I Have a Post!

I have absolutely nothing to blog about. For the past couple of months everything I've written has gone into draft and it sits there. I return to these half-finished posts and I reread them and close them back up. Probably like this post here.

?........(hmm)

???...(No)

I was going to do one of those twenty things about myself lists but I don't think I'm quite up to the challenge to make a list without some prompting or a questionnaire. So maybe I'll do a list of jobs I've had.

1. My first couple of jobs were dishwashing. One was for the Doubletree Inn in Tucson and the other was for one of those Mom and Pop greasy spoon dives that we've all been to. The tips were much better at Doubletree and I smelled like steak at the end of the day instead of hamburger.


2. I later graduated to fast food in Boise and went to the Arctic Circle. They denied me said employment so I went next door and worked for the Continental Car Wash. I showed the Arctic Circle what I thought of their establishment by not going over there during lunch time and by starving myself to death.


3. Meanwhile, back in Tucson, I might have stood on street corners with some friends of mine selling unmentionables. And I might have made pennies on the dollar for doing that. And they might have actually been bouquets of flowers just so nobody out there gets the wrong idea. And I might have been really young still when I did that. That might have happened.


4. When I was 18 I started working for the YACC (Young Adult Conservation Corp). It was a one-year program that led me into a position where I later started working for the Boise National Forest Service as a forest ranger. I never received a hat.


5. I did that for a couple of years until Carter made all the cutbacks and I twirled my make-believe hat trying to figure out what I would do. "I will cut down the forest," I said. And so I began. First I was cutting firewood and thinning trees (some things I'd picked up from the forest service) and then I was cutting down timber and chasing chokers up and down the mountains all day long.


6. Tiring of that, my best friend and I started working for Ed Browning from Idaho Falls, owner of the Red Baron airplane. He briefly popped into our town and decided to take up mining for gold. My friend and I started drilling and blasting through a mountainside and the venture produced very little silver and gold, but it kept us employed for the winter.


7. Over the years I stayed employed by mining and logging. I once staked mining claims in the dead of winter in the Owyhee mountains in Idaho and we were snowed in for two weeks. We had to complete the job by helicopter and we were moved around the mountain with specific instructions to not get our heads lopped off when we exited the helicopter.


8. Back on earth, I started working for our town's local newspaper after I submitted some poetry. I became the typesetter and everything was done on an old compu-graphic typesetter. I soon started writing and doing the layout for the old tabloid fold newspaper.


9. I eventually lost my job there when the paper was sold and the owners brought their own people in and I went back to logging. And then I got back into the newspaper business where I learned how to be a film stripper and a pressman in Ogden, Utah.


10. 
    
    When I married I moved to Salt Lake and stayed in the printing business. I now work for a publishing company that prints magazines and I no longer strip. I just look.
    

At my work that is.

And I once worked as a nighttime manager for a Subway and I was an assistant manager for a Taco-Time and I've remodeled homes and worked highway construction. I also worked for a clown.

Thank You...

I am so humbled by the number of people who stopped by to read my post and to those who offered help and suggestions over the past couple of days. While I had planned to update my friends and followers on my other blog to my present situation with my transplant status, my wife suggested writing it for both blogs because we really could use some help. I did not expect the overwhelming number of people who stopped by to read about our plight.
On Saturday night I posted my blog and when I logged in the following day I had an incredible amount of people who had visited that morning. Later I told Lois I didn't know where all the traffic was coming from but it had been like this all day long. By night I had been visited by over a hundred readers. I soon learned my blog had been posted to link over here and I was stunned by all the people who had come to help. The following day my post was linked over here and I received nearly a hundred more visitors.
Two posts -- one by a stranger and one by a friend.
You cannot imagine how this made me feel. I felt very small and very human and very blessed.

There is no way that I can thank you all except to say just that -- Thank You. While I received only a handful of comments, they were all very helpful. I appreciate everyone's help.

In this short time we managed to assemble most of the information I need to petition the judicial court where I was adopted and we have a friend who is taking care of legal procedures. On Friday we were asking ourselves, "What are we going to do?" And now on Tuesday we are sending out papers to petition the court.

How's that for a fine weekend?

Lois and Beaux

Where do we go from here ? ¿ ?

