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| May-August 2023 |
Personal Update:
A Life Reconstructed
Part II
I'm back on heavy drugs again to clean out my body from the infection(s) I've borne over the past eight year since January 2016. Hence, my limited articles through this year.
Because I am conscientious about my conversations and commentary I do not wish to "dream walk" through my material as I present them. Especially as it tends to be "cutting edge" across a variety of topics. It takes a clear mind to imagine what can be in a world which fights for the old ways of disunity, isolation, and suspicion.
And with my present drug sedation I find keeping my focus can be a problem. The other difficulty is the lack of energy and exhaustion I bear through the day because of the infection-fighting drugs.
However, I hope to do what I can even as I have since the first of May 2023 of this year. All the while I am praying my health journey will find successful completion sometime in the first quarter of 2024 after several more foot-and-ankle surgeries as I have shown below.
As always, thank you for your support and prayers. Please take what has been offered here at Relevancy22 since 2011 to extend and expand process philosophy, theology, science, and ecology across all areas of endeavor.
We are in need of a world united by difference and love. As Friedrich Schleiermacher had well said, "There are miracles all around us." We just need to lift up our eyes and look around.
However, for those bearing personal cruelty, abuse, suffering, and oppression, let us alter Schleiermacher's statement just a bit and make as our own motto: "Be the miracle to those needing miracles." In this way we may rightfully say there are miracles all around us.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
September 19, 2023
Warning: Below is part of my health journey this summer. Some pictures will be ugly to look at while other pics show a bit of progress before collapse and failure. To that end my doctors have removed my internal prosthetic which I've had since 2016 (8 years ago).
At present, there is no structure in the empty space except medical cement in my foot. Thus the boot I'm wearing with restricted walking. Sometime later this November or December there will a second surgery (fourth this summer) should the infection(s) be gone.
The last images show a customized 3D printed durable titanium cage which will be implanted in the foot and ankle area. I have no idea what the structure will look like as opposed to the picture shown.
Then we wait again for any new infections to show up. If not, a third - and hopefully final - surgery will fuse the foot to the ankle.
Again, some pictures below will not be pretty to view however, in 2016 I had two very long (14-20") open wounds x 4" wide running along both sides of my calf (top and outer areas) with picc lines directly into the heart and a overworked eou d pump sucking out crap. That experience was a lot worse. I nearly didn't make it mentally or emotionally by the third month after reviving from a fully septic crisis.
- res
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| May-August 2023 with wound pump |
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| May-August 2023 w/ wound pump; eventually there were 3 open wounds with a fourth would opening up. Thus the removal of the internal foot-and-ankle prosthetic. |
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| May-August 2023 with wound pump |
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| Third surgery: September 2023 w/ removal of device |
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| Next Surgery is the installation of a structural support device. (To implant a new internal motility device risks a 35% rejection rate. Thus the cage.) |
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| A third surgery fuses the foot to the ankle sans any infections... |
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| Xrays of a foot fusion to the ankle |