neurotwitch

it’s march already?

Been frantically trying to catch up with work I missed whilst Stanley was getting fixed up, plus keep up with new stuff coming in and, of course, I need about five days where nothing happens. I’ll have two (the weekend), which will have to do. Life is much too short to make myself too crazy. I keep slipping into always-working mode and I have to stop that.

Stanley’s spiffy new bovine aortic valve seems to be doing fine. We went to see Dr. Robinson for a post-op checkup on Wednesday and he said (imagine a New Zealand accent), “Everything is looking good, I’m done with you now.” He removed the chest tube holes stitches and sent us on our way. Jane, Dr. R.‘s office manager, said, “Goodbye, good luck, and I hope I never see you again.” She is very nice, but I will be very happy never to see her again (at least in that context!)

Dad asked, “Does this mean Stanley can now be bossy?” What’s worse, he’s PROUD of that pun. (Pretty good, actually. Ok, Alice?)

We did go to QWEST today instead of the cardioligist’s office to get the coumadin level check. It took maybe 15 minutes.  And his level was 2.8, which is fine, so he stays at the 2.5 mg does of warfarin. Dr. Robinson told him he could stop taking the high blood pressure medication after we told him that Stanley had been kind of dizzy. I told Dr. R. that it seemed odd to me that blood pressure meds had been prescribed for Stanley when his main problem post op was that his blood pressure was too LOW, not high by any means. Stanley’s looking forward to getting off the warfarin altogether, and off the Zocor. He’ll be off the anti-arrthymia meds in a few days. But he still needs the pain meds—S takes a minimal dose because he says it makes him fuzzy, but watching him writhing in pain when he coughs is no fun. Dr. R. says he still has some fluid in his lungs—hope it dries out pretty soon.

What else ... oh yes, the bill so far for the repair job. The hospital portion of the bill came in—we not sure exactly what it’s for, but think it’s for the OR, the ICU, and the surgical unit stay—came to $73,000. With the surgeon’s bill and all the pre-op stuff, so far the tally is $104,000. Un-effing-believable. I have this deep-seated fear that Oxford will deny part of the claim and we’ll have to pay more than the $5,000 deductible—which is probably unwarranted because Oxford has been great all along. They even called Stanley after he got home to find out how he was doing and find out if he needed some home health care (he didn’t).

Seems like every year something happens that costs us about $5,000. Stanley’s van getting smashed and having to buy a new one one year, getting a valve jop and bypass this year, various appliances all giving up the ghost last year ... so we decided we’re going to try to put money aside for a $5,000 Shit Happens fund. As if we ever have an extra $5K sitting around doing nothing. Heh.

Jeopardy is on—I like the tournament of champions. Makes me feel smarter when I get one right.

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