Been a while. I’m still here (barely)
Yes, it has been quite some time since I’ve updated this bunch of jumbled letters hanging out in the ether. There’s way too much that’s been happening to update you on everything, but here’s a shot at it anyway.
The House
The house is actually coming along OK. Slow, but OK. There is a ceiling up, but not finished in Mitch’s room. I put a tongue and groove pine ceiling. It needs to have trim around the edges and paint, but then it’s done. We’ll have to find a very low profile ceiling fan for his room since it has a little lower ceiling. Both the rooms in the basement are painted. Both are waiting for the carpet to be installed (after the ceilings are finished/painted). I put a whole house carbon filter on the water supply. It doesn’t really do anything for getting rid of the rotten egg smell, but at least we know it’s filtered. The upstairs bedrooms are still needing some final touches – ceiling paint finished (hopefully the texture won’t fall off), wall plates and some other little things are all that’s left.
There are some things I should get to before winter but haven’t yet. I need to put a damper at the top of the fireplace chimney and some rain caps on the other ones. I need to put up Christmas lights before we get any more snow or colder weather. I need to get the boats out of the water, get the water pump out of the lake and take the trampoline down. I suppose the snowblower needs to be checked out before it snows enough to need it.
It would be nice to get some of the Christmas light show sequencing done so I can have at least a few flashing lights this year. We have a boat trailer that I’m also wanting to convert to a utility trailer in case we actually do get hunting this year – we can take the ATV and deer stand up north on the home-made utility trailer. It would also be nice to get a work-room or portion of the shop heated for the winter.
We still have things to unpack and organize after the move. I don’t have much of my stuff done since I’ve been working on the house. The inside stuff can wait until it get’s cold outside.
Other Things
Well, other things haven’t been going so well. Over the years, I’ve occasionally had problems breathing in my sleep and have waken up gasping for air. I think it’s an acid reflux type thing. It last happened 3-4 weeks ago and was the worst it’s been. For about 10 minutes, I could barely breathe and wasn’t sure I was going to make it. The next day, I went in to the doctor and they took some blood and X-Rays. A few days later, I went in for an EKG. Everything is fine (though there’s a small leak in a valve in my heart – but it’s no big deal). They gave me a prescription for Albuterol – but I don’t think that is the fix or solution for the problem. It may help, but I doubt it. I can feel the fluid come up very high and don’t believe that opening up my airway needs to be done. I think the fluid needs to be stopped coming up.
Then, last Friday I was at work and around 4am, started getting stomach area pains. I gradually got worse until I couldn’t work. I left a couple hours early, at 6am. On the drive home, the pain kept getting worse so I stopped at the West Health clinic at I-494 and Hwy 55 in Plymouth. They were closed and didn’t open for another 30 minutes. I drove to Buffalo, thinking I’d try the Urgent Care at the clinic there. Well, they didn’t open until 1pm. But, the clinic made an appointment for me at 8:15. The doctor said there’s nothing she could do so the sent me to the emergency room at the Buffalo Hospital (connected, in the same building)
Waiting in the emergency room, I had to drink a couple large glasses of liquid (called Contrast) before they put me on the CT scan. Well, my stomach was in such pain, from 1/2 way up the ribcage to the beltline and all the way across side-to-side. Every small sip of that liquid made the pain worse, but I did it. They also put a liquid in my blood so it would show up on the scan – looking for the cause of pain. They thought my gall bladder may have been infected. We ruled out the appendix. It turns out I had (and still have) a bowel obstruction. Finally they gave me some pain medicine, though it just took the super-intense pain away, it still hurt really bad.
I was moved to a hospital room and they put a NG tube down my nose and into my stomach to pump out the fluid/junk from there and relieve some of the pressure. I hope you NEVER have to have that done. It is not fun. I told the nurses that they needed to have a NG tube put in at nurses school so they know what it’s like and hopfully be able to have a gentler hand when they put them in their patients. I threw up when it went in and the back of my throat was sore the entire 2 days it was in. It has to be at least 3/8″ clear plastic tubing and the bend at the back of the nose/throat puts a constant pressure on the back of your throat. It is even more uncomfortable when you have to swallow.
There was no food from Friday morning until Sunday morning. Not even a drop of water (other than that Contrast liquid). I still haven’t had a regular meal and am mostly drinking, not eating – but I have had some carrots and apples.
OK – enough of that, except that while laying in the hospital, I was able to look back at the last weeks and months and see that there were signs that I just missed. There were signs that something was wrong or different, but I was to busy or oblivious to notice them. I urge you to pay attention to the small things that go on in your day. Slow down and think about what is happening, or changes in your body – things like that. It may not only save some time, money and pain, but could also extend your life.
