Medical

Well now…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

… I am extra glad I had to go to my mother’s place today!

The trip itself was not particularly pleasant. We had that super warm day when everything melted, then we got snow on top of that. Yesterday, the southwestern part of our province was hit with a snow storm, but we were fortunate. I saw photos and video people shared on FB, and the one that blew me away was the sand truck – upside down in a ditch!

We got snow, but no storm. When I headed out, the roads were not plowed yet, though I could see the plow trucks were out. While our temperatures were below freezing, between the traffic and the darker surface, the highways were melting in patches, making things even more potentially dangerous. I took it slow, and was pleased to see, most of the other traffic was taking it slow, too! We’ve got good tires and a good truck, but there’s no weight in the back, so it doesn’t take much before I can feel it wanting to fishtail.

I left quite early and still had time when I got to my mother’s town. I decided to fill the gas tank and pick up some fried chicken for my mother and myself for lunch. I remembered that today is Monday, so she would have her Meals on Wheels delivery, so I asked to have the food split between two boxes, so she could have hers later in the day.

As I was paying for everything, one of the regular staff who was having her own lunch break started chatting, asking if I was having lunch with my mother today. I told her, sort of, and mentioned she would be having her Meals on Wheels, so I got hers separate for later. That’s when a customer sitting at another table (this gas station has several tables for people to sit down and have their coffee or chicken dinners) said that she would not be getting her Meals on Wheels today – all deliveries were cancelled today! With the road conditions, I’m not surprised.

So I was extra glad I’d decided to pick up food while getting gas!

I still got to my mother’s early, which was still good. I was able to get some stuff done for her before we settled down to eat. She still has her cold, and was feeling rather sorry for herself. She has developed a terrible habit, though, of making herself gasp and pant. She says it makes her stomach feel better. ??? It’s rather alarming to hear, and then she just stops and starts breathing normally.

As I was boiling water for tea, I asked her which tea she wanted and she suggested the immunity boosting teas my sister got for her, that she’s been drinking since she has a cold.

There were two different kinds, and they were both citrus based.

*sigh*

So my mother is supposed to avoid citrus, etc., but my sister keeps getting her this stuff!

At least the Cup-o-soup went over well, but I’m pretty sure those have onion in them, which is also on the avoid list.

While puttering in her kitchen, I remembered to look at her cupboard doors and saw that the printout of foods that she needed to avoid, and which were still good, for her acid reflux, was gone. There was just a bit of torn tape left where it was.

*sigh*

After we ate, we talked about her upcoming appointment and what to tell the doctor. She brought up again, how she figured she should just stop taking the pills, because they aren’t doing anything. She says there has been no change. I went through again that he’d explained: he was going to start her on a low dose first, and if that didn’t help in 3 months, he would increase the dose for another three months. Or, he might try prescribing a different medication, but that is less likely.

I asked her if she were following the other instructions he’s given her, and if she still had the information printout with all that on it.

No, she wasn’t doing the other stuff, and she didn’t know where the printouts were anymore.

*sigh*

She started complaining again about how she’s taking soooo many pills, and she’s tired of taking soooo many pills.

She’s not taking that many pills and, right now, one of them is basically a special multi-vitamin for her eye with dry macular degeneration, to keep it from getting worse.

I reminded her of just how fortunate she really is. I told her how many pills my husband takes, plus two injections, and even he isn’t taking all that much compared to some people. The thing is, the pills are doing their job, so she’s not feeling the things they are there for, so she thinks they are not needed. She’s not understanding that if she stops taking them, all these things they are protecting her from would start making her sick. I can’t imagine how terrible she would be feeling, for example, if she were NOT on the acid reflux pill, when just having a bit of citrus makes her think she’s dying (until she takes some Pepto).

Her phone appointment was at 2pm. When it was 10 after, she started saying, maybe they forgot about her. Another five minutes, and she was saying, maybe we should call them. I told her, if we were at the appointment in person, we’d just be sitting in a waiting room right now.

Still, I did find the number and tried calling the clinic. The automated system eventually got me to a message saying they were so busy, they weren’t taking any more messages, but to leave a message (???) and they would get back to the caller in 48-72 hours.

!!!!!

So I hung up, since there really wasn’t much point in leaving a message, when it was still possible they’d be calling.

My mother, however, was getting really tired by then and falling asleep in her chair. I finally told her, go ahead and lie down. I would stay close to the phone. Just give me time to go to the bathroom first, she could like down and leave the phone to me.

I had just gone into the bathroom and was closing the door when I heard a quiet knock.

Who would be knocking on my mother’s door at this time?

So I started opening the door again to answer the door for her, but it was already being opened.

There was our vandal, saying something about how my mother must be on the phone, walking right into her apartment! The bathroom door opens out and partially blocks the entryway, so when I was basically right in front of him when our vandal saw me and stopped dead in his tracks.

He quickly said he had to go. There was a container in his hand he quickly dropped on her dining table, and practically ran out the door.

Behind him, I could see a neighbour he’d brought along. I was very happy to see our neighbour. This is someone else I grew up with and consider family. He’s a very good man, and has been a sort of go-between for us, trying to get our vandal to see some sort of sense.

When he saw me, from the hallway, he looked like he was fighting back laughter.

Our vandal had left so fast, he’d left the door to close on its own behind him. I was able to grab the door and say high to our neighbour as he was leaving, but our vandal had gone down the hall so fast, I couldn’t see him anymore.

When I turned back, there was my mother, laughing.

I am so glad I was there! While my neighbour would have made sure our vandal treated my mother well, having him show up, on top of my mother being sick with a cold, would not have been pleasant for her at all.

I wasn’t really surprised to see him. I’d already called my mother to warn her he might suddenly show up, since I’ve been seeing him stalking our driveway again. I just expected him to show up earlier than today!

As for the container he left, it looked like it had pea soup in it, or something like that. My mother told me, she didn’t want it. She already had two other containers in her freezer from his, she doesn’t want. She said, with the way he talks and the things he says, it makes the food taste bad.

I totally get it.

I ended up popping it into the freezer, though, to be dealt with later.

After that little adventure, my mother was able to lie down and I settled into her armchair, in her view, with the phone.

Well, wouldn’t you know, as soon as she lay down, suddenly my mother was wide awake.

Our vandal showing up might have had a bit to do with that.

After a while, she gave up and got up.

By then, it was almost 3, and the doctor still hadn’t phoned. I didn’t want to stay much longer, as it would be getting dark soon. So I called the clinic number back and this time, left a message.

The drive back was both better and worse. Better, because the roads had been cleared by then. Worse, because I was not driving right into the wind and getting buffeted a lot more. Again, most vehicles were also taking it slow, which was much appreciated.

I got home in time for the evening feeding for the outside cats. I quickly did that, topped up their water, and played with Kohl in the isolation shelter for a bit.

Patience was not very patient just then! He was a hungry boy. 😊

Then I grabbed something to clear windows with and went to my brother’s truck to clear the windows of snow, so his solar trickle charger could get some light. I’ve since learned that another truck that’s parked here also has a trickle charger, so I’ll have to remember to clear that vehicle’s windshield, too, the next time I’m out there.

All in all, I’d say it was a good day, even though the telephone doctor’s appointment never happened. It meant I was there when our vandal showed up, and that made it worthwhile it all on its own!

The Re-Farmer

A quiet day after evening drama

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First, the fun stuff!

I did the morning routine today. We were under weather warnings yesterday for snow, but from what I could see, we didn’t get much of any, overnight. Or, if we did, it melted right away, then froze by morning, because it was SO slippery! It’s snowing now, though, so we’ll see how that works out.

Of course, the isolation babies got their extra treat of wet cat food. The cat beds we washed last night were returned, so they now have two in their shelter again. Unfortunately, they seem to be ignoring the freshly cleaned litter box and just using the floor on the bottom level. At least some of it will be easy to clean up once they are frozen. 🫤

Kohl really wanted attention! I spent quite a bit of time petting her through the sliding windows. She made no effort to get out! The closest was when she rubbed her face against my arm so far, she almost fell through the doorway.

