Hospital

I Have this Feeling…in My Gut.

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I Have this Feeling…in My Gut.

For a few days I had noticed some pain in my abdomen, but they were fleeing.  On the twenty second of December, I began having more severe pain on my left side.  My doctor’s nurse practitioner had a last-minute cancellation and I left work early and went straight down to my doctor’s office.  The pain had subsided a bit by the time I got there and the pain was on my left side.  The nurse diagnosed me with diverticulitis and gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

I started feeling better and within a week I was feeling pretty good…until I finished my antibiotic regimen.  On New Year’s Day I began having some pain, again.  We went to an urgent care doctor.  Because of the diverticulitis diagnosis, they suspected it was probably something I ate. They sent me home and told me to see my primary care doctor.  After a few days I got in with my doctor and he sent me for a scan.  My appendix was mildly inflamed.  The antibiotics from the misdiagnosis of diverticulitis had reduced the inflammation, and he recommended a more aggressive course of antibiotics for the appendicitis.

If you are like me, you haven’t heard of treating appendicitis with antibiotics, but it is a real thing!  Here is a WebMD article that shows 80% of patients may find medicine effective rather than surgery. Apparently, this has been a standard practice in Europe for some time, now, and America is just coming around to this standard of treatment.

I consented to trying the more aggressive course of treatment and got started right away (Friday).  At 3:30am on Saturday morning I woke up intensely sick.  I got to the bathroom, somehow, but I was nearly incapacitated with nausea, intense pain, and my head was spinning.  Though my wife had left town for the weekend, luckily, I was not alone! My mother drove up to stay with me because my wife was concerned for me.  Carrie is so wise!  I yelled for my mother to call an ambulance.

Thankfully, the ambulance was quick to respond.  They were great.  They got me down the stairs, out of the house, out through the cold and bright flashing lights, onto the gurney and rolled me into the back of the ambulance.  I thought to myself, “the whole neighborhood is awake watching this.  How embarrassing!”

I was rushed to OSF Saint Francis and proceeded to sit in the Emergency Department for hours.  Good thing my appendix didn’t burst!

Once I got to a room in the Emergency Department, the doctors didn’t know what to do with me.  They would not or could not look at scans done by another hospital system and the doctors wouldn’t call to consult with my primary care doctor.  It just so happens that the doctor on-call for my primary care doctor’s office called me to check-in.  I put him on the phone with the doctors at St. Francis.

One doctor came in to say I had appendicitis and was going for surgery and then another doctor came in to say that I didn’t. Then a surgical resident came in to talk to me about my ‘pending’ surgery and then a GI doctor came in to tell me that there would not be surgery and it was not appendicitis.  I felt like a ping-pong ball.

I was admitted to the hospital and they kept me off food and ran some tests.  Worse than boredom is boredom with a completely empty and loudly growling stomach!  They never sent me for scans, but instead they watched my vitals, ran blood panels and tested my urine.  I’m so frustrated that they haven’t really consulted with my primary care doctor, as far as I know, or even looked at the scan taken on Friday.

I was discharged by the hospital on Sunday with instructions to come back and have an appointment with an OSF GI specialist.  I already have an appointment tomorrow with a GI specialist over in Bloomington (that appointment was set up when I saw my primary care doctor on Friday).  I just hope this specialist can figure things out and give me a diagnosis.

It’s bad enough that I don’t know what’s wrong with my GI tract, but on top of it all: I was hospitalized on a Sunday morning.  But it is worse than that, even.  This was the week I was supposed to preach a sermon for my doctoral program!  Luckily, I have an advisor who will understand and colleagues that made sure my pulpit was covered.  Rev. Lori Bultemeier immediately offered to preach and lead worship so that I didn’t have to worry about anything!

Thank you, Lori!

A Personal Experience

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A Personal Experience

I am a pastor in the United Methodist Church and how we become pastors is way different than in other denominations.  After seminary I was “commissioned.”  If you don’t know what that means…well, you are in good company: join those of us in the United Methodist ministry process.  It is usually defined by what it isn’t.  What we know is that commissioning gives us the authority of pastors, but it is not ordination.  Two years after being commissioned can then come ordination.  In our system, that gives a pastor “tenure,” you could say.

Okay, I share all of that in order to explain that I am commissioned as a pastor in the church, currently, and next year I hope to be ordained.  Before being ordained, though, a pastor is required to go through Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in order to hone pastoral care skills.

