Time to Play Catchup

Well, here I am, obligated (in my mind) to make a post, and darned little to post about. I feel obligated because it’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and I feel guilty. And now that I’ve sat down to do it, three subjects come to mind:

Comments,
9-1-1, and
The Cat
Comments: Blogs live on comments; without them I feel like I’m talking to the wind, and that’s discouraging. When no one talks back I feel like bagging this whole blogging thing. Then some one does talk back and I’m hot to go again. Solution? Keep on posting! But sometimes that’s hard to do. For example:

9-1-1

A couple of Mondays ago my dialysis nurse decided I was losing ground in my fight against excess water. I was gaining weight because I wasn’t getting rid of the water I was taking in while eating and drinking. This results in water in the lungs (a stupid way to drown), high blood pressure (a stupid way to a stroke or heart attack) and a water-soaked expanded body (a stupid way to have clothes that don’t fit) — “stupid” being not bothering to do anything about it.

So she decided to take more water off me in dialysis. I had found over a period of months that when more than 3.5 kilos were taken out of my blood, excruciating leg cramps would ensue, so I objected loudly when she told me she was going to take 4.5 k. But she gave me a medicine to hold off the cramps, and went for it. And what-da-ya-know, no cramps! But the session left me very weak. When it was done, I made it to the pickup, drove the 2 miles to my apartment, and barely made it on foot from the pickup to the apartment. Inside, I tried to sit down in an office chair. Once started, my knees buckled and I went down, missing the chair. I wasn’t hurt, but I couldn’t get up — couldn’t even crawl to the telephone.

I had a cell phone strapped to my belt, so called 9-1-1 on that. It’s area code is west coast, and I now live near the east coast, and that caused some confusion. After that was straightened out the EMS folks got there, along with the police to break in if necessary. Luckily, Apartment Management was available with a passkey.

A check for blood/sugar gave a reading of 55, which should have knocked me out. If it were still going down, things would have become much more serious. As it was, I spent the afternoon in the hospital’s emergency room.

A couple of changes have come from this: now I always carry sugar pills on my person, and I am going to change my cell-phone number to a local one, tied to my current address.

The Cat
I live alone. This was ok up to a couple of months ago, for I had enough energy to keep busy. I’d go fishing alone, work on some home business projects, and do a number of other things that I found interesting. Then I had an energy loss that I hope is temporary. The result is I’m bored. I find I really need a pet to keep me company. My apartment lease says “no pets,” but I’ve heard there are some exceptions to that. So my doctor wrote them a note, saying that a pet — such as a cat — has a physical and mental benefit to people with my condition.

Apartment management declined to pass the note to corporate, because, it seems, such requests must be typewritten on the doctor’s letterhead. The note I submitted was hand-written on a prescription form. Also it must be faxed, rather than hand delivered.

So I’ve asked my doctor to submit it again. Hopefully, she’ll do it, and hopefully, apartment management will allow me a cat. Then comes the search for the right cat.