7 months into this experiment, and I still can’t believe we have a child.    We’re on the verge of crawling and figuring out a good daily routine and I wanted to post about a few more products we are using and really appreciate.

Playyard

Essential for day-to-day survival.

Dagny spends at least 1 hour a day rolling around with toys while we cook in the kitchen.  She rolls around in the morning during breakfast and also as I cook dinner.

She does it in the safety and comfort of her own brightly colored playard.   We inherited this bad boy but I would gladly buy one!  The interior mat is soft and friendly to the little bonker and the rattling creatures on the side provide much enjoyment, too.   This this is essential to our sanity and we have even taken it when we go to other people’s houses so that she has as safe place for a nap.  We’ll even quickly collapse it and transport it outside so that we can work in the garden while the kid plays in the shade.

Play Mats

Interlocking blue foam mats for the rough and tumble infant.

Now that our little one is rolling like a mad person and trying to crawl, we have determined that she is too active to be bothered by little things (like controlling her head).  She has this habit of rolling and dropping her melon onto the hardwood floors.   Eventually she might learn, but my knees and hips won’t.   We needed something softer to roll around on the floor with her.    Carpet is nice, but vomit and spit-up can be tricky.  Steph found these killer and simple mats at a great price and we have invested in a large area to go on top of our nice carpet.  One of these days (when the spitting up has ceased) we’ll store these mats and reveal a clean carpet.  Until then, it’s blue kickboard foam mats for us.

PRODUCT IDEA & GRIPE: I have one gripe to settle with the manufacturer, they don’t make features to interlock with these tiles.  They have a “border” piece that you can attempt to source, but it is at the same level as everything else.   When Dagny rolls over the 3/4″ edge and onto hardwood (a spontaneous event when she has mo’) she invariably goes “thunk”.   We would LOVE to have a raised border of about 4 inches….enough to stop her from flying off the side.   Come on product engineers and bring out the add-on feature.

Digital Video Monitor

The Mobi Cam video monitor is another sweet "essential" device.

We inherited an audio baby monitor, but it was analog and the frequency drifted in and out and the range was horrible.   We really wanted to be able to go outside and do yardwork while Dagny napped (without having to check on her every 10 minutes to see how she was doing).  Once again, Steph did the research and we figured we would get a video monitor (audio doesn’t carry the “information” that you want… like is the baby asleep or just being quiet or just lying face down on their mattress).

We were stoked when our Mobi Cam arrived.   The thing is digital and paired (so somewhat secure) and has an awesome range!  We can put Dagny to sleep upstairs and go downstairs and outside and garden.   You can set it to audio-only mode or watch the video now and then to check on her.   The night vision on the camera is excellent, too.     This device has greatly freed us from checking on her and has actually resulted in longer and better naptimes for Dagny!

NAG: The only nag I have is that the Mobi Cam operates at 2.4GHz, which means that it can trounce our wireless network signals.  To solve this, we simply put our airports into interference robustness mode and we keep the camera and receiver a good couple of feet away from our laptops.   Once we did all that it’s a non-issue.

PRODUCT WISH: You are a product engineer and you are making a digital wireless camera at 2.4GHz.   Could you please just put a DHCP client (or Bonjour capable) and web server in there and simply just serve basic video over the network.  Yes, I know that H.264 is an evil steaming pile of licensing issues, so do something else.   If you did this, then my iPhone becomes my baby monitor (save a web clip) and I only need the camera.       Yes, I looked into security cameras linked into our network, and these generally sucked or were 4 times more expensive than the Mobi Cam and painful to install.     Maybe in a couple of years, somebody will have solved this part.

Wrap Up

As we head into crawling and walking, I’m sure we’ll revisit this topic again soon.   Containment devices (gates and play pens) will surely make the future list.

Dagny was in a rush these past few days.  In a rush to get to 2000 — diapers that is.  You see, she’s been battling a tummy-something and has been on the diarrhea bandwagon for a few days (“When you’re sliding into first and you feel something burst…….”)

So, naturally, there was much rejoicing a few minutes ago as we uncorked this vintage model to find yet another poopy mess.   Dagny was quick to reach down in an attempt to examine her work — an attempt thwarted by goalie skills and some handi-wipes.

That’s a Lot of Landfill

2000 diapers in 7 months.  That would normally be a lot of landfill (thank goodness for cloth and the cleaning service!).   Let’s see….about 60 diapers _fills_ a trash container that measures 12″ x 15″ x 24″ (2.5 cu. ft).  Since cloth is a little bulkier, we’ll round up and say that it takes 100 disposables to fill that container.  That means that in the last 7 months we would have generated more than 50 cubic feet of plastic non-degrading human-waste coated silicate-filled landfill wrapped in non-degradable plastic trashbags.    The average disposable trained kid (those that we have seen recently) seems to be in diapers for 3-4 years — that’s something like 300 cubic feet per child.  For reference, fill your living room with a foot deep of diapers and you get about 300 cubic feet.

