woodland_miniatures

Roxy, the same thing happened to me with it seemed like all my electronics croaking all at once - phone, digital camera, kindle, coffee maker, laptop - you name it, it died. The aliens were definitely messing with both of us....

Selkie, Heidi, both really good points for me to ask about. I myself took the outer stitches out when I had transport problems and couldn't get into the ortho's office - snip and pull, and I did it because they'd been there much longer than they should have been and the whole area was looking "angry", and it did calm down after that. The doc had taken some of the stitches out earlier, and that's the part of the incision that's re-opened. I will most definitely ask about inner stitches when I see the guy again next Monday.

I know, Holly, and a decade older than me, and still going strong. The face shows every single drug/drink/smoke/emotional excess and is truly frightening, but he ain't over yet! (Now, the one that slays me is Keith Richards - if ever there's a walking miracle of survival, man....) About my own situation - well, I've had a little backtrack. One end of the surgical incision from the amputation re-opened about 10 days ago, apparently hadn't actually healed below the surface, and as you can imagine I freaked and spent some days so far down I basically didn't crawl out of bed. Finally took it to the doctor last Thursday and he checked VERY carefully for any signs of infection (said if he'd found any I'd be on IV antibiotics and in the hospital again five minutes ago) and mercifully didn't find any. Sent me home with strong oral antibiotics to keep it that way and careful instructions about how to dress and/or not dress the thing (it's about an inch and a half open at one end of a four-inch incision). Mostly,dry gauze when I'm in bed and open air when I'm not. He wants a scab to re-develop over the thing and let it heal with as little interference as possible. And if I see any, repeat ANY change in the thing (redness, swelling, hot to the touch, etc.) I am to scream bloody murder and run, run, run to the emergency room. And see him again in two weeks. And I was so hoping all this &^*% was over with - SIGH!

Dawn, so sorry you're going through this still - it is so very frustrating to have a problem that doesn't seem to have a solution, at least not one that's readily apparent anyway. There is one out there, but it's so hard to be patient and strong enough to find it. My heartfelt sympathies, my dear!

Thank you so much, Deb - those are actually videos I hadn't yet found on YouTube. Lord, don't they all look so young! My, my, my!

YES!!!

Kathie, I do a pretty mean "chair dance" as it is - have rediscovered the Rolling Stones and tons of concert footage on YouTube, and I defy anyone to stay still during "Satisfaction" or "Gimme Shelter". Hey, as long as there's still the Stones and rock 'n' roll, I'll be dancing! (BTW, for those of us who are aging - and who isn't? - that those old boys are still going strong, playing, singing and dancing their hearts out fifty years on should be a great source of hope).

We've all sure been though a lot, haven't we? Was reading back in this thread and seeing all the caring and love and wonderful words freely given here, well, to say it's heartlifting and wonderful just doesn't seem like saying enough. Watched "Forrest Gump" again night before last, and experienced a whole new level of that very special movie. Lieutenant Dan's ordeal of losing his legs hit home for me, his rage, depression, despair (all of which I experienced in the months before the actual surgery), and finally his coming to terms with his disability and that nothing would ever be the same again, well, I'm there right now. Somehow seeing Gary Sinise nail those emotions and situations absolutely dead-on helped, and so have a lot of entries by folks right here. As Forrest said to Lt. Dan, he was STILL Lt. Dan, and someone here said that to someone else here, and it's so true - I am STILL Mary. And that helps to remember, it really does. Just my way of doing things is vastly different, but you know, the really important stuff, the stuff that really matters, well, that really is all still here.

Yep, I've picked up my crochet hook and thread again myself, after a long hiatus, and it really does feel good to be doing something I love and symbolizes normalcy to me. And it's good to be back here again, too!

Hey, I'm back among the living again, more or less. It's been an interesting few months, with hospitalizations, infections, and...an amputation. Went to my ortho doc on December 18 and he didn't even let me go home, just popped me in a wheelchair and wheeled me across the street to the hospital and checked me in. The left foot came off the next day, leaving a few inches below the knee, and...WHEE!!! NO MORE INFECTIONS!! Never thought I'd be happy (well, not happy exactly) to lose a body part, but with the source of all the trouble gone, I started to feel better immediately and pretty soon felt GOOD for the first time in at least three-plus years. Spent a few weeks in a rehab facility in Yakima (my heavens, I have NEVER had food that bad in my life!) learning how to handle myself one-legged (you'd be surprised at the little thing that - so to speak LOL - trip you up, then had in-home nursing for a few weeks, and now tomorrow I pay my first visit to a prosthetics clinic to see about getting an artificial foot. Seems I'm a very good candidate for same - strong, otherwise healthy, determined, etc. So while I am in a power chair now, there's a good chance I'll get to walk again - jeez, I've almost forgotten what that's like (but I think I'll remember VERY quickly LOL!). Got a lot of catching up to do - but, oh my, is it good to be back!