I have just concluded my chaplaincy internship at BroMenn Regional Medical Center.  It was twelve weeks that was intense.  It was emotionally intense as the process forced us to delve into our pasts and innermost feelings.  It was also intense because I was burning the candle at both ends and exhausted as I tried to be in two places at once:  church and hospital.

I hope that as I come come through this week I can begin feeling “caught up” and “back-on-track.”  Rather than an intense feeling of disorganization and chaos, I hope that my focus and commitment to ministry is the part of my life where I will experience intensity.  So that is the course I am on now as I look back on CPE and look forward to full-time and fully focused church ministry!

Blessings,

The above video was produced by Scott Carnes, April 2013.

Joy in Ritual?

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Joy in Ritual?

My wife and I divide up many of the household chores and share responsibilities, normally, but since my first surgery on February sixth I have been very limited in what I can do. Over the last few months I have not had to put dishes in the dishwasher, do laundry, mow the yard…well, actually, I haven’t had to do anything but sit in a chair and take occasional walks! My normal routines and practices have been interrupted and the longer I go without doing them, the more difficult it is for me to start again.

Yesterday I finally unloaded, loaded and unloaded, again, the dishwasher. This was the first time I’ve done any sort of chore for quite some time. The really embarrassing thing is that it isn’t even a real chore. I mean, if I’d washed dishes in the sink that might be a real chore, but I just rinsed some dishes off and set them in a machine. Yet, this insignificant task seemed horrendous. I put it off all morning until I knew Carrie would be returning from work, and, finally, when I was at the eleventh hour, I went about a task that, in that moment, felt tedious and painfully slow.

How is it that a task could become so difficult when it is a routine I’ve done a million times and never felt particularly burdened (that I can remember). Well…now, to be fair I need to think back to when I first moved out on my own and had dishes to do (and no dishwasher). The dishes often mounted up and it often came down to eating on paper products before I would get around to washing dishes (I was a terrible bachelor).

Perhaps it is in the routine that tasks and ways-of-living become familiar and do-able. Perhaps, in forming a routine, we make a task more personal and intimate and, in doing so, make it tolerable, if not pleasurable.

The first time we make a bed or pick up clothes or change a diaper or run a vacuum… the list is infinite…. The first time or the first few times we do something we are bound to find it more difficult, but the more often we do it, the more it becomes part of our life-ritual, the more easy and familiar it becomes. One of the best examples is exercise, I think. It was easy to motivate myself to go to the gym the first time, but the next few times it was terribly difficult. I got home from work and I already felt exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was walk over to the gym and wear myself down further, yet, once I got through a week or so of going to the gym, it became a highlight. It wasn’t until it became a ritual that I could enjoy it and I began to look forward to it!

In our lives of faith we have the same issue. If you are a church, synagogue or mosque-goer, then you may recognize this. If you skip worship one week, it is easier to miss it the next, and getting back to your faith practice becomes harder and harder. Prayer is the same way. Perhaps that is why muslims pray so often and methodically. By praying seven times each day they have built prayer into their life-ritual. The prayer becomes both familiar and easy, in a way.

For many, dare I say most, Christians it is more difficult to pray. We don’t have the ritual. Maybe we’ve developed a practice of saying a prayer before a meal or at bedtime, but do we interrupt our day for prayer or does our day follow our prayer cycle? I’d wager for most Christians it is the former!

I think practice is important in all that we do, if we want balanced and healthy lives. During my most recent stay in the hospital, I was feeling very sore in bed. I mentioned it to my physical therapist. She got me out of bed and tried to move my legs, but they couldn’t move more than a few degrees without pain. My muscles were tight from lying in bed all day everyday for so long! My legs were used to walking and bending and running. They were used to a certain practice, but they were out of practice. If any of you have gone to the gym, biked, or run further than you are used to, then you know what I mean. You’ve had the opposite experience as I: you went beyond your usual practice or ritual.

In life we need balance. If we want to start a new faith practice it is important to do so in a measured and responsible way. We should begin praying, reading the bible, or worshipping in a way that is tenable (sustainable). If you’ve not had a regular prayer life, then starting 20 times a day is likely not sustainable as a new practice, but finding one or two times during your day (or even 7?) might be. Finding 10 minutes each morning or evening to read the Bible is more likely to be sustainable, for most people, than trying to read a chapter everyday.