Soapbox and Diaper Pails

But that’s actually not why I like the cloth diapers.   Environmental pats on the back side, after 7 months of heavy use, I can still soapbox (again) for a few bullet points on the benefits of cloth diapers:

• Dagny can tell when she’s wet and she doesn’t like it one bit!  Tight feedback loops are key to training.
• We can tell when Dagny is wet, which means we change her more promptly.   As a result, we see little or no diaper rash.
• Cleanup is easy, and we experience very few blowouts (compared to the few times we’ve resorted to disposables).  Using the remaining clean part of the cloth for initial wipe down also significantly reduces the number of wipes we need to use.
• Smell is not a problem, either.
• The cloth service now also takes compostable diapers and compostable wipes in the same container.  This simplifies things whenever we need to resort to the compostable diapers for whatever reason.
• In the end, I’m selfish and want to change as few diapers as possible.   There’s the belief (true or not, we’ll see) that cloth diapered babies ‘train out’ on average 1 year faster.

Here’s hoping that we’ll be “out” before we hit 5000!

It’s not that my baby doesn’t like you, far from it.  Dagny actually enjoys meeting and interacting with new people.  She’ll smile and babble and reach for the glasses on your nose.   She’ll look around and laugh at random inanimate objects.   Dagny is generally a well behaved and non-fussy child.    Check out the attached graph created by trolling through reams of data with statistical sampling techniques.

Dagny's happiness chart drawn from large amounts of sample data

Being reasonable parents, we do our best to schedule appointments taking into account the probability of a feeding/napping.   In other words, we know (thanks to Trixie Tracker) when Dagny likes to eat and sleep every day (see chart below).

Our goal is to nudge the timing and shoot to “reset” the happiness clock right before we put her in the car for a given errand.   Generally this works really well, and our child arrives rested, well-fed, dry and generally happy as a clam (and typically smelling better).

But so far happiness for just about any member of your profession has eluded us.   We wake her up, feed her and change her and get her in the car.  By the time we arrive at the clinic, we are well into the chilling phase with occasional bouts of smiling.    We check her in, and immediately fill out all the unnecessary paperwork.

We then sit and wait……

As we sit in the waiting room, Dagny will smile and babble and smile some more.    Around the time a nurse calls us back, Dagny is chilling again.  We’ll weigh her in and the nurse will gather all of the Viking Princess’ growth measurements.  So far so good.

At this point in the visit, nurses are obligated to leave you alone in the exam room with the door closed.  Dagny typically picks this time to start rubbing her eyes.   A few minutes of that (and requisite yawning) and her eyes will catch one of the “Don’t get HIV” or “Mommy’s on the Run” posters and this will kick off giggling and cooing like a crazy psychopath.  When manic, Dagny can get loud enough, that I’m sure the nurses in the hallway become fearful of the sounds emanating from inside our closed room.  Shortly into the manic state,  you (our doctor-du-jour) will knock and come into the room.

Too late.

The peak has passed and whining and nonstop bitching has commenced.    Typically, the only way out is to put Dagny down and reset the clock once again.  But you need to do things, and these things prevent sleep.

And this is why you must think our child hates you.   The nurses have seen the other side of that manic peak and think she’s a cutey, but the same is not true for you.  And so, at the end of the appointment, we put our child back in her car seat and she crashes and sleeps all the way home and the cycle resets anew.

Signed,

Dagny’s Parents

PS:  This cycle has become so predictable at any medical clinic that we no longer try to show up early (or even on time) to fill out the paperwork and grab a chair in the influenza-filled waiting room.   Since y’all are going to make us wait 30 minutes every time, we now just show up 15 minutes late and split the difference — this serves to shorten the amount of back end bitching from our daughter.

Dagny's sleep schedule is fairly predictable and can be nudged a little this way and that without too much effort.

When you meet up with an an old friend after a decade, you are all the more aware of the changes they have gone through. Similarly, my switchover from Office 2000 to Office 2008 gives me an excellent “delta” comparison.  In this case, Office 2008 is like that high school 2nd string athlete who is now balding, fat, divorced and addicted to some substance or another.

So, without further ado, let’s look at Office 2008 for the Mac (under 10.6) with an eye towards its former self, Office 2000.

Suite-wide Performance

Compared to the current release of Office 2008, the apps of Office 2000 launched faster (with Rosetta) on 10.5 and 10.6 than Office 2008 does “natively”.   I wish I had hard numbers for you, but I’m simply not going to be that thorough here.

POINT:  Office 2000

Look & Feel & Tools

In Office 2008, Microsoft’s attempt at tool palettes is a miserable failure.  Not only do they manage to clutter the screen with a massive amount of junk (like clip art and shapes and a pre-formatted document style pane) they also fail in several other key ways:

1. The tool palettes fail to have the same information and capabilities as the menu system.   This simply makes it a nightmare to find a given feature (could be in the menu, could be buried in a tool palette).
2. The clutter of palettes is completely unwarranted mainly because it is features that nobody but a 3rd grader (book report with clip art) or a CEO (powerpoint with motion and sounds) would think of using.  It’s almost like they dragged users into the feature meeting, pointed out a palette and said “wouldn’t it be cool to have clip art and styles and sound palettes”.  The users said “yeah, I guess”, and the design team took this as a free ticket to put everything in your face.    Sure, one could go through the mess of turning stuff off, but “intelligent defaults” are nowhere to be found here.
3. “Tearing off” a palette is something Photoshop and Illustrator have done “forever”.  Pinning palettes to the top is also a key feature.  Reorganizing palettes to fit your workflow.  Easily adding or removing palettes.   Give it up…..not supported in Office 2008

For simplicity and less clutter,
POINT:  Office 2000

Excel 2008:  Misery

Nothing in the Office 2008 Suite has gotten as drug-addicted as Excel.   We’re talking crack-head functionality here.