Normally I would post this on my other blog, but I've decided I could really use some extra eyes on this one so I'm posting it over here as well. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

It turns out that because I am an American Indian I may be entitled to help paying for drugs that I will need post-op. Drugs that I will need for the rest of my life. These anti-rejection drugs can be very expensive and cost many thousands of dollars a year. Our insurance won't pay for them.
When Lois and I got married we compared our work insurance benefits and discovered hers were definitely a lot better than mine. I have been on her plan ever since. When we discovered that I was going to need to have a transplant we were happy to find that her plan would actually cover the operation. We also learned that some of the drugs I would need for aftercare would also be covered, but not all of them. Some of them are going to end up costing us a lot.
The other day I got a phone call from the transplant center informing us about our insurance benefits and what they would cover. A drug called Prograf is the biggy. Prograf is designed to lower the body's immune system. While your immune system is there to fight infection, it will also fight against a new transplanted organ such as a kidney or liver because it thinks the body is being invaded. Prograf, along with other drugs, are used to help fight against organ transplant rejection. Apparently I need to find a way to pay for this immunosuppression drug before I can get a transplant. Or else ¿ ? ¿

The transplant center is doing its best and willing to do what it takes to help us out in exploring all our options. But now we have reached an impass. The idea to look into Indian benefits was actually the social worker's thought. A good one. Buuttt... I was adopted and I have no ties with my Indian tribe. I know that I am a Yaqui Indian because my parents said so. They adopted three of us -- two Yaquis and a Pima while they lived in Phoenix. But my case is no different than any other adoptee's. When the adoption is finalized, they reissue a birth certificate that shows the adoptive parents as the natural parents. There's nothing on it that says, adopted.
So I must first somehow prove that I was adopted and then find a way to have my adoption records opened so that I can prove it to the tribal council. And then I might be eligible for Indian funds.Years ago I did a little research on trying to find my natural parents. I wrote a letter to ALMA Society (Adoptee's Liberty Movement Association) and they responded by telling me there might be a loophole in finding my parents because I was Native American.

Adoptees who are of American Indian heritage can learn their original names and names of their birth parents by taking advantage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1977.

This law was made for a number of reasons, but the one that is of most importance to me is that my records can supposedly be opened due to genetic and medical reasons. It is a federal law. In my case I am not so much interested in finding my natural parents but rather looking for medical history and acknowledgement from the tribe so that I can apply for grant money so I can show that we can get the Prograf. Without that, there will be no transplant.
Anybody know any adoption law? We're stumped.

Nasal Septal Repair Submucous Resection Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery...

with Landmarks. That is the name of the surgery my wife had today. The name was actually longer but I have taken the liberty of shortening it.
My wife and I both took some time off for Spring break so that we could do something with the kids. About a week or so ago Lois went to see a specialist because she has had a difficult time breathing. She has literally been clogged up and we suspected that she had some severe sinus problems. After a CT scan the doctor discovered that her nasal passages were completely blocked with polyps and scar tissue that developed from an accident that happened years ago. They scheduled an immediate surgery. Right in the middle of our vacation. In a way it was sad, but for her it will be a blessing. The recovery will take somewhere between 4 to 6 weeks and they say that she will feel a hundred times better. In the meanwhile she is probably going to end up with two black eyes and a swollen face. She has had a 4 x 4 gauze patch taped across her nose ever since she came out of surgery and has been bleeding all day long.
This afternoon when we left the hospital my sister-in-law and I brought her home and got her settled in. She threw up, took a pain pill and then fell asleep. When she woke up she felt much better and she began exploring the nursing station I assembled in front of her. Bandages, tape, and meds. There was nasal spray, balm and more meds. One thing the nurse recommended using was Q-Tips to apply balm around her nose to keep her skin from getting too dry. She immediately spotted the Q-Tips and grabbed one.


Knowing my wife I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. "What are you doing?" I asked her.


She quietly spun the Q-Tip in her hand and then stopped. "Nothing." She answered.


"You were totally going to put that up your nose." I said.


"Uh-uh." She said. And then she set it back down.

When she fell back to sleep I took them upstairs and put them away. I'm pretty sure she can just use her finger tip to smear the stuff on.