Friday, March 25, 2005

whoa, where did the days go?

I can’t believe it’s so long since I last posted here. Last weekend we were just so wiped out we didn’t get much of anything done. Sunday and Monday I was sick—muscle aches, just couldn’t get warm. But I finally crashed Monday afternoon, told Stanley to wake me up in an hour and got up about four hours later. Missed Jeopardy—goes to show, I must’ve needed the rest. I feel fine now, just still very tired.

On Tuesday I was supposed to take a portrait of a client for the company website—and I totally spaced it. I never do stuff like that. She was nice about it and we rescheduled for Wednesday—and we didn’t forget. Wednesday was a busy morning, seeing three clients, then we were supposed to go see Dr. Robinson, but Dr. R got called in to emergency surgery, so that gig was postponed to Thursday (yesterday as I write this, but I still consider it today since I haven’t gone to bed yet). Lots of work shooting the new belt line for www.charlieandgrace.com and working like crazy to get that up (should be up some time Friday). Took us 40 minutes to get all the garbage and recycling out Wednesday night (three weeks of newspapers and junk, ye gods). I’ll be glad to turn that job back over to Stanley.

Our visiting nurse, Kathy, came by Thursday morning and told us the Visiting Nurse Assn. is giving all of her clients to a new nurse starting soon. Like hell they are—we’ve already called the agency to pitch a bitch: we finally get a truly competent care provider (and we like her as well) and they want us to start over with yet another newbie? I don’t think so.

To Bridgeport Thursday afternoon. Dr. R. was happy to see Stanley looking so much better, said it was good to see the twinkle back in his eye. Or it might be mania. I’m not sure. Of course, things can’t be all good. Nope. Stanley has this weird problem with his eyes, vision problems and this transient blindness thing (amaurosis fugax). The nurse looked it up and said it might be a side effect of the coumadin, or it might be related to the tylenol, but whatever. Dr. R. set up a consultation with a neurologist then and there. The neuro doc happened to be in the hospital, and available, so we met Dr. Lisa Webb, Neurologist, today.

Dr. Webb did a battery of tests that I seem to recall have to do with establishing that Stanley has not had a stroke (he remembers the tests from his grad school days—he majored in psychology). She’s not exactly sure what’s what, but wants Stanley to have a carotid ultrasound to rule out blockages in the carotid artery, which could cause clots to form. Etc. There’s more, but I’m too sleepy to go into it all.

Dr. R also wants S to have another echocardiogram to make sure the ticker and valves are all working as well as they sound like they’re working. That’s scheduled for next Thursday at 9:30 am, so at least it won’t blow away the entire day. Monday we go see Dr. Disease about the staph infection (Dr. Zane Saul). And one day next week, when we’re not seeing other doctors or at Norwalk Hospital getting the carotid ultrasound (to be scheduled ASAP), S has to see Dr. R. again for another follow-up. Our dance card is quite full next week—the only day completely free of medical stuff (so far) is Tuesday. We have a client coming to see us (all the way from New Jersey!) that day—and we’re quite looking forward to meeting him as he’s been wonderfully patient about trying to get a meeting with Stanley.

We’re hoping we can go up to Boston to spend Easter with Maureen & Jeff and Kate and Ben. And Tattoo, of course. Stanley is not too crazy about having to be a passenger if we go up there. I’m not too crazy about him having to be a passenger, either, as this is something he absolutely sucks at. I was hoping he’d be ok enough to start driving again, but not with that eye stuff and the temporary dizziness—his timing is still off. Can’t wait until he’s off all these weird meds. He hates the Coumadin and will be glad to get off it.

What’s good, though, is we’re finally able to start getting involved in our projects again—damn it’s good to be re-engaging with the world. I’m a little fried about how much catching up we have to do, but I also know that I can only do so much each day. So I’m trying to do as much as I can to catch up and not to overdo it, and breathe. Now that the slush storm is over (we had three inches of SLUSH), we need to get out to walk more or S will never get his stamina back.

Oh, one irony: Stanley has to be on a low-fat diet, sez the doc, to managed his alleged high cholesterol. So we are, and really healthy stuff like beans and good things (but no vitamin K-laden greens like spinach), and we’ve both lost weight. Which is a great thing for me—but S cannot lose any more weight—he’d be invisible. So he wants to check his lipid levels and if his cholesterol is ok, he wants to eat ice cream once a week. A half gallon of it. As if.

posted by lee on 03/25/05 at 05:18 AM

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