December 23 through 31

[chochiyo_sama]

Wednesday, December 23

Lily brought over some leftover hot dish and dessert that she had made.  We were expecting a raging blizzard this afternoon, and she had an appointment at the eye doctor for later today.  She was able to change her appointment to 9:30 this morning so she could have her appointment and get home long before the weather turned nasty.

The bad weather started earlier up by Tammy.  She has a few chickens out in the barn, but two have to be separated from the rest.  They are the older birds—the mothers of the rest of the flock.  Because they are now old and weak, the younger chickens attack them and attempt to peck them to death because chickens are assholes.  So the two old biddies live in an empty horse stall in as luxurious accommodations as a barn chicken can hope for.  They have ample food, bedding, a heated water dispenser, and a space heater.

Tammy’s husband decided to let the two old hens out of the barn to enjoy the day while it was still moderately warm.  He left the door open, thinking they’d go back in on their own if the weather got bad.  Well, one did, but the other took shelter under the deck when the freezing rain began. 

At some point, Tammy went out to the barn, possibly to shut the door.  When she returned to the house, she found the old chicken huddled against the garage door, covered in ice and trembling.  She brought her into the house, wrapped her in a blanket after picking off as much ice as she could, and put her in a small plastic tote next to the fireplace.  The chicken spent the rest of the day in the house, sitting on Tammy’s lap, wrapped in a blanket, and watching Christmas movies on TV.  The chicken spent the night perched on a step ladder in the heated garage. 

As far as I know, the chicken continues to be well and happy.

The blizzard was impressive.  The wind howled and the snow fell all day.  In the evening, I was sitting on my recliner watching TV when there was a sudden violent BANG!  The wind had sucked the screen door loose and slammed it so hard against the railing on my front door steps that it snapped off the bolts that held it in the concrete and tore it loose.  The door was pinned between the outer wall of the house and the railing.  I was already in my nightgown under a blanket, but I went out to see if I could get the door shut.  The railing was heavy and I couldn’t budge it.  Also, the wind was howling and swirling around my legs and up under my nightgown.  I was afraid the wind would suck the inner door shut, and I would be locked out.  Or, that the wind would yank my nightgown over my head, and I’d be outside in a blizzard, barefoot, with my nightgown sucked over my head and blown away.  So, since the door was pinned against the wall, I decided to let it go until morning.  Pinned like that, the wind could not tear it off the side of the house and blow it away.

 

Thursday, December 24

After getting up and doing my morning routine, I went out to attempt to deal with my door.  I figured I would have to call my brother and nephew to come and take care of it, but I hated to bother them.  I discovered that, though I could not slide the railing off the steps and out of the way, I could tilt it downward so the square base of the railing which was holding the door open was lower than the bottom of the door and it closed easily.  I had to slam it to get it shut tight then lock it so it would not blow open again in the next blizzard as I am sure we will have a few more this winter.  By sheer good luck or divine intervention, the door was not damaged.  Only the mental pole that makes the door close softly was bent.  The hinges were fine.  The railing was too heavy for me to move.  I’d like to at least get it leaning up against the side of the house.  Oh, well.

I had planned to spend the night at Mom’s, but the freezing rain had made everything so icy, I was afraid that I might slip and fall on her driveway.  Joni moved one of her sports cars into Mom’s garage, so I could not just pull in and walk on the floor of the garage.  Lily offered to drive me to Mom’s so I did not have to take my car out.  I decided to wait till tomorrow to go to Mom’s house.  I spent a quite Christmas eve with Peaches. 

I made the Christmas treat that Mom likes the best—Ritz crackers made into peanut butter sandwiches and dipped in chocolate almond bark.  I didn’t feel like it, but it didn’t take long and I knew she would enjoy them.

