Migraine Hell

I'm in migraine hell today - my prescription didn't get rid of it last night. You would think if I managed to live 54 years without getting them I would have managed to escape them but no, this year I had to start getting migraines. Some things you expect to get with age.  Migraines were a little surprise for my middle age, but then I guess idiopathic peripheral neuropathy was another surprise.

At this point I have called in sick. I am just waiting for the two Benadryl to kick in and knock me out so I can sleep through some of this. At least I can post this via my cell phone  so that the light of my computer won't kill my eyes.

You would think that my dog could at least have the courtesy of not snoring here next to me while I wait for sleep.

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My new Verizon Droid

After about four years my cell phone gave up the ghost so my wife and I got Verizon Droids.  Now I am having fun learning how to use it. This is my first E-mail with it.

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Goodbye Dad, see you in heaven

If you read my last post you knew what happened at the airport to affect my dad's health. That put dad in the Intensive Care Unit. Several days after dad got admitted to the ICU he unexpectedly had cardiac arrest and died. It has been a sad time for both my wife and myself. We have missed him a lot in the last two and a half weeks.

As Christians the sadness we have is not one of loss forever, but rather missing him now. With dad, my wife, and I all believing that Jesus is Lord (we should follow his teachings and example instead of our own imperfect thoughts and lives) and that God raised Jesus from the dead for our salvation we will see dad at death or at the return of Jesus Christ.

We have missed dad in a number of ways. We have missed doing things with him. I have lost count of the number of times my wife has started crying because she had picked up the phone to call dad, and then remembered that she couldn't talk to him.

My advice to everyone is two things:
1) Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Regrets are a terrible thing. Even in the last couple of years alone I have had some very good memories with my dad. I wanted to make sure I got to do some things with him. I took him to the Korean War memorial in Wilsonville Oregon and got to take a picture of him in front of the granite wall that had my dad's 7th Division patch (the hourglass) on it. It made him proud. Another thing we got to do: we took him over to the Goldendale Washington observatory. We all had a good time there. I took dad to Hood River Oregon and we went geocaching after a cache called "The Pipeline*", waypoint number GCC51C. At the time you could walk on a huge pipeline coming from Powerdale Dam. You got to walk in the caging system the power company used to repair the pipeline. There was even a section of the original wooden pipeline to splash us with water. I hear a flood washed out part of the pipeline, but there are still other ways to get to the Geocache.

2) Make a commitment to God that Jesus really is Lord and Jesus really was raised from the dead for your salvation. It is bad enough missing someone like my dad who we miss but will see again in heaven. I cannot imagine the loss people must feel over the fact that a loved one has died, and they will never ever see that person again. It must be an empty, lonely existence knowing there is no hope and you won't get to see the person alive again. That doesn't even include your own judgement on Judgement Day, followed by being sent to hell for your sins. We have all done wrong, but there is new life in Jesus Christ.

So with that I say, "Goodbye Dad, see you in heaven." It's much better to say that than "So long and thanks for all the fish." (from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) I'm looking forward to seeing and talking with dad again.

Don't grow old and need oxygen if you fly.

This weekend was a bad, stressful weekend for our family. The Anchorage Veterans Administration clinic got things set up for my father to fly down to Portland, Oregon for some treatment in an area they couldn't handle. Dad gets good medical care from the Veterans Administration. The VA got it set up so that there would be oxygen for him on the plane, giving the airlines plenty of notice and following their other requirements. (You cannot bring your own oxygen any more on a plane. The airlines has to provide it.)

Some idiot from either Alaska Airlines or Continental Airlines decided on their own that dad didn't need oxygen (even though his doctor prescribes 2 liters, 24 hours a day and the VA had the oxygen set up with the airlines.)

Dad got to the airline, found there was no oxygen, got overstressed and had an asthma attack on top of his COPD. Then it progressed to respiratory failure. For a while no one would do anything except poke him to try to see what was going on. The airlines wouldn't help him because his heart was beating, so they wouldn't help him with his breathing. Finally an ambulance came and the EMTs took care of Dad. Because of delayed treatment by the airlines and the testing they did the doctor at the hospital thought dad would show up as brain dead on the CAT scan.

My niece had to go get his power of attorney for health care which said he didn't want any extraneous lifesaving care. They took out his breathing tube and he could breath on his own! (Praise God!) He still wasn't conscious, but he was breathing on his own. Yesterday he woke up and was talking mostly gibberish. Later in the day they did a swallowing test and he could swallow fine. By the evening he could have a conversation on the phone and all but a sentence or two made sense.

I hope Dad continues to progress well, however I am concerned whether or not he will be able to fly down for radiation therapy for his cancer after all this. Who knows if there will be oxygen next time since it had been set up that the airlines would provide the oxygen for him this time and they didn't.

I hope no one else has to go through what we went through.

North to Alaska

March 5th I am off to Alaska for a week of visiting my dad in Anchorage. I've never been up there since he moved up there a number of years ago, so it should be LOTS of fun. In addition to seeing him I'll see the start of the Ididarod, get to have a nice sled dog ride, and of course do some Geocaching in a state I have never Geocached in before.

Time for a new year's resolution

I just went to my old blog. The date of the last post is embarrassing when you look at today's date, so I just made a new years resolution to start up and keep up my blog again.