Her partner in crime deigned to sniff my fingers a bit, but Kohl was so aggressive for pets, she got in his way. When I saw him at the food bowl, I thought I might pet him while he was eating, but as soon as Kohl saw me at that sliding door, she came right over. She was pushing her way through to get pets so aggressively, she pushed him away from the food! So I stopped, to give him a chance to eat. He, also, made no effort to leave the isolation shelter. Other cats, however, saw the open sliding doors and wanted in!

Later on, I got to enjoy another bit of adorableness. Our elderly grandma managed to get access to the new cat bed again. With the other cats, we’ve found as many as three of them squeezed into there, all at once!

There’s barely room for Grandma in there, never mind three cats!

After yesterday evening, I’m happy to say that today really has turned out to be a day of Peace, for the Second Sunday of Advent.

I got a call from my mother “late” last night. It actually was pretty early, but had been dark for so long already, I thought it was closer to midnight, not early evening!

She had clearly called for a reason, so I asked what was going on.

Very long story short…

She was dying and needed to go to the hospital.

Of course she did. It was a Saturday night. *sigh* It’s always on a Saturday, or Sunday on a long weekend.

I really don’t want to be so jaded by this, but she does it so often!

I told her, we’re under a weather watch. If she really felt she needed to go to the hospital, it would be safest to call an ambulance.

Then I had to keep asking questions to get some idea of why she felt she needed to go to the hospital.

Her cold was getting worse. She was coughing lots. There was pain in her stomach. She had a headache, which she thought was connected to her stomach.

Even the pain in her stomach took quite a while to get straight. About all I could get out of her is that she felt pain directly below her sternum. Every time I tried to get a clearer description, she’s start to tell me, then launch into something else, like did I know where her important stuff in her apartment was hidden (in case she dies or is in the hospital, and people go into her apartment to snoop).

She didn’t want an ambulance, because she wanted someone with her to watch her purse for her; she has important stuff in her purse, and she didn’t want people going through it while she was getting tests done.

She didn’t want to go to the same ER as last time, because that hospital is run by Muslims now. The last time she was there, when I went to pick her up, she told me she had a Muslim doctor (a hijabi woman), and that she had “stolen my heart”. She’d had a very positive experience with her, but has since rewritten her memory again. Now, because there was one Muslim doctor, she has decided that means the entire hospital is run by Muslims. *sigh*

Then she didn’t want to go to that ER because last time, she was in the waiting room for 15 hours (she did get called for tests in that time frame, but I had to explain triage to her again).

I ended up going online to see which hospital ERs in our region were open. The one nearest us was still open, but closing at 9pm. The other, in the hospital her doctor’s clinic is in, was open for the night. Did she really want to go to the ER? We talked about how, every time she’s gone, they would do tests, find nothing wrong, and send her home.

Oh, they found something, but they won’t tell her, because they want her to die. They take advantage of old people. They don’t care. Etc.

It was while I was looking up to see where there were any open ERs in our area, and talking about how busy they get on the weekends, that my mother even commented on how this always seems to happen on a Saturday! I wonder why? she asks. 😄

Then, because I wasn’t leaping to drive her to the ER immediately, she launched into how her children didn’t care about her, either. When that didn’t work, she shifted to, “oh, you are already dealing with so much. I’m sorry I called you. I shouldn’t have called you.” (a regular passive aggressive dig about my disabled husband)

*sigh*

After straightening that out, too, she started talking about how she needs to be in a nursing home, she can’t take care of herself anymore, she needs help.

I told her (again), you can’t just walk into a nursing home and get accepted. We are working on it. There is a process that has already been started, but it can take a while. Nursing homes are for people who are a lot further along than she is, and we would basically be waiting for someone to die for a bed to open. She forgets how my dad was before he went into the nursing home. By then, he was getting home care visits for personal care three times a day, and had declined to the point that they could not longer meet his needs. Very different from my mother getting three med assists a day, to make sure she takes her pills properly.

I was finally able to calm her down and told her that I would talk to my siblings and let them know what’s going on, suggesting she have herself some hot tea and rest. Which she agreed to do.

Once off the phone, I created a group chat to message my siblings, thinking it would be faster than email. My sister turns her phone off when she’s at home, though, and didn’t respond until well past 1am. I was finally able to reach my brother in a side chat, and he only had time to ask if Mom had been eating those mandarins my sister had picked up for her. I completely forgot about those. My mother isn’t supposed to eat anything citrus, as it triggers her acid reflux, but my sister got them for her because she felt they were mild enough *sigh* and because my mother had a cold and needed the vitamin C.

For someone who was really sick with a cold, my mother had sounded really great on the phone. Just some mild coughing, towards the end of the conversation.

So I finally went to bed and didn’t see my sister’s response until past 6am.

After doing my morning rounds and having breakfast, I figured it was a good time to try calling my mother. Her morning med assist should have come and gone by then.

I’m happy to say that my mother reported feeling much better. The “pink medicine” (the Pepto) helped so much. Her stomach was hurting much less and her cold was getting better.

Her voice was sounding hoarser this morning, though, and she was coughing more throughout our conversation, but overall, she said she was improving.

I remembered to ask her if she’d been eating the mandarins. She bounced around the answer, saying things like, not this morning, or, let me check, and, only during the day (since she insists on eating foods that will trigger her acid reflux, I’ve suggested that she at least tries to eat only a small amount, early in the day, since it’s when she lies down to sleep that it really bothers her) and so on. So I concluded that she probably did have several of them before all this started, but wasn’t about to admit it.

We talked a bit about the list of foods I gave her that could cause her problems, and which were okay. I think the printout I gave her might still be taped up on one of her cupboard doors. I brought up tomatoes, because I knew my sister had been giving her tomatoes from her garden, first fresh, then canned, over the past while. She said, no, she’d already finished those off. My mother even had given me one of my sister’s jars of tomatoes a while back, because it was just tomatoes; my sister didn’t even put salt in it. 😄 I forgot to bring up onions, though. I think she does still have some of those. So anything citrus, anything in the onion family, and tomatoes are the things she most commonly eats that are causing her problems. She is on acid reflux medication, and I’d hate to see how bad it would be for her if she wasn’t! The Pepto helps her for these short term problems, though.

At one point, when I was asking her questions about how she was feeling and what she had been doing, she brought up dry mouth again – this time, blaming the mandarins. We talked about her need to hydrate, but she just doesn’t want to drink water! As she put it, her mouth wants water, but her stomach doesn’t.

I do get that, so we talked about other ways to hydrate, including through some kinds of foods.

With her voice being so rough and her coughing, I didn’t want to keep her talking on the phone for too long. I tried to say good bye a few times, but she kept finding other things to talk about, like how she had “forced herself” to change her bedding, and mopping her bedroom floor with disinfectant while her bed was moved away from the wall, and how she was so sick, she never even got out of her nightgown, all day…

Honestly, my mother has no idea how strong she is, and how well she’s doing. She’s practically indestructible, but constantly complaining about how sick she is and increasingly talking about how she is dying.

Today, though, she was able to recognized that yesterday was a combination of things that made her feel so much worse, and now she’s glad she didn’t go to the hospital.

I really do hope they are able to get her into some sort of assisted living soon. It’s so hard to know what’s going on with her, how much is real, how much is her deciding things are worse than they are, and so on. She really does need someone around that can monitor her. Between me and my siblings, none of us are in a position to be that for her.

After I was done talking to her on the phone, I updated my siblings. My sister later reported on her own phone tall to my mother. It seems she’d picked up some cup-o-soup for my mother when she did her grocery shopping for her – something my mother would never had bought for herself – and that Mom was going to have some for lunch.

So all is improving with my mother.

Meanwhile, it has been slowly snowing throughout most of the day. We have another ongoing weather warning for “snow showers” right now, because we’re at only -3C/27F, though the wind chill puts us at -12C/10F. It’s supposed to keep snowing, heavily, at times, until about 3am. It’s also supposed to slowly keep getting colder overnight until we reach about -11C/12F by about 7am, and stay that temperature all day.

