Ok here we go Guys. For all you Old timers. Wassssup. For you new guys Hows it hanging? I am The Pyromancer. Check the rank. It looks impressive. Hell when I got it I was even impressed with myself and I not easily impressed. That was a long time ago... We dont stand much on rank around here. Dont get me wrong it has its place and is still respected. You guys get what I mean or else you wouldnt have been asked to join our ranks... We are first and formost a Large group of Friends.. That said I have news to impart.

Im sure most of you have atleast Heard of if not fought alongside our Fearless leader Master Salvatoris. Well Sal's brother and our fellow DDMer Rusty Redeye has had a pretty serious Heart attack. He is currently in the hospital on Life support. The following is a cut and paste from Sal on Facebook..



Ronnie Eudeyposted toRussell Eudey
4 hours ago via mobile · Edited
After a few tests today they were able to back off the life support a bit, and let his heart take over more of the work. They will keep assessing his ability to run without the heart /lung machine over the next few days. Once they remove all the tubes, hoses, whistles, wires and bells, they will lower his sedation and wake him up over a few days.

Hopefully by the weekend he'll be telling us all about a crazy dream he had where he was zooming around town in a helicopter while being pinched, probed and prodded by some kind of weird bug-eyed little robotic grape-juicer that sounded exactly like Darth Vader, snoring through a scuba mask, in to a megaphone.

I already know it will be the best story I've ever heard. I can't wait for my very first best friend, my big Bubba, to wake up and tell me all about it.

Im sorry I didnt post anything sooner I really didnt think it was my place but I was asked and Gladly took up the roll of "Bearer of Bad News"
Hopefully as Sal predicts in his update Rusty will be up and around in no time. I would ask everyone to Keep him and his family in your thoughts and maybe you guys that Don't believe that Facebook is the Devil can stop by his page there and post your support.

Link to DDM_Redeye

Keep Rusty in your prayers. There is only one other that gets pissed so easily about games besides Pyro...and thats Rusty.

Thanks Pyro for posting and nice disclaimer

Yesterday was the first good news weve had. Life support machine was taken away. Boom! Like a badass my brother kicked that bitch out! He passed his test enough to try and let his heart and lungs do some of the work. Hes still intubated and has every drug they got in him. Hes not been a wake at all so we are having very one sided conversations right now. They will keep him under for some time as they work on his blood pressure and his heart getting stronger. But yesterday? Victory with a little happy snoopy dance. This tiny step is huge in thw direction of triple bypass instead of transplant list. Hes apparently been having heart attacks and didnt know it. Just eat a tums, rub some dirt on it and keep at it.

I love that boy very much. Been an excellent big brother to me even tho he pisses me off from time to time;) any messages you might have for him,let me know. Ill tell him and I know he hears me. You can contact us through here or facebook. Sal can never login in so he said email him at reudey@gmail.com

We do the best to relate info but it gets hard sometimes. We forget details or just dont always understand what the fuck they are saying. So we will keep doin our best.

We appreciate your kind words and keeping us close to your hearts. Hes tough. He will be back at it before you know it and ready to say whats uuppp, to you guys.

Love
Misty

That is definitely great news! It will be a long road with little steps and he is certainly up to the task. Tell the knucklehead we love him and he is being watched over (by aliens and shit). If you guys need anything, please let us know.

And keep us posted.

The evil empire tried to take him, and he kicked their ass. That's what a Death Dealer Merc does. Its in the COC isn't it? Tell him to quit laying around we have Mechs to blow up, contracts to fulfill & planets to capture for the Queen.
With Love & all my prayers
We got your back
Plague out

He's had a few problems today. I know its to be expected and I should just get use to the fact that this is a rollercoaster ride and im not gonna dig it.

Basically hes having kidney issues and bp issues. A specialist came in today but no answers yet. They are keeping him heavily sedated because hes becoming agitated( wah? Rusty? Agitated?)Theyve also limited our visits. This is fine but I worry that noones explained all this to him. Of course we are having a bad ice storm so I cant get there and tell him. Be cool. Calm down. Rest etc.

Anyways thanks for keeping him in your thoughts. When I go back. Ill read him your messages. We appreciate it guys

Just give the word LQ and we will come hold all the sawbones down so you can kick them until they give you the information you need
Keep fighting the good fight Rusty!

