positiveenerg.bsky.social
Milwaukee native Dad who raised three Packers fans in Chicago. Work in progress. Walk and shoot 📷 , plants and animals. Anti-Fascist. End the war on drugs. Support harm reduction and civil justice - treat all people with dignity. ✌🏼❤️🌻
769 posts
1,274 followers
1,943 following
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Thanks!
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Thanks! ✌🏼❤️🌻
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Thanks! ✌🏼❤️🌻
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33/
child social worker daughter’s place with her while I sort out job that will allow me to pay for apartment in city. A journey. But today, since Chicago Public Schools had no classes and didn’t work, went to a fav place in for my lunch, our dinner tonight and my sack lunch in school tomorrow.
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I’ve got BA and a JD but have no education, training or certification to work in public/community health or teach in schools. Substitute teaching doesn’t pay much, not sure what will happen if not chosen for the programs to which I’ve applied but we will see. I have been staying in my
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Got my license as a substitute teacher, went through all approvals and background checks for Chicago Public Schools and am working in different classrooms every day in different, diverse schools throughout Chicago and have applied for opportunities to get an education degree and be certified
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live and work as adults and quit my career and try to start a new one helping people, particularly those who are often disadvantaged or compromised or ignored or abused by our society and systems. I still owe for my hospital bills from the accident but moved back to Chicago
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experiencing homelessness. Both those experiences and similar experiences earlier in life and personal work in my journey have caused me recently to leave a decades long career in government relations (local, state and federal) and leave Washington, DC, return to Chicago where my kids still
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feminine hygiene products and products for skincare, wound care, access to classes they could attend and get a free visa gift card. The people were so nice and I learned so much from the orientation and from the orientation for a rotating shelter for which I volunteered in Chicago for people
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to wait even LONGER before I could volunteer. Eventually I got to my orientation and would work a weekly shift serving the clients, providing them with clean needles and other smoking materials, access to naloxone, healthcare resources, mental health resources, clean socks, toothpaste, snacks,
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significant financial resources or the ability to work. The one appointment I missed that did bother me was my scheduled orientation meeting with the Denver Harm Reduction Action Center where I intended to volunteer. They did the meetings quarterly, I think and I would miss mine and have
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Understanding from different speakers at our monthly meetings at what I called “the hippie cafe” about the science behind benefits from different psychedelics and from my own experiences. I also continued to feel free. Not much of a care in the world, even though I didn’t have insurance or
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24/
told myself I would ask because if it wasn’t a deliberate strategy, it could have been and might be beneficial for others in the future facing multiple surgeries. I’ve never talked to the right people to discuss it since then.
I was a member of the local psychedelic society and had an
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But I was glad I did apologize and I was more curt than I should have been. I wondered whether knowing I would have multiple surgeries in multiple days if they pumped me full of ketamine for that first surgery on purpose to help put me in a better mental place to confront what was coming. I
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Third surgery eventually was on arm. And yes, I did apologize to primary nurse to whom I feared I demonstrated impatience or might have been curt that one time she and I had different understanding of my fentanyl dose.
She laughed and said I was fine and didn’t have any reason to apologize
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and in a sling this whole time but with all the neck issues and surgeries, I asked my primary nurse when they would finally fix my arm/shoulder. She didn’t know. I remembered talking to a doctor in first night I arrived or maybe it was the next morning and never hearing anything about it again
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ketamine this time but he gave me some bullshit explanation (all valid I’m sure) about why what I was getting would be better for this surgery, yadda yadda …
After that surgery continued on in SICU aka heaven in my neck brace, with my hourly visits for vitals and my left arm was wrapped
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to be concerning. With that ketamine I could not only survive anything, but I’d also enjoy it. I looked forward to the ketamine. Sadly, however, I got different drugs for surgery two. The anesthesiologist met with me prior to surgery and explained what he’d be giving me. I asked him about
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was administered ketamine for the first surgery and it was incredible. After surgery I had two of my nephews who live in the Denver area there when I was coming down and we laughed and talked and I felt like I was in heaven. Remembering that I didn’t find the concerning info about surgery two
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17/
second will be through the back and it will be much worse. We have to get through all the muscles and tendons in back that hold your head up, so your surgery and recovery, much more significant.
I laughed. I found it all pretty amusing and him pretty amusing. I appreciated the candor. I
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after he had performed the first survey of the second would be easier for me. Told him that I had heard the second would be easier on me and he yelled “Easier?! Who told you that?! That’s not true. It is going to be much harder! The first was through the front. There is nothing in front. The
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and the lead asking if I had any questions. Sometimes you don’t think of questions right away so appreciated opportunity to be asked at different times. Of the memorable exchanges, I remember asking the lead surgeon on my neck surgeries (he was good, did have an ego, was a straight shooter)
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that would be working on me that day. I had surgeons, residents and med students in for a morning meeting to explain my day, my procedures, my meds and every person involved. All were listed on the whiteboard in my room and all the times and dosages of meds and I was visited regularly by docs
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the double dose of fentanyl for that administration and she thought (mistakenly) it was to be a single dose on that hour. I decided I would apologize the next time she came in. There was great communication in the hospital. I had meetings every morning with the team leader and team of docs
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was in good spirits throughout my time there. I was kind, patient and understanding. Trying to be very kind to staff nurses who took great care of me. Only one time, did I feel bad thinking I didn’t meet that self-imposed standard. I felt that I was curt with the nurse when I was scheduled for
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hit by the car and throughout those 8 days. I’m sure I dozed, but they sent someone in 24/7 to check my vitals throughout my stay and I was awake for all of them. One big, clumsy guy that would try to “sneak in” at 2 or 3 a.m. would always bang something or drop a metal pan. It cracked me up. I
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So got my second ambulance ride to Denver Health who was already prepared to receive me. We skipped emergency room and were admitted directly to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit where I would spend the next 7-8 days.
It was a great place and I was pretty much awake from the time I got
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No, I know exactly what it is. And it’s a good medicine for pain, go ahead and give it to me and he did.
The paramedics took me to St. Joe’s and once they took a picture of my neck immediately gurney’d me out to the hallway to board a new ambulance, headed for Denver Health, a trauma center
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Told me that they were going to inject me with some fentanyl and I said “That’s interesting because my brother recently died from a fentanyl overdose in Milwaukee.”
He explained that this wasn’t the same and that the fentanyl he would administer was hospital grade … and I interrupted him saying
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it was a funky new t-shirt from Art Smart’s Dart Mart and Juggling Emporium on Milwaukee’s east side, off Brady Street that a friend had sent after I sent her two shirts from Swanky’s in Denver, which is an amazing Green Bay Packers bar near Coors Field.
They cut shirt off down my chest and
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day, just into sunset and I was only wearing a t-shirt underneath, so we unzipped it and slid it off as I lay on the board they had slid under me. When we got in the ambulance, the male paramedic said they would have to cut my t-shirt off. I wasn’t happy about that because
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Said they would have to cut my coat off. I said no. It was a very nice, perfect color, deeply discounted (and probably mis-priced) North Face winter coat, best I’ve ever owned, from Marshall’s. Amazingly, they didn’t cut off my coat. It was a fairly mild, sunny
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Strangely, I felt more free than I ever have. My work, my responsibilities, my worries and anxieties were all gone. I knew I had no control over anything and I’d just be going along to deal with whatever came.
When the paramedics arrived, they