Double A Penny - Step 20 - Bad Things Are Happening
I haven't been updating the Blog because I have been under a lot of stress and going through a medical crisis.
My doctor informed me that the next step in stopping the cancer was to remove my bladder/prostate and surrounding lymph nodes. He suggested I get a second opinion. I did and after that I got a third opinion from a doctor/surgeon at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
I was fortunate to be able to get in to see the doctor at Dana-Farber without a referral and in only four days. I was also helped by a couple at my church who took me there several times, once to see the doctor and once for an MRI. The man in the couple has stage four cancer in the bones.
The surgeon determined from the pathology and the MRI I will need my bladder out. I am not happy about this. In fact I am horrified.
I will need to wear a bag to collect the urine for the rest of my life and I am not that old. This is a nightmare that I cannot wake up from.
It is being scheduled for sometime in August. I have always been healthy and tried to do the right things. I didn't do anything that they say could cause bladder cancer like smoking or working with chemicals. It doesn't run in my family.
I am uncertain how things will progress from here as far as DTAMP or posting in this blog.
I also had an accident last week as well.
I took out the CMOS battery out of my wife's laptop computer because the BIOS settings were not holding. The hard drive is going and the S.M.A.R.T. detector will not let me boot up. I can change the SMART setting but that setting is resetting itself each time.
It was a Lithium Battery about the size of a quarter and had two leads attached to it.
I had an extra battery so I figured I would solder on the leads and reinstall it. It didn't work out that way.
Not being able to see up close I took off my glasses and got about four inches away from the battery as I soldered the leads on. I had just got the second lead on when the battery exploded and threw lithium, acid and solder into my right eye. It was very painful and I couldn't see out of it. I was in big trouble as I was home alone and live out in the sticks.
I ran to the bathroom and I could see that there was black lithium penetrating my eye ball, burning me, as well as pieces all over in my eye. In addition I was cut and burned on my forehead and my cheek.
I started to throw water in my eye and trying to figure out what to do next. I knew I wasn't going to be able to drive for over twenty minutes to get to the hospital so I decided to call 911 and get help. They said that an ambulance was on the way. I called my wife and left a message saying a battery exploded in my eye and the ambulance was on the way.
I had saved some squirt caps from Poland Springs bottles and went and got it and started to squirt a lot of water into my eye. The EMTs got there in about 10 minutes, which is fast for getting to my house.
They jury rigged a continuous eye wash and brought me to the emergency room.
At the hospital they put some kind of flush thing which was like a big contact in my eye and began flushing. In all I used at least six bags of saline solution and there was a lot of lithium that came out.
My wife had called a friend and she closed her store and was at the hospital in a very short period of time to help me. Now that is a friend!!
My wife got to me about an hour or so later. She had to leave work and drive a long way to get to me. She had horrible ideas of my eye half hanging out. I wasn't specific at all in the phone call.
I was in the E.R. for about 4 hours with a lot of tests being done on my eye. Then I was sent to an Ophthalmologist for an emergency visit several towns away. He examined the eye and did some things I cannot remember. I was pretty much in shock during the entire time. I thought I was going to lose my eyesight in that eye.
He said it would heal ok and gave me some steroid drops. Within three days my eye cleared up and most of my wounds healed. But one wouldn't. I discover a small lithium particle in the wound that kept burning the flesh. After I got that out it healed up.
There are several morals of the story.
One, always wear eye protection when working on projects. One's eyesight is priceless and everything needs to be done to protect it. I have always took to many risks and have been fortunate from the various accidents I have had.
Two, sometimes it doesn't pay to be too frugal. That computer battery cost me over $140.00 in medical bills and the fireman took the leads and almost everything so I am having trouble replacing the battery. My wife's new laptop arrived today.
Three, don't be cheap and if you have to call for an ambulance, the faster you get help the better. I was thinking how expensive the ambulance would be while my eye was filled with burning lithium and battery acid. Of course I didn't think that very long, I may be cheap but not crazy.
Four, know the technology you are working on. I was not aware that lithium is explosive when heated. After all of this I do recall reading an article about the lithium batteries in cars exploding or something like that. I wasn't up to date on what I was working on and it bit me. In the old days I used to solder to batteries all the time and had no problems but technology changes and I needed to keep studying to avoid mistakes.
The next day we had to clean up the house of lithium. It was everywhere in my office. The explosion propelled it all over the place then I tracked it to different rooms in the house.
I will never forget that unique smell of lithium.
Here is the only piece the EMTs missed of what was left of the battery.
Present Stake:$4159.28 Motto: It is only "one" found penny. Slogan: As Simple As Finding A Penny. Theme Song: Chumbawamba - Tubthumping Regards, Xinfinitum
This Double Your Way To A Million Blog is based upon the Doubling Method "How to Double Your Way to a £Million in 28 Steps". Using the Doubling Rule it is an attempt to "Double Your Way to a Million" by going from one penny to a million dollars, starting from nothing. At the beginning you start by finding a penny and then double a penny until reaching $1,000,000. posted by Xinfinitum | 5:29 PM PermaLink
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