It's been that kind of a day, but then it's been that kind of a week.

James started having problems with shortness of breath again on Sunday. He stayed home from work and called the doctor on Monday, got an appointment on Tuesday and was told not to drive. I teleworked for about three hours Tuesday morning, then took him to Kaiser. We were there pretty much all day. Took us a while to see the doctor, who then sent us downstairs to the lab and x-ray. They went to lunch at 1:30, but we got there at 1:10, plenty of time. Nope. They took James' blood and then at 1:20 everyone vanished and we had to sit there for an hour waiting for folks to come back. I've no objection to any worker getting lunch. But why all at once? Can't one person stay and one person go, and then swap? Stupid. We hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast, and neither the drinks machine or the snack machine would take bills although they said they did. I finally used James' change and got a bag of potato chips out of it. That's what we had for "lunch," half a bag of potato chips each. Then, finally, back upstairs for more of the doctor. We got home at 4:15, whereupon I immediately started cooking supper. You betcha.

So James went back to work Wednesday and Thursday, came home exhausted and short of breath both days. Thursday night he fell asleep from eight to ten; not sure why he even got back up since by then it was almost bedtime!

Anyway, the doctor gave James a referral to the pulmonary department, but he couldn't call until this morning. According to him, James' heart is fine, no reason for it to affect his breathing. His white count was normal and the x-ray showed no signs of the pneumonia. However, the radiologist was concerned about "reticulations" in his lungs, and when I mentioned how often the C-PAP is hissing, the doctor wondered if he needs a different kind of mask and, if perhaps the sleep apnea is not being treated properly, that may be causing the shortness of breath. So he's got an appointment next Wednesday. In the meantime he has to wheeze his way through. Sheesh.

He had today off because he worked last Saturday, I was on my compressed day. I had nothing planned for today except a trip to Walmart for a couple of new tank tops and a pair of shorts. Well, we went, but later than I would usually go on my own, and it was already hot as freakin' hell. October, hell. I want it January. January right now! Bloody bastard summer—how I hate it.

James scraped a big silver-dollar patch on his left arm raw getting off the power chair lift and we had to wander through Walmart with him pressing a napkin against the wound to stanch the bleeding. Had to buy green shorts, the only ones in my size. All the black ones were huge. There were tank tops everywhere, but I could barely find the shorts. For a minute it was like walking through Target. Also got James some diabetic socks and bought him a little side pack and a bicycle bell for his power chair.

We'd talked about going to Hobby Lobby, but the heat was already a menace and he needed the wound cleaned up, so we came home. By then it had stopped bleeding, and it was washed, smeared liberally with Neosporin, and covered up.

Have spent the afternoon watching stuff: Star Talk off the DVR, and then I made my way over to ABC.com so we could watch the episode of Astronaut Wives Club (the premiere) that we missed last night. Well, I'm so sorry I hit the "upgrade" on the television this morning; they have completely upgraded the "recently viewed" bar at the bottom of the television menu and erased all my preset broadcast channels to make it easier to access YouTube and a bunch of crap games. Really pissed about that. Then I get to ABC.com and have to go through a song-and-dance because of the brain-damaged browser on the television. The first thing it did was pop a banner message at the top of the screen that says "it looks like your browser is not set up to accept cookies; click help and see how to fix this." Well, this browser is so primitive you can't even do that; ABC.com apparently expects you to be on something intelligent like Firefox or Chrome. So we were stuck with that for the 3/4 of the episode we got to see on the television, and then, because the stupid browser locked up at the last commercial, we had to watch the last few scenes on the laptop. God, what a piece of junk. Right now we're watching The New Screen Savers from a few weeks back.

Labels: health, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 4:34:00 PM

Comments:

This is what obesity does. Why don't the two of you try to lose some weight instead of simply making continuous allowances for being so enormous?

# posted by  Anonymous : 4:40:00 PM

 

He can't walk more than six or seven yards without severe pain because of the two falls down the stairs he incurred 18 months ago. Ergo no way to exercise. When we talked to the technician at the Shepherd Center about alternative methods of exercise he said it would be very hard to find something James could do because of the back injury as well as the arthritis in his knees and degenerated bone in his feet. I suggested swimming but he said that would do very little to help him lose weight. In any case, this is not connected to his weight, but probably to the walking pneumonia he had for almost a month.

My problem is that I have had both my thyroid removed and a complete oomphorectomy. When I had my thyroid out I gained ten pound in the week I was in the hospital, eating only hospital food. It completely whacks out your metabolism. It seems I could eat salads every meal and it wouldn't make any difference. We really eat very little compared to other overweight people we have seen in restaurants. I'm continually amazed by the portions I see people finish! If I ate that much food I would throw up. We usually bring food portions home and have them as lunches, and at supper I have the maximum three tablespoons of any starch we have (potatoes, wild or regular rice, etc.).

# posted by  Linda : 9:19:00 PM

 

In addition, "Anonymous," I was recently reading a medical article about obesity and how doctors believe their weight causes all their problems, causing them to skip examining the patient and actually diagnosing a disease or problem. This happened to my cousin Anna many years ago; her doctor insisted her walking problems had everything to do with her weight and just told her to go on a diet. It turned out she had a tumor on her spine that was causing her problems.

# posted by  Linda : 11:10:00 AM

 

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