First point — I couldn’t give a hoot about VBA support.  This seems to be all that people whine about in the new Excel versions (“No VBA support on the Mac!”).  Whatever, as there are even more mundane problems with this turd of an upgrade.

No text labels in charts, but you can add pictures of ducks instead

Excel 2008 now fails to properly handle and graph large amounts of data.  If you have more than 1000 datapoints, be prepared for long waits as it tries to build your graph.  Be prepared for the beachball.  Be prepared for a crash.   Most of all, be prepared to deal with Excel’s inability to graph things it could crank through in Excel 2000.

POINT:  Office 2000

Oh, and while we are on graphs, you can no longer have a graph on the sheet with data and print just the graph!  Selecting a graph and hitting print may just send 400 pages of data to your printer.  Turns out this is a “known” issue according to Microsoft from 2 years ago! You have to move the graph to another sheet to print it out by itself.   Awesome, eh?

POINT:  Office 2000

You can no longer add arbitrary text boxes to a graph (See example picture).  This was something that was easy to do in Office 2000 (and even in Office 1997). In some graphs in a workbook,  you can add clip art of a dog or a duck or a cute little doggie (who wants their Busy Bee?) but you cannot add additional information other than a title and axis labels.  For some reason, in other graphs I’m unable to even add the same pictures.   So there goes my hopes of encoding additional chart information based on the animal’s species.  WTF???   This loss of text boxes in charts is a backbreaker.    It turns out that Open Office 3.x appears to suffer the same difficulties.

POINT:  Office 2000
POINT:  iWork for Mac, ’cause it is even more functional for graphing!

And finally, formatting a graph is painful at best.   In Office 2008 it is even more difficult to modify the data series data (No, Microsoft, I don’t really want to drag select my data columns when I have more than 1000 rows of data….I’d like to manually enter the series range).  Don’t even bother trying to re-arrange or re-center, as graphs tend to move around on their own.   Seriously, check out how far iWork has surpassed Office 2008 in terms of charting capabilities.  8 years ago there was no “iWork”.   Even the free Open Office matches the features and then some.

POINT:  Office 2000
POINT: iWork for Mac, Open Office 3

Powerpoint 2008: Ho Hum

Powerpoint 2008 is in stasis.   Really, it improved at all in the last 8 years.   For many users, Powerpoint is their primary “draw” package, yet it is no easier to draw pictures and edit photos than it was in Office 2000.

Forget about styling your slides.  An eye Candy pre-formatted puke fest clutters the tool palette instead.   If you want to set up basic font styles based on bullet point depth you’ll have to search and work on it for quite some time.

Auto-layout and layout guides are barely implemented (see Keynote or OmniGraffle for a great example of how to do this).  At least Powerpoint 2008 can hand PNG images!

Regardless, Powerpoint is still the same boring old POS.  It has lots of clip art and other junk at the expense of a clean method for managing and creating professional looking presentations.

This one is a DRAW

Word 2008:  As nimble as a cow

Word continues to be a massively heavyweight cluster-f.  The floating palettes are equally cumbersome and still make changing fonts and adding styles a mess.   Even after 8 years, putting together a Table of Contents is something that befuddles all but the most dedicated users.   Forget about indexing!     Lost in the stone-age, Word fails to do lots of basic text editing tasks and make them easier.   As a document layout tool, it still remains painful.  Images have a habit of moving around and re-sizing themselves (or ignoring your attempt at re-sizing).   Establishing basic things like gutters and orphan control continues to be an option buried deep in the layers of menus.

POINT:  Office 2000
POINT:  TextEdit, TextWrangler, iWork, OpenOffice

Conclusion

On Mac OS 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and even 10.6, Office 2000 is a solid upgrade to Office 2008.   In Office 2000 you will find a bevy of useful features and a fairly clean interface and relatively simple-to-use set of tools.

If, like me, you had no reason to upgrade, I strongly recommend you stick with your old copy of Office 2000.  If you must upgrade, consider the free version of Open Office, as it not matches the functionality (and then some) of Office 2000 and even Office 2008.     If you don’t mind breaking out a little bit, I would suggest iWork, as surpasses Office 2000 in terms of functionality and ease of use.

Oh, and at no point is this review being sarcastic…..Office 2008 really is that much of a step backward!

Sometimes after the late (10:45) games, I’ll get home, grab a quick shower and crawl right into bed at about 1 o’clock.   On occasion, I’ll be rewinding and replaying some of the plays of the night as I drift off to sleep.   As a result of my mental playback, I sometimes end up dreaming goalie dreams.

This particular night had been a pretty rough-and-tumble game.  Big guys screening me, bumping me around, getting in my way, etc.  Oh, and I was still in the early stages of learning how to protect myself and my beloved crease.

