Have you ever had one of those days where you had sort of an epiphany and very shortly thereafter you had an epiphany in the opposite direction? This morning was just such a morning. Follow along...
Let me back up a few days first though. I had my "pouchoscopy" and "pouch-o-gram" tests last Friday in preparation for my TakeDown surgery. I haven't officially heard the results, but it sounds like everything was right in line and it's looking like I'll be having the TakeDown surgery either next week or more likely the week after that. One of the nurses though pointed out something I've been hearing a lot lately. He said "You sure have been through a lot for someone so young." Now, I'm not exactly young, and I know there have been many people, kids included, that have been through much more in much less time. Still, I sure feel like it sometimes.
Anyway, I had my appointment with the Oncologist this morning. My surgeon said he didn't think I'd need chemotherapy but wanted me to meet with an oncologist just to make sure. While sitting in the waiting room light bulb one came on. "I seriously need to find myself a good Pediatrician. I'm tired of being the youngest one in the waiting rooms for all these doctor's appointments. Tired of waiting in waiting rooms where the most prominent magazine is 'Senior Living'."
Talking to the nurse that took my vitals, she commented on how my chart was very different from most other patients. My blood pressure is perfect (100/64 today) and the page that lists my currently prescribed medications is blank.
When the doctor came in, he started the conversation with something like "You should send your doctors something really nice for Christmas because they seriously saved your life." He said things are great, I have no cancer and no need for chemotherapy. He went on to explain the stages of colon cancer and where I was in the progression of things. The tumor was about 4 cm, which was bigger than I thought it was, but luckily had not progressed deeper than the innermost layer. He said my surgeon took biopsies from something like 24 lymph nodes right around the cancer and another 26 or so lymph nodes in other locations and ALL came back cancer free. He said that had this been a year or two later, we'd be having a very different discussion. He also said that based on the size it had probably only been there for a year or two. Considering I've had UC for about 20 years and this was all found after my first colonoscopy, to quote my Oncologist "you dodged a bullet with this one!" He ended my discussion by telling the nurse to get me out of there and make room for some sick people.
It was about this time that light bulb one popped and went out and light bulb two came on. "Would you rather be the oldest one in the waiting room? Or would you rather be the healthiest one in the waiting room?" Yeah, I'll take the healthiest any day of the week.
The irony to me in writing this blog is that yesterday I was pissed off because without so much as a warning, they canceled my medical disability because my claim had expired and I was supposed to be back at work. Never mind that the length of time was a very vague estimate and that in all likelihood I'd need more time, they just cut you off and you get to try get things rolling again while you're trying to rest and recover. So now I'm short of money and hoping there won't be any problems with my doctor putting in an extension. There "shouldn't be" any problems, let's hope there aren't. Anyway, I was pissed off because of that and was going to get on here and blog up a storm and I decided I just didn't have the energy to and I hoped the negativity would pass. It'll take a few days for the money situation to work itself out, but regardless, today was a MUCH better day.
-jk
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
It's been a good week since my last post, and things are moving along, even if a bit slowly. I haven't been walking as much, but I went on a 5 mile bike ride today and have been doing some pull-ups as well. I'm still feeling good and ready to get on with the next surgery. But before that, a side note about some pain.
Last weekend I was going to get in my car to go visit a friend and my stomach area started hurting. It was right on the scar maybe an inch below my belt line, it just started getting tender. Didn't hurt if I sat up straight and didn't poke at it, so I went about my business. The next day it was more tender, and if I stood up straight, there was a bit of a bump forming on the scar. It wasn't red or anything, and I wasn't having a fever so I was pretty sure it wasn't an infection. Actually my thought was that maybe it was a small abcess forming in the scar tissue or something. Wasn't bad enough yet to seek medical help, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.
The following day I had an appointment with my ET nurse, and my sore spot was already feeling a lot better. I had the nurse take a look and she advised me to have my surgeon examine it when I saw him on Thursday, but she said it could be one of the internal stitches had dissolved enough to come loose and the rest was just in a spot dissolving and being an irritant. She said they are supposed to dissolve in 6 - 8 weeks, and this was at the 6.5 week mark, so seemed like a high probability. Anyway, the soreness got better every day until by the time I saw my surgeon it was feeling fine.
