healthcare

Too much wind! Also, a mystery

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Good grief! As I write this, we are supposedly at only -1C/30F, but the wind chill has us at -18C/0F.

It feels colder than that!

I head out earlier this morning to do the cat feeding and my morning rounds, while it was still dark, so that I could open the gate. The wind was already really bitter by then, though it had to have been calm during the night, as everything was covered in hoarfrost. The septic guy said he would be here in the morning and, sometimes, that has meant right at 8am, so I figured I’d better get it open early.

When he didn’t show up before my younger daughter and I had to leave, I called and left a message saying I would be gone (he would see the empty garage as he came in), but that there would be someone home, so just knock at the door as his payment was ready.

In the end, he never made it. I’ll have to call him tomorrow and see about a reschedule. The last time that happened, their truck broke down!

I headed to the truck early to warm it up and noticed that front tire with the leaky valve was pretty low, so I fired up the compressor to pump it up. Then I headed back inside, out of the wind, to text the garage. The leak seems to be getting worse, so I asked if they could order the new sensor and replace it when I come in to get the oil seal replaced later in the week.

After that’s done, there’s still two more sensors to replace.

My daughter and I had to go into town for the pharmacy, first, as she had to pick up a prescription she needed for her medical appointment. I had called in one of my own for refills, too, but their delivery from the city wasn’t going to be in until the afternoon, so I told them to include it with my husband’s delivery. I’ll be in town that day, but it’ll be to drop the truck off for my appointment, and I don’t want to be carrying meds around while it’s being worked on.

I’d received a response from the garage, confirming that they could get the sensor ordered in and done at the same time. I asked if they needed any info off the tire but when they didn’t answer before we were done at the pharmacy, we just swung by and I ran in to ask. They didn’t, so we were soon back on the road.

Headlong into the wind.

We had left early enough that my daughter and I could stop for lunch at a Subway right near the clinic. We timed it perfectly, as there was a huge rush starting, just as we were paying for our food. We were able to take our time to finish before heading into the clinic.

One of the things my daughter wanted to bring up is that she will NOT be going back to that endocrinologist again. I still think she needs to make a formal complaint over how she was treated and manhandled.

Her appointment wasn’t very long, so we were soon heading out again, this time to the nearest Walmart in the smaller, nearer city.

I was no longer driving headlong into the wind, but the route was mostly open fields at this point, so I was instead fighting to not be blown off the road!

My daughter and I had out own shopping lists, and I had one from my husband, but we even altogether, we didn’t need a lot. It was just stuff we either couldn’t get locally, or was so much more expensive locally, it was worth the gas and the side trip to get them there.

Before we left, I got a message from my husband. My mother had called. She had gotten a call from the Meals on Wheels office saying that her deliveries were cancelled, and she was wondering if I had cancelled them.

?!?!?!?!!!!!

Obviously, I didn’t. Once we were home, I called her up as soon as I could, to get as much information as I could, before calling Meals on Wheels. It was past 4 by then, and I had no idea if they would even still be open. The meals are cooked and assembled in the kitchen of an apartment building similar to my mother’s, except they offer meal service and a few other things. My mother has actually been on the waiting list for that place for a few years now.

I called my mother and she immediately started talking about what happened today, and it was a bit confusing. Basically, her Meals on Wheels delivery came at the same time as her lunch assist person. there was some sort of confusion. Why, I have no idea. This is not the first time she’s had both since her increased service. Home care is aware that she gets Meals on Wheels and were good with it. I think maybe it was the first time they arrived at the same time.

After they left, she got a phone call from the Meals on Wheels office (they don’t actually have an office) saying that someone had cancelled her service, and that there would be no more dinners from them. My mother was wondering if I had cancelled it. Of course, I hadn’t. So she wondered if my brother hand, and of course, he hadn’t either. I didn’t even have to ask him about that!

Part of what was confusing is that as she was trying to describe what happened and the confusing of her lunch assist and Meals on Wheels coming at the same time, she started talking about how she doesn’t need both. If she had people coming every day to do her meals, why have Meals on Wheels?

I told her, these meals are more complete than she would make for herself, and require more preparation than home care is able to do for her during daily meal assists, so it would be better if she kept it up. I didn’t really get to say more, but these are also the most nutritionally complete meals she has all weak.

Then she started taking that she didn’t need… and here I lose it on the words she used, because they were more implying than saying outright, but basically, she’s trying to suggest that these meals are so big, they are making her fatter, so she should probably stop. She’s been getting to the point of saying she should practically stop eating entirely, so I needed to cut that off, quickly. I told her, she’s 94 years old. She doesn’t need to be worried about her weight at this point. Who cares?

I told her I needed to call Meals on Wheels right away, because I didn’t know when they closed, but then she launched into how she takes the “pink stuff” (Pepto) and Tylenol and started going on about how she thinks her problems are her digestion (this after years of blaming her insanely healthy heart) – so basically, she was working herself up to blaming everything on the Meals on Wheels meals. I had to cut her off and say I would call her back after calling Meals on Wheels.

I was too late. They were closed.

The number I called was directly to the kitchen, but I noticed another number in my online search, so I tried that, too. That was the building’s management office. Their answering machine gave office hours, and they are open only 3 days a week, and the message added that if it was about Meals on Wheels, to call the kitchen number.

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day and I normally wouldn’t expect a call back until the day after, but they do cook daily meals for the residents, so it’s possible I’ll get a call back tomorrow.

I called my mother back and told her as much as I could. Thankfully, she didn’t try to blame her various issues on the Meals on Wheels meals again. It frustrates me to hear her trying to blame all her problems on her food, but she knows nothing about nutrition. Half the time, she’s basing things on something she saw on TV 30 years ago, or some women’s magazine that the ladies from the Senior’s Centre drop off sometimes, or something her neighbours have said, to just leaping at associations with no real connection. All the more reason for her to have those Meals on Wheels! If it were up to her, she would be seriously malnourished while convinced she is eating “healthy”.

Anyhow, I told my mother I would get back to her as soon as I knew something. I have, of course, updated my siblings about it as best I could.

I’ll be at my mother’s on Friday to get her bubble packs and do her shopping. I’ll stay to do other stuff for her, too. I should remember to ask her to take the chicken I got for her a while back, out of the freezer so I can make up another stock for her. That will give her cooked meat that the lunch assist people can use for her meals, too. This time, I want to bring one of my stock pots from home. Last time, I had to split things up between a small pot and a frying pan! I should bring a proper knife, too. She has been using what look like cheap “as seen on TV” steak knives, and is happy with them, but they really are terrible. At least for full food prep. I had to use one to butcher a whole chicken for her a while back and it was so bad, I ended up using the only other thing she had – a bread knife!

Hopefully, the Meals on Wheels thing will be straightened out by then. I’m really at a loss as to who would have cancelled her service. Unless my mother gave specific instructions, they would not have had any authority to do so. It doesn’t sound like my mother did anything like that, but she talks in circles so much, someone may have misunderstood her? I just don’t know.

I am just noticing one of my weather apps that I have on display at all times. According to that, we’re now at 0C/32F. We should keep warming up all night, to a high of 6C/43F tomorrow. It’s not supposed to be as windy as it still is right now, but still pretty windy. On Friday, we’re supposed to reach a high of 8C/46F! That would be a great day to get a few more things done outside, but I’ll be at my mother’s. Ah, well. I’ve at least got the next two days at home to work on things. Once the septic tank is emptied, I want to head over to the ejector to cut away all the weeds grown up around it, then dig more of a trench to drain the greywater towards the low area, rather than forming a pool just 10 or so feet away.

Hopefully, the septic guy will be able to come in soon! This is not a job I want to work on when it gets colder again.

Gotta take advantage of every warm day we get. It won’t be long before anything left will just have to wait until spring.

I would really love it if I could just hibernate all winter!

The Re-Farmer

Not the day I intended

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I was hoping to go to Costco today. I didn’t make it, but not for the reason I was expecting.

I did check and the large payment I made against my MC was no longer “pending”. So I was mostly sure I could use the card for our Costco trip (Costco only takes MC, and using the Canadian Tire card helps build up Canadian Tire dollars, which paid for a whole bunch of stuff, recently). The freeze on the deposit of my mother’s check to cover the door was still there, though, so more than half the money is still inaccessible.

The thing is, I normally am able to use that card, even while the payment made against it is still “pending”. All I can think is that they froze the amount because it was over a certain threshold.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

I headed outside to do my morning rounds as usual. Fed the outside cats, checked on things, discovered the deer visited during the night…

Almost all the sunchoke leaves were completely stripped off the stalks, and even the tops of the stalks on the shorter ones were nibbled down! Sunchokes are related to sunflowers, which the deer like to eat, so I guess it was just a matter of time before they munched these down.

By the time I was finished my rounds, I decided I needed to stay home. My hip wasn’t hurting, but it was definitely unstable after a day of walking on concrete. If I were to go into the city and be doing all that walking on concrete while shopping, I know the probability of it wiping me out for days is very high. Better to give it one more day to rest.

Which was REALLY hard to do! We had a nicer day today and I was chafing at the bit to not be out there, working on various projects or cleaning up the last few garden beds. All of which would have stressed my hip out just as much, or more, than walking around to shop would have. At least while shopping, I could use my cart as a walker!

We did end up going out today, though. And by “we” I mean my younger daughter and I. This afternoon I checked Canada Post tracking and saw that her office chair that I got with my Air Miles was in and ready for pick up. Her current chair is badly broken, so we eagerly headed out.

I forgot.

Today is Wednesday.

The store the post office is in closes at noon every Wednesday for inventory.

Crud.

Since we were out anyhow, we instead headed to the town to the north of us. We stopped at the feed store to pick up a couple more 40 pound bags of kibble.

While there, we wandered around, first. I ended up getting a larger syringe that we could use to feed kittens with. It’s meant to be single use to give medication to larger animals, and they had all sorts of sizes available. Some were meant to have needles screwed onto their tips. The larger ones each came in their own container with a sealed cap for sterility, and the containers were only semi-transparent. We did manage to see enough to grab a type that wasn’t made to have a needle screwed on, but just an open tip like the small ones we have at home. The ones we have at home are made to dispense small amounts of medication. What I found would work much better for feeding sick little kittens. Plus, it cost less than $2.

