Odds and Ends

--Taciturn is finally in Baltimore with his mom and the Angry White Man after four days of driving. T just called; one of the things we spoke about was that AWM has a horrible virus on his PC that Norton cannot fix. Gotta love my Mac.

--In a few minutes I will drive into town for the third time today. The first time was to ship a book I sold on Amazon, the second was for lunch with my new neighbor C, and the third will be for book discussion group at another Episcopal church in town. We are reading Eugene Peterson’s The Jesus Way. Of all of the books I’ve read for church discussion groups, this is one of my least favorites. The retired priest in the group takes issue with much of Peterson’s scholarship and so that makes the discussions interesting.

--Lots of cars are driving by the house for sale next door. The price is very low for this neighborhood, but the house is older than most around here and needs updating. It cannot be considered a comparable when we set a price for our house, but having such a low priced house right next door might artificially drive down our price. We’ll see.

--Time for dinner then off to book group!

The last day

Of the antivirals is today. Hurray!

Yesterday I visited the occupational health nurse of my hospital as instructed to see if my shingles were healed enough for me to be allowed to return to work. The infection control dept would rather I stay home at present. Anyway, she viewed my not at all healed shingles and pronounced that not only do I need to take more time off, my case of shingles is the "worst" she'd seen in a long time.

Great! I love those kind of accolades!

I go back on Monday for another inspection, and since today the rash is starting to crust over, I'm sure from the hospital's point of view I'll be released. I'm scheduled to work all night the next night, but if I feel as punk as I do now, I may ask the doctor for another few days off. The occ health nurse made it clear that the ultimate responsibility for how long I stay off rests with me and my physician.

Taciturn returned home yesterday. He says the visit to Baltimore went much better than he had anticipated, very little arguing. He also said that the Angry White Man is showing unmistakable signs of dementia, examples of which I won't go into here. But that may explain why he has gotten so much meaner to me over the last few years.

Anyway, back to real life! Please pray for Arkansas Hillbilly and his wife as they sweat out a weekend awaiting for some tests to be run on their unborn child. They can't get into the doctor any earlier than Monday. Ugh.

Enforced Rest, Part III

The shingles continue, along with the attendant discomfort. I think the new breakouts are over, but some of the blisters are in places that make it difficult to wear normal female clothing and to do some activities of daily living I'm used to doing. Info beyond that crosses into the realm of TMI. I do not think all of the blisters will be open and crusted by Wednesday, though, when I'm supposed to see the Occ Health nurse. My physician wrote for a week off, and told me she would write for more if I need it.

Friday I started the antivirals and got some Tylenol with codeine for the pain. Normally I don't need the strong pain medication during the day (I'm taking Motrin) but I certainly do at night. The pain might be the factor that determines when I go back to work--if I can't drive due to taking codeine, I'm sure my nursing judgment would be at risk.

Taciturn is on his way back from Baltimore. His original plan was to return tomorrow; bad weather along his travel route has changed that. He now says he should be home on Wed, but says that Thursday may be more realistic.

I told him that next time, he needs to fly, whether or not he "likes" to fly. It is ridiculous to have seven or eight days of travel time for a three and a half day visit.

I spoke with Only Son last evening. He too is broken out in a rash, although from his description I'm sure it is a viral rash and not shingles. He is broken out on his knees and his elbows, but has no pain or swelling, just an itch. When I say "just an itch", though, he really was miserable while we spoke. He likened the itch to Chinese water torture. He had some cortisone cream; I told him to pick up some Benadryl as well as calamine lotion.

GS#1 in MO had his birthday party this past Saturday, although his actual birthday is not until Wed. Only Son related that after he had opened all of his presents and had cake and ice cream, he pleasantly told all of his guests that "you can go home now." He wanted to play with his new toys in peace! GS#1 is not a mean little boy; he just says what he thinks. He doesn't mean anything malicious. His teachers, taken aback by his frankness at first, now know that is just how he is and think it is funny.

And prayers for our blog brother Bosco Peters and his family in the tragic loss of his daughter. I absolutely cannot imagine the depth of his grief.