Speaking of seeing my surgeon, that was the appointment I had been waiting for. I've been anxious to schedule my next surgery where they'll reconnect my intestines and I can start using my j-pouch. That surgery is referred to as the Take Down surgery by the way. So I've been anxious to get that phase underway. Well, the first thing my doc need to do is "dilate my butt"... there is just nothing fun about that. Ouch! So this will be way too much information for some of you, but the reason for doing this is that because of the surgery and lack of use of the rectum, your rectum will shrink to the point that not much will fit through the opening. They need to basically stretch it out and break up the scar tissue and let the muscles contract to keep the opening closed. Yeah, Ouch! It's a short term pain, and definitely not as bad as the deep down internal pains that come with the drains they put in you after having some major surgeries.
So after that bit of fun, we talked about scheduling my next surgery. I need to have my "pouch scoped" first to make sure it's all looking good, and then I need to have a leak test done to make sure it healed up without any leaks. At first they said they probably couldn't even do those tests until March because of scheduling issues, but they had a cancellation and will be able to do it this next Friday. That's good news. If that goes well, I think I'll be able to have my Take Down surgery within a couple weeks.
The Take Down surgery will hopefully be better... it's supposed to be. I've been told I'll be in the hospital for 4-5 days if everything goes ok and then I'll need at least 2 weeks to recover, depending on how fast I heal and all that. The doc said he would try to go in through the stoma hole to reattach everything if he can, otherwise he'll have to open up my earlier incision again and the recovery can take longer in that case. Anytime you're cutting through the abdominal wall, recovery takes some time.
Other than that, not much new. On Friday I swung by my work to say hi to everybody. Actually I was going to participate in an interview we had scheduled but our candidate took another offer. So I hung out for a couple hours and participated in a quick meeting instead. It was cool seeing everybody again and letting them know how I'm doing. It'll be good to get back to work.
-jk
Last weekend I was going to get in my car to go visit a friend and my stomach area started hurting. It was right on the scar maybe an inch below my belt line, it just started getting tender. Didn't hurt if I sat up straight and didn't poke at it, so I went about my business. The next day it was more tender, and if I stood up straight, there was a bit of a bump forming on the scar. It wasn't red or anything, and I wasn't having a fever so I was pretty sure it wasn't an infection. Actually my thought was that maybe it was a small abcess forming in the scar tissue or something. Wasn't bad enough yet to seek medical help, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.
The following day I had an appointment with my ET nurse, and my sore spot was already feeling a lot better. I had the nurse take a look and she advised me to have my surgeon examine it when I saw him on Thursday, but she said it could be one of the internal stitches had dissolved enough to come loose and the rest was just in a spot dissolving and being an irritant. She said they are supposed to dissolve in 6 - 8 weeks, and this was at the 6.5 week mark, so seemed like a high probability. Anyway, the soreness got better every day until by the time I saw my surgeon it was feeling fine.
Speaking of seeing my surgeon, that was the appointment I had been waiting for. I've been anxious to schedule my next surgery where they'll reconnect my intestines and I can start using my j-pouch. That surgery is referred to as the Take Down surgery by the way. So I've been anxious to get that phase underway. Well, the first thing my doc need to do is "dilate my butt"... there is just nothing fun about that. Ouch! So this will be way too much information for some of you, but the reason for doing this is that because of the surgery and lack of use of the rectum, your rectum will shrink to the point that not much will fit through the opening. They need to basically stretch it out and break up the scar tissue and let the muscles contract to keep the opening closed. Yeah, Ouch! It's a short term pain, and definitely not as bad as the deep down internal pains that come with the drains they put in you after having some major surgeries.
So after that bit of fun, we talked about scheduling my next surgery. I need to have my "pouch scoped" first to make sure it's all looking good, and then I need to have a leak test done to make sure it healed up without any leaks. At first they said they probably couldn't even do those tests until March because of scheduling issues, but they had a cancellation and will be able to do it this next Friday. That's good news. If that goes well, I think I'll be able to have my Take Down surgery within a couple weeks.
The Take Down surgery will hopefully be better... it's supposed to be. I've been told I'll be in the hospital for 4-5 days if everything goes ok and then I'll need at least 2 weeks to recover, depending on how fast I heal and all that. The doc said he would try to go in through the stoma hole to reattach everything if he can, otherwise he'll have to open up my earlier incision again and the recovery can take longer in that case. Anytime you're cutting through the abdominal wall, recovery takes some time.
