One-Car Family

Carmen dropped me off at the hospital for my weekly blood test to see if my anti-coagulent level is within acceptable range. Last week it was at 2.9, just inside the 2-3 range. Today it tested at 5.5, "critically high!" so I have to skip a dose and cut back. I don't know how many more weekly blood tests there will have to be before they pronounce me stable. The whole treatment goes on for six months - until time to move again.

Carmen's co-workers were teasing her today because she left me waiting for a long time. My appointment was for 9:45 - she dropped me off at 8:00. The whole process was finished at 10:30 - she picked me up at 12:30. This is a consequence of being a one-car family in a transit-challenged town. Waiting is something I excel at, and I know not many humans do any more. I can keep myself entertained for hours and hours watching people, reading and organizing my ever-fattening folder of medical information, making notes on the notes from consultations with doctors, pharmacists, purveyors of portable oxygen etc. and keeping track of the time until the next Blessed Event - a Tylenol dose.

Being home is admittedly more comfortable than the waiting areas of the hospital, but for a guy like me who hates to turn on the TV unless The Price Is Right is on, home is much less entertaining.

How did I get to be an American? I don't want a car and I don't want a TV. Good thing I'm not a contestant on The Price Is Right!

Warm And (Mostly) Horizontal

Tomorrow it will be two weeks since my last posting. Whatever happened to my application with the spa people I'll never know. No word at all. I wonder how many of those 82 guys are left now.

Friday the 11th, after shoveling/scraping the last of the crusty half inch of snow from the driveway and sidewalk, which never enjoy sunshine during the winter, I set out walking the mile and a half to the nearest midday bus stop. Just about the time I exited the arroyo path and hit the sidewalk along Ventura, I began noticing my left calf muscle feeling tight, as if I were getting a charlie horse in one of my favorite charlie horse localities. I did what I always do: I ignored it.

I cleaned the shop at Albuquerque Little Theatre. It had been a mess since the strike of The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow on Halloween. What with everything there was to do for White Christmas, cleaning the shop never made it to the top of the priorities list. So I made a special trip. Colby wasn't there. I guess he appreciated it- I still haven't heard from him.

By the time I got home my leg was throbbing. Carmen told me I should go to the doctor, that she believed I had a blood clot. I smiled that little smile that says "fuck off" but in a nice way. When I sat in the recliner, my leg felt just fine- swollen to about twice its size, but not painful.

Saturday morning, in pain, I sat at my computer, played a Scrabble word, and checked my email. Lo and behold, there was one from the first exhibit guy I talked to back in July. He knew a guy who desperately needed help with some exhibit work. I called the guy, threw some tools in the car and took off for Corralles. I was able to do some of the work sitting with my leg up. For the rest I was in serious pain. Sunday I dropped Carmen at church and went back for more. By the time I got home Sunday afternoon, the only time the pain wasn't making me nauseous was in my recliner. And the one inviolable rule of the recliner: if Dad's in it, kitties pile on!

Monday morning my plan was to take Carmen to work and head for Corralles again. I got up to feed the kitties and nearly passed out from the pain. Change of plan. She hauled me to the Emergency Room, where they heard my story and took me right in. They thought I probably had a blood clot. Within an hour, Carmen's diagnosis was confirmed (damn it!) and I was admitted to a hospital for the first time since 1977. In 1977 they weren't sure whether the passing-out pain in my lung was an infection or a blood clot. They often tested my legs for clots, but found none. Keeping that experience in mind, last Tuesday evening I began to suspect that what had started as a tiny twinge in my right lung might be a migratory clot. They CT scanned me. It is. Oh, and just to be absolutely clear, officially these are "unprovoked clots."

I won't go into the personalities and relative competencies of my healthcare professionals. Some I really liked, some I REALLY didn't. Some stayed on top of the job. One completely forgot a time-sensitive medication, which I happened to wake up and notice a half hour after the scheduled time.

My doctor was Dr. Pierce- not Benjamin Franklin Pierce, but a good doctor even so. He saw me twice a day while I was incarcerated and we got on well.

By Friday my anti-coagulants were sufficiently settled that they let me come home, dragging my little bottle of oxygen with me. Since then I have been a warm and (mostly) horizontal cat bed in the recliner. Today is the first day Carmen is letting me use her oldest of three laptop computers. No kitties allowed on the computer!

Whew!