On the other hand, if we drop our habit, even for a day, we risk atrophy. In any of your life-practices, this is good advice I would wager. If you are a person of faith, I especially commend to you that you heed this advice and develop healthy practices. It maybe difficult, at first, but it will grow you, strengthen you, and help you in all of your other facets of life.























Images found at:  http://allwomenstalk.com/ & http://www.thegospelmatters.com/, respectively.

Health Checks

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Health Checks

Me in the hospital in February 2012 after first neurosurgery.



I suppose everyone has a different experience of the hospital than I do / did, but for me a shift happens at some point during hospitalization. When I was admitted this last time, I was miserable. After surgery, I was hurting really bad. During my first days in a hospital I usually feel as though I need to be there. With this last ER visit and hospitalization, I could only find relief at the hospital and couldn’t imagine going home. As time goes by, though, I begin to feel better and there is finally time when I realize I can go home. A shift happens where my need for the hospital is outweighed by a need to go home.


This time I had so many ‘incidents’ that made me feel bad (like the spinal fluid leaking or migraines) that I didn’t realize how much better I was getting overall! On Saturday the doctor came in and said they were ready to discharge me when I was ready to go. I was shocked. At first I said, “no way.” I mean, I had just had a migraine that morning, but, then, I realized that my pain meds were being reduced, anyway, and there is really very little they can do for the migraines anyway. There was nothing I was getting at the hospital that I couldn’t do at home. It was an odd moment for me and I looked up at the doctor and said, “You know, it seems like it is time to go home after all.” I only wanted to clarify our at home plan for remaining comfortable and healthy.

At my in-law’s home recovering after my first neurosurgery in Feb. 2012



Sometimes it is difficult to recognize our place and what is healthy for us. Whether it is our marriage, a house, a church or organization, or group of friends we can sometimes forget to consider our own health and happiness. I think, especially in marriage, we get comfortable and stop talking to our spouses about healthiness in our relationship(s). Just like in my hospital stay where I constantly evaluated my health and situation with my wife, the nurses & doctors, and with myself; our marriages and other relationships constantly need to have healthy communication and evaluation otherwise we lose track of our health. We wake up one day and realize that we no longer have a healthy reason to stay.


To stay healthy, we can’t just talk about the ‘nice’ things…In the hospital it isn’t easy, at first, to talk about bowel movements or have someone you don’t know help you with a shower; but these difficult conversations are just as important as the easy ones. In marriage, especially, it is easy to just say the “I Love You’s” and forget to talk about the difficult things. Carrie and I try to talk about the difficult things as much as the easy stuff. It sometimes means that we fight. It sometimes means that we get angry or hurt, but, in the end, it always means that we grow in our relationship, know one another more, and have a more solid foundation for the future.


We have to keep an eye on our relationships and we have to constantly evaluate where we are in those relationships and their healthiness.

The Roommate.

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The Roommate.

Last night was not so easy. My roommate is in his 70’s or early 80’s and turned his tv on by evening. Oh my goodness it was blasting. I had already asked to move rooms because of a noisy roommate and was determined not to have to again. I asked for earplugs and arranged for my medicine to be well-timed. My roommate turned off the tv at bedtime and I….couldn’t sleep. I had earplugs. I had drugs. I had an adjustable bed with plenty of pillows and blankets, but I didn’t have sleep. Oh, I’ve slept for a few hours here and there, but it wasn’t deep restful sleep. Then this morning my roommate called for help as he had messed himself. They did the neurological tests where they ask his name, birthdate, where he is at, etc. it was a new person asking him and they didn’t seem concerned, but I’d been listening all day and his answers were a lot slower and he covered with humor, but he had to think for a long time on somethings. In fact, he got the year and days backwards on his birthdate before quickly correcting himself.

I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but I went against doctors orders and got up and walked on my own to the nurses station so I could tell them. They came and spent time with him and I pray all is well, but I think they are going to keep a closer eye on him. I think that it is important to have an advocate with you in the hospital.

Day 3: Monday at BJC

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Day 3: Monday at BJC
Scott hard-at-work blogging from his hospital room. (That’s some great hair, Scotty) -Carrie





You are probably getting tired of my hot air, but I have advice. I’m writing this, so if you’re tired of reading it, stop. For the rest of you, press on because it only gets more monotonous! Are you excited?

Monday I was finally able to have some breakfast and it stayed down. Whoo-hoo! The doctors finally came around and explained surgery and my MRI results and by mid-morning I had this new roommate who is a really nice fellow.

