Actually saw Mrs. the Poet today

First things first, I put her phone on the charger to make sure I could call her in the morning. Since the charge cord was laying on the floor there’s no way she could plug it in herself. Also I lotioned up her legs which were very dry and rough. We also talked about how she’s eating and what, and how the protein bars were sitting on a table across the room from her bed, not where she could actually get to them to eat. I swear it’s like that woman didn’t want to come home, since she’s not doing the one thing that can get her home, eating.

Speaking of eating, grocery shopping this week only cost $44, so about half what we spent with Mrs. the Poet eating at home. And a big chunk of that was adult diapers to I don’t end up peeing my pants every day. Well the interesting thing is now that I don’t have to worry about not getting to the toilet in time, I usually manage to make it, so I end up wearing the same diaper for 2 days and then throwing it away because I wore it for 2 days, not because I used it. And I know that was a run-on sentence. I will strive to avoid those in the future. I usually buy frozen dinners or entrees and canned greens to make the meal more balanced.

So this is the month I pay Property taxes, but the problem is I still haven’t gotten all the tax bills. GISD was late setting their tax rates and I still haven’t gotten their bill. This means I’ll have trouble paying them by 1/31. But I’ll figure out a way.

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This is probably bad news

They’re getting ready to transfer Mrs. the Poet from the hospital to a nursing home. And it will probably be the one she will die in. She’s not showing a lot of improvement except that they were able to give her a shower where I couldn’t. I think that had more to do with them and where they gave her the shower than with her, because it’s very hard to get Mrs. the Poet in and out of our shower, because of the small door to the bathroom and the size of the shower. I might have been able to get her clean if I stripped down and took a shower with her, but with my lack of upper body strength I have my doubts.

Anyway, I was only able to get to one of the nursing homes on the list they gave me, the one closest to the house. I can just barely walk to this one because I can rest when I get there before I have to walk home, and it is an easy drive for my son. The only one of the children living in the US who would have a problem is the daughter living out in BFE, which for the purposes of this post is Aubrey TX. I might have spelled that wrong, so when I get the actual spelling of the town I will edit this post with the right spelling but leave this mess.

Getting back to Mrs. the Poet, they had to do a skin graft over the infected hole in the top of her foot while they were checking to see if the infection went to the bone or just to the exposed tendons. And yes I know that doesn’t speak well of my level of care, but I did the best I could with bandaging her up and changing her socks, including buying her new socks in a larger size to fit over her swollen feet. When her feet got so swollen that I couldn’t fit my slippers over her feet I knew for a fact we had a problem.

As I posted earlier, a big part of the problem is my lack of upper body strength. I have a very low lift and carry limit, and that frustrates me no end. Some of this is from old injuries, some of it is from lack of exercise probably due to those old injuries making exercise a literal pain. I have shoulder injuries that make raising my arms straight over my head impossible, and signaling a right turn on my bike where the arm is parallel to the ground from the shoulder is also a pain if I have to hold the signal for more than a few seconds. So no upper body strength, and those injuries were from the Aughties and early Teens of this century.

And I really need to put a load of laundry in the washer, so I’ll cut this one short now and maybe do another post after visiting Mrs. the Poet this afternoon.

Things have been happening

But now I have a minute to actually write about them. First of all Mrs. the Poet is mostly OK, she’s in the hospital because of the not-mostly part. We now have proof that Mrs. the Poet would deny she’s in pain while being eaten alive by a monster, because she was. Denying she was in pain, not that there are any monsters in the house to munch on her.

Let’s start from something close to the beginning. After getting out of rehab in September Mrs. the Poet had to wear a diaper because she couldn’t get to a toilet fast enough to not pee her pants. Or sometimes poop her pants. The fact that we have a pre-ADA house and the bathroom doors are not wide enough to get through with a rolling walker (the walker I had after the wreck was not a rolling walker and had no problems with the bathroom door but that’s a different story), has a definite bearing on this story.

Anywho, because she can’t get from the bed to the toilet quickly she’s been sleeping on our recliner-couch in the living room with a commode next to it, which was good as long as she ate and drank and consumed enough calories to maintain her health. And I think y’all can see where this story is headed, but don’t get in too big a hurry to get to the final destination that you miss taking the journey. We did good for about a month, and then I think she got tired of doing her business in the living room in front of the picture window (with the blinds down and closed so nobody could see in, but that wasn’t the point) and started limiting her intake to limit the number of times she bared her butt in the living room.

Now a contributing factor was our different sleep schedules, I’m nocturnal and she’s an Early Bird. Before her problems with UTI and her tummy she would sometimes get up about the time I was going to bed. Now I kept the same -to-bed time as before but her rising was much later, so there was a considerable period she sat wet on the couch until she could nag me awake before I was through sleeping, leading to a general lethargy on my part until after Mrs. the Poet went to bed until she started shifting her sleep to later in the evening but still not much past midnight. This let me get a few more hours of shut-eye, but still not enough to let me be my cheerful happy self /sarcasm. I’ve never been cheerful or happy since the wreck and TBI in 2001, but moving on. I think that the periods she sat in the wet diaper might have had an effect on her outlook on life, and she started consuming less fluids, which led to a possible UTI and rashes and (worse) skin ulcers. And she also started eating less because food was still tasting bad, but I think she just didn’t want to poop in front of the window.

