Roll call for Subsim members MIA

[Jimbuna]

If I'm to be honest I must I miss him a bit....to me he was the stereotypical SubSim pseudo curmudgeon.

[Mr Quatro]

Steed seemed lonely ... I always liked his weather reporting

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

If I'm to be honest I must I miss him a bit....to me he was the stereotypical SubSim pseudo curmudgeon.

He probably secretly got a disney plus subscription and has ODed on Star Wars.


Steed, I know you are there, How do you like The Mandalorian?

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

He probably secretly got a disney plus subscription and has ODed on Star Wars.


Steed, I know you are there, How do you like The Mandalorian?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by magic452

How about Sailor Steve? or did I miss something?

Steve is alive but hardly well.

I've been suffering for six years now from chronic diarrhea which I wouldn't have mentioned but it has gotten steadily worse until now I have no control over it and almost no feeling at all.

Over the last two years I've also lost the use of my legs. That actually started over a decade ago with an occasional random fall. No dizziness. No blackouts. I'd suddenly just fall down. Sometimes I would just be standing still. Lately, like everything else, this has grown worse. I would have a very hard time getting back up. The doctors talked about sense of balance.

Then one morning in the kitchen I fell and bounced off the refrigerator. A shattered left shoulder and two cracks in my skull are the first broken bones I've ever had. A week in the ICU and I ended up in a rest home/rehab center.

They said it would take six weeks to heal but after nine weeks it showed no signs of improvement. X-rays showed the cuff to be completely detached. Three more weeks and a new set of X-rays and an MRI showed nothing different. Then they finally decided to do the operation they should have done in the first place.

After fifteen weeks I'm actually starting to heal. Well, my shoulder anyway. I have a soft foam helmet I have to wear anytime I'm out of bed. I still can't walk. I can't even get from my bed to the wheelchair without help. The diarrhea continues. Except when they haul me off to the hospital I've lived in this bed for six months. I don't know if I'll walk again. The only good news is that I'm receiving a pension, and I have my computer to keep me occupied, so I'm pretty much doing the same things I was doing before, just in a smaller space.

And that's where I'm at right now.

[Onkel Neal]

Steve, good to hear from you checking in. Really hope 2021 will be a better year for you.

[Reece]

Yes I hope you get better soonish! Diarrhea is not nice, I get it often, doctors aren't much help, if I get a bout I use "Gastro-Stop", one tablet with a glass of water and I'm right for about 24hrs. I assume this may not work in your case, you've probably tried it!
All the best.

[Rockstar]

Jeebus Steve should have let me know earlier. I'll drive over after winter, we can partake in some medicinal herbs and tell each other sea stories from back in the day.


Do hope you get better.

[u crank]

Hi Steve. Good to hear from you but sorry to hear about your troubles.

Wishing you all the best.

[magic452]

Sorry to hear this Steve, hang in there buddy things will improve.


Check in with us every so often, your comments and insights are always appreciated.


Magic

[Eichhörnchen]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Steve is alive but hardly well.

I've been suffering for six years now from chronic diarrhea which I wouldn't have mentioned but it has gotten steadily worse until now I have no control over it and almost no feeling at all.

When I was 31 I had to have a large section of bowel removed owing to undiagnosed Crohns, and since then diarrhea has been a permanent issue owing to the shortness of the remaining bowel, with absorption of food and drying out of stools greatly reduced

My specialist prescribed something called Cholestyramine to combat the diarrhea. It's NOT a drug but a resin powder (in sachets) which sequesters the bile salts in the large bowel, thus preventing the runny motions. I learned that this powder is also prescribed to patients with high cholesterol and liver disorders, neither of which I suffer from

I can hardly believe that your medics haven't considered this as a treatment yet but I mention it just in case, as this seems to be the most urgent issue for you at present. It would be great if this was all you needed and I think it's certainly worth mentioning it to them

In the meantime I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, mate

[Commander Wallace]

It sounds like you have had a rough road Steve and very sorry to hear of your difficulties. I hope the new year is a better one for you and you recover well enough to rejoin us here, completely.


