Stuff Archives

OK. Now I'm back home it's time to catch up on some stuff, but first things first, lets give the run down on what happened.

Saturday 16th Feb
Went to hospital ER with chronic diarrhea and fever circa 7:00pm. Was already being treated as an outpatient, but rather than getting better, symptoms got worse. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the results of previous tests were through and I was told I had Crohn's disease. Had series of tests from CT scans to EKGs in order to determine whether I had an infection in order to start the treatment for Crohn's. Oh yeah - and something shoved up my bum so they could take a look round. I think the concept is similar to those boats with glass bottoms, but the view's probably not as nice.

Sunday 17th Feb
At 5:00am completed tests from previous evening. Everything looked OK - good to go with starting Crohn's treatment. Anticipated stay in hospital 3 days.

Monday 18th Feb
Everything still looks good, but Gastroenterologist wants to perform a colonoscopy. Yep, more things to push up the back door. And this after I'd already had a flexible sigmoidoscopy as an outpatient. I suppose I only have myself to blame as I did choose to live in San Francisco so what did I really expect?

Tuesday 19th Feb
Now, in order to do the colonoscopy they have to clear you out. And when I say clear you out, they really mean it. You have to drink 4 liters of this stuff called "go lightly" which makes you do anything but go lightly, I can tell you that for nothing. So, here's the first contradiction - although I had diarrhea, I was also constipated. Go Figure. The way it works is that the block is higher up so that was preventing anything from coming through, but when it let go, it let go. Anyway, I took all this stuff on Monday night and it didn't clear everything so the colonoscopy was postponed for another day.

Wednesday 20th Feb
After another evening of drinking go lightly - yep, I had to go through it all again, they finally got round to pushing the biggest thing they could find up my ring and indeed confirmed that I had Crohn's. Fortunately I was put out for this procedure, but when I came round I had some difficulty breathing (odd!!)

Was allowed to eat after the procedure, so went back to eating. Felt fine in the afternoon, but early evening felt really bad. The poor nurse that came in to draw some blood for one of the many blood tests they do daily was greeted by me sat on the side of the bed holding the commode advising that this was probably not the best time to try and stick a needle in me. She went to get the nurse that was assigned to me and when she walked in I "popped" as they described it in the Matrix. Now for the crowning glory. No sooner had I vomited than I needed to poop - the old coming out of both ends trick. So, dropped the underwear and spun round (all very delicately as I was hooked up to an IV) sat down and let everything flow so to speak. Next thing I've got one nurse injecting morphine into one arm and another taking my blood pressure on the other arm. I have to say, even for me, that's a first.

Thursday 21st Feb
Woke up not feeling too great (unsurprisingly), but all that I had to do was go for a series of x-rays on my small intestine an then would be let go. Trouble was, kept feeling worse. Went for the x-rays - and not just your run of the mill x-ray, this is a time delay series after you drink barium so they can see it go through your body. Whole thing from start to finish took about 4 hours. You get an x-ray every 30 minutes to an hour but can go back to your room to watch TV in between.

After final series of x-rays got back to my room and they were concerned that my legs had swelled up and was still having difficulty breathing. Additionally, they thought that they had seen fluid round my lungs from the x-rays. Great news - apparently there are only 3 things that can cause this - heart, liver and kidneys and they had done every test on my liver and kidneys and they were fine. They suspected a blood clot. In turn, I informed the doctor that if I hadn't been admitted with diarrhea, that would be another symptom he could add that to the list. Was sent for another CT scan that confirmed not only blood clot, but one in my chest (aka pulmonary embolism).

Thursday 22nd Feb
Started on heparin to thin blood and address clot. Now for a little something for you to try back at home. Don't worry, it won't hurt. They moved the IV from one hand to the other. No big deal, but it's interesting what you use each hand for. Your little challenge is the next time you go for a poo, try and wipe only using one hand (being the one you don't normally use). It's possible, but it feels really weird. But, the diarrhea gave me lots of chances to practice this. Although I was fearful that I'd look down and see clean toilet paper in one hand and something else in the other hand, thankfully that didn't happen.

Friday 23rd Feb and Saturday 24th Feb
Not much change as was just responding to the Heparin. The big news though was that they had managed to get a better sample from me when doing the colonoscopy and subsequently found an infection (Clostridium Difficile or "C Diff" to its friends). I think this was found on Thursday, but it didn't seem like a big deal compared to everything else that was going on. So, treatment stopped for the Crohn's to fix the C Diff first.

Monday 25th Feb
Happy birthday to me (or what's left of me at this point). Actually, by now had turned the corner and was starting to feel much better. Downside being that I'm in hospital, it's my birthday and I was supposed to be on holiday. Still, mustn't grumble.

Tuesday 26th Feb
Everything as good as can be expected. Need to complete the injection stuff, but should be released tomorrow.

Wednesday 27th Feb
Given the all clear and discharged. Well, when I say all clear, I have a ton of pills, so if you hear a rattle, it's probably me walking up the corridor. I still need to get a lot of treatment sorted out, but I'm not critical anymore. Which is a good thing.

