Lamsonacare

Day 1 (Thursday - March 27, 2014):

I have a pressure sore on my ass. It is infected. I am very sick - septic they call it. I am a gimp in a wheelchair. I have been partying too much - too many late nights fueled by booze, crack and general all around hard living. But I have fun. Fuck it. What else am I gonna do? I am a gimp in a wheelchair. One of the few things I enjoy in this life anymore are getting drugged and liquored up and doing my stupid chemical fueled little chat show on the internet. However, do to my life of debauchery, my show will be on hiatus for a couple months while I lay in bed and wait for my ass to heal. Should be a good opportunity to detox as well. Let my liver go back down to its normal size.

The hospital I am admitted to is in St. louis. It is called Missouri Baptist, but everybody around here calls it Mobap for short. I’m in pretty bad shape. In the emergency room they tell me my white blood cell count is 25 (25 of what? I do not know). Whereas the normal human has a white blood cell count of 10 to 15. So immediately they start pumping antibiotics into me, and prepare to admit me into the hospital.

I have lived in St. Charles my whole life, which is basically a suburb of St. Louis located right across the Missouri River to the north of St. Louis, but coincidentally, I was actually born in St. Louis in a hospital almost right next door to Missouri Baptist. The name of that hospital is St. John’s. There is a lot of stuff named after saints around here. Its heavy duty Jesuit territory. My name is Charles Thomas Lamson and this story is a chronicle of my magical mystical journey through the healing process.

I have a doctor that I have had since I was a teenager. I’m 45 now and the asshole looks younger than I do, but he’s an extremely nice guy and knows me quite well, literally inside and out. He comes to visit me in my room at the end of the day, which is cool because I’m sure he was working hard all day doing doctor stuff only to tell me he is going out of town for a week, but that his doctor buddies at this hospital would fix me up. And he says he’ll be by again in the morning to check on me. His name is Dr. David Ban, all around good guy.

So they start me off on these hardcore intravenous antibiotics to treat the infection. The Doc tells me he is gonna have one of his plastic surgeon buddies come take a look at my ass to see if they can patch it up.  

My sister is named Kay Meeks. She is my big sister. She is three years older than me. We are pretty close. After I am settled in my room and all that, she calls me. She tells me she is going to contact a few of my friends on Facebook to let them know where I am at, because last time I pulled something like this I just kind of vanished without telling anyone and they got very worried.

A few years back, I broke my leg and didn’t tell any of my friends because I am horrible at remembering phone numbers unless they are the easy kind to remember - with repeating digits and whatnot.

Day 2 (Friday - March 28, 2014):

Doctor Ban as true to his word visits me this morning and once again reminds me he is going away for a week, but he reassures me they are going to surgically patch up my ass. However, first the plan is to get the nasty infection under control. He assures me that his friends and associates will be checking in on me throughout the week to make sure I’m doing okay.

My Mom is great through this. She brought me to the emergency room on day 1. And she visits me today on day 2. I tell her I am a little concerned about not being about not being able to contact my friends because they might think I just kind of disappeared again and get worried about what happened to me. One time I did that and they literally called all the hospitals in the area until they found me and surprised me with a call. My rationale was I probably wasn’t going to be in the hospital that long so it wasn’t even worth the time to let them know where I was.

But I digress. My point is Mom said she left a post on Facebook as did my sister. She said she was contacted by Robb Revere asking for the number I could be reached at. Rob Revere is the owner of Revere Radio Network, one of the radio stations my show is on. Cool guy. Anyway coincidentally while my mom is telling me this I get a call on my room phone. And its Revere just sending his best wishes. So that is pretty cool. It lifts my spirits somewhat just knowing I have a listening audience that gives a damn nowadays.

That night I get three more calls from my three amigos Tony, Tom and Keith. It turns out Tom gets my sister’s message on Facebook and calls me. He then tells Tony and Keith and they call as well. This also lifts my spirits.

I am in a lot of pain. Due to my disability, I get a lot of weird pain and muscle spasms in my lower body. Usually the only thing that alleviates it at home is just simply getting out of bed and moving around, having some coffee and tylenol, and of course booze and weed always helps.

The conundrum is the more I stay in bed, the more my muscles lock up and tighten up, the muscle spasms increase. And with this sore on my ass, I am to be on bedrest for 6 to 8 weeks. So this will be fun. Plus due to the pain and the infection my blood pressure is through the roof, which is even more troubling because my blood pressure is usually pretty low. So this worries me and the nurses. So tomorrow I plan to ask the doctor for some medication to alleviate this somewhat.

Day 3 (Saturday - March 29, 2014)

I still have a lot of pain and spasms and crazy high blood pressure, but I am starting to feel a little less sick. I guess all the antibiotics they are pumping into me are starting to work.

I meet the lady who is filling in for Doctor Ban.  Though somewhat older, she is a cute little

Asian-American lady with a pleasant personality and smile. I do not remember her name. I’m still pretty sick at this point. I tell her of my concerns so she subscribes ativan, baclofen and vicodin. I am not quite sure what the ativan or xanax or whatever it is is about. I guess she thinks the high blood pressure has something to do with anxiety and maybe she is right. The cocktail does seem to bring my blood pressure down. And its kind of a mellow buzz so fuck it. I am not complaining. Regardless, the medicine seems to help.

I meet the surgeon who is to work on my ass today too. She also is kind of a middle-aged lady, but also rather cute in her own kind of weird quirky way. Her name is Dr. Tadjalli. She has a very faint accent. I think she might be Israeli or something. I like her. She seems very nice, but also a little weird and eccentric in a funny and cute kind of way, like a lot of uber-intelligent people seem to be. Its almost like her brain is working too fast for her to get out of her mouth what she wants to say. So she kind of pauses a lot and stares into space while she is thinking of the next thing she wants to say.

But she gives me good news. She says she’s going to operate on my ass on Monday. She says it will be a two-step procedure. She says the first step will be to simply go in and cut all the infected tissue out of there. I think they call that a debridement I guess. I don’t know. It is some kind of fancy doctor word. She says the second part will be to close up the wound with what they call a skin flap. That is basically where they take a piece of skin from one part of your body and put it over the wounded area.

From what Doctor Ban was telling me, I was thinking I was going to have to wait weeks before they even thought about closing it up so they could get the infection under control first. So I am happy and excited by this news.

Day 4 (Sunday - March 4, 2014)

To be continued...