Tag: emergency room

I cut my finger

On By Michel McDonaldIn DoctorLeave a comment

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I have an oopsie whoopsie lol. Last Monday I came home from the gym and I was making a protein shake. I have whole strawberries in the freezer that I put there to prevent them from going bad, but I forgot to remove the stems. So I was cutting the frozen stem off by flicking it with a steak knife. It wasn’t working, so I tried to gently push the steak knife into the side of the stem, and I guess I don’t know my own strength because it went right through the strawberry and an inch of the steak knife penetrated into my finger. Continue reading “I cut my finger” →

Parotidectomy Surgery Complications

On By Michel McDonaldIn Doctor, Health, Pain1 Comment

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It has been 3 weeks since I had my surgery and everything seems to be healing well.  My scar isn’t red and it isn’t too noticeable, except for the scar from the hole from where the tube was draining the fluid for 2 weeks which is quite visible, but disappears with a Band-Aid.

My face and ear are still numb, although the feeling is coming back slowly, but it is coming back.  But it still feels very strange.

The only thing that seems to have gone wrong is that I still have a saliva gland that seems to still be producing saliva with nowhere to go.  According to the image, there are three glands.  Parotid, which was removed, Submandibular and Sublingual.  The Sublingual gland is under the tongue, no problem.  The gland that is still producing saliva is my Submandibular gland which is below where the Parotid gland used to be.  It is still producing saliva, but it is not releasing into my mouth.  Instead of releasing into my mouth, it stores the saliva.

This is a really big issue because that is what my Parotid gland was doing.  It wasn’t releasing the saliva, so I was having to push (or milk) it out of the gland and into my mouth.  I have been trying to do that with this gland, but it is not releasing into my mouth, instead, I can feel it releasing under my skin.  I can tell because it tingles.  I don’t want it to release saliva inside of my body, but if it doesn’t get milked, it just gets bigger and bigger and next thing you know I will be rushed to the emergency room because of how painful it is.

The surgeon told me when I came back last week to have the tube removed that it was just some saliva that will be absorbed by my body, but I had no idea it was still producing more saliva.  I only know it is producing more saliva because I could feel it getting bigger and under more pressure when I ate some chocolate the other day.  Sweet and tangy are what seem to generate a lot of saliva for me, which over the years has been a major issue for me because when I start generating a lot of saliva after drinking orange juice, my saliva gland would get backed up and it wouldn’t release the saliva into my mouth.  That’s what I was trying to get surgery for, forget the stone, I want my saliva to be able to release into my mouth as it normally would without me having to milk it.

I can live without orange juice, which I have lived without for years because I know that sour causes this issue.  The one thing I don’t think I can live without is sweet, because I have a sweet tooth.  I love sweet flavors, such as sweet tea, or sweet coffee, or sweet oatmeal.  I can live without chocolate and cookies and so on, but I can’t avoid other sweet flavors because there is almost always something sweet.

My next appointment with the surgeon isn’t until March, but my next appointment with my regular doctor is next month and he will advise me on what to do.  I just hope by then it isn’t too painful.

I was hoping that my last post on this issue was my very last post.  I guess I jinxed myself by saying it was my last post.  This seems to be a pattern with me though.  I say I will never have to worry about something again, but then it comes back and I have to worry about it some more.  It’s a “if it can go wrong, it will” type of thing.  Murphy’s Law.  Why does Murphy seem to always be hiding in the shadows cursing me?  Darn you Murphy!

I will certainly update this issue if it becomes too unbearable and I end up in the ER or when I see my doctor in January, whichever comes first.

I broke my arm

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Health3 Comments

So funny story…  I broke my arm.

What happened was, last night I rode my bicycle to the store and on my way home I was riding through a parking lot to go to the sidewalk on Chester Avenue. In the parking lot of the restaurant is a tax place and they put in a walk way to the front door. For some reason they decided to put a curb on both sides of the walkway. There’s really no reason for it. Long story short, I was riding through the parking lot and it was dark so I really couldn’t see the curb and I rode right over it . I went head over handlebars and landed on my left arm. All of my weight broke my arm.

I sat there on the ground for a few minutes because I couldn’t move. My arm was in so much pain that it hurt to even flinch. I decided that I had to get up, but it was very difficult. I got up anyway and went for my phone which was in my left front pocket. Of course I couldn’t pull it out with my left hand, so I had to reach over with my right hand to pull my phone out. I called home and said “help I’ve been in an accident.” I told my partner where I was and he drove right away to pick me up.