My daughter, meanwhile, found the section for horse brushes. She ended up getting two small ones; one for her leather boots and one for her cowboy hat. You can get brushes specially marketed as boot brushes or hat brushes, and they are very expensive. These are pretty much the same, but since they’re marketed for horses, they were much cheaper!

She also made another find that she was so excited about. Leather gloves with wool lining. Most gloves have some sort of polyester lining; even the high end ones. She can’t wear those because her hands get all sweaty and they don’t absorb moisture well. She has the same simian hands that I have; a distinctive trait inherited from my father. Short fingers, broad, square palms. So the gloves she found that fit her palms were too long on the fingers, but that was a trade off she was willing to make! If she really felt up to it, she could undo the stitching and make the fingers shorter, herself.

Looking at them more closely as we drove home, after getting the kibble, she found that they are actually made by a company in the city! We’ll have to look them up. They are really high quality and cost her a pretty penny for something like gloves, but they will last her for many years. She wore them on the way home and was so thrilled. Her hands were roasty toasty, but not at all sweaty! While in the store, she suggested I try some on to get for myself, but I can’t do wool.

Once we got home and loaded things into the house, we went to the kibble and water bowl shelters and talked about some modifications I’m thinking to do. The water bowl shelter in particular has a lot of “wasted” space. I want to add a shelf about half way up. That would give the cats another place to perch, while also giving better coverage to the cat beds in the back of the shelter.

It would be good to do something similar in the kibble house, but that one is quite a bit longer. I built it so that the floor, which has rigid insulation under it, can be removed. We can’t add extra support in the middle without losing that ability, but without support, any shelf we make will sag in the middle. There is, however, a vertical support in the middle of the back wall, so we could attach angled supports to that. Something to think about. Mostly, I want to get the extra perch for the cats to be done in the water bowl shelter.

As we talked about that, we went into the garage, where we have scrap wood in a variety of shapes, sizes and types that we can use to do this. The back door of the garage is near the outhouse. Behind the outhouse is where we’ve been dumping the stove pellet litter to compost. With the number of cats we have and how many years we’ve been doing this, there is a large pile starting behind the outhouse, slowly extending further into the spruce grove. I’ve already scattered two boxes of wildflower seeds over part of it, but the oldest section still had the top of that tree that fell over the outhouse, that my brother managed to get off and save the outhouse at the same time, on top of it. I plan to use the pieces of that tree to make things, but even the smaller top of the tree is huge and heavy.

Well, with my daughter there to help, we got it off!

It was NOT easy. Not just because of the weight. This part of the tree had many branch nubs all around it. No matter what position we had the trunk, there were branch nubs digging into the ground – you can even see a gouged out trench in the soil from one of them, in the photo above.

The trunk had been straight across the pile, with a couple of old tires to keep it from rolling against the outhouse. We found we could rotate it almost 45 degrees, so that the heavy end was running more alongside the outhouse. I grabbed a rope we found in the garage some time ago, that has latch hooks at eat end (I think it was meant to attach to a horse’s halter) to put around the heavy end of the trunk. We also had a metal bar we could put through the hooks that was long enough for us to use as handles, rather than wrecking our hands trying to grasp the rope. With that, we could move the trunk about a foot or so, then I would go behind the outhouse to move the light end away from the outhouse a bit more, we’d move the entire trunk, I’d shift the top again, over and over. Sometimes, we would have to rotate the trunk to get whatever branch nub that was digging into the ground clear before we could move it more.

Once we got it clear of the pile and lying only on the ground, that was it. We couldn’t move it anymore. Somewhere along the bottom of the trunk, there’s a branch nub dug deep enough into the soil, anchoring it enough that, even with both of us, we just couldn’t move it any more. That was okay, though. I just needed it clear of the pile.

That done, my daughter headed back to the house to put things away, while I grabbed our last box of wildflower seeds and scattered them over the most composted part of the pile that the tree was on top of. Now that the trunk is where it is, it will be easier to get at it with a chain saw and work on it. I’m planning to use the parts and pieces to make some seating or maybe a table of some kind. We shall see.

Earlier, I had set up sheets of rigid insulation under the isolation shelter roof. They are the same pieces used last winter, and there are holes where the cats had scratched at them, so I ended up rearranging how to fit them in.

Last winter, I had a leftover piece of the insulation that was trimmed off and used it on the shelf inside. That ended up getting knocked off regularly, then broken. This year, I had some leftover insulating material that I’d used around the pipes on the emergency septic bypass, and it’s the right width for that shelf. So I put a length of that on there to try out for this year and, hopefully, tied it down well enough to stay there. That makes the shelf a slightly more comfortable place for the cats to hang out on, and warmer on the toe beans!

In the second picture of the slide show above, you can see where I tucked in a thermometer that was in the sun room. Hopefully, the cats won’t drag it out of there. While in the sun room, the thermometer read about 8C/46F. By the time I had set it up and paused to take a picture, it had already moved up to about 12C/54C. When I came back after we finished fighting with the tree, it was reading almost 20C/68F. The angle of the photos make the needle look off by a few degrees, though.

Meanwhile, there is a little sick kitten I’ve been monitoring. I can’t get near it, unfortunately. I would call is a semi-feral kitten, since it will not run away if I walk past it, but if I stop to try and pet it, it runs off.

It does seem to be getting better, though. For a sick kitty, it gets around quite a bit!

In the first picture, it was hanging out inside the shelf shelter, enjoying a sheltered, sun warmed cat bed. In the second picture, it’s hanging out on a step in front of the new door, and in the third, it was hanging out on top of the trap we’ve been leaving out for them to be used to, so that it will be easier to trap cats for spay or neuter, later on.

Well now.

I got a phone call while I was working on this post, from my mother. I guess it was a good thing I didn’t make it to the city, after all!

My mother got a letter from our regional health authority. She doesn’t understand what it is saying, but from what she could read to me, I think it is an appointment for the brain scan she’s supposed to get as part of her paneling for a nursing home. She was able go get the required chest Xrays and EKG right away. The lab and Xray is right across the waiting room from her doctor’s clinic, and those are all drop ins. The scan, however, has a waiting list and, if it is what I think it is, she finally got to the top of the list.

It’s been more than a year, or is it almost 2 years? since she got on that waiting list.

Since I can go through her town on my way to the city, anyhow, we worked it out. After picking up my daughter’s office chair when the post office opens tomorrow morning, I’ll drop that off at home so she can start assembling it, then head back out right away. I’ll stop at my mother’s and go over the letter with her and then continue to the city for the Costco shop. No extra trips needed.

After tomorrow, our daytime highs are expected to be below freezing for a while, and then warm up again. Those will give me a chance to work on more outdoor projects before the hard freeze hits. Everything depends on the weather.

As for today, it may not have been the day I originally planned on, but it all worked out for the better, because of it!

Funny how that can happen.

The Re-Farmer

Covering for home care, and cozy from the wind

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

This morning, I was to cover for home care for my mother’s med assist, so I was up and about feeding the outside cats before it was light out.

They seem torn between famished for breakfast, and wanting to still be in their cozy spots!

Thankfully, it was light out by the time I started heading for my mother’s, as the first thing I saw when I got on the main road was a pair of deer on the road! The highway condition group I’m on has been reporting a lot of deer activity this year, with certain areas being particularly dangerous right now.

I got to my mother’s a bit early. She was still in bed, and I would have brought things to her, but she came out to join me. I made her a breakfast that she could have with her meds. I suspect it was a fuller breakfast, small as it was, than she would have been up to doing on her own. Hopefully, she will be willing to have the home care workers help her with that. The new assists aren’t part of her current schedule, but they would be informed by now, and her morning assist is 10 minutes to allow for extra help, even if it’s just to get the kettle going and doing some instant oatmeal.

When getting some milk out for her, I discovered she had issues with the carton. She had tried, and failed to open it from both sides and ended up making a hole with a knife! I was able to get the spout side open for her but, with the hole she made, had to be very careful pouring it into her cup. Last time, I’d got her a plastic jug of milk from another town. She had cleaned it out to use it as one of her water jugs for drinking and cooking, so I gave it an extra rinse and transferred her milk from the carton to the jug.

I wish her local grocery store still carried the smaller plastic jugs. They only have 4L in plastic, and my mom can’t handle jugs that size. My siblings and I will have to make a point of getting 2L milk in plastic jugs for her, when we know we can swing by to drop it off.

After that, I spent the next hour or so doing some of the things home care can do for her, like emptying her commode and rubbing the Voltaren on her back, and stuff they can’t, like changing her bedding and sweeping her entire apartment.

She told me that she’s been asking the ladies to do the Voltaren in the morning and before bed, and they have been quite willing to do it, but there’s one home care worker she has issues with. This is the same one that will come in, get her pills out, then leave without making sure my mother takes them. Last night, my mother has asked if she could rub the Voltaren on her back. Her response was to look at the sheet and say, that’s one listed on there. Which… of course it isn’t. This stuff doesn’t require a prescription. But they are supposed to be able to help with a number of things – her bed time visit has 15 minutes schedules for that. I don’t know if this worker refused to do it or not.

As we were chatting, my mother asked me if living here at the farm has been helpful for us, financially. I told her that yes, it was at first, but things are getting really expensive now. Especially when we have things like the door to replace. This is the first time I told her that we had to put it on credit. That’s when she started saying that my brother should be taking care of this stuff for me. I just laughed at that, because I know when she says that, she’s saying it’s because he’s male, and I shouldn’t be doing “man” stuff. However, she had also been teasing about helping pay for the door, so that would also have been her way to say he should have paid for it. Meanwhile, our deal is that we live here “rent free”, in exchange for maintaining the place and keeping it up as much as we can. I wasn’t going to go there, though.

Then she started saying that we should be communicating more. That confused me because she knows I’ve been talking to my brother about this (it’s his house, after all), and her. So I asked her, what did she mean? Oh, I should be talking to my brother about it and… don’t forget! He has access to her money.

…

???

Yeah, he has Power of Attorney, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to use her life’s savings!

I told her, she needs to talk to my brother about her money, not me. Then I added, I won’t ask her, like our vandal did. He was forever going to her for money. He even expected her to pay for a large building he wanted to build and was furious when she refused, and blamed her for having to take out a loan. She said, oh, that was a long time ago. He doesn’t ask for money. Not any more, I pointed out. I reminded him of how she’s given him a check for a substantial amount, only for him to come back asking for another one, saying his wife had accidentally burned the check with their garbage in the burn barrel. She gave him another, much smaller, amount (still a lot, though). When my brother found out, he checked her account and discovered the first check had already been cashed!