Hopefully, the roads will be cleared and no longer slippery, by the time I have to go to my mother’s, tomorrow, for her telephone doctor’s appointment.

For now, though, it does look all peaceful outside, and I’m much relieved that my mother is doing better today.

The Re-Farmer

Finally home, and waiting for word…

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Oy, what a day this turned out to be!

First up, my daughter and I left quite early for her appointment, and I’m glad we did!

The outside cats seemed quite confused that they were getting fed while it was still dark out.

While we were not supposed to get more snow in our area, today, we were expected to get high winds, and we sure had that! Since we did get some light snow yesterday and overnight, that meant a lot of blowing snow reducing visibility on top of being buffeted on the highway. I had considered stopping at the gas station at my mother’s town along the way, just to grab some sort of road snack since I hadn’t had breakfast yet, but I skipped that. The clinic we were going to has a grocery store right next to it, and I figured I could wait!

We got there maybe 20 minutes early. I headed to the grocery store while my daughter went to the clinic, only to discover the doors were locked. So we both waited in the truck while I ate my sandwich until we saw the doors open 15 minutes before her appointment. Once she got called in, things went rather quickly. She had another round of bloodwork to do after that appointment, so I went to the truck while she got that done.

Which is when the messages started coming in.

My older daughter was letting me know to call my mother back… then to call home care. She couldn’t quite make much out of the message that had been left, but was eventually able to tell me that home care was still with my mother.

So I called my mother and the health care aid answered.

The first thing she told me was that she had just managed to get through to my sister. Which is good. I’m the first person to call, since I’m the closest. Then my sister, then my brother, who still lives the furthest away. My sister had said she would be coming to see my mother.

My mother was complaining of chest pains (again), shortness of breath (again) and clamminess.

The clamminess was a new one.

The health care aid was offering to call an ambulance, but my mother was refusing.

Her chest pains were most likely the usual heartburn, and the shortness of breath has become a regular complaint. From what I can observe, the previous doctors suggestion that it is conditioning is most likely correct. My mother is 93, had busted up knees and is getting out of shape with age, but she doesn’t know how to slow down. I sometimes have a hard time keeping up with her once she gets going with her walker. Then she gets out of breath and can’t understand why.

The clamminess, though… I don’t know what to make of that.

As we were talking, my sister tried to call. I dismissed that call, finished up with the health care aid, then phoned my sister while the health care aid was going to call home care next.

In talking to my sister, I told her where we were and why. She started saying they hadn’t have breakfast yet, but if I were in the area, maybe I could check on Mom instead.

…

I told her again, why we were where we were (which is NOT “in the area”). We were going to be in this town for most of the day. My sister wasn’t happy to hear that, but said she would go to Mom’s after they had breakfast.

I don’t know how long it was going to be before she was on the road, but by the time I was done with the phone calls, the weather had gotten worse. It would not be a fun drive, though I don’t know of the worsened weather reached as far as where she lives. Her route wouldn’t take her through this town, anyhow, so it’s possible she wouldn’t see the bad weather at all. Other than the high winds. Those never died down at all today. Even now, as I write this, I can see the trees swaying out my window.

That call done, I messaged my brother to keep him in the loop. Then my daughter and I went to get an actual breakfast. Not much was open that early in the morning, so we ended up going to a Tim Hortons.

We had some time between appointments, so I took advantage of it and went to a branch of my bank with some questions I had. The postal strike is causing some issues, and I needed to clear some things up. From there, we went to a Red Apple, where my daughter was able to get some clothing necessities, and I snagged a high density foam mat to keep in the truck. If we need to climb into the truck box with the tailgate open, it’s something we can lay down to protect our knees. Or, if we have a situation like when my brother wanted to lie on the ground to look under the truck, it can be a nicely insulated, clean surface to lie on.

After taking our time there, we then went to a Home Hardware that was kitty corner from the eye clinic. While there, I picked up a new sump pump hose. Not for our sump pump, though, but for our washing machine drain. We’re still running the hose out the front door, and the current one has started to leak.

At some point, we need to use that drain auger on the pipes, but I’m not going to do it until I am sure we can seal it up again without leaking. My brother keeps telling me how easy it is, but I honestly can’t even see how to open the thing. We also don’t have the sealant needed for when it gets closed up again. It’s also in a very awkward space, plus it’s directly above the sump pump reservoir. Just getting the auger close enough to use it is going to be difficult.

I really hate the plumbing in this place. 😄😄

Anyhow.

It was shortly past noon when we finished at the hardware store, so we popped across to the eye clinic and I checked in.

Thankfully, they were not busy.

I first got called in for the eye images, then the puff test. Then the tech checked to see if the field of vision machine was ready. It was, so she was able to take me straight over for that.

The field of vision test takes about five minutes per eye. Once that was done, the data was sent for the eye doctor to look at, and she would call me in when she was done. When I sat down with my daughter in the waiting room, I checked my phone and it had just turned 1pm – a full hour before my appointment!

Then my phone rang. 😄

It was my brother, calling me in between meetings, about Mom. We spoke for a short time, but there really wasn’t anything to say. Our sister had not sent any messages to update us.

It wasn’t too much longer before the eye doctor called me in. After looking at the images and comparing them from the last two, each 6 months apart, there was very little change. She took a direct look as well, and it was decided to not do the eye dilation tests this time. We would do it next time.

I mentioned to her that we were going to try and not book appointments in the winter, due to transportation and road condition concerns. The next appointment would have been in June, but she was okay if we changed it to July or August.

So that’s what I did. For the next appointment, I’m booked in the second half of July. If she wants me to do another “6 month” test, I would book it for March or April, slowly shifting the appointments to spring and fall instead of summer and winter.

Since we didn’t need to do the eye dilation test, I got to drive us home. My daughter’s dizzy spells have improved, but not gone away completely yet, so me driving was better, anyhow.

Since we were in town, we then made a short stop at a grocery store. I won’t be able to do our Costco shop until Friday at the earliest, so there were a few fresh things that we needed to get. We also picked up some road food for the trip home.

By this time, conditions had improved considerably. It was still very windy and the truck was being buffeted, but we also had bright sunshine. There was only one area that got dicey. The windward side in that area was all open fields and so much snow was being blown across, driving into it was like driving into a fog bank! At one point, as I checked my rear view mirror, the car behind me looked like it was driving on a cloud. No sign of the road or ditches at all! Just blowing snow.

Thankfully, the further north we go, the more trees there are to block the blowing snow.

We were both very glad to be home, that’s for sure!

Once everything was brought in, it was getting late enough that I left my daughter to put most of the stuff away while I went to feed the outside cats and top up their warm water before it got dark. I wanted to make sure they all had a chance to finish the food off before night time. It’s the only way we can get the outside cats that are going to be spayed tomorrow to fast.

I need to be on the road by 7am with the cats tomorrow, giving myself extra time for bad road conditions, for the 8am drop off. We’ll still be at our overnight low of -18C/0F at that time, based on the current forecast. It’s supposed to be slightly colder tomorrow, but without the high winds, so that will make a huge difference.

After the cats get dropped off at the vet, I’ll be hanging around the area until they call me to pick them up. So I will be gone all morning, at the very least. Last time, I was able to nap in the truck, but it’ll probably be too cold to do that, this time!

Oh, I just got word from my sister. By the time she got to my mother’s, she was feeling fine. No longer clammy. There’s a cold going through her building that she might be catching, so she got my mother some vitamin D, echinacea and immunity boosting tea.

Hopefully, that will do it.

I still plan to phone my mother, right after I finish posting this!

Then we need to get some carriers ready for the cats tomorrow. We won’t have any problem getting Kohl, as she’s become nice and social. The adult females may be another story. If we can’t get them, we should at least be able to snag Magda, who is also very social, but it would be much better if we could manage to get one of the adults! I’m not even sure Magda is 2 pounds yet, but she should be close.

We shall see.

Once the carriers are prepped, it’s going to be an early bedtime for me!

Time to go phone my mother now…

The Re-Farmer

Glad to be home!

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Well, that was a fun drive.

Not.