He put my bicycle in the car and drove home because I insisted that he put the groceries in the refrigerator and freezer. He drove me to the emergency room at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital and they took me to get x-rays almost immediately. It took maybe an hour and a half before they finally called me to go into a room to tell me the results of the x-ray. I just assumed that he was going to tell me that I dislocated my shoulder or just badly bruised my arm, but he told me that I did in fact break my arm. He didn’t put me in a cast and I didn’t have any surgery, he said that the bones were in place, so I just need to keep my arm in a sling for the next month.

I feel very stupid for not paying more attention because I have gone that way a million times and nothing like that has ever happened before. The thing that upsets me the most is that I’ve never broken a bone in my body my entire life. 42 years with not one broken bone. Oh well, I guess I was due lol.

Well, the positive thing about this is that I am able to type this by using my voice on my android cell phone lol. So I guess most of my computer activity is going to be with my voice. On the plus side, I don’t have to do any chores for a while lol. I can find a silver lining in anything.

The doctor said it will take a month to heal.

Emergency Room

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, DoctorLeave a comment

We went to the store tonight and I bought a can of Slim Fast Optima because it controls your appetite for 4 hours it says. During the day I really don’t have much of an appetite, it’s typically after 6pm when my appetite comes at me.

I will eat dinner at 6pm but an hour later I’m hungry again and I keep wanting to eat until about 1am and that’s bad. You aren’t supposed to eat past a certain time, I think 8pm or something. So I needed something to help me out with that so I bought Slim Fast.

Well, so I got out my slim fast shaker cup and filled it to the 8oz line with some low-fat milk then I put a scoop of slim fast in it then shook the cup. Then I looked over at my blender and thought oh I should put it in there and add some ice to it and I got a real milk shake.

So I went over to the blender, it’s not a big blender, it’s a 1 glass blender so it doesn’t make a pitcher full of drinks, just 1 glass at a time. So I went to unscrew it from the unit and when I did that I unscrewed the glass from the blade instead of the whole thing from the unit.

So I sat the glass down and grabbed the blade part and tried to unscrew it and I was turning it the wrong direction and completely forgetting that I had it plugged in, I was holding the unit with my right hand and accidentally pressed the button on it and it blended my left hand.

Well, thankfully it didn’t do a lot of damage. All it did was it made a half round mark on the palm of my hand, it cut deep enough into my skin that I had to go to the E.R. The cut near my index finger was superficial compared to the cut near my thumb.

I didn’t have to wait that long and I got seen and they cleaned it up with iodine and the doctor used Dermabond to glue the cut closed instead of stitches. It doesn’t hurt or anything, I just gotta be careful and not get it wet for the next 5-10 days which is how long it will be on before it falls off. I was very, very extremely lucky that it wasn’t worse. I could be missing a finger.

Julia Lanier

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog, Friends and FamilyLeave a comment

Our dear friend Julia Lanier passed away this morning at around 2am. She was a friend of Chips mom for years and when Opal passed away in 2004 Darrin began a friendship with Julia to help fill the void left when Opal passed (void for both of them). Darrin and Julia talked just about every day on the telephone. She would call when there was a news story that she thought he would enjoy watching on TV and vice versa.

Darrin used to take the bus over to her house and drive her to her doctors appointments with her car. Or he would just go with her and she would drive her own car. About 4 months ago when we got our car he brought a little foldable step-ladder because a ford explorer is a bit high for a woman in her late 80’s and he was going to bring her to her doctor’s appointment but ended up taking her to the emergency room instead. She was admitted into the hospital and was there for probably 2 weeks.

He visited her on a daily basis, sometimes 2 or 3 times per day, early in the morning, noon time and dinner time. The doctor released her to go into a nursing facility called Californian Care on Mt. Vernon Ave. She stayed there until she passed away this morning.

Julia didn’t want anybody to do anything special for her after she died. No obituary, no headstone, no funeral at all. She will be cremated and put in an urn in the same plot as her husband. Because there is no headstone the only way someone will be able to visit her gravesite is if they go to the office and say hey, where is she? Then of course they will have to escort you there. Anyway, she is in a much better place (as they always say, but it’s true).