 

Friday, December 25

I got up as early as possible so I could take a shower, pack my suitcase, fill Peaches’ food bowls, and clean her litter boxes.  It was a little after 10 am when Lily came to drive me to Mom’s.  I had a hell of a time getting up Mom’s garage steps to get into her house.  I eventually had to crawl up them like a dog to get in.  Every step is a different height, and the first step is very high.  I could not lift my foot high enough to get up.  Lily had made a lot of different goodies for Christmas to take up to her granddaughter Hailey’s house where she spent Christmas day. 

Lily called on her way to Hailey’s to ask me to pray for her to get there safely as the roads were very icy and there were many cars in the ditch.  Later, she texted me to tell me she had made it safely to Hailey’s and that little Cora had been very excited to see her and held her little arms out to be picked up.  This Cora is Lily’s great-granddaughter.  Our Cora was very happy to hear that there was another Cora in the family with the very same initials.  Our Cora is Cora Lynn Harpel.  The other Cora (9 months old) is Cora Lee Heil.  Some day, I hope we can get a picture of them together.

Mom made ham, boiled potatoes, green bean hot dish (the kind with mushroom soup and Durkee onion rings on the top, baked until the onion rings are crispy), and the mandarin orange Jello salad.   She made pumpkin pie for dessert.  Jack and his family came over briefly to deliver Mom’s Christmas present.  They were all masked.  They also brought a plate full of Christmas cookies that they had frosted last night.  I was able to give the kids their cards.  I gave each of my nieces and nephews $20.  My gifts for my siblings have not all arrived yet.  Slow delivery from Amazon.  My mother gave me an envelope with five $20 bills in it.  I used them to put in the cards for my other niece and nephews. 

While Mom and I watched several old movies, all of which had at least a trace of Christmas in them, on Turner Classic Movie channel, I wrote out my bills and Christmas cards to my nieces and nephews.  At some point both of us fell asleep and had a nap.  Mojo condescended to give me a brief but enthusiastic cuddle.

Lily got home before dark and texted to let me know she was safely home.  I appreciated that.  She will pick me up and take me back to my house tomorrow before dark.

I spent the night at Mom’s.  I started out with Mojo in the bedroom with me, but he was so rambunctious that I could not sleep and had to toss him out and shut the door.

 

Saturday, December 26

I spent the day at Mom’s.  We had leftovers from yesterday’s meal for lunch.  I bagged up some left over ham to take home.  I figured I would make quiche or an omelet with it—or perhaps some ham and potato soup.  We had some of the bars and cookies Lily gave us in the afternoon and some hot chocolate.  We watched some old movies again but both of us were sleepy and napped off and on through most of the afternoon.

When I got ready to go home, Mojo demanded to be picked up and cuddled for a while.  He obviously did not want me to go and was annoyed when I put on my coat and shoes.

Lily came to take me home just before dark.  Getting down Mom’s garage steps was much easier than getting up them.  We stopped at the post office so she could pick up her mail and drop my bills and Christmas cards into the mail.  We stopped at my mail box to get my mail too.  Not much was in the mail box.  When we got to my house, my Christmas package from Mary was on the steps.  Lily dragged it into the house for me, but I was too exhausted to open it tonight.  I figured I would save it and open it tomorrow. 

After Lily went home, I unpacked my suitcase, threw my dirty clothes in the hamper, and put my zip lock bag of ham into the fridge.  Peaches was very glad to see her momma come home and we had a nice cuddle together.  I watched TV for a while then went to bed.

 

Sunday, December 26

I filled my pill caddy first thing this morning then sorted and started my laundry.  I gathered and took my recycling outside to the bin and did the sink full of dirty dishes that I had left unwashed before going to Mom’s for Christmas.  I discovered that there was a marathon of Yellowstone episodes on today, so I watched that all day.  I had to pause it a couple of times to take calls from Mom and Lily and to do stuff like go see to the laundry.  I ended up not going to bed until nearly 4 am.

That’s unusual for me.

 

Monday, December 27

I got up to pee early this morning and discovered that, lo, and behold, I was peeing blood again.  Ugh. 