Other than that, not much new. On Friday I swung by my work to say hi to everybody. Actually I was going to participate in an interview we had scheduled but our candidate took another offer. So I hung out for a couple hours and participated in a quick meeting instead. It was cool seeing everybody again and letting them know how I'm doing. It'll be good to get back to work.
-jk
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Toward the beginning of 2006, my UC was doing pretty good behaving itself, but I'd occasionally have a little bit of pain in my side like things weren't digesting fast enough. Normally that feeling would last a couple hours and go away, but in February one day it came on and just wouldn't quit. I tried laying on my side and my stomach and twisting this way and that in an effort to get whatever was making my side ache to move along and it just wouldn't comply, so at 9:00 pm I ended up going to the emergency room. At 12:00 midnight I got tired of sitting in the emergency room waiting (I wasn't terminal so wasn't high on the priority list), so I left and decided to return in the morning when less people were falling apart. I guess people would rather sleep in then go to the emergency room.
So, 6:00am and the pain is still there, so off to the emergency room I go. I still sat in the waiting room for an hour, but they were finally able to see me. After a bunch of tests, it turned out my gall bladder was having issues. Rather than being about 2 inches across, mine was 5 inches, and the determination was made that it needed to come out. They thought it could have been caused by an infection but they weren't sure. I guess normally high fat diets are more likely to cause gall bladder problems but I had been on a low fat diet for years because of my UC. If anything, my gall bladder should have been coasting for years.
The next day they did a procedure which I can't remember what it was called. Basically they put me under a sedative which they called a "conscious sedative" which would keep me away but where I wouldn't remember a thing the following day. Very weird, and totally true. Once under the sedative, they passed a probe down my throat all the way through me to the point where they could use tiny forceps on the probe end to remove a couple gall stones in my bile ducts. They wanted to do this before the gall bladder surgery to make sure they were taken care of.
The following day they did the gall bladder surgery laproscopically and everything went fine. They said that it's such a common surgery and it has been performed so many times that the chances of something going wrong are really small. In my case, it came off without a hitch.
Recovery from the surgery was easy at first, but my UC ended up causing some complications. First off I was on Vicodin which really sent my UC into a major tail spin. Everything we tried to get it under control just seemed to make it worse. Finally my doctor suggested we try Purinethol which from what I understand is a drug they initially gave to Leukemia patients but found out works pretty well with IBD sufferers too. He said "There's a really small chance it can cause pancreatitis but out of all my patients, I only have one lady that that has been a problem." So thinking I was on the road to feeling better, I started taking that evil medicine.
I took Purinethol for 3 weeks I think... it's all a pretty big blur now. I remember having pretty bad stomach aches for probably 80% of the time, day or night, whether I ate or not. I'd get hunger pains so fast and so bad that I once got in the shower not hungry at all and within 5 minutes I almost got out of the shower to go eat. Worst though was that even though I was eating 3 meals a day, I got down to 139 pounds, and I'm 6'1 or so. The doctor said I was probably developing pancreatitis, so I did what I had done the previous 17 years for my UC. I stopped taking all medications and went back to managing it myself through diet. Within a couple weeks I was putting on weight again and able to return to work
So wrap your brain around this one. During that time when I was really feeling the worst was when I had my first colonoscopy scheduled and had to cancel it because I just didn't feel good enough. It wasn't until just over a year later that I had to see that same doctor for the liver weirdness when he insisted on doing the colonoscopy that found the cancer. Had they done the first colonoscopy and not found the cancer, I can almost guarantee you that I would not have had this second colonoscopy and I likely wouldn't have had one at all until it was too late for them to catch it in time.
So, 6:00am and the pain is still there, so off to the emergency room I go. I still sat in the waiting room for an hour, but they were finally able to see me. After a bunch of tests, it turned out my gall bladder was having issues. Rather than being about 2 inches across, mine was 5 inches, and the determination was made that it needed to come out. They thought it could have been caused by an infection but they weren't sure. I guess normally high fat diets are more likely to cause gall bladder problems but I had been on a low fat diet for years because of my UC. If anything, my gall bladder should have been coasting for years.
