A Very Very Very Very Good Excuse

So I just revamped some stuff on our website and then after went to take a look at the last blog. I also happened to notice that the last time I blogged was June 30th and how I said I was going to be better at blogging more. I believe I even stated that the next blog would be two weeks from the last blog. Clearly that didn't work out as I had planned, just like most of my life, but I have a really, really, really good excuse. I'm serious, once I tell you all why I haven't blogged, you're faces are going to be like:

Get comfy, get some coffee or tea and some popcorn and get ready for story time.

I'm going to be very date specific with you all that way you can't say that my excuse isn't good enough! So two weeks after my last blog, July 8, 2019, I started having a dry cough and was running a fever. I'm not a fan of doctors so I figured that a few days of rest would do the trick. On Friday, July 12, 2019 my fever was gone and I went to work. By lunch time I just didn't feel good. I had a pain in my right side every time I breathed in and the cough had come back. At first I thought it was the Keto Flu, because YES, Mama Tammy and Mamma Kris had become Keto Kris and Keto Tammy along with Keto Beto (our daughter Bianca). 

I called my wife and told her that I thought I should go to the medi-merge. It's never just THAT simple. Everyone that has a wife knows, that you can't just call and say, "Hi hunny, listen I think I should go to the medi-merge" after being sick for a whole week. It just doesn't work that way. I had to hear a 10 minute lecture on why I should have went on July 8th. So I get home and she takes me to the medi-merge. At this point the pain has doubled and my breathing was a little more labored that they took me in the back for an x-ray. The woman that was doing my x-ray kept cutting off the top of my lungs so I had to keep holding my breath even though I was in pain. So every time she said "ohhhhh shoot, sorry hunny, we're going to have to do it again" I looked like this:

At one point I think I even asked how long she had been doing this job. Every time she said, "deep breath in and hold sweetie" I wanted to throw punches. This is why I'm not a fan of doctors, you tell them something and they cling to it. So they asked if I ever had asthma. I tell the doctor that I had sports induced asthma when I was 16-17 years old. What happened after I told them that? They brought in a nebulizer treatment and said that I could be having an asthma attack.

I'm sorry what? No I don't have asthma, never had asthma, had SPORT-INDUCED as in induced by a sporting activity, which I can wholeheartedly swear did not take place prior to my arriving here! This is why I don't go to doctors! In any event, there I am sitting with a mask on breathing in asthma medication. The doctor finally comes in and tells me that my x-ray came back showing I had pneumonia. Who the hell gets pneumonia in July?? Me, apparently I do. I mean is pneumonia even around in the summer? So 7 days of antibiotics. This is where it starts getting good.

So the rest of weekend I spent in quarantine away from the family, in bed. The doctor told my wife I was contagious and we were leaving for vacation in two weeks so she didn't want anyone else to get sick before we left! Now during these two days I noticed that the kids were hanging out in the living room a lot more than normal with Tammy and laughing and talking. This made me think back to all the times I wasn't quarantined and how the kids would all leave and go to their rooms after dinner. I mean all the kids were still chewing when they got up to leave.

Could it be? Could it be that my family enjoyed me not being present? I sat there and thought, is this really happening? 

So I texted my wife from the bedroom and said, "why are the kids hanging out with you? They never hang out this long when I'm out there." My wife texts back with some bullshit like, "of course they do babe, don't be silly!" No, no they don't. I'm on antibiotics not pain killers! Whatever I stayed in bed and binged watched all the Fast and Furious movies. Three days on the antibiotics and I started to feel much better. Went to work the following week, was in good spirits, feeling good, moving and motivating. I had every intention of blogging the night of July 20th.

Which brings me to my really, really, really good excuse. So the morning of Saturday, July 20th, I wake up and told my wife I would make the coffee, I mean I make it every day anyways. I got up went to the kitchen and it happened. So let me paint a picture for you all. Our house is big enough for our family but not that big. From our bedroom to the kitchen is like maybe 7 steps, 10 at the most. By the time I got to the kitchen, I was gasping for air, the room went grey and I felt like I was going to pass out. I grabbed hold of the counter, it reminded me of this:

Because I'm me, I immediately thought to myself, "holy shit, this is how it ends? This is how I got out, making a fucking pot of coffee!" Have no fear, I actually got the coffee pot set up and turned it on in the middle of my lack of oxygen. I got to the couch, again about another 7 to 10 steps and I'm sit down and continue gasping for air like this:

