I promised everyone some more details about my recent hospital visit. Start by setting your Time Machine for a couple of months ago. I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange pain in my chest and back. It was right about where my back brace hits me and it sort of felt like a muscle cramp but it was pretty bad. I tried calling dad to wake him up but couldn’t get his attention. That led to the story already told here about the new call button that I designed and built. That night the pain finally went away after about 45 minutes and I never did get him to wake up till the next morning.

Now fast-forward to this past Tuesday. I had a rough night sleeping or rather not sleeping. About 4 AM I hit the buzzer and had dad roll me over on my side. Then my CPAP mask got out of adjustment and that kept me from getting to sleep. Finally going on about 6 AM I called dad again and rolled over on my back. Shortly after that I started getting a little pain in my chest and back like I had before a few months ago. I called dad again and took some Tylenol. After about a half hour the pain had subsided enough that I finally got to sleep a little after 6 AM. I told dad that he should cancel my caregiver Rick. Dad reminded me that he had a doctor’s appointment at about 10:30 AM. So we went ahead and had Rick come and stay with me while I slept and dad went and got his blood test.

I slept pretty well from around 6 AM to about 1 PM and decided to get up. I had only the tiniest leftover pain from earlier in the morning. If I had not been looking for it, I probably would not even have noticed it.

Since it was so late in the afternoon by the time I got dressed I decided not to eat lunch. I just drank a bottle of Ensure and had a chocolate chip cookie. I figured I would eat supper around 5 PM like normal. I had hoped to get a lot of computer work that so that I could show off my latest electronics project on the weekly video chat. It was at 7:30 PM but I knew I would get enough work done to have anything to show by then. A little after 3 PM I started getting the chest pain again. About 3:30 I took some Tylenol but it didn’t do me any good. In fact the pain was getting worse. It was so bad that after another 15 minutes or so I decided to lay down and take off my brace.

As was the case a few months ago when I had chest pains it also included back pain and it was in the location where my brace hits. However it wasn’t on the skin like I had been rubbed raw. It felt like muscle tightness. I don’t know what a heart attack feels like so I don’t know how I came to the conclusion it wasn’t one. But after laying there in bed another 15 minutes or so and it wasn’t getting any better at all I finally said to dad “This is ridiculous. I could be laying here dying of a heart attack in total denial. I think we need to go the hospital.”

Dad called 911 and in about one minute I can hear the sirens coming from fire station 33 just a few blocks from here. Firefighters listen to my heart and said it sounded okay but agreed I couldn’t take any chances with chest pain.

At first they were going to try to wrap me up in my bed sheet and carry me out to the gurney in the living room. I knew there was no way they could do that without banging up my elbows or knees or toes. We have had a gurney in the bedroom before and it took a lot of convincing to get them to try to bring the gurney down the hall. It turned out it fit just fine. They had the gurney sitting up at about a 45° angle which was no good. Then I had to convince them that there was also room to lay it down flat with the bed and just drag me over. They ended up taking the entire contour sheet off the mattress and dragging me over with it. We could put a towel under me or gotten another sheet and it would’ve been easier.

One of the firefighters pointed to the gadget on top of my TV and asked me what that was. I got to give him a very very brief demo of my remote controlled remote control and call button. He commented to my dad as they were rolling me down the hall “He’s a pretty smart guy isn’t he?”

As they rolled me out the door I was looking at the sky and there were about four or five huge black birds circling around. I said to the EMT “Look at those birds up there. I hope they aren’t buzzards. You don’t want to see buzzards circling as you’re being rolled out to an ambulance.” And we both laughed. The EMT said she thought they looked like crows.

Once I was in the ambulance she hooked me up to a heart monitor and said that everything looked okay. She did have some trouble getting all of the leads to stick to be especially with all of my hair on my chest. She also gave me a handful of four chewable aspirin to take. I probably should’ve done that myself already. I guess it was my insistence that this still wasn’t a heart attack and the Tylenol would be good for the muscle pain.

We got to St. Vincent about 5 PM. The pain was still pretty bad and it had been for about two hours now. I did have some problems with the nausea but I never did really throw up. They put me on a heart monitor in the ER and again said they didn’t see anything suspicious. They put an IV line in me although they didn’t look anything up to it. They did a blood draw and gave me a nausea shot and a shot of morphine for the pain. That helped quite a bit but it didn’t go away completely. They gave me another shot and that did the trick. I’m not had any pain since then.

I thought perhaps the pain was from congestion in my lungs but they did a chest x-ray and it came back clear. The blood tests were to check for cardiac enzymes which appear whenever you have a heart attack. They actually did two sets of those tests throughout the evening and another one the following morning on which came back okay.

Most of the time I was dealing with nurses and someone who is called a physician’s assistant. It wasn’t until about 10 PM that I actually saw a real live doctor. He said he wanted to have been seen by a cardiologist. He didn’t really say if they were going to keep me or not but we were pretty sure that they would. I was expecting a cardiologist come in at some point but the next person through the door was a transport technician (that’s what they call orderlies these days) and he said “I’m here to take you to your room.” That was the first I really knew for certain that I was staying.

Dad had packed my CPAP machine and special St. Vincent call button but did not break my wheelchair, my back brace or any clothes. If they had decided to send me home, dad would have had to run home to get the wheelchair and then come back for me. So since it was getting so late it was probably the best that they kept me. I got to the room a little before 11 and dad was out the door by 11 PM.

Unfortunately the residence or whoever the on-call doctor was changed shifts right about the time that I got there. So the nurse told me it would be a while till the doctor came to see me. Of course I can’t do anything without doctor’s orders. Also someone from respiratory therapy would have to hook up my CPAP machine into their oxygen and hook up a humidifier. I didn’t see the doctor until a little after midnight and the respiratory therapy girl didn’t show up until after 1 AM. Under other circumstances I would have been a little bit upset that it took that long but since I had slept until 1 PM I really wasn’t that. The pain was gone and I was doing okay.

Because I didn’t know if I was staying or going or what was going to happen I ended up not having anything else to eat all day. I asked the nurse if she could rustle up a bottle of Ensure or Boost or something similar. She found a carton of something called instant shake.

The doctor mentioned something about a third set of cardiac enzymes being taken. I asked the nurse when that would be interested about 4:30 AM. I chuckled and said “Well I’ve got that to look forward to.” Actually I slept pretty well. They did not have to stick me again to do the blood draw. The IV they had already established (which never did get hooked up to anything) held up pretty well and they were able to get all the blood they needed.

