James was indeed breathing badly by Sunday morning. So we ate breakfast, I packed up everything (including the C-PAP and his pillow), and we went to Emory St. Joseph. Last time we went there, I said James was having trouble breathing, and they whisked him right in. Today the place seemed chaotic; lots of nurses, no doctors. I finally asked if they could at least let him have some oxygen, and they did that. We finally went to the back and the St. Joseph's app still said we were waiting. So we cooled our heels for hours while they did blood tests and finally the x-ray: yep, more pleural effusions. He was back on the Lasix and a Foley cath and we had a room by dinnertime.
Basically he cooled his heels on Monday getting fluid stripped off him (but at the same dosage he was taking previously when he was on the furosimide/Lasix). I wondered why they just didn't keep him on it rather than putting him on the torsemide, but then I'm not a doctor. Thought he'd be there all day Tuesday, but they cut him loose just after dinner, back on the intermittent catherization and the torsemide. Watch his sodium! they said. We eat so low-sodium now—can we not even go out to eat?
The only good that came out of this was that when he called in sick to work, Tim was in a bit of a tizzy. James is basically the only person on duty on Sunday morning eight to ten. Tim had to call IBM to get a replacement for him on Sunday morning, and thus James lost his "reliable" status. For his last two weeks of work, he got put on Monday through Thursday, which was fine with both of us. James has been on Sunday through Wednesday for three years, and he's missed Sunday birthday celebrations all that time.
A few nice things happened this week. One of our floodlights has been out for at least a year. James is too unsteady on the ladder and if I go up more than two steps I get dizzy. If I had thought of it, I would have asked Clay to replace it for me when he was here two weeks ago. When I went outside to pay Alex (our lawn mowing guy) on Thursday, I timidly asked him if he would replace it for me. He went in the garage, got the ladder, I handed him the new bulb, and it was done. Must scrape up enough money to give him a little Christmas bonus when we stop having the lawn cut at the beginning of November.
We also ordered some meat from Patak's for the first time since they caught fire. Supposedly the store should be back open at the end of the month. We'll see.
Saturday evening we went to Taste of Smyrna. This was a little disappointing. There were no Asian foods at all, Mezzaluna and the 1911 Biscuit Company had already closed up shop two hours before closing, and all Copelands had left was white chocolate biscuit pudding (white chocolate has never, ever been any kind of chocolate). Everything else there was spicy or shaved ice, so all I really could eat was from the Atkins Park booth.
On the other hand, I made up for my three-year drunken pork drought by buying two servings of it (plus a chocolate peanut butter biscuit pudding dessert that I shared with James—quite good and not overly sweet) and then a third helping before we left (I'll have it for a lunch). James had some drunken pork as well, but skipped all the Mexican food left and instead waited in line something like 20 minutes for the busiest booth, which was Rodney's Jamaican Soul Food. He brought his home to eat.
I finished the weekend by transferring all my former Sunday chores to Monday. We didn't go anywhere, so I did load the dishwasher (again), tossed out a bunch of old or salty food I found downstairs (any salty food left was old, so it did not go for donations), put James' old TV in the Goodwill donation box, and vacuumed upstairs.
Labels: chores, events, food, health, organizing, sickness, work
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10:27:00 PM