You see, us goalies don’t get to use the entire ice surface like the rest of you skaters.  Instead, we get a little bit of space at one end of the rink where we find our solace.  Instead of jabbering on the bench with the team, we have posts, a crossbar and some netting to keep us company.   We like our little space, which explains why we sometimes “flip the crazy switch” when our comfort zone gets invaded.   Heck, it’s all we got!

Anyway,  so I’m dreaming away and sleeping pretty hard.   I’m playing a great dream-game in net.  Things are going well when suddenly, from somewhere off-ice, I hear:

“ooowwwww oww oww  owww”

which is weird, since I’m really holding my own in this game…..but I begrudgingly take a dream time-out when it continues with:

“owwwwwwwwwwwww….. Ouch!”

…and drearily open my eyes to see Steph on her back with my elbow jabbing into her ribcage.  Steph is holding her side, nearly falling out of bed and has a look of profound shock on her face.

“Ouch, that hurt!   Why were you elbowing me?!?”, she demands.

And in my half-dreamy state, I  simply reply:  “You were in my crease.”

You probably didn’t notice us eating less than three feet away from you when you suddenly decided your infant daughter needed her diaper changed immediately, right there. For I’m sure if you had noticed us sitting there, eating, you might not have put your daughter on the floor by our feet and commenced changing her diaper.

You left us perplexed and completely disoriented. You see, your actions made so little sense that for a moment we felt the Earth stop and alter its rotation so that it could revolve entirely around you.

We are not exactly sure what you were thinking in making the decision to change a dirty diaper within a yard of strangers eating. We understand that being a parent is difficult and involves numerous sub-optimal decisions. But a diaper is not an *immediate* safety concern requiring instantaneous action with deleterious consequences.

We are quite positive that you failed to expend even modest effort in finding a more appropriate place to air your daughter’s dirty laundry. In fact, we know for a fact that the bathroom less than 10 yards away is quite spacious, clean, and equipped with a fan for removing certain smells. This same bathroom even has a large counter for enabling diaper changing. Oh yeah, and there is typically not much of a wait for the bathroom either.

Were you so concerned about losing your precious table that you felt compelled to air it all out next to us? Surely, your husband [except that he was too self-absorbed standing in line] could have taken your daughter to the bathroom so that you could retain your sacred seat.

Your decision makes us wonder if you would also throw a dinner party for strangers. Then, in the middle of the dark brown chunky french onion soup, surprise everyone by changing your daughter on the nearby buffet table so that guests could compare/contrast the soup to the diaper contents (in the consistency, color and smell categories).

Surely, changing your daughter’s diaper in the dining room during a dinner party would feel slightly inappropriate to you, right? So, shouldn’t changing it within a yard of strangers eating breakfast also feel inappropriate and somewhat unsanitary? (You didn’t even warn or ask us!)

You probably didn’t even notice how we stopped eating and quickly started scanning for alternate tables — then got up and left. After all, when the Earth rotates about you, how could you see anything else but a inconsequential blur.

This whole thing started back on May 17th, 2005. I had casually deleted the email from the Stanford Alumni Association figuring that neither Steph or myself could afford the trip, or that it would be of any interest to either one of us. I was so very wrong! To my amazement, the girl from Florida who had never been south of the equator (let alone out of the country) was seriously considering it (note: this same girl-from-florida also loves sushi and now plays ice-hockey—go figure). We knew that these trips sold out and had to act quickly. Could we afford it? Was the timing right? Could we manage the details? Would we ever have this opportunity again? (Yes, Yes, Yes, Not Really). Within a few days we had our deposit wired and were confirmed for the trip. Within 2 weeks all 30 spots were sold out. We were on the trail 4 months later.

TO SEE THE POST IN ALL IT’S DETAIL: CLICK HERE

Well, sort of.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that my bloody phone at home wasn’t ringing. For all I know, it could have been weeks since it last rang (I don’t get a lot of phone calls and nobody ever leaves me messages, so I had no real way of knowing). Turns out, this time I was waiting for a call and all that I heard was a short blip on the phone. Weird. I could call out, I could use my DSL line. Everything *seemed* fine. So…tried to report the problem to SBC. Don’t ever try to actually call SBC! Waste of time, especially when the poor schmucks on the phone start reading a script and find out you have DSL. To make matters worse, if you have static IP DSL (like yours truly) matters become impossible. Seems like SBC sold a product they can’t script tech support for. But I digress.

So, I gave up trying to call the phone company. Didn’t work for beans. Instead, got online and reported the problem. Only problem with reporting the problem was after 5 minutes of filling out online web forms, I click the bloody submit button and get the “Server is unable to process your request at this time…” (translation: we’re a phone company, why would you think of using the web to contact us).

Oh, and there is another problem. Turns out SBC charges you $55 for a house call if it is not their problem. But do they actually give you hints on how to diagnose the problem? Nope. That would cut into their revenue stream! So, I spent a good hour completely dismantling my phone system inside my house and isolating it down piece by piece (thank god I created a custom patch-panel years back and a custom phone-line test tool). I couldn’t find the problem, and I was able to get my phone to ring. So, I figured it was SBC’s problem.

