Medical

A little friend, and change of (medical) plans

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While picking cucalmelons this morning, I found a little friend!

We’ve been seeing LOTS of frogs about this size, every time we to go through the garden beds. Usually, they hop off too quickly for me to get photos, but this one didn’t move!

He was even okay with the cucamelon leaves being pulled aside.

I am very happy to see so many frogs in our garden beds. I’m sure they’re doing a great job of eating up things that would be eating our vegetables!

On a less cheerful note, the original plan for today had to change. This was the day I was supposed to bring my husband into the city for an appointment at the cardiac clinic. They want to discuss the possibility of implanting a defibrillator in him.

Unfortunately, about a week ago, my husband discovered cats had peed under his hospital bed, and under the small table with the mini fridge he keeps some of his medications in. He cleaned it up himself, rather than asking any of us to do it.

He still hasn’t completely recovered.

When his pain levels didn’t improve by Monday, he called the cardiac clinic about his appointment. The letter he received said to expect to be there for at least 2 hours. He explained his situation. The choices were to either cancel the appointment, or they could find some way to accommodate his pain levels and disability.

The appointment got cancelled.

They way he put it, the response was along the lines of, how dare he mess with their system.

They will send another letter with a new appointment (I find it interesting that they make these appointments with zero input from patients), and after he gets the new letter, he can talk to them about accommodations. Of course, he has no way of knowing if he’ll have a good day or a bad day – or even a good week or a bad week – that far in advance. That’s why he was stuck phoning them only about 48 hours before today’s appointment. No matter; even if he’s having a good day, being able to lie down on a stretcher of something would probably be needed, just after such a long drive.

I understand why the province has a single cardiac clinic in a central location. It is probably much more efficient, and allows for things like better access to equipment. The problem is, like almost all Canadian provinces, we are geographically huge, and not everyone lives in or near this particular city. We’re just an hour away from the city (though it can take another half hour to reach the clinic, depending on traffic), and it’s difficult enough. I can’t imagine living in one of the fly-in communities and needing cardiac care. Sure, the small communities don’t have the population base to warrant their own cardiac clinics, but there are large towns and other cities that could serve these more remote communities.

The fact that it’s such and inconvenience for them to accommodate my husband’s disability is also frustrating. They’re in a hospital, for crying out loud. And with so many hospitals cancelling care to make room for all the pandemic hospitalizations that never materialized, there are plenty of stretchers and beds available that could be used for someone like my husband, without having to prearrange it weeks in advance.

Another unfortunate thing with my husband is that his pain levels have forced him to cancel a number of appointments. He has also done things like walked out after being forced to wait well past his appointment time, due to pain caused by the wait itself, and basically has stood up for himself. He is likely now considered a “problem” patient. I don’t think they realize that, when it comes to his list of health problems, his recently developed heart condition is actually not at the top of the list. Not even close. With everything else going on, this new development doesn’t even phase him, and certainly doesn’t frighten him, as it probably more typical. His pain needs to be gotten under control first. Some of his other health problems are caused by the pain itself, and will improve on their own, accordingly. They have not been able to figure out why his heart failure developed in the first place, and we’re pretty sure it has more to do with the large number of medications he is on, and has been for such a long time, than anything else. We already know that there is no surgery or treatment that can “fix” the physical source of his disability, and it will continue to cause further degradation of his spine. The only real thing that can be done is treat the pain. That’s the foundational thing. Without that being addressed, treating his other problems are little more than stop-gap motions.

This has been explained at heart clinic appointments a few times. I’ve watched notes get taken for his file, that the whole team looks at. There is no reason for them to not be aware of his disability, and what that means for his appointments. Even the fact that we have to drive so far and the affect that has on his pain levels has been duly noted.

Yet when he tries to address this with them, he’s made to feel like he’s inconveniencing them somehow?

Not impressed.

Well, next week he has his first appointment with the pain clinic. Hopefully, that will get the ball rolling on more effective treatment.

The Re-Farmer

Melting

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

It was a hot day to be taking my mother for her medical appointment in a van with no air conditioning!

It was already cooling down when I took the above screencap. 28C/82F, with the humidex bringing it to 35C/95F From the weather radar, I don’t expect to get that predicted thunderstorm; it appears to be moving to the north of us. I hope we’ll at least get some rain. It’s been a challenge to keep the garden beds watered. At least I haven’t needed to mow the lawn in a while. :-D

While driving my mother to her appointment, she actually asked me to open the windows more, even though we were at highway speeds. Normally, she’s asking me to close them because of the wind! Well, hopefully we’ll have her car back next week. I could see she was really struggling to get into our van. She’s so tiny! :-D

Her appointment went well. She is frustratingly healthy. All her tests came back excellent. She has obvious issues with arthritis, which there’s really nothing more she can do about, and problems with her knees. She could get surgery to fix those but, considering she won’t even wear her knee brace, there is significant doubt she would keep up with the post surgical requirements, so it didn’t even come up. Her major concern is with her “heart”. By which she means her breathing. But only sometimes, and only in the morning, when she sometimes wakes up gasping for air. The doctor suggested she try sleeping upright, to relieve pressure on her chest from certain generously proportioned parts of her anatomy. I mentioned my siblings and I have discussed getting her a sleep chair, and he said he thought that would help her a lot. He also suggested we try putting something under her mattress to elevate it. I figure we can try that for a few weeks, then assess how it helps or not. She might actually do well with a hospital bed, like my husband’s, which would allow her to lower the whole thing to get in and out easier, too.