I woke up about 8 AM with the new shift came in to take my vital signs. They have people called PCT which stands for Patient Care Technician who do things like take vitals, give baths, anything that isn’t too medical. Then you also have an RN who gives you medication. Since I hadn’t eaten hardly anything the day before I was pretty hungry for breakfast. I told the PCT then I need to order breakfast. She said she had to check my chart to see if I had a special diet. I had her turn on the TV to watch the Today Show.

A couple of other RNs came in and each time when they asked if I needed anything, I mentioned I was waiting on the PCT to help me order breakfast. It used to be that in the hospital they had a couple of different choices for each meal and you had to pick one of those or you got nothing. These days they give you a full room service menu and you can order just about anything anytime of day. There’s not a particular service time or a set of entrées that you only get a couple of choices. You just phone and what you want and it’s there in about a half hour.

Eventually the doctor came in. She was someone from internal medicine. She said they wanted to do and echocardiogram. I was okay with that but I wasn’t too keen on doing any kind of a chemical stress test unless it was absolutely necessary. The resident the night before had mentioned the possibility. What they do is if you cannot run on a treadmill stress your heart may pump you full of some sort of medication that makes your heart race and then they do cardiogram. I forgot to mention that the doctor that saw me in the ER asked me if the pain got worse “When you exert yourself”. Dad and I almost laughed out loud in his face. I managed to say without too much sarcasm “I don’t ever get exerted. I can’t.” Anyway this new internal medicine doctor said they would do the regular echo first and see what it showed.

The TV system they have in St. Vincent Hospital is pretty sophisticated. It actually some sort of IP TV kind of system with a menu that allows you to watch videos about their services, check your email, I think it even lets you play games. All of that in addition to a pretty good selection of cable channels. Because of a computer-based system with lets them do interesting things which one wishes they would not do. Case in point in the middle of watching the Today Show a message pops up on the screen saying “If you’ve been here within the last 30 days would you like to take a brief survey?” Then it gives you the option to click yes or no. That of course presumes that you have the physical capability of working there remote control which I do not! I laid there staring at this pop-up window blocking my view of an interview with Bill Cosby thinking about what I would tell them if I could take their damned survey.

I plotted that I would lay a really bad trip on them. I would say something like “There I was lying alone in my hospital bed feeling sorry for myself that I was this for crippled man who nearly died of a heart attack. My only enjoyment in life as I awaited the fate of my test results was to enjoy the Today Show which a nurse had so kindly turned to at my request since I was unable to push the buttons myself in my feeble state. And then this pop-up message appeared on my screen asking my opinion. It not only robbed me of my only pleasure at the time (the ability to watch Matt Lauer) but it reminded me of how helpless I was lying there fearing for my life and unable to push a single button. I didn’t dare call the nurse to clear the message from my screen lest I jeopardize the health of some other poor patient who needed her attention more than me.” blah blah blah blah blah you get the idea. I would’ve given it to them with both barrels. People who know me know I’m not the “feeling sorry for myself” kind of guy. But I’ve been around enough of them that I can turn it on for affect 🙂

It was getting close to 10 AM and I still didn’t have any breakfast on order. Or at least I didn’t think I did. Just about the time that the transport guy comes to take me to the echocardiogram, room service shows up with the breakfast that the damned PCT ordered for me without asking me what the hell I wanted! There was a different PCT helping the guy load me on to the gurney. I expressed my disapproval that they had ordered my breakfast without asking me what I wanted. She said “What did you want?” I said, “Well for one thing I wanted eggs. Are there any eggs there?” She said no.

It took me down to the basement for the echocardiogram. Basically it’s an ultrasound test where they watch your heart beating. As a joke I asked the guy if I could get a DVD of it afterwards. He said actually if you wait a couple of days you can order one. It’s part of your medical records that you’re entitled to have. They probably charge you a bunch of money for it. I don’t think I’ll bother. But it would be fun to upload it to YouTube 🙂

You’ve often heard it said of people “Well at least their heart is in the right place”. Apparently mine isn’t. I knew that because of my bad curvature of my spine and my strangely shaped chest that my anatomy was strange. But I didn’t know that my heart was very low compared to my rib cage. He actually got the best picture of my heart by putting the probe below my breastbone. It’s a good thing I wear this heavy chest brace because apparently my heart isn’t covered by my rib cage very well. He had a little bit of difficulty getting a side view but he managed to see everything he needed to see.

When I got back to my room not only was there the pancakes and sausage breakfast that I didn’t order, there was a second tray with a plate full of scrambled eggs. Apparently the other PCT took my offhand comment “I wanted eggs” very literally and ordered them for me. What I really wanted was scrambled eggs, two pieces of white bread toast, and two cartons of 2% milk. There was coffee, orange juice, and one carton of milk in the original breakfast. So I managed to get by with the eggs, juice and milk. Of course when I really, really, really wanted was to be ASKED! By the way I never did see again the PCT who ordered breakfast without me.

When I got back from my tests there was a different RN who helped feed me. She wasn’t my regular nurse. It’s probably a good thing or I would’ve never wanted to leave the hospital. She had to be the hottest looking nurse I think I’d ever had in my life. She was so hot it didn’t even matter that she was about six months pregnant.

I tried calling dad to fill him in on what had happened throughout the morning but he was apparently already on his way to the hospital. All I got was the answering machine. Soon after that a PCT came in to get me cleaned up. She was the one who ordered the eggs. I didn’t really complain because she was trying to do the right thing.

Just as I started the bath, dad showed up. He said he had brought clothes and my wheelchair but had left it all in the van. He had ridden up from the parking lot in the little three wheeled gogo that my mom used to use. He gets around pretty well but for long distances like the hospital, the cart really came in handy. It also brought with him my laptop computer. The last time I had been at St. Vincent a few months ago with a urinary infection, I could not get my laptop to connect to their Wi-Fi system. He had gotten his tablet to connect okay but I think there was something funny about Windows 8 that they weren’t yet ready to support. Fortunately this time I connected okay. He had not left my home computer on. I was hoping to be able to use Team Viewer to login to home. I was able to post a message on Facebook but could not send any emails because I didn’t have anyone’s email address on the laptop. Going to have to make a list for next time.

