Category Archives: 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

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I am in the middle of experiencing several one-year anniversaries right now.

One year ago right now, I was an indefinite resident of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.  Except for the occasional visit from family members, I was spending most of my days totally alone.

It was tough.  I was on the docket to receive a heart transplant, but just never had any idea if and when it would occur.  My life was hanging by a thread and surrounded by uncertainty.  My dying heart was a huge, grotesque remnant of what it used to be.

Lying in that hospital bed, day in and day out, tubes, needles, and wires keeping me both alive and yet, also imprisoned.

I was put on anti-depressants because of all that I had gone through.  I had to FORCE myself, everyday, to keep my spirits up. Although my son was being prevented from seeing his father, I knew that I needed to make sure I did everything I could to stay alive for his sake.  I knew only TOO WELL the pain of having a father who never cared enough about his son. I was never told by him that I was loved. He never apologized to me.  He was (and still is) a domineering figure who demands deference and obedience, even though he doesn’t deserve it.

I REFUSE to let my son believe that his father didn’t truly love him.  He doesn’t know how many nights I cry myself to sleep wishing that *I* could be there every day for him. I’m appalled, frankly, that I’m perfectly available every single day to watch him, and would do so at no cost to anyone.  But, I know it would  only be an uphill battle with her.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

I had to go into Northwestern today, (the hospital in downtown chicago) in order to meet with the clinical psychologist who was assigned to my particular case. She said that they were now pretty concerned about me because of an issue that my mom brought to their attention behind my back. So, I showed up there this morning (very late because my dad insists on avoiding the Illinois toll roads as much as possible — He says he does it on principle (i.e. the state is already taking too much of our money already!) So, instead of saving himself an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, he believes that by NOT paying the total amount of 3.50, he’s making some kind of protest. oh well.

So, needless to say, Gail made sure I heard about it today. She definitely was not the same person that I remembered her to be. She was putting me on the defensive and acting very standoffish.

Sometimes, it seems like you just can’t ever win.

October 2, 2009

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I just got back from a nice long walk in the damp, dark, dank streets of 61107. I slept rather uncomfortably lastnight after having another disturbing night of frequent nightmares/night terrors. This has been increasing for several weeks now. Some of the dreams vary in content but some are extremely similar. They are also extremely detailed and the one I had lastnight had the makings of a plot, even. The one common feature of all them is of me running away from something much bigger than me, chasing me. But, I never escape in any of them, I only wake up right after before being captured and find myself in a cold sweat. For instance, one common dream I’ve been having is of me and my sitting in her living room watching sitcoms late at night This used to be a daily occurrence, except this time, the living room was re-arranged and instead of me sitting in a chair, I was sitting on the floor. My aunt gets up and walks out to their garage, which is HUMUNGOUS. For reasons, I don’t know why, I follow her. Inside this garage, was a haphazardly parked SEMI truck that she got into and started up. For some reason, (I don’t know why), the truck did not have a normal box-trailer, but was just a long flat bed. I jumped onto it. She starts driving extemely fast. The garage is huge (like a warehouse), and as she turns a corner, I can see the garage door coming up. With a delusional sense of calm as I imagined closure was near, I shrieked as I saw the door getting closer and closer and yet she didn’t stop.  As we made contact with the garage door, there was no loud crash as I expected, but a tear.  The door was nothing but a large sheet of paper.  As the semi raced over the driveway (which wasn’t HER driveway in Cherry Valley, but was MY driveway in Burnsville), I jumped out of the bed and grabbed onto the end of the flap of torn paper, and started swinging back and forth like I was on a trapeze.  As I was swinging, my aunt had somehow become someone else, someone who looked more like my voice coach from college, Sandra, tall, young, slim, blonde.  She wdas laughing and pointing up in the sky, which ALSO gave me a false sense of security.  In the nighttime sky, the big, full moon was directly in front of me.  Along with it, were dozens of outlines of spinning spaceships.  She was acting as though our salvation was upon us.  Directly in front of me, a long, four-branched piece of shrubbery leapt up directly in front of me and started coming at me.  I dropped to the ground, turned around, and saw the woman I was with in-between two, undecipherable figures, extremely tall, dark, and sleek.  She herself, had turned into a silver, metallic wierdthing with glowing eyes.  NOW I was terrified.  I started to run away, but it was useless.  In the dream and as I woke up, I screamed out loud.  It was four in the morning.  I was cold and sweaty and had to go to the bathroom.

