One recent morning while substitute teaching at a brand new high school in a PE class, I got whacked hard in the head, almost got knocked out, went to the ER, and was told I had a concussion. More on that later in this tale, but first here’s some back story in which I will discuss my recent health, teaching credential plans, substitute teaching activities, my mental status, and more.
Last January 2019 I had a kidney stone that put me in the hospital. It came close to killing me as I did not know what was happening to me and I delayed going to a hospital until it was almost too late. I misdiagnosed myself as having constipation and I waited for the blockage to pass, but it didn’t. When I went to the ER, that’s what I told them I thought was wrong. But no, it was a kidney stone blockage. I spent several days passing blood after surgery to insert a stent. I understood from what I was told that I was close to having had that kidney stone cause my kidney to turn septic and that could have resulted in a rather painful departure from this plane of existence.
Fortunately, that happened during last year’s Winter Break so I did not miss any workdays as a substitute teacher. I wrote about the kidney stone incident previously.
As a part of the followup, I had a CATscan a few months later and three Kidney Stones were found inside me that was not yet but could become a future problem.
The doctor gave me the option of getting them out before they became an emergency or waiting until they did become an emergency as the January stone. I choose to get them out, but as I am dependent on my income as a substitute teacher, I scheduled the surgery for December during this past year’s winter break. I was taking a chance that the stones would not become an emergency in the months I waited for the scheduled surgery and every time I felt an upset stomach I wondered if I should rush to the hospital.
In an attempt to help me control my blood sugar, last spring my doctor gave me a prescription for Trulicity. It did not go well. After a couple of months of taking Trulicity, I had increasing negative reactions and then it got very serious and I stopped the drug. The worst of the effects came coincidently came during my first semester of taking classes for my teaching credential at CSU Monterey Bay. I was weak and nauseated and having chest pains and I could barely walk and even so, I passed my classes with two As and a B. That is a whole story in itself for another time. Suffice it to say I am still not fully recovered from that even now more than 8 months later.
In short, the bad reaction to Trulicity continued the downward spiral of my health in 2019.
So I had the kidney stone removal surgery, and it went well. The surgeon used a laser with a catheter to blast the stones to fragments. I had been given to expect that I would be recovered fully in a few days, but no… I was in intense pain. The pain continued relentlessly for days stretching into weeks. I was taking some pills that were ineffective, so the doctor prescribed some oxycodone, which was the first (and hopefully) last time I used that drug. It only moderately helped the pain but caused my digestive system to shut down, and I did not poop 💩 for nine days. I was miserable and towards the end, I considered going to the ER about constipation because my neighbor died of an intestinal blockage some years ago.
In addition, during this time, I scraped my left shin on a mop bucket while cleaning the house and I had a big open wound about 2-inches by 3-inches and I had to go to the ER for that too. It was extremely painful as well and given my history of amputation, I was very concerned about infection.
I was not feeling well. I pretty much just sat at home. I could barely move or sleep and just sat in my chair and moderately dozed with my dogs and cats piled on and around me. The endless pain did not go good things for my mental health or mood either, as you might imagine. I live alone, and the critters were vital to giving me the incentive to keep me going, as they have been since Dad died.
Before the kidney surgery, months in advance, I had scheduled a sleep study about a week after the kidney surgery. As I had thought to be recovered by then, I thought things would go well, but no. I was in intense pain, constipated, and I had a difficult time getting any sleep at all, and just barely made the four-hour sleep margin they needed to be able to not reschedule the study for another time. I had two sessions, with the first being me sleeping “normally” without a breathing machine, aka CPAP, and the second a week later with a CPAP.
In the second sleep study session, I felt almost as bad as during the first. I had begun to poop, so constipation was no longer the big concern but rather explosive diarrhea. I was still in agony from the kidney surgery and the leg injury.
The first time people use a CPAP, many people don’t immediately take to the mask well. It is forcing pressurized air into one’s lungs and in my case, it caused me to have a feeling of suffocation, even as the air was being forced into my lungs. Several times during the session, I awoke suddenly in a semi-panic tearing the mask off. Again I barely made the four-hour margin for them to declare they had enough sleep data.
Several weeks later I got my CPAP. The first night I used it at home I was anxious, but by then the kidney stone and leg wound pain had decreased. I started out with the nasal mask that only covered my nose but not my mouth. I began by putting on the mask while sitting at my desk and watching videos on my desktop computer for an hour or so. I got slowly used to the pressure and got into bed. The first few nights I only got about three or four hours of sleep per night, but I noticed immediately that I felt better. More on that in a few paragraphs.