He will also be referring her to a geriatric team to assess her. Or an “elder care team”, as he put it. She still didn’t quite understand what he meant, so when we were talking about it later, I explained to her about how some doctors specialized in helping older people, with their physical and mental needs that are different from younger people. Once she understood, she was quite excited about that, saying that yes, she needs that!

Since I was driving her around anyhow, I also helped her get some grocery shopping done, and then we had a very late lunch – in a nice, air conditioned restaurant!

All in all, it went really well, and she was on much better behavior than usual. She was having one of her good days, so it made a huge difference.

After I got home and updated my siblings on how things went, I went to do my evening rounds a bit earlier. The girls had already watered the garden beds. I tried weeding around the beets a bit, but so many of the leaves have been eaten by deer, I don’t know if I should even bother. I’d mentioned this problem to my mother, and she decided that meant we needed a dog. A dog will keep the deer away! I wish I’d remembered to mention that my sister has a dog, and they still had to fence their garden to keep the deer out. And bears, but that’s a problem we, at least, don’t have! :-D

With the bird feeder painted and done, the girls are still doing coats of paint on both sides of the screened window frame for the old basement. Today, I flipped the picnic table and scrubbed the bottoms of the legs clean of dirt, so that we can apply the spray rubber on the ends. I also cleaned a rain barrel I’ve moved near the squash beds, around the cracks it has in one area. I was going to look for some sort of silicon caulking or something to patch the cracks when I realized the spray rubber would actually be better. The application will wait until tomorrow. According to the instructions on the can, the weather we’re predicted to have will affect how well it works. The 14 day forecast predicts continued high temperatures, but no rain, so that will be a good time to start applying layers of this stuff. Meanwhile I want to make some sort of screen cover for this rain barrel, plus the one set up by the house, to keep debris and critters out. I found a bird downed in the one by the house once already – I’m guessing it flew into a sun room window, knocked itself out, then fell into the barrel. :-( Once I have a cover made, and the cracks coated, I will keep the one barrel filled so that we can use ambient temperature water on the squash, instead of cold well water. If we don’t get rain tonight, I’ll likely be filling the rain barrel by the house to warm up, too.

In the long term, I want to get some large tanks like this.

Image source.

They are sometimes available from salvage places for really low prices, and would be ideal for when we plant anything further from the house.

That, however may be a few more years into the future!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

More deer damage, and a medical update

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

We had a really hot day today, so when things cooled down enough, I went out to water the garden plots and sunflowers.

Which is when I found this.

All the leaves on one side of this one have been eaten!

This is the first of the large sunflowers that has had this kind of damage. :-( At least the top didn’t get chomped off.

One of the more recently chomped smaller ones is showing signs of recovery.

It also had a friend!

We’ve got a lot of grasshoppers and locusts this year, but this is the first green one like this that I’ve seen. :-)

When I was done and dragging the hose back to the house, I found Creamsicle napping on top of the straw bale. :-) My coming close for a picture woke him up…

I caught him mid stretch. :-D

Meanwhile…

Today, my husband and I had our doctor appointments that we should have had back in March. They were supposed to be physicals, but the doctor wasn’t expecting that. Which is when I found out he does physicals in the mornings, when, as he put it, his mind it still fresh. Which was not a problem, since we had lots to catch up on. He hasn’t seen my husband since December, and has seen me only while I was accompanying my mother.

Us all having the same doctor is coming in handy.

Before doing a full physical, he wanted us both to get fasting bloodwork done. For my husband’s part of the appointment, we updated the doctor on his upcoming visit with the pain clinic. Even though he hasn’t seen my husband in more than 6 months, he remembered that we’d already been waiting for almost 2 years, so he was a bit shocked that this was going to be a first visit. We also told him about the appointment at the cardiac clinic to discuss my husband getting a defibrillator implanted. He had questions about that. Mostly, why does my husband suddenly have such a low ejection fraction? It turns out that the cardiac clinic has not been sending any files to our doctor, so he had nothing. He still has nothing, really, because the cardiac clinic has not been able to find why my husband’s ejection fraction is so low, and are openly perplexed by him. The doctor has requested for us to remind the clinic to send the files to him, so he can see what’s going on. Same with the pain clinic, when the time comes.

In our previous province, all medical files were electronic, and could be accessed by any authorized doctor. So my husband could go from his GP to the specialists at the pain clinic (all 4 or 5 of them that were assigned to his case), to any other specialist, and they would all have access to the same information. Here, there is no connectivity. When our previous doctor suddenly moved out of province, we had to pay to have our files sent to the new clinic. A GP can access the electronic files at their own clinic, but not the files at the heart clinic or the pain clinic. They all have to send their files to each other, as needed. All of the specialty clinics should be sending everything back to the primary caregiver every time, so that at least that one person has all the information. Why that isn’t happening for my husband, we don’t know, but the doctor was not happy with having so much information missing.

We spent some time talking about my husband’s medications, and the problems he’s been having getting refills for the painkillers. So that’s been updated but, after we get the bloodwork done, he wants to look at switching my husband to morphine, and focus on pain management a lot more. There’s one medication in particular that he was wondering why my husband is on at all, and he just didn’t know anymore. I suspect the total number of prescriptions my husband is on will be reduced.