I decided to ignore it for a while and folded my last load of laundry, gathered up all my garbage, and dragged it to the breezeway.  Then I gathered up all of my recycling and bagged it up.  I tied up the kitchen garbage and dragged that to the breezeway too. 

At some point Lily called, and I told her about the blood in the urine.  She insisted that I call the clinic right away and try to get in.  I thought I’d let it go for a day or two and see if it cleared up on its own.  Ultimately, I called the clinic and they told me to come into the same day clinic.  Apparently they no longer call it Urgent Care.  My appointment was for 3:40, and they said I could get the blood and urine tests my primary had ordered earlier too, since I was coming in anyway. 

Lily came to drive me in so she could let me off right at the door.  I had the blood work and urine collection first and then up to the second floor where we waited for a very long time.  There were not that many people there, but apparently there was only one doctor seeing everyone.  It was Dr. Constantine, the same doctor I had seen last December when I was peeing blood. 

The lab screwed up and had only run the tests ordered by my primary doctor, so he had to call down there to have the specialized test run to look for infection, which meant 25 more minutes of waiting and waiting.  I read my book while waiting in the doctor’s office.  It turned out that there was bacteria and white blood cells and lots of blood in my urine, so he wrote me out a prescription for antibiotics and told me to come back if there was no improvement or if I had alarming side effects like vomiting or bloody diarrhea.  He told me he was concerned as the VRE is still in my system, though dormant, and that he didn’t want that to get activated as it is bad, bad stuff.  So he was giving me a really powerful antibiotic.  Then he told me the pharmacy would be closed in 15 minutes, so I had to hurry if I wanted to get the pills tonight. 

So, I told Lily and we hustled to the pharmacy.  I called to tell them we were on our way and to please let us get the pills if we were a minute or two late.  The pharmacist is a nice guy and said he’d wait fifteen minutes.  Since we were almost there anyhow, we got there in plenty of time.   Lily went in and got the pills then bought a few things she needed.  I was getting cold in the car, and by this time it was almost 8 pm.  She had to stop and fill her car with gas.  I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and I could feel my blood sugar dropping.  When I got home, I made a can of clam chowder and ate that.  I decided to wait until tomorrow morning to start the antibiotics as I had to take two a day, twelve hours apart.

I was really tired, so I didn’t stay up too late. 

 

Tuesday, December 29

I had several calls from the clinic to give me test results.  The good news is that my A1C (long-term blood sugar information) was 7.5.  Ideal is 7 or below.  At one point my A1C was over 10, so that was cause to rejoice.  Especially since I ate quite a bit of sugary stuff over Christmas.  My lipids were good.  But they said I had a lot of protein in my blood.  Normal is less than 20, but mine was over 180.  So they wanted me to come back and do a 24 hour urine collection.  So I asked if the fact that I had an infection and my urine was full of blood would cause that.  They admitted that was a possibility, so I said, I think I will wait till my 10 day course of antibiotics is complete and see if that makes a difference.  I absolutely and NOT going to be running to the freaking clinic every other day, exposing myself to every plague germ there is.

To keep myself busy, I cleaned some old food out of the fridge, washed the dishes, put some canned goods in the lazy susan, and wiped down a bunch of iced tea and pop for the pop fridge.  I put away my clean dishes and heated up some of my leftover meat loaf and made some microwaveable mac and cheese for my lunch. Then I took more recycling to the breezeway bin.

The antibiotic seems to be working already—much less blood in the urine.  A good sign.

 

Wednesday, December 30

Lily stopped by to bring me my mail and pick up the Shopper.  While she was here, she took my two bags of garbage and my bag of recycling outside to the bins.  I had a ham sandwich for a late lunch and baked an apple dumpling.  I had some apples that were getting withered.  It was a pretty quiet day. 

