{"id":576,"date":"2005-06-04T20:34:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-05T00:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=576"},"modified":"2005-12-09T08:32:50","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T13:32:50","slug":"red-red-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/red-red-wine","title":{"rendered":"Red, Red Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case the past month had made me forget what it’s like to spend a day in the hospital with Dad, I got a reminder today. Yesterday, he called to say he was having trouble with the big toe of his left foot, that it was so painful (though not swollen) he couldn’t walk on it.<\/p>\n

I went to his place last night, got him an icepack, and looked over the affected area. Nothing out of the ordinary, and he didn’t remember any accidents that would’ve caused the pain he was feeling.<\/p>\n

This morning, he called bright and early (8:30am) to ask me to help get him to the hospital. We (me, him and his girlfriend) rolled into the emergency room around 9:15, before the rush, and got Dad looked over. The immediate diagnosis (from the admitting nurse) was that he was suffering from gout, possibly stemming from one of his heart medications.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day consisted of variations on a theme, as Dad got x-rayed, blood-tested, and circulation-monitored until we finally rolled out of the place at 3:30. Everything else was negative, so the diagnosis remains gout.<\/p>\n

Dad was freaked out by the diagnosis, since he’d never had gout before. Like I said, it was probably due to his heart med, and a slightly weird diet (he had liver twice this week). I once got nailed by gout in my ankle, but it correlated to my consuming copious amounts of red wine for several nights straight. Hey, when in Milan . . .<\/p>\n

It was a pretty long day for me, as I hadn’t slept much the night before, and didn’t get much food in me at the hospital. After we wrapped up at the hospital and got Dad’s new prescriptions filled, I had to take care of a computer-repair\/replacement job for him. This involved meeting the owner of a bait & gun shop here in NJ, where I had some good conversations about home protection.<\/p>\n

I’ve now finished two volumes of Proust at the same hospital: the morning of Dad’s surgery, I read the last 120 pages of The Guermantes Way<\/a>, and today I read the last 60 pages of The Captive<\/a>. For those of you scoring at home, this means I have 900 pages left in Proust’s mega-work. Funnily enough, it feels like it’s all downhill from here, while 900 pages of just about anyone else would be insanely daunting.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested, the up-to-date list of everydamnbook I’ve read since around 1989 is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case the past month had made me forget what it’s like to spend a day in the hospital with Dad, I got a reminder today. Yesterday, he called to say he was having trouble with the big toe of his left foot, that it was so painful (though not swollen) he couldn’t walk on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Red, Red Wine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-9i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":525,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-3","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":0},"title":"Update","author":"Gil","date":"April 26, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Today was a lot better. Dad was in better spirits, despite his unerring ability to make The Wrong Comment (\"They got me a single room, here on Death Row\"), and all of us had gotten a bunch of much-needed rest.I spent a few hours with him and his girlfriend at\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":610,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/complications","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":1},"title":"Complications","author":"Gil","date":"July 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dad's back in the hospital. He's been (dry) coughing pretty badly ever we got him home after his heart surgery at the end of April. He's also had some alternating fevers in the last month-to-six weeks. We took him for CAT scan on Thursday, which revealed an abscess in his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6154,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/look-in-your-heart","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":2},"title":"Look in Your Heart","author":"Gil","date":"September 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm fine, but . . . I spent nearly 21 hours in an emergency room from Thursday into Friday. For the past three or four weeks, I've been experiencing these symptoms occasionally: a fluttering in my heart, a feeling of pressure (not painful) in my chest, or pressing down in\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/look-in-your-heart#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375714790","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/movin-on-up","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":3},"title":"Movin’ on up","author":"Gil","date":"April 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Dad got moved from the ICU upstairs to the regular cardiac ward today. The orderlies sorta dropped him into bed, which caused him immense amounts of pain, but he's doing okay. His throat's a mess, from the extended use of the breathing tube, so swallowing his pills has been tough.To\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1309,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/if-i-could-be-like-schlomo","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":4},"title":"If I could be like Schlomo!","author":"Gil","date":"January 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Official VM buddy and new dad Craig S. writes, \"Admit it; this is you, isn't it?\" I retain plausible deniability, because I never had much athleticism when I looked like that guy.","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1676,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/operation-yizkor","url_meta":{"origin":576,"position":5},"title":"Operation: Yizkor","author":"Gil","date":"September 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"As I wrote last week, I was a bit disappointed by my old shul when I attended Rosh Hashanah services. This put me in a bind because my father wanted to recite the Yizkor prayer on Yom Kippur to commemorate his parents, and that meant we'd be kicking it new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}