Please for give the contruction......
The about page of this blog is still under construction. Please forgive the abrupt ending. I will be finishing it.
Here is a blog that I posted towards the beginning of the year. I still had a list of 
objectives, with little boxes that could be checked off as I controlled my own destiny. I was trying to give life to the crusty, salty dog that is my painful alter ego. Perspective changes with time. I can’t see that part of the road clearly anymore. Mostly because I am on this part of it now. Either way, I’ve met some really cool people lately. During the stories that often spew from the gulch that is my being , pain as an entity came up. It is interesting how people from all walks of life can feel that their pain experience is so personalized. So isolated. But when it comes down to it, the therapy, the meds, they’re all the same. Our adaptation, our coping mechanisms seem to be engrained in us. As primal as our instinct to love, hate, kill, and lie. A weakness in the human condition. Yet, we have programming to deal with it. It often rolls back the values that we think are right for the time, and brings them back to ground zero. Ready for what really matters. Here is a blog of mine originally posted on MySpace earlier this year.
THAT SALTY DOG
I am tired of the pursuit of the truth of who I really am. Every time I get on the tail of that slippery bastard, he gives me the switch again. I think I’m me today, and tomorrow for sure we’ll both know the me that I’ve morphed into. You can bet your ass that he’ll be waiting to trick us both again.
I guess I’m tired of that feeling that I have when surprised by what I say. Some call it regret, some remorse, but I can always blame it on the me that I’ve become. He’s always just beyond my grasp, oh three inches or so. He has this funny way of letting me smell what he’ll become sometimes, but I’ve been fooled enough to second guess and bam, that’s when I yell, "holy shit" at my sons birth party.
So once again that slippery bastards got me pinned, we started out poor liars together. We actually helped each other clean up our act and got quite far with his loud abrasive banter. I should mention, that from time to time it is me that will stretch the truth. I certainly did not get my self into my current predicament without the help of that salty dude. My broken back, and shaky mind have got the marks of that prankster written on all sides. With each limp and every pill I can hear him cackling, three inches, no wait just three seconds past my grasp he dishes just below my thresh hold.
I hope he doesn’t read this, but we both know he typed it from just beyond my grasp. For now I will swallow my pills and count my reps and he should count his blessings. For when I get my strength back, his ass I’ll be a whipping!
Prepare to be Affected,
Ripp
Hello there. Just wanted to drop a quick line your way to let you k
now that I am still alive. The past month has been shaky. I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted this past Tuesday. (to the right is a short video explaining the surgery. I am recovering from that. I think that will be the last time I have an elective surgery for quite some time. This is the first time in a while that I have not been waiting for “the next thing” to come along and cure me. This is it. A surgery to have a stimulator implanted in my brain could help with the pain that I am left with; but hose who know me will confirm that I am a brick shy of a load already. At this point though, I have enough marbles left to at least wait a few years before I let them split my melon.
A little information for you on the spinal cord stimulator. I have a Medtronic PrimeADVANCED Neurostimulator. In laymen’s terms, I have a non-rechargeable remote controlled pacemaker like implant that has two wires or “leads” that come out of it that were inserted into the spinal column
that enter at the T-10/ T-11 level. These were inserted through two 
epidural needles much like the ones used to administer epidural anesthesia to a woman who is having a baby. They inserted them while I was awake so that I could let them know If I experienced any increase of pain, or unexpected numbness. Once they got the leads where they had them during the trial stimulator using a printout of the x-ray from both procedures, they activated the leads to verify if the coverage of my pain was the same or better. It was right on. They made an incision so that they could tie down the leads to my spine. This will keep them positioned place while they are healing . Scar tissue will build up around them holding them in place. I can’t bend, twist, squat, or do anything but stay straight for 6-8 weeks to let this happen.
Now for the generator. This is implanted in my right butt-cheek, just below the waistli
ne. I was fitted with the non-rechargeable one. During my trial stimulator I kept track of the settings that I used around the clock. They used this information to calculate what stimulator I would receive. The rechargeable one is far more expensive, and does not need to be replaced for 10 years. The downside to it is the charging. I need to lay down with the charger strapped to me for 4 hours a week. The one that I was fitted with will last 3-5 years before replacement but all I have to do in the meantime is use it. The surgery to replace the generator/battery can be done with a local anesthetic. So, in short, I am happy with the one I got.
