Visiting My Past To Help Me Appreciate My Present

Starting last Tuesday I was finally able to get back to work....So happy to be out of the house and back to the office...I walked in to work on Tuesday to see Andy, my awesome roommate and Co-Worker, sporting a Bandana in support.  It was awesome, sometimes something so small can have such a huge impact on someone.  I have been digging the Bandana stye, It takes away from the stares, of which there are many when you have a huge bandage around your neck.

I have really started to take notice of generally how brash people can be,  At least 5 times a day someone will stop me and ask what happened.  I wouldn't mind if they just asked politely, however the ones that have the courage to ask also tend to predetermine what happened to me and incorporate it in to their questions.  Here are some..

"Did you get stabbed in the neck..." (I get asked this one more when I wear a flat brimmed hat)
"Wow...That looks really bad...That must really hurt" (This is when the sensitive face comes out, usually with a side tilt of the head)
"Were you in a fight?"  Along the same lines "How's the other guy?" (This is usually said under breath as i walk by)
"OMG, What happend to you?  That looks Nasty"  (New one...Just came out with the scar from my trake now being exposed, Its hot for the ego).

A simple "I hope you don't mind me asking but are you OK?, What happened?." would be a welcome change.

I got some hot photo's from Days 1 to 4 that I had not seen yet.  They are really helping me understand where I was at and how lucky I am to be here. I thought I would post them up here for your perusal....
This first one is Pre Surgery...This is how I looked On the Sunday Night...My Eyes are open but I am in Sweet Drug Coma Land apparently. Ps...Some great hair going on here....

Apparently at this point, I have awoken and (Via Note Pad) asked Kathleen to take a photo of my Catheter so I can send it to Adam..

"I can haz thum warz?" Might just make these pics in to Meme's...

I had to be restrained...Apparently every time i would become a little lucid....I tried to rip everything out of my body. I as well was shaking uncontrollably at some points and needed to be tied down..Sorry to those of you that were there. I can't imagine it was easy to watch...

All in All, It's hard to look at these photo's but at the same time it makes me realize how far I have come in such little time. I can't imagine how hard it was for all of you that were with me. Thank you...Im so lucky to have all of you in my life.

I am hoping for some really positive updates from the Doc's coming tomorrow! Keep ya posted.





"Scar Tissue is Stronger Than Regular Tissue, Realize the Strength, Move On." - Henry Rollins

If Im Getting Better...Why Do I Have The Same Size Gash In My Neck

Things Seem to be Coming Along...My Trake is Almost Healed Over, Which is nice...I can start Speaking again. The Less I spoke the faster it would heal so I have been speaking very little the past 2 weeks..Imagine that!

The Trake hole is no longer letting Air out which is a great relief...The Nurse says only a week or so and it should be totally healed up!

A huge THANKS to Jonny Fosters and the Molson boyz for the New Pil Sweatshirt...It's nice to have a little taste of home. The Nurses say this is healing up quickly as well, but it's hard for me to tell....It's not getting any smaller.

The Nurse does say that it is getting granular which is supposed to be a good thing....
" Proliferation lasts from day two until the area is healed and features granulation, contraction, and epithelialization. Granulation includes neoangiogenesis and collagen formation. Granular tissue is pale pink to beefy red, glistening, and has a rough surface due to blood vessels and collagen deposits Contraction occurs as a result of myofibroblasts pulling collagen toward the cell body, and epithelialization is the migration of epithelial cells to resurface the area. Maturation is the last phase of healing, and involves scar remodeling after wound closure and may take years. Maturation sees a scar change from red to purple/pink to white, and from bumpy to flat."

I'm Finally back to work today...The nurse comes at 10ish and then im good to make my way down...Feels so good to be out of the house and back at work! I get still get tired quickly but every day seems to make me stronger and stronger.










"Scar Tissue is Stronger Than Regular Tissue, Realize the Strength, Move On." - Henry Rollins

Pssssst...If you look like this..Go to the Hospital...Just Sayin..

Read My First Post "The Game Changer" to get the full story....

This was a Pre-Surgery Pic that was just sent..It really shows how bad the swelling had gotten.  I had not seen these, Wow....Thats a doozie!  It's so scary to see myself like this.

And This would be one of the first Post Surgery pics I believe, Notice the swelling has gone down and they have cut the necrotizing flesh out.

I will be sure to publish some progress pics tomorrow when the Nurse comes to change the dressings.  Feeling Great today and going to try and walk to the Pier and Back with out getting tired....