(Interpretations welcome)

October 1, 2009

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My parents and I had to wake up very early this morning in order to make it to my scheduled heart biopsy at Northwestern hospital in downtown Chicago.

Fortunately, I was still very tired and was able to sleep most of the way to the hospital.  My dad, who would rather whittle away minutes from his ultimate Time of Death by taking all of the side roads into Chicago rather than paying a couple bucks by taking the tollway, was able to get us to the front door of the Feinberg Pavillion shortly after 7:00 am. 

My mom and I jumped on the elevator to the eighth floor where I was greeted by name by the secretary there and given my typical blue placard with the letters, “H1” on it.  Holding room 1 was my typical spot during these outpatient procedures. 

I was met with some new nurses this time.  One was a really short, old
Chinese woman, extremely pleasant and nice, (nevertheless, I’m sure she’d be a shoe in at a casting call for a rice field worker).   She had the hardest time with my veins, fumbling around with needles in my left arm, while I just lay there gritting my teeth, grabbing the bedsheets, and trying not to squirm.  After what felt like an eternity, she asked, “Does it hurt?”  (For the life of me, I still can’t figure out what clued her in.)  “Very much, so, YES!!”  — She graciously apologized and said she would let me rest and let someone else give it a try.  It was obvious that today was just not her day when she just stood there for several minutes scratching her head in wonderment while trying to shove a thermometer down my throat.  It was obvious she was not getting the reading she wanted, and then I snickered and just waited for her to pull the thing back out before telling her, “You just put an ice cube in my mouth and then stuck the thermometer there 2 seconds later.”   She laughed embarrassingly as she realized why my temperature was only 95 degrees.

The  nurses from the lab came in and I could tell they were in a rush.  After getting myself settled on the skinny, cold operating table, they were able to get an IV fairly easily into my right arm, and get a more accurate temperature reading.

Per my request at every one of these procedures, I was sedated throughout the whole thing.

After it was all over, Susan Tafini, (my new nurse practitioner), came into my curtain cubicle and started asking me about my meds and such.  She said that I needed to lay off some of the steroids since my white blood cell count was TOO low, meaning, I’m very susceptible to infection.  I also had a high percentage of potassium (where the heck I could be getting too much potassium is beyond me, — OOOH Shoot!  My banana just broke off onto my keyboard, brb.)

My echocardiogram, for some reason, occurred much later than usual.  At 11:30, the guy peeked in and said he’d be back in half an hour to take me.  Starving, I instantly called my mom and asked her to go down to the cafeteria to get me something hot to eat.  (It was either that or have one of the dull sandwich’s the hospital serves.)   My wonderful, dutiful mother delivered the perfect little lunch to tied me over for a couple hours. 

The echo guy told me that my heart was actually pumping better than it should (the ejection fraction rate was about 70%), which meant that I was basically dehydrated. As he put it, “My heart was thirsty.”

I could tell it was finally October.  The weather was cold, wet, and dreary — I loved it!

Thank God for another day on my second lease on life!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

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One week from today, July 22, my son, and one and only child, will have his third birthday.  It will be the third year in a row that I will have been prevented from seeing him, whether through circumstances, or through sheer cruelty.

On Austin’s first birthday, I naturally assumed we’d be able to be together.  It’s only human, right?  Well, unfortunately, the reality hadn’t quite sunk into my thick skull that Austin’s mother ISN’T human, she’s more like a machine.  That year, his birthday was on Sunday.  The day before, was one of the days of the week in which Austin was released from his captor and hang out with Daddy.  The arcane family court system in Hennepin County Minnesota, relied on an incredibly out-of-date social theory for non-custodial parents of infants.  The idiotic Supreme Court of MN decided, based on some “task force” that very young children should only have “brief but frequent” visits with the non-custodial parent.  After doing further research on this, I discovered that newer, more updated studies disagreed with this.

Saturday, July 21, 2007, it was a beautiful day and Austin and I were toolin’ around Eden Prairie; I was pushing him around in his stroller.  He liked the toys at the library, so we wandered in there and we played together for over an hour or so.  As 12:00 approached, the designated time in which I had to hand Austin back over, I decided to call his mother to have her just pick Austin up at the library (2 minutes from the townhouse).  However, as often happened with me, my good intentioned plans got sabotaged by unforeseen meteorites that somehow come crashing threw the ceiling at the worst possible time.  The wayward projectile that came flying at me that day caused my cell phone to pick up absolutely NO signal – thus preventing me from notifying the ever-volatile volcano, Mt. St. Hellwhore.   As such, when I was finally able to get through somehow, the machine went berserk.

