John's all purpose blog

My first day back in Reno with the dream-mobile, and already life seems more complicated:

1. Prospective condo-buyers want to see the place, so I have re-tidy it (having littered the place with van manuals and other road trip detritus) and be absent by 10am.
2. An hour before I left van-land, they helpfully told me that I needed to drain the van water system if I expected it to get cold in Reno.  Well, as bad luck would have it, I do expect it to get very cold very quickly, so I have basically a one day window to find the tools to … Continue Reading
   

I am off to Oregon to get my camper van next week!

The imminence of actually having to deal with parking that sucker has finally gotten me in gear to start the process of selling my condo.   As per my plan, I’ve done a pretty good job of de-cluttering over the last coupla months – birthday party visitors, did my place look less clutter-y?  Now the final step is to hire cleaning professionals.

The tidy and prosperous neighbor in the unit below mine gets his carpet cleaned a coupla times a year, so I got the name of his cleaner-dudes.  The process … Continue Reading

Half Full report:
I started the process of getting the camper van of my dreams last month, to be completed next month.

Half Empty report:

I drove up to Oregon, wrote a very big check to a guy I’d never met before,
… to buy a delivery van that won’t  fit in my garage,
… yakked with people about it for two days,
… drove home without the delivery van and with only a couple of invoice copies to show for it!

We of course will stick with the half full point of view, cuz’ that’s just the kind of forward-thinking people we are!   But suffice to … Continue Reading

(I had so much fun yakking about my health, but with luck there won’t be much more of that to yak about in the future, so this is your notice that I will be more and more yakking about just random stuff in my life)

I’ve been home almost six weeks, and I have been thoroughly unproductive.  My excuse, and it’s a good one, is that I am recovering.  That’s a good reason for not moving much furniture, but really, I should be getting a little more done on the computer for all the time I spend on it.

health report

I have … Continue Reading

I am home, back in Reno with a big ole scar down the middle of my chest and a new list of pills to take.  This will I think be the final post in the Heart Surgery Odyssey series.

The basic outline of my post-op recovery overseas was to be a week in the hospital, then another week at a local hotel.   Dr Cicek however kindly offered to let me remain at the hospital the whole time.   The tradeoff was that I would experience a lot less of the real Istanbul, but on the other hand, I tire so quickly that … Continue Reading

Well, here we are, the day before the big day.   There is one more test this morning, some kind of sonogram-ish thing to check the condition of my cardioid arteries, and I am good to go.

In the evening the barber shows up for my full body shave.  He was a funny little dude that looked exactly like Mr Bean in those BBC comedies.  He shaved my chest, then my arms and armpits.  So far, great!  The staff is constantly plastering me with these little plastic stickers with snaps on ‘em to which they attach electrodes for their … Continue Reading

Saturday May 23

(still working on the travelogue part of this below)

This is a new-ish hospital (five years old) out in the far suburbs – the countryside really – and they are working hard to attract an international clientele. It is right on the Sea of Marmara, my new favorite place, and every room and pretty much every window has a fantastic view out over the hills and islands and water.  It the morning with the sun just right one can still see snow on the mountains to the southeast.

It was difficult to start the original blog until I had some kind of plan to report.  Otherwise, all I would have had to say was “boy I sure am fucked and let me whine about it for a while”, which is a little boring.   But once the medical tourist plan going, it was pretty easy to write, because I had something to say!

Likewise, once I got here, with the awesomeness of it all staring me in the face, it was difficult to post until the damn thing was over and I could finish with “and then I woke … Continue Reading

“hi, my name is John.  I’m going to Turkey in a few days …. for a heart operation.”

My public presentation of “things” has been morphing lately.  It started three weeks ago when I visited Martha in good ole Marin County.  As luck would have it Vinyl was playing a show on a funky old grounded houseboat in Richardson Bay in Sausalito, which sounded like a pretty sweet event, and it was!

But it brought up a small issue, how to present what’s going on to old friends such as the Vinyl boys and the dance floor folks, who I feel quite … Continue Reading

This is a nuts and bolts update, with facts, numbers and links.  Many of you expressed interest in the gory details of what I’m doing, so here goes.

The very first hit on my google search for “overseas heart operation” was the same folks referenced in the CNN article (Jul 09 – actually not!  The CNN article references another company, but everything else is true!).  I clicked them, and as it turns out I clicked no further (unusual for me, I usually need to know that there’s not a better bargain out there somewhere :), because they’ve been very … Continue Reading