After finally getting the problem form to go through, i got a technician out the next business day. And this guy calls me at work and says “it’s your problem”. I say “no way…i’ll be there in 10 minutes”. And the guy was right!!!

Now, here’s the rant section for real. Turns out all that they do is hook up a multimeter to your box and measure the resistance. Take note: 3.5mega-Ohms or greater is a good line. 1.5M-Ohms is kinda the minimum. With this kind of powerful knowledge, the tech and I are able to isolate the problem (a pre-existing line that, in fact, did not go through my patch panel….no wonder I didn’t catch it). Well, as of this point I am out $55 (I figure I’d take the guy to a fancy dinner instead), but we weren’t out of the woods.

So, these SBC guys have one other tool at their disposal. With their super-fancy wireless ruggedized laptops (this particular laptop was missing the “S” and “D” keys, so it couldn’t have been that rugged) he was able to call in an airstrike from the main office. Translation, he could ask the main office to run a line-test and it would report the resistance measurements from afar. Turns out one of my lines was still sub-megaOhm. Worse yet, unhooking my DSL modem did the trick.

Bad news. My DSL modem was working, and had worked for 5+ years. It was an ancient Alcatel 1000 that was configured by a $200/hr type PacBell technician.

So off to Fry’s I go. Find myself a brand new Zoom X5v ADSL modem. I didn’t really need all the features, but it was the only unopened box at Fry’s…..and one should NEVER buy opened boxes at Fry’s.

And here’s where the rant gets even better. Before doing anything, I tried to log into the Alcatel 1000. But after multiple attempts, figured I was locked out from gaining access. This meant that I could not get the settings and would be flying blind (nightmare of biblical proportions). So, down in the basement I sat with my new modem for 3 hours hacking away. Nothing. Nothing and n-o-t-h-i-n-g! I tried every bloody configuration, encapsulation, VCI, VPI setting and everything.

Did I mention I was a static IP subscriber and things were different (aka difficult) to set up? Well, after this three hours, I sucked it up and called SBC. Since it was midnight Pacific time, I got a call center in (gasp) India. The dutiful actress read the script and we got nowhere. At one point the script made her say “have you logged into SBCs help site at help.sbc.net….you will find it quite helpful”. I was too tired to yell at this point and simply explained to her that my network access was not so good at this time and that all the searches conducted on SBC’s worthless help site were in fact worthless after all. Then she says “Have you tried google?”

No joke….the SBC help staff recommends GOOGLE! I could not believe it! My befuddled response was lost in translation….and so I asked her a technical question (to keep her on the phone line trying to find where in her script the Encapsulation settings were located) and began to google. And lo-and-behold I found the first major piece to the puzzle. Turns out Pacbell wired DSL on yellow/black (outer pair) instead of the inner pair (red/green) that is most common now. I ran into the basement, quickly re-wired my junction box and suddenly my new DSL modem had a solid Link light.

But I wasn’t out of the woods. I still had hours of trial and error to work on. Every reboot of the modem took nearly one minute. Did I mention I was in the basement on my laptop this entire time?

Well….and then came the nasty part….when I did get the internet connection working, I could NOT get back to the Zoom Web Control Panel for the modem! This meant that since I was changing so many things I had forgotten some details and HAD TO HARD RESET THE MODEM AND START OVER!

This hard-reset and start over thing went on for several more hours. Finally, at 2am, with settings written down, I had internet connection but no ability to tweak modem (firewall, NAT, etc etc) settings.

Thanks to Zoom tech support though….they had live chat (the next morning) and were quick (24 hours) to respond to my email questions. I only got slightly annoyed once when they asked why I would need to get onto the Web Control Panel once everything was set up. Other than that, they were very good about answering my setup questions. Definitely a recommended brand!!

Anyway, the important puzzle pieces are as follows. In my area (MtView, CA) with old PacBell static IP, it took a VCI/VPI of 8/35 and an Encapsulation of 1483 Bridged LLC (whatever all that means). Make sure you have the jack wired to use the red/green center pair as well. Contact me if you want more details, but suffice it to say that overall it took 10 hours to get this thing online.

So the questions remain WHY IS IT SO BLOODY HARD TO SET UP A DSL MODEM? Why are there so many encapsulations and why do they not auto-discover!?! Why will Pacbell/SBC not simply give out the settings on their web site!?! Why is it so hard to get a Web Control Panel to work on the internal LAN when I’m connected directly to that LAN port!?!

That’s enough for now…looking forward to my Vegas trip now!

From: Red <c>Red Byer. For personal distribution only.

Sent: Thu 3/13/2003 4:10 PM

Subject: Back Surgery Stories/updates
First off, administratively: (1) Sorry for the mass email, but it’s more efficient. (2) Sorry if you get 2, 3 or even 4 copies of this message…i pretty much just spammed my address book.

Anyway, I just had a micro-discectomy, and here’s the story and a status update for you all.