Nothin' but wet, sloppy and gray for us here in the Cascades this winter - usually by now we have several feet of snow, but only a couple of inches so far. I'm wondering when my entire town was transported (while we all slept, no doubt) to the Seattle area? Still, at least it hasn't been cold! What some of the rest of the country has been going through makes me feel darn lucky!

Deb, BIG hugs, and those memories are a trove you'll treasure forever. The lady is at peace now, and though it hurts now, you'll always have the lady in memory.

Oddly enough, having the actual verdict in hand has made looking up at that snake's belly seem not all THAT far up. Yes, it's off with her foot time, but y'know, it'll be a relief, in a weird way, to have a resolution to this endless cycle of infection/healing/not healing/infection....Get my life back again, and I am blessed with a g-o-o-d life, wonderful friends (including you guys - I can't say what a difference your hugs have made), and the privilege of living in a truly beautiful environment (eastern slopes of the WA Cascade Mountains). It's been made clear to me that I matter to folks around here, and that I'll get whatever TLC/help/just plain ol' hugs I might need during this process, and yes, I'm still trying to get my head around that, but it is an amazing comfort to know I AM NOT ALONE. And very humbling. Waiting now to hear from the orthopedic surgeon, and my visiting nurse will be coming today; a social worker is coming on Monday to evaluate me for having an in-home helper (I manage okay, but, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to have help with cooking, cleaning, shopping....all possible from the state, but oh the hoops you have to jump through!). One thing I do know: the crochet hook/knitting needles will keep on clickin'. Maybe not with minis right now, but doesn't taking a stock of thread and hooks and my Kindle (for patterns) to rehab with me sound like a nice compact package? If I can just get a good light.. At the moment am working on a full-sized wool poncho for myself - decided something like that would be a lot easier to get in/out of than a regular coat (gotta stand for that LOL) and keep Mary cuddly, and lo and behold, a neighbor cleaned out her yarn stash my direction and there's just enough lovely wool yarn for the poncho I had in mind. There's always a solution, isn't there, and never where you're looking for it. Folks, again, thank you, you've helped a dark day be lighter. Thank you.

Can't sleep, so am breaking in my new bread machine - honey cracked wheat. YUM! Am going to doctor later today to discuss my rotting, unhealing foot, and am feeling very low about it all. But after well over three and a half years of the wound not healing and infection after infection, I can see the inevitable coming. In a way, it'll be a relief to go ahead and have the leg amputated (OMG, what an ugly word!), but it still terrifies me. Yeah, I've been living in this wheel chair for over two years now, but y'know, I'm kinda used to having that thing there at the ened of my leg. SIGH! The goal right now is to get me healthy enough for the surgery - get me over the gut infection, etc., and so don't really know what sort of time line I'm facing. Got endless people to look after Koko while I'm gone (and dunno for how long), and have months of food on hand for him, sooo....We'll see what happens later today. Prayers for all those going through a rough patch, and any send my way would be appreciated. As my momma used to say, I'd have to look up right now to see a snake's belly. But, then, I AM still here and still plugging along. And that counts.

Our high today might get up to 15 degrees F, and everything is coated with frost and ice. My cat demanded to go out late last night, and I said okay, on your head be it - he was out a total of 3 minutes (just long enough to water the closest bush LOL) and that was the end of that. My poor heater/air conditioner combo is running non-stop to keep my living room at 64 (comfy for me, with a cuddly bathrobe). Thank heavens the electric bill is paid by the owners of my building!

Dear Dawn, don't give up on your search for answers. I'm 58, have had an "unspecified" autoimmune inflammatory disorder since my late teens, and no label and/or solution all this time. I'm currently going through a really rough patch in my own health (yesterday total despair almost overwhelmed me and a nurse I knew drove nearly 50 miles to come sit with me, listen to me "whine" and hug the stuffing out of me), and during one of the three hospitalizations I've had in the last two weeks a doctor offered up a thought for my overall long-term condition. He and his team thought that I might just have a long-undiagnosed case of Crohn's disease. Gave me some things to read, and OMG, it just might be the culprit. Anyway, there are more urgent issues health-wise for me right now, but to actually have a strong candidate for what's been a real problem all my life, it's like finally knowing what the enemy is and there ARE things that can be done to cope, instead of just striking out at random. I guess what I'm trying to say, Dawn, please don't despair - there IS an answer out there, somewhere. And I'm sending you a huge hug, so hold on to your stuffing!

