I Have a Rat

I thought I had a mouse or two & my buddy Ron set up some traps. We used peanut butter as the treat - Ron traps a lot of them in the old apartment building he still works at & peanut butter is the lure of  choice. I prefer the trap to the 'Sticky Feet' pad since the last pad I had caught the cat & ME. Nasty things to get off your feet!!! 

MY critters prefer imported, Italian pasta! They found the cupboard with all the little bags in a plastic tray & ate their way silently through multiple bags. Every single bag was empty!!! It was my own fault since I put them into a tray - my niece bought a whole bunch of them when she helped me organize my kitchen. They fit nicely on the shelf & I can pull them out without dropping, get what I need & then push them back easily. Nice idea when you have a cat or dog but not good when you have rodents.

So Ron set all the traps & they all got sprung. And someone gorged on peanut butter - probably as an appetizer before hitting the pasta. We just scratched our heads & tried again. 

Then I saw it. A BIG FAT Rat. Rattie sits up & looks at me when I move or yell. I'm sure he's well aware that the house could burn down before I could make it out of my chair to whack him with my cane! I think he waits until I go to bed before coming out to eat pasta. He makes no noise & hasn't even been in the garbage. Just the pasta.

Ron says he has bigger traps at work .  .  .  .  .

Breath of Hell

 It was so hot in my little house yesterday - even in front of a fan - that I didn't move unless I had to or cook anything at all. Lucky for me I found some salmon cream cheese to put on my whole grain flat bread. Even going to the bathroom was tough because there's no fan in there & the heat made it hard to catch my breath with even the smallest exertion. A good wipe & head soaking with a cold wet washcloth made it bearable though. 

Made the mistake of NOT opening my doors really early so the house didn't cool down. So today, I got up & opened everything up at 6:30. It was actually chilly sitting at my desk under the ceiling fan!! The furnace thermometer on the wall is no longer over 30 - I have no idea how hot it was since the needle was mashed against the side & 30 is the highest reading. It's happily recording a temp of 19 today. 

Years ago, Marlow would lock the fence & we'd leave the doors open to cool air all night. The dogs patrolled the yard so the raccoons didn't come in & the whole place stayed cool. And, we did have that monster fir tree in the front yard which blocked the sun too. Nowadays, there's only me so I'm fair game for every raccoon in town!! It's amazing how small a space they can squeeze through so I can't even leave anything partially open .  .  .

More Air

 Another week has come & gone with just a small change in my life. The AIR guy dropped by on Monday & took all my small tanks away!! He left me big tanks in their place - I think they're twice the size!! They're twice as tall & just a little bigger around. I know it's silly to get excited about air tanks but these may give me a little more freedom. I can't wait until I can drive to the Railway Cafe & order a sandwich!! And they fit into the very same cart the little ones fit into. That means they'll fit into the holder on Frank, my walker. I can lift them - a little easier since they're much taller - and have no problems putting them into the cart. Now if this heat wave would end . . . . .  I'll be able to go out. I won't even attempt to go anywhere until I hook up a tank & see how long it lasts. 

My blood test was good last week - I forgot about the holiday but they fit me in where they could. So nothing has changed with my drugs. I'll be glad if I could lose the Warfarin though. On the weekend I banged  into the door jam hard enough to get a big swelling just above the elbow. Of course it turned into a black & blue, painful lump. Holy Haemophilia Batman!!

Sorting Out My Life

 Monday, once more. The traveling Nurse still hasn't made it to my house for the blood test for my blood thinner. I suspect that while it's important, it's no longer life & death in my case. I've managed to stay stable for three weeks now & that's a good thing.