My hand still hurts from my job application today. If I get it - and who knows if all 82 guys in front of me have jobs yet (see "Another Defeat" from August 31 in this blog) - I'll be building hot tubs, spas and outdoor buildings like sheds and such. I looked at their stuff, and it looks interesting to build.

First I had to hand write the list of previous jobs covered so well in my resume, which they also have. Then I had to list FIVE personal references! I went with people whose numbers I have in my cell phone. AND THEN! I had to take a fifteen page test on vocabulary skills, number sequences, word scramble things, cryptograms, pattern recognition- all the stuff you need to be a good carpenter. Well, I'm pretty darn good at that stuff, so maybe those 82 guys will eat my dust - in which case it was a wonderful test. But my hand still hurts. Arthritis, you know. I'm old.

And speaking of old, I suddenly got in the mood to listen to the Gershwin on my Media Player music list. An American in Paris just finished, and Rhapsody in Blue just started. I love that stuff. I was reminiscing just the other day about the time back in the eighties when we went to the Tupperware Auditorium in Kissimmee to hear an evening of Gershwin, and the guest pianist couldn't play the Rhapsody worth a crap! What a disappointment that was. I'm betting the rest of the orchestra hated it even worse than I did.

Remus J. Lupin wanted his own Facebook page, so we tried to get him signed up. At first we put his real name and his real date of birth. Facebook locked us out for a day - evidently they don't cotton to six-year-olds on FB. Once they let us back in, we tried a different birth year, and that was fine but they wouldn't let the name Remus Lupin pass. So we tried Yin N Lupin, and they loved it. So now, in addition to everything else I do for those kids, I also have to share my computer with them. What the heck, they've been stealing my chair for months.

Anyhoo, Carmen is home from her three-day ministers' retreat, and will be home tomorrow and Saturday - two days in a row! It's been weeks since that happened. Maybe I'll paint the ox head tomorrow, if the weather warms up. Christmas eve is in two weeks, you know, and we don't need no stinking naked ox in the pageant. Not that I'm going, hell no.

Who'da Thunkit?

I now have four Facebook friends in Albuquerque, two of whom I never see, one of whom I see sporadically, and one is Carmen, whom I see a lot of, but not lately. She got home from San Francisco Sunday afternoon, after being gone since Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday she left at 8:30 and got home at 9:30pm. Today she left at 9:00 and will be at a retreat center until tomorrow sometime. She has a wedding to perform this Saturday and the church office holiday party Saturday night. The kitties and I miss her.

Speaking of those kitties, they haven't asked to go outside this whole month. They are content to bask in the sunshine on this side of the glass doors to the back patio. That's good, because I have to be out there with them, and baby it's cold outside! We had another big scary winter storm last night. It dumped about an inch and even covered the roads this time- until the sun came out. Now the driveways on the north side of houses all still have snow on them, and the ones in the sunshine are clear and dry.

I used my newly acquired computer prowess to create our first annual newsletter. It has to be proofed by Carmen when she has time, and then they have to be printed, inserted into some sort of snail mail technology, addressed, postaged and sent. Don't hold your breath.

So that's the news. Over on the other side of the blog wall there is a post named "Holes In the West." It's a long one. See? I'm trying to keep up with it.

Ministerial Ballbuster

Today is the big momemt we've all been waiting for. This afternoon Carmen stands before the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, delivers a ten minute sermon, and is harangued for a half hour about her fitness for ministry - as if there is a question about that! If (when) they give her a #1 rating, she can immediately begin her search for a settled ministry, and eventually we'll find out where we'll be moving in June.

One of my projects recently has been to put together photo montage pages for sections of her search packet. I have, during this blessed time of unemployment, learned a lot about my computer, including how to manipulate pictures and do other fancy things in Word. So that's ongoing.

December is a ballbuster month for ministers, as well as ministerial interns and ministerial intern spouses. Yesterday I finished up her music CD for her "Reliving The Christmas Event" service she's doing in a week or so, and cleaned up and updated the script sent us by Marni P. Harmony, formerly of Orlando. I also created a fancy CD label with a picture of our snow-dusted holly tree ghosted behind the music list. It's beautiful.

As soon as the weather warms up, I'll paint the ox head for Christmas Eve Service #1. We still have to decide on how we're accomplishing the body of same. The prevailing thought is to cover a couple of bean bag chairs with a hairy blanket that attaches to the head. It'll be wonderful, whatever we do.

Meanwhile, there is a possible wedding coming up and a memorial service, both paid projects for the intern, and we are going to see White Christmas on the 18th! January will be here before we know what hit us!

