Do you like this story?
Ghlaghghee celebrates the Fourth …. and so do we
By Gina Spadafori
July 3, 2009
Picture of Ghlaghghee (pronounced “Fluffy,” as I’m sure you all know) is from John Scalzi’s most wonderful blog, Whatever. I recognized John on the floor of the massive Book Expo America last year and introduced myself. We kinda-sorta know each other from our days working for Bees (him, Fresno; me, Sacramento) and from our time at AOL back in the day when working for AOL made you cool, not hopelessly 20th century.
John was gracious enough to look glad to see me, at least long enough to mention that he was late for a book-signing.
Since I’m stealing a picture from his blog, I need to say that I’m not a big reader of Sci-Fi, but John’s stuff is so intelligent, creative and funny that I have read it all. You should, too, so go check it out.
In any case, Ghlaghghee Scalzi is here to help me let everyone know we’re shutting down here until Sunday, so Christie and I can deal with our respective moms (mine’s coming home with her new knee on Saturday) and all our bloggers and readers can enjoy time away from the computer with friends and family.
Happy Fourth, everyone!
Share & Enjoy
|
Facebook
|
Twitter
|
Google Buzz
|
Digg
|
|
Technorati
|
StumbleUpon
|
Delicious
|
Email
|
Home
I neglected to mention that John Scalzi’s latest SciFi novel, the excellent “Zoe’s Tale,” features a cool dog.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 3, 2009 @ 8:41 am
I love Scalzi’s work - I AM a big science fiction fan - and LOVE “Zoe’s Tale” - it’s a great story with a really cool dog.
Happy Fourth to everyone!
Comment by Liz Palika — July 3, 2009 @ 10:46 am
My mom came home from the hospital last night — one week after I rushed her to the ER with horrible pain, vomiting, and intense nausea. It’s been a long and terrible week — she has cancer in her spine, lungs, skull, and hips, as well as her sternum, which had fractured.
Since early May I had taken her to the doctor and to the ER many times, complaining of incredible pain in her sternum area. Over and over they diagnosed the wrong things, and told her to take Advil. Even though she’d had cancer twice in the last year, most recently a mastectomy in January, no one did or suggested a CT scan.
This time, the vomiting tipped them off, and they checked her blood and found sky-high calcium levels. Then they scanned her and found multiple areas of bone destruction, presumably from cancer. They admitted her immediately for a week of treatment to reduce her calcium level, and get her hellish pain under control, as well as do a number of painful diagnostic tests.
Assuming this is her breast cancer metastasizing, there are treatments and we’ll be looking at the likelihood of at least some relief and some good time with her, but it it’s something else, like lymphoma or multiple myeloma, we’re looking at a hospice situation.
The most likely thing is that it is the breast cancer, so we’re hoping for the biopsy results to tell us that. We’ll know next week sometime. In the meantime, I’m just taking it hour by hour, and glad to have my mom home again, not nauseated, and with her pain mostly controlled.
By the way, the Advil has been replaced with a 25 mg fentanyl patch, dilaudid and tramadol. Which I wish I could shove down the throat of the ER nurse who when my mom told him her pain was a 10 on a scale of 10, told her that it “couldn’t be a 10, because if it was, you’d be on the floor writhing and screaming.” Well guess what, you jerk? Bone cancer is a 10. Thanks to your little lecture, you not only intimidated her into under-evaluating her pain ever since, but you deprived her doctors of valuable information that might have led to an earlier diagnosis and also made sure she’d get inadequate pain control. If I remembered your name I’d report you.
And yes, I do know anger is one of the stages of grief.
Comment by Christie Keith — July 3, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Christie, I’m so sorry.
And I’d like to throttle the brain-dead moron who first came up with the “rate your pain on a scale of” idea (which just this past week caused a miscommunication that almost led a doctor to remove all restrictions on my hand injury that still causes me to yelp in pain if I so much as grab a hairbrush wrong - not at all the same category as what your mother is going through, but another example of how hare-brained the whole “rate your pain” thing can be when mis-used).
Here’s to hoping that they get your mother’s pain control right this time, and that the test results come back with the more treatable breast cancer (imagine that - *hoping* for breast cancer - but it is what it is, right?)
My thoughts are with you and your family.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 3, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
Oh, Christie, that’s awful! The whole thing, and a little extra awful for that terrible nurse.
I’m nasty-minded enough to think that the hospital has a record of who was working that night, and your mom’s records might show what personnel treated her.
Comment by Lis — July 3, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
Christie, I am also very sorry that your mom had to endure so much pain and that she was misdiagnosed……..may she suffer less in the future.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 3, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
My heart goes out to both Gina and Christie.. words don’t really suffice here, do they? You will all be in my thoughts.
Comment by Kim — July 3, 2009 @ 4:17 pm
Gina, I hope the replacement works well for your mom and that she recover soon from the operation.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 3, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Thanks, everyone, for such good thoughts. My mom is recovering very well, and looking forward to regaining her mobility — and her car keys!
I hear nothing but good about knee replacements. I hope my mom will be enjoying life again soon. Been a rough few months for her, becoming a widow rather suddenly after 54 years of marriage and now this.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 3, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
Oh, Christie. You and your mom are in my thoughts. You’ve probably checked it out already, but the forums over at breastcancer.org are really the best: http://community.breastcancer.org/
Here’s the home page. It’s a great resource. [Run by doctors.] I hope your mom will be much more comfortable now that she’s home. Take care -
Comment by Luisa — July 3, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
Lessons to us all: cherish our moms. Hugs to Gina and Christie and theirs.
Comment by Susan — July 4, 2009 @ 5:02 am
What a gorgeous cat!
Happy 4th to everyone!
Comment by Ingrid King — July 4, 2009 @ 1:51 pm