Hello Everyone,
I've received several very nice PM's from people asking me about how I am doing since my stroke in June. Many thanks to all of you for your concern. I am doing well. :o)
Here's the story of my two month "vacation":
June 26, about 8:30 AM, I was home alone, cleaning up the breakfast dishes, when I began to feel faint. I dialed 911 and told the operator I thought I was having a stoke or a cardiac arrest. I sat and waited for the EMT in a chair on my front porch -- and that's the last thing I remember for about two weeks.
Our insurance carrier is Kaiser Permanente HMO, but since the emergency team found me lying on the front porch in a coma and having a seizure, they took me to the nearest hospital rather than Kaiser -- 3 versus 20 miles.
That afternoon, after my CAT scan, the emergency room physicians decided they needed to send me to a more advanced facility. My wife. bless her, had heard that UC San Francisco Medical Center was ranked fifth in the nation in stroke care so she called our HMO and insisted that I be flown over to UCSF for treatment. a chopper came, picked me up, and delivered me to a waiting ambulance at Chrissy Field in San Francisco.
I had fantastic care at UCSF. I was in critical intensive care for 15 days, then four more days in 'ordinary' intensive care. I was a "Category Five" stroke patient (the worst) with a grave prognosis. In fact, one of the nurses who cared for me in the critical care unit, told my son last week that she has never had a patient survive a Cat-5 stoke in her five year nursing career.
I was then transferred to Walnut Creek Kaiser in the East Bay. After five days there, I was transferred to Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Vallejo, about 30 miles north of Walnut Creek. I stayed there for one week and then, to everyones' surprise, I was ready to be discharged.
Since then I've been taking 30-60 minute walks almost every day. The only problems I've noticed are: First, when tired, I start weaving left and right while walking. Second, I get overloaded and confused when I need to make a decision or a plan based on several pieces of information. I've been told these symptoms will probably fade away in another month or two.
Keep your medical insurance paid up! Thank God, Kaiser is paying the bills:
5 hours at the local hospital in the emergency room: $22,500
- CAT scan
- intubation
- Several liters of IV drips at $800 each!
1 Medical Evac Helicopter Flight: $8,500
- (too bad I couldn't enjoy the view, I was in a coma...)
19 days at UCSF, are you ready for this? $335,000 (yikes!!!)
- Three surgical procedures in two days
- Included in the 335 grand is a $75,000 pharmacy bill.
I was pretty much unconscious for two weeks so all this seems like a movie that everyone, except me, has seen... :o/
Thanks again,
--ken/fl |