My wife comes out, half awake and goes "what the hell is the matter with you? Why are you breathing like that?" Now in her defense, she didn't know that I almost passed out, so the look accompanying the above comment was something like this:

I told her that I got up, by the time I got to the kitchen, I felt like I was going to pass out and I couldn't catch my breathe. The above look then turned into this look:

I then realized that the "Are you kidding" look was because I told her that I made the coffee and she thought that I didn't. I'm kidding! She was actually really upset that I didn't wake her up or call for her. I mean with in all honesty, if I was going to pass out, I'd rather pass out while she was in the room, because with her neck and back injuries how the hell was she going to break my fall? For real if I called her into the kitchen while I was feeling lightheaded all she could physically do is watch as I did this:

While we're having coffee, I start coughing and am still having trouble catching my breathe. At this point, Tammy is trying to convince me to go back to the medi-merge and I'm debating my point as to why I shouldn't. First point, I had a basketball game to coach that afternoon and second point, no. So we get ready to go the gym and I'll admit now that from the time I got ready to the time we actually left, I felt like I was going to pass out at least 15 times. During this time, I was still trying to catch my breathe. At this point I had told Tammy that I thought the pneumonia had come back. So any normal person in this scenario would tend to their health, I however only cared about coaching my team. That's dedication, that's commitment to the sport, the youth, the future of female athletes. You hear that Division I schools?? Ya know just in case a Division 1 coach is reading this and needs an assistant! 

At this point we're in the car heading to the gym and my wife keeps telling me to call my assistant and have him coach the game. I gave her the same speech I just gave you all and the Division 1 coaches reading. Her response was, "well you're an idiot!" It takes us a good twenty minutes to get from the car to the team bench with all my stopping, catching my breath and holding on to things. Normally it would be a 5 minute walk. Do you all appreciate the vivid picture I'm painting of my very very very very good excuse? My wife is sitting beside me telling me I'm getting to serious and to get to the point already. So lets skip ahead to after the game and we're back home and Tammy finally convinces me that she's taking me to the hospital after I denied her requests because I didn't want to ruin her Saturday. After I said that, she responded:

Followed by:

Then finally:

Off to the ER we go! 

We get to the ER and I walk in and threw myself over the front desk and mumbled out the words "I can't breathe!" The lovely, over zealous security guard was like "are you visiting someone today or are you a patient?" Way to do your job buddy but do we all not notice that I'm slumped over your desk gasping for air? At this point, Tammy tells him that I can't breathe, have pain in my chest and feel like I'm going to pass out. There's a guy off to the side in a cubicle that gets on the phone and calls Tammy over to him. Meanwhile I'm like, I'll just be over here while you all figure out what to do with me:

Next thing I know we get rushed to the back and I have a slew of nurses sticking me with needles, hooking me up to machines, and taking vitals. Doctors are coming in and out asking questions. Then they start giving me breathing treatments. Can I ask what the hell is up with the medical professionals automatically resorting to breathing treatments? Let's think about this for a second... If I come in and am gasping for air, what the hell makes you so sure I'm actually going to be able to breathe in humidified air at a fast speed? In any event, while all this is going on, I'm laying in the bed like:

Like can someone PLEASE get a sister some AIR??!! Finally a really nice male nurse comes over and says, "I'm going to help you out", and puts the O2 mask on me. Help me out? You just saved my life... someone give that man a damn raise! So after a few hours the ER doctor comes in the room sits down and says, "Ok, so we're going to admit you. Your blood work came back and it indicates that you had a heart attack and are in the early stages of congestive heart failure". At this I look at Tammy and she starts crying, I immediately start laughing. I have no idea why I thought that news was funny, but I couldn't stop laughing. At one point I looked over at Tammy and was like, "ain't this some shit? I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I starting eating clean, and NOW I have a heart attack? Am I missing something?" Then I sat in the bed like:

I then decide that after 5 years of not speaking to my father now would be the perfect time to text him. So I sent him a text saying, "Yea so I'm in the hospital, no don't come, but I had a heart attack, so thanks for your shitty ass genes John! You couldn't pass this on to your other kids?" What? It was warranted. So we get moved up to a room and Tammy is calling everyone and filling them in. Every nurse that came in I automatically called them Nurse Boo. If there were student nurses, they were automatically called Baby Nurse Boo. So the first Boo of the night came in and started taking vitals and telling me all the tests I'd be going for and what was ordered for me and all that happy whoha stuff. 

