Alan Fox

I’m a planner, which means that I map out in advance my activities for the coming day, week, or month. I walk into my office in the morning with three or four priorities. Sometimes, of course, one emergency or another will push aside my best-laid plans and surge to the top of the list.

One such emergency was on March 27th, when my (first) cervical spine surgery took place. My recovery seemed to be going well, although afterwards I suffered from far more pain than expected. In fact, I made an appointment with the surgeon to get his opinion.  He took a look at the latest x-rays, admired his handiwork, and told me everything was fine.

Four days later I woke up with a white film on my pillow. My wife thought that perhaps I had spit up during the night, but when I got out of bed she saw my back and shouted, “Don’t get in the shower!”

She immediately took a picture of the back of my neck and emailed it to our son who is a doctor. He called instantly to say, “I’ll meet you at the emergency room with my over night bag. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

It turned out that I had a major infection, and it had “made itself known” by bursting through the sutures from my original surgery. One nurse almost fainted when my wife showed her the photo, which apparently was passed along to many others on the hospital staff.

So approximately six weeks after my first surgery the “A” team once again gathered at nine am on a Saturday morning for my second spine surgery, this one needed to clean out the infection and replace much of the contaminated hardware.

I’m now at home after a nine-day stay in the hospital. Hopefully you won’t ever find yourself in a similar situation but if so, here are a few hints:

1. Insist on having the best technician in the hospital draw your blood. My arm was stabbed once by an idiot who wanted to try again, and insisted that the hospital allowed him to make two unsuccessful attempts. I told him that my rule was only one. My wife told him to leave. Without warning he tried to lower the head of my bed on his way out. Ouch!
2. Listen to hints from the nursing staff. When I asked for a stronger pain-killer and reported my pain as a “four,” my nurse said, “Read between the lines. Your pain has to be at least a seven to allow me to give you the stronger dose. Now, what is your level of pain?” “A seven,” I answered.
3. Have someone stay with you 24/7 if possible. You will receive much better care, I promise.

This is how I spent my extended Spring vacation. I hope that yours was a lot more fun.

Love,

Alan

There are at least two living grandpas in my immediate family and one of them is me.

The other grandpa is my father, who is often known as great-grandpa.

At the moment we are both at the hospital. I am at Cedars Sinai (henceforth “CS”) recovering from my second cervical spine surgery within six weeks.

Dad is at Ronald Regan medical center at UCLA, (henceforth “Ronnie”), recovering from a fairly serious foot infection.  I still harbor a hope of assuming his mantle of great-grandpa at some day in the future, but that remains to be seen.

There are a number of similarities between my dad and me, and many differences. I will hereafter refer to my dad as “MD” even though he is not a doctor (the doctor in our family is my son, his grandson, Steven).

Boy, has Steven been busy over the past six weeks. On March 27^th, after thoroughly consulting with Steven, I was wheeled into the operating room (henceforth “OR”) of CS. My spine surgery was a total success ­– especially when you ask my surgeon.

While I was home recovering, MD decided to upstage me (in Steven’s world known as out gurney-ing me), and developed a somewhat serious foot infection. He was checked into the emergency room at Ronnie.

I promise you that I (to be referred to as either “I” or “me” – which are absolutely delightful words) did not have a relapse (henceforth referred to as “ouch”), or I upstaging dad (henceforth “IUD”) to go to the OR on purpose. (I am currently on pain medication and knew what OR stands for ten seconds ago and now I don’t.)

I do not mind that the main responsibility of caring for us in the hospital has fallen onto the shoulders of Steven and my wife.  I am the perfect patient because I follow instructions, have enormous patience (at least to begin with), and MD does not.

For example, MD yells at the nursing staff regularly. I scream at the nursing staff irregularly. He desperately wants to get out of Ronnie whereas I kind of like yelling at people at CS. My view of the Santa Monica Mountains is superb, though the food here leaves something to be desired – such as seasoning without anything other than pure salt (henceforth “PS”). He likes to complain to as many visitors as possible. I prefer to have no visitors and to allow them to suffer terribly on my behalf, in silence, in the comfort of their own homes.

