Gee Whiz!!!

   Gee whiz! I tried doing this yesterday and had to keep starting over because I was so out of it I couldn't keep straight what I was writing. Twice I caught myself writing dialogue from and old Gunsmoke Episode from old time radio on Sirius. Good show, but not quite what I wanted for the blog. I should have saved it, and once again stated "Do Not Blog And Take Morphine". Sound advise, only I'm taking some now, my mouth and face are killing me. The right side Jaw is asking over and over and over "Hey Buddy! That hurt? Did this hurt? How about this?" YES!!! You evil Bastard they ALL fucking hurt!! Twice this morning on the way to the bathroom it's given me that lovely stabbing pain that's both blinding and enough to drive you to your knees. I refuse to go to my knees, but I have closed my eyes and stopped walking. In that case he gives me a couple of quick ones to remind him who's in charge. Right now it's me, you sorry fuck. I still walk, use the suction, and stay off my knees. You gotta do better than you are right now, you fuck. Which was going to be part of the "What's going on with me right now." portion of the blog. That sounds good to me.

  Yep, the jaw pain is bad. The swelling is down a lot since Lymphedema Therapy and that's a good thing. My Left side looks more swollen, but it's not hard like collected fluid. And it may only appear to be swollen since the other side is so much less swollen. The problem is, yes the bone hurts on the upper and lower mandible something fierce. Worse than that is the nerve bundle that heads across the jaw toward your ear and points elsewhere. That's where the stabbing pain comes from, that nerve bundle getting irritated at me. At least I hope so. It hurts though, to suction, That's both muscle/nerve pain, on top of bone pain.  I have a very swollen spot under the right jaw. It's not tender to the touch but it's making the muscle back there sore to the touch. That's a pain, literally and figuratively. It hurts pretty badly to open my mouth very wide. I am trying to stretch it by opening my mouth as far as I can stand. That worked well the first couple of times I tried, the real pain then came in when I try to close it. This poses a couple of more questions. Is something trying to pull my jaw out of place and that's what's making the muscle and nerve so painful? Or, it cancer is in the bone, has it latched onto the muscle and nerves causing it to be involved in the pain as well as bone pain? Hard for me to tell. I'm going to have the Hospice nurse go over it pretty closely today and see if he can come up with something he can ask the Doc. Maybe something along the lines of a muscle relaxant. If it's strictly muscle, that should take care of the pain. If it's as I suspect, the bone pain wouldn't leave with simply a muscle relaxant, but taking away muscle pain would be good, I think.

    Something else weird happened this morning. I changed trach tubes and had just gotten it all in and taped down, when I had to cough. No big deal, most of the time when I put it in I have to cough. It irritates my trachea, so I expect that. A lot of the time I'll clear some excess mucus, sometimes it's a dry cough just from being irritated. This morning was weird. I coughed once and heard little "pops" like something was hitting the towel. I looked, a tiny little red dot. I had to cough again. Same thing this time, only there were two more. Stranger and stranger. So I just coughed one more time, nothing making me, I wanted to see what it up too. Yep, one more little red dot. Being the curious dickens I am, I fished one out and ran a little water over it to see. Looks like a little dot of flesh that had a little blood on it. So I did the same thing with the other three. Same outcome, looks like flesh with a little dab of blood. Being the genius I am, I threw them away. Weeeelllll, that sure took out the possibility that I might get some lab to look at them. Well, if I do it again I'll keep some of them. Last week I could have sworn I coughed a lung up, but it was too clear looking HAHAHAHAHA

    It's been a bit more chilly here, and I'm fighting a runny nose on top of the ten foot long tape worm. That'll age me some. Nope, I lied. That's from the first "True Grit". John Wayne was telling about working a Jerk Line for a mine owner in Colorado. "I was a pretty fair hand with a Jerk Line when I was a yonker. Worked for a fella that was alway doooown with something. He was also sportin a 10' long tape worm, that aged him some."  Sorry, couldn't help that, I was being entirely too serious. Yeah, the cold is screwing with me. It screws with everyone. Snotty, running noses and all. I'm no different than anyone else, only I can't cough up or spit the damn drainage out like I used to be able. Now I just aspirate it and cough it out my trach. Not the best way to get rid of it, but it's what I have to work with.  It seems the more I cough the more tender the right jaw gets, which stands to reason since they are both on the same head, and since they both are linked by being on the same body, why would one start something and not include the neighbors? So, yeah, I've been suffering along with everyone else. The good thing is, I've been able to get up and go have coffee with the guys in the morning. I'm sure they all miss my witty repartee, or not. It's amazing how, since I can't talk, much I miss being able to add a little something to the conversation. One of the guys says a lot of funny stuff, but it's often a bit out there, and just a bit out of his character, so I think some of the guys miss his little one liners. Well played, Sir, well played.


  In honor of my Texas buddies that I've been ragging on because of the weather here, because the well servicing crews wanted to go home because it was cold. How, if the wind blows over 20, the rigs shut down. I can't fault the hands or my buddies on that one. That's the service company safety rules. But suffice it to say, if they'd been working 400+ miles north of here, they'd gone broke or starved to death. In honor of that, I've got a couple of wind/snow/rain/cold tales. All true, so help me God.