Not sure yet what I'll be doing for Thanksgiving, but I'm sure something will turn up. OMG, Kathie, I'm still rolling on the floor about your family's reaction to your Northern cooking!

Rain, rain, and more rain - buckets of rain. And temps right now in the upper 40's, weirdly warm after a week ago when it was in the teens. Though we all know the snow will be here sooner or later....

Debra, my heart goes out to you. I lost my mother nearly ten years ago, though looking back she really passed four years before that with a stroke that changed her utterly. We never really get over wanting our mommies, I think, but she is out of pain, safe and warm now and with your father again. Lovely picture!

Kat, it was a great sidebar - people do need to realize that there IS help out there for folks with no insurance and very little money. Contact your local state Dept. of Social and Health Services - and yes, there is a phenomenal amount of paperwork and irritation, etc., but the vast majority of folks who work in such depts. are genuinely caring and really WANT to help people. Well, spent another few horrid days in the hospital last week - they kicked me loose Friday, thank goodness. The tummy etc. troubles were not the flu at all, but a bacterial infection of the small intestine that usually shows up after you've wiped out your friendly bacteria with antibiotics - so it's a little weird since the last time I had antibiotics was last May. Oh, well, never could do anything by the book, lol, and so I'm home again, on oral antibiotics for the next several weeks (and yes, I'm eating yogurt daily - that does help keep your normal bacteria going, and besides it tastes good!). See my doctor later today for a follow-up, and am SO glad to be able to eat again and not have it leaving me from all orifices at light speed.....Man, there just isn't anyone on this planet I hate badly enough to wish that particular horror show off on! As for the help I started yelling for, I've actually got some of it, much to my astonishment. Got my food stamps back (tiny amount, but the fact that I'm back in the system lets me use some other services that I definitely wanted - transportation and such), and the visiting nurse will be around tomorrow to start up with me again - that can really help because s/he will be keeping on eye on this horrid unhealing foot wound I've had for what seems like forever and with the proper doctor's orders, can bring me dressing supplies and such instead of me having to buy them myself (and believe me, that little expense adds up each month), and a social worker will be coming out next week to see what else might make a difference to my life. I got denied the in-home caregiver, but that happened before this last hospitalization and I do have some hope that I'm now officially helpless enough to qualify - I really am terribly weak and much restricted in how I can move. For the folks that don't know, I've been dealing with these awful monster wounds on the bottoms of my feet, where I have no feeling (for reasons no one really understands) and have had life-threatening infections over and over and over during the last three and half years; one of the feet has been healed for well over a year, but the other one.....Thank heavens, a doctor did get me a power wheelchair more than two years ago and this has been a Godsend - it means I can get around town and my apartment and my building, and not be totally housebound. Man, the day I got that, oh, it was like being a free woman again! But, still, I am living in a wheelchair and would give anything to get all this settled and WALK again. I did have an orthopedic surgeon that I've known before come to me in the hospital and say, "Now, Mary, just how attached are you to that foot?" The thought of losing it isn't a new idea - hey, at one point a couple of years ago there was talk of taking BOTH my feet! So his question wasn't a shock, but still....I am ready to consider, though, anything that might give me some sort of resolution to this - waiting for the next inevitable life-threatening infection is no fun, believe me - so the dreaded "A-word" is now officially on the table. Oh, my, who knew a simple dry skin crack on the bottom of my foot over three and a half years ago could ever lead to anything like this? All for the want of a good moisturizer....

I thank you all so very much for listening and taking heed of the possibilities, which sure blindsided me. Someone else here today said we're all family, and it really feels that way to me. What the experience did in a practical way for me was that I spent today yelling for help from any agency/organization that had helped me before during my recent health problems, and which I'd let slide away out of stubbornness and more stupidity that I'm comfortable admitting (but, hey, you don't get healthy if you keep on rowing down that Denial River - and I am blessed in that I CAN get healthy, when so many never will be again). Pride and stubbornness...well, I let all that go today. So I am being interviewed for in-home help from DSHS on Wednesday (this means help with my household chores, cooking, daily living needs, shopping etc.), I did what was needed to reactivate our local home health and hospice folks so that I can have visiting nurses (and the medical supplies that they will furnish instead of my having to be out of pocket $50 - $150 or more each month with no hope of claiming any of that as medical expenses), and a bath aide to help me stay clean. Little Mary cried "UNCLE!" loud and clear today - and I am SO relieved that I did. These people all remember me from helping me before over most of the last two years, and they listened, let me know I was worth helping - all I had to do was ask and then LET them help me. Oh, yeah, I am so ready to let them help me now - so maybe needed to be this deeply frightened in order to shake me back into the real world. This horrid experience may just turn out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me, who knows?

