A New Room Mate

Dealing with bureaucrats, private or public, is often time consuming and frustrating. (I define a bureaucrat as anyone who has in his job some measure of control over your life.) My adopting a cat is the exception that proves the rule.

The apartment rules said, “no pets.” The on-site administrator said, “Well, normally that’s the policy. But sometimes they’ll make an exception, such as if the renter’s doctor claims the companionship of a pet could be important to the renter’s health.” So I discussed it with my doctor, who agreed that a pet would be helpful. She promised to write a letter to that effect, to Apartment Management

She was quick, as was Management! Two days later I had permission to adopt a cat, and the day after that I met Martini at the Carolina Animal Rescue & Adoption (CARA). Martini and I hit it off immediately, and a day later it was a done deal. I must have been meant to have a cat, for everything worked to make that happen quickly! Apartment Management even waived the $250 cat fee!

Most cats hide out a few days when introduced to a new home. My last cat, some 10 years ago, slashed a hole in the fabric under my bed and made a hideout in the space. Martini looked around, said “This’ll do, and staked his claim. He generously allowed as how I could stay there too, as long as I behaved myself. Thank you, Martini. I am grateful.

So now it appears my fate is sealed for the next 20 years or so. I’m almost 76, but I don’t dare kick the bucket — Martini would kill me!

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.

Reamed by the Royal Ramrod!

Since the ticker checked out okay, the doctor decided it was safe to “relax” me for a look at my esophagus, stomach and points south. The idea was to send a camera and a shovel down my throat to take a look around, and if anything was found that shouldn’t be there, to retrieve a piece of it for laboratory analysis. Relax me — HA! One minute I was on the table, talking to the anesthesiologist, and the next I was in the recovery room — recovering.

I expected to at least have a sore throat after them ramming all that stuff down it, but no. There was no discomfort whatsoever. It was good that my daughter did the driving that day, however; probably I’d have gone to sleep behind the wheel.

Don’t have the results yet, and won’t for a couple of weeks unless there’s a problem, in which case he’ll call me. Like the man says, “No news is good news.”

So much for health issues. Hopefully, the next bunch of posts will be on other subjects!

The pump still works — I think!

A couple of weeks ago I had a stress test to find out how strong my heart is. The idea was to have me walk fast on a treadmill while connected to an ekg machine. This procedure takes just a few minutes. But my legs gave out before the ekg got a reading, so the test was aborted and rescheduled with a chemical stress test, which I had today.

This visit took almost 4 hours. I showed up at 10:00 a.m. and they got started at 10:30. First they set up an iv and pumped some radioactive material into my veins. Then they sent me back to the waiting room for a half hour, while the radioactive stuff permeated my system. Then they took pictures of my heart in action, with the help of my now radioactive blood.

Back to the waiting room for a half hour. Then back to the examination room, where they hooked me back up to the ekg, and injected me with a drug that stresses the heart for 6 minutes. This was uncomfortable — not painful, just uncomfortable. Slight headache, queezy stomach and flushed face. If the nurse had not told me to expect that, I would have thought something was going wrong. It was a long 6 minutes.

Back to the waiting room for a half hour, then to another photo session. I finally got out the door at 1:30 p.m.

Next comes a biopsy of my stomach. The doctor aborted that procedure a week ago because he didn’t have enough information on my heart to be comfortable in applying anesthesia. Now he does, hopefully, and I’m scheduled for next Tuesday.

All these tests were scheduled because of a blood test showing a drop in hemoglobin,which is often caused by internal bleeding. The hemoglobin level came back up, but my dialysis doctor wants to be sure I’m ok. One side of me is getting impatient with all these tests interfering with my non-dialysis days; the other side is thankful that my dialysis doctors are sharp-eyed and careful!

“Oh, what a relief it is …”

No, this is not an alka seltzer commercial. It’s a follow-up to the previous post. Blood tests indicate hemoglobin levels are back to normal. No blood in my stool. Everything else looks right. Either the earlier blood test was flawed, or it simply reflected a spike in my system. Either way, no transfusion is necessary, and probably I do not have colon cancer.

So what does this prove? Most of the things one worries about never happen!

More interesting times …

Recently, I’ve been suffering from weakness and fatigue, first after some dialysis sessions, and lately, pretty much all the time. Today I found out why. Blood tests taken during dialysis indicate I’ve been bleeding internally. The question remains, where am I bleeding, and why?

