Well, now that the toe, and almost the teeth, are out of the way, it's time to attack all the other little irritants. This morning I got up at seven (ewww) and drove Butch to Advance Auto to see WTF is going on with him. Got a ride home and did various chores until the insurance adjuster came; pretty much what I thought: won't reach the deductible amount, which is $1,000. Well, I'll see if anyone knows a good tree service...
This actually ended...happily. Alex showed up to mow the lawn Wednesday morning and I went out there to warn him about the tree. He looked at it and said, "I'll take the wood and cut the poison ivy vine and toss them into the very back of the yard, and it'll be $30." Blink. Well, sure, I'll take it! (And "I don't deserve this man.") When I paid him for the lawn and the tree I actually gave him a little more because I was so happy to be rid of the fool thing.
Once the tree was taken care of, we had to head to Glenlake to get James his steroid shots. Now, when he made this appointment, they gave him no specific instructions, nothing about fasting, etc. So he was going to quit work at noon, we would have sandwiches, we'd go get the shots. Well, they called him at 11:45 to ask if he wanted to come earlier. We scrambled to get dressed and I made myself a peanut butter sandwich and he just had a 90-calorie brownie and scatted.
And then when we got there he was honest and said he'd had the brownie.
They hashed this out for ten minutes and then decided the 90-calorie brownie wasn't a threat. He got five shots in his spine and I picked him up in the truck.
Well, he wasn't supposed to drive home just in case he had a reaction to the shots, but just as we were leaving, Advance called and said Butch was ready. Oh, Butch's problem was that the camshaft sensor wasn't talking to the crankcase sensor. When they don't talk to each other, apparently the car's computer system has hysterics and just quits! (God, I miss Twilight. He had sensors, but he had sensible ones. This was only for the anti-skid system. When the sensors don't work why not just turn the anti-skid system off rather than the whole damn car?) Anyway, $311 worth of two tires and the sensor thing brought it up to $1100. Urgh.
On the way we picked up supper at Zaxby's. Good God, wings have gotten expensive.
James and I wrangled about this on the way home (and this took a while because the stupid Braves game was just getting out and the traffic was unbelievable) and so I let him drive from Advance to home, following him carefully. The spinal shots gave him no problems, no swelling or anything, although they warned him his blood sugar might spike. Boy, did it, it was in the high 300s when he went to bed!
Thursday morning I got up about 8:30, and I looked at the calendar and there was James' oral surgeon appointment at 11:15. But why did it say it was on the 11th? And then I realized he had never put the oral surgery on his calendar; this was the original appointment that was cancelled when he made the July 28th appointment. James called them in a hurry, apologized, and they said they could get him in at 11:30. Whew.
So I sat in the lobby on the free wifi, typing a story on my tablet while I listened to Rupert Holmes on my phone, until he emerged about quarter to three, rather bloody around the mouth. We stopped at Kaiser on the way home to pick up his pain meds and his antibiotic, and then went home, where I spent the rest of the afternoon putting on and taking off icepacks. He had a hydrocodone around dinner time: I made rice and gave it to him in some Campbell's chicken broth cut with vegetable broth and some squished up canned carrot and Lighthouse salad bits to give it a little body and a little ginger. It tasted pretty good. I just had the rice in broth.
By the time bedtime came he eschewed the pain meds and just took the Zolpidem and Tylenol. The bloody gauze for a while was pretty gross, but he took it out about nine o'clock and never put any more in, nor did he have very bad swelling.
He woke up Friday morning pretty chipper despite my having a crying fit about seven a.m. about what to do about the antibiotics: Kaiser shorted us; we only got twelve. By the time I got up, I was in a better emotional state, called Kaiser and got through the four hours (it seems like it, anyway) of COVID messages to talk to advice, who connected me with the West Cobb pharmacy, and they said they were sorry and said they'd prep a bottle with the remainder of the scrip for me to pick up. So, took the dog out, dressed, got $5 worth of gas at the BP so I could make it safely to Costco to eventually fill my tank, picked up the rest of the pills at West Cobb, went to Lidl, went to Publix, went to Kroger, and then came home with relief to lose myself into Law & Order: Criminal Intent and sit under the fan.
Saturday I helped him make the meat for his lunches since the steroids don't kick in, according to the post-procedure instructions, for three to ten days and his back was killing him. We were rapidly running out of acetaminophen, and I didn't want to go to Costco on a Saturday, so I actually got on the computer and ordered that and two other things and they were delivered by dinnertime; the $6 Instacart fee was worth not having to go there on Saturday. These things are so easy...we're starting to call it "phonewavium" by how we can get on the internet and order things so easily.
Labels: cars, chores, errands, food, health, illness, shopping, television
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