December 2008
Hey! I'm not THAT loopy!
For those of you who feel you need to remind me of incidents in my past that demonstrate I ALWAYS HAVE been loopy and that it’s not something new, ease up or I’m gonna start telling stories on you. Like Fred Wymore CRYING FOR HIS MOMMY after a snake crawled over his feet while he was enjoying a magazine in the bathroom at his place in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky.
New Year’s Eve,...
If it ain't one thing, it's yer mother.
So now I’m loopy. I’ve been noticing lately that I’ve had even more trouble than usual remembering stuff, things that were more or less automatic, like coming up with the password to sign on the computer and little details like that. So I checked with people on the Pulmonary Fibrosis forum on Yahoo, and unfortunately, it seems pretty common among IPF patients. They’re...
...and home again, home again, jiggety jig.
Where do I begin……… My first stop was my brother’s house. I wasn’t much company since I slept 15 hours after the drive. They had fixed a place in a room on the ground floor for me, which was perfect. No steps. My nephew’s flight from New York City was delayed by two days due to the weather. He later helped me with all the paperwork that needed to be...
Maybe I could make the trip by snowmobile...
Man, we really got hit today. I’m guessing a total of about 8 inches of new snow, and now there’s freezing rain coming down on all of that making for a huge mess. About the only people out at this point are the snowmobilers, and it sounds like a bunch of bees going by. I took Jake to the kennel earlier today and a woman in a big car already couldn’t make it up the hill leading...
Uh oh... looks like a delay...
The weather watch posted calls for 6-12 inches of snow, followed by sleet and freezing rain moving through Pennsylvania starting late tonight and ending tomorrow afternoon. So I’m changing plans and will now leave early Saturday instead of tomorrow. I don’t want to drive in that slop. Grrrrr….
I’ve had such a great and wonderful bunch of e-mail that I haven’t...
And I will be off to Indiana!!
Great news! The pacemaker guy checked me all over today, asked a bunch of questions, and told me I could make the drive to Indiana Friday as long as I get out of the car frequently, walk around, get things moving. He said if I was staying here, he might think about putting a pacemaker in tomorrow, but since he feels making the trip shouldn’t be a problem, he’ll talk to me after the...
What it may be like.
I joined a Yahoo forum for pulmonary fibrosis. There are over 600 people who belong, and some exchange ideas, share little helpful hints, compare medications and treatments and symptoms. Sometimes we’re cruising along and then are brought abruptly back to reality, like today. One man on the list is taking oxygen at 8 liters per minute. I’m on three, by comparison. People are...
With this disease "about the same" is a good...
We know it’s not going to get any better. Barring a miracle or a new drug, it’ll only get worse. So when the pulmonary doc checked me over this morning and said my lungs sounded pretty good under the circumstances, it was like getting a good report card. No need to see me for six months. I hope he means by that that he thinks I’ll still be alive in six months! He and I had...
Do me a favor
Every year at this time I read to myself and to anyone who is near enough to listen the Christmas story in the Bible, Luke, chapter 2. It reminds me of what Christmas is all about and makes me feel good inside. And pause when you get to the part “…and on earth peace, good will toward men.” It’s hard to pick a fight with someone when you have those words in your...
Humidity is up and it's hard to breathe.
It amazes me how much increased humidity can affect my breathing now. Yesterday and last night were very difficult. There’s a lot of rain moving through the northeast and this morning the humidity was 100%. I already figured that out even before I checked. I have the air conditioning on and it helps. Seems very odd to have both the heat and the air conditioning on. A little expensive,...
What a great Saturday.
First of all, I got some great information on pacemakers from Big Jim who had a pacemaker/defibrillator put in. Told me how easy it was, restrictions while healing, etc. I have some great friends!
Later I went to a recital/Christmas program of vocal and piano students from very young up. It was held in the sanctuary of a huge and very old Lutheran church in Nazareth (how’s that for a...
Update...going back to the pacemaker guy
I got a call this morning from the heart doctor’s office. They want me to come back next Wednesday to talk with their pacemaker implant guy. This is after my regular heart guy said yesterday there “could be a pacemaker in my future but not right away”. So I don’t know what this means. They want me to come 15 minutes early to get another EKG (had one yesterday) and...
The good news and the bad news....are the same!
The good news from the cardiodude today was that I don’t have any valves or blockages or any other problems at this point that need to be fixed. There may be a pacemaker in my future, but not yet. The bad news was, there’s nothing there than can be fixed to help me breathe easier. I had hoped he’d be able to open up something so I wouldn’t run out of breath/oxygen as...
Echocardiogram is over with.
Off to the heart doc first thing this morning, spent less than an hour on a table while the lady held some cold metal object on my chest and watched the pretty pictures of my insides and listened to the gurgline and slurping noises. Surely there’s some other less disgusting way she could earn a living! She didn’t say anything, other than it was tough to see my heart at times because...
Why do vitamins smell bad?
It seems almost universal that when you open a bottle of vitamins the smell almost knocks you over. Then the pill is usually huge and if you don’t get it completely swallowed, as in with LOTS of water, you get to taste it again. And now I’m taking something called N-acetyl Cysteine, NAC for short. Several people on the IPF Yahoo forum have said they’re taking either the pill...
Weird. In my dreams, I'm still healthy.
What is strange and at the same time a little demoralizing, is that in my dreams I’m perfectly healthy and doing all the things I always could. Then I wake up and it leaves me breathless just to take the dog out. I guess that’s where the term “rude awakening” came from. And with all the meds I’m on right now the dreams are VERY strange to start with. Same thing...
Make A Wish and the Bucket List
OK. Is there an age limit to that Make A Wish thing? Every time I hear about it, it’s a terminally ill young boy or girl being treated to a wish. Maybe it’s anything they want. I’ve seen them go to Disney World, to a NASCAR race and bunches of other things, and I’ve always thought it was great. So here’s my question: Do I qualify? Hey, I’m terminally ill...
Some great news!
The prayers worked. Thanks for all your help. My daughter went back for the follow-up x-ray for the darkness area that showed up during a mammogram. They did the x-ray, studied it, then poked their heads out and told her they wanted her to get a CT Scan, and she had one of those stomach-turning “Oh, shit” moments. They did that, and studied it awhile more, then came back and told...
And back from Little Rock. Survived my daughter's...
What a trip. Getting through the airports without oxygen was a hassle but there was transportation there and waiting everyplace except here in Allentown when I got home last night, and from the gate, it was a looong walk to the luggage carousel and then the front door, where Trixie was waiting to pick me up. I couldn’t wait to get back on the oxygen at that point. I came home and read...