Never Once During College Lacrosse or Football

“A tough time for me the last few days. I’ll write about it in my next post.”

I promised so here it is. It’s GROSS so bail out now if these things bother you…

But I’ve got to tell you what I went through to get this book to you only a month late…

About 2 months ago, I started to get DVTs (deep vein thromboses) in both of my legs. It went full-fledge and I put myself on Coumadin (thanks to a prescription from a college friend and then Dr. Martinez when the first one ran out).

I got the DVTs from sitting on my rear 18 hours a day finishing the book. I even stayed all night at Panera on A1A twice to finish, mooching their outside plug and Wifi (mine broke a month ago and COMCAST/X-finity won’t come to fix it.) Try it sometime. Even the commercial world is beautiful and peaceful at 4:30 in the morning.

I wasn’t able to monitor how anticoagulated I was with an INR- it should be 2 - 3…- because Baptist Beaches Hospital in Jax Beach, FL wouldn’t let me check the level unless I registered in the ER and paid an outrageous fee. (Yes, they knew I was a heart surgeon, but “rules is rules” I guess).

So I said, “To hell with it”. I know I’m anticoagulated because it took 6 hours for a cut finger to stop bleeding the other day, my fitted bedsheet is slowly becoming filled with red polka-dots and every time I brush my teeth I spit blood into the sink for about 45 minutes.

In the mirror, I look like I have TTP (thrombotic, thrombocytopenic purpura) with bruises all over my face (which was helpful at Panera because nobody would sit within 10 feet of me and I got the plugs all to myself.

The sweet waitresses there put a napkin out every morning that read “Please reserve for Dr. Sheftall” (or maybe they were trying to keep from getting sued. I looked like I had beri-beri-dengue-cholera yellowmalaria or something contagious like that; Walking very slowly, very zombie-like, I scared the shit out of a few girls from Ponte Vedra High school. Blook started coming from the corners of my eyes one day.

I had to have the plug. Did I mention that I have no internet at home while trying to write a book that has to be 100% accurate?

Here’s what my legs looked like:

That big bulge is not my maleolus. It’s much too low. Not sure what that is…

You can see a hint of my maleoli there. I usually have very slim ankles and bony feet- like my wrists and hands. My leg hair fell out too. I was pretty sick.

It was bilateral. I had it in both legs. I went from 216 lbs to 266 in 2 weeks, 25 lbs of water in each lower extremity. 25 pounds is pretty heavy. I was lugging it around in each of my legs all day. I could barely walk. You couldn’t see my kneecaps and it took about 5 minutes to bend my knees since the water had to be pushed out to somewhere else very slowly so my skin wouldn’t split open. It was so tight, it was as hard as a table.. I don’t have a picture but both calves were enormous- bigger than my upper thighs.

So I got some coumadin, aka Warfarin:

Nothing changed for a week. Then, blood started coming out of my fingernails (thus the red polka-dotted sheets), the 45 minutes spitting blood after brushing my teeth. and the bruises on my face, abdomen and flanks.

(Every time I write the word “blood”, I think of my girlfriend/wife, Alin. She pronounces it “blue’d” because she taught herself to speak English using a pocket Vietnamese/Chinese/English Dictionary. (She never got the chance to go to school. Her mother made her sell sandwiches on the street starting at age 4. Here’s Alin when I met her 21 years ago (in my clinic):

and now

We’re having a little “disagreement”. She wants me to quit being a doctor. “You’re old”, she said. “ You work too hard,” she said. She’s also afraid I’m going to find someone else across the street at the hospital. (We live in a hotel room across the street from Central Hospital in Phnom Penh. She waits in the window for me to come back to our room. Sometimes, I wave to her from a window in the hospital.

“I don’t want anyone but you”, I assured her. “You have nothing to worry about”.

“Blue’d”… She speaks 8 languages, though. Fluently.

She’s never worn make-up in her life, she has a deep scratchy sexy voice like the female FM DJs and she’s a south-paw. It doesn’t hurt that she looks like a movie star either. Yeah, she’s ok

My next book is going to be about her/us. It will be another non-fiction book. But you won’t believe half of it.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures. They were taken from a phone video I shot from my hip while we were “discussing”. She doesn’t think I love her because I let her go out on the street by herself. “This isn’t a prison,” I told her.

“Don’t you worry I will meet another man .. and go with him? (she gets harassed regularly when I’m not with her.)

“I worry about it, but I trust you… Do I have any reason not to trust you?”

“Never.”

Here’s a painting I did of Alin 5 years ago. I can draw pretty well- sometimes… but this was my first portrait painting..

I hadn’t seen her in 16 years. She was so thin. We were still in love. We held hands with both hands like we used to. She fell asleep on my arm for 3 hours in a noisy beer garden. We went home and I did some sketches of her and took some pictures. I finished this later . Just that one night- that was all- then she disappeared again for two years.

Two years later, I saw her one night walking down the street when I whizzed by on my bicycle. This time , I took her home to my room in the hotel and she never left. That’s when I found out she was in prison for those two years. If I had known I could have bribed the jailers in Cambodia and bought her out or maybe gotten a favor done for me by the higher ups I used to play golf with but I didn’t know she was in there.

See, I told you… You don’t believe some of it already, do you? And I’ve left out some major parts, like the 24 times we’ve broken up in two years. But as soon as she gets to the room I got for her, she calls me on “face time” and we talk all night. Or at least until I invite her over to eat with me the next day and she moves back in. I didn’t tell you about the time she climbed up 7 stories to get to our balcony one night at 1:30 am, using the cable TV wires. No make-up. She’s never worn make up in her life.

My pants started looking polka-dotted too. This was the only pair I could get my legs into so I had to wear them every day.

Most of the dots are near my zipper. If the bruises on my face didn’t gross out the girls from PV High , that probably did.

A few days after I started bleeding excessively, I got a kidney stone. It is excruciating. I’ll pray you never get one. I was on the floor for 24 hours writhing in pain. I did find a thumb drive I had lost. It was under the bed, in a pile of dust. It was the USB that had the picture of Henry writing “what happened?” to me when I was helping him with his letters. If you’ve read the book already, you know what I’m talking about.

Kidney stones happen when the urine gets saturated with CA++ and phosphate-- and stones crystalize out of solution (just like when your 1st grade teacher put tons of sugar in a jar of water and stirred it up, then hung a string down into it and crystals formed on the string ; crystals of sugar.

Crystals have sharp edges and cut your ureter (the tube that goes from your kidneys to your bladder.) Normally, that’s ok but I was anticoagulated so it kept bleeding all night. I noticed when I peed is looked very dark. I switched on the lights and it was bright red blood- this went on for 4 days and I got very anemic. Finally coca cola-colored urine came out (metabolized blood looks like coffee grounds). I had stopped my coumadin because my legs got better but 2 days later they ballooned up again. I’m back on coumadin again peeing bright red blood.

I had to inject myself with a huge dose of morphine. Twice. I was so delirious, I over-pulled the first one.

All this happened while a hurricane hit. If you can figure out the pattern I painted in my deck from this little bit, you are my hero. The lights were out while I was writhing on the floor. It was a strange experience

What does all of this have to do with College lacrosse and football? I was blind-sided many times in both while throwing passes. Right in my kidneys. But I never peed blood for 4 days.

Writing is tough.

Extra credit for anyone who explains in the comments what my deck pattern is or how my kidney stones are related to the DVTs.