The next day they did a procedure which I can't remember what it was called. Basically they put me under a sedative which they called a "conscious sedative" which would keep me away but where I wouldn't remember a thing the following day. Very weird, and totally true. Once under the sedative, they passed a probe down my throat all the way through me to the point where they could use tiny forceps on the probe end to remove a couple gall stones in my bile ducts. They wanted to do this before the gall bladder surgery to make sure they were taken care of.
The following day they did the gall bladder surgery laproscopically and everything went fine. They said that it's such a common surgery and it has been performed so many times that the chances of something going wrong are really small. In my case, it came off without a hitch.
Recovery from the surgery was easy at first, but my UC ended up causing some complications. First off I was on Vicodin which really sent my UC into a major tail spin. Everything we tried to get it under control just seemed to make it worse. Finally my doctor suggested we try Purinethol which from what I understand is a drug they initially gave to Leukemia patients but found out works pretty well with IBD sufferers too. He said "There's a really small chance it can cause pancreatitis but out of all my patients, I only have one lady that that has been a problem." So thinking I was on the road to feeling better, I started taking that evil medicine.
I took Purinethol for 3 weeks I think... it's all a pretty big blur now. I remember having pretty bad stomach aches for probably 80% of the time, day or night, whether I ate or not. I'd get hunger pains so fast and so bad that I once got in the shower not hungry at all and within 5 minutes I almost got out of the shower to go eat. Worst though was that even though I was eating 3 meals a day, I got down to 139 pounds, and I'm 6'1 or so. The doctor said I was probably developing pancreatitis, so I did what I had done the previous 17 years for my UC. I stopped taking all medications and went back to managing it myself through diet. Within a couple weeks I was putting on weight again and able to return to work
So wrap your brain around this one. During that time when I was really feeling the worst was when I had my first colonoscopy scheduled and had to cancel it because I just didn't feel good enough. It wasn't until just over a year later that I had to see that same doctor for the liver weirdness when he insisted on doing the colonoscopy that found the cancer. Had they done the first colonoscopy and not found the cancer, I can almost guarantee you that I would not have had this second colonoscopy and I likely wouldn't have had one at all until it was too late for them to catch it in time.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
As far as I know, we don't know the real cause (or causes) of ulcerative colitis, but from what I understand there are some things that we think might play a part. I've been asked a number of times if I was on any high doses of antibiotics before getting ulcerative colitis and as it turns out, I was in a car accident a couple years earlier and ended up in the hospital for a while. Normally I would think that that is too much time to be considered as playing a factor but I'll never forget what the doctor that diagnosed me said. He said that there was significant scarring in my colon, consistent with what you'd see if I had actually had UC for a few years, not just the few months I was exhibiting symptoms.
Anyway, below is the long story of the car accident I was in prior to my diagnosis.
When I was a senior in highschool, I was in a car accident that was one of the defining moments in my life and it changed the direction I was headed. As close as we can figure, this is how it happened. There may be some small inaccuracies, so I'll correct them as I get feedback.
Who, What, Where
Well it wasn't really a car accident. I was in the back of a lifted Toyota 4x4 with my then-girlfriend, Renee. My older brother was driving, it was his truck, and my younger brother was a passenger in the cab. We were in the mountains camping and had gone in to town (leaving my friend behind at camp) to get something to eat or something like that.
On our way back to the camp area, we took a turn a little too fast and hit some gravel on the side of the road and started to lose control. Over-correcting or the end of the gravel caused the back end to whip around and the truck flipped over, first onto its left side, then onto the roof and hood. Renee, was on the outside or uphill edge of the flip and sort of got catapulted out. The short story about her was that she got a broken wrist and some nasty scrapes and bruises, but was otherwise no worse for wear, physically.
My older brother driving had the window next to him shatter and a lot of that glass ended up in his arm. Otherwise he too wasn't much worse off, other than maybe too much guilt over being the driver. As a side note there, I totally don't blame him one bit. Shit happens and you deal with it and move on. It was absolutely unintentional and so I don't point fingers in the slightest. I never even saw this as so much of a bad thing or something I complained about or anything. It was more of an interesting experience that I just happened to be going through.
My younger brother? Unharmed. He bounced around the inside of the cab because he didn't have a seatbelt on and walked away without a scratch. (Don't take that as a sign that you shouldn't wear your seatbelt. You still should!) He got more than his fair share of stress though, not even old enough to drive and seeing his family pretty badly injured and the trama I'm about to describe.
