O Hai Gamer Santa. I hear you leik Mudkips o.o
I know my mommy buys my other presents…
but I know you bring everything gaming….
You’ve been good to me over the years but lately things have slowed down… You must be really busy with other people (or too damn lazy to read a letter >.>) but I have a few things I would like this year.
I know you deal in gaming, but can you bring me the use of my right arm/hand back??? God took it away with his ‘will’ and something they call ‘Compartment Syndrome’ which left me with this…
Here is a little back story… 
I have very bad Insomnia and it wasn’t till recently that I got medication to help me sleep (though it still does a poor job), because of my Insomnia I will sometimes be up for days on end and when I do finally pass out, I’m out cold. Well the night before Thanksgiving 2008 I had already been up for a couple of days and was at that point of passing out. I ended up passing out around 10pm on my right side and as a result of being so tired on no sleep, I didn’t move from that place for many hours. I woke up around 10am Thanksgiving morning, to find my right arm was very swollen and numb, as well as my right leg. I was very weak, could barely move and my hearing was messed up. I didn’t know what was going on or what to do so I called my mom. She came in to find me in that state and I was rushed to the hospital. After arriving there though, things got worse.
My arm started to throb and swell more and after a series of questions they thought it was an infection of some sort and put me on heavy antibiotics (though I didn’t have a cut or anything from which to get an infection) and gave me morphine for the pain. I was taken for Ultrasounds, had blood tests and after laying in emergency for several hours, I was taken to the surgical floor to await surgery to relieve the pressure in my arm. Finally the pain was too much and it felt like my fingers were going to explode, so I was taken into surgery around 1am.
I was cut along the inside of my arm from my shoulder to my palm, across the back of my arm from the wrist to the elbow, a small cut was made on top of my shoulder and one on my triceps to relieve the pressure. It was at that time they saw how bad it was and they had told my mother they might have to amputate my arm. Following the surgery more went wrong. My kidneys had shut down and I was put on a respirator, being no longer able to breath on my own as my body seemed to be shutting down. I was placed in ICU, where I remained for 3 days fighting for my life. While in ICU I also underwent another surgery.
After all that I was moved to the surgical floor on a lot of drugs, both pain killers and antibiotics (still thinking it was an infection). By now I’ve had a total of 2 surgeries. I came to have my third, where I was told they were going to “look and clean up”. Spending what had been so far a week in hospital, where they had kept my arm open and bandaged so it could drain, I was told they were going to start closing. I had surgery 4, where he cleaned and closed, removing dead tissue as he went. Then surgery 5, where it was almost completely closed, I was told the muscles that allow me to raise/straighten my fingers and work my thumb were removed because they were dead. It was at that point I was told that though it was mostly closed, they couldn’t close it all the way (do to it being open for so long, by now I had been in hospital for 3 weeks) and I’d need a skin graft. Surgery 6 (since thanksgiving), they shaved a piece of skin from my thigh and they used it to close the spot near my wrist on the bottom of my forearm. Finally after a month in hospital, where I had my 21st birthday, I was released November 10th (I’m Canadian, my Thanksgiving was October 13th)….
So here’s what happened…
It wasn’t an infection like they thought at first. It turns out I had ‘Compartment Syndrome’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartment_syndrome), caused by prolonged limb compression. The treatment for it is a Fasciotomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciotomy). By me laying on my one side for such a long period, I was cutting off blood flow to my arm, as a result of how long it was, my arm swelled and from lack of new blood, nerves and muscle was damaged. When I had woke, I moved around and the surge of new blood caused the very thirsty muscles to expand, but they tried to expand farther than they were allowed by the muscular casing and some started to die. Now if your asking, ‘ok, but why then did your kidneys shut down? and how is it you were fighting for your life?’. Well, when muscle dies its filtered through the kidneys and the muscle particles themselves, are too big to fit through the small, strainer like holes, in the kidneys tissue, so that’s what caused them to fail. Due to my kidneys failing, all the toxins that would normally be filtered started to back up into my system causing all kinds of problems.
They took out a total of around 85% of my muscle over the course of six surgeries and I received 280 stitches from the palm of my hand to my armpit. Having the muscles/tendons that allow my right hand to work properly makes gaming very hard (five years later and I can still bearly sign my name)…
If you can’t bring me a shiny new arm…
Then there are a few other things I could use…
I will for sure need a new Computer. This Acer Aspire U will do for me.
This new Zeus Thunder Hero PC Gaming Rocker, time two of course. Why you ask? I direct you to the next item.
I will need two of those chairs to go with this new Two Person Computer Desk from Stroovi.com. Giving a place for my new computer as well as my old one to game with a friend.
Of course I will need a Sound Blaster World of Warcraft Wireless Headset (as my old pair got broke >.>)
and finally a Collectors Edition of
I know you might be thinking this is a tall order, but I’m sure Epic Gaming Santa can swing it (You sure as hell better!!! I’ll drive my butt down to Silicon Valley and kick yours all that way up to the North Pole and let you freeze! [everyone knows Gamer Santa lives in CA])
I Really had a lot of fun making this entry. Once I started I just went with it. It wasn’t till after I grabbed that last picture to post that I read the Rules. According to them, I am excluded for being Canadian (we burned down your White House once [War of 1812, look it up] we can do it again :P). Even though I won’t win, I still wanted to share the work I put into this post. I hope you enjoy.
I make no claim to own ANY of the pictures in this post (except of course the pictures of my right arm), all credit goes to the wonderful people who posted these images online for me to download. Without the hard work of these other people, lazy f****rs like me would have to actually do something O.O…
Kindest regards Mr. Gamer Santa,
– AC
