[PRCo] Re: Changed to Years Make a Difference

[Schneider Fred]

On Jun 10, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Bob Dietrich wrote:
> Missed you at the EPTC Meet.
>

Here's the complete answer Bob:

You missed me at the East Penn meet because the Perfesser was so  
incapacitated that he could not travel.  Ed Lybarger actually came  
here that morning and offered to drive me down and John Swindler  
offered to drive me back home.   I figured it was best if I didn't  
go.   That was the week I was sleeping sitting up in a chair every  
night.   That was also the week my wife was driving me to every  
doctor's appointment.   The pinched sciatic nerve is no bad that some  
days I can barely move.   It can only be corrected surgically ...  
another one of those operations on the spine.   That cannot be done  
until several months after the coronary bypass operation because no  
anesthesiologist will put me to sleep for fear they can't wake me up  
again because of the heart issues.   The heart operation is scheduled  
for June 16th, six days from now.    Then after the open heart  
operation and the back operation,  we talk about doing the hernia  
repair.

I've got enough operations lined up to get a wing named after me at  
Lancaster General Hospital.

Amazing thing about a pinched nerve is that it can go from very minor  
discomfort and being able to walk all over Savannah or Charlotte or  
Los Angeles or Phoenix in one month to being unable to walk a hundred  
feet the next month.

By the way, those coronary bypass operations are fun.   This is my  
second go round at those.   I had a triple bypass 13 years ago.   I  
would best describe that as driving a truck over the patient, picking  
him up and then laying him on the railroad tracks and letting an  
Acela have a crack at him at 120 mph.   Then you invite the wife in  
and  say to her, "Doesn't he look good?"   I remember the last one I  
had.   They gave me some combination of medications afterwards  
because it works well in 80 or 90 percent of the surgeries.   In my  
case it made me loopy as hell.   No, don't tell me that's normal for  
me.   It placed me out on planet Saturn hunting Pluto or Mickey  
Mouse.   I couldn't even tell them what day of week or month of the  
year it was.     I know Swindler had come in to see me but I'm not  
even sure if I knew his name it was so bad.  I'm not sure I even knew  
my own wife's name.    I think after three weeks I went back to work  
and I still felt I had been hit by a truck by 2 in the afternoon.    
Of course the doctors told me I shouldn't go back to work for a month.

But getting blood to the heart still beats not getting blood to the  
heart.   Beats hell out of being on the brown side of the lawn,  
doesn't it?

Now yins all know.

Fred