She remembered that. That was money she gave him to go towards the building he wanted to build.

*sigh*

That did give me a chance to tell her about our incident from a couple of days ago. When I told her how he’d opened up his shirt, took off the support strap and started waving his colostomy bag at me, she told me, he’s been showing that thing to everyone.

*shudder*

All in all, things went really well this visit. I was able to get quite a bit done for her, which was nice. I even remembered to ask her if she wanted me to make lunch for her before I left – and from her reaction, I could tell she had meant to ask me to do just that, but had forgotten! She told me what she wanted put together on a plate for her, then to set it in the microwave, so that all she needed to do was turn it on when she was ready to eat, after someone from church came over to give her communion.

After I was done there, I was going to swing by the grocery store to pick up a couple of things for home, but they were closed. So I made a side trip to the town closer to us and got a few things there before heading home.

By then, the winds had gotten even worse, so there was no way I was going to get anything done outside today. A forced day of rest!

The forecast now says we will be getting rain all day tomorrow (Monday), continuing on through half the next day. So that’s two more days of outside work lost. After that, it’ll be cooler, but at least the winds will have died down and the weather clear. The problem is, Wednesday is my first city stock up shopping trip. I’ll shoot to head out as early as I can and hopefully get back with enough daylight hours to get at least some work done outside. At this point, I think I’m going to start winter sowing, just to get things into the prepared beds while I still can! On the plus side, the long range forecast now suggests the first couple of weeks of November might still be warm enough to get more done out there.

When it was time to head out and feed the outside cats, I ended up spending quite a long time doing my evening rounds, checking for wind damage, picking up fallen branches, etc. I was finishing up when I spotted this cozy scene.

In the first picture, you can see Pinky in the cat bed on the bottom. That is the cat bed that had been in the catio, where she and her little would cuddle together and sleep.

In the upper level Midnight is in the cat bed there, and in the second picture, you can see he is cuddling with a little grey tabby kitten! Which is amazing, because he usually growls and swipes at the kittens!

I’m glad to see kittens in there. Most hang out together in the sun room, but some just won’t stay there other than to grab some food. The winterized catio is being well used, too. So far, it’s been holding up to the wind all right. I did put the red bench I made against one side wall, to reduce how much it was fluttering in the wind, so that helps, too.

Technically, it’s warm today, but with that wind, it’s very unpleasant out there, so I’m very happy to see the cats using the shelters. Some, like Adam, Sprout and Sprout’s calico seem to have secret spots out in the outer yard somewhere that they hang out in. Sprout’s fluffy orange and white seems to have moved into the portable greenhouse!

Oh, I have news about the ones that have gone to the foster. The adult and Pinky’s two have been spayed and neutered. The adult is completely deaf and has a really bad ear infection, but there were no ear mites in any of them! The vet thinks the adult may have been born deaf. I fully expected to learn the infection was from a really bad ear mite infestation, and that that is what caused the deafness.

So the adult is going to be rehabilitated and socialized, so she can be adopted out rather than coming back to us, since she won’t survive long as an outside cat. If she really were dumped, as we suspect, I’m amazed she survived long enough to find our place at all!

We do the best we can for the outside cats, so they can be cozy, safe, well fed and warm, but nothing beats getting adopted and living the good life indoors!

Gotta work on socializing more kittens, and getting those ladies fixed!

The Re-Farmer

Updates on cats, doctors and more cats!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I woke up late this morning which, unfortunately, meant we had a lot of very hungry cats outside! I asked one of my daughters to simply pour a scoop of kibble onto the sun room floor to tide them over before I could do a proper feeding. Which helped, I suppose, but they were really eager for their morning food. That is when I mix up a small bowl of “cat soup” with just one can of wet cat food, and use that to soften the bowl if kibble, first. I also prep a smaller bowl of kitten soup that I leave on top of the freezer until later. I could hear so much commotion at the door, I ended up taking the bowl of softened kibble and going out the main doors, instead. Even if I had someone ready to herd cats out the door as I went through, I just didn’t want to risk stepping on a kitten!

Which means I filled their food trays and bowls in reverse, doing the furthest ones first and making my way to the sun room. I didn’t take long for them to hear me and come running. Which worked out so well, I’m thinking I might start doing this regularly!

After I finished putting the last of the softened kibble in the sun room trays, I grabbed Frank’s two remaining littles and brought them into the old kitchen to have their own kitten soup without having to fight off other cats. That also gave me time to wash their eyes open again. That done, I quickly popped into the sun room and back again. Frank wanted into the old kitchen and I let her, so she could have the special food along with her kittens.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

She was too nervous and went hiding and exploring around the old kitchen. I let her be and went to get the squeeze treats I bought a while back but never got to using, yet. I gave some to the kittens in their food bowl, then just squeezed the last of it onto the freezer near them, hoping Frank would be tempted. At one point, I was able to reach her and pick her up, but as I moved towards the freezer, she got more and more nervous. Before I could put her down beside her kittens, she panicked, scrambled when her feet touched the top of the freezer, sending food – and kittens! – flying. One of the kittens ended up falling behind the freezer, while Frank ran and hid under a couch.

The other kitten was still on the freezer and done eating, so I let it out through the screenless storm door window. Then I tried to get the kitten that was behind the freezer. It was sitting on the floor, just out of reach. I thought I could use something to push it from behind and get it to move out from behind the freezer.

Instead, it disappeared. It took me a moment to realize it had gone into the opening where the freezer’s guts are! After several attempts, to reach it, it finally came close enough that I could grab it and lift it out without getting tangled in things I could feel, but not see, in there!

The kitten got to enjoy a bit more food and squeeze treat, but Frank wouldn’t come out. I finally went out with the kitten, hoping that Frank would go onto the freezer and eat, while I wasn’t in there.

The kitten joined the cuddle puddle – and was nuzzling Sir Robin, trying to nurse!

I spent some time refilling water bowls, then opened the doors to the old kitchen, where I found Frank just inside, waiting. She never ate what was on top of the freezer, and was very eager to just leave the old kitchen! That gave me a chance to take the bowl of kitten soup and leave it out for other kittens to finish. There was still the glob of squeeze treat on the freezer, though. I ended up picking it up with my fingers, trying to hold it in my hand. It was messy, but I got most of it. I then went to the cats and kittens at the kitten soup bowl.

Two kittens I’ve never been able to get close to before where there. Both of them happily licked the squeeze treat off my fingers instead of running away!

Then they ran away. 😄

Meanwhile, I started getting messages from people with the rescue. This continued throughout the morning, and while I was in the city. Long story short, we might be bringing as many kittens over on Sunday as we can get into carriers! I’ll have to get some clarification, first, though. There seemed to be some communication issues. Tomorrow is Saturday, so I need to get that cleared up fairly quickly!

When I was done my morning rounds, it wasn’t much longer before my daughter and I started for the city. We left insanely early, to give ourselves time to get lost. 😄 I did look the place up on the map last night, plus I had Google Maps up on my phone to give directions. The route looked pretty straightforward, though what it was showing in the app did not match was I saw on my desktop last night. The address was the address, though, and I did remember the area fairly well, from my days when I used to work around there, and lived just across the river. I was not looking forward to trying to find the address, then finding parking. The area is mostly narrow, one way streets.

We did make a stop at my mother’s down along the way, though, to pick up a couple of energy drinks and some chicken and wedges for breakfast. From there, I got the app going to give me directions while I drove. My daughter was a sweetheart and passed potato wedges to me while I drove. I couldn’t eat my chicken while driving, but my daughter could eat hers, and I was more concerns that she got some food in her. She has a terrible habit of not eating, because eating most foods makes her sick. We have not been able to track down exactly why.

As we got into the city, I had the app up on the dashboard holder, but for some reason, it wasn’t giving voice directions. So my daughter took the phone so she could see the map and gave me the directions as we went along. I did remember the route from checking the map last night, but it’s been so long, I preferred having a navigation officer!

When we got to where the area, one of the first problems I noticed was not being able to find street numbers, anywhere. We got to where the app said the address was at, but couldn’t see anything to show where the clinic was. Specifically, a building tall enough, as the endocrinologist clinic was on the 9th floor.

With the one way streets, we drove around the block a couple of times, made slower because of construction, before finally spotting a parkade that didn’t have a “lot full” sign and headed in. We figured we could find the place more easily on foot. It couldn’t be far.

We then had the fun time of trying to find a place to park with enough room for our truck. The first four levels were all reserved parking. We finally got to a level that wasn’t all reserved, but the first side of that level was half roped off, apparently reserved for “game day”. We finally got to where it no longer was all reserved, and nothing was roped off, but the only open spots we saw were “small car only”.

Then I spotted two accessible parking spots.

My daughter and I don’t have our own accessible parking placards, but we do have my husband’s. We used it and finally parked.

My daughter actually forgot her cane at home, but we had three spares in the truck. After she grabbed one for herself, I decided to grab another for myself, just in case.

I am so glad I did. My left hip may be better after the steroid injection, but that lasts for only so long, when pounding concrete!

We had to back track to the street the clinic was on (with a gorgeous, castle-like cathedral as a landmark; I once had the opportunity to go there for mass, when I lived in the area, and can attest it’s as beautiful on the inside as the outside), then tried to find someplace with a street number. We found one, but didn’t know which direction we needed to go for the clinic. We were in the 300’s, and the address was in the 200’s.

We were about to wing it when I spotted a guy in a suit about to cross a street, so I quickly asked him if he knew where the clinic was, and which direction we’d need to go. He was an absolute sweetheart, quickly found the place on his phone (his app got it right, where ours clearly didn’t!) and pointed us in the first direction. We had about 3 blocks to walk, though part way along, the sidewalk was blocked off for construction (which was happening all over the place), so we’d have to cross the street, then cross back again, along the way.

The guy was so wonderful and happy about giving directions, he really made our day!

So, off we went, picking our way through construction at an intersection across from the area blocked off for construction (!!!) before finally making it to the final stretch. That’s when we could see a big billboard sign for a clinic. We couldn’t actually read all of it, because there was a tree growing right in front of it, but we could make out enough that it looked right. The entrance wasn’t on the street the address was on, though, and as we walked past the corner and could see the other side of the billboard, which wasn’t blocked by a tree, we realized it wasn’t the right clinic. We still popped in to ask for directions.