  The first year I was working derrick, 82-83, the year I quite recall, we were fishing a joint of 2 3/8" tubing with a pump in it, seating nipple and a four foot long perforated sub. Thank fully no mud anchor. Anyway, it was left in the well by Brand X Well Servicing, and we got elected to fish it. The day before, we got all the pipe and rods out of the well. Brand X had run them back in and pickled the string, good move and it keeps everything from going bad on you while it's on the bank out of the well. After we got all the equipment out of the hole, we ran a string of 2 7/8" tubing work string. Beautiful day, but pop had watched the weather channel before he went to work, so after we got the work string in the hole, we put up the floor and Operator stand tarps. I was sweatin my ass off by the time we got finished and I was sure the old man had lost his freakin mind. I was sure of it when we got out the next morning and it was pretty again. Cool, but not crazy cold. We fished the junk out of the well, cleaned everything up, and headed for home, with me still thinking the old man was crazy. Took a long time to wash over that fish, we had gotten it out and on the bank, the put a bit and scraper on, tripped in and cleaned the well bore to bottom, stood all that work string back in the air. It was 7PM and darker than the bottom of a well when we went home. The next morning it was ice from one end of the state to the other. It was 18 degrees with 25 mph winds with gusts to 40. Hmmm, the old man hadn't lost his mind. When we got to the rig, and got it fired up there was ice probably 2" thick from the ground to the crown. I put on all my winter clothes, stuck 4 pairs of gloves inside a vest under my insulated overalls, and with a hammer that had a string on it to tie to my wrist, I went up the derrick knocking ice off the ladder as I went. Up in the air I knocked ice off each stand of pipe in the derrick before I walked out to latch it in. Slow going, they had to stop every 10 or so stands, carry the slips away from the well, then melt the ice out of the jaws. It took a while to get that in the well. Then we laid it down. That was close to noon, so stopped for lunch. It started to warm up and the ice was falling off the rig. Big, long chunks. It'd knock you on your ass if it didn't knock you out. So we waited an hour and it was okay to go back to work. Picked up the downhole equipment, ran the 2 3/8" production string in, and hung the well back on. We got home about 7PM, again

   One I really remember, because the tubing tester pissed and moaned all the time he was rigging up, turned out to be right, his equipment wouldn't work. It was so windy we'd tied the blocks down to the earth with the sand line, after we rigged up the tubing tester. The guys down here had never heard of that. We had a chain on the blocks we used to hang them onto the back of the derrick when we rigged down. So, if it's really windy, and to make it so you can work, you run the sand line down through that chain, the tie it two a couple of chains. One between the derrick legs, the other chain from around the well head and back to the first chain. Then you tie the sand line to that rig up, pull it tight, and the blocks aren't bothered by the wind. Easy fix that kept us working when everyone else went home. The only thing we didn't run or pull, even off the ground, when it was windy were Fiberglass sucker rods. They were just too dangerous. One of the competition thought they could run a string in big winds. The first two came out of the derrick when the blew over into the blocks and got kicked out. The other 8 doubles got blown out before the derrick man could get the top tied back in. Fools.
  Anyway, the tubing tester swore up and down that we'd freeze his stuff. He said he had 14# brine. And from what I saw of it in the 6 stands we were able to test, I'd say that was about right. Picked up the 7th stand ran it in, stuck the testing tool in and the pistol looking piece that is used to pressure the other tool into it's slot. Nothing. Pull it out and look. Slush. Slush? Yeah, the wind chill was 11 below zero, it had finally slushed up an entire tank on the truck. We rigged him down, I went up and we finished running the tubing. Dropped a tool, had a hot oiler pressure the string, it held. Next day we ran an acid job. The wind chill was 25 that day, just a few degrees less than the temp. By the time we finished the acid job and got things ready to swab, it had gotten all the way up to 35. So goes SW KS.

  Good God we worked in some fierce weather when I was a kid. I was out and worked in some rough shit when I pumped, but it was never the same as when I was hangin ten off the diving board in the derrick or on the floor of that pulling unit.
Short funny one. We caught a job to pull some casing on a well and run back new.  It was in a location that was owned by a farmer who was a pain in the ass. There was no such thing as a low profile pumping unit, so the company cut a 500 bbl tank in two, dug out the well head big enough to set a 320 Lufkin pumping unit inside the tank. Pain in the ass to pull. Dad ordered a special tool built and we were waiting on it to run the work string in the well. It was nice, we'd cleaned the derrick the day before, and clean all our tools the day before that. I stretched out in the alfalfa next to the dog house. It was spring, 75 degrees, the sun was out, not much wind and a 2 hour wait. I woke up with a 8 or 10" long little green garter snake on my chest. Warming up in the sun. I swear, when I first woke up I thought I was gonna fill my pants, both sides. When I saw it better, it was funny. I picked it up, took it to the other guy on the rig. He almost passed out. I had no idea he was deathly afraid of snakes. I turned the snake loose, and in 3 days, mostly waiting on stuff, we had the well back online and off that location.


Go into the light, children, go into the light