I’m happy to see him being pro-active about it. The previous doctor didn’t want to change anything until after my husband was seen by the pain clinic, but that took so long, the doctor moved out of province before that could happen!

My own part of the appointment was short. I have only one prescription, and I’ll see him again after my bloodwork is done. We ended up chatting a bit about my mother, since I’ll be bringing her back to see him tomorrow.

As for our follow up appointments, he started to ask if we could book them in the mornings when I mentioned I’d asked for the afternoon, because of the drive. When he realized how far away we live, he completely back tracked and said to make the appointment for whenever works best for us, and to book another “joint” appointment, and he will accommodate us. Since our bloodwork requires fasting, we will book the appointment after we get it done, which likely won’t be until Monday.

So we’ll have at least one more medical appointment this month, on top of the others.

With this doctor wanting to work proactively on managing my husband’s pain, I suspect we’ll be back fairly regularly.

By the time we were done, my husband was at his limit – and we still had the drive home to do. He was worried about his appointment at the cardiac clinic next week. The letter said that there have been a lot of delays, and to expect to be there for as long as 2 hours. That’s after a 1 1/2 hour drive. We’ll have to make sure to call in advance so they can have a stretcher available for him to lie down on; something they were able to arrange to do for him before, after a previous appointment was so late, he ended up walking out because he was in just too much pain. They’re a cardiac clinic. They don’t take into account any other issues a person might have, unrelated to the heart, unless it’s brought up directly.

Another reason why not having central files is a problem. When he goes to any specialist, he has to explain everything else to them. At the cardiac clinic, he could see any one of a team of 5 that works together, so he has to explain his disability, and why he uses a walker, all over again with each one. Otherwise, they assume that his use of a walker is related to his heart condition.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

At least now we’re able to actually get appointments and treatment. The months of delays because of the pandemic shut downs have really messed things up for him. Our province has once again had more people testing positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus, and people are freaking out and demanding things shut down again. What the media isn’t including in their reports (though it’s on the provincial government website, for all to see), those new cases are from 5 days of testing, and represent only .9% testing positive. The total number of positive and presumptive positive cases for the province since March is .03% of the entire population. A person is more likely to get hit by a car than test positive for the Wuhan strain of coronavirus. People don’t seem to understand risk factors at all anymore, and the panic means people like my husband are having a hard time getting medical care. During our appointment, the only time it came up at all was when I mentioned we were supposed to have today’s appointments back in March, when everything got shut down. My husband’s appointment at the cardiac clinic got cancelled. While my husband did get one appointment rescheduled at the cardiac clinic, for a test in nuclear medicine, next week will be the first time the cardiac team will be seeing him. He’s had a couple of telephone appointments, but that’s it. He had also finally gotten contacted by the pain clinic just before the shut down, which that added a few more months to his wait.

If things shut down again, lack of treatment would certainly mean his condition degenerating further. Lack of treatment is more likely to kill him, than any of us coming in contact with the Wuhan strain of coronavirus.

He is certainly not the only person in this position.

Frustrating is really quite an understatement.

The Re-Farmer

A hint of what this August looks to be like

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Today, the girls held down the fort while I headed out early to take my mother for a doctor’s appointment – her first since things were just starting to shut down. Most appointments were being cancelled – thankfully, not hers – and they were only doing phone appointments. The clinic is still doing “walk ins” by phone, but are now doing in person appointments again.

The doctor had wanted my mom to be able to do fasting blood tests, so the appointment was shortly after the clinic opened. That way, she wouldn’t be without food for too long. The doctor also wrote her up for an EKG and chest Xrays. Without the results of those tests, he didn’t want to do a physical or address her prescriptions, etc. quite yet. So he did memory test with her, and talked about some of her concerns to address next time.

Which will be this Friday. He wanted to get her back as soon as possible after he got the test results. She also formally gave him permission to talk to me about anything regarding her health, at the same level as he can with my brother that has Power of Attorney. This will reduce the burden on my brother, as well as make things easier for the doctor, since I am more available to both the doctor and my mother.

Right after her appointment, we went across the hall to lab and Xray with her requisitions, only to be told that their Xray machine was broken and wouldn’t be fixed for 6 months. We could go to the hospital near my mother’s place, though, so we got that paperwork back while she got blood taken, then her EKG. The staff in the lab were the only ones we saw wearing masks and gloves, besides the odd patient.

We wanted to stop for lunch – breakfast, for my mother! – in the town the clinic is in, but the places we normally would have gone to were all closed. We ended up going back to her town before we found someplace open. By then, she’d gone 12 hours without food! Then we got her Xrays done. Thankfully, we didn’t have long to wait. At this hospital, there was one person near the door who was wearing masks and gloves and asking the usual “have you traveled, do you have any symptoms” questions. The only other people I saw with masks was a couple of patients. I found myself in the waiting room with a couple of people, with chairs physical distanced apart. The woman nearest me was wearing a cloth mask, and I could hear the poor woman struggling to breath through it. :-( At both hospital clinics and lab areas, they had the same sign saying who should be wearing masks. Few would have been required to wear them, based on their list. It seemed very reasonable; cautious, without being excessive.