The antibiotics I am taking STINK.  And when I burp after taking them, my breath STINKS like these nasty things.  It smells like something out of a horrible swamp.  Disgusting.

 

Thursday, December 31

Lily had to go to Walmart this morning.  She asked if there was anything I needed, so I had her pick up two ink cartridges (one black, one color) for my “new” printer.  I ordered them from Amazon, but they are not here yet.  She also got me a box of spring blend lettuce, a container of mixed grape/cherry tomatoes, a loaf of French bread, and two cucumbers.  While Lily was here, I opened my amazing Christmas box from Mary.  So many wonderful things were in it!  A chip clip in the shape of a gray cat head that MEOWs when you open the clip, a shopping bag that can be all stuffed into the little head of a cat and carried in your purse for extra storage (great if you are on a trip), a gray cat that opens up to reveal pink cupcake shaped candies, a Christmas cross stitch kit of a black cat sitting in a window with some Christmas decorations, several pieces of fabric for my doll clothes and other projects, a set of Mary Engelbreit books that are just the right size to be displayed with some of my bigger dolls, a children’s book called The Rough Patch about a Fox dealing with the death of his best friend, a little dog.  I am such a baby.  I cried all the way through it.  I guess I am still raw from Stewie’s death.  Three blank page bound books and a book on writing, a little package of Kleenex with adorable cats on them, a cute little thing with the quote “You can’t tell me what to do!  You’re not my cat!” A bunch of really delightful things that made me so happy.

I also had a small package from Amazon which contained the DVD movie version of Alien Nation. 

I worked hard this morning.  Peaches had puked on my bathroom rug, so I washed them, then thoroughly cleaned the toilet and sink and scrubbed the floor.  It smelled wonderfully clean in there when I was done.  Since my bathroom was gloriously clean, I also cleaned Peaches’ litterboxes again.  Then I decided to bake the beef roast Lily had picked up for me.  I peeled potatoes, carrots, and onions and cut up a cabbage and baked them all.  I made myself an onion, ham, and cheese omelet because I was too hungry to wait for the roast to cook.  I also threw a small sweet potato into the oven to bake.  I ate the omelet and then, when it was done, I ate the sweet potato.

After eating that sweet potato, I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom in urgent need of a BM, but when I got there, nothing happened.  It felt like I was about to explode till I sat on the toilet, then NADA.  The same thing happened twice more over the course of an hour.  In addition, my low back began to hurt extremely bad, as did my left side.  It just kept getting worse and worse.  When I went into the bathroom again, I was in agony.  I started feeling really nauseous.  I had to grab the wastebasket and puke my brains out.  Thank goodness the bag in my wastebasket was strong and didn’t leak that nastiness all over the wastebasket itself.  The pain just kept getting worse and worse and a LOT of blood was in my urine again.

I began to get a little worried, so I called the nurse line and told them what was going on.  They told me I should go to the ER.  My car is currently out of gas, and no one responded to my texts when I told people that I needed to go to the ER.  Lily was at Mary Groth’s for supper, and she has terrible night blindness.  It really isn’t safe for her to drive at night, and I was in no condition to fill my car with gas at this point.  The nurse line advised me to call the ambulance, and after deciding that I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, I did. 

It was after 9 pm when it arrived. I had changed my clothes and put on my shoes (and a bra) and loaded my purse with the book I am currently reading, a bottle of water, and the embroidery project I am working on.  First a pickup from the fire department arrived and took my vitals and recorded my information.  Then the ambulance came.  It was a bumpy, painful ride to the hospital.  I was looking forward to getting some pain killers, but they didn’t give them to me for almost an hour.  I had to answer questions about my exposure and possible symptoms of covid about five times.  I had to get one of those bags that looks like giant condoms to puke in some more.  Then the doctor decided they’d hook me up to an IV and give me fluids, antinausea medication, and two different pain meds.  Then I started to feel much better.  One of the pain drugs they gave me was Fentanyl, which caused my oxygen level to go down.  My blood pressure was pretty high, but I was in a lot of pain and stress, and it began trending downward.  I had to have a CT  scan and make another offering of very bloody urine. 