If you’ll remember my meals kept getting pushed back because they didn’t yet know how soon the surgery needed to be. The real question at hand was whether there was an infection and the MRI came back clean. More good news. The down side to this, of course, was that after all the waiting I was in for more waiting. Well, that’s okay. I’m not in a hurry to be under the knife again. I had breakfast and, even tho it was cold, gross and greasy: It was one of the best meals I had ever had. Oh boy was I hungry!

When it came time for lunch, though, (yes this is about to take a sad, unfortunate turn) they said I couldn’t eat for awhile again. They were going to do a procedure to reduce the pressure and swelling by using syringes to pull some of the fluid (and blood) out of my head. It wasn’t so bad. At first Carrie told me it was a spinal tap and that sounded excruciating, but it wasn’t a spinal tap, they just had to get under the skin, muscle and scar-tissue to pull it out. Now, don’t get my wrong, it hurt. I think I nearly squeezed my wife’s hand off, but it was bearable and I finally had some relief once I recovered from the procedure. They did the procedure right in my room and numbed the skin with lanocaine (sp?)

The rest of the day was super-exciting. I laid in bed all day. I had fun little moments like when dinner came, but it was a very long day. On Sunday I slept nearly the whole time, but by monday I found myself not sleeping all that much. You may know something about that yourself, I don’t know. But isn’t it increasingly tough to really rest in a hospital once the newness wears off? Well, it is for me. I think my buttocks begins to get sore from sitting and my nerves get worn by the staff, my family, and other patients and I have a harder-and-harder time truly resting!

That’s really all that is fit to print for the moment. After my minor procedure I was pretty well out of it for the next hour or so. It really left me tired and sore, but once I began to sit up I realized that I felt tremendously better.

Day 2 – Getting to St. Louis.

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Day 2 – Getting to St. Louis.
image found at:  http://www.epmonthly.com/whitecoat/2010/05/florida-verdict-threatens-ems-availability/ambulance-2/

Hmmm. So where did I leave off? Ah, I told you all about getting sick on Saturday and getting to the Pontiac Hospital. I was feeling a little stupid, you know, expecting the doctors to say, again: “This is all normal, take some tylenol and go home.” My wife later said it’s like going to the mechanic and having the rattle stop once the mechanic is there to listen. Well, as most of you now know, it wasn’t business as usual. The radiologist told us it looked like bleeding in my brain from the original surgery and they wanted to transfer us to St. Joseph’s in bloomington. Luckily my wife was not satisfied about the transfer. For me, I would have done anything I was told I was so goofy from the morphine, but my wife was on top of things. She was confused why they would transfer me to bloomington and not to the doctors I knew already and the facility where I’d already had brain surgery. Well, for those of you who have not yet met my wife, she is never afraid to speak her mind. She told the doctor that we would just wait until he had contacted the surgeon’s office in St. Louis. I’m sure my wife felt elation when he walked back into the room looking a little defeated and said, “the doctors want you transferred back to Barnes.”

At first we were told the transfer would be within the next hour or so…so Carried stayed by my bed from 2-4am. Finally they told us that they were out of ambulances and drivers and that it would be 7am, so Carrie went home and got some sleep…at least I thought she did.

She was so worried about Sunday morning going well, that she secretly went to Chenoa an
 worked on Sunday morning stuff and prepared for worship for several more hours, since I had kept her from doing any work during most of this past week. She is a loyal and conscientious worker.

The ambulance got to the hospital around 7:45 and we were piled in and headed to St. Louis by 8am. It was really a pretty comfortable ride (morphine and anti-nausea meds help with that, though). Most importantly, the paramedic and driver were excellent and really went above-and-beyond to make us comfortable, give us internet access (yes, amazing, right?) and to provide excellent medical care.

Since we’ve been at Barnes-Jewish (we got here around 11am or so Sunday morning) it has basically been a waiting game. I mean, this situation was unscripted and this hospital visit was unplanned so they had to slip me in front of other people for the MRI and bounce me around rooms a bit before things were satisfactory.