All the best to you now and in the new year.




@ I'm sorry to hear of your issues , Eichornchen. I hope your meds are working well for you as well.



I think I will be pretty happy to see this year fade away.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Steve is alive but hardly well.

I've been suffering for six years now from chronic diarrhea which I wouldn't have mentioned but it has gotten steadily worse until now I have no control over it and almost no feeling at all.

Over the last two years I've also lost the use of my legs. That actually started over a decade ago with an occasional random fall. No dizziness. No blackouts. I'd suddenly just fall down. Sometimes I would just be standing still. Lately, like everything else, this has grown worse. I would have a very hard time getting back up. The doctors talked about sense of balance.

Then one morning in the kitchen I fell and bounced off the refrigerator. A shattered left shoulder and two cracks in my skull are the first broken bones I've ever had. A week in the ICU and I ended up in a rest home/rehab center.

They said it would take six weeks to heal but after nine weeks it showed no signs of improvement. X-rays showed the cuff to be completely detached. Three more weeks and a new set of X-rays and an MRI showed nothing different. Then they finally decided to do the operation they should have done in the first place.

After fifteen weeks I'm actually starting to heal. Well, my shoulder anyway. I have a soft foam helmet I have to wear anytime I'm out of bed. I still can't walk. I can't even get from my bed to the wheelchair without help. The diarrhea continues. Except when they haul me off to the hospital I've lived in this bed for six months. I don't know if I'll walk again. The only good news is that I'm receiving a pension, and I have my computer to keep me occupied, so I'm pretty much doing the same things I was doing before, just in a smaller space.

And that's where I'm at right now.

Hope you get to read this post Steve but following on from the message you sent me via Neal I'm still unable to catch you online via Skype.

Most importantly though....keep up the improvement in your condition and ask someone near you to put a few coins in the leccy meter for internet connection

[Onkel Neal]

Good news to end 202 with: I got an email from Rebel, one of the original Texas meet members and he is ok and back.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Steve is alive but hardly well.

I've been suffering for six years now from chronic diarrhea which I wouldn't have mentioned but it has gotten steadily worse until now I have no control over it and almost no feeling at all.

Over the last two years I've also lost the use of my legs. That actually started over a decade ago with an occasional random fall. No dizziness. No blackouts. I'd suddenly just fall down. Sometimes I would just be standing still. Lately, like everything else, this has grown worse. I would have a very hard time getting back up. The doctors talked about sense of balance.

Then one morning in the kitchen I fell and bounced off the refrigerator. A shattered left shoulder and two cracks in my skull are the first broken bones I've ever had. A week in the ICU and I ended up in a rest home/rehab center.

They said it would take six weeks to heal but after nine weeks it showed no signs of improvement. X-rays showed the cuff to be completely detached. Three more weeks and a new set of X-rays and an MRI showed nothing different. Then they finally decided to do the operation they should have done in the first place.

After fifteen weeks I'm actually starting to heal. Well, my shoulder anyway. I have a soft foam helmet I have to wear anytime I'm out of bed. I still can't walk. I can't even get from my bed to the wheelchair without help. The diarrhea continues. Except when they haul me off to the hospital I've lived in this bed for six months. I don't know if I'll walk again. The only good news is that I'm receiving a pension, and I have my computer to keep me occupied, so I'm pretty much doing the same things I was doing before, just in a smaller space.

And that's where I'm at right now.

I'm sorry to read about your current health problems, Sailor Steve, and I hope and wish for a betterment of your condition. Getting old isn't easy in any case, and it is particularly difficult when one's health is in question...

