My Heroes, or "But in purple, I'm stunning!"

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If you’re not a Babylon 5 fan, obligatory meme for nearly no context:

With so much of negativity, pessimism, conflict, and contention grabbing attention these days, I’m feeling a compelling need to tell you about what’s happened in my little corner of the world in the last couple of weeks.

Before we begin, I’m fine. I have the strength of a kitten, and the attention span of a gnat, but I’m fine. Full recovery is already underway, and I almost hit “normal” this week.

Two weeks ago, in the space of 7 days, my world went from completely normal, to “what are these little purple spots?”, to “you could literally bleed to death at any moment!”

My immune system suddenly decided that the blood platelets that control clotting were evil, and must be destroyed. On a scale of 150-450 my count was 2. (From repeated 2’s I doubt the equipment can measure any lower.) Below 10 is a critical risk of internal bleeding, including bleeding into the brain (that’s cheery thought, isn’t it?) and of course an ordinary cut would be catastrophic as well.

It’s called ITP, if you want to look it up. By the way, the little purple spots are just failed capillaries. Something that happens all the time, to everyone, every day. A capillary fails, it clots, a new one grows, you never know. But I wasn’t clotting, so every failed capillary bled out a tiny bit. Boom! A new little purple spot.

But that’s not really the point of this tale. I’m not dead, the ITP is responding well to treatment, and I get to keep my spleen. Normal activity is OK, but I’m banned from rock climbing, skydiving, stunt doubling, skateboarding and motorcycle riding for a while. Well, there’s only one on that list…

My new favorite blood doctor says a count of 30 is “adequate” and 80 would be “acceptable”, but that I was out of immediate danger over 30. I’m still just “adequate”. I hope one day to become “acceptable”, and I yet aspire to become “normal” some day in the future.

By the way, I can’t really recommend internal bleeding. At least in the kidney, the pain is phenomenal, and there’s no real upside that I could discern. And that was minor internal bleeding, with no serious damage done to the kidney.

Anyhow, on to our tale. These may be little things to some, but they are huge to me. And of necessity, I am leaving out a LOT of equally good and wonderful people, or this would turn into a novel. There are a lot of other great tales of friends and heroes not being told in this particular account.

The initial treatment looked good, and I was discharged for outpatient treatment after three days. The second day back home, I got a burst of energy, and put the front of the van back on.

Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that the day before I was diagnosed, I spent 8 hours changing the radiator on my wife’s van, without a clue that a busted knuckle could be fatal? Maybe you’re a better shade tree mechanic than I am, but it is flatly impossible for me to do a job like that without getting a single scratch. But it happened.

Two other miracles (among many):

I’d been planning for weeks to go shotgun shooting that morning with friends and neighbors. It’s been a year since last time, so I was looking forward to it. I had to wait for the radiator to be delivered, so that wasn’t going to hold up the repair job. But that morning I “just didn’t feel like it” for some reason, and stayed home. A few days later it sunk in that I would not have had a bruised shoulder that day. It would have been internal bleeding.

And Friday my brother had invited me to go dirt bike riding with him and his boy. I told him I’d love to, but I had to stay home and change the radiator on Saturday. Nothing could possibly go wrong on a dirt ride, could it?

When I was discharged the hospital the first time, my dear wife, the nurse, had told me that HER discharge orders were that I wasn’t going back to work for the rest of the week because of likely side effects of the massive steroid doses I’d been treated with. Grumpy, sleepless, distracted, hyper, etc. I asked if I was going to be that bad, why she wanted me around the house, and she sweetly said “I’m trying to protect the rest of the world from YOU”.

I’m not saying she was right, but later that day the clothes dryer quit heating. For several hours I just ignored it, didn’t even want to think about it. And then from 9pm to 1am I was suddenly tearing the dryer apart and troubleshooting, and ordering parts for the repair.

'Roid rage, me? I think you guys owe her one.

Heroes? Oh yea, right. Hey, remember what she said about distracted?

I was discharged on Tuesday. The dryer incident was Wednesday. Parts weren’t showing up until Saturday. Thursday was normal. On Friday ITP symptoms started to reappear, but more seriously. Purpura vs petechiae, if you’re keeping score. Same thing, but larger spots. And in the mouth. We now know that “wet purpura” means “platelet count below 10, red alert!”