I was going to help my mother with grocery shopping after she was done with the Xrays, but she was – understandably – too tired and just wanted to get home. I’m glad I persuaded her to bring her walker. She was ready to just cane it, but I told her it was better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. Plus, I have plenty of space in the van to bring it along, and don’t even have to fold it up. The only time she chose not to use it was when we went into the restaurant.

After dropping her off at home, I then had to head to the pharmacy – which made town number 3 I drove to! ;-) – to pick up the rest of my husband’s medications for the month. I let the pharmacist know about potential updates or changes in his prescriptions over the next while. As we were talking, she mentioned that my husband is the only person they have taking the painkillers he’s on; the ones with all the restrictions and regulations. He’s at the maximum dose already, and all they really do is take the edge off the pain. I really hope the folks at the pain clinic can help with that!

I took advantage of being in town to run a few errands. That included stopping at the garage to see when my mother’s car would be worked on. I was told they’d be able to work on it at the end of the week, or next week. I mentioned my mother having a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and that I hoped to be able to use her car, since it’s easier for her to get in and out of. He couldn’t say for sure, but they would try. We’ll see how that goes.

A stop to pick up our mail on the way home found a letter from the heart clinic for my husband. They made an appointment for him next week, to discuss implanting a defibrillator. His ejection fraction has improved, but not much – and they still don’t know why it’s become a problem in the first place. All the tests they’ve done have come back normal and healthy.

So we now have a phone appointment for my husband tomorrow, with home care. The day after, he and I have appointments for physicals with the same doctor as my mother. Then on Friday, I’m back at the clinic with my mom. Next week is the new appointment at the cardiac clinic in the city, and the week after is his first appointment with the pain clinic, also in the city.

I have to admit, I’ve become spoiled by our current situation. This is now a lot of driving for us. When we lived in the city, I did a lot more driving. Not drives of an hour or more, to be sure, but our mileage of less than half what it used to me. A few extra trips now feels like a big deal! :-D

It’s going to be tiring – especially for my husband – but I’m just grateful we’re finally “allowed” to get health care again.

The Re-Farmer

Good news!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

And it only took 2 years and 5 months.

My husband got a letter from the pain clinic in the city today. He has an appointment for next month!

Which will make it almost exactly 2 1/2 years since he was first put on the waiting list.

It took 2 years and a new doctor making some noise just to finally get their 14 page (or was it 17 pages?) questionnaire. That got sent in, but then the lock down happened and my husband, like so many others, got knocked off the priority list for health care.

He had to call in to confirm, then answer pandemic related questions. He was also told if he doesn’t have a mask, they’ll provide one.

He had a little chat with our daughter, and she will be making him a pirate mask.

Finally, he’ll be able to talk to a specialist about managing his pain. Who knows what will come of it. At the pain clinic before we moved, he had a team of 5 different specialists overseeing his case. The heart clinic out here has a team of 5 specialists, too, but they all work together on the same things, so when he comes in for an appointment there, he can see any one of them. At the previous pain clinic, each team member focused on a different area, such as pain medications, physical pain management, etc, with one primary care giver. We have no clue what to expect out here. So much of the health care in this province is different from before. Even with basic health care, they do things slightly differently, though at least part of that is the difference between living in the city, or in the boonies, like we are.

I am really hoping this is the start of some sort of treatment plan to at least get the pain under better control. We’ve known for some time – and at least one specialist made sure we understood this – that my husband will never be not-disabled again. He will never be 100% pain free. The best we can expect is an improvement in quality of life. Any improvement at all will be a blessing.

The Re-Farmer

Good grief

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

What a runaround today has been.

But first, I will share something to make you smile!

Upside down, furry friends.

Two Face and Dave were busily playing, with Two Face grabbing, licking and biting Dave’s head and him… letting her. :-D

At about 1am. I just had to turn on a light and get pictures. :-D

So… today’s runaround.

When my husband’s bubble packs got refilled, the pharmacy told us that one of his medications was out of refills. For some reason, this one painkiller got only a 1 month renewal. He’s actually on two versions of this painkiller; a quick release and an extended release. The extended release version was missing.

The pharmacy had faxed the clinic, but as of Saturday, there was still no response. They did have a pre-bubble pack prescription left for 6 pills. Three days worth. So I took those. My husband will be out of them again, after today.

So this morning, starting from when the clinic opened at 9, my husband tried phoning the clinic.

After more than an hour, he still hadn’t gotten through, so once I finished my rounds, I drove to the clinic.

Which is in a town 45 minutes away (as far as I know, the clinic we had been going to previously, still doesn’t have new doctors to replace the two that moved away, which is why we had to switch to a town further away).

When I got there and talked to a receptionist, telling her we couldn’t get through by phone, she was apologetic. It seems that on Mondays in particular, the doctors all have telephone appointments and use up all the lines.

I explained the problem and she looked up my husband’s file. According to what she saw, the doctor had phoned the pharmacy on Saturday. She even had a time. It was maybe an hour after I’d already stopped by the pharmacy myself!

So as far as she could tell, the pharmacy should have had a 2 month renewal for these meds.

Once I was done there, I messaged my husband and let him know, asking him to call the pharmacy while I made a quick stop at the hardware store nearby to get the latches I needed, then drove to the pharmacy. Which was another 45-50 minutes of driving, so it would give them plenty of time to find the fax and fill the prescription.