How is Rusty doing?

Ive been iced in for damn near a week now. Oh my stars the freakin ice! So im getting my updates down the vine.

His lungs have been giving him some trouble,lots of fluid. This is just part of being down and out for so long. It also makes it hard to take him off the vent :/. So today they are doing a tracheotomy(im pretty sure I spelled that way wrong). He had kidney trouble a few days back but seems better. Lots of antibiotics and hes been less restless. He has been able to respond to drs requests some due to less meds and.sedation.
Basically hes doing good with 1 step forward 2 steps back. Long recovery ahead
Im hoping to get there tomorrow and check him out for myself Hes at a wonderful hospital with a staff in his room at all times. They are really great and im going to smuggle them cookies in since all the vending.machines are lowfat sugar free;) Dang heart hospital and their healthy ways :p

Thanks for asking and im sorry ive not updated. I told Pyro,that this is such a bad rollercoaster ride. It seems like a dick move to make you guys go on it. Ill try to update better as I get info.
Love
Misty

glad to hear he's coming off the Meds. You know we will all take the ride, that's why we are here, its a big family Stay strong

Salvatoris wrote a novel on FB:


I want to thank everyone for their kind words, well-wishes, thoughts and prayers. I know it will mean a lot to Rusty when he sees it. I told him yesterday that I would sit and read them all to him when he is a little more awake. There are no words strong enough to express how relieved, excited and happy I felt when I was able to look at him eye to eye yesterday, and to finally know for sure he could hear what I was saying to him.

Only two years older than me, Rusty is first and best friend I ever had. For the last forty years we've been about as close as two brothers can be... And from time to time we fought like only two brothers can. Through think and thin, rain or shine, he has been a constant fixture in my life. As many of you know, we have lived and worked together for almost all of our adult lives. Since he went in to the hospital, I never considered any possibility other than him stubbornly fighting his way through this thing. I don't even know if I can imagine a world without him. I just know I wouldn't want to.

Now that Rusty is getting to the point of being an active participant in his own recovery, I would like to post a little more specific update than I usually do. I have avoided posting some of the scarier sounding stuff up to now, wanting to just stay positive and comforting on these public updates. Now I'd like to write a fairly frank assessment of his current medical situation and what, describe we can see so far of the road ahead. If you aren't interested in reading any scary sounding possibilities or current realities, and just want the summary, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. Without a coat of sugar on top, some of these things might be worrisome or hard to hear. I'm posting it here today because it can also be hard to say, and it doesn't get any easier the more times you say it. --- The short and slightly sweeter statement is that Rusty is awake and on the mend, but he still has a long way to go. He is gradually becoming more and more awake, and has fewer and fewer tubes, hoses and needles poked in him every time I see him. He is on a path out of the hospital to continue his healing and treatment from a bed at home, but the length of that path is still unclear. Its a marathon, not a sprint, but he is well on his way.

Now for the specifics... Let me start with the "awake" part. He is about half sedated still, so while he is conscious a lot of the time, he is not entirely lucid all of that time. He will look you in the eyes when you talk to him, and he clearly understands most of what is being said while he is paying attention. Though it looks like its taking some work, he can shake his head to answer questions. And if you are lucky enough to be his brother, you can have whole conversations just by looking at his face. Some of the time the sedatives are winning the fight and he seems to be more sleeping with his eyes open than actually awake. That is how he was when I first saw him conscious, and it was a little upsetting. When Misty leaned down to talk to him, he turned right to her, and seeing the recognition and greeting in his eyes was a giant relief to me. I got a little emotional over it, and when Rusty saw me upset, he tried to sit up and gave me the exact same look I have seen from him after I got just my ass kicked or my heart broken. It was the face he makes when seeing me very upset makes him even more upset than I am. The same face he makes when he is helping up off the ground, dusting me off and boosting me back up on the horse. The face I have seen my whole life when I am hopeless, lost or broken, when I am inconsolable or ready to give up. My big brother was trying to get up out of that hospital bed and fix me. That is when I knew for sure that he was still in there, just the way we left him.