Ouch!!!
I on the other hand had a different experience. I instinctively grabbed on to the rollbar, right hand on the side bar and left hand overhead near the KC light. As the truck flipped onto that side, my right hand got crushed between the bar and the road. The truck continued to roll onto the roof and rollbar, crushing my other hand as well. Had that KC light not been there, I believe my left hand would have been sheared off completely. Luckily, the light got sheared off and the metal bracket that held that light was strong enough to keep some of the pressure off my hand. The truck skidded for a couple feet on the rollbar and then tilted forward onto the roof of the cab and the hood and skidded the rest of the way like that.
The brain is an amazing thing. I was conscious through the whole thing, but I don't remember any of it. I actually only remember bits and pieces of the morning before the accident, don't remember the day before at all, and don't remember anything until days after I was in the second hospital. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Skip This Section If You Can't Handle Gross Stuff.
So there we all are, lying all over the road. The reason we were up in the mountains camping was because we had dirtbikes and were up there tearing up the trails. We didn't have much in the way of protective gear like chest protectors, but I did have a helmet and these red-leather gloves. You can possibly see where this is going, and this is your last chance to skip ahead if you have a weak stomach.
So there I am, just had both hands crushed and I'm lying in the road. My brother is trying to help as best he can. At some point I say to my brother "take my hands off" He goes "what?" I then say "Take My Gloves Off!". My hands were so covered in blood that I believed I had those gloves on again. He says "you don't have any gloves on!" and so I start grabbing at my wrists and trying to slide these imaginary gloves off. My brother told me later that he could see the bones in my hand (metacarpal of my index finger mainly) when I would try to slide those gloves off. There was one area that was missing a lot of flesh and the white bone was right there.
Anyway, a lady driving by stopped and ran over to help. She had some towels in her trunk and she and my brother wrapped my hands in the towels and were able to keep me from doing any more damage.
They're Coming To Take Me Away
An ambulance came and took us to an emergency room or trauma unit someplace in town where they began cleaning things up. At one point they contact my mom and tell her what has happened and she can hear me in the background yelling and causing a ruckus. She asked to speak with me and the emergency room people said no because they described me as being combative. So my mom hung up and immediately called back and said "no I want you to put him on the phone!" Luckily they did. When they put me on the phone my mom said "Jim, I need you to calm down. They're trying to help you." I responded with "okay" and that was it, I immediately calmed down. If that's not a sign of having respect for your mother, I don't know what is.
I have no idea how long I was there because that was still during the time that my brain has blocked from my memory. At some point, hours or days I don't know, I was transferred to a hospital in a different city, and a few days after that is when my memory starts working again.
The Hospital
So there I am in the new hospital. My hands are so swollen that when I rest them palms down on the table, my fingertips don't touch the table surface. They are the size of cantelopes. The amazing thing is that I actually have fingers. Damage that's been done.... my right hand got the worst of it bone-wise. The bones in the back of my hand they find in 6 pieces. My thumb was jammed straight back into the joint which exploded and they find that too in 6 pieces. My left hand only had a couple fractures, but it got the worst of the tissue damage. You have two tendons to your index finger and I lost one. You know that meaty section you have between your index finger and thumb? I don't have that anymore.
Now, luckily for me I had a pretty young female doctor. She didn't know what to do about me, but when she was told "you're gonna have to cut both of those hands off", she said "He's 16, I'm not gonna cut his hands off. There must be something we can do." (I'm summarizing there since I wasn't actually involved in the conversation... and I still have no memory at that point anyway) She ended up taking pictures and x-rays to Stanford Hospital and asking for guidance, and ends up getting in touch with a well-known doctor in reconstructive surgery who becomes the overseeing-surgeon on my case.