The controller is about the size of one of those old two-way pagers, weight and dimension wise. It is very easy to use. I hold it up to the implant site, press the sync button. it syncs and displays the current status of the unit , and I put in whatever changes that I want to make with it. I hold it back up to the implant, hit sync, and it does what it is supposed to do.
I am still in too much post operation discomfort to realize the full impact it has on my pain level and location. I am feeling enough to get excited though. That’s enough to keep me going for now. In the end I have a beautiful wife and four beautiful children, if this is a good as it gets, they make it more than alright. It has been a long time coming. It is not the end of the whole situation. Hopefully it is the beginning.
I am recovering at home, drinking lots of water, watching a lot of movies, and I just reinstalled Flight Simulator X on my computer, so I’ll be visiting Hawaii later this afternoon. Please fasten your seatbelts and……….
Prepare to be Affected!!!!!!!
Much love,
Ripp 
WordPress Tags: Scar tissue,spinal column,spinal cord,surgery,brain,pain,Medtronic,Neurostimulator,pacemaker,
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,Ripp,spinal,stimulator,rechargeable,epidural
It is kind of funny. When a women says that she is a stay at home mom, there is a kind of unspoken admiration with many layers of respect. The mother is sacrificing her career to stay home and help build decent active members of the community. A stay at home dad on the other hand, is silently regarded as a kept man. A Wii junky. Someone who couldn’t make it in the big leagues so he shoved his beautiful wife out into the world so that he could put the kids in front of the TV, and catch up on all of the internet developments that he had neglected over the years by going in every day and bothering with his "pesky" job.
I am now a stay at home dad. I had a few unsuccessful spine surgeries that have left me disabled and unable to handle traveling, or even jockeying my old desk. I am at home. I’ve been able to get to know my kids a lot better than I would have ever been able to otherwise. I can’t take care of all of their needs because of my injuries. But I do what I can.
My initial instinct when I started down this road, was to turn it into a schedule-riding two-headed monster. A well oiled daddy day-care machine. The kids would be ahead of their classmates, would eat clever new foods, know several languages, and have me to thank for it. It wasn’t that easy. First of all, we are talking of creatures who have free will. That’s right. From the 15 year old all the way down to the three year old. This was something that I had not been accustomed too. Back at work, I was the boss, on a team of bosses that got results. When I walked into a room, the conversation would trail off. "The boss is in the room! Shh!" When I said jump, they did. Now it is a battle to get people to chew with their mouth’s closed.
There was an incident the other day where our dog ate the babies yogurt and then puked on him. Then the baby puked on the dog, who when I yelled, “Biscuit go! Biscuit go out!” let nature take it’s course on the floor causing the baby to heave once more before I could get the cleanup process started. No, I did not throw up or get any of the secretions on me; although I have a good story about that, but I’ll save it for another post. Point is, I am middle management now. The children are the boss. Whatever I do, I can’t let them see me sweat. I have gone from road- warrior corporate ladder-climbing, to domestic engineer, entry-level.
The kids come to me for everything now; from tattling to comfort after a fall. I am their harbor in which safety lies. The judge and jury for every argument. I am surprised by how much this experience has changed me. My patience has been expanded. My love has been enriched. I automatically know what each little cry means. I can tell when they are tired, hungry, injured, or just in need of a hug. My time management skills have come in handy. My yelling voice has been a hindrance. Louder just makes people cry, and makes me feel like a total jerk.They have taught me about a space inside myself that I did not know existed. It is a one inch ball just inside my chest, and under my solar plexus. It is warm and aches when they are hurt. It tingles when they laugh or sing. It vibrates when they run inside, or ask" “why” after everything I say. This spot is my heart. Not the pumping one, but the loving one. In my mind’s eye it grows so big that it motivates me to do many things. To sing Bob the Builder, even when I am alone in the car. It motivates me to let them go a bit too far, and then look them in the eye and zap them without speaking a word.
The other day my wife left just before dinner. I did not clearly understand where she was going. I called her on her cell to see, and she was getting something from the hardware store and would be home in 30 or so minutes. That little spot made me say, “You know Shauna, I’ve had this roast in since noon, and now you’re going to have to eat it when it is cold!” That’s right. The little spot caused me to bitch about dinner. I stopped in the grocery store the other day and read the cover of US Weekly. I said to myself in a quiet voice, “That poor Kate and her eight. How could John cheat on her, and with one of the kids teacher’s. That Pig!”
All kidding aside. I am grateful for the time that I am spending with my family. There is a silver lining to this after all. I am growing and learning and loving. It is enough to keep my mind from the pain at times. Thanks to Shauna and Brian Plus Four!