Another significant difference – MD has given up two or three times and called his caretakers to provide sleeping pills so he could die. I, on the other hand, while being wheeled at 30 miles per hour down CS halls, may have seriously thought about my own mortality, but upon arriving at the OR where the operating team seemed to be having so much fun – decided not to interrupt the joy of their Saturday morning by dying, even if the surgeon might have claimed later that, despite my demise, the operation itself was a miraculous success.

MD may escape from Ronnie tomorrow. I will be allowed to enjoy the haute cuisine of CS until Thursday or Friday or for as long as I can eat the stuff.

It is said that great comedians transform their pain into humor for others to enjoy.  This blog has bounced around like my pogo stick blog from February of last year and I am dictating it to an editor (henceforth “ED”) with the hope that this will be the start of my long threatened, but not yet realized, ambition to become the world’s first and best lying down comedian (henceforth “FAB”). I plan to be writing additional blogs for many years, which, hopefully, will not be as funny as this one because – as Adlai Stevenson famously stated after losing the 1956 presidential contest to Dwight D Eisenhower –  “I’m too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.”

Talk to you next week. I’ll be home by then.

PS – I was dictating this blog to ED when my ear, as it often does, touched the mute button on my phone. I apologize because you’re missing the best part (henceforth “TBP”).

Alan

When I was sixteen I attended summer camp in the mountains near my Los Angeles home. I’ll admit that camping has never been my thing – I’m outdoorsy in theory only.

But it was at that camp I met Gail, my first real girl friend.  She lived on Manning Avenue across town. That meant I had the opportunity to drive my mom’s old Pontiac forty-five minutes each way to pick Gail up for a date.  It’s strange to recall this now, more than sixty years later, because I don’t like to drive any more than necessary, and try as I might, I cannot visualize Gail as a seventy-nine-year-old woman. She’s like Marilyn Monroe who never ages in my mind.

One morning at camp I woke up with two black marks about an eighth of an inch apart on the ball of my right thumb.

What was this?  I knew immediately: it was a bite from a black widow spider and I was doomed to die unless I got immediate help. I’ve always had an active imagination – especially when it comes to dangers from which I might die.

What to do?  I certainly could not tell the cabin counselor. I didn’t want to be labeled as a “sissy,” and I already didn’t get along very well with the other boys, particularly those who had more experience with camping.

I did work up the courage to approach the counselor, stick my right thumb in front of him, and casually ask (while looking the other way), “What do you think this is?”

“Probably a splinter,” he said.

Doomed. Apparently he had never seen a black widow bite before. I was sure the venom was already coursing through my veins and I was never going see my family again.

“Okay,” I mumbled. “Thanks.”

I had only one more chance for help. At breakfast in the dining hall I approached the camp nurse. She had to recognize a black widow spider bite when she saw one.

Again I stuck out my right thumb and repeated, “What do you think this is?”

She must have had little experience with the outdoors herself.

“Probably a small splinter,” she said, continuing to sip her coffee.

My final hope vanished.  I could not bring myself to voice my real concern. I simply couldn’t say, “Do you think it might be a black widow spider bite?”  I couldn’t. It was like not asking a girl to dance with me until she was already leaving the high school gym on the arm of a more assertive guy.

At camp there was no library where I could look it up, and, of course, no Internet back then.  So I spent the rest of my day waiting to die.  I was even a little disappointed when I survived all the way through to the evening campfire.  I didn’t want to expire in my sleep

That was the last time I ever attended summer camp as a camper. Two years later though, I worked as a camp counselor teaching photography. I spent a lot of time in the dark room where I primitively merged the faces of female counselors onto… I’m sure you get the picture.

I’m glad my children seem to like hiking, camping, skiing, and other outdoor activities.  And all of them actually seemed to enjoy summer camp.

Do I need to add that the moral of this tale is, “Don’t be afraid to ask”?

Cheers.

Alan