Saturday...

And no work today. No recovering from it, or getting ready to nap in preparation for it.

I've been pretty fried this week from this weird schedule. Thursday night was incredibly busy as the patient care tech called in sick. Central Staffing sent me a person who had never seen the Hospice House, so I had to show her around and tell her what we do differently than at the Towers (nickname for the main hospital). Then we had to get to work. She had been told that all she had to do was follow me around, which wasn't going to work. She absolutely was willing to do stuff I asked (I'd met this particular nurse before, a while back) and was a good worker, but the long and short of it was that I was the nurse and the tech for twelve patients, with J being the person to help me reposition those who needed it.

Yesterday morning I had heard another PRN nurse had been hired, which really upset me when I heard it as I have griped since I got there about hardly getting to work. Weeks like this past one are very, very rare. But then I listened to a voice mail message from my immediate supervisor that said Central Staffing was going to start sending us another nurse almost each day for the busiest period of the day. Hmmm, I thought, maybe I can work those hours instead of someone from Central Staffing. People had told me to wait to see what happened to our staffing after the big inspection we just had before I applied to work elsewhere in the system. Apparently the inspectors had been not at all happy with our bare bones staffing, so change is coming.

I'm going to make an appointment to discuss this with my supervisor. Stay tuned.

As for my last post about the Angry White Man, Taciturn still says things like "When we go to Baltimore..." Since today has been such a nice day and we are going out to dinner tonight, I will defer any further conversation about that subject.

Actually, my pal Mibi from seminary, who commented on my last post, gave me another option--have T drop me off in DC, which I love (people and place), hang out with my seminary pals for a few days, then ride back when he is finished visiting his folks. Hmmm...

Memorial Day weekend

Started out with a bit of bad news--my mom had a stroke very early Friday morning. It was minor, so minor she didn't think anyone would notice, and she just pulled herself across the floor to her bed without calling for help. She hates to be a "bother", but by not being a bother, she missed the critical 90 minutes "brain save" time the emergency people talk about. She had a regularly scheduled MD appt Friday afternoon for something else, and when my sister in law arrived to take her to the doc, Mom's face drooped on the right side. Ooops. The doctor sent her immediately for a CT scan, which showed a blood clot in the left side of her brain. She'll have an MRI this week; the local one (they live in a rural area) was shut down for the holiday. Anyway, I spoke to her yesterday and she just sounded very tired. She mixed up a few words while we spoke, but she says otherwise she doesn't feel all that bad. My brother and I are concerned that this is the warning stroke before the big one. She had another one several years ago.

We were in Baltimore when Dad called as we were there to have dinner with Taciturn's mom, step father and step sister. We went to a place they raved about called Basta Pasta in Fallston. We thought it was incredibly ordinary, although we didn't tell them. T had veal which he thought was tough, and the shrimp in my dish was over cooked while the rest of the dish was blandly seasoned. That was ok, we had gone to Maria's in Parkville, MD for lunch which is always amazing! We stayed overnight, had cornmeal pancakes the stepfather made for breakfast, and came home.

Yes, we missed Pentecost Sunday services. We got back too late. I think God understands that this was the only weekend out of 8 we could see T's mom. Going to Sunday church right now with the upcoming move is weird anyway. At least I'll get to go to my former parish this next Sunday.

Last night Amy grilled pork tenderloins for dinner and we three gals (Monica as well), had that, salad, grilled zuccini, and pomegranate martinis. Yum! Coffee and cookies afterward. Taciturn declined to go along as he didn't want to be the lone male; the other husbands were away on business.

Today T and I went downtown to tour the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. That was fun. We walked to a different Metro stop than we usually take for variety when we came back. Spaghetti and wine for dinner tonight, and Amy and I help Monica with the packers tomorrow.

Our tenants in our South Dakota house have posted on their website that they are moving this week and would appreciate all the help they can get. That means something! Hurray! So the first thing I'll do next week when I'm there is change all of the locks, reprogram the garage door openers and the keypad outside. Hopefully I can get other stuff accomplished as well. It'll be a busy week.