It was nearly 3 am when the doctor told me I had two large kidney stones in my left kidney which were “a nine” which means they are so large that they probably will not pass on their own.  He gave me three prescriptions, one of which was Percocet, a pain killer, and another was an antinausea drug.  I think the third one was supposed to open the tubes to make it easier to pass the stone, if it could pass.

They wanted to know who they should call to come and get me.  Well, it was after 3 am by this time.  Lily has night blindness.  Mom cannot see and does not have a car, so Jack was the only one.  I hated to call him as he is really grumpy when he is awakened and is not a real rapid waker upper.  Me, I am fully conscious the second my eyes open.  Anyhow, the nurse called.  She was really nice and cool.  She was tatted up pretty good and was a cheerful smart ass.  She went to get my prescriptions from some dispenser and came back to tell me she needed $3.  Cheap enough.  Another nurse came in to unhook me from the IV and the heart monitor sticky things and help me get dressed. 

They walked me to the lobby where I waited for Jack.  The other nurse brought me my new meds and some print outs on kidney stones.  I had to wait about 15 minutes longer for Jack.  Caleb had been awake and playing with his computer, so Jack took him along to help him stay awake.  Jack complained about his new boss and what an incompetent ass he is all the way home.  He is scheduled to retire in April of 2022.  He has to last till then.  

When we got to my house, they helped me get into the house.  As soon as they left, I put on my pajamas and went to bed.  I was exhausted. 

Comments

[egret]

What a difficult new year! I hope you feel better soon.
All those cat things sound adorable. Now I want a cat chip clip that meows!

[the_godiva]

Lucky chicken. She is lucky she is loved and cared for. On another hobby farm she would be stew by now.

Nice Jack's family is finally taking Covid seriously and were all masked up.

So, in essence you didn't get a Christmas present. Well, I'll certainly make up for that. You got your birthday box. I'll be sending your Christmas box soon.

We watched TCM all night too. I recorded Lucy Worsley's Christmas Carol Odyssey on PBS at 8pm because I knew they'd never let me watch it. Then when I came back on Sunday to take the dogs to the dog wash and finish the garden my Mom had erased it because she "thought it was a mistake" because she didn't record it. She also erased Rick Steves. You'd think she would have had a clue since I am always the one watching Rick Steves on PBS. Her excuse was "It's my TV and those weren't my programs."

And there is NO way to see it. There is no DVD. There is no pay service that has it. It isn't available anywhere. Not even as a bootleg on YouTube. I can only wait until next year and hope PBS runs it again. From now on if one of my programs is on I'm not going over there. I'm staying home and watch it myself on my TV.

Did you notice I changed all of the dog words in the book to cat words? But you can peel off the tape if you like. I cry every time I read that book too. I have quite a few. I started buying them after Caesar died. I bought The Rough Patch after Ramses died. There are some cat ones too. Half of those were from your birthday box. I used the same wrapping paper and in the end couldn't tell the birthday from the Christmas. I still have half left so I'll be sending them in a week or two.

What a lousy way to end the year. But consistent, considering what other shit we have been through. Thank goodness it was nothing Covid-related and hopefully they will not have infected you with the ambulance ride or the two visits to the hospital. But it is another fucking bill. Just as you had paid everything off too.

I didn't even get to see the ball drop this year. I left my parent's house at the usual time and was home about 11:55 but couldn't get into the house fast enough to see it. I imagine it is online somewhere but frankly I'm not interested this year.

2020 is over. Good riddance.

[chochiyo_sama]

I do love that book. The illustrations are adorable too.

[cmcmck]

Sorry you had such an awful new year.

Here's hoping this gets sorted out soonest!

Hugs

[chochiyo_sama]

Hopefully things will only go up from here.