Mark A. Kilmer (the weblog)

1/17/2009: 7:32 pm: MarkNews from the World of Medicine

News from the World of Medicine: more double vision

I went to see my ophthalmologist yesterday afternoon (Friday) after either a series or a sequence of events conspired to force my hand. I wasn’t packing Aces, but that much did not matter.

On Sunday night the 4th, the world decided to spin object appeared to move and fly. The nest day, Diane called my ophthalmologist, who sent me to the emergency room. Once there, a young doctor Bouchard determined that I had vertigo and an mid-ear infection, so I was given meclizine and zithromax. After the zithro ran out the next Friday and I was still severally affected, I called my GP on Monday. I got a “sick call” for Tuesday morning, and while Regina saved my sanity when my diaphragm burst eight years ago, she didn’t know what this was. She sent me to my ophthalmologist, who was able to take me on Friday.

I was to be late getting there this afternoon, so Diane called to warm them. “Sorry,” the angry receptionist snorted at my wife, “our office prides itself in taking no patients who arrive more than fifteen minutes after their appointed time. It is really too bad, but he’ll have to reschedule. My wife heard the entire office staff rolling on the floor in the background, but my Dad then arrived to take me over. We arrived almost a half an hour after the time of my appointment, but no one was in the parking lot. I still expected to have to reschedule, but the receptionist had me fill out the usual paperwork, and then a girl came out to call me back. She asked questions which I answered. She had me look at letters with one or the other eye blocked. She dumped some drops into my eye to check it for eye pressure and told me that I was acting “perfectly.”

She the dilated my pupils and took me to a room to await Dr. Sponslor. (I graduated from high school with the man, and his sister was my swallowing (speech) therapist. Lori Manners..) He asked about my double vision, and asked me how I see things now. I answered the my pupils were dilated, and we had a good chuckle.

Tests, lenses, talk of “prisms.” He finally told me that this should go away in a few weeks. He prescribed for an ocular block (plastic eye patch which fits on my glasses).

I have not been able to blog, go grocery shopping, or join in any reindeer games for a while, but we’ll see how this goes now that I know it has been examined.

Thank you for the prayers, and please keep them coming.

I can report that today, my vision has been nominally better.

1/11/2009: 8:51 pm: MarkNews from the World of Medicine

doctor, my eyes (Zivili!)

It was a week ago tonight (Sunday) that the room began spinning, my balance went missing, and I prayed that I’d last until morning. I did, of course, and my Ear, Nose, and Throat Doctor advised me to go to the Emergency Room. I did that Monday, the doc there, a fellow named Calhoun, diagnosed me with a middle-ear infection and plied with the antibiotic zithromax for the infection and some Meclizine for the vertigo. The spinning left quickly, but not I’m out of antibiotic with some double vision which makes it very, very, very difficult to write. (I managed to do the Sunday Show review this AM, but I am no yet sure how this was done.)

Tomorrow AM, I’ll cancel a dentist’s appointment and try to get in to see my family physician about this whole thing, whether it be aural, ocular, or whatever. (Please do not let it be cancer!)

Right now, I’m taxing myself by doing this, and I abhor taxses. Looking at this realistically, I might be ending my blogging career. I guess I should hold that thought unless or until I am forced to admit it.

My grandpap was Croation. Zivili! May God’s will be done.

1/6/2009: 8:58 pm: Marknews, News from the World of Medicine

We need a more permanent solution to our problem♠

I have been tired. My wife tells me that it is a side effect of the Meclizine. Other side effects include vertigo. Hey, that’s why I’m taking it, so it’s a lot like those drugs for depression which, waning, might cause thoughts of suicide, although not nearly as serious.

Except when one wishes to write and/or blog. I purpose to kill those two birds with this ‘ere stone, but only because this is my blog.

I have something to say about the Rollie Burris situation, but I cannot do it with aplomb, Or a finger in my pudding. But Harry Reid has his finger up something or other There is no escape from this for him, not that it will do any lasting damage to him or to his party either way. He’s damaged goods as it is

Seat Burriss. When the time comes, seat Caroline or Mario’s brat. For the love of the rule of law, which calls for the seating of Burris, he ought not to seat Goofy Al until the courts are done with this. When 21 precincts had more votes counted than people who voted, something is neither democratic nor just about this But something is corrupted, just let it not be the U.S. Senate in this case.

With Franken and Webb in the same Senate and on the same side as the Dem President of the United Stats, it will be a fine time for pundits, but I’m tired of the nonsense. I’m finishing Ralph Ketcham’s bio of Madsion, though, and the nonsense has been with us since the beginning.

