Did You Remember....

"Did you remember to bring the box for the blood?" "I don't think we need it."

I'm sure that every family with chronically ill members say things that sound, well, peculiar in other settings. 

Today Babygirl and I left the house for the first time in over a week.  I'd have stayed in, but until Babygirl learns to drive, options are limited. She has to draw her own blood periodically before and after dialysis (okay, peculiar statement #2). We have a centrifuge to process this, and then it goes into the fridge until we can get it to a lab. She drew the blood yesterday after 5.  We had 5 tubes of blood in a cup on the top shelf for about 20 hours, until we finally worked up the energy to leave (I mean, changing into cleaner pajamas seemed important even if I wasn't getting out of the car). 

The cup went out the door in Babygirl's hand.  The mailer box remained on the table.  I grabbed it, and made her take it into the lab with her. She came back without it, so I assume I was correct about the box.

All beside the point. There is so much of this stuff. SO much. 

DeeDee

A Missed Celebration........

 In my office, only 2 of us who have been present since the pandemic started have escaped contagion, me and one of the front desk staff.  

I didn't catch Covid from Babygirl last January despite being face-to-vomiting-face with her the entire time she was incubating. I was, however, masked for almost the entire event.

This time? The masks went on AFTER the diagnosis.  And here we are, staring down a positive test.

My sincere congrats to the last man standing. 

It isn't the sickest I've ever been. That honor goes to the Russian Flu while I was in college. And thankfully, the guy with the ballpeen hammer in my head has stopped banging around, for the most part. But those losers with the coshes who keep smacking me in calves and shoulder blades need to STAND DOWN. 

Also not a huge fan of alternating between shivering and sweating.

I'm pretty sure this level of fatigue and breathlessness going up and down a flight of stairs should more be associated with mountain climbing.

On the plus side, Babygirl isn't running fevers anymore.  She was up to cooking dinner yesterday, although neither of us could taste it. We are both sleeping anywhere from 1-3 hours for every hour of activity (which could be just unloading the dishwasher or reading a book).

So I'm on Covid Furlough until at least Tuesday, or until the respiratory symptoms clear.  If the number of tissues overflowing every wastebasket in the house are any indication, this could take a minute. 

DeeDee

PS The saddest part of this is that I was out sick on National Rubber Ducky Day.  And I had planned SUCH a celebration.

Round Two.....

 I think I had about a week.  One week.

I've spent the last two months agonizing over the fact that our long-term tenants were leaving. They found us lovely new tenants, and based on the timeline the old tenants were given, I figured that two months was plenty of time to prep the apartment for those tenants, in time for the New Year.  But due to multiple delays in their closing, we ended up with less than ONE month.  One month to clean and paint all the walls and woodwork. One month to set up some window replacements and a new kitchen counter. One month to refinish the floors.  I worked 8=10 hours a day on the weekends and 2-3 hours on working days. I had friends come in and scrub bathrooms. I had a grandkid learn how to use some tools to pull up molding.

We almost made it. The tenants holed up in a hotel for a couple of days, and we are finishing what remains while they are in situ.

The day after they moved in, my entire body just said, "No. Nope. Not today." I called out of work and slept more than 16 hours, a week ago today. I had nothing to do for the weekend, so I enjoyed doing exactly that. 

Earlier today, Babygirl sent me a picture:  "Is that positive?" 

Why yes, that IS positive. She has Covid. Again.  

Current temp on Tylenol is 101 degrees. That would typically send us to the ED, but we know the cause, and she is eating some and drinking pretty well. Curlygirl, who can't tell if she's sick or not because she ALWAYS feels Long-Covid Crappy, tested negative. I feel fine, so I didn't bother with a test. 

I'm so grateful for one low-stress week it's almost ridiculous. And to be fair, January this year so far has been MUCH better than January last year.  

I have to confess that I'm not too grateful for this.

DeeDee

Happy New Year.....

 All of this past 10 days, I've been reliving last year. You know, the way women mentally review their labor and delivery on their kids' birthdays every year (you don't?). 

Curlygirl caught Covid right before Christmas.  I came to her house and wrapped about a thousand presents for the kids, masked and at a social distance, of course.  Christmas morning was celebrated in their garage, since the kids had gone to stay with Gammy to avoid contagion.  Curlygirl's boo recovered. She still has not. Physically she is still doing poorly. Emotionally she seems to be improving.  Last night at dinner she was laughing about how people comment on how "good she looks" in her pictures.  She said, "I'm SICK, not UGLY!" That is one of the best descriptions of chronic illness I've ever heard.

Babygirl's crisis started right after Christmas, when what appeared to be a generic stomach bug turned deadly within a few days. 

By this time last year, Babygirl was on a vent with a feeding tube, central and arterial lines in, facing emergency dialysis. She'd already had her first two of what would be many blood transfusions.  And I was still thinking that maybe they could halt the rejection and save the kidney. And I'd had the best two hours of sleep in my life on the padded bench in her ICU room. 

Yesterday I was on the phone with our internet provider for well over an hour. The internet got turned off because our new tenants turned theirs on, and there was some confusion about which side of the house they were supposed to be working on. Since the new tenants now "owned the account" Spectrum needed their permission to fix it. This would be merely an inconvenience if we didn't need internet to run the dialysis machine programming. But be that as it may...

Babygirl expressed sympathy for the frustration. But last year, by lunchtime on New Year's Eve, we'd been in 2 ERs, had the express lights-and-sirens ambulance ride between them, been intubated and hustled to the ICU. I hadn't had a proper night's sleep in over a week, and was standing soley on adrenaline. 

Yup, I'll take conversing with the (oddly, extremely helpful) support staff at Spectrum all day any day over that. I did draw the line at switching to Spectrum as our phone provider. We've been knocked off the internet 3 times in the last 8 months for incredibly stupid reasons, so I'll keep my phone provider separate, ThankYouVeryMuch.

I'm glad to see 2022 out the door.  But, as always, I'm not making plans or resolutions. Things will be what they are, so I do my best to keep my mind blank about the future.  It's a far better alternative than worrying over what I cannot control.

DeeDee