September 12, 2006
Janet Rogers returned this morning to boot me up the stairs (JUST kidding, Janet. Sorta ;-)). The idea is to consolidate and organize the stuff up there, to hopefully reclaim part of the room as an exercise room as I used to use it as (in the future Gary could conceivably use it this way too, after he is advanced enough to bump himself up the stairs), and to move things from the dining room/storeroom to either up there or to the garage, leaving just the frequently used things and things Gary needs to get at downstairs. We found a few things to send to the Thrift store and made a list with Gary’s help of other things we found that perhaps some graduate students might like: racquet ball and tennis racquets, a mattress, bed-sized foam pads, a blender, an upright vacuum, a couch. (Janet says she’s heard there is some kind of website or something for the university’s graduate students which lists free things they can come and get.)
But most of the stuff upstairs is things I’ll have to decide whether or not to keep – books and, especially, gardening stuff. We did manage to fill about fifteen garbage bags with things to throw out. After about two hours of this, I started coughing – I had been getting rid of old row covers (lightweight spun fiber material that is spread over crops when gardening organically to keep out insect pests) and several bags of dried luffas which I’d never yet turned into sponges (because of the work! Maybe it was because the seeds I bought were mainly for the “eating” variety of luffa, but the mature ones were hard to “skin” after they’d dried on the vine and had been soaked, and it took forever to shake the seeds out), and whatever I’d gotten into set off my allergies. When I gardened, I always wore a mask, and often one of those “paint” respirators, though I don’t know if that was overkill, but anyway, these things minimized my allergic reactions. I had thought about wearing a mask when I worked upstairs today, but I couldn’t remember where last I’d seen them. When I started coughing, Janet said maybe I should go downstairs and get out of “whatever,” and she would do some last finishing up. I didn’t argue. I had suddenly gotten a headache and felt really tired, but I would have felt guilty lying down while Janet was still up there working, so I went through a couple of boxes of papers that had been in the dining room/storage room while she continued working up there. I’m not sure exactly all she was doing, but I think I heard the sounds of sweeping and things being moved, so I think I’ll wait until the dust has settled (literally) to check it out.
She worked nearly another hour (!), and when she came down Gary and I told her she was a great help to us, Gary adding that we weren’t quite sure why she’d taken us on as her project (other than the goodness of her heart, of course! Basically it is just that, we know. She also claimed it was kind of fun – some people have an odd notion of fun ;-)).
After she carted away in her car the stuff for the Thrift store, I went to my room for a nap. I fell asleep immediately, and woke up an hour later. I still felt really tired (I tend to think it was from the allergic reaction more than from the labor), and I kind of dragged around until it was time to leave for my dentist appointment. I had been scheduled to go last April, so I hadn’t seen the dentist since last December. Yikes. There I got the happy news that I have two cavities, so I get to go back in October to have them filled without anesthesia. I am so looking forward to that.
I asked them about Gary coming, and I was told the dentist has several paraplegic patients, so Gary should have no problem with accessibility. The paraplegic patients the dentist has are advanced enough that they don’t need help getting into the dentist chairs, but the chairs lower far enough that I think Gary and I can even do the transfer without the board.
I was still tired when I returned home from the dentist (hopefully I have learned my lesson and will wear a mask when working upstairs from now on; or maybe Janet will realize the reason I put that stuff upstairs is so I wouldn’t have to look at it or think about it for the rest of my life and she will agree this is a good idea. Nah . . . I have the feeling she has my work cut out for me ;-)), but fortunately for me Gary had decided to make bean tacos for dinner, and he made them all by himself, even turning on the stove with his new reacher.
He called our external case manager about the hospital bed being turned down by insurance. She told him a mistake had been made, that it had been put that we were buying it, not renting it. She said a new form will be submitted. Hopefully that will enable us to have insurance pay for it. I asked him if he’d asked about the commode seat, but he said he hadn’t, wanting to concentrate on the hospital bed because it is about twenty times the cost of the commode seat.
Well, just as I was going to end this entry, I checked my email and found one from Janet. She gives the link to a NYT article on interactive web sites for those with serious health conditions. Thanks, Janet -- very interesting. We all sort of discovered on our own the benefits, didn't we?
Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/health/12cons.html?ref=health&pagewanted=print
Janet Rogers returned this morning to boot me up the stairs (JUST kidding, Janet. Sorta ;-)). The idea is to consolidate and organize the stuff up there, to hopefully reclaim part of the room as an exercise room as I used to use it as (in the future Gary could conceivably use it this way too, after he is advanced enough to bump himself up the stairs), and to move things from the dining room/storeroom to either up there or to the garage, leaving just the frequently used things and things Gary needs to get at downstairs. We found a few things to send to the Thrift store and made a list with Gary’s help of other things we found that perhaps some graduate students might like: racquet ball and tennis racquets, a mattress, bed-sized foam pads, a blender, an upright vacuum, a couch. (Janet says she’s heard there is some kind of website or something for the university’s graduate students which lists free things they can come and get.)
But most of the stuff upstairs is things I’ll have to decide whether or not to keep – books and, especially, gardening stuff. We did manage to fill about fifteen garbage bags with things to throw out. After about two hours of this, I started coughing – I had been getting rid of old row covers (lightweight spun fiber material that is spread over crops when gardening organically to keep out insect pests) and several bags of dried luffas which I’d never yet turned into sponges (because of the work! Maybe it was because the seeds I bought were mainly for the “eating” variety of luffa, but the mature ones were hard to “skin” after they’d dried on the vine and had been soaked, and it took forever to shake the seeds out), and whatever I’d gotten into set off my allergies. When I gardened, I always wore a mask, and often one of those “paint” respirators, though I don’t know if that was overkill, but anyway, these things minimized my allergic reactions. I had thought about wearing a mask when I worked upstairs today, but I couldn’t remember where last I’d seen them. When I started coughing, Janet said maybe I should go downstairs and get out of “whatever,” and she would do some last finishing up. I didn’t argue. I had suddenly gotten a headache and felt really tired, but I would have felt guilty lying down while Janet was still up there working, so I went through a couple of boxes of papers that had been in the dining room/storage room while she continued working up there. I’m not sure exactly all she was doing, but I think I heard the sounds of sweeping and things being moved, so I think I’ll wait until the dust has settled (literally) to check it out.
She worked nearly another hour (!), and when she came down Gary and I told her she was a great help to us, Gary adding that we weren’t quite sure why she’d taken us on as her project (other than the goodness of her heart, of course! Basically it is just that, we know. She also claimed it was kind of fun – some people have an odd notion of fun ;-)).
After she carted away in her car the stuff for the Thrift store, I went to my room for a nap. I fell asleep immediately, and woke up an hour later. I still felt really tired (I tend to think it was from the allergic reaction more than from the labor), and I kind of dragged around until it was time to leave for my dentist appointment. I had been scheduled to go last April, so I hadn’t seen the dentist since last December. Yikes. There I got the happy news that I have two cavities, so I get to go back in October to have them filled without anesthesia. I am so looking forward to that.
I asked them about Gary coming, and I was told the dentist has several paraplegic patients, so Gary should have no problem with accessibility. The paraplegic patients the dentist has are advanced enough that they don’t need help getting into the dentist chairs, but the chairs lower far enough that I think Gary and I can even do the transfer without the board.
I was still tired when I returned home from the dentist (hopefully I have learned my lesson and will wear a mask when working upstairs from now on; or maybe Janet will realize the reason I put that stuff upstairs is so I wouldn’t have to look at it or think about it for the rest of my life and she will agree this is a good idea. Nah . . . I have the feeling she has my work cut out for me ;-)), but fortunately for me Gary had decided to make bean tacos for dinner, and he made them all by himself, even turning on the stove with his new reacher.
He called our external case manager about the hospital bed being turned down by insurance. She told him a mistake had been made, that it had been put that we were buying it, not renting it. She said a new form will be submitted. Hopefully that will enable us to have insurance pay for it. I asked him if he’d asked about the commode seat, but he said he hadn’t, wanting to concentrate on the hospital bed because it is about twenty times the cost of the commode seat.
Well, just as I was going to end this entry, I checked my email and found one from Janet. She gives the link to a NYT article on interactive web sites for those with serious health conditions. Thanks, Janet -- very interesting. We all sort of discovered on our own the benefits, didn't we?
Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/health/12cons.html?ref=health&pagewanted=print
posted by Peg Daniels at 8:07 PM
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