We spent the next few hours just sitting around waiting for results from the echocardiogram. Dad read a book on his tablet. I played a little Candy Crush on the laptop but was a little bit uncomfortable with the bed raised up so I put away the laptop and we put the bed back flat again. Finally the internal medicine doctor came back and she said that the echo looked okay. She said I should follow up with the family doctor but she was cutting loose.

I called up Acme Homecare to tell them that I was going home and would need Rick back again the next day. I wanted to make sure they didn’t need to do a reevaluation of me. When I was in for three days with a urinary infection they had to send a nurse to ask me a million questions that they already knew all the answers to. Once you are in for more than a couple of days they have to treat you like an entirely new patient. Fortunately with just an overnight stay in an observation room they didn’t need to do all that. Rick was back on the job the next day.

Dad rode the gogo back to the van taking with him as much stuff as he could. That included the laptop, my dirty clothes, and my contour sheet and pillow from home that had traveled with me in the ambulance. He then parked the van at the pickup area in front of the hospital, loaded my clothes in a bag on the back of my wheelchair and rode my wheelchair from the van back to my room. He got me dressed which included putting on my back brace which is tricky for a novice to do. It’s better to have him do it than the nurse. As he returned with the wheelchair I asked him several questions about things he might have forgotten like my shoes. One thing he did forget what the headrest that goes on my wheelchair. When I’m getting in and out of the chair we remove it so it wasn’t on the chair when he picked it up at home. That meant I had to write home in the van without the headrest. We propped a pillow up behind my neck when I was still pretty uncomfortable in my neck was very stiff by the time we got home.

We left the hospital about 4 PM which means my total visit lasted just 23 hours. We were going to stop to give McDonald’s on the way home but I suggested we go straight home because my neck hurt. He went back out afterwards and got the sandwiches.

When I went to bed that night I looked on the floor and underneath my bed with someone’s wristwatch. One of the firefighters are ambulance people must’ve lost it while transferring me on to the gurney. We will probably drop it off at the fire station sometime.

We still have no idea what was wrong with me. It had to be some sort of muscle cramps. My heart’s okay. I haven’t had any pain since then.

A couple of weeks ago I played in a poker tournament at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Zionsville. It was my second biggest live poker tournament winning ever. I promised my friends on Facebook I would write a blog entry telling more about the event. I’m just now getting around to doing that.

I think this was the fourth tournament I played at that church. My friend Jack Brake goes to that church. The tournament director a guy named Gil Keller also frequented the St. Gabriel poker tournaments and is a really great guy. He also plays that Jack’s home game which I’ve been to a few times.

St. Alphonsus has a very large complex of buildings on them quite beautiful. I’m not been inside their actual church but considering the quality of their parish hall send other facilities my guess is it’s gorgeous. The parish hall we played him look like it might’ve been a chapel or sanctuary that had been converted to use as a hall. They have a large video projector screen and a pair of 2 large flatscreen TVs. Gil hooks up his laptop to the screen to display the time left in each blind level. He has a really nice app that he can program in all the details of each level. It also tracks the number of players remaining in a number of rebuys so that it can report the average chip stack size. I found myself looking at that number frequently to see where I stood in relationship to the field.

The buy-in was $50 which got you 20,000 chips. Blinds started out 100-200. You are also allowed to rebuy to bust out before the first break. Each blind level is 20 minutes and the break was after the fifth level. A rebuy would be $50. After the first break, anyone could do an ad on for an additional $50 for 20,000 chips or half of an add-on $25 for 10,000 chips. They had 33 players on the one guy didn’t show up so they put his chips in play and posted his blinds until the first break. He never did show so they removed his chips at the break.

I had a reasonably good hand the first hand of the game. I forget what it was but it was a face card with a decent kicker and the opportunity to play the first hand was irresistible. I think I ended up with a pair of Kings that ran into three of a kind. It was disappointing to have a decent hand right off the bat and get beat. It was a sign of things to come. The entire first four levels of the tournament I did not win a single hand. Most of the time I would get marginal hands out of position. Of course every time I would limp in, someone would come over the top. I basically sat there for the first hour and a half and watched my chips dwindle away.

As we got closer to the break in the end of the period in which you could rebuy I decided to play a little bit looser having already made up my mind that I was probably going to have to rebuy or with a big pot if I was going to be any kind of competitive for the rest of the game. Late in the fourth level I went all in and lost and is the rebuy. That meant I now had $100 in the game. That’s what I plan to put in because I expected I would do the initial $50 plus the add-on for $50. I only had $140 with me and I had already spent $5 on a 50/50 drawing. If I was like to do an add-on it was going to have to be the half add-on for $25. By the way I really like the idea of having an option to do the half add-on. Even if I hadn’t already done the rebuy and been short on cash, I might only done the half add-on.

The very first hand after the add-on I got in a very big pot against three other players. One of them was all in and the other two we checked down the remaining cards. I ended up winning the entire pot and although I didn’t count the chips completely, it was very nearly a double up for me. So in two hands I went from being nearly out of the tournament to having almost double the starting chip size.

Since I had won that big pot, I considered not doing the add-on but in the end I decided to do the half add-on anyway. That meant my total investment was now up to $125. At that point they were introducing a new red chip that was worth 10,000. Most of the people who did the add-on got 2 red chips. When I sent my dad up to the chip table to buy my add-on, I expected him to come back with one red chip. Instead he came back with five yellow ones which were worth 5000 each. They had given him 2 ½ times more chips than they should have. I thought about just keeping my mouth shut and I would like to say that it was my sense of honesty that prompted me to speak up but that really wasn’t it so much. I was more concerned that other players were similarly getting the wrong amount of chips. In the end I did tell him that give me the wrong amount and I gave back the extra chips.

From there on out I just took it easy and picked my spots carefully. It was clear that many of the players were staying on marginal hands. That told me that the right strategy was to wait for a premium hand and let them go at it with their marginal hands. If I would happen to catch a flop on a good hand I would be able to take them big. Because I was playing only a few hands, I think I developed a reputation for only playing premium hands which was in part true. But on a couple of occasions when I missed the flop or perhaps played position and really didn’t have much, I was able to bluff my way to winning a few pots that were total bluffs.

There was a guy sitting to players to my right played a lot of pots and won a lot of chips. He knocked out several players and had amassed quite a big stack. As I looked around the table I could see I was doing okay compared to the other players and I was maintaining average or better stack size according to the big screens. But I really wondered how things were going at the other tables.

