Ok, not what you expected. Ha. But part of my metaphorical stock. Need to get back on my diet, so will have some eggs this morning, some good coffee, maybe a bit of milk. I’m about to put on my pork roast in the slow cooker and that will be dinner along with maybe some scallops or shrimp or something — whatever I can dig out of one of four freezers. Our big freezer quit for a while, so we crammed $3K worth of meat into the extra fridge, our regular fridge freezer, and the travel trailer freezer until the new freezer arrived. In the last month we’ve had to replace the washer/dryer, big freezer, coffee pot (not done yet), heating pad and my dad’s ventilator. The Kimball curse — my father’s stuff always broke and now it’s my stuff.
Which brings me to why I’m not sleeping at 7 a.m. Because the new ventilator is going off, not constantly as normal but every say few minutes. So it’s enough to keep me awake, but every time I get up to fix it, it stops. The other night after they replaced the ventilator, they left me a back up one, and they both went off – – dueling ventilators. Grand. But it’s nice to be awake either very late at night for a while or early morning before there is any noise of any kind, other than my neighbor Terry’s dog barking a bit. Got myself a leftover cup of coffee to sip until my husband makes a new pot — I’ve moved to 3/4 decaf which definitely helps my skin.
Stock — well, we spent yet another few days in the hospital. My dad has had a couple infections they refused to treat — telling him straight out to go home and die. I tried to force them to give him IV antibiotics and not stop them or I’d sue them. Got the one guy to do this and the next guy stopped them. Which is what happened the time before. But he got enough to get him started and our doctor friend called in oral cipro in a big dose and I think we’re gaining on it. It’s hard to articulate how hard it is to be a caretaker full time but it’s even harder to fight with idiot health people and deal with red tape constantly. Not to mention watching him having to listen to this bullshit. When they see Dad, he’s ill, and Parkinson’s makes you confused when you are ill — but they simply refuse to believe he has quality of life. Even when he tells them he does. This latest (and I am doing my best not to call him what he was) JERK, tried to kick me out of the room so he could pound my dad to get on Hospice, asked him “some people want to go home and die, are you one of them?” He tells this idiot no several times. And the guy refuses to believe me he’s totally lucid in between infections. Says they are no longer treating aspiration pneumonia or infections in catheterized patients. Antibiotics have “side effects,” but going home to die isn’t a side effect we should worry about. Parkinson’s people are not cancer patients dying in weeks or months. It’s a horrible disease to manage made worse by incompetent and arrogant medical people. We decided to stay with our N-Palliative people and home health nurses, not Hospice, but if anything else critical happens, to have them take us to Petoskey –I spent yesterday writing my four-page nasty letter to the administrators. OR if he does in fact seem to be failing and Dad feels too tired to keep being drug to hospitals, we’ll sign up for Hospice then.
Of course, if they’d kept that IV antibiotic on for a few days the stay before LAST, as the ER guy wanted, we wouldn’t have been there the last time.
Dad did decide against a feeding tube which would cut down on aspiration of liquids (you can still eat and drink) or having his lungs drained to see if in fact he has an infection (of course, this idiot claims he does not — yet the pulmonary person I had to FIGHT them to talk to said that yes, indeed, that IS a possibility). So we are home doing antibiotics on our own.
He seems improved.
And his oxygen saturation is better with the concentrator turned up some when on night time ventilator (my dad only wears this at night and it functions like a bi-pap, not a ventilator). During the day, he walks around, watches tv, eats, reads the paper, roots for football teams — most recently the Rams after our Matthew Stafford was traded out there. He’s a Tiger’s baseball fan.
So, we have physical therapy today and the house needs cleaning. Writing? What’s that? There goes that freaking ventilator again….
But I am hoping to get some reading and exercise in around all that. My daughter has us signed up to watch her students’ concert in Marquette at 2 p.m. (she teaches band), and my son is trying to buy rental property he’ll live in the first year, and we’re busy with all that.
Good it’s Friday. I think I’ll make steak and lobster over the weekend or quail and steak maybe –I’ve had four quail frozen quite a while, will pan braise them in a wild mushrooms sauce along with some nice filets. My Butcherbox meat company has some nice specials of lobster tails now and then or scallops. Always carry wild salmon. And of course, beef and most recently lamb — I have a nice boneless leg of lamb to do in the slow cooker for Easter.
Maybe writing someday…
Happy weekend, folks. I hope things go well.
L.E.K. 
With all the medications in existence, it’s hard to believe that your father has to be denied antibiotics of any kind, in any form. And if the quality of life is good, especially to him, shouldn’t that be the enthusiastic priority? Go, Tigers. I’m sorry for the troubles not only with health but with machines. Time for me to offer a coffeemaker (I ended up with an extra one). I like the ingredients you cook with (for example, mushrooms). I hope the concert is or was a good one. I hope you get to read more, as you want, and look forward to more writing.
Thanks, Christopher! You’d think they’d give him antibiotics. They are terrible. They also diagnosed lewey body dementia for my dad in one day. Ridiculous. People with Parkinson’s and infections are often goofy. This guy was a real idiot. I’m making Dad and my son with Downs Cuban sandwiches tonight with the pulled pork. Just pork for me and maybe a few salad greens, we’ll see. You sound like things are going a little better on your end??
Thanks, I’m doing okay. My heart seems to be working fine and the machine that keeps it going. My day-to-day worry for myself is the noise that comes through the ceiling that my landlord will not deal with. I continue to work on moving, which is challenging because lack of rest makes me tired all the time. More important, though, is my older brother’s cancer, which is metastasized. He’s in Pittsburgh (about 200 miles from here), and I think his care’s been pretty good. My sister’s out there, too. I’ve gone out and am standing by to go out again. One thing Amy and I have talked about is our brother’s reticence to let us help him. We appreciate his wanting to be on his own, but it’s serious now. He needs help.
I’m so sorry to hear about your brother’s cancer. Terrible disease. He must be alone, I guess? My prayers are with you all. XO