And Now, Recovery?

The Good Doctor Mondo has finally had her tracheotomy this morning, and she is out of surgery and back in her room. Much like my only poker bankroll, she is deeply sedated but relatively comfortable.

And now, we wait.

I've been told that events, such as the pace of reducing levels of sedation will be directly proportional to her ability to improve her lungs and oxygen saturation. I've been told any real significant improvement will still be slow, and I have no expectation that she'll even be out of ICU for another week or two.

But I actually got to give her a wee kiss on her lips! I'll say this much...surgical tape residue tastes like crap.

But the Good Doctor Mondo has never looked more beautiful to me.

Oh, brief poker comment to make this blog relevant, and the most minor of brags. That JokerStars $4.40 LHE event I final tabled last week? I've now played it three times over the last week and cashed...three times. Sample size, I know, but I seem to be getting a handle on when to be aggressive, and who I can push around, at this level. We'll see...when the Good Doctor awakes, I'm likely to be off of poker for quite some time, so I may play more limit today.

The Opposite of Awesomeness

Thanks, doc. Thanks to your unfathomably stoopid donkeyfucker absentmindedness, the Good Doctor Mondo's tracheotomy has had to been postponed to 8am Monday morning.

Why?

Because as her surgeon, it was your job to ocommunicate to the nurses to stop her blood thinners 24 hours prior to surgery.

At least you had the good sense to not actually go through with the operation today.

And Yet, A Diversion

Over the last week or so, the longer this medical drama has gone on, certain nurses and social workers here have been urging me to do the kinds of things I would normally do to reduce stress. I've already missed two gigs with New Ben Franklins thus far, and numerous rehearsals. And that's not about to change because I'm not going 35 miles down to Denver while my baby is up here in a medical coma. I'm just not.

The band's been wonderful about this, and after two shows sans bass, it appears one of my nearest and dearest friends is going to stand in for me at our next show or two, but I digress.

In order to relax while sitting in her room overnight, I've actually begun to play some poker again. Mostly to give myself some relief from all the constant phone calls and text messages to answer, and part because I can't sleep. Since she's under heavier sedation now, while I will never leave her...the immutable fact is, she probably isn't even aware of my presence.

Anyway, I've managed to play some, and for the most part there is nothing to report.

But I did make what I believe to be my first final table in a LHE event, a $4.40 $1k guarantee on Stars. Amazing. I won something like 22 of my first 24 showdowns. Then I lost when my flopped set of queens went down to runner runner aces, and from then, it was a case of hanging on. Went out 7th of about 970 runners. And then barely slept.

I have to admit it was a good distraction, and there may be a bit more of that to come.

I want to thank everyone in this poker bloggiverse for all of their thoughts, well wishes, healing vibes, prayers, what have you. It has to be helping, it just has to.

Brief Update

It's now been just over two weeks since the Good Doctor Mondo was intubated, and to date, her progress has been interminably slow. In fact, she's pretty much as she was over a week ago. But there are some signs of improvement, and some signs that she may be beginning to give up some of this fluid in her lungs.

However, we're running into territory where keeping her on the ventilator risks possible serious, permanent damage to her mouth, throat, and vocal cords. As such, the doctors will be performing a tracheotomy in a few hours. The hope is that once they can lift her from the sedation she's been under all this time (because she'll no longer be on the vent), that she may actually be able to begin to recover.

Be well.

Just A Mere Side Story

The Good Doctor Mondo continues to battle and give it all she's got. Unfortunately, the end result of the last couple of days is that she's still pretty much where she was last Friday, which sucks. Hard. But I take comfort in knowing that's still a lot better than she was doing a week previous.

Anyway, I'd remembered I wanted to post a tiny bit about our Alaskan cruise, specifically, the casino action.

Yer boy Mondo won a tourney on the boat. Boy howdy, a single table tourney with $30 buy-in for a big pile of $175, woohoo! But for those itching to play on the boat, I offer one word of advice...don't.

