firsties!

all today, a monday.... some good, some bad. buy through it all smile and have fun!

bought my first electric guitar ever. a fender stratocaster. i'm also going to be playing my first song ever on the guitar by the end of the week!

ate at a tgi friday for the first time ever today, and it was 100% free through a family connection.

noticed for the first time that someone has keyed my porsche, vandalizing it in two places and requiring it to be painted. they keyed it down to the metal. f-ers.

for the first time in weeks i weighed over 125lbs.

risky business

if my wound vac is off by march 15th, i am going to register for the pan ams and fight with zero training. risky business.


this saturday is a huge bjj tournament in san diego. the world pro gi qualifier. this is what i went up to santa cruz for last year and got all the way to the finals through all of my side of the bracket no-showing, being over weight or being DQ-ed. 3 "wins" i don't count.

so tomorrow i will be spending all day at a jj tourny i'm not fighting in, but supporting my new team mates, Atos jiu jitsu. which means it will also be the first time in public my old team will really see me. some of them have no idea i switched teams since i did it while out for surgery.

jj schools and teams can be like a gang. i switched gangs silently without telling any one, in a less than manly way. could i be called a creonte? maybe. but tomorrow i am sure i will have to face the music in a very public place and i doubt it will be pretty. risky business.

It's a small world after all.... And a cool one!!

Last year for the heck of it I fought in the Mundials, or world championships for brazilian jiu jitsu. You know, cause I do things like that on a whim.

The brackets are online a week before the fights so I googled my first opponent's name and found him on youtube and facebook. I like to scout the people I am going to fight ahead of time.

Well after he beat me and went on to be 2nd in the world in his class (I can't say "our class" as I really am in the old guy class and he is in the true adult class) we became friends on facebook. I even left my old jiu jitsu team when the team he trains with opened a branch in San Diego.

So because there are a bunch of big tournaments in the next 6 weeks in San Diego and Los Angeles area all of the big names from our team, Atos, are here in San Diego training. I am getting to hang out with world famous black belts, spend more time with a guy who I've fought one and then been FB friends with for a year.

Like he is having dinner at my house with my parents and such on Sunday. Just 10 years ago I could have never made this type of friendship and had it grow. It really is an awesome world and I love being in it. I can't wait to visit him in Rio Claro sometime.

It just makes me smile to have friends from different places and cultures. I love it.

Ronaldo and me. Big smiles, big hugs and big friendship!

gonna party like it's my birfday.....

Even 50 Cent has got to give me props and sing my praises! Rowdy Rowdy! I was down before he was even born.....

I've been thinking about the celebration of my life, aka my birthday! As I am soo freaking happy being alive this year I feel it should be a blow out. Orginally this was planned as being catered with a taco truck, mobile laser tag, jumpy house and live band. A party in every sense of the word.

But then I changed my mind. Kinda. I think I will still have people over and such but not sure it is going to be such a huge production for my guests. Sorry.

What I have been thinking about though is the gift/s I am going to ask the ever so compassionate, understanding and long suffering Super D for. And it pretty much boils down to the 3 things that drive my life as far as "things" go; guns, motorcycles, cars, jiu jitsu. There are a few other things there of course, but you get the idea.

Since it is just a wish list, and hopefully no one takes it badly, I might just put my b-day list up here as a reference for Tenacious and as a look inside the "want want gimmie gimmie this looks cool" side of my mind.

3" lift for my truck, RevTek or whatever is at Off Road Warehouse
Gibson electric guitar and Marshall amp w/lesson and chord books
Springfield Armory Scout Squad rifle, walnut or black composite stock
Sig Sauer P226 pistol in 9mm
Glock 19 in 9mm
private jiu jitsu lessons
Honda CR150R Expert motorcycle
Ducati 848 in pearl or black
KTM 690 Duke
black Koral superlight gi, A1
shark fishing trip

the Terminator or the Rowdinator?

I can not freaking wait until I am not hooked up to some sort of machine! I feel like a cyborg or something. Not even close to bionic. But like the first terminator I just keep moving forward. I have no other option.... That is the goal I keep crawling towards, no machine hooked to me, no holes in me.

rrrrrrrrraaaaaaawwwwwrrrrrrrrr, don't stop moving (incessant mechanical whirring)

There is more than one world, more than one plane, more than one state of being.

My family is fasting (refraining from eating food for at least two meals) and praying (communicating with their God) for a betterment of my health.