Okay, it wasn’t too back, but I really hate driving at night at the best of times. Add in things like blowing snow and being buffeted by winds, even if it’s just a smaller amount, is something I’d rather avoid. That wind was really bitter. As I write this, we are at -13C/9F with a windchill of -26C/-15F. I actually broke out my ratty old down filled parka for the trip!

I need a “going out” coat. 😄

My husband’s appointment for his CT scan was at 5:30, and we needed to be on the road by 4:30 at the latest. We decided to leave at about 3, giving us time to get some gas and *gasp* make a date of it!

A cheap date.

We ended up going to the nearer Walmart I usually go to in between stock up shopping trips, as it’s very close to the hospital my husband’s appointment was at, and had some McRaunchies. 😁

It doesn’t take much to make us happy.

Best of all, it was still daylight for the drive in.

A downside was not being able to park close to the doors. My husband does have a disabled parking permit, but all the parking spots were full. I was driving around and there was one open spot, but another vehicle pulled into it – parking diagonally, and not even trying to straighten out – before I got close. So we had to park quite a bit further out and my husband had to push his walker through the snow.

As far as we could see, the car that got the spot ahead of us did not have a disabled parking permit.

It was still there when we left, too.

Even when we got to the hospital parking lot, most of the disabled parking spots were taken – at least the ones that were closest to the entry. I thought there was one really great spot, but it turned out to be permit parking only.

I dropped my husband off at the entrance, but had to block the access lane to do it. The area in front of the doors was blocked by a handy van, and all the spaces in front and back of it, which are all 10 minute drop off zones, had cars parked in them.

By the time I found a parking spot and came in, my husband was already checked in and in the waiting room at diagnostic imaging. We were only about 15 minutes early at that point.

They got him in about 15 minutes late.

The downside of leaving so early is, he was in quite a lot of pain by then.

As for the scan itself, he was in and out in less than 10 minutes! That included the time needed for them to help him get off the table. He could get on all right, but his back wouldn’t let him get up without assistance.

When we stopped in the lobby so my husband could put his coat on, I checked the time and it was exactly 6pm. It was straight home from there, but the drive took quite a bit longer than usual. With the poor visibility and blowing snow, I was driving about 80-90kmh (50-55 mph) in 100kmh zones (62mph).

I got passed only once, and there was quite a bit of traffic!

What is usually around a 45-50 minute drive ended up taking just over an hour.

But, it’s over and done with. His new doctor will have up to date scans to look at and see how much more his spine has deteriorated since the last scan, a few years ago. Which isn’t even the injury that disabled him, but there’s nothing they have been able to do about the soft tissue damage. Hopefully, when she wants to talk to him about the results, his doctor will be okay with a telephone appointment. Even though the clinic is in the town nearest us, it’s still really painful for him to get to it.

Once at home and heading into the house, I was very happy to see that there were several cats hanging out inside the isolation shelter. Since we can’t see into it unless we are outside, I’m never quite confident that it’s being used. Especially when I look out the bathroom window and see piles of cats smashed together on the cats beds in there. 😄

My brain is still not used to these early sunsets. Even during the drive home, when it just past 7pm, it felt like it should be midnight! Now, I look at my clock and it’s not even 8:30pm yet.

It just feels wrong. 😄

Then, just when I’ll finally be used to it, it’ll be the solstice and the days will start getting longer again. 😄

I can hardly wait!

The Re-Farmer

First snow – sort of – and things went well

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

It seems so odd, having my daughter doing the morning rounds so I can sleep in. 😄

I still wake up at first light, just out of habit, but I at least got another hour or so of sleep in after that. I do miss seeing all the kitties first thing in the morning, though!

Today was my mother’s appointment in the city for eye treatment, and I needed to be on the road by 10:30am. Knowing that we’d be on the road at lunch time, and that it would be hours before we could eat, I made sure to have a late breakfast before heading out.

I was a bit surprised to see actual snow on the ground. I suppose this is technically our first snow.

It was still there, sort of, when I got home. We had so much rain, I wasn’t expecting to see any.

Unfortunately, that rain did cause another problem – it froze the lock on the gate! I lost a few minutes, warming it up so I could unlock it and open the gate. Thankfully, when I work out times to get places, I try to factor in extra time, just for stuff like this!

Also for stuff like stopping for gas. Usually, I would do that before picking up my mother, but I told her when to expect me and the delay had me running later than that, so I went to her place first. We left pretty much right away so I could stop for gas, then continued on.

The drive in went really well. The roads were clear (unlike other parts of the province, where highways were still closed due to icy conditions), traffic went smoothly, there was no construction or accidents or any delays. We actually got to the clinic an hour early!

Which worked out. By the time my mother was checked in and we went to the waiting room, it wasn’t long at all before she was called in for the first part of her appointment, at least 40 minutes early!

The first thing was to check her eye with the eye chart – she couldn’t see even a single letter with her right eye, just dark – then dilate the eye so they could get pictures. After a few minutes to dilate, she was taken to another room for the scan.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to try and get video this time, because it was hard enough just to get a clear still shot. The poor guy kept trying to find a way to get her to focus in one spot and stop moving her eye, but she kept trying to look for something to focus on. How do you focus on something you can’t see? Her eye was darting all over the place. Then she started cranking her head to one side, trying to find something she could see, which put her eye outside the machine’s frame. We both tried to find a way to tell her to just try and look straight ahead to where the thought the green X she couldn’t see was supposed to be, and not move.

He did eventually get the shots he needed, though, and then it was off to a different waiting room. After a while, the doctor swung by and told my mother she could go into the next room, but in the time it took use to get her up and moving with her walker, he was gone. We didn’t know which room she was supposed to go into. So she sat on her walker while we looked around to see if he’d come by again which, unfortunately, put my mother in the way in an intersection of hallways.

We were next to a room with an open door that had the computer monitors up and running, though, and the eye images looked familiar. So I went in and looked around on the screens for a name. Sure enough, it was my mother’s file, so that was the room she was supposed to go into.

I told her this, but she wouldn’t move, because the doctor wasn’t there to tell her to go into there.

We waited a few more minutes until a door in the next room opened. The doctor was there with another patient. He was surprised to see us, so I quickly told him, we didn’t see which room he’d indicated and, while I saw her name on the screen in the one room, my mother was refusing to go in. So he came out and assured her that it was the right space before returning to his patient. He was very apologetic when he came back later. He said he had indicated which room and I told him, we simply missed it. I did actually see his arm wave, but couldn’t tell where he was waving us to.

At this point, he went over the images from the past two visits, plus the new ones, for comparison. He asked how my mother felt and she said, she saw no change. Which is actually a good thing, since it means things are not getting worse. The scans show improvement, but she’s not seeing a change because of the scar tissue. There is nothing that can be done about that.

He gave her the option of not getting the treatment at all today. There is still some blood in her eye, but very little. All they can do is keep it from getting worse. At this stage, if she skipped the treatment, he couldn’t say, one way or the other, if the bleeding would come back or not. She would have to come back for monitoring, but not for a couple of months. At the same time, he didn’t want to put her through the treatment, she didn’t want it.

My mother’s response was, we’re here, so we may as well do it!

Once that was decided, he then took care of the freezing and antibiotic drops, then the freezing injection, which needs 7 minutes before the final injections. While we were waiting, we kept talking, and the doctor was trying to explain again that all he could do right now was try to keep things from getting worse.

Then my mother asked if getting new glasses would help.

*sigh*

There’s two problems with her question. One is, she isn’t understanding that the problem is scar tissue. No prescription lens is going to make a difference for her right eye. Her left eye, maybe, but that’s it. I told her, if she wanted to, she could wear her new glasses, which would make a difference for her left eye, but no glasses will help with her right eye, which the doctor confirmed.

