Oh wait, after the ruptured diverticulitis there was my death

Hey all,

Thanks for continuing to read forward.

After being at work for less than 2 weeks I surprised my workmates with my death.  Oh yeah, that happened too.  Nasty event, death is.  I don't remember anything from it, I seem to have lost my memory for a period of time around it.  Maybe just as well, not a lot to remember when dead and frozen and in a coma to follow.  But this is the information that came to me, I can only go by what people have told me, and a lot of people are still hush hush about it.  I am sure it was traumatizing for many, and to them I apologize.  It was not my intention to die that day at work.  But better there than while driving in my car or while sleeping at night alone in bed.  At least by dying at work I had a chance to be saved.  And I was saved.  God has placed his angels in location to see to it that I, one of his children, survived to complete whatever mission it is I have in this life. 

Anyway, as promised, here is what I learned:

On July 5th, 2012, I stood up at my desk, took off my reading glasses and while putting them on my desk I said, "oh uh" and hit the ground cold and blue.  Dead by the time I hit the ground.  My desk neighbor, Rigo,  jumped up and caught my fall enough to protect my head and neck from physical damage.  They thought I passed out, I was only back at work for 2 weeks and I was passing out before my surgery 2 months prior.  It took a few minutes for them to realize I was not unconscious but that I was in fact dead.  I had that lifeless colour, no breathing, no heartbeat.  Yeah, I was dead.  I was down for about 5 minutes when another desk neighbor, Son, started CPR compressions on me. He is so small too, maybe 100 pounds?  But whatever he did was enough to get the oxygen flowing through my brain until Laura G found someone else trained in CPR to assist him.  The next person was Linda, from HR, she kept the CPR compressions going while Rebecca called 9-1-1.  I understand the EMT's got there some 13 minutes later.  They were not able to revive me on site, neither with CPR not defibrillation, so they continued CPR on my body until I was delivered to the hospital.  I was dead for about 20 minutes I understand.

What happened to me is called Sudden Cardiac Death.  It is when the heart stops receiving electricity to keep it beating.

At the hospital, after reviving me via defibrillation and epinephrine, I was kept under hypothermic therapy (freezing my core temperature to about 70°F) for 48 hours.  This slowed down the healing process, which is when the scarring and brain damage would occur I understand.  Then I believe I was kept in an induced coma for another couple days after that. 

I have no memory of any of this.  I have no memory of 2 days before, of the 4th of July up on my rooftop with my neighbors watching fireworks, of falling at work.  My memory is lost (damaged?) up to about 2 weeks after the death.  I was calling work daily but I can't recall calling them the day following. 

I was fortunate I recovered and that I was not converted to an unusable organ donor (I say unusable because the lymphoma I had makes me ineligible for organ donation).  I am fortunate I had people around that did what they needed to do to save my life, my brain, my family and friends from having to go through another funeral.  After months of Cardiac Rehab I now have much of my old body back, with a little hardware.  :-) I did have a stent installed, then during the end of my rehab I walked out the Long Beach Half Marathon (3 hours, 31 minutes... not bad for walking only, not a step of jog was allowed by my doctors).  Then I had an ICD installed.  I now have, in my chest, a defibrillator. It is like a pace maker but it will hit me with 40 joules of shock if my heart stops again for 6 seconds.  The device is also a pace maker but that is 3rd in function.  The 2nd function of the device is the 3rd lead... it is a beventricullar resyncrony charge - it synchronizes my ventricles to beat more efficiently.

So, a nice little adventure I had.  Now I am part robot too.  Not only do I have my own mouse antibodies to protect me from ongoing lymphoma I now have a battery to keep my heart beating if it stops and to make it work more efficiently.  COOL!  I am borg!  hehehe

Anyway, we can't let being 50 (almost 51) get in the way, can't let cancer get in the way either.  And I sure as hell can't let death stop me.  God keeps kicking me back so whatever my mission is must be a good one.  :-)  I only hope I can deliver.

Check my countdown timers.  I have a few events I am doing this year... Lake Irvine Mud Run on Apr 6 '13, Orange County Half Marathon on May 5 '13, Disneyland Half Marathon on Sep 1 '13 (with my nephew Nick!), and also the Run For Your Lives zombie run on Sep 28 '13 (also with my nephew Nick).  This last one is a full 5K mud run experience but while being chased by zombies so no time to rest.  We will be both runners in 1 wave, but also zombies for a 3 hours shift afterwards.  After all, I am a TRUE zombie now, I have been reanimated after death.  Yikes!  What an adventure this life is!!!!

I bought a GoPro camera to mount on a chest harness for the upcoming events, and I got a new laptop (first one ever for me!) to edit the video.  I hope I can entertain you readers with my adventures.
I am currently in a coffee shop using my laptop (I feel so Hollywood, I should be writing my novel or my screen play.  hehehe).  I will update my countdown tickers in a bit.  And I have some really great pictures to share with y'all from my day at the Holi Festival in Norwalk (Los Angeles) from a couple weeks ago.  My nephew Nick was in town so he met me there.

Thanks for reading.  Now that I am a heart patient I can't take my Adderall, so chatty chatty chatty.  But it's better than death!  :-)

Catching up after recovering from food poisoning

Hello readers,

It has been a very long time since I have posted to my blog.  I am sorry about that, some unavoidable events have become paramount and it has taken me months to recover from it.

First, I had to abandon my trip to Alaska.  :-(
It's not that I wanted to, but 3 weeks before the Orange County Marathon (May 06, 2012) I contracted a bad case of food poisoning.  I was thinking it had to be from some iffy chicken I cooked.  It should have been fine but it was iffy.  That evening I had the most uncomfortable gastric distress (ewww), and it continued for 2 days, 4 days, a week, 3 weeks!!! and it didn't go away.  I did the Orange County Half Marathon (13.1 miles) but I did not finish pretty.  I had diarrhea 4 times during the run (yes, there were porta-potties) and I had to learn from a stranger that toilet seat covers work for emergency tissue paper.  OK folks, too much?  Nah, facts of life. Anyway, it took me more than 4 hours to finish, but I finished. 

4 days later I started passing out and took myself to the emergency room, had to hang out there for a few hours to find I had a 'mass' in my stomach.  Not really the food poisoning I thought it was but it was something.  I was hospitalized because the mass was what is called a 'phlegmon'... a pocket of infection protecting something.  After a week in the hospital on IV antibiotics I was going to be sent home for home IV treatments but I had a tachycardial event raising my BP above 220 so they put me in telemetry to check my heart and learned whatever it was in my stomach needed to be repaired.  So into an exploratory surgery I went. 

The surgeon found a ruptured diverticulitis and the phlegmon was protecting my appendix.  The surgeon had to resection out some large intestine and small intestine, but leaving my appendix.  (Why?  why not remove that unneeded unnecessary organ while in there!).  Anyway, I had another week in the hospital for the recovery of that one... 2 weeks with nothing by mouth, no water, no food, no IV food, nothing to go thru my intestines.  I did lose weight.  :-)  I wondered what would get me to do that.  hehehe.

Recovery was boring, but it happens of course.  I was out of work until the end of June.  Needless to say, but I will anyway, my birthday trip to hike Denali and do the Anchorage Mayor's Half Marathon had to be cancelled.  Can't really hike in the wilderness with an open abdominal wound, not with the wild animals up there.  And the marathon would probably have been uncomfortable also.

Oh well, maybe next year.  The Denali hike and the Anchorage Mayor's Half Marathon are still on my bucket list.  Maybe for birthday #52.  (I'm not making it a goal for #51, if you continue reading you will read why).