This has been an eventful week in many aspects.

Our own particular hell started on Monday evening. At two-thirty, I dropped James off at DaVita, bought a couple of things at Kroger, and went home, sorted meds for the week, cleaned the master bathroom, chatted with a friend, edited a story. At six fifteen I went to pick up James. Out we tooled to the truck. James got into the passenger seat. I rolled the chair on the lift, it started to lift, got about two inches high, and then it dropped back to the ground with a bang.

You guessed it, guys. The lift broke again. This time the hydrolic pole that lifts and lowers the platform broke.

At this point we were stranded, because, while the chair has the range to trundle home, the truck can't get anywhere dragging the ramp behind it. I called AAA, to see if they could get me a rope, because I could (barely) hold the ramp closed and lift it up, and if I could tie it together, the truck could get home. But when I tried to tie it up with a bungie cord, it snapped in half. AAA says they couldn't get me a rope; they could give me a tow, which wouldn't work.

Well, God/fate/someone sent Eduardo, who was doing business a few stores down. He had a ratchet strap in his truck, and he lifted and tied the ramp upright with it, and then we had a couple of shorter bungee cords to keep the folded-up base parallel to the lift pole.

Now I started to worry. What if I drove home and it let go? And James would have to trundle the entire two miles home by himself. What if the chair lost power or he had some medical problem? He's only out of the hospital ten days.

Eventually, I called Alice. To make a long story short, she and Aubrey [her daughter] came to the shopping center, and Alice drove home behind me to watch the ramp (it did drop vertically slightly, to the point I couldn't get the truck in the garage due to the curve in the driveway), but we got it home. And Aubrey walked all the way home with James. She found the easiest route via Google Maps, with the least ups and downs, and after about an hour Alice and I saw them approaching on Life 360 and we walked out to the corner to meet the wayfarers.

There's that saying "God never gives you more than you can handle." God apparently thinks I'm Supergirl or Wonder Woman. If I'm not at the end of my rope, I can see it from here.

For the rest of the week I had to trundle James around in a wheelchair, and later in his big rollator, which I didn't realize that I could push if James tucked his legs up (the rollator is actually easier to maneuver than the big wheelchairs). The rollator is heavy, though, and my back is really feeling it.

Wednesday was really a nightmare: because James had a followup appointment with Dr. Mobley in the afternoon from his sojourn to Urgent Care earlier, we had to be at DaVita at seven in the morning, the only seat they had. We both had four hours sleep. I went to Kroger, then went home to get more sleep, but it doesn't seem to be helping. Friday I did a Lidl/Publix run and made chicken cacciatore for supper.

Tuesday Oliver went back to the vet. He scolded Dr. Bostick the entire time he was in the weighing box. She took him off the medicines! But she wants me to continue vaporizing him and keeping his cage enclosed so he's warmer. I wrapped three sides of his cage in Glad Press'n'Seal so he gets more light; maybe it will perk him up. He looks so sad. I am wondering if he's suffered neurological damage from being sick for so long, because when he's not eating or sleeping, he just sort of sits, sometimes with his head down, looking sad. And she says to make him eat.

Thursday we took the truck to Mobility Works. This new part will cost $1700. Now we're nearly up to the price of a completely new chair lift. Plus Bruno [the manufacturer] apparently can't believe the lift is breaking down like this. They keep asking if the chair isn't heavier than the lift can tolerate. Well, dudes, when the idiot bashed in the previous lift at the Kaiser Glenlake office, we sent the specs on the chair to you, and this is the lift you sent. This is on you, not on Mobility Works or us. The manual says the chair weighs 326 pounds, the scale at DaVita says it's 317, and that's what we told you.

Anyway, someone finally called to make an appointment for a followup about the fistula and why dialysis doesn't want to use it. It would be with another doctor. It also wouldn't be until August 20 and I was very disappointed. I logged on to Kaiser to put all of James' appointments on his phone, and only then realized the fistula appointment was at the Southwood office. No. Just no. That's an hour's drive on a treacherous stretch of highway and every time we have had to go down there we have had our hearts in our mouths because the traffic there is so bad. It's either bumper-to-bumper or racing at 90 mph with cars darting in and out of traffic. There's a reason we quit driving to Warner Robins although we miss seeing Maggie and Clay.

I sent Dr. Austin a terse note that said neither James nor I were in fit health to make a trip to Southwood, and wanted to know why Glenlake was not an option. I also asked straight out for the results of the two ultrasounds of the fistula we had at St. Joe's. (Someone did eventually get back to us with an appointment for Glenlake, and, as a positive note, it's sooner, on August 2. We got no report about the fistula.)

Saturday should have been a fun day, but after we went to Hair Day—James was so tottery that Ron left the driveway clear and we came in through the garage; it was a busy day for Sheri, too, as she had a bumper crop of haircuts—we had to go up to Urgent Care, because since James got out of the hospital, due to the Foley catheter he wore all week, he had another UTI. It wasn't crowded and we weren't there all that long. This time the doctor is trying him on two doses of the powdered stuff, Fosfomax. I don't hold out much hope for it to work, as it's only two doses, and James has had it before, three doses, and it didn't work.

This all paled to what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a rally for Donald Trump. Despite all the Secret Service presence, a shooter was able to get on the roof of a nearby building. Luckily Trump turned his head and all they knicked was his ear, but a man who was at the rally threw himself over his family and was killed. The shooter was some kid—twenty is a kid to me!—who had researched killing both Trump and Joe Biden. Of course now this has made a martyr out of Trump.

Labels: birds, events, friends, health, pets, repairs, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:44:00 PM

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