And the combination of not enough fluids and calories caught up with her and she just got too weak to stand with the walker when I pulled her to her feet from the couch. And too weak to stand means too weak to use the potty because she has to stand to get her pants down and diaper off and butt wiped (she has to be standing clear of the potty for me to get in and clean her). And Tuesday of last week she fell getting to the potty and had to be helped to her feet by the EMTs and didn’t get her diaper changed and had to sit in a dirty diaper all day, and the next day and the next and on until Sunday when I called for an ambulance to transport her to the hospital where they cut her clothes and dirty diaper off and found massive skin infections and other things I don’t even want to think about, all because she was embarrassed to potty in front of pulled and closed blinds. [exasperated sigh] And this makes several trips to the hospital because of potty issues. The first trip at the beginning of Summer was over her not drinking enough and getting a UTI, the second trip was because the antibiotics she took for the UTI caused her to have C. diff, and now because she was embarrassed about going potty in front of the window (with the blinds down and closed). Now the first two were because she was actually sick from diseases, but the last trip was because she was sick because she was embarrassed. And because while she was still relatively healthy she didn’t want to go to the hospital. And now she’s practically immobile in a hospital bed with 3 IVs, one in each arm and a third in her hand. [another exasperated sigh]

And if she hadn’t been able to convince the nurses I wanted to have her transported on Tuesday instead of waiting until Sunday I would be in jail now for elder abuse. And I still want her to be healthy and sleeping in my bed even if we only sleep for a couple of hours together, because we belong in the same bed, sleeping together.

Perpetually tired lately

I know why I’m tired, there just isn’t anything I can do about it. Someone needs to take care of Mrs. the Poet and I’m elected by default because there were no other candidates. The problem is the previously noted difference in our sleep cycles. I have to be up and active during the day because that’s when she’s active, but my body doesn’t like that schedule and keeps trying to force me back to my normal nocturnal schedule. Thus, sleep deprivation and lack of cognitive functions that arise from that deprivation.

One of the things that comes with sleep deprivation for me is the inability to shut my brain off and go to sleep. The more sleep deprived I am the harder it is to get the monkey to shut up and let me sleep and the more sleep deprived I get in an endless feedback loop. And I have to be awake and functioning for an 1015 appointment for Mrs. the Poet’s doctor, when I usually go to bed around 0400-0500 and getting her up and dressed and fed is about an hour process and I have to get showered and dressed and fed also because I’m the one with the phone apps for Lyft and Uber. If I’m not up Mrs. the Poet can’t get there.

Current writing jam: Fairdreamers by Kliment

Been a long time

But I really haven’t had much time to post, nor anything different to post about. Mrs. the Poet is still either on the couch with her feet up (most desired option) in her wheelchair, or on the potty seat. We try to get her in the shower at least once a week, but her ability to stand up in the shower has been minimal and transferring her from the walker to the shower seat and vice-versa have been difficult because of that.

Because of her and my physical problems, getting aligned for even hugs and kisses is outside our physical abilities. I can kiss her, or I can hug her, but both at the same time is just not possible. One of us has to get in a posture that is physically uncomfortable to painful for hugs and kisses. I don’t want to hurt Mrs. the Poet, and it’s no fun when I’m hurting, either.

On the good side, the skin ulcers she had when she left the nursing home are healing up nicely thanks to Boudreau’s Butt Paste maximum strength formula. I found out about this stuff from several of my Ultracyclist (randoneer and RAAM riders who might spend as long as 36 hours at a stretch riding upwrong bikes) who were getting pretty much the same thing from sweat and friction and abrasion as Mrs. the Poet gets from not stopping for a wet diaper change.

Sorry again for no updates

Still nothing much happening beyond another huge burger and a sundae on my Birthday courtesy of Red Robin and their loyalty program. Oh and the reward card I got for doing an online thing that was mostly good for buying things online but I could also spend at Red Robin was mostly drained right before my birthday, it went from $75 to $3 before I could even spend it.

I’m still thinking about the Sprint-T, and entering any free engine give-aways I can find, a free engine that runs beats an engine I don’t have. It might not be the engine I wanted, as almost all the give-away engines are iron block with aluminum heads, and I’m hoping for aluminum block and heads, but they’re all better than no engines. I’m also thinking about the transmission, as some of the give-away engines are set up for an automatic or exceed the torque limit for the T5 by a substantial margin. So, I’ll need to buy the appropriate transmission for the engine. The “appropriate” transmission being the lightest thing I can bolt up that doesn’t break and has a high enough overdrive for driving on the freeway without excessive fuel consumption, or that has a low enough 1st gear that I can install a final drive the same as what I would have with a more normal final drive and a really tall overdrive. Racing will be mostly in 1st gear until about 40 MPH, above that I can use 2nd. And the only time I’ll use 3rd or higher is on the highway getting to race venues.

