The Opinionated Bastard

Man, what a week.

So I’d just gotten back from a mini-vacation in Las Vegas the 4th through the 6th when my parents called. My dad’s operation to fix his hernia was scheduled for the 13th. Humans plan in vain while the god’s laugh; I had worked the previous weekend so I wouldn’t have to use vacation days for going to Vegas.

So much for that theory. So back at work two days, off over the weekend, work one more day, then back in the car for the drive to California. There go 4 days of vacation…

Now for those of you who think I’m a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, I’m not. I’m small-l libertarian, and besides, wool makes me itch. But my parents definitely are. How conservative are they? Let’s just say it wasn’t an accident that they put the Reagan Library behind their house.

Anyways, got in Tuesday night, then my Dad’s surgery was Wednesday afternoon. My mom was totally freaked out, for which I don’t blame her. Last time, I hadn’t come out because I’d had a hernia operation and it wasn’t that bad so I figured no big deal.

In that case, what happened was my dad was in pain, so he was taking the Vicodin they gave him. Vicodin tends to cause constipation. If you have a hernia operation, you’re not supposed to strain.

And doctors wonder why their patients think they are idiots. In my case, I never saw the pain killers at all, my wife loaded me up with Advil instead. Plus I never have that problem, for reasons that I will get to.

So the doctor is off over the weekend, so my mom had to take him to the emergency room because as we all know, you’re only supposed to get sick from 9-5 Monday through Friday. In the emergency room, having an elderly patient who basically needed an enema wasn’t exactly a high priority. So the hours passed…but nothing else passed.

Finally, the chaplain happened to stop by, and it turned out my dad knew him from Rotary. So my mom asked him if he could do something, and he got a nurse to help my dad poop. (Basically, she used her fingers to unstop him. Embarrassing for my dad, and talk about a shitty job for the nurse!)

That was the last time. So this time I figured I better come out. My wife tried to weasel out, but I insisted she came too. She was a lot of help, because what she doesn’t realize is that with her there, everyone else in the family is much calmer (me, my mom and my dad). My mom even commented as such to her friends. Which was kind of surprise because my wife and mom haven’t always gotten along.

Going in for an operation, even someone else’s, always drives me up a tree because as an engineer, watching the way hospitals run things is like watching the clowns at the circus…except its the patients who do all the work. So not only am I stressed out, but I have to refrain from redesigning the entire hospital while I’m there.

Prior to the operation, my dad looked terrible. In fact, lately he hasn’t really looked that great when I’ve visited which is hard for me to deal with.

Hard enough that I get a sort of hysterical blindness. I can’t actually picture him as sick, I have to keep reminding myself what he’s actually like.

The problem ultimately boils down to the fact that he isn’t sleeping very well. He has sleep apnea in Western terms. If you google sleep apnea and read up on it a bit, you’ll discover that the treatments for it are what I call Western voodoo: There’s a bunch of weird treatments they can do, but nothing helps.

In Eastern terms the real issue is that for most of his life he’s held his stress in his neck, specifically his upper spinal knob. Do something for 77 years and your body will think that’s what its supposed to do, “hold everything in the neck”. When he was younger, it wasn’t that much of an issue, but as he’s gotten older, its inhibited the flow of chi up his spine. So he’s started stooping and the muscles in his throat are weak.

So basically if he lies down, his throat muscles can’t hold his throat open, so he can only breathe in fits and starts while sleeping.

In other words, sleep apnea. Except he’s caught in a vicious circle now. He doesn’t get enough sleep, so he’s tired, so his throat muscles are weak, so he doesn’t sleep well… If I’m there, I can work on making sure he gets enough sleep, so he always looks much better when I leave.

In Eastern terms, the fix is easy enough its just a matter of unblocking his spinal knob. With him living in CA and me in AZ, I couldn’t do that much over the phone. I got him to go see a Qi Gong guy in CA Master Hong. Which was really pretty amazing, getting my dad to do this weird hippie medicine…

That was starting to help but then last month he had a cataract operation and couldn’t wear his sleep mask. Plus, the eye doctor had given him Doxycycline an antibiotic which cleaned out all of his intestinal bacteria.

