Waiting on Hold

I am currently about five minutes into a call to Inland Imaging about arranging an appointment for a couple of procedures. One, an MRI to look at my Pancreas and a Thoracentesis, where they stick a tube in my side and see if they can drain any fluid out of my lungs.

I made this same call this morning and was told I was 23rd in line. I could opt for them to call me. That was at 9:30. It’s now 1:50.

Oh my God, I’m in.

Okay…I’m off the phone with Inland Imaging. 

I explained to the woman on the phone that I have a referral for an MRI and I was trying to arrange an appointment. She was looking over my chart and started asking me questions about if I had any metal in my body. I told her I had a Defibrillator, some wire in my chest, and several stents. I also explained that I had already given somebody at Inland Imaging this same information last week. She looked further into my chart and discovered they had determined I could not have an MRI.

Do you think anybody thought to call me?

I have since left a message with the office scheduler of the Pancreas Doctor letting her know I can’t have an MRI and how do we proceed now.

It’s a good thing I’m retired otherwise I wouldn’t have the time to make all these calls.

Downriver Bike Ride.

A quick update on my last post.

I ended up gaining back a pound and a half by the end of the day so I’m very suspect of the whole thing…to the point where I am unsure as to the veracity of my scale.

It’s all I got so I’m sticking with it. If it’s off, it’s not by much.

I just returned from a good long bike ride. I went 10 miles, it took me just over an hour, and rode what I call my Downriver Course. The reason I like this route as much as I do is because there is a nice, clean bathroom at the Downriver Golf Course, which I thankfully made use of today.

Other data from the ride include: my average speed was 9.1 mph. My max speed was 31.5 mph. That was when I rode down Doomsday Hill.

I have a total of 411 miles on the bike of which about 350 are my miles.

Today I noticed that there are two locations along the trail, high above the river that have occupied Osprey nests on top of telephone poles. One of the ways I noticed them was because of all the white splatters on the paved trail below the nests. 

I also noticed many cool houses that I have passed by before but not really taken notice of. I’m getting better and noticing my surroundings as I ride. I’ll bet there is still a lot of stuff I miss along the way.

I’m having a great time on this bike and I must once again thank my buddy Mark for loaning it to me and not ever expecting to get it back. Ever!

Diet Ice Cream

Yesterday, I started the day with some yogurt. That was followed by some cottage cheese.

Around, 1:00, we took Susan’s sister, Margaret to the Milk Bottle. It’s a little retro restaurant not far from here with great burgers and even greater ice cream. I had a Banana Split. I also had several bites from Susan’s Chocolate Sludge…very tasty.

Later in the day, we went to a Spokane Indians baseball game. There, I had a pitiful excuse for a German Sausage. They charge a dollar for Sauerkraut. I also had a bottle of water.

Upon weighing myself this morning, I lost almost 5 pounds from the day before. I weighed myself twice just to be sure. I’m thinking of going back and weighing myself a third time. 

I’m also considering eating a Banana Split every day for the rest of my life.

Homebody

Now that we’ve been home for a couple days, I have come to realize that I am a homebody.

I’m quite happy being here at the house, and in a larger sense, Spokane.

I have not traveled a lot. I’ve been to Mexico and Canada. That’s the extent of my international travel. 

Here in the states I’ve been to: Idaho, Montana, California, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Nevada, Utah, and very briefly, Wisconsin. I live in Washington, so I’ve been there too.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is, I realize I’m a homebody and I’m okay with it.

The Journey Home

We are heading for home today.

We are going to return on highway 101, that more or less follows the shoreline all the way up the coast. We would like to make it to Crescent City, way up at the top of California.

One problem we are having is we don’t have a room for tonight. They want at least $200.00 a night and there doesn’t seem to be a lot available.

We are going to try and find something on the road. Susan is not very excited by this prospect and I know I’ll be getting some “I told you so” glares if we can’t find anything. But, come on! This is America. There’s got to be a room out there.

The on line maps tell me we are driving 355 miles today and it will take about six hours. We hope to be on the road in a couple of hours and I’ll update here when we reach the end of our travel day.

8:14PM: It turned out to be a 10 hour day. Left San Fran at 9:30 and got out of the car at 7:30. We made it to Grants Pass, Oregon. Four hundred and forty mile, ten hour day…but more like nine since we stopped at In n’ Out in Eureka and stopped again to look at Redwoods.

Here are a couple of photos.

Stanford Day Three

Today was our third day at Stanford. Yesterday was a mess. They had a couple of appointments too close together so we were scrambling between appointments.

Then I left glasses and pens behind, couldn’t find my watch when I took it off during a blood draw, and just generally created undue grief on the situation.

Today we only had one appointment with the lung transplant peoples. We had a brief consult with one of the Doctor’s P.A.’s about my health history. I walked to hell and gone for a chest X-ray.

We finally met with Dr. Shravani Pasupneti. She told us that she thinks I need a new heart. She’s not so sure I need lungs. 

The other problem she threw into the mix was there is something weird going on with my pancreas. Here’s what it says in the report.

This report is listed under CT CHEST, ABDOMEN PELVIS WITH IV CONTRAST.

Pancreas: Diffuse fatty atrophy. More prominent than prior examinations, there is a region of relatively increased density and enhancement at the midline pancreatic body (Series 11, Image 70) that persists on the delayed sequences (Series 13, Image 66) with mild surrounding fat stranding. No ductal dilatation.

What it means is we are going to run a bunch of tests back up in Spokane and then return to Stanford in a couple of months.

We were hoping we would hear about getting on the transplant list by next week but that is not going to happen.

Right now, we are about to enjoy a nice barbecued pork chop dinner her at Arnie’s.

June BP