Rehab Routines

I visit Skip each evening at the rehab hospital. Even on the weekends, I like to spend most of the day here at the house and then head over as it starts to get dark. During the week, I go over after the workday officially ends at 5pm. I typically stay for a few hours, primarily because I don't like to leave the pups in their crate for too long.

There isn't much to do in the rehab hospital. So, I've come up with some things I can do in Skip's room to keep busy.

• Clean up. The aides and nurses have a tendency to leave junk on all available surfaces, including tables, the floor and the empty bed in the room. I organize all the junk, throw out the debris, and wipe up Skip's patient table and the guest table. With flowers, cards and gifts she's received, I've organized them, watered, thrown out as they've aged.
• Prep water bottles. Skip needs to hydrate frequently with her Clinitron bed sucking a lot of moisture out of her body. Because she'd spill a glass of water, she uses big water bottles with sports caps. I rinse out and refill the ones she's emptied since my last visit.
• Help with self-care. Skip loves to keep her nails short but can't sit up high enough to handle the trimming herself. So, I do that. So far, I've only clipped the skin once and it didn't draw blood, just the top layer. I also handle toenails. She gets dry skin and her elbows in particular are getting quite dry (the bed again?), so I apply a lot of cream when I'm there. (Her aides apply cream in the morning.)
• Untangle cords. The phone, the TV controller/call button, the wound vac power cord, the wound vac hose from body to vacuum and the IV line are all cords that end up on or near Skip's bed. The IV line is kept away from all the other cords so no tangling there. However, every day when I come in it's mind-boggling to see how tangled the other lines have become. I like untangling them to ensure Skip the best access to her key lifeline: the call button. Since she can't walk, if she has a problem and can't manage to get the call button she's in trouble until someone stops by for some random reason.

Besides keeping me busy, it also helps us both feel better. Skip is getting some care from me, has her few square feet of space in better shape, and I get to be a help. Fortunately, though, I'm looking forward to only doing this for another 10 days, then we're gone!

Bells are Ringing in My Ears

I don't often talk about any maladies that effect me, but today I want to talk about my ears. They ring.

I know they've been ringing for over 30 years because I clearly remember speaking to a doctor about them when I was 21 or 22. In my late 20s, the ringing was accompanied by loss of hearing in my left ear such that if I was speaking on the phone with the handset to my right ear, I had little awareness of ambient noise in the room. And what I could hear in my left ear was blurry.

The partial deafness and working in a good job with medical benefits prompted my first significant exploration into my ear problems. I went to Mass Eye and Ear, a part of Mass General Hospital, and had all sorts of tests. These essentially determined there was no clearly definable reason for the deafness or the tinnitus.

The hearing loss in the left has come and gone over the years. I have learned to accomodate it by strategic seating in settings where I'm in a group, such as large, in-person meetings and restaurants with a group of friends.

In my mid-30s, vertigo joined in the fun, so I now had a trio of ear issues. This led to the identification of Meuniere's disease as a likely culprit of these issues. My father has Meuniere's, though he hasn't had any vertigo attacks in 15 years or more. (This is lucky for him since his mobility is now impaired by Parkinson's.)

The hearing loss is always there to some degree, the vertigo is a very infrequent visitor, but the tinnitus is always with me. I'm writing about it now because it's really spiked up over the last week or so. Over the years, the loudness and the tone have varied significantly, even varying by ear. With the recent increase in volume, I now have a pulsing, high-pitched ringing shriek localized slightly to the left of center in my head. This is also accompanied by distinct ringing sounds located directly in my ears. When the house is wonderfully quiet in the mornings, like right now, it's presence occupies a fair portion of my consciousness; later in the day, when the activity level and noise increases, competing with the tinnitus, it will fade into the background.

In addition to all of this in the present day, I look at my dad and worry about the future of my ears. He is 84 and has two hearing aids, having worn them for at least a decade. Despite this, he needs to be spoken to in a fairly loud voice and dialogue often needs repeating. I suspect this is in store for me. D'oh!