I used the CPAP for several weeks. When I woke up, I took the mask and tubing and put them into a plastic box with clips so the dogs could not get into it to chew it up. The mask and tube came in three parts, a heated tube, a mask, and a “nasal pillow”.
Then one night the doggos got ahold of the mask and chewed up the “nasal pillow” part when I left the mask unguarded for a few minutes for a nighttime bathroom run. I had a second nasal mask with another pillow and I used it but it too got chewed up one morning when I got up, pulled off he mask and had it resting on the pillow beside my head for a few minutes before I got up. At that point I had no more nasal pillows to use and the part they chewed up, the “pillow” costs me $20 each to replace and I get only one per month paid for by insurance.
At this point, I pulled out the full-face mask, which I had not intended to use because I had a very difficult time with it during the test, but now I had no choice, at least until I got a new monthly nasal pillow. It turns out that the puppers chewing up the two nasal pillows was the best thing they could have done as I found that once I got used to the full mask, it was much more effective and comfortable than the nasal mask and I will be using it for the most part from now on.
Several weeks after the kidney stone removal surgery in December, I had an Xray at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.
This was the hospital I was born at, and at which my late father help build in 1951 when he was an apprentice carpenter. Dad said he hug every door in the original part of the hospital, and many of those doors are still hanging.
Dad had told me that there had been an Xray of me taken before I was born. I was about 2 weeks late coming out, so it was probably taken to check on me and my head size. While I was at the hospital, I asked the tech if it was possible that Xray could still be in a file somewhere and he said probably not as Xrays are destroyed after 7 years. That’s a shame as it would have been the first photo of me.
When I finally got my followup appointment for the kidney stone surgery several weeks later, I was told I did not have any infection and the X-Rays showed that everything was healing well.
So why did I have so much unexpected pain with the kidney stone procedure? I asked the doctor and he said that it may have been because he did not use a stent when he inserted the catheter up my urethra, so every time he moved the laser, he was scraping up my insides. I have since wondered if not using a stent is standard procedure or he just skipped it to save time.
So let’s discuss the effects of the CPAP now.
When I went into this, I did not really know what to expect. I have heard that for some, a CPAP changed their lives, while others felt no different. Whatever happened, I did not expect immediate dramatic results, but there were immediate results.
Even after the first couple of nights with only three to four hours of CPAP use, I felt better. I still woke up tired, but not nearly as exhausted.
As the days and weeks moved on, I found a change that had indeed happened to my body. Before I was constantly tired to the point of falling asleep as well as being very sore. After the CPAP, I was still tired, but not falling asleep, although I was still tired.
I don’t feel like passing out every day as soon as I get off work. Before I would often pass out in my chair within a few minutes of arriving at home. Sometimes I even fell asleep in my car parked out front. Once one of my neighbors knocked on my car window because I had been motionless for several hours and he thought I might have died. I often would go to the teacher’s lounge or to my car, find a place to sit and nap during lunch breaks. I don’t fall asleep in my chair most days when I come home from teaching like I used to.
I am getting more and better sleep. and now I routinely sleep 8 or more hours per night, with perhaps only one bathroom break. I wake up tired, but I feel more refreshed and it’s a different kind of tired than I had before the CPAP.
There have been some unexpected positive side effects of the CPAP. To start, my blood sugar is much more under control without any change in my drugs or insulin. My appetite has declined and I have lost a few pounds as well since starting the CPAP.
I used to often have serious leg cramps that would wake me up. They would be extremely painful and sometimes I would wake up in agony as I threw off the covers, along with the dogs and cats, in order to get out of bed in order to stand and stretch out the cramps for minutes to sometimes hours. I have not had any leg cramps since starting the CPAP.
Why is this happening? The most likely reason is that more oxygen getting into my body at night resulting in better metabolism. My kidneys work better at processing urine. My liver works better at processing sugar. My digestion works better. And with more oxygen in my body, my legs don’t get cramped due to low blood and oxygen at night.
This CPAP might indeed change my life.
Before the CPAP, going to sleep was almost a chore. Getting to bed was not a pleasant thing as I would often lie in bed for hours not sleeping and even when I did fall asleep, I would wake up in a few hours or less. CPAP has allowed me to stay asleep longer.
