Tag Archives: Health

I’m Worried

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Not a day goes by that I don’t get an email from a certain hospital extolling the nursing supervisory positions that are available for me to consider. I get at least one email, sometimes two. One day they broke the record and sent me four. And the jobs come with sign-on bonuses, $10,000 dollars, $15,000, more.

I was at the dentist one day checking my email while I waited for her to come to my exam room. When she walked in, I held up my phone to show her the screen. She peered at it wondering what was up.

“$20,000!” I said, “Just to go work for them.”

She pulled up a stool and sat next to me. “Imagine,” she said, “how hard that job must be if they’re offering that much.”

I didn’t have to imagine. I’ve been there, and done that. Past tense. I haven’t practiced in over a decade and I finally let my license lapse two years ago. It took me a while to completely let go and accept that that part of my life was over.

They must know my license is not active. I suppose they figure I can reactivate it. And there’s probably still refresher courses and long orientations to the job. But how to reactivate my feet to pull thirteen-hour days with no lunch and barely any potty breaks.

But all that doesn’t worry me because I’m not going to do it. Those days are done for me. What worries me is what it all means. What it all points to: A lack of nurses.

Nursing care is why you get admitted to the hospital. Just about everything else can be done outpatient, labs, x-rays, nuclear med, etc., even some surgeries. They can open all the ICU beds they want but without ICU nurses those beds cannot be filled. There not being enough nurses is a scary, scary thought.

I graduated at the height of one nursing shortage in 1980. I had a job lined up two months before graduation. I’d decided to go back home to Texas and sent feelers out to several hospitals in different parts of the state. They all responded with offers of perks and freebies of all kinds. But the palm trees of Galveston captivated my eyes. They reminded me of the palm trees of my home in The Valley.

I went there and faced the streetcar named Reality Shock head on. That first year was sink or swim. I swam and it made me into what I remain, still in my heart, an ICU nurse. But the nurses I have the most respect for, of all the disciplines, are pediatric oncology nurses. My God, their fortitude. They are angels walking this earth.

So when I see that our number is decreasing once again, I worry. I worry because we need them. Because they are indispensable. They see us on the way in and they see us on the way out. And in-between, they keep us as healthy as is humanly possible.

They spend all day and all night with us in the hospital, allaying our fears, answering our questions, holding our hand when the terrors strike, and even covering our loved one with a warm blanket when they collapse in the visitor’s chair out of exhaustion in the cold of night.

My graduation picture as I look toward the future. As students, we wore the stripe up one side of the cap. Upon meeting all grad requirements we got to wear the stripe around the cap. My cap is long lost. I never wore it in the real world.

Awash in the possibilities awaiting me, on the shores of Galveston Island.

Y’all take care, now.

Hello, Again

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I have been away so long, I forgot my login. Thankfully, I don’t rely on the old noodle. I write it down. I write just about everything down. It’s like a nervous tic. Or a need. Or something.

Right now I’m listening to cry-in-your-beer mariachi music. I was in the mood. Not for beer, never beer, some Moscato maybe. Not in the mood for crying either. It’s just that sometimes I get homesick, I miss Texas. Can you imagine? Missing Texas! Maybe it’s true what they say, you can never go home again.

Just feeling a little nostalgic perhaps. Wishing for some do-overs. Some time travel. I always think what if. What if I’d chosen this, what if I’d chosen that, maybe I would have missed the turn that took me straight into RA’s arms.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

These past eighteen or so months have been eventful and at the same time uneventful. It was January, 2020, when my gallbladder tried to kill me. I showed up septic at the emergency room. It worked so quickly, in hours I went from epigastric discomfort to hardly being able to drop from the car into the wheelchair my husband had trotted over to get for me.

My son surprised me the day of my surgery. I was holding an icepack to my head for the unrelenting headache and had my eyes closed. I heard the door and thought it was my angel of a nurse with my pain med. I opened my eyes and saw him pulling his carryon into the room. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

He was supposed to be in San Francisco where he had been setting up a hospital with their digital documentation system. He smiled and said, “What are you doing here?”

The next day, he sat at my bedside and said there was a new virus out west that he was concerned about. And the rest, shall we say, is history. He made one final trip and has been working from home since.

I didn’t leave my house once between March and September 2020. I’m a homebody at heart, but that was somewhat in excess. I made somewhere between 500 and a 1,000 masks. I lost count. They are all over the country, literally from coast to coast. I’m still making them, though not as many.

I make them with a filter pocket and I stuff a blue paper surgical mask, sans ear loops, in there, so I brave the world with six layers between me and whatever is out there. Not often though. Still sticking close to home.

Two days ago I did venture out after another two months of hibernation to go to my trusty CVS for my third vaccine. I read if you are immunosuppressed or on Methotrexate, you should get a third one. That’s me, so I did.

I had such high hopes, but well, we shall continue to be vigilant.

Boy, Linda Ronstadt could sure belt out mariachi songs. Wow!