Which leads to the other problem with her question. She’s been refusing to wear her new glasses because they didn’t make her headaches go away. Her macular degeneration had not started when she had her eyes tested and got her new glasses, but it must have started very soon after. My mother simply decided that the problems with her vision were being caused by the new glasses, which she decided was because the eye doctor gave her the wrong prescription – and she’d already re-written her memory about how they treated her when I brought her to pick up the new glasses. She had also been angry about how much the glasses cost, thinking they should still cost as much as glasses did decades ago. Add in that the eye doctor was female, which my mother views as even worse that her being Asian, and my mother was quite ready to blame the eye doctor, even though it’s entirely possible my mother had messed up her own prescription. I was in the room while she was being tested, and I could see that it’s possible she started giving answers because she was tired and not able to actually tell one setting from another, or not giving herself the time to see. The doctor that referred her to this clinic, however, was a male, so in her mind, he would get it right, because males are better at such things than females. 🫤 The specialist treating her is Asian, but he’s male, so that sort of makes up for it, in her mind. 🫤

After the seven minutes where up, the doctor moved on to the next steps. Unfortunately, the doctor was having the same problem the tech was. My mother couldn’t stop moving her eye. Or moving in general. When asked to open her eyes wide, she would raise her eyebrows, but that did nothing to open her eyes any wider. At one point, she moved her eye during an injection, resulting in a scratch. That got the disinfectant drops right away. Then with another injection, he had it all ready and was about to do it when he stopped and left the room. He’d spotted that my mother had managed to breathe, possibly spit on, the freshly exposed needle just before he moved it to her eye. He wasn’t going to take any chances, and got a new needle.

This was the first time the treatment hurt for my mother, and that would be because of the movement during an injection. Every time she blinked her eye after that, she felt pain, even with the freezing.

Besides that, everything went smoothly and quickly. The doctor said for her to come back in 2 or 3 months, but there would be no injection. They would just need to check her eye.

After asking my mother about it, we went with an appointment in three months. Of course, if there is any pain that might suggest a possible infection, she is to come back right away, or if the clinic is closed, to go to a specific ER in the city that can deal with eye issues.

Overall, the whole thing went well and smoothly. My mother didn’t try to get out of the appointment. She seemed to be in good spirits and feeling stronger than I’ve seen her in a while. No sudden changes in behaviour or strange rants. Even while driving, there was only one time when she suddenly screamed because she didn’t like how close she thought I was getting to another vehicle, as I was maneuvering into the disabled parking spot. I had plenty of space, but her exclamation was enough to potentially cause an accident, all on its own. Thankfully, it was in a parking lot, not in the middle of traffic. I had to remind her of my number one rule in the vehicle: no distracting the driver!

Not only did she seem in good spirits and was having one of her good days in behaviour, she actually expressed gratitude and complimented me, without any passive aggressive criticisms at the same time. Which is actually quite out of character for her, most of the time.

I’ll take the good when it happens, and be thankful for it!

After the appointment, it was straight back to her town with only a stop at the gas station to pick up fried chicken and wedges for a very, very late lunch. Plus milk, the only thing she was out of at home! With Meals on Wheels coming by three times a week, her groceries are lasting a lot longer.

While we were having our very late lunch, it was still too early for her to take her supper time medications. She’d gotten a call this morning from the home care scheduler, saying they didn’t have anyone who could come by this morning. They are supposed to come in between 7 and 9 am – and my mom got the call at 9! She’d already gotten up and had them with her breakfast, at 6am. When she had her medication assist before bed last night, she mentioned that she was going into the city today and wasn’t sure if she’d be back in time for the supper medication assist, which the scheduler did have in her notes. In the end, my mother told them not to come in for both remaining visits today. She knew she would be tired, and the timing of their visits have sometimes been disruptive for her. After telling me this, I made sure to get her supper medications ready in the miniature tagine pinch pot I brought for her for her medications. She can see how many pills are in there, and it has an adorable little cover.

As we were talking, however, she noticed something on her table and picked it up – and it turned out to be a half pill from her morning medications! She hadn’t used the little pinch pot first, after taking them out of the blister pack, and put them straight into her mouth. She had dropped one without noticing!

Oops.

At least she did find it again.

I didn’t stay too much longer after that, as I was feeling pretty tired, too. I also left early enough to stop at the post office on the way home. Canada Post is on strike right now, but that doesn’t stop the junk mail from being delivered. 🫤🫤 There did turn out to be a Purolator package waiting for us, though.

When I got home, I had a whole crowd of yard cats waiting for me! It was time for their evening feeding, so I took care of that, while one of my daughters took care of the inside cat feeding.

I tried to do a head count, and I might have counted 36, but they were moving around so much, I may have counted some, twice.

I also found a collar on the sun room floor. Nosy keeps managing to get his off. This time, I spotted a cat I thought might be Collin. After checking his ear for a tattoo, I put the collar on him, instead. He’s the one fixed cat that is the hardest to tell apart from the other white and greys! Nosy and Stinky at least have distinctive markings.

The Cat Lady had ordered some kibble for us from Amazon, but it got delivered to her place instead, for some reason. We missed being able to meet up during my trip to pick up kibble after my daughter’s doctor visit yesterday, so I messaged her about possibly meeting tomorrow. She’ll see what her schedule is like and message me back in the morning.

All in all, everything went really well today. We’ll just need to monitor my mother in regards to how her eye is feeling.

I like it when things are nice and smooth and boring. I’m at a stage in my life where the less excitement there is, the better! 😄😄

I’m also really appreciating our lack of snow right now. I’ve got a lot of driving around to do in the last week of November and the first week of December, between medical appointments and stock up shopping trips. I don’t mind the colder temperatures we’re going to be getting. I just want the roads to stay clear! Looking at the long range forecasts, into December, it’s almost looking as if we’ll be getting a green Christmas! When we lived in the city, we had quite a few of those, even though we lived further north than we do now. Granted, we also would get snow in June or July, so it’s a trade off I’m okay with! 😄 Still, this old body could do without snow for the rest of my life, if I could manage it! 😄

Ah, well. It is what it is! I’m just going to be thankful for what we have now. 😊😊

The Re-Farmer

Everything is all right

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, I’m happy to say that my daughter’s visit to the doctor today went well, and it’s nothing serious. The dizziness was caused by her inner ear.

She also had high blood pressure, though once I heard her numbers, I think it is likely to be “white coat syndrome”. She got a prescription, but we won’t be able to fill it for a while. Once we got home, my husband called the pharmacy to ask how much it was, as our daughters are not covered by his insurance. They couldn’t say, exactly, because it’s currently unavailable, and they don’t know when it will be available again. Still, the approximate cost they were able to give us is well within our prescription budget.

Since we were a walk in, my daughter was seen in between appointments, so we ended up waiting about 2 1/2 hours, give or take a few minutes. We did get to see a new doctor we’d heard excellent reviews for, who also happens to be open for new patients. I’d had it suggested that we switch my mother to this new doctor, since she doesn’t like her current one, because she’s black, female and has a strong accent. I’ve advised against switching doctors because she’s in the middle of trying to get into long term care or assisted living, and changing doctors would set things back.

It turns out, my mother wouldn’t like this doctor, anyhow. She’s black, female and has a strong accent. It just happens to be a British accent instead of a Nigerian one. 😄😄

My daughter, however, really likes her. She listened to what my daughter had to say, didn’t jump to conclusions or make assumptions, and actually took her seriously. After examining her to try and find a cause of the dizziness, which involved sitting my daughter on the edge of the examination table, then flinging her down onto her side abruptly, it was determined that it’s an inner ear problem. My daughter was written up for blood work, and there’s a lab just down the hall from the clinic, so that got done as soon as we booked a follow up appointment in two weeks. This will be to both get the test results and for an official “meet and greet”, so that this doctor will officially be my daughter’s doctor.

In two weeks, I’ve got an appointment for another field of vision test. The eye clinic is just a few blocks away from the medical clinic, and my appointment is in the afternoon. My daughter has to come along to drive me home, since my eyes will be dilated – hopefully, her dizziness will not be an issue by then! So we booked for the same morning.

Unfortunately, the only morning appointment they had was at 8:45. Which means we need to be on the road by at least 7:30, if not earlier. It’ll be a long day, but I don’t mind. My daughter and I can hang out together and have a lunch date in between appointments.