By the time I was done at the hardware store, I had messages from my husband. The pharmacy had no fax. They said they would talk to the clinic about it.

So I drove to the pharmacy anyway. By then, the pharmacist had gotten through to the receptionist at the clinic at noon, which is when our doctor was supposed to be in, but he wasn’t yet. He needed to sign the triplicate, before the clinic could fax it to the pharmacy. That hadn’t happened yet. The pharmacist told me that, if she didn’t hear from the clinic by 2, she would call them herself. She knew my husband would be out of the painkillers by the end of today, and how much of an issue that would be.

I decided I would stay in town for a while and have breakfast lunch, then make a stop at the beach.

It’s been about 8 or so months since a storm completely covered the boulders at the main dock, and the waves are still only starting to reveal them again. Where I’m standing to take the above picture, I was about 5 feet above water level. Normally, there would be a lot more boulders visible, and the beach here would be more “slope” and less “erosion cliff”.

The beach was busy, though not crowded. This is a resort town and normally it would have been packed with tourists and people at their cabins for the holidays, even on a weekday. It was good to see people out in the sunshine.

I walked around the strip of beach I usually do, pausing at a Pokemon Go gym near the beach to do battle. I had gone to a tree for some shade, and would have leaned on it (since the park bench that used to be there is now gone), but found it was occupied.

This bumble was just wandering around on the bark, minding her own business, so I let her be. :-)

The pharmacist had told me they would phone our home number if the prescription was filled. By about 3, there was no call, but I swung by anyhow, just in case.

The pharmacist had called the clinic, but the doctor was with a patient and had not been able to sign the triplicate yet. She did not know when he would be done, and there was no fax, yet.

*sigh*

I told her I had to go home, and asked if they could phone us when they got the prescription. She told me they could deliver it to us, even as far out as we are. I told her we don’t have a credit card to pay for it, which is how they usually do payments on home deliveries. She said that we’re there so often, they would just set it aside (the printouts with the bar codes) to pay for it the next time we came in. !!!

Which would be amazing, though I don’t expect it to happen. As I write this, I can see that the pharmacy is either already closed or, if they’re back to regular hours, closing soon.

I really, really hope this can be taken care of by tomorrow. I will happily make the extra drive in to get them!

Thankfully, with my being gone most of the day, the girls were home to take care of the routine stuff. So while I can’t say it was a completely wasted day – I at least got the latches I needed, and even found pruning paint, for the next time we have to cut away live branches – but it feels like nothing tangible got accomplished.

I’m going to install those latches, just to say I got something checked off the to-do list!

The Re-Farmer

Today’s Evening Roundup

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

It’s barely evening, but I think I’m done for the day! :-D

We had plans to go into the city so the girls could get some shopping done that we never quite get to when we do our monthly stock up. With that in mind, I started my morning routine early, starting with visiting the kittens.

Beep Beep dashed up the stairs when I opened the door to the basement, so I let her be and made sure no other cats came down. This way, the babies got to have the wet cat food, without having to fight over it with their mom! :-D

Except for Saffron, who was much more interested in me…

I think they did leave some behind for Beep Beep, when she finally came down. :-D

Doing my rounds outside is getting so gorgeous right now!

I noticed that the cherry tree by the house is blooming now.

Just the cherry trees by the house. The ones near the new garden plot are not blooming yet. Both areas get the same amount of light and rain. The only difference is the micro-climate created by the house itself.

I also found some surprise blooms.

When cleaning up along the south side of the spruce grove, I found a row of crab apple trees. While I still have much to do in cleaning up dead wood and thinning out the trees, what I managed to do so far, made a difference. Last summer would have been their first summer with more light and space. Like the row of crab apple trees I uncovered when cleaning up the maple grove, they had no flowers at all last year. This year, there is one tree, with one branch, that is blooming!

It should be interesting to see how things develop here over the years. I will be taking at some of these trees, and hopefully the remaining ones will have better conditions to grow and produce.

The lilacs are starting to open up, scenting the entire yard!

The chokecherries growing among them seem to be doing well this year.

I also checked the sunflowers, and even more of them are sprouting. These are the Early Russian sunflowers, which can grow 6-8 ft tall. The others are Giganteus, which can grow 10-12 ft tall. I hope to see Giganteus seedlings within a few days. The package info says it can be 10-14 days to germination.

When the girls and I headed out to the city, we had a wonderful surprise, just half a mile from home!

I pulled over and my daughter tried to zoom in on my phone as best she could, but zoom really sucks on my phone’s camera.

What you are seeing is a dozen sandhill cranes! They had been near the road when we startled them. These are really huge birds!! Seeing a dozen of them taking off at once was really something!

The drive to the city is about an hour, but along the way we made sure to stop at the medical clinic. The town our doctor is in is about 2/3rds of the way to the city. After not being able to get through yesterday, I wanted to ask about getting renewed prescriptions. Especially for my husband. Given he has the kind that requires a hand written, in triplicate, prescription that needs to be delivered to a pharmacy within 3 days of being written, I said I could come back for them after we were done in the city, rather than waiting until the doctor was off the phone with a patient.

Then it was off to the city, where we had several places to do to. Thankfully, they were not all that far apart, but not only has traffic increased substantially again, but so has construction. Most of the stores had no real restrictions or line ups. At least not the ones we needed to go to. We did drive past a few places that had long line ups outside. Even Walmart didn’t have any line ups for the cashiers, never mind outside.