We were playing about eight players per table on average. However when it got down to two tables they decided not to merge to a final table until there were actually eight players. Most tournaments I’ve managed and most that I’ve played in add an extra player for the final table. Even the World Series of Poker Main event which plays nine players per table, merges to a single table when there are just 10 players remaining. They don’t call that 10th place player a member of the “final table” even though he does sit at the final table. It was really rough playing with just four players while we waited for the ninth place player to go out at the other table of five. I’m going to have to recommend to Gil that next year the go-ahead and put nine or 10 players at the final table.

When we finally merged to the final table I was pretty proud of myself for making it that far the second year in a row. Last year I think I went out eighth but they only paid five or six places. This year they were going to pay six places however sixth was only going to get $40. Fifth was $90. For someone who only did the initial $50 entry, at least they got some money back for sixth place and would possibly turn a profit at fifth. But considering I had $125 invested I knew I was going to have to get to at least fourth to get in the black.

We had about three minutes left in the level when we merged to the final table. We took a break after that and they did a color up of chips. Someone use the phrase “chip up” and so I got on my soap box and started preaching. There had been a running joke going around the table about people whining about how poorly they had been doing. I said to the group “It’s my turn to start whining”. I wasn’t whining about how I was doing in the tournament. I was whining about the misuse of language. I explained to the group that this was a pet peeve of mine. Technically “chip up” is a process where you win a series of pots and gradually build your stack of chips. What we were doing was called “color up”. That’s where you trade in your low value chips of one particular color that are no longer needed for chips of a higher value and different color. But I hear people call “color up” by the term “chip up” frequently and it really bugs me.

Among the chips that were added with a new 25,000 chip that is a rectangular plaque like the ones that they use in European casinos. We all joked about how we felt like we were James Bond playing Bacharach against an evil villain. It was kind of fun to have these unusual chips in your stack even though after the color up I only had one of them. The guy who was sitting to places to my right had about five or six. The advantage to color up is it makes it easier to see the relative stack size of each player. Amateur players don’t always keep their chips very well organized and do not keep them in easily countable stacks. At this point it was easy to work around and just look at the number of 25,000 plaques each player has to judge their stack size. I turned to my dad and said “can you believe it? It looks as though I’m currently in third place!” Considering that I didn’t win a single hand for the first 100 minutes or so and it had to do the rebuy, it was amazing enough that I made it to the final eight but to be sitting third at that point was just unbelievable. Dad reminded me that in fact I was really only in eighth place. The way that game goes, you could get kicked out at any minute.

Considering the size of the stack that the one guy had with his six or seven 25,000 plaques, I think we all figured that he had the win tied up we were all playing for second place. The problem was his strategy was a mess. He had been bullying people because he had such a big stack and it had been working. But now rather than going after the shortest stacks, he was going after the larger ones. Because the blinds were so big and he was playing so loose that whenever he would lose it would cost him 10% -15% of his stack or more. Of course some people were going all in with a short stack because they didn’t have any other choice and he would call because he figured they didn’t have much. Occasionally they would double up and that would cut his stack even more.

I tried to lay low as I could because I needed to make it into the money. When we finally got down to sixth place I was still in third or fourth. At one point I ended up all in against one of the other shorter stacks. I barely had him covered. It was classic coin flip where I had a small pair and he had two over cards. The odds of winning one of those are about 50-50 so that’s why they call it a coin flip. I ended up winning that one which kept me alive a little bit longer. As I saw the guy with the big stack begin to lose his and the guy who had been in second place take over the lead I realize that those two weren’t afraid to go at each other. That really worked to my advantage so I picked my time when to get involved. Once I got down to fourth place I don’t recall what it paid but it was more than the $125 that I had invested. I was so happy to be that far along I didn’t really care what happened after that.

When we got down to just three players I turned to dad and said “I told you I was in third place”. He said “you can say that now that you couldn’t say it before. You could have just as easily gone out in eighth”. Of course he was right. The guy who had had the big lead at one point probably had more chips than all of the other players combined. Now he had about half the stack of the new chip leader. I just let them go at it and occasionally picked up some blinds when I had position. I knew the two big stacks would go at each other and eventually they did. The guy with the big stack was gone in third place. If he played a little bit smarter he could’ve won the whole thing. That left me heads up against a really smart player. He had about a 10 to 1 lead over me. We’ve been playing over four hours and were both very tired. He had indicated he might make some sort of deal which I probably should’ve taken. I doubt he was going to take first and second place money combined and split it even with me but he might’ve given me more than I would’ve gotten for second place on my own. But it’s pretty rare to get a chance to play heads-up for good money and I asked him if we could just go ahead with it for a few more hands. “I’m probably going to go all in pretty soon here to see if I can double up. If I don’t it will all be over. Let’s given a few hands.” He agreed.

Sure enough a few hands later I caught a couple good cards and pushed. He called and caught a pair on the flop. I never did improve and it was all over. Second-place paid $460. Subtracting out the $125 that I had invested gave me a profit of $335. That doesn’t include the $5 I spent on the 50-50 drawing. I count that as separate. First place paid $740. I don’t know if he did rebuy or add on. My guess is he did the initial $50 plus a $50 add-on. I don’t think he did a rebuy.

Overall I had a great time. And winning my second biggest live tournament ever made it even better. For the record my biggest live win ever was at a tournament at brother-in-law Joe’s club that he belongs to in Danville. They had 64 players paid $50 each and I got second place which was $650 total or $600 net. My biggest win anywhere was a limit hold‘em game on Poker Stars. It was a $5 entry against about 4000 players. It took about five hours to play. I got first place which was about $545. Although that was less than the $650 that I made in that other live tournament, I still consider it my biggest win as a percentage.

Shortly after Kennedy died, people begin saying “We will always remember where we were when we heard the president was dead.” I suppose my grandparents generation the “where was I when it happened” event was Pearl Harbor. For my parents and I it was JFK assassination or perhaps for my generation that was either RFK, MLK or the moon landing that classified as the “where were you” event. We have to suppose that 9/11 is the latest in a series of these life-changing historical moments.