PS - We're Number One! We're Number One!!!!!!!!!!!!

As Professor Hinkle Would Say...

Busy busy busy! I went with Carmen to work this morning so I could drive home, load up my sneezy girl and haul her to the 9:30 vet appointment. Before leaving, I brought a cat carrier from the 40 degree garage into the house to warm up some. It rattled. Cats scattered. I was glad to let the hink factor settle down some before 9:00.

I also responded to the two mobile vets before departing, letting them know that we had made an appointment with a stationary vet during the twenty hours it took them to respond to my calls and emails. I guess I should have let them stew for a day or so, but I didn't.

ReLu was centered under the bed when I got home to get Yin. She was under the dresser, her little orange striped tail poking out in full view. I stroked it, and she ran out. She ran out of the bedroom so I closed that door. ReLu had full access to food, water and litter boxes from the bedroom. I opened the top lid to the carrier and left it in the hallway before going after my quarry. She was under a chair in the living room. I rousted her out of there and she ran to the hallway, smacking her little blind face into the carrier, then on to the bedroom door, which she also smacked. On her way back I grabbed her and stuffed her in. They don't call me a world class cat juggler for nothing.

The new vet was very nice and she fell in love with Yin- who wouldn't? She took the dreaded anal temperature. It was normal, so no infections. She pumped some flluid into my 5.25 pound girl, installed a topical mite killer on her back, and reintroduced Yin to an old "friend," Neopolydex eye drops, with which we had tortured her for five years of her life in Orlando. All in all, it was a good vet visit (my opinion, not Yin's) and I hauled her home to recuperate in her fleece bed- where she resides at this moment.

I pounded down some breakfast and lit out for the church once again, to bring home my other girl so she could pack for San Francisco. Two hours of rushing around ensued before we loaded the car and headed to the airport by way of our favorite Albuquerque restaurant, Zea's, where we had a nice liesurely late lunch. Then on to the airport to check in, check a bag, and hang out together people watching until Carmen felt it was time to do that Security thing and head for the gate. Then I drove home, arriving about 6:00. I have been checking the US Airways Flight Status page. Everything has been on time so far, so she should be on her connecting flight in Phoenix awaiting departure at 9:14.

Other than that, not much going on today.

Sneezy

Despite phone messages and emails to several mobile vets, I have not heard anything from them. I understand that procrastination is a New Mexico thing. It wouldn't fly in Boston, but we're not in Boston any more. But we now have an appointment for tomorrow morning at a stationary vet nearby.

My little blind girl has been sneezing recently. Years ago she had an upper respiratory infection that kept her from eating- they won't eat what they can't smell. She's still eating fine, but we're hoping to avoid a crisis situation, especially since the big MFC interview is this week, and we're trying to avoid crises on all fronts until that hurdle is cleared. Meanwhile, Miss Yinny Yin Yin is sleeping comfortably in her fleece cat bed, completely unaware of the flurry of anxiety raging on around her.

We decided to try a veterinary house call due to our current status as a one-car family, plus her long history of frequent visits to the vet. Two weeks after we rescued Yin and Yang, dumped by a breeder at four weeks old, our vet bought a new Lexus. Coincidence?

Yin used to have itchy skin. Sometimes she would make herself bleed from pulling out her hair. One time I called the vet to ask about treatment. He said, "Can you bring her in right now?" I said "Sure!" and hung up the phone. I looked where she had been two seconds ago, and she was gone! I searched the whole house. I looked in all of her best hiding places- in the tub, between the shower curtains, under the bed, behind the sectional sofa, under the recliner, in the kitchen cabinets, behind the washer and dryer- to no avail. After a half hour of searching I stopped to think about where she might be. The only place I could think of that I hadn't looked was in the three-inch gap between the kitchen wall and the back of the refrigerator- but she couldn't even fit in there, could she? I got the flashlight and looked. There she was, crammed in the far corner. I closed every door in the house and slowly rolled out the fridge. It was forty five minutes after my phone call before I ran to the vet, carrier in hand.

She's a wily one, that blind girl. And how did she know I was talking to the vet? Did she hear and recognize his voice? I'll never know. Nowadays she hasn't been to a vet in almost a year. She's still hinky about being picked up or even being approached. She'll come to us if we're sitting or lying down, but we can't walk toward her without triggering the vet alarm. And if she hears the cat carrier rattle, forget about it! And I'm sur she has all of her new hiding places mapped out in her cute little head. Tomorrow will be interesting.