The lady pointed out the window to another high rise building across a parking lot.

A building with a huge painted on sign on the side.

With the name of the clinic at the bottom, in white paint on a pale blue background, barely readable.

We were very appreciative for the help.

Thank God we left as early as we did! My daughter’s appointment was at 1pm. We reached the front doors at about 12:40!

When we got to the 9th floor, the elevators opened up to a reception desk.

With things roped off in front, as if under construction. I think it was actually just to keep people from waking up to the counter, though.

There was no one at the counter.

We tried reading the sign, all it really had was arrows for endocrinology in both directions, and some doctor’s names. My daughter didn’t have a name for the doctor she was booked at, so we didn’t know which way we had to go. I spotted a cleaning lady, so I asked her which way to the endocrinologists. She asked which doctor we needed to say, and I told her we didn’t know. She said the staff (meaning the receptionists) were on lunch and would be back soon, so they’d be able to tell us.

We thanked her and went to a nearby waiting room. We couldn’t see the reception desk from where we were but, thankfully, could hear when someone was at the counter. My daughter and I – and several more people in the waiting room – promptly headed over to check in!

… and ask where a bathroom was. It was a long drive!

Of course, it was while my daughter was still in the bathroom that someone came out and called her name! I let them know. 😄

Even with all that, my daughter ended up at her appointment almost 10 minutes early!

She was out much faster than I expected for a first time appointment. She had requisitions for blood work, one to be done right away, the other to be done later. She had been told there was a lab on the ground floor, and she could get her first blook work done there, so that was her first stop.

When we got there and she was checked in, I asked about how long it would be, since the waiting room was quite full.

About 40 minutes was the answer.

!!!

It turned out they were short staffed today, and falling behind.

With time ticking on our parking spot, we decided it would be faster if we head out and stopped at a lab on the way home.

So, off we went to get the truck and head home, this time taking a route I was much more familiar with. It wasn’t until we got home that I had a chance to check why we were sent to a completely wrong area.

It turned out the address in my calendar for the clinic had two numbers reversed. The bizarre thing is, when I was looking at the address and directions on the website last night, I saw the address that was in my phone. Yet, when I looked up the clinic last night, I used the street address that was on my phone, and found it.

So weird!

As we were leaving the clinic, my daughter made a comment about how much she appreciated our new doctor, but she was going to wait until we were out of the city, and I didn’t have to focus on traffic so much (dancing around more construction) before telling me how it went.

We did make one stop along the way. Gas prices in my mother’s down had dropped to $1.269/L, but I planned to get gas in the city. I’d seen a station on the way in that had gas at $1.239/L and was planning to go there – until we passed a station with gas at $1.199/L !! I was just over a half tank and put $40 in, which filled my tank! I can’t remember the last time I was able to fill my tank from half for only $40!

Once we were out of the city, I remembered to ask my daughter how the appointment went.

Not well.

It was a very short appointment and I won’t go into detail, but the doctor was very rude and “just an old b***”, as my daughter described her. Long story short, though, by the time she told me some of the things the doctor did, my jaw was dropping. She needs to make a formal complaint. The doctor apparently made it clear she was disgusted by my daughter’s body. My daughter has hirsutism. She was there because of her PCOS. How does an endocrinologist not encounter a PCOS patient with hirsutism before? Or maybe she has, and just treats all her hairy female patients with hormonal disorders with disgust?

As if that weren’t bad enough, my daughter was manhandled, without explanation nor consent, in a way that is considered sexual assault. Sure it was a physical exam, but NO doctor is supposed to touch a patient like that without first explaining what they were examining for, and getting consent.

She also tried to test my daughter’s reflexes, but kept missing the tendon, then getting ticked off because there was no reaction to her hammering on my daughter’s ankle.

I really hope my daughter files a formal complaint, because… damn!

Along the way, we stopped in the town our doctor’s clinic is in, to do her first blood tests at the lab in the hospital. My daughter went in to get her tests done, while I stayed in the truck to finally eat the rest of my breakfast!

I’m glad we chose to go to a lab on the way home. My daughter was out so quickly – with two people called in ahead of her – that I was just finishing eating when she came back to the truck! Had we stayed at the lab in the city, we would have been just getting out and heading to the truck, unless they fell behind even more.

Her second set of blood tests can be done whenever she is able, but for this one, she is supposed to take a medication at 11pm, then get her blood tested at 8am.

I don’t even know if the local labs are open at 8am. I think they open at 9am. We’ll have to figure that out. Either way, she has a prescription to pick up before she can do the second test.

After the results are in, she hopes to get a telephone appointment only, or pay extra to get the results emailed to her. She does NOT want to go back to this doctor. I told her that she needs to let her regular doctor know about what happened so that, if necessary, she can get referred to another endocrinologist. Apparently, there’s a new clinic being built and there’s already a long waiting list for it, but she’s more than willing to wait, rather than go back!

For the most part, my daughter is just angry, but she realizes that a patient with, for example, a history of sexual abuse, a visit like this would have been very traumatic.

So glad that appointment is over with!

By the time we got home, it was late enough that the first thing I did was get the outside cats fed. No crowd trying to break through the old kitchen door during the evening feedings! Then I got changed and head outside, focusing on getting all the now-dry stuff from the sun room packed up and put away in bins with lids.

As seems to be the usual around here, it took longer than I expected, but I finally got it done!

The storage area is now organized and packed. Before winter, more things will be added for storage but, over all, it is done. On the cat side of the room (second picture) I still need to figure out where to set the second heat lamp, which has a lower wattage heat bulb, but that’s pretty much it. That cats really, really like the new set up! More and more of them seem to have figured out the litter boxes, too.

Finishing the sun room meant I could finally move the cat isolation shelter under the canopy tent.

That took some doing. The wheels kept sinking into the soil! That thing is heavy. What I would like to do, once I have the spare funds for it, is replace the wheels with something larger. For now, I put scraps of cardboard under the wheels to keep them from sinking into the dirt. I also have some handles I want to add to the front and the back, so it’ll be easier to move around.

Meanwhile, the cats can still use it where it is now.

Or that one skunk I have been finding, napping in the cat bed!

The box to go over the ramp door during the winter needs a bit of work. The overlapping plastic cracked when I set it on its side to attach the legs. I did try to set it where it could overhang the edge of the well cap, but it kept moving while I tried to work on it. Nothing some duct tape can’t fix. 😜 The panel in front, with a smaller opening for the cats to get through, was broken by cats panicking and hitting the edges while running out, so that needs to be trimmed. I also want to add a couple of pieces of the same material used for the legs to the sides, as handles to make moving it around easier. Right now, it’s hard to get a grip on it without damaging that roof panel even more.

It might be a couple of days before I can do the painting. Saturday would be perfect for it – a warmer day and, more importantly, a warmer night in the forecast. I might be able to get just one coat on before it starts getting too cold for wet paint to cure, but even that is better than nothing.

I’m going to be out and about a lot over the next while. Tomorrow, I’ll be at my mother’s for longer than usual. Along with her grocery shopping, I will be cooking up some of the chicken she was so angry at me for buying for her. I even remembered to ask her to take it out of the freezer tonight, so it’ll be thawed out before I get there. She’s also asked me to trim her toenails for her. I want to take a good look at her feet, as she apparently is getting an ingrown toenail, and that might need to be checked by a doctor. Of course, I’ll be doing some housework for her, changing her bedding, probably doing her laundry. Some of this stuff, my sister would normally come out on Fridays (my mother’s scheduled laundry time with the shared machines) and do for her. Since my mother gets her Meals on Wheels at noon on Fridays, I don’t plan to be there until about 1pm, so she has a chance to eat, first, and I can take the tray out to the common room for pick up, later in the week.

Saturday, I’ll be out again for a dump run, but that shouldn’t take long.

Sunday afternoon, I will be meeting to drop off cats near a Walmart, so if there’s any last things we need before Thanksgiving on Monday, that would be my time to get it.

Then I get to stay home for a while! The only appointment I have next week is a telephone follow up about the injection to my hip. I’ve got lots to do to prepare beds for winter sowing, as both day time highs and overnight lows will soon be cool enough to sow seeds but not have them germinate until spring.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, the truck is back and… *sigh*

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, let’s start with the good stuff!

I’ve been feeding the outside cats a bit later every day, simply because it’s dark for so much longer. Which means getting through the old kitchen door with hungry cats and kittens swirling under my feet can get pretty dangerous! My younger daughter was on cat herding duty this morning. I can get through the door with the kibble bowl and avoid stepping on cats (barely), but I can’t also stop them from running into the old kitchen or close the door behind me at the same time! So I just try to get through as quickly as possible and start dropping food into trays to get their attention, while a daughter herds kittens making a mad dash through the door back out again until she can close at least one of the doors.

Later on, after the cats were fed, I’d done my rounds and I popped into the sun room to get some pruning sheers, I found this.

A great big bowl of kitties! Sir Robin seems content to be snuggled up with seven littles!

After the chat I had with the rescue, where they were trying to get an idea of how many cats we have, I did a head count as best as I could, of all the cats and kittens I could see. Usually, I try to count just the adults, as it’s so hard to spot the running around kittens at times. I think I got a total of 35, but I’m not 100% sure. I am sure that there were some “missing”, but I may also have counted some of the kittens twice.

We’re going to be warm for the next while, so this morning I uncovered the winter squash and watered the few things left to water, including the sunflowers, which are blooming more and more!

The sunflower in the first photo had been chomped by a dear. It sent up two new shoots, which then branched out more, so now it has four or five stems reaching upwards. All the flowers in the first photo are from that one plant.

The second photo is from the one that got flower buds developing at the base of almost all the leaves. I couldn’t fit them all in a photo what would fit on Instagram. “Only” eight blooming seed heads are visible in that photo!

The last photo is of the tallest sunflower. So pretty!

I still have no idea if we’ll get any viable seeds out of these. We have almost no pollinators around these days. At least not the flying types. This past smoky summer, with drought and heat waves, was brutal on everything. There are still other types of pollinators, but I don’t tend to see them on the sunflowers. We shall see how it works out.

I’m happy to finally see some colour on the Cosmos flower buds. There are so few buds at all! Most of the plants don’t seem to be developing any at all, even though they are quite tall and healthy looking, other than a bit of frost damage on a few.

