Sunday family dinner

Christian's favorite pastime.
The only pic I got of Austin was blurry, hmmm. It was good to see him though.

Rebecca and Paul.

Me and cute little boy.

Christian is all boy and such fun!

Ma and Pa; they are a riot.

Andrew, Kate, and Rebecca chow down.

It seems Christian thoroughly enjoyed the crowd and wanted to join in.

Sundance Film Fest 2011

Got out of the hospital just in time...the trip begins.

We didn't run into anybody famous this year, as the fest was winding down. They were already taking stuff down on Saturday and the fest goes through Sunday, most notably the Brita Hut was gone...what I looked forward to the most, but still got some Brita SWAG from a kind soul.

The moose is loose.

My old buddy, Bear.

The Egyptian theater.

A Michael Fatali pic, until we went inside the studio, where they told us to stop taking pictures. Andrew says this guy is one of his inspirations.

The Indian and mountain lion sculpt.

At Sundance resort.

The Dawgdude, film buff.

The Dawgdude, would be movie star.

Lil' ol me.

We saw 2 movies this year at Sundance. We saw a movie called "The Catechism Cataclysm on Friday night at the Tower Theater at 9th and 9th in SLC. It was a very weird dark comedy, but not too dark, about a young Catholic priest, questioning what he is doing, with the makers of Eastbound Down (which I have never seen). Enjoyed the energy of the crowd, and had a good question and answer session with the director afterwards, which is always interesting.

On Saturday night, we saw the winner of the US documentary award, so we did not know until 30 minutes before it started what it would be. It was called "How to Die in Oregon," horrible but good. It was about physician-assisted suicide, which is legal in Oregon. It was quite an ordeal to watch, but intentionally so, as they were trying to get the point across of how it is to die slowly of liver cancer.

The Old Spaghetti Factory. I have many memories of this place, but it was Gary's first time, so fun!

Smiles.

Self-port.
Provo in an inversion from the Bonneville Trail, but nice weather all 'round.

Beloved Squaw Peak.

Hospital times.

To add to this winter's one thing after another's happenings, I was hospitalized for 6 days starting January 22. For about 2 weeks prior, I had been having epigastric abdominal pain and I started taking OTC Zantac, for heartburn, which seemed to have helped.


On January 21, Gary's birthday, at about 2 p.m., I had some birthday cake, and started feeling crappy then. Then we had some birthday dinner that evening. About 10 p.m., I went to bed and shortly thereafter threw up. Then got up about an hour later to vomit again. This time, as I squatted in front of the toilet, I passed out. Gary helped me to the floor, he went to call 911, then came back, and I was sitting up again, with vomit on the floor. He then said he was taking me to the hospital. I was like, "are you serious, what?" I felt my heart racing on the way to the hospital. Fortunately it was 1:30 a.m., and the ER was not very busy and got right in. I threw up again in a garbage can in triage. By the way, I am not one who vomits, it seems it has been years since I have vomited.





View from my hospital window.


Gracie comes to visit.

Buddy and Jasmine say hi.

In the ER, they found I was in atrial fibrillation, very fast and irregular heart rate. They put me on a diltiazem drip through the night to convert me to a normal sinus rhythm, which finally happened about 6 a.m. They gave me an abdominal CT scan and a gallbladder ultrasound through that night. It was a very uncomfortable night in the ER as I was on a gurney with the head up and lights on and EKG monitoring wires and IVs draped everywhere. The ER techs and docs would come into my ER room periodically to see if I had converted to a sinus rhythm...one of them commented it was like watching a football game. That's how they get their kicks. I found it very interesting too.

In the morning, they took me up to the telemetry or cardiac floor. There I saw the hospitalist, who said I would have a possibly 24-hour stay.

They found I had a urinary tract infection, so I was started on IV antibiotics. They found my TSH level extremely low, and deemed I had thyrotoxicosis or hyperthyroidism, which put me into a-fib. On the IV antibiotics (Zosyn), which lasted about 4 days every 6 hours, I had continuous diarrhea.

For the first couple of days on the floor, they gave me a medicine to slow my heart rate. My resting heart rate is around 60, so that made my heart rate go down to the 40s, so they stopped that.

Each day as the doctor came to visit, he said I should stay one more day. On the 5th day, I got a new doctor, who wanted to definitively rule out the gallbladder, so ordered a HIDA scan and said I should stay one more day. The HIDA scan results were good, no gallbladder problems, so finally was able to be dismissed on the 6th hospital day. I was started back on synthetic thyroid.

I had been on Armour Thyroid, which is natural pig thyroid. My doctor who prescribed this medication also told me I could increase the dose in the wintertime as I was more hypothyroid in the wintertime. I had also not had my thyroid level checked in over a year. The doctor in the hospital told me that the natural thyroid can vary by as much as 20%, which is why most docs prefer the synthetic thyroid as it can be much more easily controlled. Needless to say, I am convinced not to be on natural thyroid any more or to increase my own dose and to be very careful.

Abdominal pain persisted throughout the hospitalization, but has now subsided, so it must have been related to the thyrotoxicosis. Also had a headache every day of the hospitalization, but that has died down now too.

By about the 2nd hospital day, I felt good enough to be released, but they wanted to make sure everything was okay. I was not allowed to leave the floor I was on as my heart was being monitored. I did not have a drop of sunshine for those 6 days. It kind of felt like jail, and I had a tele monitor around my neck the whole time, but as far as hospitalizations go, I had a good one , and know it could have been much, much worse.