Now for the current prognosis on his heart. Its somewhere between what they originally said was the best we could hope for and the worst possible case, assuming he even made it through the first night. His heart is pumping, but it is badly damaged and working at a greatly diminished capacity. The doctor said yesterday that it's about 20%, and he does not expect it to improve much beyond that. This is not something that will heal over time, or can be improved with treatment. The percentage they are giving us may go up a little bit, but they don't expect it to change very much.

Its too early to determine the exact kind of care Rusty will need once he is out of the hospital in order to maintain his health at whatever level of activity 20% functionality of his heart can provide. He will certainly need medication, most likely ventilation and possibly even a "permanent" IV. All that will have to be assessed and determined later. Now, I put permanent in quotes because having a heart that can only do a fourth of its normal work is not a permanent solution itself. He is going to need a heart transplant to get back an acceptable level of health. He will just have to take it easy and tough it out and let us take care of him in this condition for however long it takes him to get to the top of the donor list.

As scary as that prospect sounds, the odds for someone who is maintaining reasonable health outside of a hospital, with that level of heart functionality, are actually very good. It can be a long wait. Every year there about 3000 people in the US waiting on the transplant list, and there are about 2000 donor hearts available. It can take up to a year and half or longer for people in a less than critical situation to to get the heart they are need. It wont be fast or easy, but we can take care of him for 18 months, no problem. I'd carry him around every day on my back for that long if he needed me to. So maybe he has to stay in bed and watch tv or play video games a lot, take frequent naps... that's exactly how he would schedule a vacation.. or spend any given Saturday.

The point I hope everyone will focus on here is that Rusty is alive, awake and there is an emerging path from where he is now, to near full circulatory functional, something he hasn't had for a long time already. The path is long and winding, a little rocky and uphill most of the way... but its well worn and fairly brightly lit. He will have to walk it slowly, and he will need us to lean on when the ground gets rough or the hill gets steep. But i know he can make it to the end, even if we have to pick him up and carry him part of the way.

For today, lets all just be happy that he is awake, and relieved that he should be able to wait for his new heart at home, surround by family, rather than in the hospital, sustained by machines. For me, that's a victory, and every day he is still with us is a success.

This got way longer than i intended and Im sure its rife with spelling and grammatical errors... I have to stop writing this novel and go get some work done, I will clean the typos up in a bit.

Thanks for the update, Pyro. The most important thing is that he is on the road to recovery and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Battle on, Rusty!

Hey guys. Hope you are all well. Rusty update.

Hes doing better. Fully awake and getting more movement in his hands. We had a rough sunday. We went to watch the game with him and he wasnt feeling great, over tired and uncomfortable. They readjusted him and got him set up then decided to give him morphine :/ Hus heart rate was rising and rising and noone would really listen. He then coded, they jumped on him and it took 20 minutes to get him back. This is the second time this week. Ok thats the scarey stuff..fucking horrible stuff. After that dr talked to us in his room and saying things like brain damage. Rusty was shaking his head , dr said it was involuntary. We argued and we were right. Hes just fine and wanted everyone to know it. Fighting hard.
He still has his trach and cant talk. This is frustrating for everyone. I cant read his lips correctly everytime and I hate that. But he doesnt get mad at us. In fact that boys trying to take care of us to much. He does let me baby him a bit and wants to hold my hand. He likes me petting his arm. Ill take all the petting he will allow

So thats what I got right now. Tons of typos and choppy sentences. Sorry, needless to say im pretty worn out.
Keep thinking of the boy and send him messages.
We all send our love and hope you have a wonderful christmas.
Love
Misty

With a very sad heart I have to tell you Rusty passed this evening. We are heartbroken. I am heartbroken. My good big brother is gone.

Im lucky to have had these last few days with him. Squeezin my hand and not letting go. Kisses and jokes. One of best friends for over 20 yrs and ill miss him daily.

True to my word my promise to him,ill look after the boy I have and all the kids. We will remember ever stagger stagger stir and every whats up. All the times he made me mad and all the times he hugged me tight.

Love to you all and hold us in your thoughts.

With Tears on my cheeks I sit here and try to wrap my brain around the fact that Rusty is gone. I've only had this feeling once before... When my Brother Died. Well that is what has happened. I have lost another Brother. Maybe not by Blood but in every way that counts. ..... R. I. P. DDM_Redeye. I for one will never forget you..