Honestly, I've never seen a worse structure in my life. 2000 starting chips. Blinds start at 50/100 (that's right, you start with 20 BB). Blinds double. Every. Fifteen. Minutes. That's right, by 30 minutes in, you're at 200/400 with tourists who wouldn't know a fold button if it were glowing red in front of them.

Of course, that didn't stop me from playing almost every tournament on the boat. Played five of the six tourneys. Top two paid, and that was my only cash. Normally, I'd end up raise/folding to a highly uncoordinated flop and shove at some point in the first orbit or two, and then lose my push'n'pray flips. Got two outed at least once. But had a blast all the same on the trip overall.

Oh yeah, played my first ever casino craps on the boat. Man, that game could lead to a bad end for me, even if I broke even there.

Now that I think about it, didn't I already tell this story? Fuck it, I needed the distraction given current events...

Be well all, and remember those that truly matter, because none of this side shit does.

And Now Comes the Tough Part

Happy 4th of July to all, especially all you firecrackin-poppin' 'mericans out there. Try not to lose a couple of fingers this year, okay?

Today is the 4th of July...

...the Good Doctor Mondo's 11th day in intensive care...

...the Good Doctor Mondo's 13th day in the hospital...

...the Good Doctor Mondo's 9th day on intubation/ventilator, and...

...the Good Doctor Mondo's 2nd day of relative awareness.

This is truly where it becomes difficult, for her and for me. For her, under a lighter load of sedation, she no longer has the luxury of going back under and losing her ongoing memories of this terrible experience. This is something she's going to begin to carry with her, going forward. When the nurses come to futz with her positioning, suction her mouth and the vent tubes, etc., not only is she going to remain exceedingly uncomfortable...she is going to be cognizant of it happening, and quite possibly remembering significant parts of it, too.

For myself, this is the most difficult part to watch. In fact, seeing her at this level of physical anxiety and stress is pretty much the worst thing I've had to witness since the last minutes before they intubated her last Friday.

The pace of recovery of the human body can be a fascinating, and yet frustrating, thing. My wife was simply so close to dying, that her body is taking an extremely long time to recover. While the pneumonia takes up less of her lungs, it is still there. At the most base levels of exertion (e.g., the nurses adjusting her positioning in bed), her oxygenation levels drop pretty fast. The positive is that her recovery time after each such episode seems to be decreasing...and that is the most tangible sign that she is improving.

The positive upshot of this is what leads the doctors to want to back off the sedation. That is, she's doing better. Not much better, but better. It finally took until a couple days ago for me to reach the point where I just knew my wife was going to live through this ordeal. And she will. But her road remains unfathomably long and hard. By all accounts, she's really not close to being able to be removed from the ventilator, and not close at all to leaving intensive care. So the vigil continues. And after that, all the vague hints I get from the medical staff are that it may even be a matter of a couple of months before my darling can come home. There's talk of telemetry wards, assisted care rehab centers, etc., but nobody's really telling me anything.

Sometimes, I wonder how we're going to cope. Her university and my employer have been wonderful thus far. But then, she's largely on a summer break, and my cases have slowed down, so we're not really missed yet. However, I have no idea what the future holds.

All I can hope is that this is not a mirage, and that my baby *is* getting better. I will be here for her no matter how long it takes.



In other news, one of our favorite distaff lawyers appears to have survived Day 1A of the Main Event with a fair bit more than double starting chips (or at least was there with 90 minutes to go). Go LJ!!!

I bought a small piece of her ME action last year and sadly saw her get outdrawn on and roached. Unfortunately, I wasn't really focusing on things, given my wife's issues right now, and missed out on my chance to back a strong player whose already barely missed one final table this year. I hope you guys out there didn't miss your chance. This may be LJ's year, and I'll say this much...she'd make the November Nine a heckuva lot more fun than Kelly Kim.

Oh, and Go Rockies!

When Poker Just Does Not Matter

I've really been struggling for the last few days about how much, or even whether, to share certain parts of my life with this blog. After all, aside from CK, I've never actually met any of you, off of the virtual felt, that is.