Pre Surgery, Da’ History

For those who don’t know, I went in for lower back surgery last Tuesday the 11th. The operation was a micro-discectomy…..History: I have had on/off severe back pain for about 10 years now. Back then they only took an x-ray and thought I had a fused disc down there somewhere. Well, 2 months ago, it really really went out (sleeping was no longer an option). Finally, in early February, I had an MRI done and it showed a beautiful bulge/prolapse/hernia/rupture between L5 and S1. 15mm bulge to be specific, pinching on the left side spinal cord and basically messing it all up. As a point of reference, a prolapse that size was enough to make my chiropractor take pause and look seriously concerned (and he’s an x-football player who regularly treats NFL players).

Mid February, it was feeling better and I was working out more…and it went out AGAIN…Valerie & Steph got to witness that Valentine’s dinner hands-and-knees-all-of-a-sudden fiasco. In fact they looked worried enough that it became obvious surgery was a necessity.

After quite some waiting and a lot of kneeling at work, I finally had a pre-op and a surgery date scheduled. A second opinion with a more conservative Dr. S in Redwood City confirmed that it was time for surgery. Dr. K at the Stanford Neurosurgery was scheduled to be my surgeon.

OH, and this is most definitely not a “pity me email”. At least 3 of the people getting this have had total knee re-builds, at least 1 of the people has had a kidney transplant, and another had a deviated septum surgery. I think the pain and recovery from my surgery pales in comparison to those just mentioned.

Post Surgery, Quick Summary

So, the quick summary….after a DREADFUL night in the hospital (read more below) I am back at home . . . dosing up on vicadin and valium and steroids. I’m in some pain of course (imagine a sledgehammer hitting your back, or some sucker-kidney-punches) and I walk *really* slowly. I can’t bend or twist yet, but the good news, NO MORE SCIATIC LEG PAIN.

Speaking with the doctor, he said that he was surprised to see that much of the disc bulge seemed be from an older injury (hence the 10 years of back problems). He cleaned it right up, I hope. I’m hoping to get a post-MRI out of the deal if I can…just to see what it looks like now. As for the disc degeneration in L4 & L5…well, just going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. I hope to keep strong enough to be able to lift and toss-around my kids some day.

Since doctors do not give straight answers and love to be ultra conservative, they were saying it would be 2 weeks before I could drive and 4 weeks to return to activity. Yeah, WHATEVER. The driving is limited by the vicadin….(i can always get driven to work)..and the return normal activity varies by individual (2-6 weeks is what I have read).

I feel better today than yesterday, and I am not taking full-dosages of vicadin. I currently hope to be back to work in <10 days.

A Quick Thanks For The Support

THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR SUPPORT. The cards/balloons/flowers are greatly appreciated. In fact, I left one of the baloons with my roomate, who was having a really bad time and who’s 2 year old son was visiting. The “Get RRRRuufff” dalmation balloon stayed behind for him. Oh, and the “ITs A BOY” balloon courtesy of Manuel M was the source of some confusion for the nursing staff.

Well done!

The Gritty Details Of My Night In The Hospital

AND NOW, the detailed nitty gritty somewhat humorous recap for those who have never been to a hospital, under anesthetic, etc. READ ONLY if you can stand the yummy details….this is for those of you who like the gory, juicy, nasty details…and for me to share the stories for those brave few.

WARNING: Too Much Information [TMI] abounds below.

They let me lie down in a bed and asked lots of questions, poked and prodded for 15 minutes, took vitals. Then came the fun part. I got to watch Stephanie & my mother flinch as they inserted the IV into my left wrist. I swear that they almost fainted. The best part, they loaded me up with some sort of anti-anxiety, relaxant stuff. WHAM….in 5 seconds I felt like I had just had 3 margaritas. My hearing went away and I was flying quite nicely. And then, wheeled to the operating room.

Interesting point….in the pre-op room there were at least 3 different SCRA parents that recognized me. In fact, Dr. Samuels (Coach Emma’s father) was my anastheseologist. Made me glad I was wearing my finest attire and didn’t have any embarrassing tattoos.

The resident that inserted the IV was very kind, and (sorry Steph) cute…so not a bad way to be put under and perhaps be the last thing I would see on the pain-free end of things. There was no countdown, nothing. Just a “We’re going to put this pillow under your head to support your neck better.” Uhh, yeah….I think that’s what they did.

Because the next thing I heard as I woke up…”Breathe deep….take another deep breath. Good. Another deep breath…really deep.” I complied, I don’t know why, but I did…and then my eyes opened…and I felt so very very good. It was only 2 1/2 hours or so after they had put me under. No nausea….a little soreness in my back (promptely relieved with a small hit of morphine).

And the TASTE. Oh my god, it felt like my mouth had had a bunch of nasty melted polyester poured into it. My mouth, my throat…my lips…tasted and smelled HORRIBLE. The nurse heard me complaining, and whipped out some sort of pre-tasting swab (some $50 lemon pledge-pinesol flavored q-tip) and swabbed my lips and let me suck on it for awhile. That was nice….then she was a total goddess and gave me a cup of crushed ice to suck on!!! Wow….anything to get rid of that nasty taste. I kept asking them why they didn’t invent mint flavored anasthesia…..could it be that hard?