I know the extreme difficulties gastric disorders or conditions can impose on a person. I've lived all my life with gastric problems and they have become particularly acute sine I turned fifty and my system seem to have been less able to cope with the effects; this has been especially true since I had to undergo emergency gall bladder removal due to acute pancreatitis back in 2004 and my gastric problems became even worse, with the pancreatitis becoming a chronic, recurring condition for a few years after the surgery; I even spent some time on the Cholestyramine that Eichhörnchen mentioned in his post. One thing I did take notice of during recent years is the need to do certain things to manage one's medical treatment; always look carefully at the nature of the medications being prescribed since one medication may conflict with or adversely affect the function of another medication; I like to read all the notices/warnings that come with my medications and will look them up on the internet to be better informed; one of my medications actually had as a possible side effect gastric problems that another of my medications was supposed to solve; I alerted each of the doctors who prescribed those medications and, once they conferred and realized the meds may have been causing a lot of my gastric problems, they took me off those meds and my problems significantly lessened, so it sometimes pays to be as informed as possible...

The situation with the two doctors is also another area of concern in dealing with one's health; if you are seeing more than one doctor or specialist and/or your care is handled in sort of clinic setting where you might not see the same doctor each visit, it is a good practice to ask the doctor you're seeing at the time just exactly how aware he/she is of your record and condition(s); a lot of the clinic doctors and not a few of the doctors otherwise often don't take the time to thoroughly revise a patient's current records and miss changes in medications, procedures, etc., done by other doctors; they tend to gloss over the details and just see the bigger points, sort of like reading a newspaper by just reading the headlines and not the articles; unfortunately, with the doctor's and hospitals being stretched thin, even before Covid, medical professionals often have to move rather quickly and sometimes have to cut corners; one of the things I found more than a bit annoying is the tendency of doctors to ask me what another doctor had to say about my condition or meds; my response has now become one of "Well, I don't think I am capable of accurately and fully answering your question(s) since I might leave out or misstate another doctor's diagnosis, so it would be best if you two talk to each other and decide amongst you"; it is important to make the doctors take more than just a passing, mundane attitude to your condition...

Always ask questions and make sure they listen. When I started to take notice of loss of memory some years ago and I brought it up to the doctors (most of whom were younger than some of records in my collection), they tended to brush it off as just a function of aging, even when I pointed out that even for an old geezer like myself it seemed a bit out of the ordinary; I even went through a period of the sort of 'wobblies' you describe; it wasn't until I told a doctor that I had made inquiries into participating in an Alzheimer's/memory study at a local university's med school that the doctor began to fully realize just how serious I thought the situation was and ordered a cranial MRI scan; the scan initially detected an accumulation of white brain cells indicating irreversible brain damage and possible Alzheimer's or MS; a later more extensive and thorough MRI of my brain and spine showed I had been through a series of "silent strokes" over the years and that I also had nerve damage in the form of spinal stenosis, which will require corrective surgery, although that is on hold for now with concerns about the effect of spinal surgery on someone of my age until my other conditions even out or the spinal conditions become too threatening to defer; the good news is the Alzheimer's and MS are pretty much off the table, but the not so good is I am now considered to be at high risk for more "silent strokes' or even a massive stroke in the future and, even without the Alzheimer's or MS, the net effect on my memory and/or function will likely be similar to if I had either of them; I may not really be keen about the prognosis, but I'd rather know than guess, and if I have to be a PITA to a doctor to be told the truth or get a straight answer, well, hell, I'm old, I'm mean, and I don't really have a lot to lose by being insistent...

You've been through a lot and you're still here, and, as the saying goes 'if you're going through hell, by all means keep on going'; my grandfather was a tough old Navy guy and he smoked ciggies, cigars, pipes and chewed tobacco, and was an indulger in beers and hard liquor (hated wine, though; thought it too 'girly'); he was one of the toughest guys I've known and, when he retired to the Veteran's home, the doctor's eventually took away his tobacco and drink; his health soon declined and we were told he died cursing and swearing at the doctors; I don't recommend a life of hard drinking or heavy smoking as a lifestyle for anyone, but there is something to be admired about about someone who goes down swinging, who doesn't "go gently"; I'm not far behind you in years, but I know we've both seen an awful lot in the years we've already had and the prospect of seeing what around the next corner or over the next hill is a pretty good motivation to keep slogging on; keep going and fighting and know you have a lot of supporters and friends in Subsim and, even if you aren't able to fully participate as you or we would like on the forums, you are still thought of and missed. Make those doctors earn their pay and hasten you to better health...





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