I quickly helped Austin clean up the little mess of toys we had managed to make and snuggled him back into his stroller.  When the “blonder than she pays to be” cyborg walked in, I quite naturally asked it, “So, what are we going to do about Austin’s birthday tomorrow?”  I was given a “does not compute” gaze from its eyes, “What do you mean?”  “Well, it’s Austin’s first birthday, so I’m wondering when I’ll be able to get to see my son.”

Despite whatever animosity existed between us, it never even OCCURRED to me that someone would be so cruel, both to me AND to her son, by depriving us both of a crucial relationship.  But, my expectations were that of a human being, one who actually possesses a heart.  My faulty assumption was quickly exposed, however, when the machine revealed that it was not programmed with the ability to show any type of genuine compassion.  Without any sort of consideration whatsoever, it said in a monotone voice, with a matching expressionless face, “I think we should stick to the court order.”

I was speechless.  All I could do was stare into the steely, cold eyes before me, hoping to find even a faint glimmer of a soul.  But, sadness welled up within me, as I failed to find any evidence.  My own eyes streamed out the uncontainable expressions of my soul, as I knelt down to the stroller, thankful that my little buddy had no idea of the tragedy happening right before him, and would never remember it.  I kissed my son and hugged him so tight, saying, “Happy Birthday, Austin!  Happy Birthday!  I love you so much.”  I stood back up, and without any further acknowledgment, not even a glance, I walked straight out of the building.  Another piece of my heart died.

If anyone reading this would like to send Austin a birthday card, PLEASE do so, indicating how you know his daddy.  His address is:

Austin Berg

13608 Fernando Avenue

Apple Valley, MN  55124

I am also putting together a DVD containing pictures, music, and videos.  If you’d like me to include pictures as well as any birthday wishes you might have for him, feel free to indicate that here in a comment to this post or in an email.

God bless

Friday, July 11, 2009

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It was really a not-so-much great day, health-wise.  The weather has just been so weird.  It was both cold AND hot here in Rockford. Usually, I end up getting some kind of cold or fluey thing when that happens.  But, now with all these immuno-suppressants, I’m particularly vulnerable.  I’ve been coming down with a sore throat and I think even an ear infection.  I called Northwestern because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, either go see my primary care physician, (since, I’m sure NW doesn’t want him prescribing any more medicines that might have weird interactions with the 18,000 other pills I’m on.)  My new nurse practitioner, Susan something or other, said she’d get back to me, but, I never heard back.

I had to go to the hospital in town here today in order to get some blood work done for Northwestern.  I wasn’t supposed to take any pills beforehand so that they could check my “tac” levels (“tac” is short for the name of the medicine that costs me/Medicaid only $976 per month!)  Next Thursday, I’m scheduled to go back into Chicago to Northwestern hospital for another routine biopsy.

Abused Men

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When you think about the issue of domestic abuse, most people, if not even nearly everyone, thinks of a woman being battered by a man.  Hardly anyone thinks that it could possibly be the other way around.  However, the reality is, there are just as many men being abused by women as there are women being abused by men.  The statistics are skewed on this point because most men do not come forward with this.

For whatever reason, women have gotten some sort of a “free pass,” such that they can do or say whatever they want to a man and feel as though they are totally innocent.  Plus, if they DO feel the need to act in a mean way, it obviously means that the man initiated, HE started it.

Women are always the innocent flowers.  Their feelings are much more important than those of whatever a man calls “his feelings.”  What nonsense, really.  Men aren’t REAL human beings — they don’t experience pain and rejection the same way that women do; and, if they DO complain about it, well then that obviously means they are not “man” enough, or that they are just “too sensitive.”

How could I have been so blind?  How could I have been so stupid?

November 26, 2009 — Too Many to Thank

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This is my second Thanksgiving Day on my second chance at life.  A little over a year ago, on November 10, 2008, my life was miraculously saved from imminent death.  One unknown generous person, simply because he or she was a registered organ donor, sacrificed his or her physical heart to replace my old, dying one.

Someday, I may find out who this wonderful person was and be able to express my infinite gratitude to his or her family.  Aside from this person, there are literally dozens and dozens of many others to whom I am indebted to as well.  On this day, I thank God and of course, ALL of you who so generously shared pieces of your OWN heart so that I could have a whole new one.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you all!

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!