And there I sat….bored, but drunk on anasthesia for an hour and a half….then two big nurses came and I got to watch the ceiling tiles of Stanford Hospital fly by as they whizzed me and my 300lb bed around and around and up the elevator.

Then I was in my room…next to a guy who was snoring (and didn’t stop the entire time I was there) really really really loud. They checked vitals (they do that in hospitals…a LOT) and I proceded to convince Steph & my mother to go get some food for themselves (I had to pee really bad, and wanted the privacy) [TMI to follow, don't read if you're squeemish.

Well, evidently, that liter of IV fluid they had pumped me with....it wanted out in a BIG way. I filled that urinal to the brim, and could have kept going, but I didn't feel like asking for more. The nurse who took it away dutifully recorded that I had peed, and how much, 'cause they do that as well as check your vitals.

Oh, by the way, I smelled terrible....my mouth still tasted terrible. Everything like a flowery plastic nasty that exuded from every pore. And the pee? Yuck. For those (like me) who can't stand morning after asparagus/broccoli piss, try the post-anasthesia pee. Holy stinking nasty!!! And it continued like that all night, too!!!

But I digress.....The time is now about 6:30pm.

So, in order to get off of the IV, I had to keep some fluids down, and I was eager to comply (that taste). They brought me some apple juice, water and soup broth. I began drinking the soup broth. Well, about this time, my roommate decided that the morphine was not agreeable, and I was treated to about 5 minutes of projectile vomiting into his bedpan. I must have been hungry, because I stll drank that soup, the apple juice and the water.

I was rewarded by being unhooked from the IV drip, but the IV tube remained in my wrist. Blech.

Then they brought me dinner. It was HUGE. After witnessing my roommate, I was in no hurry to rush back into eating (puking is tough enough, but with a hurt/weak back, it is tough and completely painful). Well, the dinner they brough was salad, fruit, a huge hunk of chicken, some rice and guess-what: BROCOLLI. Why not add insult to injury and throw in some asparagus, as if my pee didn't already smell bad enough! Needless to say, I passed on the brocolli....and nibbled on the rest. Quite a feat, given that my roommates heaving kept on going.

About 15 minutes later, steph & my mom return with their dinner, and I promptly shoo them out, because it's time for my roommate to get an enema. Wonderful. My pee smells like flowery plastic, my roommate is hurling, I'm worried about hurling (that's what everyone says happens after anasthesia & morphine), and my dinner is getting cold quickly because it smells like enema. This hospital stay was turning out to be a wonderful idea.

Another 15 mintues go by, the smell(s) have subsided...my mom, steph and my housemate return and I'm nibbling. I'm starving...want to eat, but given the circumstances, just can't.

At about 7:30....mom & housemate leave....Dr K comes in to let me know that all went well.....and then I attempt to stand. In order to stand, they have to remove these cool little pressurized air-bag leg-massagers that they had (keeps blood clots from forming, improves circulation and feels damn cool as they inflate and deflate).

7:30, a mere 4 hours after surgery, I stand....and go take a nice long plastic smelling pee (i hate urinals, and using a toilet was my reward for standing). My back felt weak, but acceptable, and with steph and the nurse for support, it was not a problem. We took a little walk around the unit (about 15 minutes or so)...and that felt really good.

I was able to walk/shuffle around until 8pm.....when I had to get back into bed (yup, still wearing my wonderful pantyhose in case you'd forgotten) and steph got kicked out for the night.

Contrary to popular belief...they kick visitors out early so that the patients go insane with boredom. They have found that boredom and insanity are the biggest aids to healing quickly and demanding shorter hospital stays. SO, at 8pm, I was faced with 14 hours of excruciating boredom with a little bit of pain. I was in prison/hospital....same difference.

On the good news, The Waterboy was playing...and that helped.

So commenced the night of no sleep. I had a little pain, sure...but having an IV in your wrist prevents it from bending. And in case you hadn't noticed, you usually have to relax your wrists to sleep.....I couldn't do that. Oh, did I mention that having the IV tube also prevented me from rolling over onto my stomach. You would think that after back surgery they would enable you to roll on your stomach so as to relieve pressure on the cuts/stitches and therefore relieve pain. However, given that (from above) "insanity" leads to shorter hospital stays, on my back I remained.

And did I mention that my roomate snored. Snoring is a euphamism in this case for STRANGLING A BEAR! I was hopeless, bored, and of course insane at this point.

Oh, and just in case you've already forgotten, it's time for a quiz....nurses do what?They check your vitals. And when do they do it? When you have finally managed to fall asleep for 15 minutes. Seriously, every 2-3 hours they would wake me up and check my vitals....ARGH.

Oh, and did I mention the drugs. They had me on some heavy duty antibiotics (via the IV drip hookup) and would push steroids into me a couple of times as well. Turns out that steroids can cause insomnia.....Also turns out that nobody told me this!

Oh, and it also turns out that one of the side effects of anasthesia is increased heart rate.

So, there I am trying to get to sleep with (let me list em) (1) a roomate who was either snoring, ralphing or getting an enema done (2) nurses who just wanted to wake me up in order to push me further into insanity (3) an IV tube in my wrist that hurt to flex (4) cuts in my back that I had little choice but to lie on top of (5) steroids & anesthesia that pumped my *resting* heart rate up in the 80's and 90's!!!!!!!!!!

