My brother Charlie remains in hospital...

I called my Mother last night to ask how she is doing and how my brother Charlie is doing. She said the surgeons were going to do a artery replacement. The veins in is left leg are closing up and not allowing sufficient blood flow. That is the reason the ulser on his left heel isn't healing. So, the surgeons want to take a "healthy" vein and run if from the "healthy" arteries nearest the ulser to the ulser. The premise is this will lead to a much higher blood flow and healing.

I told my Mother, "if the veins are so bad, then he's lucky to still have the leg."

She sniffed and I finally realized that I should have kept my big mouth shut. "You don't want to talk about this?"

"I can't", she said and I changed the subject.

Charlie was born after my parents thought their "family making days" were over. Since I was 14 when he was born, I became the built-in-baby sitter and (happily) the doting oldest brother who did his best to spoil "his boy". His life has not been a wonderful as we had hoped it would be; the juvenile onset diabetes, along with some other problems, lead to that. (It is admissions like this that keep me from blurting out who I am; I just don't want the family to know I'm pulling "a Howard Stern" and am letting the one or two readers of this electron rag "see the private parts". Oh well...

Back to practicing medicine without a license.

But, if the other veins are shot and are letting very little blood through, this seems like a pointless and ultimately futile operation. If what they told my brother Jim is correct, Charlie will end up losing the leg anyway. In my opinion, he will have suffered a useless operation. On the other hand, he would have kept that left leg a few days or weeks longer and will be able to scratch his calf or stretch it or even walk about on it for that extra time.

That alone may make this replacement worth doing...

I called him last night (after talking with our Mother) and he couldn't talk. He'd suffered a severe reaction to the (anti) "pain meds" the night before and had spent the night vomiting. (Something I'm used to from a couple of bouts of food poisoning in the local area.) His being a type 1 diabetic meant that he was losing any food he may have eatten and was unable to keep down anything.

So, the infection probably jacked up his blood sugar and the vomiting may well have lowered it (or raised it, I'll have to ask the "American Diabetics Association").

But, back to his leg. Even if this operation simply lets him keep his let for days or weeks longer, he will have had the leg that much longer. That is a good thing, even if his "co-payments" will continue to escaliate. What the hell, he's probably so in debt that only bankruptcy under the old rules could have saved him. Under the new rules, he fucked! Ah, another thing we can thank "our" Congress-critters for!!! (If irony were cash I'd be rich after that statement!)

It also galls me since I'm a life long Republican (but think the individual is more important than the company so maybe I'm really a Democrat?).