"Scar Tissue is Stronger Than Regular Tissue, Realize the Strength, Move On." - Henry Rollins

The Game Changer

Hey everyone, I would like to firstly start off by thanking all of you for your prayers and well wishes over the past 3 weeks...It has really gone so fast and I am ecstatic to be well on the way to recovery. I know there is confusion as to what happened to me, Heck, Im not even all that sure. So i thought I would write this to clear things up and let you all know that I am getting better day by day and love you all greatly.

This first part (the well written part) is a letter from Mandi which really depicts my first Week or so in the hospital. I was in a bit of a drug induced Coma so I can't remember a thing. I am so happy to be alive, and so lucky to have all of you in my life.

I have posted some Pics from Day 1 till Today to show you the progress...

Mandi:

About a week and a half ago, Bubba mentioned that he felt like his glands were really swollen. Within the next 48 hours, his neck swelled out like a bullfrog and his face started to swell too. At 8:30 AM on Sunday morning, he took himself to a walk-in clinic because he had started to have a lot of pain when he tried to swallow. The doctor at the clinic took one look at him and told him if he didn't get to an emergency room immediately he was going to die. He called his friend/boss Adam who took him to the hospital the clinic recommended because they had a Head and Neck specialty team.

I didn't get his messages about what was happening until 1 o'clock. I got to the ER and they wouldn't let me see him until 4 pm. I was so shocked to see him so swollen and so scared but we were sitting in an ER and I thought at least he was there and now they could fix him. It was all so confusing trying to figure out what could have caused that kind of extreme swelling.

They had put him on an antibiotic IV and were very concerned that is airway would be compromised if the swelling got any worse. Within a few hours, they decided to intubate him and admit him to ICU. The intubation was mostly precautionary because although he could still breathe on his own at the time, the doctors didn't want to have to do an emergency tracheotomy should the swelling grow and cut off his airway. They took him to the OR to intubate him and I wasn't allowed to see him until about 9:30 pm in the ICU. He was hooked up to so many machines and tubes and he was heavily sedated so he would be as comfortable as they could make him given all that he was hooked up to. The doctors and the nurses told me that he had an infection in his salivary gland and that after some time on the antibiotics things would get better. They had sent samples of his blood and urine to be cultured in a lab to try to determine what the bacteria was that had caused the infection. They said once those results came back from the lab they would be able to target the antibiotics better but for now he was on a really broad based one they thought would kill the infection for the time being.

His mom and I talked about whether or not she should fly out here to be with him. Everything I was hearing at the time was kind of vague but seemed like although things looked bad with the machines and tubes, by the morning things would start to look better. We decided to see how he was in the morning before she booked a ticket. They let me stay with him until about 12:30 am. He was pretty comatose most of the time and when he did come to a little bit, I told him he had a really bad throat infection, he was on antibiotics and he just needed to sleep.

First thing the next morning I went back to the hospital and the swelling appeared to have gotten worse. They told me it was because of all the fluids in his body now but it looked like it was moving more up his face. They added two more antibiotics to his IV and his mom decided to fly out. There were two teams working on his case, the Head and Neck team and the Infectious Diseases team. Everyone agreed this was the best course of treatment for now. All day long we waited for some change to happen with the new antibiotics but they said we wouldn't see any change for at least 24 hours, maybe longer. I just kept telling him when he would open his eyes that he had a bad throat infection because I didn't want him to think it was something he couldn't fight. However, it was increasingly looking like that was not the case.

The chief of surgery for the Head and Neck Unit told me that afternoon they were completely confused about what was going on. His CT scans were not giving them any good answers. I never heard anymore about the salivary gland infection theory and they had no different diagnosis. They asked if had done anything different over the past couple of weeks where he could have picked up this infection. I told them he had just gotten back from South by Southwest in Austin, he had stayed on a ranch, and as crazy as it sounds, he had wrestled some goats while he was there. They said they would consider these things and hoped for some answers from the lab cultures the following day.

His mom flew in that night, came straight to the hospital and we stayed until about 12:30 am. The doctors and nurses said the antibiotics needed time to work and we should start to see some changes in the next day or two. As I looked at his body, which didn't look anything like him anymore, I couldn't help but ask myself how he could survive this. It was a complete mystery to the doctors what was causing it, they didn't really know how to treat it properly and there had been no improvement in two days. The idea that he would not make it became a legitimate possibility over the next couple of days.