And there you have it.

Good News!!! I'm going to be discharged from hospital tomorrow morning. Obviously with having had something that's put strain on my heart I asked the doctor whether I'd be OK for sex. He said yes, so I told him there's a nice little Italian restaurant nearby that maybe we could go to first.

What could be more fun than spending your birthday in hospital hooked up to an IV? Presumably nothing as that's what I'm doing. So, to my loyal fan base that's been wondering where my blogs have gone, now you know.

Normal service should be resumed shortly as I expect to get out of here in a couple of days. I have a backlog of stuff to put on the open forum blogs which I will get to and also want to do an article titled "up my arse and beyond" that gives a guided tour of my body as per the scans that I've had whilst I've been in hospital. Unfortunately there's no footage from the rectal probe which is a shame as I'd quite like to have had a look at that. There are some good x-rays and CT scans though.

Wow! My inbox has been inundated with one email asking about the Fan Fare of Daytona. Actually, it was to explain the Budweiser shoot out, but I feel the entire thing needs some explanation, so here it is.

In typical American style, somebody obviously thought about - “how can we prolong the event and get more money from the punters?” And here's what they came up with. Ordinarily, a NASCAR race has 43 competitors. To keep it simple, the top 35 in the standings pre-qualify and the next fastest 8 get in. What this means is that all the drivers not in the top 35 come to each track with a car setup purely for qualifying and tend to qualify at the top of the heap, but then go slowly backwards during the race as their cars aren't setup for the long haul of say a 500 mile race. The order the drivers start in is the order they qualify in.

Not so for Daytona. That would be far too easy. So, the top 35 in points from last season automatically qualify. Qualifying is then held and this determines another 2 drives that get into the race (35 + 2 = 37). It's actually 3 that qualify, but we'll come back to that. The field in its entirety is then split in half - odd numbers and even numbers. Each half then enters what's called a “duel”. Two more cars qualify from each duel (37 + 2 + 2 = 41). The next spot goes to a former (Sprint) Cup Champion if there is one in the pack who has not yet qualified. Any remainder is filled up with the next fasted qualifiers. (As I said earlier, the third place in qualifying gets in on the basis that there would always at least one more spot to fill, but the third place in qualifying may also get in via the duels thus pushing the next people to get into the race from further down the qualifying list).

As for the starting positions for the race, only the top two positions from the qualifying session are locked in. The remaining positions are determined by the duels to create forced racing in each of the 150 mile duels (one duel filling the odd numbered spots and the other the even numbers). Otherwise, presumably the previously qualified drivers would drive one lap and then pull into the pits. This means that you could be unlucky enough to qualify third, but have a bad duel and end up starting 43rd.

All very well, but what does this have to do with the Shootout? Nothing really, other than to give you an idea of what's going on. The Shootout is a special event race. Not really sure what purpose it has other than to get the season started. Now, bearing in mind all the rigmarole above for the Daytona 500 qualifying, what is the Shootout? The Shootout is a race for all of the previous season's pole sitters (those people who started the race first by qualifying first). Oh no, if this is a race for the best qualifiers, how complicated have they made the qualifying for this race? Any idea? No, well, believe it or not, there is no qualifying, it's done on a random draw.

And America wonders why nobody else follows its sports.

As Daytona week kicks off with all the fan fare that accompanies the Daytona 500 we bring you the top story so far. Most people are reporting on the alleged “punch up” between Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch. Certainly a news worthy discussion, but not what we feel is truly reportable. Instead, we focus our attention on the effects of the big last season news - that of Dale Earnhardt Jr. moving from Dale Earnhardt Inc. to Hendrick Motorsport.

This has caused a lot of concern with fans, in particular the problem that he was going to lose his number 8 car and Budweiser sponsorship. Why would this be of such a concern to his loyalist fans? Apparently it's because they're worried about how they're going to have to change their tatoos! (Seriously - they even covered this on the tv.) So Dale has managed to secure the 88 car and has written the eights the same way as they were written on the 8 car. This is to help the troubled fans and allow them the option of just adding an 8 to their previous tatoo.

What consideration! Actually, most people interviewed (yep they interviewed people on this) said they were just going to take the opportunity to get another tatoo done and not bother changing the old one.



Seems that I've picked an appropriate sport to follow. Although my die hardness ends with wearing a baseball cap.

So the news story from the US is that United are going to start charging $25 per additional bag. The news from France, however, is that flight attendants are stripping for the pilots. Probably a fair reflection on the difference in service.

The video of the strip tease can be found on The Sun's website. The think I like best about the article is the fact that it isn't possible to squeeze in another pun. Starting with the title across the picture “ hello ... this is your captain tweaking” to the old favorite of finding somewhere to abuse the term “joystick”

Saturday morning and time to head out to go house hunting. But not any ordinary Saturday morning to go out for a drive. No, brother Hog ordered himself a car public address system that you connect up and it plays noises (like the noise of a cow) so that you can surprise unsuspecting people. Or so it says on the box. This product is, apparently only available in the US and will only ship to a US address so my brother had it shipped to me and I can then arrange to pass it on to him in the UK - either on my next trip home or by mailing it.

