Greg Hewlett passed away on January 17th after nearly eight years of battling colon cancer. While we grieve his loss, we are comforted to know that he is with his Lord.
If you would like to leave your thoughts on Greg, please see this thread.
If you would like to make a charitable donation in Greg's honor, please see this thread.
The Struggle Has Ended
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Minor complication
Things have been going great. I am still in disbelief about how small the pain is this time compared with last. I still have discomfort and some difficulty sleeping, but this is nothing compared with last time.
One issue, however, was that my chest tube incision was still oozing this weekend. I went to the ER at Richardson hospital Saturday night. As I walked in the door, I was confronted by a packed room full of crying and caughing. This was not the place I needed to be. I called the surgeon on call at MD Anderson and he recommended I go to the local urgent-care-ER facility first thing Sunday to get evaluated and get an x-ray, which I did. That doctor saw that my lower right lung seemed to be developing early stage pnemonia - not good. The on-call surgeon said I'd probably have to go to Houston to see my surgeon. And they put me on antibiotics.
To speed things up and get better info to my surgeon in Houston before driving down, I wanted to send the x-ray images electronically to MD Anderson. The urgent care places said they did not have the capability to send images electronically, but gave me a CD that the xray machine spits out. The CD was an autorun diagnostic image software with unrecognizable image format files. And it was huge - 30Mbyte. The doctors and nurses at MD Anderson aren't computer geeks, nor are they patient with computers, even if I could send them a bunch of raw files. So I called up my high tech Houston buddy Nils and we came up with a plan. I copied the CD directory structure onto an ftp server Nils set up at his home PC. Nils then burned an exact duplicate CD, which he delivered to my surgeon the next morning. No FedEx needed. Pretty cool, huh?
Long story a little longer, Dr. Hofstetter evaluated the x-rays and determined that this should be fine on its own and that there is no need to go to Houston. So I'm happy at home and back on track recovering.
One issue, however, was that my chest tube incision was still oozing this weekend. I went to the ER at Richardson hospital Saturday night. As I walked in the door, I was confronted by a packed room full of crying and caughing. This was not the place I needed to be. I called the surgeon on call at MD Anderson and he recommended I go to the local urgent-care-ER facility first thing Sunday to get evaluated and get an x-ray, which I did. That doctor saw that my lower right lung seemed to be developing early stage pnemonia - not good. The on-call surgeon said I'd probably have to go to Houston to see my surgeon. And they put me on antibiotics.
To speed things up and get better info to my surgeon in Houston before driving down, I wanted to send the x-ray images electronically to MD Anderson. The urgent care places said they did not have the capability to send images electronically, but gave me a CD that the xray machine spits out. The CD was an autorun diagnostic image software with unrecognizable image format files. And it was huge - 30Mbyte. The doctors and nurses at MD Anderson aren't computer geeks, nor are they patient with computers, even if I could send them a bunch of raw files. So I called up my high tech Houston buddy Nils and we came up with a plan. I copied the CD directory structure onto an ftp server Nils set up at his home PC. Nils then burned an exact duplicate CD, which he delivered to my surgeon the next morning. No FedEx needed. Pretty cool, huh?
Long story a little longer, Dr. Hofstetter evaluated the x-rays and determined that this should be fine on its own and that there is no need to go to Houston. So I'm happy at home and back on track recovering.
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