One big effect of being constantly exhausted and falling asleep is that I was not getting out to socialize, and it had gotten to the point where I was only going out for work, shopping, or some unavoidable meetings. I have become increasingly isolated from the world at large as I rarely visit anyone nor does anyone visit me. If I continue to get stronger, perhaps that might change.
Still, the CPAP is not a magic cure. As a substitute teacher, I find that most classrooms do not have comfortable chairs. Many chairs are small or broken. It’s not unusual for me to be in classrooms where there are only child-sized chairs, especially in kindergarten or first-grade classrooms. Then there are the occasional classrooms with standing-desks only, apparently run by young and superfit teachers. When I have my own classroom, I will be able to put in comfortable chairs for me, but as a sub, I have no options about seating other than to carry my own chair with me, which is not really an option. When you add into this the need to be in constant motion in many classes to keep kids from doing something dumb and/or dangerous, I still am very tired by the end fo the day, just not AS tired.
My father had gone through a sleep study in 2013 and had gotten a CPAP, but he hated it and I had to press him to use it and bugged him to use it when he went to bed without it. However before he could get used to it, he got sick and went into the hospital, as he was prone to do in the last few years of his life. His insurance demanded that he was supposed to have used the CPAP for several months after getting it in order for him to be able to keep it.
As he was in a hospital and a nursing home, the usage and time requirement imposed by the insurance company expired and they took back his CPAP. In order for Dad to have gotten it back, he would have had to go through another sleep study from the beginning, and the insurance company would not listen to reason about Dad having been in the hospital. I tried to get Dad to go back but he was both unwilling and also he was in hospital so much he might have had a problem ever getting the usage requirement. It’s a shame however as I now consider how much the CPAP has helped me that perhaps if Dad had gotten used to his CPAP, perhaps he might have lived longer, and indeed might still be alive. Maybe.
Now back to my concussion. I had been substitute teaching at a local high school. It was a new school that only opened this school year and I had not been to that campus yet. When I saw a job posted on the substitute teacher job website, I wanted to take it, but it was subbing in a PE class. I generally don’t voluntarily take PE classes because I am not a physical hardbody, but as I’d been using the CPAP for a few days at that point and I was feeling better and I had never been to that school and I wanted to add it to my roster, I decided to click on ACCEPT. I had done PE on occasion, but only for a period or two as a fill-in, never for a full day.
So I showed up and the first period went OK. The kiddos were all freshmen and sophomores because the new school did not have any Juniors or Seniors, and many of them knew me from middle or even elementary schools. I took the students into the main gym and they played basketball.
Then the second period happened and again I took them to the gym and they played basketball. Then during the second period, WHAM! I took a basketball to the right side of my face. The whole world went blurry and I almost passed out.
The student who threw the ball had missed the basket and the arc of the ball intersected with my headbone. He was a student I knew from middle school. He was very apologetic and concerned. I stumbled over to the other side of the gym, nearly falling over once, to the other regular PE teacher and told him I’d been hit in the head with a basketball. He didn’t seem too concerned and walked off. I was dizzy and sat down and the period ended.
I considered what I should so. I thought I was going to have to go through the rest of the day teaching PE. Fortunately, I had brought one of Dad’s canes because I wanted to be prepared in case the day turned out to be more than I could handle. I slowly walked out to pick up my third-period class, but the head coach came over and told me the school was switching me with another sub in a classroom and to go there. The coach seemed to think someone had deliberately hit me, but I assured her that I was sure it was an accident.
So I stumbled over to the classroom and switched with the other teacher. The classroom was again filled with students who knew me from middle and elementary school. About the fourth period, I started to get very sleepy and nauseous, although I did not throw up. I made it through the end of the day and went home, by which time I was feeling somewhat better. As this happened on a Friday, I went home and went to sleep.
At home that weekend, I had a bit of a headache, but not too bad. Then came Monday and I had a particularly obnoxious group of elementary students and by the end of the day, I had a splitting headache. Oddly enough, although I had been struck on the RIGHT side of my head, the headache was mostly on the LEFT side of my head.
I thought of the dwarf planet Pluto which has a big white “heart” heart-shaped area on it. A theory about that area’s origin is that Pluto was hit on the opposite side by something big and the impact transmitted all the way through the sphere of Pluto. The white ice inside Pluto erupted out the other side forming the big white heart. In a similar way, when the basketball hit the right side of my skull, the force of the impact bounced inside my headbone and caused the left side headache in my brain meat.
