Amputation Below the Knee; Dying on the Table and Coming Back with Total Recall

If you must have your leg amputated, Below the Knee is the best outcome. Sometimes it's not enough--sort of wait and see if your veins can function well enough to regenerate and heal...if not, up and up and up til the leg is gone.

Did she do it to herself? The attitudes of some medical professionals, who were trained better (I know--I'm one of them, disabled), make them less likely to give empathetic help.

YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF.

Not that she denies it. Tells horror tales, some hilarious, about past I.V. drug abuse.

Now she needs a new liver an a new kidney. Some fat chance of both being available and compatible, but that's way in the future.

Like many addicts, lovers of addicts, cleaner-uppers-after-addicts, she'd got Hepatitis C. Can't get new liver until Hep C is cured. Cure is interferon, which is bad -- not as bad as it used to be but bad enough. Is she healthy enough to endure the cure?

They cut her femoral artery several years back. OOPS.

She's died twice that I know of.

I know a lot of people who've died. Hazard of being in anonymous program for anomalous people.

Just this afternoon, my housemate told me of dying of OD and seeing himself brought back to life in a corner near the ceiling. He accurately quoted the doctor saying "forget it, he's gone" and the nurse saying, "no, try adrenaline. hit him with the paddles." Wearily, the doctor followed the nurses orders--

it happens more than you'd imagine LOL

and zoom-- he was back in his body and hitting on the nurse who saved his life. Tearing the tubes out of his arms...this was 30 years or so back...and he said:

I tore out the catheter.

NOOOO! I cringed. I was a psych nurse, don't know much about med/surg but I do know there's a balloon inflated to hold the catheter in place. And if you DON'T know that, and pull the catheter out without deflating the balloon.

ouch.

serious ouch.

Anyway, she's already planning for her motorized scooter, her rehab, getting the hell out of Miami.

Back to the Keys where they'll deflate your balloon before you get crazed enough to pull it out yourself. Where her friends can visit.

It's Thanksgiving. My mother died when I was 13 then night before Thanksgiving. I hate Thanksgiving. You wanna give thanks, Give the land back to the Indians you stole it from you turkey-fucking bastards.