I really feel for the people lining up outside in this heat we’re having right now!

Still, we got what we needed to do, done. There was some temptation to do more with “while we’re in the city anyway…”, but it was just too long, too hot and too draining! If it wasn’t necessary, we skipped it.

On the way home, we stopped at the clinic again. The doctor ended up asking me to come in to see him about the prescriptions.

It turned out that he had already faxed the refills to the pharmacy. Including my husband’s triplicate prescriptions. Because of the pandemic, they’ve waived the requirement for the pharmacy to have the physical prescriptions. Which no one told me about. They probably assumed I already knew.

My husband’s meds were ready for pick up on the 29th – a Friday – but he forgot to tell me about it until after the pharmacy was closed. So I picked them up on Saturday morning, after dropping my daughter off at work. When I picked them up, the pharmacist told me he could only fill so much, because of the need for renewals.

They must have faxed the clinic when my husband called his refills in, because the doctor faxed the renewed prescriptions …

… on the 29th.

Which means that, when the pharmacist gave me 1 week of bubble packs and told me he couldn’t do more (usually it’s 4 weeks) without a renewed prescription, they already had the renewed prescriptions come in, the day before.

:-/

Meanwhile, I’d been out of my own prescription for some time. When I went to get a refill and they couldn’t, they sent a fax to the clinic right away. I came back a couple of days later, and they still hadn’t received a returned fax.

That had gotten done on the 14th.

No one called me, so I assumed they never got a response. I’ve been without my meds for about 3 weeks. That was part of why I wanted to go in to the clinic in person, since we couldn’t get through by phone.

My doctor clarified all that for me, and even printed out copies of the prescriptions for my own records. Once we were done there, we headed to the town our pharmacy is in.

It turned out my prescription was filled and waiting in the drawer.

*sigh*

Thankfully, my prescription is nothing particularly urgent.

I did ask for my husband’s refills to be done, since he’ll be out in a few days. The bubble packs take more time, so I’ll be coming back tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I picked up something for myself.

After helping my brother patch the shed roof, I felt okay, but by the end of the day, my right wrist started to hurt. I have no idea what I did to injure, or even if it was any one thing that did it. I was able to manage well enough yesterday; mostly, I was reminded of it as a problem when I tried to do something like turn a door nob.

I am considered left handed, because I write with my left hand. With most things, I’m ambidextrous. Some things, I’m right handed.

Like when I open door knobs.

When driving around today, it was more of an issue. Just turning the ignition to start the vehicle was painful. Turning corners, hurt.

So I now have a brace to keep me from over taxing my wrist (though I had to take it off to type) and give it a chance to heal. It’s a bit on the small side, but I got the largest size available.

My and my big, manly hands! :-D

Thankfully, I have two strong daughters who can lug things around for me.

When we unloaded the van, we also brought the pieces of tree in, since it’s supposed to rain. Getting the big one was an issue; we did have to cut one of the branches off.

So far, it hasn’t rained here, but from the looks of the weather radar, we should get at least some, though a rather large rain system has already bypassed us entirely. Some rain would be wonderful. :-)

Meanwhile, it’s time for me to get that wrist brace back on!

Ow.

The Re-Farmer

Looks like I ran out of spoons

/ Re-Farmer / 11 Comments

For those who are not yet familiar with the Spoon Theory, visit this link.

Today has been turning out to be a very non-productive day. Right from the start.

The first issue was waking up in pain. Particularly in my hands. Every joint in my fingers, stiff and sore. I know osteoarthritis is setting in (inevitable, given some of the jobs I’ve had in the past), but most of the time, they’re fine. Some days, however… well… let’s just say they’re “not fine.”

I woke up fairly early and started getting ready to do my usual routing, which now starts with bringing fresh water for the kitties. My husband was using the kitchen, so I sat down on the couch for a bit to let him finish.

I basically passed out for nearly 4 hours.

It felt more like a few minutes.

My entire body is feeling achy and sluggish, I’m in a snarly mood, and I’m in a brain fog.

Definitely a reminder that I am not really all that able bodied. I didn’t feel like I’d been overdoing it over the past few days, yet I clearly have, and my body is making sure I know it.

Well, at least it’s a good day to go into recovery mode. It’s too wet to finish mowing, and too chilly to finish transplanting. Manual labour outside is not going to be much of a thing, today.

And so, I will share some smiles with you, instead! :-)

I’ve been posting so many photos of our adopted cats and kittens, I rarely get photos of the two that moved out here with us. Last night, DahBoy got to entertain us!

One of my daughters was in my doorway when DahBoy demanded up.

He did not want up on her, though. She was just a way to get to his real goal.

No, not the top of the door, either!

He wants the top of the linen closet. He knows there’s space up there, and he wants in!

Will a human assist him? No? So how is he to get down, now?

Oh, look! A handy human.

I got that last shot a split second before he leapt onto my shoulder, then vaulted the rest of his way to the ground. :-D

This morning, while visiting the kittens, I had to very carefully step my way around kittens that were determined to climb my legs. They didn’t stop until I gave them some wet cat food.