Need I say that with the overnight lows down around 5 degrees and other recent experiences this weekend, Mr. Koko spent all night last night cuddled up against me, both using me as an ultra hot water bottle (and me, him!) and guarding me from any other demons hauling me away again. It is supposed to warm up into the 30's late this week, with freezing rain and just plain cooooold rain probable - SIGH!

I spent this weekend in Yakima Memorial Hospital's ICU with a life-threatening allergic reaction to a medication I've been taking for years. This is a cautionary tale, from someone who considers herself fairly well-versed in things medical (learned through hard experience while caring for my mother during her years-long dying, and through my own recent pretty bad medical problems), and I NEVER saw any of this coming. What happened: Thursday morning I woke up with extreme burning and pain in my esophagus, and had trouble swallowing, felt like I needed to burp but couldn't; a few hours later the burning moved into my stomach - excruciating! - and antacids didn't help a bit. Early afternoon the diarrhea started, then the vomiting. I spent the next two days blowing at both ends about every 15 - 30 minutes, nonstop - it was truly hideous, but you know, I thought "awww, flu, it'll pass sooner or later and I'll be fine." What I didn't realize was that I was severely dehydrated and my kidneys had shut down after about 24 hours of this, and that I should have been in a hospital at that point. NOTE: there is a truly godawful strain of stomach flu out there and if you or a loved one have been losing what seems like gallons of fluids from either end pretty much non-stop for even "merely" 24 hours (believe me, it seems like an eternity in H*LL when it's going on!), you NEED TO GET MEDICAL HELP. Chances are you are by this time badly dehydrated, your stomach will continue to refill itself with stomach acid every time you empty it and this cycle can get locked in; in my case by the time I had a friend call 911 on Saturday morning my veins had collapsed (almost impossible for the medics to get a line into me to get some fluids in) and my kidneys had shut down - didn't pee for three days. It's isn't all that far from this to folks setting up your wake for you. GET HELP before it gets to this stage, folks. Now, the allergic reaction to the medication I'd been taking for years, and what did finally get me to call 911: Friday night my tongue hurt like the dickens and I was having trouble swallowing. Well, there'd been an awful lot of really nasty stuff pass that way, sooo.....I didn't do anything about it. Saturday morning (need I say I hadn't been getting any sleep during this nightmare), my tongue and throat started to swell and got to grotesque proportions really quickly. Tongue so big I couldn't close my mouth or talk - got myself out in my building's hall and thank God found a neighbor right there and had her call 911. Folks, this swelling is called "angio edema" and often occurs in the face, throat or tongue, and it can shut down your airways very quickly. Mercifully, the medics got there and were pumping me full of epinephrine and whatnot within minutes, but had a tracheotomy tray out just in case. Me, I'm still not believing any of this is happening.... Anyway, the bottom line is that the tongue/throat swelling was caused by an allergic reaction to a drug I've been on for years, and was probably brought on by the violence of the flu and its consequences. FYI, the drug is a common blood pressure med called "lisinopril", I was on a low dose of it for at least the last five years, but even so while an allergic reaction like this is definitely uncommon, it is NOT rare by any means. So now I obviously will NOT ever be taking that drug or any other ACE inhibitor, which is the type of drug lisinopril is. After having had this reaction, any drug of that type would most likely have my friends preparing my memorial. So now I also need to get a medic alert bracelet, and have already let my pharmacist know, so that even if some ignorant doctor does prescribe something for me that's in that family of drugs, my pharmacist can be watching my back. Thank God for the wonderful pharmacists in this world! Anyway, the hospital discharged me yesterday afternoon and I rode home from Yakima with a wonderful old guy driving a cab, who asked me when I got in at the hospital, "So, what the heck happened to you, dear?" My response, "Well, I was just proving one more time that I'm a tough old girl to kill." Made a new friend with that dear old boy, who is one of those unsung heroes seeing his wife of 46 years through a long, horrid dying with little or no help or support. His name's Jerry, lives in Yakima, WA and any prayers sent his way would surely be a comfort.

Oooh, pretty betta, Hazel! Years ago I had them, too, and they are really interesting fish. Your new friend is a beauty indeed. I've had an experience this weekend that I really need to share, but I think I'm going to do it as a separate topic. It's fairly gruesome and just doesn't seem to fit here, but I think it stuff folks really need to know, could save a life.

Well wishes and speedy, painless recovery - and that you're up and about again soon. We miss you, girl!