I was in the third grade in James E Robert School IPS #97. Every year the PTA had a fundraiser cookie sale where the kids would sell cookies to raise money for the PTA that then purchased equipment needed by the school. Most of it was wheelchairs. After each annual cookie sale the PTA would throw away “Thank You Party” for all the students. My mom was the PTA room mother for the third grade. My teacher was the much beloved Clara Rose Holmes. Someone came into the room and talk to one of the other adults either my mom or the teacher and it was obvious they were pretty upset about something. There were probably other parents there is room mothers for the other classrooms that day. We didn’t have a TV set in any of the rooms but we had a radio and someone turned it on. The adults were all intensely listening to the news reports.

At one point the kids were told that the president “got shot in Dallas”. I thought he had been given an injection of some kind. I couldn’t figure out why he had to go all the way to Dallas Texas just to get an inoculation. “Don’t they have doctors in Washington DC that could have given him a shot?” At some point someone finally explained to me he was shot with a gun and eventually confirmation came through that he really was dead.

Mom had brought me up to be a political junkie. We watched The Today Show every morning religiously. It was a practice she continued to her final days. She was watching The Today Show on 9/11 and woke me up shortly after the first plane hit. I was watching in time to see the second one hit live. Anyway back to ’63… We were lifelong Democrats and Catholic as well so Kennedy’s election was a big deal in our house. She had made sure even at age 6 or so that I appreciated the significance of a Catholic president. I remember the stern look on her face watching The Today Show during the Cuban missile crisis. I distinctly remember asking “Mommy what is a blockade?” So although I was taking lots of cues from her reaction to the days events, I’d like to think of myself as being a reasonably politically savvy little eight-year-old who knew that this was a very big deal.

Being big fans of the Kennedy family and people who appreciate good comedy, we had a copy of the best-selling comedy album “The First Family” by comedian Vaughn Meader in which a comedy troupe put on sketches with spot on impersonations of the Kennedy family. My favorite little clip from the album was an argument over toys used in the Kennedy bathtub. They included an entire flotilla of battleships, submarines, cruisers, and a rubber duck belonging to the president. Another favorite clip simply said “Go to the polls and vote. Vote for the Kennedy of your choice but to vote!”

Rather than ride the bus home that day, mom drove me home. I remember as we got in the car I said to her “I guess we can go home and throw away the First Family Album. Nobody will ever want to laugh about the president again.”

Looking back on those sketches 50 years later I guess I can laugh a little bit and I’m not alone. A quick search of Amazon.com shows that last year they released a 50th anniversary edition of the album. I actually bought it on CD a few years ago from Amazon along with some other vintage comedy items like Spike Jones and Alan Sherman.

Being a huge fan of the American space program also may be an even bigger fan of Kennedy and his pledge to get us to the moon. It always sort of pissed me off that the plaques on the lunar modules at the name Richard Nixon on them. All of the things I would’ve liked Kennedy to live to do, my biggest sorrow is that he did not live to see the moon landing pledge fulfilled.

I watched TV continuously with my mom over the next several days. I saw Oswald shot live on TV. I saw the famous salute by John John. I watched it all. I did think it was a little bit arrogant that the torch they let at his gravesite was called “Eternal Flame”. Both the scientist in the theologian in me take the word “eternal” quite literally. The sci-fi fan in me hopes that someday we colonize other worlds. If that dream comes true it will be because Kennedy put us on the first step of that journey. That will be his eternal legacy. Not some propane torch buried in the ground.

As many of you know I spent four days this week at St. Vincent Hospital with an extremely nasty urinary infection. I knew the mild one every six or eight months. Usually I just did a little stinging sensation and I know that one is coming on. Dad takes a sample up to my urologist office. He writes me a prescription. And everything goes okay.

(Spoiler alert: there may be some TMI too much information contained in the rest of this blog entry.)

This one snuck up on me very hard and very fast. I did feel a pretty nasty sting when I went shortly after dinner Monday night. I was feeling worse and worse throughout the evening. I went to bed about 10 PM and took some Tylenol just because I wasn’t feeling too good. It didn’t take long to realize I was getting very nasty chills. I ended up coming up with multiple extra blankets and still shaking very bad. When we took my temperature it was a whopping 103.6. I don’t ever recall having a temperature that high.

I probably should’ve gone to the hospital that night but I was feeling so awful and it was just so comfy all snuggled up in all those blankets. I just didn’t feel like moving at all.

The Tylenol brought the fever down a little bit but it was still pretty high. At 2 AM I took another dose and it eventually came down.

The next morning it was at about 100 even. My caregiver Rick showed up at 10 AM like always. I decided to go ahead and get dressed and have dad take me to the ER. For some reason I was having difficulty swallowing. I had really nasty nausea and dry heaves. I knew that even if I got an antibiotic it was laundry hard to swallow and I needed to drink lots of fluids at this point I just couldn’t see that happening the way I felt. I was definitely going to need IV fluids and probably IV antibiotic. I was a little bit embarrassed that I had not gone to the hospital the night before.

Once I was up and dressed I had Rick back my laptop into my wheelchair bag. Dad packed up my CPAP breathing machine and we found my special nurse call button that the folks at St. Vincent made me about 30 years ago. It’s just a little microswitch like I use on my remotes and stuff but it’s got a plug on it that fits their receptacle. They build it for me when I couldn’t use the ones that they had. They just told me to take it with me bring it back anytime I need it. That’s what I’ve been doing for decades.

I got on my computer and posted a quick message to Facebook and some email to friends who either don’t have Facebook or don’t read it very often. I plan online browser game called Travian. I sent them an in-game message telling them I was going to be off-line. I took a quick look at my bedroom DVR and canceled some programs that were scheduled and deleted some stuff that I could get on demand later.

We got to the hospital about noon and they took me right in. I took a urine specimen with me. We keep a supply of specimen jars here. They didn’t want to take it but I told them I didn’t think I could give them a fresher sample. It’d take a lot of effort just felt a little bottle that morning.

They wanted to start an IV on me but it’s very difficult to find a decent vein. They finally got a little ultrasound machine and found one in my upper right arm. They drew some blood from that and then hooked up and IV. At first they said they might just keep me overnight in an observation room but based on the idea that I was having other issues like appetite and swallowing etc. they decided they should put me in a regular medical ward. I got to my room about 6 PM.

I still felt really lousy but I slept reasonably well all things considered.

My urologist showed up early Wednesday morning and said he wanted to do an ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder. He wondered if perhaps I had some stones that were aggravating this infection. We were both concerned that this one was way worse than anything I had ever experienced.

