Catch Up Entry

Although I posted a New Years' entry I never finished the Christmas post – AND I have whole lotta stuff in between to chronicle. This is going to be a short and sweet entry to bring everything up to date.

Christmas day was lovely – Ken and the old lady and I had a great morning. We lollygagged around and opened our presents slowly. We just enjoyed the day and each others company. In the afternoon I start prep for dinner. I made a stuffed pork loin to do on the grill. At 5 pm I was just finishing the vegetables when the old lady complained of her hand feeling tingly. Then about 5 minutes later she was speaking in a very slurred manner. Of course first thing I thought was TIA or stroke. She did NOT want to go to the hospital. SO I let us all eat and she improved over a 5 or 10 minute time. After eating though (and it was NOT a holiday dinner at that point – simply a way to make sure we all had something to eat) I insisted on going to the Emergency room.

Honestly I cannot now remember how long we were there – but of course it was hours. I was exhausted when we got home.

We followed up with her local doctor on the 27th I think it was. The old lady admitted that she had felt tingling in the outside two fingers on her right hand at other times prior to the incident on Christmas day. She got a new blood pressure med as her pressure was up, AND the doctor did say she thought it would be unusual that a TIA would manifest itself in just two fingers.

Fast forward to New Year – New Years Eve Ken and I went with Sandy and Bob to see King Kong. That was an intense film. If you are going to see it I suggest closing your eyes as soon as the bug part starts and keeping them closed. YUCK! I of course cried at the end – ‘cause that’s what I do. Afterwards we stopped back at Sandy and Bob’s house, had some snacks and champagne, saw in the New Year and were home about 1:30 I think it was. New Years Day I had planned on nothing but relaxing. It was not to be.

We slept late and then Ken went off to take care of some things. I decided to make a dinner in the crock pot using a recipe from the new cook book my sister got me for Christmas. I was just cutting up the chicken when the old lady called me. Yup you guessed it – another TIA type incident. This time much worse- she could barely talk and the numbness/tingling had gone up her arm. We called the ambulance as she was afraid to have me drive her. I must say our local volunteer EMTs and fire department are wonderful. It was like calling out the brigades. They took her in – I straightened up a bit in the house, made sure that Ken would come back and look after Tulip and off to emergency I went. After many hours they decided to keep her. Also put her on a stronger blood thinner.

She was there until Tuesday the 3rd. Came home – had a good afternoon and a good Wednesday. Thursday she called me at work feeling awful. And I called the neuro nurses in Boston – they said go to emergency at Dartmouth. We did. Were there for 7 hours. Saw Neurosurgeons, neurologists and who knows who else. They ended up deciding that she was not having TIAs rather it could be migraines starting up or seizures resulting from the fluid on the outside of her brain. They said stop the new blood thinner – which in retrospect I realize was probably the thing giving her the really bad headaches as those only started after she was in Springfield Hospital and started on the blood thinner.

They started her on Topamax – a seizure/headache med. We have a follow-up with a neurologist next week. And this Wednesday we still need to go down to Boston to the Neurosurgeons to see what to do about the fluid around the brain. Plus she has an appointment tomorrow with the local doctor that I am insisting that she keep because maybe she can get off the new blood pressure med as it 1) makes her unbelievably sleepy so that she is doing almost nothing BUT sleeping and 2) it gives her dry mouth and with her teeth I worry about that dryness. Oh and there is a slight chance that they will keep her in Boston to do the drain of fluid right away – although I am not betting on it.

What else has been going on? Well I decided with her emergencies that I should finally break down and get a cell phone. That was a comedy of errors. Went with Ken to get us both phone (an upgrade for him and a new one for me) on Jan 2nd. Well it was a holiday so the cell company was not open so they could not activate our phones. The next day I was just going to run up and get them but decided to call first – phones were still not on – the store could not get through to the company. The NEXT day I called and they managed to turn them on – I ran up after work to get them. I noticed they were charging me $69 per phone and I said – you told me they were $49 per phone. Oh says the lackadaisical kid – that’s with the rebate. So I say –Are you going to give me the rebate form? So he looks around and around and around. Finally he finds them and off I go. Get home and decide for once in my life to be proactive and start to fill the forms out. Guess what?!? The model we got isn’t on the form. MUST CONTROL FIST OF DEATH!

On top of that – I go out and feed the chickens on Thursday night and there’s a chicken missing. It is Pinkie (so named for the color ring on her leg) She is the one that I personally operated on twice for impacted crop. She is gone – disappeared – not a trace. I could not figure it out. There is no way an animal could have gotten her out of there without a sign of blood or feathers or something. So I was guessing that when I fed them Wednesday night she popped out the door behind me – I didn’t notice and then since she was out of the coop and just loose in the barn that something got her that way.

Skip ahead – Saturday it was a nice bright sunny day so I decided to let the chickens out a bit. And since it was so bright I decided to really check the coop carefully in case Pinkie’s body was slumped in a corner somewhere and I hadn’t noticed it. I don’t know what made me look behind the hay bales I use to line the outer wall of the coop to help against the cold, and there she is! Stuck between the bales and the outer wall. Little dummy. I pulled her out and gave her talking to and she was so thirsty poor thing. In a way I am surprised she made it at least two whole days without water and right up against the cold wall.

Anyway that brings us up to Saturday morning. Maureen came to visit this past weekend. But I shall leave talk of that to another time.

Oh and so much for a short and sweet entry huh?!