Anyway, long story short there, they perform skin-grafts and put pins in my hands and piece the bones back together. The first skin graft, they took what they called a split-thinkness skin graft off of my left hip. They basically slice a layer of skin in half, right through all the nerves. You can imagine using a cheese slicer to remove a thin layer of skin Then they somehow checker it so that it has holes in it so that the tissue underneath will breath and they cover the wound with it. It attaches itself to the wound and grows back. Trippy, but the place they took the skin from? Yeah, that kinda sucked. Almost like an intentional roadrash, but it heals real quick with a large but faint scar. That skin, they ended up using in 4 different places, two on each hand. The second skin graft they performed was a full thickness graft. As I understand it, instead of taking a patch of skin from the surface, they take a layer going from the surface inward? Hard to explain, but it leaves a more significant scar with a lot less pain. Anyway, I'm not sure on the details on all of that... I was pretty out of it at the time, but that's how I believe it worked. So that skin graft they did because one of the earlier skin grafts was done in the webbing between my index finger and thumb on my right hand, and it had scarred up so that the webbing went all the way to the last joint on my thumb... almost like AquaMan. So, they cut out that and rearranged things a little and used the new skin to fix it up. They also used 3 pins and a wire to hold the bones in the back of my hand in place, 3 more pins to re-assemble the thumb joint, and 2 pins to stabilize the thumb (I think)... all in my right hand.
How good of a job did they do putting my hands back together? You'll have to read all the way to the end. The only remaining hardware though is a small wire. They took out all of the pins except one, and that one came out by itself one day when I was off at college. I'll explain how the hell that happened later if anybody really wants to know.
Back To School
I ended up missing quite a bit of my senior year of highschool. Even when I went back, I had both hands bandaged up to my elbows and they had to be kept above my heart, so I listened and took oral tests and missed a lot of class because of physical therapy. You don't realize how much you need your hands until you don't have them anymore, and there's nothing quite so humbling as having other people wipe your ass. Luckily for me, my Renee basically moved in with me and took care of me and did all those things that I needed done. I also suddenly became more widely known at school. I was more of a nobody at school before that, and afterwards, all sorts of people were saying hi and talking to me. The teacher of my religion class told me that she used my experience while I was out to start the class talking about near death experiences.
A Life Changed
The funny thing is that when I was in the accident, I was also taking a class in automechanics and was kind of planning on being a mechanic. I had to drop out of that class because I was in the hospital and I ended up auditing a programming class. I had taken another programming class previously and enjoyed it but just never thought much about taking another one. I was good at it and one thing led to another and here I am a software engineer instead of a mechanic. I still do work on cars from time to time, but anybody that knows me knows I'm much better suited to a thinking job like working with computers than wrenching on cars.
It wasn't until much later that I found out that the original prognosis was to amputate both hands. They were quite a mess. Even after the first skin grafts, when they unbandaged them, Renee had to leave the room because she almost passed out. She just expected them to look a lot better after the surgery. These days, I have almost full function (95). It is truly amazing how well my hands work considering what they have been through. I can type 60 words per minute, play the guitar, and flip people off... not all at the same time though. I can do all the things you need really fine motor control to do, like fasten a necklace clasp or thread a needle or dial a cell phone with one hand. I bet most of the people I interact with on a daily basis don't even notice or suspect what has transpired, and more than one ex-girlfriend has said they love holding my hands and think the scars are cool.
Here's something I've always thought about though. Would I heal as well if the accident happened today? No, because I'm older, but I'm talking beside that fact. The reason I ask is this. When the accident happened, I don't think it ever entered my mind that I would not be whole again. It just never occurred to me. Well, just prior to my memory kicking in again, I guess right after I was moved to the new hospital, my family was all gathered around and I evidently looked up at them and said "am I going to die?" They all laughed and said "no, you're not that bad off." Like I said, I don't remember that, and other than that one incident, I don't think it ever even occurred to me that I wouldn't have my hands. So, with all the experience I've had now, I don't have that same naivete. Does being completely clueless as to how bad things CAN get actually help you heal?
Anyway, below is the long story of the car accident I was in prior to my diagnosis.
When I was a senior in highschool, I was in a car accident that was one of the defining moments in my life and it changed the direction I was headed. As close as we can figure, this is how it happened. There may be some small inaccuracies, so I'll correct them as I get feedback.
Who, What, Where
Well it wasn't really a car accident. I was in the back of a lifted Toyota 4x4 with my then-girlfriend, Renee. My older brother was driving, it was his truck, and my younger brother was a passenger in the cab. We were in the mountains camping and had gone in to town (leaving my friend behind at camp) to get something to eat or something like that.
On our way back to the camp area, we took a turn a little too fast and hit some gravel on the side of the road and started to lose control. Over-correcting or the end of the gravel caused the back end to whip around and the truck flipped over, first onto its left side, then onto the roof and hood. Renee, was on the outside or uphill edge of the flip and sort of got catapulted out. The short story about her was that she got a broken wrist and some nasty scrapes and bruises, but was otherwise no worse for wear, physically.