Mrs. the Poet is getting better, her digestive issues are working their way out. Our other problems are also working their way out. They’re not fixed yet, but progress has been made. My major problem with her is her insistence that I adhere to her sleep schedule. I usually end up with about 5 hours of sleep and wandering around in a daze until sundown, when my normal sleep schedule tells me it’s time to wake up. I will be so glad when she gets well enough to sleep in a bed and not need someone to change her diaper. I will be even more glad when we can sleep together in the bed.

And speaking of bed, it’s past time to put this post to bed.

Still nothing new to say

It has been status quo since the last update except Mrs. the Poet’s digestive system has been slowly improving. There’s no longer a stack of commode liners waiting to get dumped at the door, usually just one or two from the time after sunset when I can’t see where I’m walking.

One of the big reasons for that is the progression of my cataracts is basically killing my night vision. Add that to allergies that cause cloudy discharges in my eyes during the day and you get my life now. Add THAT to I have to live on Mrs. the Poet’s sleep schedule of being up during the day when the internet is slowest and sleeping at night when there’s lots of bandwidth and I’m awake and alert, and Hephaestus knows we need all the lerts we can get. Right now I have to stop and wait for my eyes to clear up periodically while I compose this post, combined with pauses to get my mind working on the subject of the post, because sleep deprived.

And as much as I would like to join it, it’s time to put this post to bed, but not me.

Sorry about the radio silence

Mrs. the Poet was released (kicked out by her insurance) from the rehab home and I’ve been kinda busy with her needs for the last bit. I read my e-mails and web comics and then I collapse in bed until it’s time to get up and do it again. Unless you’re into stories about changing an old woman’s diapers because she can’t get up to use the toilet, it doesn’t make for riveting reading. I get to sleep about 3 or 4 in the morning, wake up by 0900 and drag through the daily routine of maintaining life functions, turn the TV on in time for Wheel Of Fortune so Mrs. the Poet can watch it, then turn it off when the daily insanity of network TV starts. Sometimes I turn it back on for the news and weather forecast.

With my own limited mobility I get worn out taking care of Mrs. the Poet. And I neglect my diet while trying to find something Mrs. the Poet can eat, because most of my regular diet sets off Mrs. the Poet’s delicate tummy. Seriously my rotgut diet seriously upsets her delicate gut biome and has her pooping frequently. As she puts it my digestive system is like the bottom of a bathtub while hers is like an empty egg shell. I’m still hydrating to excess to prevent kidney stones even though mine look like yellow Tic Tacs and while I know I’m passing one they don’t hurt. It’s still better to not have them, because even though they don’t hurt as in cause me pain they still could damage a kidney. And that wouldn’t be good.

And that’s about all I have to say today.

Mrs. the Poet is free from her prison

Not that she was in actual prison, just in isolation until her C. diff infection cleared up which it did yesterday. So she did some PT in the gym this morning. She still has a long way to go, but at least she’s on the road to recovery. Now she’s complaining to me about not having enough pants. The problem is her clothes have to be marked with her name so they can be washed and returned from the rehab center’s laundry. And most of her pants are too dark for the marker to show up.

So I ordered another 3 pack of sweatpants for her and also for me. Because I’m running out of clothes that fit, because everything I own is old and worn out. Now I will have clothes that fit and are not worn out. They are due on Sunday, but Mrs. the Poet’s pants will be here on Friday.

And that’s pretty much all I have for today, sorry for not being more interesting while my wife is sick.

Mrs. the Poet is almost ready for PT

Right now they had her in the rehab center for a week and her diarrhea is almost gone, she has to be clear of that before she can use the Gym for her physical therapy. We brought her peanut butter and crackers so she can get more protein to build up her endurance. The protein drink we got her makes her diarrhea worse, so scratch that. Also she has this thing where meat just makes her full which is why we are looking for alternative protein sources she can eat. She did manage to eat what the rehab center calls a cheesesteak last night, which is great improvement. And I got to give her a kiss last night for the first time since before she was transported to the hospital the second time back on 8/8. So it’s been like almost a month since we kissed.

While I was composing this I was also playing Shadowrun as The Old Man and just slashed the $h!+ out of a bad guy with my katana because I was within the lethal splash range for my grenade launcher. Another player was able to draw a bead on her and burst fire her to a lingering death. This accomplishes the payout goal of the run, get her teeth and fingers to ID her for the Johnson. We’re just brining the teeth in a convenient container, and the fingers still attached to the hands. The torso and her implants were not part of the bargain, so we’re keeping the implants to get access to her finances to make this run pay something other than pure karma. We had to end the session early so we find out how much nuyen and karma we get next week.

Hard as it may be to believe I haven’t been thinking about the Sprint-T in a while, worrying about my wife was using up those processor cycles I would have been spending on thinking about the car. So, no progress on the Sprint-T. It’s about time for me to fix dinner so I’ll call this one over for now.