I was also visited by an internal medicine doctor. My regular primary care physician is an interest but he doesn’t do hospital visits anymore. They’ve sort of change their model where they have doctors who do nothing but hospital and doctors who do nothing but office. You can’t get one that does both anymore which kind of disappoints me because I like to have someone managing my overall care like an internist who actually knows my history.

Anyway the interest was concerned that there might be something else besides urinary problems that had made me so sick. He wanted to do a CAT scan of my abdomen since I told them I have a history of diverticulitis and of course in 2006 my intestine actually ruptured and I had to have a temporary colostomy. I was similarly worried that it might be something intestinal because I was so sick. On the other hand I was not having any intestinal pain whatsoever. I was very constipated. My “normal” is perhaps every two days sometimes and it was pushing 3 or 4 since I had had a movement. (I warned you this was going to be TMI… It gets worse).

Of course when you have a CAT scan they make you drink a bunch of liquid. I did have a tiny bit of an appetite by now. I had eaten some scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. The stuff they made me drink was not as bad as some that I have had. But I had to drink three glasses of it and I only managed to get 2 of them down. At least with a good IV line I would not have any problems with the dye that they have to inject. Whenever I have a CAT scan, that is always a big hassle.

The ultrasound on my kidneys in the CAT scan procedures went relatively easily. I did end up with a fever of about 100 which was making me feel pretty lousy. Normally I have to take liquid Tylenol because I can’t swallow the caplets. But Tuesday night I was so sick with dry heaves that just the thought of taking the syrupy cherry liquid made me gag. I asked them if there was an IV Tylenol or aspirin they could give me. Their only alternative was a suppository 🙁 I was feeling bad enough that I agreed to one. Later on in this ordeal when I was eating something and swallowing better they did get me some liquid Tylenol.

Of course when you’re in the hospital one of the first questions they always ask you is “Are you allergic to anything?” For many years I always said no even though there are couple of antibiotics that I don’t tolerate very well. Of course the one time I said “no” they tried to give me one of those and when I said I didn’t want it they said “I thought you said you weren’t allergic to anything!” So now when they asked me that question I always say “I’m not allergic but there are a couple of antibiotics I don’t tolerate very well. Cipro is me really bad nausea and Keflex gives me really bad diarrhea.” Despite my dislike of Cipro, they talked me into giving it to me IV. I can usually tolerate it for about three days. After that it feels like I’ve got toxic waste flowing through my veins. Not a fun feeling when all your fighting is a bladder infection. Eventually I did talk them into using something different once the urine culture came back and they knew exactly what bacteria I was growing. My usual antibiotic of choice is something called Levaquin and I know for a fact that I have had it by IV at St. Vincent before. But for some reason they didn’t have IV Levaquin this time. Among my normal medications is a nasal spray for my sinuses. I was using Flonase but I recently switched to a different spray is a combination of Flonase which is a nasal steroid and something else which is an antihistamine. They didn’t have the new nasal spray so I went back to Flonase for a few days.

One other bit of medication issue I had… The first time the nurse went to give me meds she started naming things I had never heard of. When I asked her what it all was she said that one of them was stool softener for my constipation. I had already discussed that with the doctor and I was cool with that. Another was a kind of diuretic that was either Lasix or something similar to Lasix. That was okay. I knew I needed to get that fluid passing through me. I was a little surprised that’s what they were giving me because it is notoriously bad on your potassium levels and they had already discovered my potassium was low and they were giving me IV potassium. My previous encounters with IV potassium burned terribly. However this time it was okay because they were giving it to me very slowly mixed in with a bunch of other fluid. Anyway back to the mystery meds… One of them was a blood thinner because they were worried I was going to get blood clots lying in bed. I explained to them that I have feeling everywhere. I know when I’m uncomfortable. I have them reposition me. I’ve never had problems with bedsores. And that I wear a heavy back brace that likes to poke me in various places. While I wasn’t wearing the brace in bed, I could just imagine once I was ready to go home and put that brace on I would end up with bruises everywhere. They said it was okay if I refused to take it.

I had a long talk with the internist the next day. I told him I didn’t like them prescribing me medications that we had not previously. “That is not cool at all!” I told him. He never actually apologized but he agreed that they should have discussed those other meds with me. Other than that little glitch I really liked the doctors that I had. Also all the nurses were great. I had no complaints about any of them. I also had a chance to be cared for by some student nurses from Marion University. They all did a really good job. I had fun chatting with them. Of course they get all of the lousy jobs like feeding me breakfast and giving me a bath but it gave us time to talk. There seem to be a lot more male nurses these days. 20 or 30 years ago when I was in the hospital it seemed unusual to see even one. This is that they were all over the place in two out of the five students that worked on me were men.

After resting up from all that I decided to dig out the laptop and check out the Wi-Fi service. I had used St. Vincent Wi-Fi in the past. I don’t think I had ever used it on my old laptop. I did use dial-up on the old laptop several times before Wi-Fi was so popular. But I had previously used it on my iPod touch when my mom was in the hospital. In fact I bought my first iPod touch when she was diagnosed with cancer sort of because I knew I might be spending some hours in St. Vincent waiting rooms with nothing to do.

I didn’t have any problems identifying “STV-GUEST” as the proper Wi-Fi signal to connect to. When I told it to connect there was a pop up window that asked me to accept the terms. I didn’t bother to read it but it was a little bit suspicious because it didn’t say anything about St. Vincent. I had seen such a pop up before that did identify it as a St. Vincent user agreement.

Anyway when it finally did connect, it said that the connection was “limited”. I didn’t know what that meant. Apparently “limited” means “utterly useless”. I think around with all the troubleshooters and properties and everything else I can think of and determined that it was connecting me to the network but not giving the Internet access. For some reason it would not assigned me an IP address.

I told the nurse about it and she sent in someone who was the secretary for that floor. She was apparently their “go-to-gal” for all things computer. In the end she really didn’t know much about it. It turns out anytime she had ever tried to connect it had worked so she didn’t have any strategy for fixing the problem. She tried disconnecting and reconnecting several times to no avail. We rebooted a few times with no luck.

I tried to convince her to call someone in the IT department but she insisted that they would be highly unlikely to work on a patient computer. She says I have a backlog of maintenance tasks on the hospital’s own computers. There’s a PC in virtually every room from the nurses to do all of the record-keeping. They got a little laser barcode scanner that is Bluetooth connected to their PCs. Every time they give you a pill or an IV bag they have to scan the barcode on my wrist tag and scan the barcode on the medication. It looks like a pretty cool system for keeping track of everything.

