Glad to hear that you're still with us, Butch, and home and out of the hospital! Good luck on kicking the nicotine habit! With all of your health issues you experienced and a huge increase on the excise tax on them, it's a good time to kick the habit. Hope you continue to improve and hope to see you at the Convention! Now, when can you work on the TSA webpage?! 8^)> Later, Mark Alman
________________________________ From: allcavers-boun...@metroplexcavers.org on behalf of Butch Fralia Sent: Tue 4/7/2009 12:49 PM To: allcav...@metroplexcavers.org Subject: [Allcavers] Butch Fralia out of hospital I'm happy to report I was finally released from the hospital about 3:00 PM on Saturday, April 4. I've been "enjoying" pneumonia since the end of December and have been through several rounds of antibiotics. The last round was particularly aggressive involving the antibiotic Avolox for 10 days and 12 days of steroids. That was completed about 10 days before the trip to the hospital. Sunday morning, March 29, I was having breathing difficulty seemingly from excess "gas" and was trying to get to a local clinic to see if they could give me something for that. Because of the gas, I couldn't bend over enough to get in the car so ended up calling an ambulance instead. At this point, I must mention that breathing is habit forming. Once you get in the habit, it's really hard to stop! It's easier to quit smoking (I have). Anytime you can't breathe, it sets off panic attacks and in this case hyper-ventillation. The ambulance ride seemed like it took about two years though they were giving me "breathing" treatments on the way. At the hospital, they continued the breathing treatments, brought out the vampires for blood samples, ran chest x-rays and an EKG. They got my breathing stabilized and observed my lungs had lots of excess fluid along with other parts of my chests. They confirmed I STILL had pneumonia (enough to make a grown may cry). So there I am on IV antibiotics and diuretics but with my breathing stabilized. I literally hadn't slept since the night before and dozed off only to be awakened by some alarm going off and people running around my bed. Seems my heart rate started spiking at around 185 BPM from around 75BPM. More test and some kind of heart drug to get my heart beat under control. Doctors are asking how long I've had heart trouble. Until that moment I've never had it suggested by a medical professional or my own body there was a problem. There were a bunch other weird test results that I'm happy to report were anomalous and proved not to be a problem. Sunday night I was admitted and finally settled in my room at 1:00 AM Monday morning. On the way to my room, I stopped off for a CT scan that apparently verified I had fluid on my lungs (seemed like that was pretty popular test result). The rest of the week was taken up by lots of test, IV's and was mostly uneventful other than boring beyond belief. My blood pressure was way low until one of my nurses checked it in the other arm and found it to be way high. Checking it in my leg showed normal blood pressure. Turned out there were some venous clots in both arms causing the blood pressure anomaly and were deemed not serious. Bottom line is eventually home with about $30,000 in hospital bills, a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, pneumonia and excess fluids (I lost over 20 pounds in the hospital from the diuretics). I came home with a boatload of medication, not the least of which is three different types of antibiotics, diuretics, and other heart stabilization medicines. Except for all the drugs keeping me dizzy and still being tired from the journey I'm in good shape and should recover nicely. Thanks for all your support, e-mails and phone calls. Butch
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