They have faith, a belief system and follow it. They believe that by not eating you put the body in subjection to the spirit. This combined with prayer is an effective way to communicate with God, in a deeper way. To petition him for his blessings.

My family is doing this for me tomorrow, Sunday. If you wish to join in whatever way you wish, I give you my humble thanks.

I can not do this alone and am thankful for all I have received.

'Till we meet again dear friends........

My week in review

Monday was President's Day and K had it off so we thought we'd go to the movie together. About half way through it I started to feel really cold. By the time the movie was out I was shivering uncontrollably. It has been unseasonably cold here in San Diego so I thought it was just that.

A few hours later I had a routine check up with my surgeon to check on the course of the infection that still was unresolved in my surgical wounds. I was obviously ill but when my vitals came back with a pulse of 119, temp of 103.7 and respirations of 20 it was clinically obvious as well that something was wrong with me.

That is when my surgeon told me to lay down as they were going to admit me to the hospital and his MA started packing me in ice and giving me Tylenol. Four hours later I was in a hospital bed and getting ready for my CT scan. Their initial thoughts being I had a fistula, needed to be NPO (nothing by mouth), and be on TPN (the fancy liquid food into my vein) through a PICC line (the iv line from my arm to my heart).

Tuesday morning found me with no food or water. A CT scan where they were sure I had a fistula and then a change of their minds. A test where I drank blue dye to see if it would leak out of my intestines out through my surgical wounds. That didn't happen. And then the idea of a PICC line was shot down as my veins were unsuitable and I would have to get a central line through my jugular vein in my neck!! So Tuesday was a day of no progress and no answers.

Wednesday was more of the same, no food or drink. Just me walking around and watching tv. About 4pm I get a call to my room telling me that Pre-Op is ready for me. Pre-Op?!?!? I'm having an operation?? No one told me that! Guess what, I was. Surgeons "cure" things with a knife and since I had not demonstrated anything medically for why I was sick, why my wounds were still producing pus he was gonna take me to the OR and check it out himself.

The anathesiologist gave me Ketamine, aka Special K, to help calm me down before surgery. It made me vomit on the operating table. I also vomited in recovery too. And the strap they used to hold my face in place for the endotracheal tube gave me a horrible "chin strap" rash. But really, as far as weeks in the hospital and surgery goes this was pretty dang easy for me.

So basically since imaging didn't show anything my surgeon decided he was going to cut out any infected tissue, find any hidden pockets or tracks of infection, wash it all out totally, send tissue to pathology and then put a wound vac (negative pressure wound healing system) on my new surgical wounds to try and get them healed up super quick and in a newly infection free environment.

Thursday they let me jump right back into solid food since I obviously didn't have a hole in my intestine and they couldn't give me the fancy iv food so why not throw some bacon and french toast at me? All day Thursday I felt better than I have in a llllooonnnnggg time. Other than being connected to a machine that is sucking on my abdomen all day, every day until my wound is totally healed.

Friday was fighting "the system" and just trying to efficiently get discharged from the hospital and get all the drugs and home health stuff set up. I've said it before and I'll say it forever, the pharmacy at my HMO is THE most poorly run entity I have ever encountered. They make the Army, DMV and the post office seem like super efficient Asian models of efficiency. Horrible!

How it has all basically shaken out is that I am on a new Crohns disease drug, Humira. It is like Remicade but all human made, no mouse stuff. Sadly it is also a painful shot I have to give myself in my stomach every two weeks. Or at least until it gives me cancer. Hahahaha. So we are attacking my Crohns in a new way after this hospitalization. Secondly we are trying to get my wounds healed up with no infection. I'm on the wound vac, a high protein diet for the next month, tons of vitamin supplements and home nursing care. A nurse comes to my house 3 times a week to take care of me. Sadly I can only shower those days as well to as that is when the dressing and hardware for my wound vac gets changed. And that could take anywhere from two weeks to two months.

I am of course still not out of the woods yet. Things still could turn for the worse, which I was warned about a few times before leaving the hospital. But I feel really good and the past two days have gone well, so I am hoping and praying for the best.

And of course not to let you down, here are some pics!

I could see my house from my hospital room. How sad is that?
The box of supplies I went home with! I had to walk down to the car when I left but it got a ride in a wheelchair.
Banksy came to my room one night.
This is what my wound vac looks like. Well if you are upside down.
Chillen in my room, settling in for who knew how long at the time.