I’ll keep you up to date with how it’s going. Leave me a comment. Let me know what you think.
Prepare to be affected!
Ripp
WordPress Tags: Home,career,wife,kids,spine
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This is a video of the procedure that I had done today to restart my heart. Scary Shit
Use link if embedding fails
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nsN0vdXZuY
At approximately 2:00 am this morning, my youngest boy woke his mother I out of a dead (Ambien induced on my part) sleep by lovingly projectile vomiting all over our bed. After several episodes, and changes of sheets, (yes this went on until 5 amish) I settled down to watch Brewster’s Millions on TNT. This is when I first take notice of it. My heart was pounding as if I had just finished today’s round of squat thrusts. It was not painful. but it was very uncomfortable. My heart was jumping around like a puppy in a pillowcase. (playfully) After another hour or so I was able to get things settled down in my brain and drifted off to sleep. I 
crashed hard til 8 am. Immediately upon waking I felt my heart jumping around more than it had before I dozed off earlier. I found that I felt weak. The beats would come on like morose code. Boomp….boomp boomp boomp…..boomp boomp/ Once again, not painful. but evermore irritating and anxious. I was worried. I had a racing heart before. Too much caffeine carbs, or sugar usually the culprit. This time it showed no signs of letting up.
I went to the hospital and got checked into the ER. They put me on a heart monitor and it showed a condition that is know as arterial fibrillation. When this happens you have 48 hours in which the doctor needs to intervene. If they don’t, the heart pumps 20%les effective and could send blood clots to your legs. Arterial fibrillation is a possible sign of heart disease and may cause stroke, when blood pools in the ventricles because of the atriums quivering motion.
Long story short, I wanted this over and I wanted it over now. There were two options. Option 1 would put me on another medication that made me dopy and would thin out my blood. Then, whenever they could fit me in I would attend an appointment with the cardiology and we would figure out the next step together. Option 2, they stop my heart and then restart it electrically. Instantly stopping the current episode. I get to meet with a cardiologist to see why this happened to such a strapping young lad. I went with two. Kick Start My Heart played fin my head as I signed the medical release. Option two it was. I was transferring to the room and given a sedative to calm me down a bit. Then, my night night juice.
The stuff entered the catheter in my hand with power to render me unconscious in 20 seconds flat. It was liquid fire, burning my hand than my are. Was it consuming me from the inside? The smell of rubbing alcohol hit me. The world went woozy for 2 seconds and just faded away, and opened the world to nothing. Nothing at all!!Next thing I remember the world begins to come back. Echoes at first, then figures looking down at me through the murkiness of a shallow pond. Then that cleared. I remembered them asking me my name. I did not answer. I remember them asking me what my wife’s name was. The women in the r I said “Shauna”, I said.
Now, after being put out, My heart stopping, and then being restarted my question is was I dead? Was that nothing really the curtains? Do we just pop out of existences. Do all of the neurons just stop firing and and the energy stored dissipated as heat in our first clod night alone? Something tells me my quest is still on. This little experience bare doing anything to my world picture.
They packed me up, and sent me home 45 minutes after. I need to make that appointment with the cardiologists. Happy Happy, Joy Joy……….
R.I.P.
PS. I could not get a better shot of the paddle burn promised on Facebook.
Ripp
Prepare to be Affected
WordPress Tags: Flat,Real,World,Experience,Arterial,Fibrillation,Ambien,projectile,bead,door,spouse
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I have not posted in several days. This is my first Oregonian allergy season. My wife was so ill that we ended up in the urgent care center several times over the weekend. I think I have the flu now on top of it. If you are planning on seeing me any time soon, I’d make sure that you are not standing as tall as me. Lightening will be striking any time. Enough complaining. About that anyhow.
I am still searching for a purpose for this blog. So far. I put a few clips of my high school video yearbook up. One person looked at that I know of. I messed up and made all of the clips 1GB instead of 10 minutes on YouTube. All but one of the clips were taken down. I will re-digitize them from VHS later this week and re-release. I will hit the Face Book circuit hard in order to try to get some more readers. I can blame no one for not reading. I am blogging about not knowing what to blog about for the most part. Kind of Seinfeldesque, on a dumber level. I am writing a piece on chasing my children around the internet. From social network to network. Once parents find sites and think they are cool, the kids must move on to something new. Cat and mouse.