There are several possibilities. I haven’t researched it yet, so I don’t know what is most likelyl One possibility is a bleeding ulcer. I often have a short-lived stomach ache after breakfast, and I imagine that could be caused by an ulcer. Another is super-thin blood. I did bleed internally once because of that, and had to give up aspirin as a heart protector. But I think that would have been caught in the regularly scheduled blood tests.

The third possibility that comes to mind is colon cancer, and this seems to be what my care givers are focusing on. Monday they’re addressing the immediate problem with a blood transfusion during dialysis. Plus, they’re setting up an appointment for a colonoscopy, and for consultation with an intestine specialist.

Of course this situation has me concerned — worried, even — but I’ve found that usually when I jump to a conclusion it’s the wrong conclusion. So I’ll let my caregivers conduct their tests, and wait to hear from them.

Stay tuned!

A Milestone (sort of)

At my age, I have to put milestones close together to better the odds of making it to the next one! Anyway, under those rules last Friday was a milestone — three weeks without a cigarette! For a non-smoker, I’m sure this doesn’t sound much like a milestone. But I’ve smoked cigarettes for the better part of 60 years, sometimes up to 4 packs a dayl Four packs means there are very few moments in the day without a cigarette in my mouth.

About six months ago I tried to quit gradually, and for a while I was down to a little less than a half pack a day. Then my usage began to climb until the day I quit three weeks ago, I was up to a pack-and-a-half. Gradual wasn’t working, so I just quit.

The physical need is gone, but the habit is still with me. I often find myself absently fishing in my shirt pocket for a cigarette that isn’t there, or wishing for an after-dinner smoke. But then I get busy with something else, and I’m ok again.

I’ve had my last cigarette! (I hope, I hope, I hope)

I’m Still Interested!

Well, the results are back from the tests mentioned in my previous post. They’re encouraging, but leave some questions unanswered. The mammogram and ultrasound indicate that the lump is merely a fat deposit and (hopefully) will go away on its own. The chest x-ray does not show a problem, but indicates more tests are in order. So my doctor is setting up an appointment with a lung specialist. Hopefully, he’ll find nothing wrong.

In the meantime, I’m trying once again to quit smoking. I’ve purchased a “quit kit” from CigArrest to give me a leg up on this new attempt. I’m sure I can do it. I was off cigarettes for a year before I took it up again on my cross-country trip a year or so ago. Then I found that, like potato chips, you can’t have “just one.”

An Interesting Time …

Last Friday in the middle of a coughing spell I mentioned to a doctor at the dialysis center that I had a lump under my left nipple. She was already concerned about the nature and duration of my coughing spells. Today I spent an hour at a radiology lab, getting a mammogram, a chest x-ray and an ultrasound inspection. My doctor takes these things very seriously, and so I must also. I don’t have the results yet, and so I’m rather anxious about it.

Probably the lump is just a fat deposit, in which case there’s no problem. If it’s more than that, it will require yet another medical procedure to beat up my old bod.

And probably the x-ray and ultrasound will show no problem (I hope).

I’m pretty sure I’ll come out clean from these inspections, but until I get the reports I will continue to be a bit nervous.

Stay tuned!

Friday — the Best Day for Dialysis!

And why is Friday the best day for dialysis? Because it’s the last day for dialysis — for the week, anyway!

And today was especially good. I got there before anyone else scheduled for 6:30, and so was the first to be hooked up. I was online by 6:45, and the session ended at 10:45 — a half hour earlier than usual. Even more important, I was able to sleep for three of the four hours on the machine. This made the session even shorter, from my perspective.

And I came out feeling great, so I did not have to waste the afternoon sacked out. I was able to put up another steam engine on Ebay. My last one sold for $100, so I have good hopes for this one. (In a previous life my hobby was desktop machining, specializing in miniature steam engines of my own design. $100 isn’t much for an item that took almost 100 hours to design and build, but I was building them for fun, not money, and $100 is about $100 more than I expected!) We’ll see how this one goes. If it does well I have about 10 left to unload. If it disappoints me, there’s a Dempsey Dumpster nearby. In either case, they’re taking up too much room in my apartment.

Anyway, it’s been a good day!