Ok, it's a little long but here goes. Background I was 5'10", 285 lbs and healthy as a mule. Never needed a doctor and working in Iraq as a combat vehicle mechanic. Get ready for a much needed R&R, buy tickets and wait at job site in desert for Airlift to Baghdad. Help another contractor lift a 600+ pound tire and wheel assembly. Leave Iraq with slight backache. Arrive in Thailand to begin additional training fpr rescue diver certification. Complete training and set out to enjoy a 3 day trip on a live aboard dive boat in search of whale sharks. Arrive at Hin Dang, drop in on first dive and swim in a school of whale shark. The next two dives are just as good. The final dive of the day we are diving with a swarm of Giant Spotted and Eagle Manta Rays. Get out of the water that evening and lay down for bed. Wake up in the morning with a splitting earache, so diving is off the list till that works itself out. 2 days of seasickness and intense pain later we get back to shore and I go to the local international medical clinic and get a shot to clear up the ear infection and I am getting better. Still have a nagging llittle pain in my back from lifting that tire. I am uncomfortable but continue my vacation as my ears heal. Finish up and head back to Dubai to rally for going back into Iraq. Arrive after a 5 hour flight to Dubai and find myself unable to lift my carry on bag. Report this and get ejected from the company motel and have to find my own accomodations. Convince the company the following morning I need to go to the hospital and I am ill. Spend a day in the hospital and it's decided that I have a back strain. I am discharged with modern Arab pain killers and put on a 14 hour flight to the US. The 2 750MG Tylenols wear off 4 hours into the flight, so I sit, stand and lay down for the next 10 hours. Finally arrive in Atlanta and get the full strip search since I am now nearly unable to walk. Arrive at my home and call for transport, my wife takes me directly to the doctor. Doc says back strain, treatment begins and I get something stronger than an aspirin for the first time. After 10 days of no improvement a Chiropractor freind say something else has to be wrong, sis they take any blood and look for infection? So I schedule another appointment, but cannot even get out of bed to go to the appointment. The first ambulance trip to the hospital goes smoothly, all 23 bumpy miles. The hospital takes a blood sample and sends me to intensive care to start killing the massive infection I have with no name. After 4 days of IV antibiotics they say, we have to stop the meds and let you get sick again because we killed the infection markers and cant grow what you have in the lab. So it stops and I go back uncondious and back up to intensive care. Now the results come back, I am growing Gramm negative and Gramm posiyive infections at the same time, not possible but I am doing it. So the massive antibiotics start around the clock. As the meds fo in they decide I need to have a catscan and find the swelling around my spine from the infection disolving the bone. They prescribe Heparin to keep from getting clots. The next morning I am back in ICU with blood as thick as mud, I am alergic to heparin. So heroic efforts finally correct this and a lung colapses from the abses from the infection. In go the drains and a tube to reinflate the lung. Thats when we find out that Ambien make me a crazy person and I try to escape from the enemy hospital and pull all of that out. At least the struggle against the restraint re-inflates the lung, but I have pnumonia now and I am drowning in my own juice. Now to the iso room for treatment for TB. Only problem is I dont have TB and the meds make me sicker. Finally call hospital agency and get that stopped and get sent to a rehab hospital for antibiotics and drain removal eventually, Since I am imobilized I am getting a catscan every other day to check lung, infection and drain tube placement. Al is good till they find my aorta in my abdomin has swollen to the size of a fist and is starting to leak. This is a kill you quick deal. Another ambulance ride back to the hospital and upstairs to the surgical ward. Outlook bleak, only 20$ wake up that even survive the surgery. But first they have to reverse the blood thinners again. Of course they over do those meds so I am as thin as water and wont clot at all now. 2 days trying to get that set so they can do emergency Aortic transplant. I tell em it's the 27 of June, I dont want to wake up till the 4th of July Nascar race since the only other time I ever had surgery I woke up on the table in real pain. It goes good, I survive and wake up July 2nd, a little early but OK. Now I look like a telephone exchange with all the tubes pipes and plumbing, and I have alreasy lost over 100 pounds. So in goes the feeding tube, which immediately makes me sicker with a reaction to some thing inside the mix. Then they figure out that I had a clot in the only kidney they could re-attatch is whats causing that. Off to dialysis to get the swelling down and water level where it is supposed to be. Back to the rehab hospital after a month longer at the big hospital. Going home soon maybe.... The infection flares back up, this time in my kidney, spine and lung again. Trip three back in tha ambulance. Another 3 weeks on high dollar antibiotics and the decision I should take them for life after all of this. Get sent to a nursing home and start trying to learn to walk again. Fianlly get sent home. I bring home a ton of meds and a nes buddy caled C-Def, which is uncontrollable projectile diarhea. So now I am dehydrating and continuing to loose weight and all of the meds kick in and I am unable to maintain conciosness. Apparently I am in the midst of an opiate overdose. Another trip back to the hospital in tha ambulance and 2weeks in the ICU and 2 more weeks in the nursing home to resolve that. While in the ER this time they decide that it would be a good idea to administer a drug called Narcan. It is designed to rescue heroin addicts who have overdosed themselves and has a very intersting set of side effects. First and foremost it makes you combative, so out come the restarints again. Then it empties you Bowels and your bladder. I promptly urinate on the entire ER staff while my wife is swearing "he's a dialysis patient, I swear he hasnt even got kidneys, I dont know how he is doing that". So I finally get sent home again, with a another new anti-seizure drug called dialntin. 3 months later I get a come hither demand for another Catscan to see if I am having any more drug seizures, well of course I am not. I am taking an antiseizre medication. So the 1400.00 dollars they are demanding for this test will prove nothing. I am weened off the dilantin, and told come to the ER if I start having trouble. I think I got that part figured out by now. And if I had taken the additional Catscan the outcome and direction would have been exactly the same. I am home now, and managed to stay here for just over a year without any more rides in the hurt wagon. I rarely ever go more than 60 hours without seeing or being seen by a member of the medical community in one form or another. So if you know Murphy, he has been living at my house for the last 16 months. If you took the time to read all of this, add the theme music from the circus in the background and you will have some idea of how it's been for me in the last year or so. As it stands, I go to dialysis 3 days a week, and take more pills than any normal human being should be capable of, but I survived murphy and the train wreck of unreported high blood pressure and a little common every day run of the mill infection called klebsiella.
Bob...