Hospital Suck Part 3

2005 decided it would like to end on a crappy note and sent my dad packing to the hospital the day after Christmas. I knew Christmas Eve that he would be making a trip to the ER, but not wanting to be in the hospital Christmas day he decided he'd fake (in my opinion) feeling better until the holiday had passed.

So Monday, my brother, husband and I took my dad to the ER. Close to 2 hours later he was given a room. Unfortunately he had to share his room (I'm not really sure whether this is a good or bad thing, because if you're super serious, from what I saw, you have a room to yourself). My brother and I were the only two allowed back in the room with my dad, so Bob was lucky to evade the discussion on why the girl sharing the room with my dad was there*. Of course, even while we had to put up with her incessant talking we were slightly amused with making up theories on why she has had so many "domestic altercations" with men** and with my dad mouthing "Shut up."

After another hour or two, a doctor came in to check on my dad and sent him out for a couple xrays (he had pain in the area near his gall bladder). Several xrays, pokes and prodes later they determined that my dad had diverticulitis and was admitted to the hospital (it may have happened in reverse, my memory fails me).

Well, after being in the hospital all week, he was finally released this evening (hopefully his dog didn't go completely insane during his absense; she gets depressed when he's not around).

While I hate hanging out at the hospital, I feel as though I've learned a lot from these "adventures" this past year. The two biggest things I've learned:

Patience; I was getting a bit crazy with wanting a house and babies now and after spending an extended time with my sister and her kids and time in the hospital I realized how horrible of a parent I would be right now. Bob and I are so unstable right now. We don't know where Bob will be accepted to grad school, we still owe 58% of what we owed when I graduated, I have career issues... we're just not in a good stable place yet.

Moderation good, exclusion bad; A least in part (I'm no doctor) diverticulitis is caused by a poor diet; in particular, the exclusion of fiber from your diet. And while I knew moderation was better than exclusion, seeing the effects of exclusion makes it clear how important a balanced diet is (This doesn't include smoking, where exclusion is good).

* She had a "domestic altercation" with her ex-boyfriend and depending on which version of the story you believe, the one she told when she first arrived at the hospital or the one she told the cop 30 minutes later; either her ex, while they were fighting, slammed her against the car roof, or she slammed into the ceiling while trying to get away from him while hitting him with her heel.

** Her ex-husband broke her jaw about a year ago.

Merry Christmas!

Religion

I found this survey online that predicts your religion, Belief-o-Matic

Here are my results (unfortunately, since my response was not in the choices that means I'm a Neo-Pagan, but that's ok - I've been called worse):

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (92%)
4. New Age (88%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (87%)
6. Secular Humanism (85%)
7. Scientology (85%)
8. New Thought (81%)
9. Mahayana Buddhism (80%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (78%)
11. Reform Judaism (74%)
12. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (71%)
13. Nontheist (68%)
14. Taoism (61%)
15. Bahá'í Faith (60%)
16. Jainism (53%)
17. Orthodox Quaker (53%)
18. Islam (50%)
19. Orthodox Judaism (50%)
20. Sikhism (47%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (46%)
22. Hinduism (42%)
23. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (35%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (35%)
25. Roman Catholic (35%)
26. Jehovah's Witness (21%)
27. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)

Hospital Suck Part 2

My dad made it out of the hospital Sunday afternoon and is now home snuggling with his dog.

The bypass went really well and other than a seriously negative reaction to morphine and ambien he did super. They knocked him out Thursday afternoon since he hadn't been sleeping and had gotten into a disoriented rage due to the medicine and slept till Friday afternoon when he woke up to be his cheerful self, sort of, he thought his family had been a dream and when he realized we were real he was overcome with emotion.

All he needs to do is keep from smoking, eat healthier, exercise and keep healing. Now if only we can convince my mom that she should quit smoking and maybe I won't have to go through something like this again...

Hospitals Suck

I don't like much about hospitals or doctors, but I'm super thankful they're there when you need 'em.

My dad has been in the hospital for more than a week now because while trying to get a prescription refilled 2 weeks ago his doctor discovered he'd had a minor heart attack and had damage to his heart to prove it. I'm still not sure what made is doctor perform the EKG, because he wasn't scheduled for one and it was kind of a random thing to do, but luckily he did and they discovered that my dads arteries leading to his heart were 95-100% blocked, the arteries leading to his kidneys were 95% block, and he had an aneurysm in his leg. They discovered all this last Monday and he was admitted to the hospital to monitor him because he was deemed an excellent case for suddenly dying due to a blood clot. He quit smoking overnight.

On Wednesday he had surgery on the arteries leading to his kidneys to put stents in. During the surgery he had a blood clot in the second artery leading to his left kidney and they had to terminate the surgery after they completed placing the stent for fear he would have another clot. They completed placing the stents on Friday and he went in for the quad-bypass yesterday (of course after having a visit with his puppy outside the hospital on Sunday).

Luckily, it went really well and he was able to talk a little to us last night. He says some really weird stuff, but I prefer him squirming and hurting over not being here at all. They say he probably won't need to take as much blood pressure medicine since his arteries are clear and that maybe for the first time in years we'll be able to go on our evening walk the night before Christmas (something he hasn't been able to do in a couple years).

So, he's doing a little better now. His surgeries are over (except the surgery on his leg for the aneurysm) and they gave him a sleeping pill so he could finally get his rest up. With luck he'll be out of the ICU this weekend and will be up walking around and causing hell like normal.

Bobby pictures

I finally got around to scanning and posting some pictures I have of Bob from his photo album. I posted them under my photo album page and will eventually move them to my family tree if I ever get around to posting that.