I found out that sometimes the effects of a concussion are delayed by a couple of days and that untreated concussions could be very serious. I decided to go to the ER.
I filled up the dog and cat food and water in case I got admitted and headed to Monterey’s ER. I went to Monterey, 25 miles away, rather than locally as the Salinas hospitals have in the past couple of years changed the weight limits on their CATscan machines, although the machines are the same machines. They used to have a limit of 450 pounds, well beyond my weight. Then some administrators decided to limit them to 250 pounds, THE SAME MACHINES. I discovered this last year when I had the kidney stones and had to be sent to Monterey from Salinas in an ambulance because Monterey had a CATscan machine with the ability to scan me. I did not know if I would need a CATscan, but I figured I should go where the appropriate equipment was just in case.
In the ER the doctor told me that based on my symptoms I probably did have a concussion, but it was minor and the effects would go away in a few weeks. He said that if the headaches didn’t stop in a few weeks to go to a neurologist. For a few days, the headaches continued, gradually getting lesser until they have faded away. Fortunately, as of me writing this, the headaches are gone. Yay. 😺
I think that using the CPAP may have been a factor in the headaches going away quicker than they otherwise might have done.
Now I want to take a moment to give a brief update on my teaching credential plans.
In the next couple of months, I am working to find either a teaching internship, which is a paid situation and a two-year process or failing that, a student teaching position, which is unpaid and a one year process.
If I get a paid internship, my future funding needs will be only for over the summer as well as first-semester tuition after which I should be able to fund myself unless there is an unexpected emergency. If I don’t get an internship and I have to go the student teaching route, I will need to raise enough to pay for tuition as well as living expenses from July 2020 to September 2021 when I presumably would have my full credential and an income. I am very stressed out about this and am exploring every option I can for now and I will make a full diary about this by sometime in early April, or sooner if I know more.
In the meantime, I have continued to substitute teach. I am quite well known by this point and I have taught in almost every public school in Salinas in grades ranging from preschool to twelfth grade. Whenever I go out in public, like to a mall or event like First Night or Farmer’s Market I hear MISTER GREEN.
One cute story happened one afternoon as I was leaving a school and a boy called out “MISTER GREEN, you were my substitute in kindergarten and first grade!”. I asked him what grade he was in now and he replied “Third Grade”. I asked him how he got through second grade without me and he said: “it was hard”.
In the past few years after Dad died, I have been going through what I now consider to be the second-worst era of my life, with only the time after my cancer surgery and colostomy being worse.
I have had multiple health crises in recent years. The grief of losing my father after having been his caregiver and near-constant companion for over fifteen years have been, and continue to be, crushing, and combined with many financial, family, and personal crises that have had me in a continual and deep depression for years.
There have been many times in the past years when I have had health crises that left me feeling so bad that sometimes I wondered if I would make it through the night and wondered as I fell asleep if I would wake up. I contemplated how long it would be before someone would notice my absence. I have often contemplated what legacy I might leave behind, whenever that happens.
The past couple of years have been a series of back-and-forths for me. Sometimes I move three steps forward and then get shoved two steps back, and sometimes shoved four or five steps back and sometimes I’m just metaphorically running in place. There are forces of chaos in my life that could suddenly move in devastate everything unexpectedly. But overall the progress has been slowly forward, at least so far, and I have hope that I will endure until I make some progress.
During the times of my most intense pain, both physical and psychological, I have depended heavily upon my contacts in social media whether it was when Mom was dying of lung cancer, or when I was facing my own death from colon cancer, Dad’s brushes with death and final end, and the past years of grief, pain, and chaos. I am aware that there is a common social trope that people who rely on online relationships are weak or losers, but I am not sure I would still be here without social media contact as my in-person contacts are not many these days. When people go silent and ghost me, it negatively affects my mood and outlook and all that goes along with that. I know that people have their own lives to live and I may not be significate to many.
With the coming of my CPAP and the accompanying slow rebuilding of my energy and perhaps health, for the first time in years, I have something that gives me hope that my end may not be in the near term and I might one day make my bucket list item of celebrating my 101st birthday, maybe.
So this has become much longer than I expected when I started typing and typing and typing. I had to get a lot out, and there is a lot of pain I could have expressed but didn’t here and now for time constraints.
If you read all that, thank you.
#jtg