The Respiratory Therapist came & assessed me. She cranked up my home compressor to 10!!! from the 6 I was at - my blood O2 fell too quickly & I recovered too slowly when I moved around. OUCH I had noticed & was using the bigger hose & cannula from the hospital stay because it gave me more air. The silicone ones provided by home service are narrower & twist tightly with usage, cutting down the air outflow. I have to ask for the bigger, wider ones!!! Hopefully, I'll be able to do more for longer - like stand up to cook, take the laundry out of the washer & maybe out of the dryer!! I might even be able to use my Dyson stick vac again. 

She also requested bigger O2 tanks for me - she wants to give me my freedom back but really doesn't want me to go back onto the alternating valve. She even wants to turn the O2 up a little more!!! I was quite vocal about being trapped at home with the new valve setting. I want my old alternating bursts of O2 back. With bigger tanks, I get another 30 minutes on setting 6. So a tank would give me 1.5 hours - and more if I cranked it down to 4 when just sitting. I could potentially go to a medical appointment if I don't have to wait too long. The hospital had me on 4 for most of my time there in both June & again in July. I figure I could go to any drive thru for lunch or even just a coffee if I wanted to with just one tank. I have to wait to see what kind of cart comes with the bigger tank. Ideally, a double cart would be my choice but I'm betting that NO cart will be offered since there's a handle at the top!! In the hospital, they came with a loop handle & I could pick them up or drag them easily. Not sure if I can manage two tanks at once but most of the year it's cool enough to leave one in the car .  .  .  . 

Knitting - not really knitting but I'm making dish/wash cloths once more. I've noticed more stiffness & aches in my hands lately, especially my fingers. My right forefinger locks up sometimes & my left middle finger leans to the right in a half Vulcan salute!! Probably stiff tendons. So I'm knitting garter stitch wash cloths to ease back into something more productive. I suppose I shouldn't sneer at dish/wash cloths since I love them in the bathroom, especially in the shower!! But it seems so - elderly - knitting something so basic .  .  .  I'm easing my embarrassment by calling it Therapy.

Hospital Summer

 Home again. I just got back from the Hospital again. I tell you, I've spent waaay too much time laying about the bloody hospital this summer! This time around I never left the Emergency department. There were so many of us in there that the Hospital opened a new\old ward way in the back to get some of us out of the corridors. We ended up in the closed old wards used for storage. We had little new equipment - not even curtains on the windows - but the beds were much better than stretchers in the halls. Since I was on O2 & lasix to make me pee, I got a choice corner with a toilet. It must've been designed for an RV because it came in a one piece unit with a sink up top & a toilet in the cupboard below that swung out, into the room. Of course it was too low! We had to plant a commode, with no pottie, over the top so I could get on & off by myself. I had to be careful though because they had to keep borrowing my commode for other patients that couldn't walk to the bathroom .  .  .  .

Since we had no curtains, they brought in a whole lot of folding screens. What fun. Everyone in the place knew every time I used my little toilet! We were relatively well behaved even though there seemed to be a party going on across the hall with all the guys who could get up & leave their beds. 

Lucky for me, I only spent 5 days on the ward this time. I screwed up my medication - probably why I ended up in for a month the last time - which caused my legs to swell up once more! I now know WHY that happens & I won't have that problem again. I've been taking the medication for THREE years & no one told me that it had a working life of 5 hours. There's nothing in the literature about it either. But now I know. I was taking my doses too far apart to work.

So I'm back home waiting for the Nurse to come & take my blood - they do it once a week to regulate my blood thinner. I am having another session with the O2 Therapist on Friday to regulate my O2. I want my old valve system back so I can get out in my car again instead of being trapped at home with tanks that only last for 66 minutes!!

I am seriously hoping to be able to get out to the Mcdonald's drive through for a good coffee before the leaves fall off the trees .  .  .  . 

Knitting - what knitting??? I was smart enough to take my extension cord, all of the chargers, Lara bars, my own pee pads, Wet ones, toothbrush, mascerateable cloths, spare shorts & tee for sleeping, phone, ebook, radio/earplugs, Silicone creme, Nourishing Creme & Puffers to get me through. I had nowhere to put knitting.