The Fuzzy Mind

Fuzzy decided to join a cancer survivor support group. I joined not because I need support but I felt that since writing this blog about my Prostate Cancer I might be able to help someone else get through their treatment. I also obtained a great deal of experience helping JR through his chemo.

The group meets at a local restaurant.  We  have  dinner and a talk session and sometimes there is a guest speaker.

 Fuzzy felt it would give him a chance to socialize and help others. Fuzzy at one point in his life was deeply involved in the Boy Scouts of America. I was a Cub Scout den leader and went on to start a Boy Scout Troop as well as take volunteer positions at the local Council level. It was a very busy and rewarding time in my life and now I felt it was time to get involved in life again so after surviving my bout with Prostate Cancer I found a group where I might fit in.

Fuzzy needs to back up in his life story to provide some background. Fuzzy spent many years working for a very large corporation. This corporation during the 70’s and 80’s would subscribe to any new wave idea and self help or personal betterment that happened to be the rave at the time. We went from lunches in a cafeteria festooned with balloons and dixieland bands with lots of posters telling us that each of us was special and that we were a family to mandatory meetings to listen to some guru drone on and on about the same subjects. So I have seen them come and go, just as soon as a new idea hit the Time’s Best seller list. We had one  group thought during these talks. " Shouldn’t I be someplace else doing something more important?". After a number of years the corporation realized the only people this baloney was helping were the people they were paying big bucks to for these programs and then it stopped.

Back to the support group. I do not want to cast dispersions on anyone’s belief or program that they find helps them. I do have a problem when some new age guru ( now there is a real 60’s expression ) tries to foist his miracle ideas on vulnerable audiences. Last evening it was the SECRET that the guest speaker was holding forth.

What you might ask is the Secret? It is a newly repackaged and reworded presentation of the Power of Positive Thinking. This is not a new idea but with the new packaging it is sold as a new and improved idea. So now it is presented as, if you think bad or negative thoughts then bad or negative things will occur in your life. If you think about good health and money and all the wonderful things life could bring then it will be yours.  Again back to the 60’s and the good vibe bad vibe idea. Fuzzy did interject that positive thoughts were useless without a positive attitude to go along with them, in fact the positive attitude is the important idea people should be working on. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet would not be billionaires today if they didn’t have the attitude that they could do it.

Fuzzy listened to the speaker discuss the recent death of a member. This person was out running on a busy road and was hit by a truck and killed. The speaker said that there must have been something negative going on in her life at the time. Basically that if she was thinking about flowers and butterflies and was whistling a happy tune she would still be with us! It was an accident! You can’t control fate or accidents. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. When a member of the audience was told not to think of the word cancer and to lose it from their vocabulary and they would feel and get better Fuzzy knew he had heard enough.

At this point I couldn’t listen anymore and left before I took over and went off on a rant about how much bull  was being fed to a group of vulnerable people.   I made my excuses and quietly left during an intermission in the program.

I had been to several previous meetings of the survivors group and those were very helpful to some of the attendees who were going through treatment at the time. I clearly remember one woman, a wife, mom and homemaker. She was there with her daughters and was feeling badly about her family having to support her as she dealt with this difficult disease. She had always been the caregiver and now was having to let others care for her.  Damn it, it just wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. We listened to her and could see through her tears just how frustrating her situation was. She wasn’t concerned for herself but for everything she felt she was putting her family through. By the end of the evening with the great help of her daughters and the group she seemed to let go and be willing to accept the fruits of her labor of raising two wonderful children and to accept their help without any regrets. The daughters were more than willing to do whatever she needed to get through this period in her life.

It was an evening of listening and suggesting, telling of personal experiences but no judgement. Never did this woman hear the words, you shouldn’t feel this way. All she heard were positive things that she took home with her. Fuzzy hopes she is making it through her treatment. Fuzzy knows just how difficult it can be when you are fighting for your life and how important those who love you are. I believe everyone who was there left that night feeling a little better.  I know I did.

Sorry to have been gone so long, but Fuzzy has been healing slowly. The weather we have been having with weekly snow or ice storms hasn’t helped spur me to write either, but today is bright and sunny so it has moved me to get away from the drivel on the television and get back to my keyboard.

What I see on the television news channels, newspapers, magazines and the Internet has me astounded. Nothing is  ever anyone’s fault and somebody has to do something to save us. Crap.  Whatever happened to self reliance, self control, and common sense?

Did someone at the bank hold a gun on the borrowers and force them to sign a sub-prime mortgage? Weren’t they smart enough to take the paperwork home and read it over? If it was to confusing to them then that should have been a red flag. The old time snake oil salesman would roll into town and talk the citizens out of their money by baffling them with his bullshit. Basically this is the same set up the lenders used on sub prime loans.

