Decent couple of days, getting away from all the other social sites.

Before we go on, Blogger removed the spell check from these postings. I apologize in advance for more errors than usual. The meeting with hospice on Wed was fine, and then I met with my ongoing hospice nurse on Friday. It’s shown positive results even! Right now Tamma’s (the nurse) job is to keep on top of my meds – make sure I have the right quantities on hand and we’re clear on dosage time and amount. She took care of a quantity imbalance by ordering some more, and then we addressed the issue of bowels. This is part of the journey no one really wants to talk about, but getting plugged up is a real issue with such large quantities of pain killers in my system. Temma put together a plan using regular, over the counter stuff, and yesterday I had relief! Yea. And what was also good is I found the hospice nurses really are as quick to respond as they said they would be. This a.m. I called again to discuss continuing approaches to the colon issue and she (one of the on-call’s anyway) called back within 30 minutes with an answer, so now I hope to keep that under control and I’m pretty confident that my questions will get answers quickly.


Had a bunch of people drop in and say hi and had dinner with my ex-brother in law. Tonight (Sun) I’m having dinner with Rick and Joyce before they leave for Italy. They will be gone two weeks and during some of that time Andrea will house/cat sit so she’ll be next door until she goes down to Cozumel for her IronMan Triathlon race.



Before we go on, Blogger removed the spell check from these postings and I apologize in advance for more errors than usual. I'm also as confused as anyone why some of you can post comments here and others cannot. As always, feel free to email me any time with your feedback and questions and I promise I'll get back to you. I went on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Classmated, etc and am not going to respond to input from them any more. Too much to keep up with so this blog, my personal email and occasional posts to the MPIP bulletinboard are my links to the world now.



The meeting with hospice on Wed was fine, and then I met with my ongoing hospice nurse on Friday. It’s shown positive results already! Right now Tamma’s (the nurse) job is to keep on top of my meds – make sure I have the right quantities on hand and we’re clear on dosage time and amount. She took care of a quantity imbalance by ordering some more, and then we addressed the issue of bowels. This is part of the journey no one really wants to talk about, but getting plugged up is a real issue with such large quantities of pain killers in my system. Temma put together a plan using regular, over the counter stuff, and yesterday I had relief! Yea. And what was also good is I found the hospice nurses really are as quick to respond as they said they would be. This a.m. I called again to discuss continuing approaches to the colon issue and she (one of the on-call’s anyway) called back within 30 minutes with an answer, so now I hope to keep that under control and I’m pretty confident that my questions will get answers quickly. From here on Temma will drop by weekly unless I need her more often. The nure also put a package of meds of the "just in case and to have handy" variety and shipped it to me. Standard operating procedure for hospice, I guess, and insures they have what they might need in case of emergency.



The social worker came with Temma, too. At this point I don't feel strong need of her services, but you can't ever be sure. They can also provide a chaplain but most of you know this service is not a high priorty for me. That said there is a famous saying that there are "No athiests in fox-holes" and I certainly appreciate all the prayers being said on my behalf. Had a bunch of people drop in and say hi and had dinner with my ex-brother in law. Tonight (Sun) I’m having dinner with Rick and Joyce before they leave for Italy. They will be gone two weeks and during some of that time Andrea will house/cat sit so she’ll be next door until she goes down to Cozumel for her IronMan Triathlon race.



Laundry is a place I 'm going to need help with and Amy was a big help with that and changing my sheets, etc. Plus she took my ironing and John tossed that in with his stuff and it all got professionally done so all my shirts came back looking like I still work for a living ;-) At any rate, I think I may have to discontinue my current housekeeper and Amy and An are going to work something out with housekeeping, laundry and ironing using her crew for pick up & delivery, plus Amy's crew is two people and they can blast thru my place quickly.



Also giving thought to using some blog space here for modest reminisce. I spend a lot of time in bed with memories going through my head. When you start cataloging all the changes the last 63 years have undergone I may share some of the most vivid ones. Won’t be the Great American Novel (or Julie and Julia), just some things I remember that might be amusing and that even my kids haven’t heard (tho I doubt that).