Even during the feeding frenzy, Saffron and Turmeric were more interested in me than the food! They’re not as into the solid food thing, yet. Especially Saffron, who would much rather climb a table leg. LOL

Once outside, I had another cat I had to dance around. Potato Beetle was quite determined to walk in front of my moving feet and flop onto the ground. That is, when he wasn’t doing this…

What a goof!

At least they’re entertaining. ;-)

Ugh. It feels like such a wasted day, today, and it’s only mid afternoon!

Hopefully, a day of recovery means I can get things done tomorrow. I really need to get those transplants in.

The Re-Farmer

I know what I’m doing tomorrow!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Today I took my husband into the city for a medical appointment, but of course I had to check the kitties, first!

They are getting more and more active! We’re going to have to put them in something deeper, soon, so they don’t start crawling around the basement. At their size, there are too many things they can get into, that we couldn’t be able to get them out again! :-D

My husband and I left early enough to hit the post office, first, and ended up swinging by home again to drop things off. My husband had finally got his retroactive disability tax credit, and he used some of it to get a much needed new computer. Not something we wanted sitting in the van while we were in the city!

His appointment went well, though the drive was quite painful. It was for some tests in Nuclear Medicine, in the same hospital as the cardiac clinic. I was not allowed to come in with him, though. We arrived early, as is our habit, and I expected to have lots of time to walk around on a beautiful day, playing Pokemon Go. They must have taken him in early, because he was done much faster than I expected. Which is a nice change, even if the reasons for it are not to nice. :-/

His computer was not the only thing to arrive in the mail. I got a parcel I was expecting to come in tomorrow.

My Yukon Gem potatoes have arrived!

Which means I need to get them planted right away. Looking at the forecasts, tonight we’re supposed to reach 0C (32F), and that’s the coldest it’ll get overnight from now on.

I had been thinking about where and how we would plant the potatoes. With our rock hard soil in most places, I decided to go with a completely new and different method from what I’m used to. Here are some videos about what I am going to try.

The only thing is, I don’t have hay, nor was any available. I just have straw. I hope it will do as a substitute. I’ve seen other articles and videos that used straw, so I think it should.

With this in mind, I made use of the frames from the goat catching pen we’d made. The long sides are roughly 8 ft x 4 ft. A perfect garden bed size. So I am using them to mark out where I want to put the potatoes.

I will remove them, after I’ve finished covering the seed potatoes. For the 6 pounds of potatoes I have, this should be enough. I soaked the areas thoroughly, and will soak them again tomorrow before we start again. We are expecting some rain tomorrow (I hope!), but it won’t be much. By Sunday, we are supposed to hit 21C!! (70F) so I want to make sure it’s all thoroughly covered and watered before the heat hits.

We are also going to have to watch out for the Potato Beetle!

He kept us company while we started on the future potato beds.

I had considered setting them up where we’d covered with straw last year, as I am sure we won’t be having as many squash to transplant as I had hoped. There’s still a possibility that more seedlings will come up before the end of the month, so I figured I may as well just go off to one side, instead.

How well this works will help us decide what to do as we increase the amounts and varieties of potatoes we grow in the future. If we can get a good crop, without having to plow or till this hard, rocky ground, that would be really awesome!

The Re-Farmer

Those plans went out the window…

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today started out normal enough. I did my rounds, as usual, including checking on the kittens.

Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them to sleep while she gets some needed sustenance – and some cuddles! :-)

I was just settling down to upload the trail cam files when I got a phone call from my mother.

For quite some time now, she’s been complaining about her heart. Chest pains. Not getting any air. It’s been very confusing. Partly because test after test has shown her heart is in great shape. No one has been able to find anything wrong. The other part is, her descriptions are rather lacking in details. She’ll talk about how her heart is bothering her so much, but then start talking about not having any air at night, and has to turn on a fan or open a window. But it’s her heart. It is made more difficult for her to explain, when she has a very poor grasp of anatomy.

The more detail we manage to wrestle out of her, the more we’re thinking it’s a problem with her lungs. What makes it even more difficult is that her symptoms only seem to happen when she’s lying down in bed. When she’s up and about, they go away.

This morning, I could hear in her voice right away, that something was wrong. She started talking about how much her heart was bothering her, then talking about not being able to breath. Her night was bad enough to scare her, and she was wondering what to do.

Normally, I’d just take her to the clinic. The clinic her new doctor is in has walk in, but it’s also located in a hospital, so there’s an emergency just down the hall.

But we’re in shut down right now, and with all the scary stuff she’s seeing on TV about the Wuhan virus, she’s also worried that her breathing problems are related to that.

Which is theoretically possible. Even though her building is in lock down, people do still have to go in and out. It was very unlikely, but still something that would probably check.

Also, her doctor’s clinic is doing most appointments only by phone right now.

Now, there is a hospital just a few blocks from her place. I suggested she go to the emergency there, but neither of us were sure there still was an emergency room. The building is now more of a nursing home with a clinic in it. She had even tried the health link number, which is for all the province, but only got a message saying they were busy. What else was in the message, I don’t know, since she would not have finished listening to it.

So I suggested she try to get to the emergency we thought might be near her, and to do that, she would first call the social worker assigned to her building. The social worker would have the phone numbers she needed. While she was doing that, I got online and tried to find the numbers to call myself.

Well, that turned out to be useless. I called the hospital number and got an long recorded message saying, “if this, call here, if that, call there, if something else, do this”. Even I was loosing track of it all. My mother would have been completely lost. From the website, it sounded like they wanted people to go use drive through testing centres for the Wuhan virus, rather than go to any hospitals.