I’m even happier to see so many of the memorial asters blooming. I’m pretty sure the plants are supposed to be much bigger (the nasturtiums were much smaller than normal, too), but they seem to be doing okay. If all goes well, I’ll be able to harvest seeds from them before the hard frosts hit.

Speaking of which, this is why I went back for the pruning shears.

Those are all the onion seed heads in the trellis bed. They were starting to open and I decided to bring them in to finish off indoors, so I don’t lose too many seeds into the bed itself. I found so many tiny onions while working on the bed in the spring, from seeds lost last year!

The other bowl is the driest of the carrot seed heads. There are still more on the plant that were quite green, so I’ve left them for now. We even still have some carrot flowers.

I’ve got quite a collection of seeds “curing” in the living room now. I need to settle in one of these evenings and package them up soon.

Once done outside, I came in for breakfast. I just sat down when I got a notification on my phone that there as a new voice mail. My phone never rang.

Yes, it was home care.

I’ll have to get back to that, though. I’m still shaking my head over the whole thing.

I was booked to drop off the courtesy van and pick up the truck for 1:30. I left early so I could fill the van’s gas tank (as required) and put it through a car wash (not required, but it was getting pretty covered in gravel dust already). I still got to the autobody shop quite early. As I was driving in, I could see a truck that looked like it might be ours, but I wasn’t 100% sure until I spotted my phone holder on the dash.

The truck was so clean, I barely recognized it!!!

I headed in to switch keys, sign what needed to be signed, and pay what needed to be paid. The final damage, including the “betterment” cost, insurance waiver for four days and the deductible, was $720 and change.

If this were not covered by insurance, it would have cost us almost $1500.

I am really happy with the work done!

I’m glad I went with the bed liner stuff instead of regular paint. It looks really good, and I like that it has a texture and won’t be as slippery anymore. The inside of the tail gate was already coated with that, so it even matched that.

Then I got into the truck. Wow!!! They actually cleaned out the whole thing! The truck hasn’t been this clean on the inside since we bought it!

Once I was parked at home, I opened up the tail gate to check out the new cover. The latch to free it is much easer to find than the old one’s was. It rolled up nice and easy, and at the cab end, there are loops. Under the cover are straps with hooks to go into the loops. Waaaaayyyy easier to fasten then the buckles the old cover had!

That was about it for differences between old and new that I could see.

The trip to get the truck was almost enough for me to reduce my blood pressure after this morning.

The voice mail from home care was to let me know that the person scheduled to do my mother’s 9:30am meds today had called in sick.

It was past 9:37 when I was listening to the message.

She scheduler told me that they did find someone to cover it, but he wouldn’t be able to get to my mother’s until 10:30. She was concerned it might be late and wanted to know if I preferred to cover it myself. She wanted me to call back, but said she would schedule the 10:30 visit, just in case.

She didn’t leave a number.

Since my phone never rang (which means my Wi-Fi calling needs to be reset again), there was no caller display number. I couldn’t call her back. It would have been to give the go ahead for the late visit, anyhow, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

Being past time for her med assist, I was more concerned about calling my mother to let her know they’d be late.

When she answered, she told me she had just finished her breakfast. I don’t think she’d noticed they were late, yet.

I told her what the situation was and that someone would be coming, just at 10:30, instead.

She started making disparaging comments about how they call in sick so often.

Then she started going on about how we need to stop leaving her to strangers to take care of her. We need to take care of her. All weekend, and no one even phoned her.

…

…

I told her, my brother and I were AT HER PLACE on Saturday. It’s like she completely forgot that I came in to do her meds, grocery shopping and some housekeeping, just the day before yesterday, plus the surprise visit from my brother, and our taking her angel statue when we left, at her request.

When I told her that, she paused a moment, but just kept on going.

She was feeling sick. She’s been feeling sick for days. I tried asking her, sick in what way? but she got mad and told me to let her speak.

It turns out she meant her breathing, which makes everything else worse. So she was feeling bad overall, but blaming her breathing.

Then she told me she used the inhaler that I’d left out of the lock box for her, and was feeling SOOO much better, so she’d decided she will keep using the “puffer”.

…

…

I told her, she could finish that one off, but she no longer has a prescription. Because she’s been using it for a long time (more than a year) and it wasn’t helping.

Oh, but this one’s from the hospital, not the other one, and the one from the hospital works so much better.

I told her, they are the same medicine. The only different is how it’s released. Inside, it’s the same medication.

Oh… she says. Well I’ll still take it.

I reminded her that when I got her refill last time, she freaked out at me over how much it cost. I can afford it, she says (she could afford it before, too, but that didn’t stop her from yelling at me because it wasn’t free).

This went on for a while and I was starting to lose my patience. We do all we can to help her, and she keeps sabotaging our efforts. I told her I’d done a lot to get things the way she wanted, talking to the doctor, etc., and now she’s messing with everything again.

Ah, but this is my mother, so she took that to mean that I was complaining about how doing all that I do to take care of her is just too much for me. It really should be my brother doing all this, because he’s got the “biggest piece of the pie” (meaning, he now owns the farm). She has zero understanding that the farm is a burden for him, not a benefit, even with us helping as much as we can by living here, plus she thinks that transferring the ownership to him basically means he should be her slave, at her beck and call at all times.

My brother is on a flight across the country for his work right now. He works in internet security, at an international level. She has no clue how stressful or important his work is. All she wants is for him to be available to her at all times, and obey her every command. She’s been pretty blunt about that expectation, too. All because she transferred ownership of the property so it wouldn’t be part of the will anymore, in hopes our vandal would stop harassing her. Which he hasn’t. He just thinks she gave the property to me, for some reason. At least he can’t contest ownership of the property in the will, because she no longer owns it. Instead, she now thinks she owns my brother.

*sigh*

Then she started begging, pleading, for us to get her into a nursing home. Which we’ve been trying to do for more than a year, now. As she started that, she suddenly started talking about how Canada is turning into an African country, and this is a bad thing. I kept asking her, what does this have to do with being in a nursing home? She just kept repeating about Canada turning into an African country, then shifted to, it’s about her health. She needs to have people around her. She could start screaming.

???

Eventually, she was able to tell me that if she were in a nursing home and having troubles at night, she could start screaming, and someone would come to help her. But where she is now, she could start screaming, and no one would come (which has actually happened). I told her, that’s why you have the Lifeline. If you need help, push the button.

The entire conversation was very confusing and all over the place, with a lot more than what I’m including here – and all I was wanting to do was let her know her morning med assist would be an hour late.

I finally told her, again, I was calling to let her know her morning med assist would be late, adding that my breakfast was getting cold (sometimes, that works), and cut the call off. I just couldn’t handle the call anymore. There was no reasoning with her in any way.

While I was working on this post, I called and left a message with the mental health assessor that had come out this past Tuesday, mentioned that I had just found out the appointment had been interrupted by our vandal. I mentioned I had a phone call of concern just this morning and wanted to talk to her about it.

I do have my medical appointment in the city tomorrow, though, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to connect with her. If she’s able to call before I had to leave, that would be great (I did get a time frame). Otherwise, it might be a few days.

We are very much at a loss with my mother. She really does need to be in a nursing home or supportive living, but we’ve done everything we can to get her in. Unfortunately, she’s sabotaging a lot of our efforts by refusing the home care help she should be getting, like meal assists, dress assists, bathing assists. Not that I blame her for not wanting it, but if she can’t handle home care doing this stuff for her, how is she going to handle nursing home staff doing this stuff for her? Meanwhile, because she is NOT getting all this extra care that she actually needs, she’s viewed by the system as being too able bodied and independent to qualify for a spot in home car.

*sigh*

My brain is tired.

The Re-Farmer

Home care crazy!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Their right hand doesn’t know what their left hand is doing!

This is what WordPress’ AI image generator thinks I look like. 😂

I was just sitting down with my supper when the phone rang. I recognized the number as the home care scheduler.

*sigh*

She was very, very apologetic, but they had cancellations and there was no one to cover my mother’s bed time med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. Other visits are covered.

Bed time only?

Yes, she confirmed.

This confused me because her supper time and bed time meds are always done by the same person. If someone cancelled, how does it work that only the bed time assist wasn’t covered, and for two nights in a row?

She explained that they had to pull for a client.

…

I asked what that meant.

It turned out that the cancellation wasn’t one of my mother’s scheduled home care aids. It was someone else. Someone that did not have anyone that could over for them (like I do for my mother). So she had to pull people away from other clients that did have people to cover for them, like my mother. She was able to find someone that could do her supper visit instead, but not her bed time visit.

…

So… I would be covering for someone so they could cover for someone else, that was covering for someone that did not have anyone to cover for them.

It took me a moment just to worth through that verbally and a while longer for her to work through what I’d just said and…

Yes. That’s exactly what was happening.

Well, at least I had time to finish my supper before I had to leave, since my mother’s suppertime med assist was covered.

First, I updated my family and my siblings, then I called my mother.

She was in a great mood when she answered, telling me she was just finishing her supper and “a very pretty boy” had just left after doing her med assist.

So I told her that he wouldn’t be coming back, because I was going to be coming in.

This confused her. Before he left, he had assured her he would be coming back. Around 8, she asked (I believe she’s scheduled for 8:50), and he said yes.

…

I told her I would call the scheduler back and find out what’s going on.

The problem?

It’s now outside office hours. It went straight to voice mail. Their message gave a bunch of information, including that no one would be listening to any messages during evenings and weekends.

Any message I left on a Friday night wouldn’t be heard until Monday.

*sigh*

Very quick update message sent, and I called my mother back. I explained that I wouldn’t be able to get through to the scheduler and confirmed again that he said he would be back.

Yes.

So I told her that, if no one came by 9pm, let me know and I would go over to do her meds. I would also leave her meds for tomorrow’s bedtime assist, just in case. If she didn’t call me, I would know that he showed up and everything was okay.

She told me she would call me, either way.

What a s**tshow.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, adorableness, and unexpected outings

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I headed outside this morning with my usual feeding of adorable beasts and doing my rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the main garden area.

In the first picture, you can see a Hopi Black Dye sunflower, still trying to bloom! All of the sunflowers, which I thought were killed off by our last frost, look like they’ve actually recovered! Wild!