The town we had to go to is most of the way to the small city with the Walmart we go to, in between the big city shopping trips. My daughter felt well enough to go there, instead of figuring out where to find cheap kibble in the town we were in. As we were driving, she read from the printouts she got, which was much funnier than they probably intended.

The short version:

What is the cause? It could be this, it could be that, or it could be nothing at all. We don’t know.

What is the treatment? do this exercise that involves sitting on the side of the bed, then flinging yourself bodily down onto your side abruptly, several times. Repeat the process three times a day.

Why does this treatment work? we have no idea. It just does.

We found that incredibly funny. Especially the “exercise” instructions.

When we got to the Walmart, my daughter stayed in the truck while I did the shopping, as she got more dizzy spells along the way. We didn’t need much, so it wasn’t long before we were on our way home again.

During the drive home, though, we got a message from my husband. He found broken glass on the floor in my office/bedroom, where there is food for the cats. It turned out that the cats had knocked over a glass jar I had on my window sill, filled with pretty beach rocks. Thankfully, the glass broke but didn’t shatter into a million pieces, like some types of glass does. Still, the cat food in the tray had to be thrown out, and I’m probably going to be finding beach rocks on my floor for days!

Meanwhile, tomorrow, I am off again to take my mother for her eye treatment. I called and left a message for her, and she just called back. She didn’t try to get out of it at all, which was good.

What was not good was finding out she had visitors. Our vandal and his wife. Apparently, he’s still getting chemo or something. He behaves when his wife is with him, but after hearing the message he left at my brother’s cell number, she seems to finally understand that when there are other people around, it’s the “nice” him, but those phone calls are the real him.

She still can’t bring herself to tell him to not come around anymore. She told me she tried to recommend he was a religious program she enjoys every morning, and talk to him about turning to God. Apparently, he has some pretty nasty things to say about the show she watches, even with his wife there, so she was not happy.

I do hope the process for getting my mother into long term care or assisted living happens soon. The faster she can move out of where she is, the sooner we can make sure he can’t show up at her place anymore. Hopefully, we can even keep him from finding out where she ended up living but, if nothing else, we’d be able to tell the staff that he’s not allowed to see her for security reasons.

I so wish we didn’t have to do this. We used to be so close. The person he used to be, however, is gone.

Mental illness can be very cruel. Especially if it’s a type where a person can hide it and be “normal”, even from their own spouses.

It is what it is, though. We can only work with the hand we’re dealt with.

As for tomorrow, my mother and I have worked out our schedule, and what time we have to be on the road for. The high for tomorrow is supposed to be below freezing, but no rain or snow, so the roads should be clear.

It’s going to be a long day away from home, though.

I’ll have to remind my family to keep checking my office/bedroom to make sure the cats aren’t destroying it while I’m gone!

🫤🫤

The Re-Farmer

Change of plans

/ Re-Farmer / 10 Comments

My daughter came to me last night with some concerns over strange and severe dizzy spells.

Of course, my plans got changed.

We are now sitting at the nearest walk in clinic, a 45 minute drive away.  We’ve been waiting for almost anout 1 1/2 hours, now.

On the plus side, the doctor she will be seeing is accepting new patients.  Depending on how things go, she may later book an official meet and greet appointment.   I’ve heard good things about this doctor.

I still need to pick up more kibble and a few groceries.  Where we do that will depend on how things go here, and how my daughter is feeling.

I’m just really glad the weather and road conditions are good.  Other parts of the province got hit with a storm white out conditions, still ongoing this morning.   We are currently clear, and the highways are dry.

We shall see how the day goes!

The Re-Farmer

What an awesome day!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

My plans for today were mostly thrown out the window. I completely forgot that today was Saturday.

We had a date this afternoon!

Which worked out, since it turned out to be a damp, then rainy day. So much for two days without rain that I could have used to get work done outside!

We did still have time to get a few things done in the morning, which is when we had another surprise.

My brother called to let us know he was on his way! The last time they were out here, he was not able to finish unloading a trailer. He needed to get that done before snow arrived, and snow was already hitting some cities to the south west of us.

My daughter and I headed outside to get the truck ready and I went to open the gate for him. I was in the process of opening it when he drove up. Talk about perfect timing!

While my daughter fired up the compressor, topped up the tires on the truck, then pumped up the flat on my mother’s car, my brother and I went to check out the new expeller. He was so thrilled and relieved that they came out before winter. He was afraid we might get ghosted, like the other company we’d originally thought to go with, partly because they were closer. That may have been the problem, as our vandal does visit the town they are in, and we’re pretty sure he would have known at least someone who worked there. As with other businesses to the North of us that we’ve tried to hire, they just stopped responding to our calls. The company that did the job is South of us, and our vandal just doesn’t hang out in that area.

We can’t prove this, of course, and it’s entirely possible the other company ghosted us for some other reason, but it is still the most likely reason. It has simply happened too often, and always with companies in towns our vandal spends a lot of time in, and knows a lot of people in.

As my brother and I looked over the work done, I learned a few things that I did not remember from when the system was originally installed. For example, the trench that was dug was done by my father, using a claw excavator. I have no memory of that! I only remember the trench, already dug, from where it was by the house and the new well.

Part way through the job, the transmission on the claw excavator gave out. They ended up having to drag it into position, my dad would dig out a section, then they’d drag it into the next position so he could dig out the next section, until it was finally done!

That must have been insane – but, you do what you can with the tools you have!

That sounds like a rather familiar situation… 😄

I also learned that the cattle fountain behind the barn was installed later, not at the same time as everything else.

After we checked it all out, my brother got to work, while I joined my daughter. She was done with the truck, so I moved that into the yard, so it would be closer for my husband. Our date this afternoon was to meet his father in town – and be introduced to his girlfriend! My older daughter was not going to be able to come with us, so we only needed to get one back seat ready in the cab. Then we moved things out so that we could put my husband’s walker on the other side, rather than into the truck box.

At one point, my brother came over with some stuff they wanted to pass on to us, including a case of spice bottles! They’d bought them for their own use and ended up not needing them all, so there was an entire unopened case, plus one, they passed on to us. They thought we might be able to use them to store seeds in, and they are absolutely right. There are so many, we’ll be able to use them for our herbs and spices, too, and have lots left over!

He also got to check out how we have the isolation shelter set up for the winter. The last time he saw it, it was still sitting out near the well cap. He also thought that the new location was a much better spot.

So do the kitties!

The first photo above is the first time I’ve been able to get both Kohl and Rabi in the same shot in months! 😂

Once the truck was ready, I did a few things around the yard, like putting away the last garden hose and covering the septic tank with the insulated tarp. I was never able to hose down the other side of it, but that was really just to remove damp leaves that were stuck to it, rather than having to actually clean it. The big hose that my brother lent us, in case we needed to divert the septic while the new expeller was being installed, got tucked away into the barn. The garden tools, wagon and wheel barrow got put away, too. I don’t expect we’ll be able to do much more in the garden beds. It would be good if we can – anything done now is one less job that needs to be done in the spring – but there is nothing essential. If we do get another nice, dry day, it’ll be chain saw time to get that dead spruce and the crab apple tree it fell on, cleared. That could be left until spring, if we have to, but I’d rather get it done before the snow flies. Weather willing!

My brother was still here when it was time for us to head out. He was really taking advantage of being able to come out, to do as much as he could. I don’t expect he’ll be able to move the farm equipment to where he intends to store them more permanently before the snow hits, but we’ll see.

Before leaving, my daughter made sure to feed the outside cats and get them away from the truck, so I could safely drive it out of the yard. 😁

It had been arranged that we would meet at the new Dairy Queen in town. That last time my FIL was in the area, that lot had a garage on it, and that burned down years ago!

We got there early and got some snacks and drinks while we waited.

Then it started to rain.

They ended up arriving late, but got there safe and sound. Not so much because of the rain, it turned out, but because my FIL wanted to take the “scenic” route – a shorter and more direct route, but one that goes through a number of small towns, so it’s slower. He hadn’t seen the area in years, either, so his “adopted” daughter (my SIL’s closest childhood friend) was happy to oblige.