I finally ended up calling the clinic near my mother. My mother used to go there, before switching to where her current doctor is. After talking to them for a bit, I was told to call this other clinic. So I did.

They told me to call the hospital near my mother’s place.

*sigh*

I explained to her that I’d tried that and just got a recorded message telling me to call other places. I ended up being transferred from the clinic to the hospital it was in, with instructions to ask to be transferred to the hospital in my mother’s town. When I explained the situation to the new person I spoke to, she was stunned that I only got a recorded message. So she put me on hold and called herself.

It turns out that, at the very end of the message, there was one last instruction to hit 0 to get the nurse’s desk. I must have hung up before that last bit at the end, because I never heard it.

Then she told me, “you know that hospital doesn’t really have an emergency room anymore, right?”

Well, now I do!

Basically, if she went there, they would assess her, then send her someplace else.

After explaining the situation to her, she suggested I bring my mother to this hospital, then gave me instructions on which entrance to go to.

So I called my mom back. She had just called the hospital by her place and told me they booked a telephone appointment for her with her new doctor.

For 3:30pm

It was coming up on 10am, as we were talking.

I told her about my calls, and gave her the choice. In the end, she decided she had better get checked.

So off I went to pick her up and take her to the emergency at this other hospital with an fully functioning emergency.

I’ve taken her here before, but a few things have changed since the shut down started. Instead of going straight to the desk to be checked in, there was a lady at a table facing the entrance. She was wearing a mask, gloves and gown. In front of her were posts like used on highway construction areas, with yellow caution tape between them, plus a hand sanitizer station. On the table was a stack of masks.

She asked us a few questions about why we were there, and if my mother had other cold-like symptoms or had been traveling out of the country within the last 14 days.

Once that was cleared up, she asked us to use the hand sanitizer, then my mother was allowed to the check in desk.

I was not.

There was a small waiting room I could go to, though, and it was a good thing I was handy. My mother, being scared of the virus, was talking about getting tested for it, and the staff were all “why weren’t you given a mask?” They had to come to me to clarify. Then a few moments later, the woman we first talked to came to me and asked if my mother had a history of dementia. I carefully (and quietly!) explained the situation with her, so that helped them understand a bit more on how to address her. Meanwhile, I could hear them trying to explain to her that, because she doesn’t have the symptoms, they would not be testing her for the Wuhan virus, eventually mollifying her by saying they would make that decision as she gets checked. Then she was sent to the emergency room waiting room, and I could hear no more.

Then I waited.

And waited.

Which was fine with me. I got to update my family, and had a nice chat with a woman who ended up waiting in the room with me, because she wasn’t allowed in with her husband, either. The only exceptions I saw was an elderly couple, with the husband pushing his wife in her wheelchair, and another guy with his very elderly father, and both times they were clearly expected for specific things, not an emergency room visit for something unknown, like my mother. The place was surprisingly busy, all things considered.

Then my mom came out, and that was it. We were done.

Once I got her in the van, she was able to tell me that…

…they found nothing wrong with her.

She is, understandably, frustrated.

They did take X-rays of her lungs, but will only call her if there is something found.

Long story short, I suggested waiting a few days for the X-rays to be looked at, and if she doesn’t get a call, to book an appointment with her doctor to talk about her breathing issues.

It took a lot of questioning, but I eventually got out of her that she’s had this issue for probably about 10 years, but that it’s gotten noticeably worse, recently. Which eliminated one possibility that I was thinking of, in that there was some sort of air circulation problem in her tiny apartment. Ten years ago, she was still living here at the farm. She brought up asthma, but the more I described the symptoms, the less she thought that might be the cause. She had also brought up her thyroid, but that was only because a friend she talked to on the phone takes medication for her thyroid and suggested it. I had to explain to her that a thyroid was a gland we all have, not a disease. I know people with both hypo- and hyper- thyroidism and was able to explain more about that to her. I had brought up in the past that sleeping in a more upright position might help, and maybe getting a sleep chair, and she’s starting to think that might be a good idea. She doesn’t want something with “buttons” on it (a remote), so she’s just thinking of a recliner with a lever. Sleep chairs are designed for actual sleeping on and would be much better, but are very expensive. So it might be worth trying a recliner and seeing if it makes a difference.

It wasn’t until just before I left that she mentioned something that had me thinking that she might have sleep apnea.

Whether or not she does, a sleep test would probably be a good thing to get done, but with all non-essential and elective health care not being done right now, it’s not like that is going to happen. Especially since there are already months long waiting lists for these tests, at the best of times.

At least my mother was feeling better by the time I got her home, but I can really understand her feelings about them not finding anything wrong with her.

It was late afternoon by the time we were done, but I was still able to get some things checked off on my to-do list. Her town has a hardware store, so I was able to go there to get the paint we need to finish the sun room door, plus a few other things. After messaging with my daughters, I ended up swinging by home to drop the stuff off and pick up a daughter, then we went into town for a few errands, before picking up some take-out food.

Oh, was that ever good. :-D

My daughters, meanwhile, did get some work done on the future garden plot, but that will be a post for another time! :-D

For now, I’m just happy my mom’s okay, and to be home.

The Re-Farmer