My older brother driving had the window next to him shatter and a lot of that glass ended up in his arm. Otherwise he too wasn't much worse off, other than maybe too much guilt over being the driver. As a side note there, I totally don't blame him one bit. Shit happens and you deal with it and move on. It was absolutely unintentional and so I don't point fingers in the slightest. I never even saw this as so much of a bad thing or something I complained about or anything. It was more of an interesting experience that I just happened to be going through.
My younger brother? Unharmed. He bounced around the inside of the cab because he didn't have a seatbelt on and walked away without a scratch. (Don't take that as a sign that you shouldn't wear your seatbelt. You still should!) He got more than his fair share of stress though, not even old enough to drive and seeing his family pretty badly injured and the trama I'm about to describe.
Ouch!!!
I on the other hand had a different experience. I instinctively grabbed on to the rollbar, right hand on the side bar and left hand overhead near the KC light. As the truck flipped onto that side, my right hand got crushed between the bar and the road. The truck continued to roll onto the roof and rollbar, crushing my other hand as well. Had that KC light not been there, I believe my left hand would have been sheared off completely. Luckily, the light got sheared off and the metal bracket that held that light was strong enough to keep some of the pressure off my hand. The truck skidded for a couple feet on the rollbar and then tilted forward onto the roof of the cab and the hood and skidded the rest of the way like that.
The brain is an amazing thing. I was conscious through the whole thing, but I don't remember any of it. I actually only remember bits and pieces of the morning before the accident, don't remember the day before at all, and don't remember anything until days after I was in the second hospital. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Skip This Section If You Can't Handle Gross Stuff.
So there we all are, lying all over the road. The reason we were up in the mountains camping was because we had dirtbikes and were up there tearing up the trails. We didn't have much in the way of protective gear like chest protectors, but I did have a helmet and these red-leather gloves. You can possibly see where this is going, and this is your last chance to skip ahead if you have a weak stomach.
So there I am, just had both hands crushed and I'm lying in the road. My brother is trying to help as best he can. At some point I say to my brother "take my hands off" He goes "what?" I then say "Take My Gloves Off!". My hands were so covered in blood that I believed I had those gloves on again. He says "you don't have any gloves on!" and so I start grabbing at my wrists and trying to slide these imaginary gloves off. My brother told me later that he could see the bones in my hand (metacarpal of my index finger mainly) when I would try to slide those gloves off. There was one area that was missing a lot of flesh and the white bone was right there.
Anyway, a lady driving by stopped and ran over to help. She had some towels in her trunk and she and my brother wrapped my hands in the towels and were able to keep me from doing any more damage.
They're Coming To Take Me Away
An ambulance came and took us to an emergency room or trauma unit someplace in town where they began cleaning things up. At one point they contact my mom and tell her what has happened and she can hear me in the background yelling and causing a ruckus. She asked to speak with me and the emergency room people said no because they described me as being combative. So my mom hung up and immediately called back and said "no I want you to put him on the phone!" Luckily they did. When they put me on the phone my mom said "Jim, I need you to calm down. They're trying to help you." I responded with "okay" and that was it, I immediately calmed down. If that's not a sign of having respect for your mother, I don't know what is.
I have no idea how long I was there because that was still during the time that my brain has blocked from my memory. At some point, hours or days I don't know, I was transferred to a hospital in a different city, and a few days after that is when my memory starts working again.
The Hospital
So there I am in the new hospital. My hands are so swollen that when I rest them palms down on the table, my fingertips don't touch the table surface. They are the size of cantelopes. The amazing thing is that I actually have fingers. Damage that's been done.... my right hand got the worst of it bone-wise. The bones in the back of my hand they find in 6 pieces. My thumb was jammed straight back into the joint which exploded and they find that too in 6 pieces. My left hand only had a couple fractures, but it got the worst of the tissue damage. You have two tendons to your index finger and I lost one. You know that meaty section you have between your index finger and thumb? I don't have that anymore.
