Last week on the second day home from surgery my blood pressure skyrocketed to dangerous levels. At 3AM a group of first responders were in our living room.
I was grateful they were all masked and told me they were vaccinated.
All frontline healthcare/law enforcement should be.
It's antithetical to the work first responders do, to exacerbate people's fear/worry/trauma by bringing the possibility of a deadly virus into moments when they are at their most vulnerable.
This shouldn't even be a conversation or debate.
EMTs, police, rescue, and healthcare workers of any kind who refuse to be vaccinated or wear a mask in the field should be terminated. If the protection, healing, and safety of the public they serve are not priorities, they don't belong there.
The good and responsible people of this country need to put our collective foot down and be advocates for our and other people's well-being—and to defend the interdependent community that we are from people who value self over everything else.
While in the hospital, my amazing ICU nurses shared their exhaustion and their disbelief watching patients, loved ones of dying people, and even their fellow caregivers refusing vaccines.
Hello everyone! John here. Most of today's tweets have been prescheduled, as I planned in advance not to be online much while my body begins recovery from brain surgery.
I wanted to check in with a real-time update on my progress:
Follow-up visits today with both neurosurgeon and ENT who performed my procedure to assess my progress.
Hoping to get clarity on the wildly fluctuating hormone and BP levels, and the water/sodium balances which have been the most challenging so far to get a handle on.
Actual surgery site pain-free and invisible from the outside (as they broke through my sinus cavity and removed the tumor in sections through my nasal passages... amazing). No issues aside from steady but manageable sinus pressure, lack of sense of smell, and profound congestion.
Feeling well enough to give you a brief update while waiting on my wife to arrive:
Tumor removal went very well and I avoided cranial fluid leak which would have made recovery much longer and more involved.
During surgery my BP did drop significantly so they inserted an arterial line to monitor continually and treated to bring up. Now trying to get it down to normal levels. Weaning my off those meds.
Have had some significant hand swelling they will try to get to the bottom of. That and BP levels will likely keep me here tonight, but my surgery site itself is great and my head is almost pain-free with limited meds!
We're less than 24 hours until my surgery and I'm about running out of time to answer messages and return calls and do a bunch of stuff that just ain't gonna get done at this point! I'm good with that. We've done a lot this week.
I'll be devoting most of the evening to getting in one last workout (as it will be a few weeks before I can) having a great meal (in case my sense of smell goes) relaxing, and being with my family.
I've said it a lot this week and will say it again when I get home, but thank you. Your kind words, prayers, encouragement, gifts, contributions, and support have been overwhelming.
On September 11th I was working as an art director in Philadelphia.
I was walking through our artist studio when I heard Howard Stern on the radio say something casually about reports of a plane crash at the World Trade Center.
For a few seconds everyone on the show was speaking with almost glib curiosity, imagining it was a small private plane and speculating on what might have happened. Very quickly it became clear that this was something different.
I can remember standing in that spot for a long time, unable to move and barely breathing as they all gathered information in real-time. And I started to hear something in their voices I never heard before: genuine fear.