We then had introductions and an absolutely grand visit. My FIL’s new girlfriend is awesome, and they are both so happy! They’re like a couple of teenagers in love. 😊 Like my FIL, she is widowed, and neither ever expected to find love again, this late in their lives. My late MIL would definitely approve.

We ended up visiting for almost two hours! Thankfully, it was between the lunch and supper rushes, so we were never taking up needed table space. Plus, we would get more food every now and then, too.

The down side is, because we were there early and they got there late, we were there for almost three hours in total.

Which was really too much for my husband. Not that he was going to show any sort of discomfort in front of his father. He hasn’t seen his dad in so long, and this was a rare opportunity. Neither of them are able bodied, though my FIL has improved his own mobility. Largely due to the extra exercise he gets, using his walker to get to his girlfriend’s apartment (they live in the same assisted living complex). He’s under orders from his physical therapist: she doesn’t go to his place, he goes to hers! Even the health care aid that helps him put his socks on in the morning has commented that his legs are getting noticeably more muscular!

My husband, on the other hand, is in a very different situation, and by the time we were heading out, he was having trouble standing up straight. Once we got home, he immediately got out the TENS machine, and he is currently wired up and getting zapped. He’s going to really pay for this outing, tomorrow, but he says it was worth it to be able to see his father.

Which made our day quadruple awesome. We got to see my brother, my FIL, my husband’s “sister”, and finally meet the woman that has made my FIL so happy, all in one day.

We are truly blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.

The Re-Farmer

Not today

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, I’m glad I got as much done yesterday as I did, but today I’m paying for it!

My plans for outside, today?

Not going to happen.

Oh, I did my morning rounds, as usual, and got to make some kitties very happy.

The full belly kittens especially enjoy the isolation shelter, with its new, donated beds.

There is one thing I need to figure out about the isolation shelter, for times like this, when no cats are being isolated. I specifically made the door to also be a ramp, so they can go in and out freely. Where it’s sitting now, though, that big, wide opening is facing directly south. Which is great for passive solar heat through the windows, and even the plastic wrapped around the bottom.

Not so great for wind and snow.

That’s going to blow right into the opening.

I’ve considered getting some scrap carpet or something and attaching it above the opening on the inside, where it still allow for the ramp door to be closed, with the carpet cut into strips so they can easily push through. That’s what’s over the opening into the cat house and it works very well, though it does need replacing. The cat house, however, has an added entryway to it. After my brother built it for his dogs, he found he had this same problem with wind and snow getting into the original entrance. So he made an addition. The addition created a somewhat sheltered corner next to one of the windows, which is where the new entry is, while the original entry is at the far end of the addition. Between the new angle and the shelter of the corner, the carpet strips at the opening (a double layer of carpet with the strips cut so that the slits overlap the strips) and the distance to the main entry, very little wind can get in, and virtually no snow at all.

That’s not really an option for the isolation shelter, since it needs to be mobile. If the patio blocks were not so uneven, we could simply rotate it 45 degrees, and that alone would mostly solve the problem. Uneven patio blocks aside, that would also eliminate a lot of the passive solar heat, plus we’d have to change up how the cords for the heated water bowl and heat lamp are, so we could still plug it in.

Basically, we need a wind break and a roof over the opening. It’s just a matter of figuring out the best way to do that, using the materials we have on hand. It may be something as simple as leaning something against the shelter that’s long enough and wide enough, and securing it enough that it won’t blow away.

We’ll figure it out.

After completing my rounds, I prepared a shaker container with the native wildflower seeds mix and some potting soil, giving it a thorough shake to get the seeds well mixed in with the potting soil. Once the insulated tarp that’s been laying on the ground all summer is moved aside, I planned to loosen the soil beneath with the landscaping rake, then scattering the seed mix over it.

Well, not today, it turns out.

Before doing that, I went in for breakfast and to let things warm up at least a little more – our high for today is only supposed to be 5C/41F, and we’re supposed to be rainy. Oh, they’re now saying, light rain and snow. As I write this, it’s before noon, a fog has rolled in, but no rain, so far. The tail end of a system that is passing north of us isn’t expect to hit until about 3pm.

So I sat at my computer to watch some videos while having breakfast, then worked a bit on the second of six Singlade balls I’m making for this year’s Christmas decorations.

Then I got up to go to the bathroom and discovered my entire body had basically seized up.

Every joint in my body seemed to have stiffened up. My husband had been in the room with me at the time, and I was hobbling so badly he offered to bring me a cane.

I used the walls, instead.

I’m having a harder time moving around than he is right now, and he’s the one that’s officially broken!

Well… it is Sunday. I guess this is God’s way of making sure I get my day of rest! 😄😁

This time of year is so hard on my osteoarthritis. It’s frustrating, because I can do so well on some days, and then WHAM, I can barely move.

I guess this will be a good day for pain killers, hot tea, watching videos and making Singlade.

Lord knows, I’m not going to be able to do much else today.

Now… about those pain killers…

The Re-Farmer

“You’re mother is dying.”

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

No.

No, she isn’t.

But that’s what she told me when I got a call from her this morning.

This is starting to become a common refrain, unfortunately.

My schedule for today included heading to my mother’s nice and early, so I could drive her to the city. She had an afternoon appointment for another eye injection *shudder* to try and stop the bleeding of her wet macular degeneration and maybe – just maybe – improve her vision in that eye.

I tried to get more information about what was going on, but just got repeats of her usual. Her breathing. She only got 2 hours of sleep, and it’s because of her pills (it’s not because of her pills). Her chest pains (acid reflux). Pain in general. Even her incontinence. She’s convinced she is dying.

On the one hand, I get it. I totally get it! She feels like crap, and the idea of driving 1 1/2 hours to an appointment that would take at least an hour, then another 1 1/2 hours drive back, would seem overwhelming.

She’s 93 years old with busted up knees.

Yeah, I get it.

On the other hand, she has no understanding of just how good she is doing. I mean, she’s really amazing. At this age, her sister was already in the nursing home, being shuttled around in a wheelchair, and falling deep into dementia for several years. There are people far younger than her that are doing far worse.

Plus, canceling and appointment like this at the last minute is a big deal. There is only one place that does these treatments, and if she wants to retain any vision in that eye (she did say she was noticing an improvement), she needs these treatments.

Her response was, what does it matter, if she’s going to die, anyway?

She tried to guilt me, saying that I didn’t believe her. I told her, it’s not that I don’t believe her, in how she feels. I’m trying to understand why she thinks she’s dying. Because, really, there is nothing new in her complaints. That’s what I keep trying to get to. What is happening that’s different, that’s convincing her she’s about to die any at any minute.

In the end, she said she wasn’t going to say anymore and was going to say good bye, then she hung up.

At which point, I messaged my brother and his wife to let them know the situation. They are so busy right now, it’s the last thing they need to deal with, but they needed to know.

In the end, I decided that I would go to my mother’s place, anyways, and talk to her in person. If she still refused to go, I would phone the clinic and cancel the appointment from her place.

I meant to leave early, but so many cats were following me to the car, I had to ask one of my daughters to very noisily feed them.

Yes, they’d already been fed.

Including sweet Gouda. What a lovely kitty he is!

It was Syndol that would not stop following me to the car. I kept moving him away, and he kept coming back. I finally had to carry him all the way to the house, where he finally noticed the kibble and went to eat.

So much for leaving early, but I was at least on the road at the time I was intending to be.

While I was driving, my phone started ringing. I couldn’t answer, of course, but I’d told my brother that I would be on the road, and I figured it might be home.

It was.

When he couldn’t reach my by phone, he sent a quick message. He’d phoned her, they had a good talk, and she will go. He called her in between meetings at work, so he had to be brief. By the time I parked and could check messages, my SIL added that my brother had finally told our mother that they were selling their place, just so I would be aware.

So when I got to my mother’s apartment, she was up and ready and waiting.

She then launched into giving me all sorts of instructions on what to do and where to find things when she died. I honestly think she expected to die during the drive in.