Of course now we have a mess in the real estate and housing markets. The only half- humorous point is now the snake oil salesmen are getting stuck with a lot of repossessed houses which they can’t unload in today’s market. I guess it is true, that what goes around comes around. Do I feel sorry for the people who are losing their homes? Not really. Well maybe one or two who lost their jobs and had to default through no fault of their own.

So what to do? Well, we can all get together and stand and wring our hands and weep and wail until our government comes and bails us out. Guess what? It is working! Now we the people have got to figure a way to help those of us who were not astute enough, or just too stupid, to handle our own finances and plan our future.

Now Fuzzy is not against lending a helping hand to those who truly need it but, no matter how cold you may think I am, I do not believe in helping, because you were too dumb to take the responsibility of your own life when you were perfectly capable of it. I do not want to help if all I am doing is propping you up when you could be helping yourself. Sometimes self help can be painful, but from these things we learn and grow.

If you have a family that is suffering because of your poor planning then by all means Fuzzy wants to help your children because all of this was beyond their control and it happened to them. But Fuzzy is very concerned about what you are teaching them. I see children lacking self control with the " I want it now" attitude. I don’t believe many children are learning patience and respect for themselves or others. No matter how deep a hole you have dug yourself into during these monetary crises, you must teach your children so they do not repeat your mistakes. Our only hope for the future is that our children learn not from our accomplishments, but from our mistakes.

Well once again Fuzzy’s health headed for the crapper. In late 2002 and early 2003 Fuzzy’s leg became extremely painful and my feet hurt like hell. A check of my circulation showed very little blood flow in my legs and feet. Further testing showed the Y connection formed by the Aorta and the Femoral arteries of the legs was plugged with goo. So Fuzzy entered Nyack Hospital and had a Bi-fem Bypass preformed by my team of Vascular Surgeons.

They used plastic tubing impregnated with pig cologne so my body would not reject it to re-plumb Fuzzy’s circulatory system. First they installed a tube from my right shoulder down to the Femoral artery in my right leg. This bypassed the Y connection going to the right leg. They then connected a tube from my right leg to my left Femoral and completed the bypass of the Y.

During the first month the left Femoral collapsed and I lost most blood flow to the left foot. This  was extremely painful and I ended up calling JR several times at about 2AM. I knew there was nothing he could do but sit and talk but that seemed to help in the middle of the night. 

So the Vascular Team took me back to Nyack and put in another plastic bypass from the top of the left Femoral to just above my knee. This caused Fuzzy to have to go to Helen Hayes Hospital for rehabilitation of the knee.

Fuzzy was left with Ischemic Neuropathy of the left foot, This just means very screwed up nerves in my left foot. This causes the foot to feel tight as if it is so swollen that the skin is near the breaking point. This is a 24 hour 7 days a week feeling. Fuzzy has sort of gotten used to living with it.

This brings us up to February of 2008.  Let the games commence again.

Here is a drawing for those of you who would like to follow along.

The bottom and toes of Fuzzy’s left foot turned beet red and the toes would swell up to fill a EEE width shoe. A flow test showed no measurable flow of blood in the left foot and only marginal flow in the right, The technician immediately called Dr. Mike S. who then wanted me put on the phone. Mike’s first words to me were,"I want you at Nyack Hospital TOMORROW." I said," tomorrow?", and he replied that time was not on my side. So with my feet being rather important to me and losing one or both of them is out of the question, I called JR and off we went to medical land for another adventure.

Mike was going to do a thrombectomy of the bypass going from my right leg to the left. This original plan would have required about an hour and I might have been able to go home. I need to back up a little. After the last round of surgery I told Mike the next time I was going to get in a knife fight with him I was bringing a gun. He told me to bring whatever I wanted as he was going to have a guy knock me out! Well damned if he didn’t.  Dr. Bob showed up, introduced himself, and with his magic cocktail mix sent me to la la land. Next I wake up to find that the job took over 4 hours and I was to be guest of Nyack Hospital for awhile.

Going back to the drawing, Mike found the line coming down from my right shoulder was blocked and he couldn’t open it. So after cleaning out the clots and plaque in the right left bypass and the bypass in my left leg, he opened the left leg of the Y and placed a stent in it to hold it open. This would now be the blood supply for my legs and feet.

All of this is accomplished through incisions in the groin. This leaves you with an incision in the fold of where your leg meets your body.

Report: SUCCESS! Fuzzy’s left foot is returning to normal color and both feet are now warm and a pulse can be felt in both feet.

Fuzzy wants to thank everyone on Mike’s team who were involved, Bob for knocking me out, Nyack Hospital and their Nurses and especially JR who once again brought Fuzzy through. My feet thank you one and all.

I am planning on putting them to good use by getting out and visiting my Grandson and all of my friends in the Adirondack Park. My butt can’t wait to get back into my canoe with my camera in hand.