Incidentally...I slept about 2 hours total that night...and spent the rest of the time trying to get to sleep and wondering how to break out of the insanity and boredom asylum.

10:30pm.....my mom called, so I went to the nurses station and took the call. Also managed to sweet talk a nurse into bringing up the Sharks website....great, they lost again....At this point I proceeded to walk around the hallways for another hour.

2:15am.....bored, can't sleep. Got up and walked around the hallways for another 45 minutes. Oh, don't forget, I had my well ventilated outfit and thigh-high pantyhose on, too. And, yeah...I use the term "walking" quite liberally....it took me about 15 minutes to go 200yards....so a couple of laps killed a LOT of time.

5:30am. My roomate wakes up ralphing and dry heaving. Incidentally, snoring and puking and groaning were his main sounds, and it was always one or the other.

5:45am.....who wants an enema? Not me!!! But my roommate got another one. WOW....there is nothing sacred in a hospital.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO ANOTHER SEGWAY: The question I got asked most, throughout the night, after surgery and into the morning........wait for it..............the question was: "Have you passed gas?" I kid you not! The nurses are serious about this. It's a mark of pride......they cheer you on...they wanna hear it.....they almost seem to live for it (second to takin' vitals of course). "Have you passed gas?". I was constantly getting asked that question.

Well, here's why. Turns out that anasthesia totally screws with your GI tract (i.e. it takes it to a complete stop) and so do most of the pain meds, especially vicadin. Also turns out that passing gas (that's "farting" for us non-nurse laymen) is like the sign that the engines are about to turnover again. This is why they recommend a major fiber-diet post surgery... Speaking from experience [i warned you, Too Much Information] it’s tough to jump start those bowels again…..really tough. Even a juice club with fiber boost, 2 apples, 2 bannanas, prunes and raisin bran isn’t enough. They give you stool softeners on top of it!! [you were WARNED about TMI]

So, let’s get back:

7:00am…i had just gotten to sleep at 6:30 am….and the doctor’s assistants came in, pushed and prodded me a little bit, made sure I felt okay, told me I’d be going home in 4 hours (I was clearly insane and bored, and heceforth ready to be released). Then they left.

So, I got up, urinated some polyester smelling fluid and began to walk (breakfast was supposed to be at 8:00am). I walked for a good hour and a half (that’s about 6 laps around the ward, I think)…got really tired…..and passed gas….loudly and proudly!!! A couple of times….Heck, the way I figured it, I was in a hospital, they were encouraging it, they were asking me about it….so I cut loose. How many times in your life have you actually been encouraged to fart by professionals? For me….that number was 0. So I made the most of it, which incidentally was quite little, because that anasthesia really does stop you up.

8:30am, breakfast FINALLY shows up. Remember, I’m post-op…should be eating high fiber, etc. They give me bacon & eggs and a smallish bran muffin and some coffee. No fruit. I’m starving (hadn’t really eaten for well over 36 hours at this point) and wolf down all that.

8:45….I still have that blood IV in my wrist, it’s swollen and i want it out. They figure that have to load me up with one more bag of antibiotics (I’m taking the steroids orally at this point). They try to push the antibiotics thru and start the drip, but I think the IV is coagulated/swollen…..and they stop. 15 minutes later, they check with the doctor….

9:00. My insanity and boredom is evident. They reward me by removing the IV needle stuck in my wrist. The reward comes with a price….a lot of hair. Oh well.

9:15….I get to shower!!!! The nurse gets to open my well ventilated gown and strap some saran wrap with some hair-pulling tape all around…..wonderment. It took some time (about 10 minutes), but I was able to get the little traction-socks and the white thigh-high nylons off. The rinse off removes a lot of that flowery plastic smell from my poors, and suddenly I feel a lot better. I was starting to feel some dignity, too.

That is, until the nurse pulls off skin & hair removing the wonderful plastic wrapping around the bandages. There is no shame here….it’s a hospital……and the bandages, well, remember that I mentioned it was a LOW back surgery. Men (like me) have hair on their butts. And the surgeons…well, they didn’t shave me down and that quickly became evident as I got a backside ‘waxing’ from the waterproof tape. Yippee.

9:45 – 10:45. I stroll the halls in my street clothes, completely insane and bored. I can finally play my Gameboy (the IV in my left wrist had prevented my thumb from moving). At 10:45, just as I was about to go Postal, Steph shows up to break me out of there. The nurse helps dose me up with a few vicadin prior to the car ride….and then I’m off (like a snail in heat) towards the car….towards the pharmacy….towards home.

And home is where I’m at while I’m writing this. Can’t drive, don’t wanna get in a car, but at least i can sleep…..on my stomach!!! I’m feeling better today than yesterday, and hoping for that fast recovery…..dosing up on fiber like a telecommunications company before the bust. Able to take “walks” (liberal usage of the word…”shuffles” is more like it).

And most importantly….no sciatic pain……

So that’s my story….hope you all had an entertaining read…..any questions? hahahahah

End Of [TMI] Section

Once again, Thanks to everyone for their support.

-Red