Wednesday night I came up with a brainstorm so when I called Dad Thursday morning I had him bring me some stuff. I have a little Wi-Fi dongle that looks like a USB flash drive. I bought it from the Wi-Fi on my Raspberry Pi tiny computer. I had him bring me the Wi-Fi gadget and the driver disk. When he arrived Thursday morning I disabled the built in Wi-Fi on the laptop, installed the other Wi-Fi gadget and it behaved exactly like the built-in Wi-Fi.

Dad had his Barnes & Noble Color Nook book reader with him. We tried connecting to the Wi-Fi using his tablet and it worked perfectly 🙁 That ment it was something I was doing wrong. Or perhaps their system just wasn’t compatible with Windows 8.1. We never did figure it out. I showed dad how to log into my Facebook account to post a quick update message for friends and family.

I also installed a special chip in his Nook that sort of turns it into a full-blown Android tablet. We switched it over to Android mode and downloaded a copy of my favorite remote control program called TeamViewer. We used that program to remotely access my desktop at home. Then we can post an email using Outlook on my PC. I can use webmail on my Road Runner email account but it does not store any of my email addresses. So we got a quick message out that way.

One of the things that bothered me at this point was the status of my DVR. If I had had good Internet access I could’ve used a Bright House remote access webpage to get to my DVR and try to reschedule some shows. Unfortunately that system isn’t quite as useful as I wish it was. It will let you schedule a recording. It will let you see what you have scheduled to record. It will let you cancel a scheduled recording. What it will not do is it will not show you what you already have recorded nor will it tell you how full your DVR currently is. That makes it marginally useful in my opinion. I didn’t bother to have dad try to log into that mess. I would just have to hope that any movies I had scheduled would be shown again later and that any regular TV shows I could catch on demand more from “other sources” wink wink.

I normally eat two meals a day and a snack before bedtime. That’s usually lunch and dinner. But since I was waking up early and eating breakfast and lunch I didn’t really feel much like dinner. One thing that was cramping my style, they had me only cardiac diet. I was going to argue with them that I really didn’t have any cardiac diet restrictions but they explained to me that it was really a no salt diet (low-sodium) because they wanted to keep the fluids running through me and salt makes you retain fluid. So I really couldn’t argue with that.

Early on Wednesday the urologist had said he was probably going to put a catheter in me. The whole reason I get these infections is because my bladder doesn’t completely drain. However when I told the internist and the nurses have difficulty usually is to hit one of those things in me, they all decided they wanted the urologist to do it. He would not be back until Thursday morning. So although I should probably had the catheter on Wednesday it didn’t happen until Thursday. The urologist sent over his nurse to do it. It actually went better than some such procedures I’ve had although none of them are any fun.

On Thursday morning the urologist came in early and told me that the ultrasound and CAT scan showed nothing extraordinary on my kidneys or bladder. He said that he had already known I have some small cysts of fluid on my kidneys that they were nothing to worry about. He knew about them but I don’t ever recall hearing about them. Anyway I asked him what the CAT scan had to say about my intestines. “I don’t really know… I was more interested in your urinary system.” Viva specialization! The internist was very late getting in that day. I was kind of anxious to hear about the CAT scan. When he finally did show up he said everything looked normal.

Okay here is a double triple TMI alert…

I mentioned that I was constipated so they finally started giving me some stool softener’s. It took two days worth of them but finally early Thursday, they kicked in and I filled a couple of bedpans with some really nasty stuff. I did start getting some cramps after I was cleaned out but having heard that the CAT scan on the intestines was okay I didn’t worry about it too much. The pain went away pretty quickly.

When I talked to the internist late Thursday I asked him “What is our goal here for getting me home?” My white cell count had been something like 37,000 when I came in. They had it down to 22,000 and normal is 11,000. I asked him does it have to be normal? Anyway after a small conversation he concluded there was a good chance I could go home Friday that he needed more input from the urologist.

One other visitor I had on Thursday was a woman from the chaplain’s office. I had thought about calling them. I told them when I went in that I was Catholic and wanted to receive communion but nobody had showed up. When she stopped by for a visit I told her that no one had been by. She looked at her paperwork and she did have me down as Catholic. She promised someone would be in and they did show up Friday morning for communion. That was nice.

Also my friend Rich stopped by Thursday night for a quick visit on his way home from work. I told him the whole saga about the Wi-Fi problems. We also got caught up talking about our favorite TV shows such as The Walking Dead and Sons of Anarchy. He was the only visitor I had other than dad but that was okay.

Thursday night was the Colts game versus the Titans. Fortunately St. Vincent has a great selection of cable TV channels including your usual basic cable ESPN, ESPN2 2, all of the news channels including MSNBC, and all the science and discovery and history channels. Fortunately when the Colts play on NFL network may always allow a local station to broadcast the game it was on WTHR. I was pretty wiped out and I dozed off somewhere late in the second quarter and woke up during the opening drive of the third quarter. Naturally I was very disappointed at the way the whole first half went. I tried not to scream too loud when Luck ran in that touchdown from about 12 yards out to give us the lead. I was really worried when we were only up by 2 field goals because I knew if Tennessee ever got their act together again, they might march right in with another touchdown. Fortunately we ended up leading by 10 and I got a little bit of a relief. Then Tennessee marched in and scored. The onside kick was no good and we ended up winning. I classified as one of those apologetic “a win is a win” kind of games. At least they didn’t slaughter us like what happened the week before.

I slept reasonably good Thursday night. I was disappointed Friday morning when the urologist did not come in like he usually does. That did not look good for my prospects of coming on Friday. However the nurses all had the word that I was a probable discharge. I’m guessing it was about 10 AM that the internist finally showed up. He had talked to the urologist who apparently had been on the floor or had checked in at the nurses station or something but had not visited with me. Anyway he had signed off on the discharge so the internist said that I was good to go. He would write up my orders.

In addition to things like removing my IV and all that stuff, we needed to make some changes to the catheter system. I had about 6 feet of tubing and a huge bag hanging on the side of the bed. They switched that to a shorter tube and a leg bag. Dad got me dressed to go. As I suspected it had experienced previously after being on IV fluid for a long time, my back brace didn’t fit worth a damn. We put it on me as best we could. Fortunately they had a Hoyer patient lifter gadget to lift me out of bed and into the wheelchair. Once I was sitting up I could tell for sure that the brace was a mess and that my arms were extremely stiff. I knew it was going to be at least a day and probably two until I would be able to function normally. There was no way I was going to be able to drive my wheelchair.