Tomorrow is another day. Your prayers are indicated. Thank you for them.

1/5/2009: 5:05 pm: MarkNews from the World of Medicine

More Health Issues

Everything is so unstable these days. I discovered last night, I felt strange, certainly, but after I’d relaxed in bed next to my wife, reading the end of Ralph Ketcham’s bio of James Madison, my wife directed me to get a little, white lynx-point named Molly off of the cable box, and the world shifted. Several times. I maintained my balance but was glad to be back in b ed.

This morning, I awoke, and it was worse. My wife called my ear doctor, and he demanded that I go to the E.R. to be evaluated. I hear the advocates a taxpayer-funded health care wailing that in the current system, the E.R. is often the doctor of first resort because the uninsured do no have a doctor. Well, boo and hoo. Right. I pay for insurance and I have several doctors, and I was referred to the emergency room as a first resort.

Listen, to me this was cancer. I also had a tumor on my forehead, just above my hairline. I’d beaten it once, I could beat it again, etc., but I realized that I should wait at least until it was actually diagnosed.

We went to the E.R. across town. I hadn’t been there since 1987, when I had to get stitches at about my eyebrow. (It’s a sad story, really, or at least pathetic.) The E.R. doctor wanted to know who was the President, and I assured him that it was still the President of his youth, Roosevelt. My Dad thought it funny, but the poor doctor was just trying to see if here were anything more serious wrong with me. Hey, I was in great spirits. The President, actually, was Reagan.

This time, the place didn’t look like I remembered, but a few decades might do that. My wife and I waited while the staff did their triage thing, even though there were not a lot of people there at noon. There was, however, a lady who looked to be a heroin addict. The sun was bursting through the glass, and the lady sang Paul McCartney: “Good day, sunshine.” I smiled at her.

After all this and that, they called me back to the actual E.R. The nurse had to punch in a special code to gain access, and I wondered what would happen if she had forgotten the code. I figured that someone else would enter it for her, then she would look for a job somewhere else.

The nurse asked questions and left. The young E.R. doctor, Dr. Bosclaugh, looked in my ears and diagnosed what I told him I had: an inner-problem causing vertigo. He said that since I had just been checked for a recurrence of the cancer thing, it probably wasn’t that messing with me. He prescribed an anti-biotic and something for the symptoms, which is fine. We waited for the scrips, about half an hour. My wife helped to the car, once I’d step out of the wheel chair they’d loaned me so I didn’t have to walk.

You know, the young Dr. Bosclaugh told me that the tumor on my forehead was an ingrown hair that would probably burst on its own. After he’d gone, my wife and I speculated on interesting places for this to happen. In a Confessional, when pulled over for a traffic violation, at the Chinese buffet. I wonder if it will make a noise.

But on the upside, I am swallowing much better. If this continues, I probably won’t need the electrodes. Is that kewl, or what?

11/20/2008: 5:53 pm: MarkNews from the World of Medicine

News from the World of Medicine - another appointment

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF MEDICINE, FROM MARK KILMER

Well, I saw my radiation oncologist, Dr. Shocker, this afternoon. I noted that I was not as anxious as I’d feared I would be, but there is always a question floating above your head in a dirt balloon.

In the mail (USPS), I’d received a card which could be separated into two parts, the top for parking validation at the special lot across from the graveyard, the one for cancer outpatients, and the bottom for optically scanning into the place, letting them know you’re there. We were a few minutes late, but we were called back almost right away. I’d gained weight since last time, and since my EGD of a month ago, so that was positive. And the familiar nurse sat us in an examining room, noted that I remembered in which chair to sit.

He had to see two other patients first, but Shocker was along shortly. He’s a very declarative man. He checked down my throat and found everything in perfectly in place. He did a manual examination of my neck, and that as clean as well.

He ordered a chest x-ray, as the chest, he said, was the most likely place for BOT cancer to metastasize, but he seemed unconcerned.

We see my Otolaryngologist, Dr Howells, on December 5, and we’ll discuss the EGD, the videoflouroscopies, and the swallowing exercises with him then. But as far as the terrible part, the cancer, it is still gone. If has been gone for over a year.

The problem is, New York Times columnist David Brooks continues finding “fatal cancers” everywhere he looks. (It is his favorite term to flippantly use for the sake of jocularity. At lease he and his readers think it is funny.)

Thank you for your prayers and for your thoughts, and please remember me in your future prayers as I fight the lingering effects of last year’s treatment.

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a political enigma variation

News from the World of Medicine