I had some plans to make a stew later today, so I decided to do a small harvest (second image above). Just enough potatoes for the day, plus our only bulb onions of the year! These were in the high raised bed and their necks were bent by rolling cats, so they weren’t going to get any bigger. The only onions we planted this year were the seeds included in our seed mixes. Quite a few came up, then disappeared. In the high raised bed, just these got big enough to form bulbs. All the others were basically just the greens. Even the really strong and healthy looking ones in the old kitchen garden are nowhere near starting to form bulbs.

Next year, we’ll be starting seeds indoors again. 😄 From our own seed, too.

I was back inside, helping my daughter, who’d been working on the “cat free zone” (the living room) for most of the night. We’ve basically been just shoving things that needed to be protected from the cats into there, but never quite getting the chance to go back and put them away properly. It had gotten to the point that there was just a path in between furniture to the shelves in front of the window, where I’ve got tomatoes ripening and seeds drying.

I didn’t get to help her for long before the phone rang.

It was home care.

I have to admit, it’s been a long time since they’ve called. The scheduler was very apologetic, but they had a last minute cancellation. Someone called in sick.

My mother’s meds were scheduled for 9am.

It was about 8:35 when she called. Driving time alone to my mother’s is 25 minutes.

I didn’t even bother changing out of my grubbies. I just made a quick call and left a message with my mother, grabbed my purse and headed out. So she got her meds just a little bit behind schedule.

Apparently, the person who was supposed to come this morning was also supposed to do my mother’s two evening visits, and she didn’t show up for those, either. Apparently, a guy came to do it, and he was all the way from the city! I appreciate that they found someone to do her evening meds. Her and however many other people are on that home care aide’s list!

In the end, it worked out. My mother was still in bed and not feeling well. I ended up making some toast for her, so she’d have something to eat with her meds. She also likes to have milk, half and half with boiling water, as her beverage, so I made that, too – finishing off both her milk and a loaf of bread in the process of making her breakfast. I told her I would get her more milk and asked if she needed anything else. I figured I would go get it while she was having a peaceful breakfast.

Which is when things got strange. I have no idea how she interpreted my request, but she seemed to think I was trying to rush her and was leaving right away or… I don’t know. She started going on about how she needs to rely on me and my siblings more now, and making …. less than charitable, shall we say … comments about my brother and sister. Now, I admit, to a certain extent, I can understand about my sister. She used to call my mother almost every say, and visit on some of her days off from work (she only works 3 days a week at a Walmart). In fact, my mother used to lord it over me, how my sister was calling her every day. Then my sister started to get more involved in their church again. The Worldwide Church of God, which is recognized as a cult. Her behaviour has changed since then, and she has been … not cutting the family off, but definitely cutting us out of things. She’s back to refusing to celebrate birthdays (they’d relaxed on that for a while) and hating Christmas and Easter, going on with the long debunked claims about them being pagan holidays, etc. There are definite issues there, but my sister does still do things like to my mother’s laundry, or mop her floors, and will pick up things like clothes and other things from Walmart for her. My sister used to sew her own clothes all the time and she knows my mother’s measurements, so anything she gets for my mother, she tailors to fit. So while there is definitely tension and issues, she does still help out in ways my brother and I can’t. We each have things we can do individually for my mother that the others aren’t able to.

Anyhow.

She made a comment about my wanting to leave so soon (I think she decided my wanted to get her milk while she was having breakfast meant I was in a hurry to leave?) and how there are two girls at home that can help take care of my husband. Which threw me, because my mind wasn’t there at all. I told her, we’re winterizing. There’s lots of work to do. She actually seemed confused by that. I don’t think she ever knew all the things my dad and brothers did to prepare the house and yards for winter.

I kept trying to bring her back to, I want to get you milk, do you need anything else? but she kept going back to saying things about my brother and sister. Finally, I just grabbed my hat and purse and told her, I’m going to get you some milk.

To which she told me to hold on… she might need something else…

…

*sigh*

In the end, there were just a couple of things from the grocery store she wanted, but we also checked her Volataren supply. She still had but, since she’s using it on her back now, as well as her knees, it was worth picking up more. Which meant a trip to the pharmacy.

My mother then started getting cash out, took out a 50, and asked if I wanted an envelope. I said it would be good, since I put all her change and receipts back into the envelope for her to go through later. She started looking for an envelope, found one on her table – and it still had the change and receipts from the last time I did shopping for her! Then, just in case, she took the bills from that and included it with the $50 bill she already had ready.

I then left her to her breakfast and my first stop was at the pharmacy. They know me pretty well by now, and I’ve had pleasant chats with the manager a few times. They are aware that I’m shopping on behalf of my mother, and I’ve also talked about having to come in to cover for home care way too often. So when I came in and the manager saw me coming in so early in the day, I told him about home care cancelling again this morning – but, it turned out to be okay, since it meant I could run errands for my mother, too.

He laughed and said, “let’s not tell them that!” 😄

My mother’s Voltaren turned out to be on sale, which was nice – until I tried to hand over the $50, then went into my own wallet for the change. The manager very sheepishly asked if I had anything smaller. This early in the day, making change for a $50 would have emptied his float! He even commented that he should have a bigger float, but almost no one pays in cash anymore. In the end, I had enough of my own cash to add to my mother’s smaller bills and was able to pay with exact change. He was so very thankful!

I’ve worked retail for many years. I totally get it!

We talked about how so few people use cash these days, but then you have people like my mother. She simply could not use a debit card. It’s beyond her. He commented that, if ever the machines go down, though, it’s people like my mother that will be in the better position!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up the few things my mother wanted, plus I got a couple of extra things that were on sale that I knew she’d enjoy and could put in her freezer. It was still a really small shopping trip.

When I got back to my mother’s and put things away, showing her what I got different, I tried to entertain her with what happened at the pharmacy. In the end, I think I only confused her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how they were trying to cheat her by not being able to make change for a $50 bill, that early in the day.

*sigh*

Then she started going through the envelope with the change and receipts and the contents didn’t make sense to her. I told her again, because I used the smaller bills, adding in my own cash, there was no change from the pharmacy. The change in the envelope was only from the grocery store.

I’m not sure she got it.

In the end, I didn’t stay much longer. My mother was feeling very tired and I encouraged her to go back to bed, which she said she would do. She told me she’d even used her LifeLine last night, to talk to someone about how she was feeling. She wanted them to tell her what to do, but they can’t really do that. The guy did ask her if she wanted him to call an ambulance, and she told him no. Instead, she told him he could go back to bed, and she would do the same.

I hope she did go back to bed after I left!

From there, I went straight home. My daughter had managed a lot more progress on the living room while I was gone, including moving some things to the basement. (If we can figure out how to get it down the steps, I’d like to move the big aquarium to the basement, too.) She was really exhausted – I think she was up all night! – and was feeling sick, but had just remembered that she had a prescription to pick up for our joint appointment tomorrow. It’s a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated, so it was something to call in at the last minute. She did that and was told it’d be ready for pick up this afternoon, and I told her I’d take care of it, and sent her off to bed. She was more than happy to do that!

Which meant that, after a couple of hours, I was on the road again. My husband needed a few things from the pharmacy, too, so that worked out. Before heading home, I stopped at the grocery store and picked up a couple of small trays of sushi as a thank you for my daughter. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t eaten, again.

By the time I got home again, it was time to feed the outside cats. I headed out again later, to close some things up.

Which is when I spotted this.

Some of the kittens have discovered they really, really like the portable greenhouse! That’s Colby snuggling with a much, much smaller tabby in the foreground. I’m not sure about the other older kitten, watching me through the doorway. I’ll have to remember that distinctive black chin. When I moved around, I spotted two more littles, curled around each other on the grass near a luffa pot. Today was a decently warm day, but they quite enjoy the extra warmth, when they can find it!

I’ll be heading outside one more time before calling it a day. With the extra trips out, I did not accomplish what I’d intended to, but none of it was particularly time dependent. We’ll be out again for much of tomorrow, too. After that, there are no more planned outings until I have to pick up my mother’s refills on Sunday, then my husband and I have a dental appointment later next week. We’re supposed to have good weather so, hopefully, we’ll be able to get the bigger outside projects done. Getting the sun room cleaned out for the winter will probably be the biggest and longest job. The critters have made a real mess in there – and I don’t mean just the cats!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Mid month stock up: this is what $178 looks like, plus a very long day.

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It may not be mid month on the calendar yet, but it is for our stock up shopping schedule.

It’s been a very long day.

First up, the cuteness. A really bad, cropped critter cam image, but still cute!

That is Lady Hypotenose, in the wee hours of the night, tending her now five kittens! I saw them on the camera earlier, swirling around her like a vortex, except the new baby, who was hunting nip. I look a couple of minute later and there she was with three of her babies (the fourth one ran out of frame), and her newly adopted baby, nursing them all in the middle of the sun room.

What a good mama!

When I went to feed them this morning, they were all over the place, but when I came back after finishing my rounds, they were all gone! Every one of them! I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sun room!

I went out to check the cat house and various other spots, but nothing.

Then I came back to the sun room and found a single kitten, going for the food. I had no idea where it came from.

So I went into the old kitchen and watched through the door with the missing screen, and spotted a kitten squeeze its way out from under the counter shelf.

*phew* What a relief! I was afraid Lady Hypotenose changed her mind about keeping her kittens in the sun room!

After that, I had a bit of time before I needed to head out to my mother’s, to take her for her doctor’s appointment. She really struggled to use the stool and get into the truck but, unfortunately, this was not an appointment that could be done over the phone.

We were able to go through a whole bunch of things during the appointment, from going over the results of her various blood tests (all is fine), talking about her leg swelling with a dosage change and confirming that yes, she has toe fungus, and getting a prescription for that. My mother brought up her frequent complaint about dry mouth, that happens only when she’s sleeping. I’ve been telling her, she’s probably sleeping with her mouth open. I get it, too, sometimes. So when the doctor asked some questions and came to the same conclusion, my mother was right ticked off!

I think the doctor was ticked off, too – or at least shocked – but not at my mother. I brought up the referral for another mental health assessment, since it’s been more than a year, and home care needs it for paneling my mother for a nursing home. The doctor looked up the last penal report and was shocked it wasn’t enough. She wrote a referral for the assessment, but also wrote a letter to the home care coordinator (I’m glad I keep her business card in my phone case, because she needed the contact information!). I brought up that my mother really shouldn’t be living alone, and my mother added that she is having more trouble moving around and has to lean on furniture to get around he apartment.

I think the case coordinator is going to get a rather brusk letter about my mother’s conditions, and that she needs to be in care.

