Went Flying!

Not as pilot, but I'll enjoy whatever flying falls into my lap. I went flying with my friend Mike, as safety pilot, while he polished up his instrument skills at Front Range airport (KFTG). He flew the the ILS and Localizer approaches to Runway 26, ILS and Localizer approaches to Runway 35 and NDB approach to Runway 26, and practiced holding patterns and tracking.

I had a blast, just riding along and watching for traffic, which was my primary job. I snapped a couple of pictures on this severe-clear day, with Pike's Peak easily visible off to the south. I also played traffic controller, and gave him vectors (magnetic headings to fly) to each initial approach fix.

Every once in awhile, I would glance down, and check our progress on the Foreflight aviation app's moving map display on my iPhone. Very cool. Except, the regular access to the phone's GPS device, and the frequent screen updates, rapidly drained the battery, until I decided to shut it off at 30%, only halfway into the flight.I was kicking myself, for not bringing K's cool iPad 3 along, since it has a much bigger screen, and a longer battery life.

Even considering the iPhone's nice high resolution color screen, my old trusty Garmin GPSMap196 handheld aviation GPS is probably a more appropriate flying companion. It does a better job of providing aviation situational awareness, with real-time course and vertical guidance for most IFR approaches, and the batteries last far longer, even though they're not rechargeable.

Note to self: Need to either plug the iPhone into the cigarette lighter to keep it charged when flying, or investigate one of those smartphone battery life extenders. Maybe the Mophie Powerstation XL would be the Christmas present I should be getting myself. Or maybe the Hydrogen Reactor I heard about recently. Or maybe even the PowerBag that my friend's wife likes.

Mike did the driving as well as the flying, and that gave me the chance to see his new (to him) 2011 VW Jetta TDI, a turbo diesel with 6-speed manual transmission. It's a very nice car, comfortable, with good safety considerations, a smooth ride, a few fun gadgets, lots of oomph when the turbo kicks in, and awesome fuel mileage the rest of the time.

Just to add to the enjoyment, we stopped and had a delicious lunch at Racines restaurant, on the way home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone safe travels, and a wonderful Thanksgiving! Judging  from the weather synopsis charts for the next 24 hours, it looks like everyone traveling around North America has a good chance of missing any serious weather. Crossing my fingers for our traveler friends...

Cheery white stuff

No snow in the forecast. What's all this white stuff, falling from the sky??

Lear 35 crash

Drat. Yet another general aviation crash last night. This one was a Learjet model 35, registration XA-USD, departing Ft Lauderdale at 7:50 PM for a return flight to Cozumel, with a medical team aboard. The flight crew reported engine failure shortly after takeoff, and they turned back, but were unable to make it to the airport. They impacted the Atlantic Ocean near the shoreline, in the darkness of night, and it appears from news articles and pictures that the aircraft at least partially broke up, since 1,000 pounds of floating debris had already been recovered. It's puzzling, that a very capable twin jet couldn't return successfully after an engine failure. Some failures will take out both engines, but most will leave one running, in which case it should have been "easy" to return safely. I really wonder what happened. 

News articles: from Aviation Safety, Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel, CBS Miami

Launched AV038_MAVEN

Today we launched AV-038, an Atlas V rocket, carrying the MAVEN spacecraft, bound for Mars. MAVEN's mission is to probe the Martian upper atmosphere, in hopes of learning how Mars transformed from a warm, wet planet, into the barren world it is today. Flight time for the gas-sniffing sleuth is ten months, with arrival scheduled for next September.

MAVEN's next milestone is a December 3rd engine burn, to adjust the probe's path toward Mars, the first of four course correction maneuvers planned during the mission's 10-month cruise.

Ground controllers will start activating MAVEN's eight science instruments for tests this December, and some of the payloads will take data during the voyage to Mars. MAVEN's ultraviolet imaging spectrometer will observe comet ISON in December.

Once MAVEN is at Mars, the probe will drop into an operational elliptical orbit, and begin collecting scientific data in November 2014.

See the full story and more pics at SpaceFlightNow.com.

Home after a crazy day

I checked in with K's nurse at 7:30am this morning, and discovered that a blood glucose (BG) hypoglycemia emergency was brewing, and they didn't even know it yet. They had given her a total of 32 units of Humalog (a fast-acting insulin) during the night, while chasing a high BG that only required 4 units. By my calculation, that would have driven her blood sugar down to negative 4,200 over the next few hours! An impossibility, for sure, but also surely enough to kill her, if left unchecked, by taking BG down to zero, and holding it there.

They didn't allow for (and didn't even want to consider) the time it takes even fast-acting Humalog to be metabolized. Someone must have fooled these people into thinking that insulin takes effect immediately. I had told them that each unit of Humalog will drive her BG down by 150, at a rate of about 60 per hour. In this case, they started at 719 BG at 1145pm, so after giving her the correct 4 units of Humalog to bring it down by 600, it would have taken about 10 hours, to get to a normal number in the 100 range, sometime around 10am. Instead, they measured periodically, and treated the number they saw each time. So they gave her 10, 10, 8, and 4 units throughout the early morning.

They had measured a BG of 419 at 4am, and I guess they felt confident that they would need even more insulin soon, and weren't even a little worried that her BG would be going too low. I warned her Nurse and the Charge Nurse that she'd be crashing soon, and that they would probably need IV dextrose to stop it. I recommended that they measure her immediately, even though they were in the middle of the RN shift change. Sure enough, they measured a BG of 58, way too low. They measured again, to be sure, and got a BG of 34, critically low.

Luckily they were in a hospital, and had easy access to intravenous dextrose. They gave her a shot of 50 mL of D50 push, which raised her BG to around 240 over the next hour or so. Amazingly, her BG didn't drop below that later, as I feared it would, but instead hovered at 240 for several hours, then started trending up, after she ate lunch. The D50 had completely offset the excess Humalog. We've gotta get ourselves some of that stuff! If only we could.