So I'm going to skip ahead a little, so the following day I had gone for 4 tests, 3 of the tests came back negative, so while I was on my way down for the 4th test, I said to Nurse Boo, "Hey you wanna bet on this test?" She looked at me like:

"Come on Nurse Boo, I'm 0-3 right now, take the bet!"I was convinced that this test was going to come back positive because I knew something was wrong. Nurse Boo didn't want to take the bet. So once I got back into the room my lovely meal was waiting for me. Roasted chicken breast, broccoli and green beans. Please keep in mind that I was informed that I was on a cardiac menu so instead of salt I was given Mrs. Dash. Why is this still a thing? It's horrible! You sprinkle it on the vegetables and at first glance it looks like wood chips and it doesn't season the vegetables at all. It falls off them as soon as you pick them up to eat it. So, someone please, explain what's the point of Mrs. Dash when it just ends up in a pile on your plate. So you look like this when eating Mrs. Dash

When I'm in the hospital, whether it's a patient or being a supportive wife, I tend to do shit myself. So I had to go to the bathroom, so I decided that all the Nurse Boos were busy dealing with other patients that I would unhook myself from all the machines and go. I took off my oxygen, stood up, took two steps and ended up like this:

So remember the 4th test? Yea, well I won! Test came back positive. Here's the funny part of the whole thing, they didn't tell me right away. Nurse Boo came in and said "we're moving you up to ICU so they can monitor you more closely." Naturally it didn't register. So when we got up to the room, I looked at Tammy and said, "wow this is a really nice room, at least its private and enclosed and spacious". She looked at me and said, "you do realize that it's ICU as in intensive care unit, right?" So the second Nurse Boo came in for the night, hooked me up to some more advanced machines, drew some more blood and stuck me in the stomach with a needle. ​

The next morning, Dr. ICU comes in to tell us the news. You all ready for this? Apparently I threw a pulmonary embolism to both my lungs. For those that don't know medical terminology, basically a pulmonary embolism is a blood clot. At this point for some reason I still find this all amusing. Dr. ICU tells us that medically speaking I shouldn't be alive and that the radiologist called himself to first find out if I was "circling the drain" or if I was alert and to say to Dr. ICU how impressed he was with the size of my clot. Well Dr. Radiology, I'm not circling the drain and I guess, thank you! Come on up to ICU and i'll autograph my CT image of your choice.

So once we got the news, Dr. ICU said he be back in with my "team" of doctors. So I had Dr. Blood, Dr. Lung, Dr. Heart and Dr. Internal on my team. When rounds came around and my team came in, Drake's song popped into my head and I was like, "My teams' good we don't really need a mascot!" Apparently I was a hit with my team because no one could figure out how or why this happened. It was serious like an episode of House. At one point I told the Nurse to call Dr. House especially when two of the doctors on my "team" looked like this:

Moving on! Once they stabilized me back down to a different floor with a whole bunch of new boos. At this point I was so over being in the hospital that when the 5th Nurse Boo came in and said, "so what happen sweetie?" My response was, "well God got jokes!" Its true the G-O-D is the Prank War Champion! I'm not sure if it was the lack of oxygen, respiratory failure or the food but I started hallucinating and saw God up in Heaven like:

Every time a doctor came in, they were like, "well you're lucky to be alive!" Yes I know, got it, can we start with something a little more less doom and gloom, like "Hi, how ya feeling?" After a very long 6 days in the hospital, 6 days 2 times a day of roasted chick, broccoli and green beans, I was discharged. My wife was a champ, she stayed the whole time with me, even sleeping in a broken recliner. Thankfully my wife doesn't put up with my shit and ignores me, if she didn't I wouldn't be here today.

So there ya go! I told you I had a very very very very good excuse as to why I didn't stick to my promise!

In all seriousness, pulmonary embolisms is an extremely serious condition and there is not a lot of education on the symptoms of a PE. Often times patients are misdiagnosed and end up dying. Ten to thirty percent of people affected by a PE or DVT will die within one month of the diagnosis. For more information, check out the following website:

www.stoptheclot.org