There were a few other things, some of which I had to explain to my mother as I brought her home. Normally, we would have stopped for lunch or something after the appointment, since we were on the road at lunch time, but with the changes in her prescription, I needed to get her bubble packs to the pharmacy.

My mother was so tired, she actually started to fall asleep during the drive!

Once I got her home, I went through the lock box and took some bubble packs out, leaving the new one that just got started today. My mom will stick to the same dose until that pack is done.

I also found a message from my daughter. The pharmacy had already called me on the land line, wanting to talk to me about my mother’s prescriptions! When I got there, I joked with the pharmacist that they are FAST! They were calling before I even got my mother home, yet!

They took the bubble packs to adjust them, but the new prescription for my mother’s toes as another issue. I was warned right away that it was expensive, while she looked up if it was covered by our province’s prescription insurance.

It wasn’t.

My mother had given me cash, and asked me to get some more Voltaren as well, since she’s using it on both her knees and her back now. Between that and the new prescription, it wasn’t enough, so I paid the balance.

When I got back to my mom’s and went over everything with her, and told her I’d covered about $50, she was furious. This little bottle was $50? she said, as she threw it across the table. No, it cost over $120. The $50 or so was what I covered.

Cue much ranting and raving about how it’s just toes, she didn’t need it, she didn’t want it.

She had been quite happy to get the prescription when we left the doctor’s, but I guess she expected it to be free, just like she did with the inhaler when I covered that for her, too.

It took a while to calm her down and give her the instructions on how to use it.

I suspect she will refuse to use it.

After all that, I was more than happy to leave. I still had my own errands to run at Walmart, since I was out, anyhow.

It had been raining off and on all day, and I even got warnings from home that it was pouring buckets. It wasn’t that heavy where I was, though, so the drive to the Walmart wasn’t too bad. I’m just happy to have the rain. We need it so badly!

Once I got to the Walmart, I could finally have my own lunch, too!

I didn’t have a large list, but it was enough to make the drive to Walmart worth it. Especially when it came to the cat food.

This is what $178.63 looks like.

Yeah. Not much there at all.

The most expensive items were the two bags of kibble, plus a case of wet cat food. I also got a box of pet stain/odour remover, to cat supplies alone were in the $100 range.

My husband requested water flavours, but they had only one flavour of his preferred type/brand, so he got three different types. I also grabbed more distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. He still has a good supply, but it’s a lot cheaper at Walmart, so I got extra.

There’s some coffee creamer for the girls, some cleaning vinegar and facial tissues, some powdered chicken bouillon, and some rye bread. They had an excellent price on corn on the cob, so I picked up a bunch.

And that’s it. That was almost $200

Ouch.

By the time I was heading home, it was late enough in the day that I asked my daughter to feed the outside cats. She tells me that all the kittens, except the two garage kittens, came to the house to eat, and she even got to pet some of the new littles! I’m glad because, by the time I was bringing in more cat food through the sun room, they were almost all hiding again.

The system that gave us all that wonderful rain today has passed us by and it seems like the main body of it will go right over where the huge fire across the lake is. Even with the rain, the air was still smoky. We might get a bit more rain tonight, but just barely.

I actually don’t have any appointments or planned errands for the next couple of weeks! I’m amazed. It’s been so long. Of course, there will be the usual unplanned stuff – trips to the dump, any new calls to cover my mother’s med assists for home care, stuff like that – but I’m otherwise actually going to be able to stay home for the next while!

What an amazing thing. I might actually get some progress done on various projects that had to be set aside!

I think I’ll celebrate by going to bed early.

The Re-Farmer

A day of kitties, dentists and… of course

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

My husband and I had joint dental appointments this afternoon, which meant – of course – I couldn’t sleep last night! I got maybe three hours of sleep before I finally got up to take care of the outside cats and do my morning rounds.

I had company.

Gotta love the murder mittens! 😂

Once the outside stuff was done, I had enough energy to grab a couple of PB sandwiches for breakfast and then crashed for a couple of hours, so I would at least be safe to drive.

I don’t think my husband was able to eat anything at all this morning. He meds really mess with his appetite, so he doesn’t typically have any sort of breakfast.

Which turned out to not be a good thing!

His appointment was at 12:45, and the plan was for us to go for a late lunch after we were done. We both had changes in our medical information to update them on before our appointments, so we headed out early to have time for that.

Thank God for AC in the truck. For all the rain we’ve had, it’s still hot and muggy, with the humidex making it so much worse. Stepping outside of the house or truck was like walking into a wet wall of heat. The rain doesn’t seem to have done much to reduce the smoke in the air, either. We’re just as smokey today as we were yesterday, and yesterday was the worst I’ve seen since we moved out here.

We had a bit of a surprise during the drive to town. For some distance, we could see something on the side of the road. A whole bunch of large somethings.

They turned out to be Guinea hens! About five or six of them! Someone’s flock had escaped. 😄 I had no idea anyone in that area kept Guinea’s.

Once at the dentist, I had a form to fill out with my new information. For my husband, he brought printouts and we just handed it to them to input into his file from. None of these forms ever have enough space for the number of medications he’s on. The first time we filled one of these forms out for him, we wrote the list out on the back and it pretty much filled the page.

My husband got called in first, and I had a while to wait before I was called in. Long enough for him to get his Xrays done, and then inform us they had to double the freezing to do what they had to do, so it was going to take longer than expected.

My own visit was actually a pleasant surprise… I think. I had a couple of teeth that have been bothering me, and I thought I had a cavity starting under a crown. After the Xrays were done, they found no cavities. In fact, other than needing a cleaning, my teeth are great.

So, why the problems I’ve been having? The dentist was perplexed. In the end, the only thing he did was the slightest of grinding and polishing of a sharp edge that I was feeling that I thought was the edge of a cavity. I didn’t even need freezing. He tried all sorts of things to try and track down the source of the issues I was describing, and everything was testing out fine. About the only thing he can think of is that there is a crack under a filling, too small to show up on an Xray, but he really couldn’t tell.

I will have some other work done another time, and eventually get to talking about what to do about my missing teeth, while we still have insurance, later on.

So my husband and I are booked for another double appointment next month.

My husband, unfortunately, needs more work. Today he got a temporary fix, but he does have a confirmed cracked tooth under a filling. He was in the waiting room by the time I got out, and still so frozen, going for lunch was out of the question!

We booked the next appointment, but had a problem settling the bill. For some reason, our insurance wouldn’t go through. My husband’s did, but not mine. This has happened before, and not just as the dentist. After fussing with it for a while, she ended up just printing out the invoice/receipt for both of us for our records. They’ll keep working on whatever is going on with the insurance company and if there’s anything not covered (I believe we are covered 90%), they’ll mail us a bill. I seem to recall they did this for me the last time I was there and had a tooth pulled.

From there, we made a quick stop at the grocery store. My husband stayed in the truck – he was in no shape to walk around! – and I dashed in to pick up something he could keep in his medication fridge to eat once the freezing wore off.

My the time we got home, it was time for me to head out to feed the outside cats and start my evening errands.

Which is when my cell phone rang.

*sigh*

Of course.

It was home care.

They didn’t have anyone for my mother’s med assist for tonight and tomorrow night. I confirmed the times she was scheduled for. I had enough time to update my siblings in our group chat, call my mother, grab a food and go.

When calling my mother, I found out that my sister had left not long ago. She had been able to come over to do my mother’s laundry during her scheduled time, which was really nice. I would have done it, if we didn’t have our dental appointments. Given what happened with the med assists, if I had done it today, I would have gotten home and had to turn around and come back almost right away! My sister is normally not available, so she doesn’t even have the lock box code.

Unfortunately, every time I call my mom to let her know I have to cover the med assist again, she starts ranting at me. Why are they calling me? Why don’t I tell them I live far away? Like it’s somehow my fault. I tell her, don’t take it out on me! She says she isn’t; that I’m the “victim”, so she doesn’t seem to realize that yelling at me every time really is her taking it out on me, even if it’s home care she’s mad at.

The call was short, though, as I told her I needed to have my supper (lunch, actually), then go.

Including the time it takes to get ready, open the gate, get the truck out, then make the drive, it takes about half an hour or slightly more to get to my mother’s. While there, I give her the supper time meds, then prepare her bed time meds for her to take herself, later. She’s supposed to take her supper time meds with food. She had her Meals on Wheels at noon today, but didn’t really have much she was up to for supper and ended up asking me to get some instant oatmeal started for her, and prep her milk that she likes to add to it as well. Even so, I was there for less than 10 minutes, and then it was another half hour to get home.

Talking to my older daughter about the situation just a little while ago, she pointed out that we won’t be able to do this in the winter, and I’m the closest! We’ve already had one call where the person who was supposed to do my mother’s med assist wasn’t going to come into town because it was too dangerous to drive on the highway during a storm. I told the person calling me, if the aid couldn’t come in because the roads are too dangerous, neither can I! (Which was completely true that day.)

That’s something I’m going to have to remember to bring up with the case coordinator. There’s a reason my mother’s meds are in a lock box, but if med assists are so unreliable due to staff shortages, this is going to be a real problem.

Unless, of course, they finally get my mother into the nursing home, like she wants so much!!!

So that was done, and I’ll be back tomorrow. My brother and SIL will be out this weekend with their grandkids, if all goes well, so maybe my brother will be able to come with me, too. With how she treats him, he doesn’t want to, but she behaves better when I am there.

Anyhow.

Once done and back home, I was able to finish my evening rounds.

Which has its perks!

Sometimes, those perks have blue eyes.

That smokey coloured garage kitten is getting darker as s/he get bigger. I still wonder where the blue eyes genes came from! There has to be a cat at a neighboring farm. It certainly isn’t from one of the males that lives here.

The white and grey is becoming increasingly curious, and allowing me to be closer. The smokey one runs away, which actually surprises me. After that one time I was able to not only pet it, but pick it up and hold it, I thought it would be the easier one to socialize. Instead, it’s been the harder one!

It does help that the mother allows me to pet her and starts purring. If she’s around, like she was when I got the above pictures, they are less prone to simply running away and hiding.

Once the evening stuff was done, I could finally settle in for the day. It’s not even 8pm yet, but I’m seriously considering going to be, with how little sleep I got last night. The only reason I have against it is that it’s so hot and muggy in my bedroom/office. The AC doesn’t affect this part of the house, and there’s only so much the fans can do, even with I have the box fan set to blow the hot air and smoke OUT the window during the day.