Now, luckily for me I had a pretty young female doctor. She didn't know what to do about me, but when she was told "you're gonna have to cut both of those hands off", she said "He's 16, I'm not gonna cut his hands off. There must be something we can do." (I'm summarizing there since I wasn't actually involved in the conversation... and I still have no memory at that point anyway) She ended up taking pictures and x-rays to Stanford Hospital and asking for guidance, and ends up getting in touch with a well-known doctor in reconstructive surgery who becomes the overseeing-surgeon on my case.
Anyway, long story short there, they perform skin-grafts and put pins in my hands and piece the bones back together. The first skin graft, they took what they called a split-thinkness skin graft off of my left hip. They basically slice a layer of skin in half, right through all the nerves. You can imagine using a cheese slicer to remove a thin layer of skin Then they somehow checker it so that it has holes in it so that the tissue underneath will breath and they cover the wound with it. It attaches itself to the wound and grows back. Trippy, but the place they took the skin from? Yeah, that kinda sucked. Almost like an intentional roadrash, but it heals real quick with a large but faint scar. That skin, they ended up using in 4 different places, two on each hand. The second skin graft they performed was a full thickness graft. As I understand it, instead of taking a patch of skin from the surface, they take a layer going from the surface inward? Hard to explain, but it leaves a more significant scar with a lot less pain. Anyway, I'm not sure on the details on all of that... I was pretty out of it at the time, but that's how I believe it worked. So that skin graft they did because one of the earlier skin grafts was done in the webbing between my index finger and thumb on my right hand, and it had scarred up so that the webbing went all the way to the last joint on my thumb... almost like AquaMan. So, they cut out that and rearranged things a little and used the new skin to fix it up. They also used 3 pins and a wire to hold the bones in the back of my hand in place, 3 more pins to re-assemble the thumb joint, and 2 pins to stabilize the thumb (I think)... all in my right hand.
How good of a job did they do putting my hands back together? You'll have to read all the way to the end. The only remaining hardware though is a small wire. They took out all of the pins except one, and that one came out by itself one day when I was off at college. I'll explain how the hell that happened later if anybody really wants to know.
Back To School
I ended up missing quite a bit of my senior year of highschool. Even when I went back, I had both hands bandaged up to my elbows and they had to be kept above my heart, so I listened and took oral tests and missed a lot of class because of physical therapy. You don't realize how much you need your hands until you don't have them anymore, and there's nothing quite so humbling as having other people wipe your ass. Luckily for me, my Renee basically moved in with me and took care of me and did all those things that I needed done. I also suddenly became more widely known at school. I was more of a nobody at school before that, and afterwards, all sorts of people were saying hi and talking to me. The teacher of my religion class told me that she used my experience while I was out to start the class talking about near death experiences.
A Life Changed
The funny thing is that when I was in the accident, I was also taking a class in automechanics and was kind of planning on being a mechanic. I had to drop out of that class because I was in the hospital and I ended up auditing a programming class. I had taken another programming class previously and enjoyed it but just never thought much about taking another one. I was good at it and one thing led to another and here I am a software engineer instead of a mechanic. I still do work on cars from time to time, but anybody that knows me knows I'm much better suited to a thinking job like working with computers than wrenching on cars.
It wasn't until much later that I found out that the original prognosis was to amputate both hands. They were quite a mess. Even after the first skin grafts, when they unbandaged them, Renee had to leave the room because she almost passed out. She just expected them to look a lot better after the surgery. These days, I have almost full function (95). It is truly amazing how well my hands work considering what they have been through. I can type 60 words per minute, play the guitar, and flip people off... not all at the same time though. I can do all the things you need really fine motor control to do, like fasten a necklace clasp or thread a needle or dial a cell phone with one hand. I bet most of the people I interact with on a daily basis don't even notice or suspect what has transpired, and more than one ex-girlfriend has said they love holding my hands and think the scars are cool.
Here's something I've always thought about though. Would I heal as well if the accident happened today? No, because I'm older, but I'm talking beside that fact. The reason I ask is this. When the accident happened, I don't think it ever entered my mind that I would not be whole again. It just never occurred to me. Well, just prior to my memory kicking in again, I guess right after I was moved to the new hospital, my family was all gathered around and I evidently looked up at them and said "am I going to die?" They all laughed and said "no, you're not that bad off." Like I said, I don't remember that, and other than that one incident, I don't think it ever even occurred to me that I wouldn't have my hands. So, with all the experience I've had now, I don't have that same naivete. Does being completely clueless as to how bad things CAN get actually help you heal?
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