Obviously I couldn't resist the urge to test out this ingenious invention. So I thought, why not video it, so I did. You too can see how amazing this product isn't by clicking on the “Hog Horn” link from the Other Videos page.

Things to look out for:

• Between the break when I connect it up, I'd practiced using it. Note William's expression when I flash to him
• On the animal noises, it seems like those that we actually take a guess at (chicken and pig) are actually wrong.
• Is it me, or is the car's indicator the loudest thing on the video?

Now, what you don't see is that after I turned the camera off, there was actually someone at the side of the road. I hit him with the duck noise and he totally didn't hear it.

Now, now, the other bit that you didn't see was the effort that went into putting this together. We head off on our journey and the windscreen wipers on Karen's car were just leaving a smeary mess on the winDSCreen. I couldn't see a thing out of my side. Karen claimed she could see out of hers, but appeared to be peering between the streaks akin to looking out of a pillbox. I seriously thought this gadget was going to work, so I made her drive back to the car parts shop. I bought two new winDSCreen wipers and stood in the rain for about 30 minutes getting soaked trying to figure out how to fit them. It really wasn't worth it.

Now, now, now, did you know that there is a left and right winDSCreen wiper. No? Well, nor did I. I guess I had a 50% chance of getting it right when I put them on, but odds like that never seem to work out. I believe Murphy's Law intervenes somewhere along the line to considerably reduce the odds below 50% which is why I fitted the new wipers the wrong way round. You can't actually tell from the video as most of the video is just a shot of the speaker on my knee. We drove round for about 4 hours before I realized that I was looking through a brand new widescreen TV and Karen was again peering though the old 14" black and white. I guess I could see so that's all that matters really.

Press release:

“EastBayRag, the Bay Area company headquartered in San Francisco, announces that it is going to cut 1,000 jobs throughout it's global operations. The company is feeling the pressure of all the other software companies being bought for obscene amounts. In an effort to realize the EBR Business Plan, and to entice even higher bids (hopefully up to $44.6 billion), the company has decided to take the drastic measures.”

I mean, come on Microsoft - $44.6 billion for Yahoo! I only want $10 million. It's a drop in the ocean and look what you get. So Yahoo's got a bigger customer base, more intellectual capital and a couple more assets, EastBayRag has a logo with a bloke fishing on it. And one that I ripped off from some clipart somewhere. What more could you want?

Following the theme of the previous article of random irrelevant facts, here's one for you. If you go to Google and type in EastBayRag, it will find this site and display entries to hit the relevant page. If you go to Yahoo and try the same it will not find anything and will ask you if you meant to try something different. Now, if you look at the IP address that this website is on and lookup the owner, you will find it belongs to Yahoo. Although I host this site myself, Yahoo is my ISP and they are the ones providing connectivity to the Internet. It seems that Yahoo's search engine doesn't look at what's going on under its own nose. (I'll leave you to deduce the rest for yourself).

Is it just me or do I have a right to question the units of measurement used on the news this morning? They were discussing the fact that January has had a significant amount of rainfall. And I quote, the amount of rainfall was “eight and thirty nine hundredths of an inch.” It was even written as 8.39"

Last time I checked, inches were typically broken into sixteenths or multiples thereof so you could go to 1/32 or 1/64 etc. I don't recall ever hearing an imperial measurement having a metric (or decimal I suppose) end to it.

Maybe the US is not content with just altering the rules around language to make it more phonetic (as opposed to correct [he hypocritically says typing and spelling in English US]) that they decided to bastardize (noting the spelling with a “zee”) the measurement system.

(And I know the measurement systems aren't the same in the sense that things like the fact that a US pint is different from a UK pint, but at least there's a reason for that. That reason being that the UK changed its system to imperial in 1824 which is post some irrelevant July 4th date so America didn't adopt it. If you really want to get you head in a spin, America uses English Units. English units are outlawed in the UK by the 1824 Weights and Measurements Act, so the UK uses imperial, a.k.a. British Imperial System. I guess the US is more traditional than the UK).

Congratulations to Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates for winning the Daytona 24hr race for the third year in a row. Second year in a row for Scott Pruett and Juan Pablo Montoya at the wheel. (Not at the same time, obviously, otherwise it would have been a little crowded in the drivers seat). And first time for Dario Franchitti and Memo Rojas who were the other two drivers to take the wheel for stints.

In other news, beware the little people. Whilst most people are focused on the recession, The Sun ran an article this week about gangs in Sweeden putting dwarves into bags and putting them on buses. Whilst in transit, the dwarves would crawl out of their hiding place and loot the belongings of other passengers. Full story Cops Hunt Dwarf Thieves