So digestive problems and gas in a hernia patient? Did I say doctors are idiots? Well, I’ll say it again…

In talking with him on the phone, I’d talked him into doing yogurt, acidopholus milk, and buttermilk (the sour taste in buttermilk is from the bacteria, not ‘butter’). He hadn’t wanted to (my mom had suggested the same thing) but I pointed out that even if he didn’t like how yogurt tasted, it still was pretty good tasting compared to most other medicines.

That helped quickly, as did some probiotic pills from the same guy who sells him his sinus pills Dr David Williams. At this point though, his hernia was really bad, so he decided to get that operation before the second cataract operation (they only do one eye at a time).

So with no sleep, constant pain, terrible gas, and no chi flow, my dad looked terrible.

So he had the operation on Wednesday afternoon, and basically came home and went to sleep. My mom fussed over him a bit, and I looked at him somewhat, but the fun didn’t really start until Thursday.

So Thursday, we started with the bowel movement challenge. Having a bowel movement after hernia surgery is always difficult, but my dad hadn’t been having much luck in that area lately anyways.

My dad was also having a lot of pain in his shoulder. Examining him, I found out the problem in his upper spinal knob was causing him to vent cold out his right arm, hence the shoulder pain. So I worked on his arm and shoulder a bit, but really the key was to break the stasis in his upper spinal knob. So I did a bit of that, which fixed his shoulder, but of course, then the stasis affected his neck instead. Plus with the sleep apnea, he’s been sleeping on just one side, and not on his back at all.

My mom hadn’t been feeding him much of anything to even have a bowel movement though, so my dad wasn’t in any pain on that front, just a bit anxious because he was worried about having to go through the same ordeal as last time.

I told him not to worry if he wasn’t feeling any pain though, so that helped him relax. I figured not much to worry about just one day after the operation, and after not eating anything all day Wednesday.

So Thursday my dad was mostly groggy from the anesthesia still, so it passed fairly quickly for him. The Opinionated Wife kept my mom occupied for most of the day, while my dad had me trying to fix their mini-dish satellite system.

Friday my dad had perked up a bit, and I was able to work on healing him some more. His operation had gone really well actually, he was in less pain from healing then he had been from before the hernia. So he didn’t need to take any pain killers at all. Still no bowel movement though (despite lots and lots of prune juice). In talking, me and De realized something.

My Dad, after nearly being poisoned by Provacol, an anti-cholesterol, medication, had pretty much cut out all fat from his diet in order to control his cholesterol with diet. Now recently, after De and I started doing WeightWatchers, her gynecologist had insisted that she start taking something called “Udo’s Oil”. A couple of hours after taking a tablespoon, my wife (who had been constipated) was no longer constipated. As we put it, you have to be properly lubricated for everything to work correctly…

After driving all over Simi Valley, we couldn’t quite fine Udo’s Oil, but we found something similar, and brought that home.

So the next day, Saturday, success! And my dad perked up enough to eat a steak for dinner, his favorite thing.

So for all that people can blather on about super-size meals, low-fat diets, etc. I wonder how many of him really have shit happening to them? Doesn’t it seem a bit complicated to have to got to a special store to get special oil so you can poop? Wouldn’t it be easier to just eat some dead cow?

So with my Dad pooping again, the only thing left was the massive amounts of cold I’d broken free from his spinal knob was making his neck hurt. A trip to the drugstore for a heating pad could help with that though, so De (the Opinionated Wife) and I went off in quest of that and 7 other items my mom had come up with (like a bug zapper). That was more complicated then it needed to be for some reason because it seemed to be almost impossible to get help finding anything. Of course the stores were pretty busy, it was Saturday in Consumerland after all. Finally in Walmart, she went up to the customer service desk and asked “Do you guys take money?” When they guy responded with a confused, “Yes”, She said “well then you need to get someone to help me then”…

Naturally, the bug zappers were over in the hardware, given that flies are always getting into your toolbox and stealing the wrenches. Or perhaps they were there to read the approximately 1,000,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that seemed to be in every store we went into that day.

Anyways, the moral of this post? Shit Happens, and some days, that’s a very good thing…