She did mention my brother’s call, but as she was giving me instructions, including about her finances, she brought up my brother, and how he has the farm, but he wants her money, too. I sold her, the only person that wants her money is our vandal, and reminded her of the legal steps my brother had taken to protect her from our vandal. She just scoffed, then said that my sister was the only one who didn’t care about my mother’s money.

Which is weird, but she does like to try and play us against each other.

I’d worked out a time when we had to be on the road by, to get to her appointment, and we ended up leaving almost 20 minutes earlier.

She did walk very slowly to the car, lots of panting and pausing. It was a struggle for her to get into the car, and then she sat there, panting.

She really did play it up.

Her struggle to get into the car was very genuine, though. If we were using the truck, I probably would have had to practically pick her up to help her in!

She made a comment about her breathing as I was getting in, but then pretty much stopped the act at that point.

As we were driving, she started telling me things like, she’d talked to some of her neighbours in her building, and one of them had the same thing she did (at least that’s how my mother understood it), she didn’t go anything, and it went away. Then my mother told me about a Jehovah’s Witness that used to come visit (how many decades ago was this???) who talked about losing vision until she prayed and God healed her, and her vision had been fine ever since. She also told me about how, years ago (how many years?) she remember she had black spots floating around in her vision. She never went to the doctor, never did anything different, and they went away.

All I could say, really, was that these are all different things. That’s great for them, but that has nothing to do with you’re specific situation.

Also, for someone who was complaining about getting only a couple of hours sleep, she was very talkative and alert. I suggested she could try napping during the drive, but she wanted to enjoy the scenery…

Anyhow.

She told me she’d gone to bed at around 11, woke at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter what, and it was because of her pills. I told her, we know it’s not the pills. It could be anything. Even just busy brain or stress. Oh, but you don’t know what I’ve lived through…

???

Eventually, she brought up about my brother selling their property, and that they were selling it privately, not through an agency.

I’m not sure what reaction she expected from that.

I reminded her, I had told her, my brother is preparing for retirement.

She did bring up about him not selling the farm – the property we are on – and I told her, he can’t sell it. That was part of my father’s will.

She dropped that, too.

Overall, though, the conversation during the drive actually went pretty well. She kept commenting on the traffic. She still seems to think traffic should be like when she and my father lived in the city until the mid 60’s.

I’m glad we left as early as we did, though. It’s construction season.

If we’d left when I originally planned, we should have arrived about half an hour early. Leaving when we did, we should have arrived as much as 45 minutes early.

We got there 10 minutes before her appointment.

They took her in almost immediatley.

The next while spent getting her eye dilated while the tech tried to get images and video of it.

Normally, during these tests, they ask you to focus on a green X, or a picture of a house, or some such thing, in the middle of the device over the eye they are looking at.

With macular degeneration, that’s not possible. She can’t see the middle of anything.

So the tech instead set up a tiny green light on an adjustable arm in front of her left eye, and asked my mother to try and focus on that.

My mother kept getting distracted.

What do you mean a green light? It’s white?

There’s a dark spot in the middle.

The light isn’t on…

After a number of attempts to get video, I finally started to explain, they just needed her to look at that spot. It didn’t matter what the colour was, or anything else. It’s the location she needs to focus on.

I think she finally understood that, but by then, the tech was done!

She was then sent to a waiting room before the next stage, but the doctor requested one more image. He needed a specific location photographed, so he could compare with an image taken last time.

That, at least, was quick!

We do have good news.

The bleeding in her eye seems to have stopped. There is still a bit of blood in there, but mostly there is scar tissue right in the middle of her vision.

Then he asked her if she wanted to continue treatment!

She deferred making a decisions (which is her usual way), wanting him to make the decision for her. Which he couldn’t do, of course. He did say he would recommend still getting the treatments since, if they are stopped now, the bleeding might resume. I finally said we should at least do a treatment today, and we decide about further treatment later.

Meanwhile, my mother launched into how she’d had these black spots floating in her eyes, (I told her, this is not the same thing, and the doctor repeated that) and they went away on their own, etc. The doctor told her, this is not going to go away on its own.

She dropped the subject.

So they went ahead with the treatment, with a light freezing of the eye, adding antiobiotic drops, and finally the main freezing. That one needed 7 minutes, and my mother was asked to hold a tissue over her eye and just relax for a while.

As we were waiting for the freezing, the doctor and the tech – plus a third person that was in training – started looking at other files. They spoke quietly, but I could hear bits and pieces, and could see some of the images they were looking at.

All I can say is…

My mother is doing really great! She is there at a time when she can actually get treated, and the damage is relatively mild. At one point, I could hear them lamenting that there was absolutely nothing they could do to help one particular patient. She had simply waited too long to get checked. As quiet as they spoke, I could still hear the pain in their voices.

The doctor had a timer going, so they were soon back working on my mother. She got her injection, and was reminded that she will have redness, which is normal, but if there’s any pain, she is to come back right away.

As for the next treatments, he told her she no longer needs to come back in 4 weeks, but maybe 4 or 5 weeks. I checked my calendar and saw that my husband is rebooked for his CT Scan in 5 weeks, so it would have to be 4 weeks for my mother.

The doctor was very understanding about the long drive in, and that the next treatment would be winter driving. There is simply no other clinic like this that’s closer. One is planned for the town we are closest to, but that’s all it is at this point – plans.

Once he was done, that was it. We just needed to book the next appointment, then go.

By that point, we were both hungry – my mother hadn’t even eaten breakfast! – but neither of us were up to trying to find a place to eat in the city. We talked about where to go in her town and she wasn’t enthusiastic about her choices. Then I suggested we stop at the gas station where I could pick up her favourite fried chicken and wedges.

She was quite excited over that idea!

So we had a good drive home – traffic was a lot lighter, and we were no longer in any construction zones.

I picked up the food and got her home. She was pretty famished by then! I got enough that she could have another meal out of it later.

After that, there were a few things she needed help with. One was a letter from the government that she didn’t understand. Another was helping her write out a check to pay for her ambulance bill, from her trip to the ER a month or two ago. It didn’t come with a return envelope, though – they expect people to pay via etransfer, credit or debit. She didn’t have a suitable envelope, so I ended up taking that home to get ready to mail, which I will do tomorrow.

As we were talking, she mentioned that she needed her laundry done. She hasn’t been up to doing it herself, and it’s been piling up. She said she hoped to “hire” my sister to do it – but my sister and her husband are coming home from out of province tomorrow, and tomorrow is my mother’s laundry day on the building’s schedule.

I also noticed, her fridge was looking empty.

But she never asked me for help. I even asked if she needed shopping, but she said the only thing she needed was milk.

Okay…

That was it!

I left soon after. I’ve got her check ready to mail and have my own parcel to pick up at the post office.

I really, really need to get more work done outside. Tomorrow was going to be my first day in quite a long time where I didn’t need to go anywhere, and could get back to it.

*sigh*

I’ve just arranged to go over to my mother’s tomorrow, to do her laundry and, if she puts a list together for me, her grocery shopping, too.

The long range forecast has changed, again. The snow I was seeing in the beginning of November seems to have gone away for the most part. We’ll even have some warmish days. If the weather holds, I should still be able to get things done.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, we’ve had no word from the garage about the truck, which means no one has had a chance to look at it yet.

I also had a chance to talk to my brother this evening, and got to hear the rest of how his call with her went. He had so little time to make the call, he basically just told her, go to the appointment, and that I was already on my way to get her. When he mentioned that yes, they are selling their property, she launched into her usual lecture about how the value of land only ever goes up, etc. He just let it slide and had to tell her, he needed to get back to work.

When I talked to him this evening, it was after he’d had a very long day at work (he starts at 5am), and was at the property, packing up shed contents. They’ll be coming out here this weekend with the stuff they are keeping, but they are also sending stuff to auction.

It’s a huge job, that’s for sure!

So we will be at least seeing my brother and their friend on the weekend, with trailer loads. I honestly don’t know where he’s going to be putting things at this point! Most of the sheds here can’t be used anymore.

I’m sure he’s got a plan, though. He always does!

So that’s been my day today.

How was yours? 😁😁

The Re-Farmer