I did get a chance to say goodbye to some of the nursing students before I left. They were all really cool people. Also the transport people who took me back and forth for various tests were all pretty cool. Every time they were about to go over a bump in the floor such as getting on and off of the elevators they would warn you. I thought that was really special. I told them I wasn’t in any pain and it didn’t really matter that I could see that if I was in pain, every bump would’ve been a big deal and it was nice that they would always warn patient. Dad had been bringing little three wheel go-go scooter that we had bought for my mom. It’s a very long way from the parking to my room and he really liked having it. Once I was up in the chair, dad got in the go-go and went to get the car. They sent someone from transportation to push me downstairs in my wheelchair. In a cool bit of bookend irony, the guy who had pushed me from the ER to my room on the first night was the same guy who pushed me from the room down to the lobby.

We stopped by the drugstore to turn in my prescription for some liquid antibiotic. We told them we would pick it up in a couple of hours. They just called to say they didn’t have it and would not be able to get it until tomorrow morning. Dad just drove back over there to pick up the prescription and try to take it to a different drugstore. I did not yet have my IV antibiotic today or I would’ve waited until tomorrow morning but I don’t want to wait a full day without any more medicine going in me.

It’s a little bit strained sitting here in front of the computer not being able to drive my wheelchair or get to the phone in case of an emergency. Dad asked if I was going to be okay with him running this errand. I told him I was at the computer and if he didn’t show up in a couple of hours I would send out some emergency emails and Facebook messages.

The first thing when I got home was I had dad put me in front computer to send out email and Facebook reports that I was home. Then I tried eating some lunch but didn’t feel like much of an appetite. I was having a little bit of difficulty breathing until we loosened up some of the straps on my back brace and then I was okay.

The next thing I did was go through about 300 unread emails 95% of them were of course spam. Then I started going through my DVR to see how much damage I had. Fortunately I have a gadget that allows me to send IR remote signals to the DVR using a webpage on my PC. I see what’s on the bedroom DVR because I have a coaxial cable running from the bedroom into the office where I can watch the bedroom DVR from the office. There were only two movies that I’ve lost that I was not able to reschedule. Fortunately they were ones that weren’t very important to me. I get by without seeing them. There were quite a few that I really did not want to lose and was lucky to catch on the schedule a few days from now. I will still have to catch up with some shows on demand but that’s okay as well.

After that I started writing this blog. It’s great to be home with a real computer and real Internet connection and real cable TV with DVR!

Thanks for all of the prayers and support from family and friends.

PS added later… Neither Walgreens nor CVS had my antibiotic in liquid form. Instead we got it in a capsule form and we open a capsule up and mix it in some vanilla pudding. That’s what they did with some of the pills I had to take in the hospital. And he did make it home okay so I don’t need to send out any emergency emails 🙂 I still not limber enough to drive my wheelchair but I think I push buttons on my TV remote and we might even crush some candy on the iPod touch if we’re lucky. All future updates will be quickies on Facebook.

Lots of people have been sharing their creative Halloween costumes online. Today’s costumes have to have lots of blinking LEDs, electroluminescent wire, and all sorts of other electronic effects. I can only imagine the kind of costume I might have dreamed up when I was a little kid if I’d had access to the electronics that I have access to today.

However as you will see below, my parents and I did get pretty creative in trying to design a Halloween costume that dealt with the fact I’m in a wheelchair.

I think my favorite is this one from 1963 when I was 8 years old. We had recently purchased a washing machine or some other big appliance that came in a giant cardboard box. We reused the box for my costume and decorated it like a TV set. We cut a hole in the front for the screen and I dressed up in a cowboy outfit. That made me “A Cowboy on TV”. You probably can’t see it on this photo but written on the front of the TV was the words “RCA Living Color” even though probably at the time we only had a black-and-white TV.

The problem with doing something creative is that you constantly have to try to outdo yourself over and over again. While in 1963 costume simply covered up the wheelchair, the 1964 costume sought to transform the wheelchair into part of the costume itself. A canopy was added to the wheelchair to make it look like a baby stroller. Of course that meant that I had to dress up like a baby. I don’t know how they ever talk me into doing this but I did anyway.

Here’s a closer view where the photo is not quite as faded.

For 1965 we just sort of ignored the wheelchair when turned me into a robot. I suppose a robot could sit in a wheelchair. The arms and legs were made out of flexible duct work. The chest and head piece were cardboard covered with aluminum foil.

I’m pretty sure that after that I didn’t do much trick-or-treating. In years prior to that I always just got a ready-made purchased costume. The only photos I could find on many of those costumes go all the way back to 1958 where I was an astronaut before there even were astronauts. Or maybe I was a Martian who knows?

Here’s another photo from the same year. The guy in the Popeye costume is my former next-door neighbor and currently my dentist Dr. Michael Tillery.

Here’s what the guy in the Popeye suit is doing today. (Click to view)

I have all sorts of ideas of how I could string rows of LEDs around the wheelchair or create fancy light show displays. I could put a string of LEDs around my wheels and use an accelerometer chip to detect when the wheels are turning and that would change the pattern of lights. It would be a lot of work and I never go to Hollywood parties or go anywhere like nightclubs where having a blinking outfit would be cool. So I guess I will stick to my usual electronic projects such as TV remote controls and toy helicopter controllers.

Back in the 1980s my mother had a grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation to create an accessibility guidebook for Indianapolis. The book was called “Navigation Unlimited in Indianapolis”. It was actually an update of an earlier book that the foundation had produced. Many different disability organizations had created such guidebooks for other cities around the country. This was prior to ADA and other accessibility legislation. She went around to hundreds of public places and measured doorways, surveyed restrooms, counted steps, measured curbs and scouted accessible entrances.

After ADA and other building code changes I’m happy to say that for the most part such a guidebook is not needed. But there are still a few places where access is problematic. One guy has found a modern way to handle this problem. He has created an app using Google maps that allows people to rate various locations and facilities as to their accessibility or more importantly there inaccessibility to people in wheelchairs. Here is an article from Time online telling his story.

My mother would’ve absolutely loved this. In fact I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of it myself.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/10/14/wheelchair-inaccessible-the-story-behind-an-app-that-maps-obstacles-for-the-disabled/