They tried very hard to get her discharged during the day, but she wanted to wash up, and have dinner before she left. Then she wanted to peruse the hospital gift shop windows, even though the shop was closed, and I had locked myself out, by going out the automatic doors after 8pm when they stop letting people in that way. I didn't finally get her out the door and into the car, until after 9pm.

Surgery went OK

They took her from her room to pre-op around 130pm. Dr Atkins came and took her from pre-op toward the operating room at 350pm, estimated 30 min to complete. The O.R. called me in the waiting room around 430pm to say that the surgery went well, and they were putting on the bandages. Then the Doc stopped by to give me a quick recap, basically "it went as planned, couldn't close all the way, leave the bandage on, expect bleeding - we want that, don't use ice, and see her on Tuesday." They said her BG was heading down through 89, after surgery. They moved her to recovery for an hour, which gave me time to run off and eat at the Copper Pot again. Nice place. Then they took her to her room without telling me, but I found her pretty quickly. She was sleeping like a log, and I couldn't imagine them discharging her that night, but they didn't figure that out until later. When she woke up, so was starving! And in pain! Figuring her BG was probably low by then, I got her to drink some Apple juice, and the RN started working on pain meds. Food Service still had her with the "no food" order that was in place before surgery, and that had a really big impact on her, since she hadn't eaten since the night before. After an hour, things started getting better, as the doc returned the RN's call and canceled the no food order, and she finally got her breakfast/lunch/dinner, and some pain meds. They finally realized she was going to have to stay overnight, and I headed home to see how the dog had fared. She was fine, and welcomed a late night walk around the block.

Surgery today

So, the "wound removal and ankle bone scrape" surgery should be today. They decided to dialyze her this morning 8-12, so the morning caregiver Maureen didn't get to be very helpful.

I had to giggle to myself last night (in a slightly hysterical way), when the nurse said she was going to give her 10 units of Humalog before bed. I mentioned that ten was *way* more than we would've given her, especially since she's been taking Tradjenta, ten units would bring her BG down about 1500 mg/dl, and since her BG was only 402, that seemed problematic to me. You'd rather *not* have a negative blood glucose, after all. I said we would only have given her two units for the BG, and another unit for the food she was about to eat. To her credit, the RN went with our recommendation. This morning, her BG was 149, a very nice number. It's *so* scary to think about how that would've gone, if I'd already left for home by then.

Surgery deferred again

This morning, I woke up to find K with an extremely high BG. Her glucose meter reads "HIGH" instead of a number, which means it's over 600. I fell asleep last night, before she and the caregiver finally got home from dialysis, and apparently she fell asleep on the floor of her closet, before she could think about taking any insulin for her glucose, which was already going up. I've no idea if we can get it down into an acceptable range for them in time, without crashing it. If it goes too low, with no food intake allowed since midnight, she won't be able to recover without canceling the surgery due to food in stomach. This is unbelievably frustrating.

Update- They just deferred the deferred surgery. Her BG was coming down rapidly, and at 11, when she was supposed to go into surgery, it was fast approaching the number they said yesterday would have been acceptable. I question their reasoning for canceling. Sounds like they will admit her today, and "get her BG stabilized" before they do the surgery later or tomorrow. But I question their ability to do any better a job with BG, considering recent past experience. I guess if I just stopped sleeping, I could watch it all night for her, and this wouldn't have happened. What a slacker.

Update- She's been admitted to Swedish Hospital. No surgery slots available this afternoon or tomorrow morning. They'll try again tomorrow afternoon, pre-op at 1pm, surgery at 3pm.

And now begins the frantic effort to cancel or reschedule every activity she had scheduled between now and Saturday morning...

Surgery deferred

K's surgery was deferred a day, due to high Blood Glucose (BG) when she arrived today. She had a a really low BG this morning, and too much Apple juice got drank, dealing with it, so it overshot up high.

Surgery Wednesday

K has foot surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning at Swedish Hospital. She has a long-standing ankle wound that has been resistant to various treatments. She says they're going to try scraping the ankle bone, to put less pressure on the skin from the inside, and give the wound a better chance of healing.

Another BG saga

6:30am - I checked in with the nurse, and found out her BG was high (719) last night after eating, which calls for 4 units of Humalog, but they gave her 28 units over several hours! Her BG is 400 now, so that ought to bring her blood sugar down to about minus 3000 in a few more hours! I warned her RN and the desk RN that she'll be crashing soon, and she'll probably need IV dextrose to save her.

8:30am - Sure enough, they measured a few hours later and her BG was 58, then 34. Ack!

9:30am - They gave her 50 mL of D50 push, and it appeared to solve the problem, bringing BG up to 172.

BG stayed above 100 the rest of the day, climbing and settling at around 240 for several hours, then starting up again later.

3:30 - They're trying to get her discharged today. Seems like the BG is doing ok, after the shot of dextrose.

They were ready for her to leave before the RN shift change at 7pm, but we didn't get out of there until around 9pm. Ran into the neighbor as we were pulling into the garage, and chatted for quite awhile. Finally got into the house around 10pm.

Sleep deprived

Nuts. It's happened. I've turned into my Dad, who used to fall asleep every time he sat down in front of the TV with the family. So, we would wonder, was it the TV, or the family, that put him to sleep? Turns out, it was the sitting down part.

Winter weather inbound

Looks like we've got a little snow on the way this afternoon and tomorrow...

Update- False alarm. I sprinkled a bunch of snow melt on the walkways and driveway, and nothing came. So now the walkways are slippery with that stuff. Can't win. Now I'm hoping for snow, so it will melt the snow melt. Ironic.