Saturday brought the kidney pain, and a return to the hospital. Well, I guess the dryer isn’t getting fixed.

Wrong.

That Saturday evening in the ER, friends and neighbors Scott & Julie and Mike & Annette came to visit. Scott asked some casual questions about the dryer. Monday I got a call from Scott saying the parts had arrived, asking what my diagnosis was, and how far I’d got with it. I filled him in. “OK, great, Julie and I will take care of it. Thanks! Oh, can I use some tools?”

That’s a hero. They are heroes.

I was discharged the second time on a Tuesday again (yesterday, as of this writing). Remember the radiator job? As we’d parked at the hospital on Saturday, there was some steam from under the hood, but a quick glance made me think it was just the overfilled overflow tank venting.

Nope.

Halfway home on Tuesday (10 miles or so total trip) the van made a funny sound a couple of times that I couldn’t identify. Not loose or rubbing, but surely not right. I leaned over to look at the gages and the temperature was full cold. Nothing from the heater. Ok, what now? Failed thermostat? Dead water pump? We got home OK, and I popped the hood to find out some idiot had not properly installed a hose clamp, and one radiator hose had blown off the engine block and dumped the coolant. And I can’t even blame the steroids for that one, I hadn’t been diagnosed or doped yet. Apparently 75% is NOT a passing grade in some situations. In my defense, it was well after dark when I finished the job that Saturday, but it was still a dumb, obvious mistake.

I was actually quite happy to see a missing hose clamp, that’s a LOT easier to fix than the water pump. I just left the hood up and we unloaded the van, and then we tried to catch our breath and figure out what to do next. And a few minutes later my phone rings. It’s Mike. “Hi, I see your hood’s up, what’s wrong, can I help?” He’d been home for lunch, and was headed back to work. I explained that I’d hired an idiot to work on my car, and it was just a hose clamp and coolant that was needed. “Hey, no problem, I’ll go get it! What kind of coolant?” Umm, lemme see, for Toyota, it’s pink, I don’t remember the number. I go out on the porch to look at the bottle and Mike is standing in front of me! “Hi! I saw the bottle. I’ll go get some and a hose clamp, are the screw type ok?”

Now I need to point out here that Mike’s work is about 15 miles away, he’s going to be late getting back, this is NOT convenient, and he is WAY over-dressed to be working on cars. But he’s quickly gone and back with the parts, and before I can find a screwdriver, he’s got the hose clamp installed. Mike tells me go inside and rest, he’s got this. Which he really, truly does. But I persuade him that since the filler is in a bad spot, the job is a lot easier with an extra set of hands. And because I’m so buzzed with steroid side effects (a MUCH higher dose than the first time) I need to do SOMETHING, so he lets me hold the funnel. In a couple of minutes the coolant is in, and the job is done. We chat about dirt bikes for a minute, and then just before he leaves, Mike slyly grins and says “Hey, while you’re buzzed on steroids, want to go lift some weights?” (There is no way either of us are bodybuilders!)

And he’s off to work.

That’s a hero.

Small things? If you say so. They are huge things to me.

I think maybe I’m trying to get around to a couple of points:

  1. This sort of stuff happens all the time, but it will never be the front page news. It should be. As I mentioned at the start, I could tell many more tales of kindnesses in the past couple of weeks.

  2. We’re all just ordinary people, but doing a little more here or there can change the world. Even, or maybe ESPECIALLY, if it is just one person’s world. I’ve tried to do the same for them as they’ve done for me. But frankly, I think they’re better at it.

But the funny thing is, we each seem to think that we’re getting the better end of the deal.

Blaine

Part of my inspiration for writing this was my friend John’s account of a neighbor getting involved when a stolen truck was dumped in John’s driveway. Good neighbors and friends are priceless. If you don’t have one, you can try being one. Things spread.

And an entirely appropriate footnote:
Just a minute ago, a day after Mike rescued me and our van, his wife urgently needed to borrow our van to take her mother to a doctor appointment.