But I just felt the need to briefly express here about one of the most frightening experiences you can possibly imagine...and that is seeing your spouse, the love of your life, and your entire world slipping into very severe illness.

My wife, the Good Doctor Mondo, did not return from our Alaskan cruise in good health, and while I know I can write as much as will spill from my brain here, I don't feel I can completely express all the details just yet, as they're too painful. Of course, most of my trip reports suck, too, because my blogging skills are weak.

At any rate, over the past week, my darling sank into an extremely serious pneumonia, the cause of which they have not been able to ascertain, even a week later. By Friday midday, I was starting to seriously doubt she would live through this past weekend, as the doctors placed her in a medically-induced coma. But she's as tough a cookie now as she is at the poker tables, and she has refused to succumb to anything.

Thankfully, I can report that she's making steps in the right direction. These are baby steps, truly, and I can't even fully grasp how far she has to go. But she feels the love and support of those around her, and by extension, those around me. Still, as of now, the doctors aren't even contemplating trying to bring her off the ventilator and awaking her from her coma until at least a few days from now. And, as is common when someone is befallen with life-threatening illness, complications arise now and then. It's almost a sick twisted game of Whack-a-Mole, where doctors give her steroids to help her lungs, but then the steroids raise her blood sugar to where she needs insulin, to where the insulin leads to needing something else.

But the medical staff here have been uniformly brilliant, and she's getting the best care anyone can imagine. And she's getting better, baby step after baby step after baby step. Right now, I only wish that baby would start running, rather than crawl.

Giddyup!

For the 2nd time in my life, I've bought a piece of the action of someone's upcoming WSOP event. Hopefully, the returns are greater this time than last time. By that, I mean any return would be greater than it was last time.

Okay, I only bought 2% of the action for 1% of the gross, so it's more of a pony than a horse. But I believe in this player's skill.

Fingers crossed for lots of "nut nut" held by my horse.

Felt Feels Good

In a virtual way, of course.

Finally got back to playing some online MTTs yesterday, with mixed results, but it felt good all the same. Managed to cash in three NLHE rebuy events, the huge $3r and a $5r on Stars, and a $12r on bodog. I don't know what attracts me to rebuys...perhaps is really a matter of being able to not have to exit after an early junk-kicking.

Came close to the final table in the bodog (there were only 131 runners), and took a terrible beat in the $3r which would have finally gotten me to average chips (60k or so), when my AK couldn't beat AQ. All in preflop, JT9 on the flop, I'm thinking "no K no K no K". The 3 on the turn was nice, but I couldn't fade the card I originally wanted on the flop.

Tried my hand at my first 8-game mixed tourney, and didn't play well. Will try again.

Ultimately, I managed to chip up my roll, but only a small bit, as my Stars cashes weren't much over my rebuys.

What truly jazzes me now, however, isn't poker. It's my Colorado Rockies. WTF, 15 wins in 16 games? That's a better run than our regular season ending in 2007. And the parallels are eerie:

In 2007, the Rox were 35-33 after 68 games.
In 2009, the Rox are 35-33 after 68 games.
In 2007, the Rox' longest winning streak was 11 games.
In 2009, the Rox' longest winning streak is 11 games.
The 2007 Rocktober run included a dramatic game ending HR by Todd Helton to cap a comeback.
The 2007 RockJuneber run now includes a dramatic game ending HR by the Toddfather to cap a comeback, his first walkoff home run since.....2007.

Anyway, the truth is that this team is actually a better team than that 2007 edition. They underperformed badly early, but some sabermetric numbers reveal some bad luck in there, too. They should end up with at least four (and possibly five) players at around 25 home runs, which is very respectable post-'roids. Overall, their starting pitching is a bit better.

Hopefully the run continues. Of course, there are still over 90 games to be played, but the upcoming trip against the Angels, Dodgers, and A's will go some way towards determining whether the 2009 Rockies are real or not.