I have been encouraged to post this material by my audience (a young woman in Peoria) and while I want to refrain from using this site as a dissemination point of purely personal matters, I have decided that this information should be shared. I do so however in the hopes that mankind will benefit from these written words and that world peace will be the ultimate outcome.
This summer has been what I would call a “Hospital Summer”. Unlike Indian Summers, Hospital Summers result when people go into hospitals for at least a week at a time. This one started with what I thought would be a routine visit to a cardiologist. Upon examining me, the Doctor invited me to sit in a wheelchair, then asked his nurse to push it (and me) across a parking lot to a hospital. It seems I had “atrial flutter” which was not a good idea.
I hung around the hospital for a week and gradually warmed to having various tubes and wires connected to my body.
I then went home, ate pills, and sought the solace of blood thinner. In what seemed like mere days, I was blessed with a kidney stone, which sent me back to the hospital for another week. I once again became acquainted with the tubes and wires and discovered the unhappy truth of urologists.
There were many discussions about thin blood and thick blood and I learned some new medical terminology.
After this stay I went home again, this time determined to starve my blood until it was really thin. Then it was back to the hospital for a one day visit and a procedure called an ‘ablation’. I am fine, and no one wants to hear all this, so I have decided to keep it simple and “My Hospital Summer” will come to an end now, not even making it into the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version.
The following, however, is a more recent medical event:
Tuesday evening I went out to my studio and decided to replace a bulb in an outside light that is a good 10 to 12 feet high, I got the ladder in place and expected to take two trips One to remove the dead bulb and one to replace it. I got to the top and remember getting the bulb out, and I started down the ladder.
From there things get foggy. I must have fallen at some point in the descent. I think I was actually toward the bottom but my memory of the event is gone.
I do remember staggering around not sure what was going on. Gradually things came into focus and I saw a lot of blood on my hands.
I went into the house and no one was there but 3 dogs and a cat... they refused to help.
Barbara (my wife) is where she usually is in a crises ...not there. I sat in my office and gradually most of my memory returned. I had a gash on my head and my butt hurt.
I then called Barbara; to no avail (also a pattern in such crises).
Next I called my daughter Emily, who happened to be with our friend Ann, and told her what happened.
Ann is a certified expert and will attend any crises that I get myself into. She called 911. The paramedics arrived and the dogs all came to life.
They (the paramedics, not the dogs) began asking me a bunch of questions. They strapped me to a board and put a neck brace on me, and from time to time shined a light into my eyes.
Emily and Ann arrived and they also asked questions.
So off I went to the trauma center at UNM Hospital with some guy continuing to ask where I was, who I was, the date, etc.
I gave pretty good answers, I think.
Then the guy asked me who was President.
Suddenly, it all came rushing back.
Immediately after the fall I was talking to God and he told me in confidence that Obama is Jesus.
Once before, (while I was on drugs) God had told me I was Jesus... so I was a little skeptical.
At any rate, I thought it best that I not tell the paramedic any of this, so I answered that Obama was the President.
It must have been correct, as he stopped asking questions for a while.
Barbara showed up in time to see the ambulance leaving the scene, and decided to join the caravan.
By this point the hospital stuff was routine.
I was run through all the machines, had my shirt cut off of me, got a brand new IV inserted in my hand, and answered all the same questions all over again.
Because of the neck brace all I saw was the hospital ceiling.
They stapled my head back together, told me my coccyx was intact, and by two in the morning they had had enough of me, and I got to go home. Its now Saturday and while I still feel like an 85 year old man, I am definitely better.
The pain is tolerable and my newly fixed heart survived.
UNM hospital is where you want to go when your spouse stabs you with a filet knife or you do a little too much crack.
Many interesting people are in the lobby at 2:00 in the morning.
As we were leaving (they let me have a hospital gown as my cut up shirt didn't fit any more) I was inclined to ask these people to vote for Obama as he IS Jesus, and we all need more of Jesus's love (and time).....but I kept my mouth shut.
My massage therapist tells me that the Hopi Indians believe when you fall it is an attempt to get your body back into proper alignment. She says a world of good will come out of this.
Already I can tell my left elbow has been realigned.