Tuesday morning at 8 AM the doctors decided they needed to operate immediately and they asked his mom for verbal consent over the phone. After exhausting all other options, they wanted to get inside and see if by looking at the infection they could figure out the problem. One possibility they said was something called necrotizing fasciitis - a flesh-eating disease - but they wouldn't know unless they went in. They made an incision in his neck and found out he had this very rare infection that was beginning to kill the tissue in his neck. He was very, very fortunate the infection had not destroyed any muscle tissue yet only some of the soft tissue. They cut out the dead tissue, drained the infection, and put in something called a wound vacuum that continually drains the infection as he heals. They also put in a tracheotomy so they could take the tube out of his throat but leave them access to his airway in case the swelling got worse. And they took tissue samples for the lab to culture to see if they could figure out what the bacteria was that caused this so they could give him exactly the right antibiotic. Until they figured that out, they said they would keep him on three different antibiotics to cover all possible types of bacteria.

The put him back in ICU after the surgery and we waited to see if the antibiotics worked. They said the antibiotics had not really been able to be effective because the dead tissue had been in their way as there is no blood flow to dead tissue. He started to communicate with us a bit more on Wednesday. He wrote notes and and said he had no memory of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We filled him on a need to know basis so he wouldn't be scared and stressed out and told him he needed to sleep it off.

Over the next few days, he has made incredible progress. He's had some doctors tell him they didn't think he would make it. If he hadn't been so young and healthy, you would be reading a very different story. They check the wound every couple of days and there has been no new dead tissue which is great news. It's not unusual for someone with this to have to have multiple surgeries and although we thought he would need to have at least one more, it now looks like he won't have to. They still don't know what bacteria caused it. They said it's like a staph infection where you have some minor cut on your skin that you may not even realize you have, the normal bacteria that lives on our skin every day somehow makes contact with the cut and for no really good reason it flourishes into a terrifying and life-threatening infection.

Although better, he is still very sick. Over the past couple of days, he has broken out in a rash all over his body which they think is a reaction to one of the antibiotics. Since he's on three of them, it's a long process trying to figure out which one it is he is allergic to. Also, because of all the antibiotics he's on, his kidneys aren't functioning at a normal level so it's taking his body longer to clear things out. He keeps spiking a fever as well and they don't know why. His white blood cell count keeps going down so we know the infection is dying but the fever and the rash are concerning the doctors. They are starting to downsize his wound vacuum and tracheotomy though which is all good news.

Throughout all of this, what has been fascinating to watch is how just how incredibly good-natured and happy he has managed to be. Heavily sedated and infected, when I didn't know if was awake or listening, he was fist-bumping his nurses or giving them a thumbs up when we would tell him what they were doing to him. Every nurse he has had has told us he's the best patient they have ever had. They all comment on how he has never complained or been frustrated with all the poking and prodding and pain he's been in. If wasn't already certain of his purely kind, patient and loving character this experience has confirmed that for me.

Now Me:

That takes us to pretty much the end of the week, I was finally moved in to what they call a Step Down room, where I was still under ICU care but in a room of 4 with a window. I was to spend the next 8 Days here while my healing process began. As of my first day in the Step Down i was ready to start eating again, I Quickly made the steps it took from Liquid Diet to Puree Diet and Finally a Regular Diet in just 36hrs. Being able to eat again gave me the power to be able to start walking the Hospital Hallways a couple of times a day, ensuring that the blood didn't start clotting in my legs. It's amazing how weak you can become after 2 weeks laying in a hospital bed. Over the next couple of days, they removed my trake tube and finally my wound vac.

Everyday Mandi would read me the messages, video's and e-mails that everyone was sending through. On days where I was being poked and prodded, with my skin on fire It was a tremendous source of strength for me to know that I had so many people caring friends who loved and believed in me.

I was finally released to home care on Monday afternoon this week and have been quietly resting. In the time Mandi wasn't spending at the hospital...She was repainting and remodeling my room and buying me a new bed. It was the most amazing surprise to come home to!

I get tired quickly, I still can't really speak while my Trake wound heals, And I have a nurse come by once to twice a day to clean the wound on my neck. But in all, Im Alive, Happy and Getting better every hour of every day!

A Special Thanks to Mandi, Mom, Adam, Cory, Andy, Lauren and Kat, With out you by my side everyday guiding me, Im not sure I would be writing this. And to Brooke, The Ninja that made my worries disappear with a smoke bomb and cartwheel.

To the 1 Doctor at Playa Vista Urgent Care who set me straight...And to the 12+ doctors at UCLA Harbor that    brought me out of this...I owe you all my life.

Looks like I have a second chance at life, And I'm going to be sure not to waste it. Keep following the blog to see updates on whats happening with Bubz.

"Scar Tissue is Stronger Than Regular Tissue, Realize the Strength, Move On." - Henry Rollins