Tomorrow is supposed to get just as hot as today, with some rain in the late evening. Then we’re supposed to get about a week with little change in the temperature, but no more rain. Also, no change in the ongoing severe air quality warnings.

I do have to make sure to make a dump run tomorrow. I’m really dreading it. The conditions have gotten so bad there, I skipped going last week. I did as on a local group if anyone knew if they’d brought out the front end loader and pushed all the built up trash into the pit, but no one confirmed either way. Considering it’s been at least two months since the trash accumulating at the edge of the pit has been pushed in, you’d think it would be done by now.

I truly doubt it.

Our new council is really dropping the ball when it comes to this particular landfill. There are two others in our large municipality, but I don’t know their conditions, I’m not sure where they are, and it’s really not worth the extra cost in gas to drive the distances to them.

It needs to be done, though.

What a pain.

Ah, well. We’ll deal.

For now… yeah. I think an early bed time is definitely a necessity.

The Re-Farmer

Got to our medical appointments! Also, not eating there again. Ever.

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

My daughter and I had back to back morning medical appointments with our doctor last week, but we had to reschedule to today, since we didn’t have transportation last week.

Last night, I got a call from Home Care.

They didn’t have anyone to do my mother’s med assist for this morning.

*sigh*

Thankfully, we have to drive through my mother’s town to get to where our doctor’s clinic is, anyhow. It just meant leaving earlier, and my mother getting her meds half an hour earlier than scheduled (still within the time range they are supposed to be taken), so we could get to our appointments on time.

Which meant the outside cats got fed a bit early, too!

The full belly babies were very snuggly, afterwards!

My daughter and I were then off to the doctor’s, stopping at my mother’s along with way. I popped in to do the med assist. My mother did know I had an appointment to get to, and knew it would be a quick stop. Thankfully, she did not try to delay me, like she had the last time I had appointments to get to!

While she was doing her meds, I noticed she had started working on her grocery list. I was wondering about that as, the last time I asked, she told me she didn’t need one. I kept expecting her to call for Friday or the weekend, and she never did, so I knew she’d be low on things. I wasn’t going to be able to do it today, but my friend is picking me up tomorrow morning, as she goes to take her car to the garage to be looked at. We are planning to visit my mother as well, so we’ll see what works out, timing wise. My sister is also planning to visit my mother tomorrow so, if necessary, she can do the shopping. My mother prefers that I do it, though. I helped my mother do her shopping so many times before she could no longer manage it, I know what my mother prefers. My sister doesn’t, my mother hasn’t been happy with some of her substitutions. 😁

That done (my mother even behaved! 😄), we continued to the town our doctor is in. We didn’t get there as early as I had been planning on, but early enough that I could make a quick stop in the grocery store that shares their parking lot.

The only thing I needed to get was bread, but neither of us had had breakfast, so I was thinking of picking up some sushi or something. There was none to be had, but I did find an alternative. They had a selection of hot meals set up with their rotisserie chicken display. So I picked up a perogie dinner and a lasagna, plus a couple of drinks. Other options were meatloaf with mashed potatoes, vegetables and gravy, or a porkchop with mashed potatoes, vegetables and gravy.

My daughter chose the lasagna for her meal, and we ate in the truck. My perogies were unusual in that, not only did they not come with the usual sausage and sour cream, they were served with vegetables in a white sauce, topped with melted shredded cheese.

I’m not sure which of those did me in.

After eating, we went into the clinic about 15 minutes early. Once checked in, I immediately went to the washroom.

While there, I got a message from my daughter saying that they’d come for me, to take me into a room early, so we traded appointment times and she went in ahead of me.

So I went to the waiting room and…

Immediately ran back to the washroom.

Then I got a message from my daughter.

Her lunch was suddenly giving her grief, too. She suggested we trade appointment times again, telling me which room she was in. So when I got out, I let the receptionist know what we were doing, and went to the room my daughter was in while she ran for the bathroom.

When our doctor came in, she clarified with me that we were both seeing her today, and had just switched times.

For my appointment, I had two things to talk to her about. The first was about my painkillers. I’ve been on T3s and they really haven’t been any better than taking over the counter painkillers, so there’s no point in me being on prescription painkillers. This is something I’ve had issues with all my life, with prescription medications, and especially painkillers. Either I need basically double the dose to have any sort of effect, or they don’t work like they’re supposed to. Since we’re basically just treating the symptom, and this is for my arthritis pain, I asked if we could try me on anti-inflammatories.

After talking about it, she agreed. I got two prescriptions; one for the anti-inflammatories that I can take as needed, up to three times a day. The other is for something I would take only once a day, and it’s designed to protect my stomach lining. I’m also supposed to only take them with food, because the anti-inflammatories can be very hard on the stomach.

We’ll try them for 3 months, then do a series of blood tests, including for kidney function, and see how things are.

Then there was the other thing I wanted to talk to her about.

My arm that I hurt when falling, about a month ago.

I almost decided not to bring it up, since it’s been doing better, but there is still pain that should not be there.

I told her what happened, and how my arm felt after landing so hard on it. I started to raise my arm to show her what my range of motion was like, only do discover I could only lift my elbow to shoulder height before pain stopped me. !!!

So she manipulated my arm a bit, while feeling at my shoulder joint, and I could tell her exactly where the pain was, and when.

It’s also the part of my palm under my thumb and my elbow that still have issues.

She took some notes and gave me a requisition for X-rays. Lab and X-ray is at the hospital not far from the clinic – and I needed to go there on behalf of my mother anyhow – so I could do that right away.

When I was done, my daughter was still in the waiting room and got called in soon after. I got my printout and waited.

After hitting the washroom again.

Once my daughter was done, we drove over to the hospital.

Thankfully, they had two bathrooms as we both needed to run for it!

I then talked to the receptionist on behalf of my mother. There was a requisition for bloodwork on file that I picked up, so my mother can get that done along with her monthly blood work. That gets done in the first week of the month, so I booked the medical appointment my mother has been asking for, for the week after. That way, the doctor could also go over the lab results with my mother, too. When I spoke to my mother last night, she was lamenting that they didn’t call her about her last blood test. I told her, they only call if there’s a problem. If they don’t call, that means everything is good!

She doesn’t believe that. She thinks they’re hiding things from her.

Appointment made, we went into the lab and X-ray area, literally across the room from the clinic reception desk, and handed in my requisition, then we sat to wait. It wasn’t very long before I got called in.

I had three X-rays done on my shoulder, two of my elbow, and three of my wrist and thumb. What surprised me was when the tech set my hand on the X-ray plate so that it was straight on the outside edge, thumb on top and straight.

The surprise was just how much holding that position hurt.

Not only that but, after the doctor had manipulated my shoulder to examine in, I was starting to feel muscle/nerve pain creeping up from my shoulder to my neck. A sort of pain that was making me feel dizzy. For a while, I thought I would have to get my daughter to do the driving!

That done, we started to head out again – after yet another stop at the bathroom.

There was something my older daughter needed, and there was a dollar type store I knew of that might have it. If it wasn’t there, we’d probably have to go to a craft store in the city to find it, and that wasn’t going to happen today. So this store was our next stop.

Once in the store, we did find what my other daughter needed – or at least the closest to it. I had hoped to wander around the store a bit before we left, though, as it is very different from all the other dollar type stores I normally find.

My insides, however, had other plans.

Okay, we’ll just pay for things and be on our way…

Or not.

As I was paying, I asked if they had a public washer.

No, I was told, but you can use ours if you need to.

Yes, please!!!

So while my daughter took the stuff to the truck, they let me use the staff washroom.

I have no idea what those perogies did to my insides but, by then, I was in serious discomfort. Almost enough to make me forget the pain in my shoulder!

God bless that woman.

Once back in the truck, I called the pharmacy in the town nearest us. They had received my new prescription from my doctor, and would be able to fill it right away. The time it would take us to drive there was likely enough for it to be ready.

That arranged, we were on our way again.

About half way through, I realized I was not feeling good again.

We made it okay, though. My daughter was also feeling unstable, so when we got there, she made the mad dash to their one bathroom first, while I asked about my prescription. The pharmacist was just doing the final check on it. Since I had to wait anyhow, I sat down at the blood pressure machine.

Funny. My blood pressure was a bit high. I wonder why that would be?

The machine was next to the bathroom door, where my daughter was, and I saw a woman with two tiny children try the door. While they were waiting for my daughter to come out, a guy came over with a stroller and joined them.

The entire family ended up taking turns.

I was still okay, and totally get how it can be with such tiny children!, but once I got my prescriptions and the bathroom was free, I ran for it.

Yeah. By this time, I was in major pain.

One of the things we noticed while getting out of the truck, though, was that one of the front tires was looking really low. The front tires were both replaced, but of all four tires, three of them still need to have their sensors/valves replaces. The sensor batteries are dead, and the valves in two of them have a slow leak. This one tire, slightly more than the other.

So we had one more stop to make, at a gas station. I got to stay in the truck while my daughter checked the tire pressure on all the tires, and ended up topping up three of them.

After that, we could FINALLY, head home.

Yeah. As soon as I got home, it was straight for the bathroom.

Then my daughter.

We had two different meals, so it’s strange that we were both affected. She’s lactose intolerant, but I am not. All I can say is, I’m never going to be buying a hot lunch meal from that grocery store, ever again! They were good, too, but absolutely brutal on our insides!

Later on, I had to get my daughter to help me do the evening cat feeding, because I was still too unstable. She, at least, seems to have recovered.

I’m at the point where I am once again starting to really feel the effects of that examination of my shoulder again. My rotator cuff is hurting, and the muscle/nerve pain up to my neck is now affecting both sides of my neck, and my triceps in my left arm.

It’s been about a month since I fell. This is insane! I am sure I didn’t break anything, but I’ve clearly done some major damage somehow in there.

I’m really looking forward to the results of those X-rays.

Thankfully, the rest of my day doesn’t require me to go anywhere, and with the off and on rain, I’m limited in what I can get done outside, anyhow. It’s not even 6pm yet, as I write this, and I’m seriously considering going to bed soon.

My daughters are making supper right now. I’ll be taking some of those anti-inflammatories with my meal, and probably go straight to bed after that. Hopefully, I’ll remain stable enough to actually get some rest!

What a day this turned out to be!!!

The Re-Farmer