We saw a neuro-surgeon resident who was on-call this weekend who was exceptionally helpful, very thorough, and really paid attention to my situation. Oh, and he really seemed very knowledgeable. He came by the room in the early-to-mid afternoon and talked to us about the CT scan that was taken in Pontiac. He wasn’t convinced there was any new bleeding, but certainly there was spinal fluid leaking and…the best way to describe it would be a ‘pressure problem.’ If spinal fluid is leaking out from the skull, there isn’t enough in the skull, so my headaches and my pain was from the pressure being ‘out of whack.’
He also helped me to understand my headaches. I explained my different head pain and headaches and I told them that sometimes it shot from the back of my head to the front. He told us that the C2 (not sure that’s right) nerves or nerve bundle (or something) arch up from where my surgery was done to the front of my head and that was causing some of the headaches I had been experiencing. Gosh, it was just great to know that they believed my pain and that I wasn’t crazy. Okay, so this isn’t definitive proof of my craziness. My brand of crazy comes from somewhere else, though 🙂

The MRI wasn’t able to happen until 6:30 pm or so on Sunday night. They wouldn’t knock me out and it took about 45 minutes. I’ve never had trouble with MRIs before, but I thought about that bump on my head and the nausea I felt and I told them I didn’t think I could do it without being knocked out. They were moving me onto the MRI when I looked up with big sad eyes and said, “Oh, so I guess the doctor didn’t approve for me to get knocked out for this. The Radiologist’s only response was a slow, sad head shake.

Well, it was long and painful, but not intolerable. They didn’t even have to re-do any of it. I rocked out that MRI…yeah. And then we waited for results.

I hadn’t kept any food or water down since Friday evening at dinner and this was Sunday night, so I was hungry. No, I was famished. I’m a Carnes and we should come with a label, “Dangerous When Hungry.” Well, they didn’t want me to eat until they knew for sure that I wouldn’t need surgery until Monday. They said it was unlikely, but if there was an infection I might need immediate surgery and they didn’t want me to eat in that case.

I’m a reasonable guy (when I’m not hungry) and I understood that it would be a while before we got MRI results, but it took several hours and then the nurse came in at 10 pm (or so) and said that we probably wouldn’t hear any more until Monday morning. You should have seen the look of despair in my eyes. I explained how I had not eaten in days and how I’d been promised food before bed, so long as there was no emergency surgery. The nurse took pity on me and, despite orders, gave me a few ice chips.
Oh, that ice and water were exquisite! I mean, that water tasted better than the best wine. OooOOohhhhh, soooo good!

Well, that gets me to Sunday night and you nearing know as much as we do so far.

Day 1 – The ER in Pontiac

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Day 1 – The ER in Pontiac

Gosh, it’s weird and confusing to be here all over again. Here I sit at Barnes Jewish waiting for surgery. I’ve been through this once so you’d think I’d know what’s happening, but i don’t. It’s been a strange whirlwind sort of weekend and we are just getting to see the full picture.

These last couple of weeks have been harder on me than the initial recovery and last week it got real bad by wednesday when I woke up with terrible pain and headaches which caused me to throw up and then I continued throwing up all morning from about 4 or 5 am until noon and then I finally found a comfortable position and fell off to sleep and slept the rest of the afternoon. The next couple of days were rough, but no more throwing up until Saturday. Saturday was nearly exactly like Wednesday. I woke up earlier than usual and then continually vomitted, but it never stopped. We called the neurosurgeon, just as we did on Wednesday and they weren’t terribly concerned (they didn’t think it was surgical or related to my surgery). But the neurosurgeons said that we should go to our local ER if the pain persisted.

Finally around 3 pm or so we realized that I was getting no relief. The problem, though, for me, was that I couldn’t imagine having to go by car to the hospital. The light and motion seemed like they would just make everything so much worse that I delayed a fair bit before agreeing to go. Well, reason kicked in and my wife helped me to the car and drove me over to St. James OSF Hospital in Pontiac. We go to the hospital around 4 or 4:30 pm.

They got me right into an ER room and I we asked them to make it dark and quiet.  They took care of it immediately and got me on some anti-nausea meds and morphine. Gretchen stopped by cause she was already out and about and sat with me while Carrie went home to pick up my MRI scans and reports from February and March (which we had left at home). The Pontiac hospital did a CT Scan and we waited until 2 am or so to find out that they believed there was bleeding in my brain from the surgery.

It was a long day, but finding out what was going on and finding out that I was getting to transferred was a load off. Sometimes just having a plan makes everything a little better!
I will share more a little later and bring you all up-to-date. For right now, I’m going to relax a little and wait for Carrie to get back from the waiting room. A visitor just came and she took them away from the room so that I could rest.

Thank you, all, for your on-going prayers and concern. We do appreciate your caring support very much!