Stop the World!

Warning: drivel ahead!

I had a brief period of overwhelmingness today. I had a good sense of what the day would bring and then a curve ball got thrown. Skip's aide, MW, had talked yesterday about not coming today because she was trying to get packed for moving this weekend. As a result, I thought the day consisted just of work, with only my brother coming to do some home maintenance. No nurses, no MW, no physical therapist. All in all, that seemed pretty quiet.

Late morning, MW called and said she'd like to work 1-5. Skip was thrilled. That would get her outside on the patio (it was a lovely, warm day here), a visit and a cigar smoke. I was not thrilled, though. Skip and I had planned that she'd spend time lying on her side in the early afternoon to take some pressure off her wound. That was out. We'd planned on only have one visitor today, my brother. That was out.

Suddenly, this change in plans had me completely overwhelmed. Not for any good reason, but just because it was a change. But, I didn't crank out. Instead, I gave myself a time-out. For about 15 minutes, I sat in the living room and wasted time on my home computer. I completely separated myself from the day's pressures. It did the trick as I was able to climb back into the day's responsibilities and routines and get through it all without descending into a bad mood. In fact, I ended up appreciating MW's presence as she took care of a lot of household activities (such as empty diswasher, fold laundry) that would have been part of my routine instead.

I have to watch out for tomorrow, though. We're having 4 new appliances delivered and partially installed (gas appliances being installed by a plumber on Friday), MW, the house cleaners, my brother and a full day of meetings. Oy! I'll have to be on my guard for crankiness! (Actually, I've already come up with ways to settle myself into a "cone of silence" so I can work away from all the chaos. Wish me luck!

To Costume or Not to Costume?

Skip and I are going to a Halloween party. It's a costume party and it's requested that all partyers wear costumes. The last time we went to this couple's Halloween party, Skip wore a simple costume and I was bad, going in street clothes only.

It probably wouldn't surprise folks who read this blog to learn that I'm a curmudgeon who's not much on costumes. And, to a certain extent, not much on parties. I do find, though, that I am usually happy that I went to the party when all is said and done.

Sometimes I'm able to give up my curmudgeonliness and actually loosen up and have fun. I'm going to attempt that here. Skip is all for wearing a costume and has been regularly asking me to look through costume websites to get ideas for what to wear.

It's a struggle for me. I can be such a stick in the mud.

Drivel Post #1

Some of the folks who read this blog may feel I've already penned drivel in a prior post or posts. I won't take offense if you think so. After all, what's interesting to me isn't always going to strike a chord with you. And, sometimes I can be accused of a bit of navel-gazing.

When I started the plan to post 30 out of 31 days in October, I knew I'd eventually come to a day when the well was a bit dry. Today is that day. I'm a bit wiped out from the week, Friday nights are always the low ebb of the week for me, and I'm needing a good night's sleep to recharge.

I'm relaxing on the couch in the living room. Sally is sleeping snuggled against my leg, Ruby is sleeping, lying on her back, just to Sally's side. Skip is in her wheelchair a bit to my left. She's got her feet elevated. Her rolling table (sort of like the rolling tables used for patients reclining in hospital beds) is in position for her to easily use her laptop. Everything she needs is within easy reach ... water bottles, tv remote, phone, snacks.

I'm waiting for the Red Sox playoff game to start. They're in California, playing the Angels, and the game doesn't start until 9:37. Right now, we're catching the end of the Yankees/Minnesota Twins game and I'm happy to see, in the top of the 9th, that Minnesota has a 3-1 lead. I'm hopeful the Red Sox win tonight as they lost last night and being down 2 games in a best of 5 series isn't a good situation. Considering the late start of the game and the fact that it'll conclude sometime after midnight, I suspect I'll not find out the result until tomorrow morning.

So, just checking in with a drivel-istic update. Hope you're all well!