For now, the pictures are here.

Of course, this one is my favorite. :)

Aggie Preparation for Hurricane Rita

Texas A&M bookstore located on the "Aggie" north side of campus.

What's up with them buoys?

I've spent a lot of time over the past couple days watching the buoys and tide gauges along the Texas and Louisiana coast to get an idea of what our project sites would be experiencing during Hurricane Rita. Unfortunately, my buoy watching experience was seriously disappointing - either something is wrong with them or my idiotic conspiracy is true!

As a brief explanation, the Saffir-Simpson hurricane classification is as follows (note: wind speed refers to sustained wind speed):



Based on a review of the NOAA data stations (1. NOAA Tides Online, 2. National Data Buoy Center, 3. National Hurricane Center), the highest wind speeds (gust - not sustained wind) recorded at the land station near Sabine Pass was 99mph with a maximum sustained wind speed of 82mph (2). The offshore buoy (42001) that had the lowest air pressure (close to 27in - which suggests the Hurricane passed directly over it) was even more disappointing with a measured wave height less than 35 ft and wind speeds near 50mph (reported during the storm) (2). While these two values correspond (to each other) based on wind/wave analysis (calculations that predicted the fully developed wave height based on a sustained wind speed) - they differ drastically when compared to the wind speeds reported by the National Weather Service and what the expected wind speed should have been based on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. I obtained a final final plot from buoy 42001 which shows (I'm guessing) information not posted in the Hurricane Rita update windows that shows the maximum wind speed near 90mph (created after the storm) (2).



Even the storm surge was less than that predicted for a stronger storm, ranging between 2-5ft along the LA and TX coasts (1).

While not a big deal to the general public, this discrepancy is cause for concern among coastal and ocean engineers as buoys and near shore data stations are the source of historical wind conditions that are used to create statistics that give us an idea what the probability is for a storm to occur during a projects lifetime. Not having correct wind conditions could distort the statistics and result in analysis that underpredicts the wind speeds for a particular area and projects that are under designed.

And, while I'm glad Rita didn't come ashore as a stronger storm, I'm disappointed that the tide gauges, buoys and other stations did not record better data - blah!, I wanted to watch it come ashore numerically!


Of course, for those interested in an alternative explanation Bob and I (because we obviously have nothing better to do) created a great theory that would explain why the buoys didn't record higher winds, waves or surges - and true to form it involves a government conspiracy...

Katrina, Andrew

For my sister, I've written a brief summary of the difference between Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

As shown in Figure 1, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in south central Louisana while Hurricane Andrew made landfall just east of New Orleans, shown in Figure 2.


Figure 1: Path of Hurricane Andrew, 1992


Figure 2: Path of Hurricane Katrina, 2005

A close up of New Orleans, shows a better picture of what the differences are, shown in Figures 3.

Figure 3: New Orleans

The most notable difference between the two is the location where landfall was made. Hurricane Andrew storm passed to the west of New Orleans and would have reduced in strength prior to hitting New Orleans. To simplify the analysis of the 2 storms, I'll neglect this and assume that Andrew passed New Orleans at the same strength it made landfall at.

To further simplify the analysis, I will just refer to wind direction and setup. There are of course other factors that amplified the differences between the two storms, such as pressure, size of the hurricanes, the rivers/channels that flow through New Orleans, and then there's wave dyanmics, and other coastal processes, but wind provides the simpliest explanation.

Hurricanes rotate in a counter clockwise direction. For a storm that passes to the west of New Orleans, the wind direction would have been to the north and east. This is important because the wind would have pushed water away from New Orleans rather than directly at it. In addition to waves, the wind would create a buildup along the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, called setup. This is what happened during Hurricane Andrew.

Hurricanes that pass to the east of New Orleans would have had a wind direction to the west and south. This would have pushed water directly onto the levees protecting New Orleans, like Katrina did. The water build up would have run along the levee, down channels, sort of probbing for weak spots.

Now, from my sources through work, the levees were built to withstand a category 3 hurricane, and Katrina was on the upper tolerance of the levees design. Tack on that sections of the levee had sunken by four feet (much of LA is sinking and losing more than an acre of wetland every 30 minutes that protect LA from storms and the gulf, but that's a whole different story.

If you're interested I recommend reading Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell. I also have some other Coastal studies at work) and were not repaired due to budget cuts and other constraints, its easy to see how such a disaster occured.

Post-Katrina Aerial Photos

NOAA posted images of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina here.

I was looking through the aerials along Grand Isle, LA where we have a coastal shoreline stabilization project and saw written out of debris "HELP!" God help the poor soul trapped on Grand Isle, hopefully the Mayor made it out to the island with plenty of supplies yesterday. He had called to let us know that the roads were blocked and that he would be traveling out in a boat to survey the damage.

Out of curiousity, I took one of the photos and georeferenced it using a georeferenced aerial image from 2004 that we had at work. The rectification isn't perfect, but it's close enough to get an idea what happened. The aerial is of the southwest tip of Grand Isle, near Caminada Pass. The first picture was taken in 2004, the second after Hurricane Katrina.


2004 DOQ Aerial Image of the Southwest corner of Grand Isle


2005 Post-Katrina Aerial Image of the Southwest corner of Grand Isle


2005 Post Katrina image overlaid on top of 2004 DOQ

Coastal List Definition

The following was posted on the Coastal_list a mailing list for coastal engineers and others interested in coastal processes/engineering:

We would appreciate any definition(s) of a "sand dune" folks on the mailing list may provide. If available, please provide a citation for your definition.

Response:

Sand Dune: A pile of sand you paid a Coastal Engineer to get for you.