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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. |
Source: http://quotes4all.net/quote_1004.html
[Powered by QuotesPlugin v1.0 for Windows Live Writer]
This is what I need..
K.I.S.S.
Here’s to keeping it simple sweetheart.
I’ll bee back to ya real soon.
Ripp
This is awesome. Because I think it is awesome, I am awesome. Are you awesome?
I do not know what I am worried about. When I published this post this post this video had been seen 348, 408 times. I just need to post. Someone will find me!
Ripp
Prepare to be affected
“If you have “needing money” in your vibration, then you will keep attracting needing money. You have to find a way of being happy NOW, feeling good NOW, and being in joy NOW, without money, because those great feelings are how you will feel with the money. Money doesn’t bring happiness – but happiness brings money.”
I found this while doing research for the blog yesterday. It really struck a chord with me. The person who quoted it said it was from the Dali Lama. So it is a quote of a quote and definitely more profound than, “Kunga Gadunga.” No need to quote that. I have been trying to center myself. Find out what makes me tick. An injury induced mid life review. (/crisis) A wise man once said if you want to be happy smile. The above quote hit the proverbial spot. 
I am still hard at work arranging and researching and brushing up on English. I am letting this whole thing take on a life if it’s own. I love to read and write. More importantly I love to talk. I hope you love listening.
Ripp
Here is a recommendation for anybody interested in listening to a very cool vantage point of a very complicated subject. I have listened to it on CD about 15 times. I t gets you thinking in a good way! He compares existence and the theology behind it, and the connection to science. Kunga Gadunga
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The Universe in a Single Atom (Unabridged) |
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After name dropping for months, mentally wrastling wrestling with my wife, and about as much strategery (intended GWism) as this south Florida boy could muster, I gathered my birthday money together and logged into to e-Bay. I placed my hand firmly on my mouse. A bead of sweat building on my brow as I rolled the cursor into the search box, clicked, and typed, ” iPod Touch; 2G; Reconditioned.” Now I know what you’re thinking, “Ripp, reconditioned?” I will remind you that we are in a recession, I am out of work, and I have a house for sale in Atlanta if you are interested.
I placed the order Friday. By Saturday morning the tracking link on the e-Bay website read a delivery date of Tuesday. For those of you who know me, I am a little bit of a junkie when it comes to electronics. The focus of this blog is evidence of that. Right now my IPod touch, iPod shuffle, HP Ipaq, LG Decoy (cell phone) and digital camera are all connected via cable or Bluetooth to my computer right now. I won’t even go into the rest of the list right now. This enthusiasm for the electromagnetic made this a horribly long wait. But Tuesday came. 11 am the little red, white, and blue truck from heaven stops. Our mail carrier get’s out and I meet her at the door. I have the package. It is everything I imagined and more. I’ve had it a few weeks and it is amazing. I am a very organized person, and I looked at this to combine the PDA and iPod that I was carrying. One glaring mistake on the entire industry’s part with this technology is the lack of a task manager that syncs with a desk or laptop computer. Note taking and organization has been very limited as well due to the limitation of what can be done on a handheld device versus the complexity of what can be done on a desk or laptop.
Enter Evernote stage left…. I found out about them company about a week ago through http://www.walyou.com for those who give a poop, that is my favorite website. If you like cool off the wall stuff http://www.walyou.com is your one stop shop. Anyway, through http://www.walyou.com I found http://www.evernote.com/. Their pitch is intruging. “Remember everything”, reads the browser tab on their site. I am using it as my to-do list. I am also using it to keep notes while I go through out the web. Little things that normally would go forgotten are recorded, a time line representing right now. The software is on my computer, iPod and the internet. They all sync with each other via the internet. The software also has a very cool feature which recognizes letters in a picture and, when downloaded to the software the text in the picture is searchable. See something you like, take a picture tag it as “shopping list” then when you go out shopping (or send someone else out wink wink) you just search for that tag and all of your “shopping list items are right there waiting for you. It does thousand of time more than I could ever explain. So I will cease and will opt to let you explore their site on your own. I think they have a great product. Even if you don’t have a problem with the iPhone/Pod, check them out. Evernote, they are my second brain. Let me know what you think.
ripp
This blog has yet to be focused. Most would say that this is the kiss of death. I say Nay! Nay I say. For I am a nay say er. When I am not wearing that hat I say poppycock! That’s right. I just said poppycock. Actually, to be correct, I wrote poppycock and nay. I said neither. Brr it’s cold in here.