If anyone needs masks, I’d be happy to send you some. Here’s a pic of what they’re like.

Y’all take care, now.

Future Planning

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I read somewhere, some time ago, that RA can steal ten years of your life. I doubt that is still true, if it ever was, I mean how could anyone pinpoint the exact amount of time RA took from you? With new advances in treatment maybe there is no specific loss of days attributed solely to this disease process.

Luckily, I haven’t had to test the waters of the new meds out there. I’m still stuck on my weekly Methotrexate. Nine pills, no more, no less. I want less, but my doc is so very conservative with change. His philosophy is: don’t break what’s not broken, while mine is: let’s take it to the limit, none!

Ah, I can only wish.

But I am holding steady, and that’s nothing to sniff at. One must feel gratitude. And I do, but still, what I read about the ten years pops up in my head every so often. Like yesterday during our appointment with our financial planner.

He knows I want low risk in anything we do. If I was younger, I tell him, perhaps I would go for broke, but I’m not as young as he is. He smiles and then gives me options, perhaps a five-year annuity sounds better than a seven-year one? Yes, five sounds better than seven in this case.

What if in five years I’m sick and need the money and it’s stuck in a seven-year pit where if I take it out I forfeit some?

Then again, what if I’m sick in three years? Two years?

But what if I’m still sailing along on MTX seven years from now?

How can we know? And do we want to know?

I don’t think I do, so I will keep that ten-year thing at the back of my mind. It helps to motivate me to make the most of today. To make the best future plans. Because what if the countdown has started and liftoff is looming? 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .

 

Life, etc.

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So, I’ve been gone so long, I forgot how to get into the admin part of this site. I shall have to use their newfangled platform. New to me, that is.

You know what they say, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Or as my mother used to say: Uno pone, Dios dispone. (one plans, God decides)

But as they also say, life goes on, RA and all. I don’t want to exclude my little parasite for fear that it might resent being ignored, like Glenn Close in the movie Fatal Attraction.  That was a great line, “I’m not going to be ignored,” she said. Why would Dan think that a force like her could ever be ignored.

RA is like that. It won’t be ignored, but we can try. Every day. Some days I’m more successful than others, and presently, it’s behaving itself. I have been doing manual labor for five weeks. I decided to go on a remodeling binge. My husbands pleads, “This it, right? We won’t do this again, will we?”

Funny thing, he has to do nothing, except put up with a little inconvenience, like sleeping in the other bedroom for a couple of weeks while they worked on our bathroom and closet. And maybe skirt around the furniture while they paint the walls. He’s at work all day. I’m the one home juggling the needs of several crews at once.

But I did bring this on myself. I never knew how many books I own, or how many framed pictures and artwork were on my walls. Seeing them all together was eye-opening. And I’m willing to lug my beloved books from room to room, no matter how heavy they are.

My only complaint is that if I sit too long in between spurts of activity, I have a hard time getting restarted. I feel like the tin man, rusty as hell, frozen in place. But as I told my rheumy who laughed at me (laughed with me?) it’s age, wear and tear, not specifically RA. Though I’m sure it’s in cahoots with the osteoarthritis, and we won’t specify the age. I’m years young, not years old.

It’s been a busy year. I was psyching myself up to live through another June 11th, the day my husband tried to check out last year. We are both still traumatized by those events. And while I was dreading the day arriving, my son had a car accident. He had an injured ankle, which turned out to be fractured. But the cause of the accident rocked my world. He’d had a heart attack, at the age of 35.

This was June 2nd. And at three o’clock on the morning of June 5th, while I was trying to sleep but couldn’t because they were going to do a cath that day to find out what heart damage there was, my older son called me.

You know that a 3 a.m. phone call is a bearer of bad news. I held my breath as I reached for my phone, thinking about his children, him, his wife. But they were all O.K. He had called to tell me his father had just died. From a heart attack.

He’d had three already, and had been told his only possible treatment was medications. I knew the day would come, but you are never ready. I’d spent part of my life with this man. And though we went our separate ways, we remained connected through our son.

I immediately wanted to split myself in two. Both my sons were in trouble and needed me. One, alas, far from me. I had to think. I know my older son has a wonderful support system in his wife and her family. I see how they love and respect him.

And my younger son was scared to death, his wife is pregnant and she has no real family close by. I had to stay put. But it was really, really hard living through the physical and psychological trauma of one son, while aching to be with the son who was feeling such emotional pain.

I will see him and his family in a couple of weeks. We are meeting up in Disney World. And then we see each other again for Christmas. I can’t wait.

My younger son is dealing with his new, hereditary health status and is still limping around. It will be a while before his ankle, tendons, and ligaments, recover to where he can get back to his karate training. He had scheduled to test for his 2nd degree black belt at the end of June.

Meanwhile we await the birth of his little girl in nine weeks or so. I can’t wait for that either and have broken out my sewing machine. More baby quilts to make.

Through all this, RA has maintained a presence, though not an overly aggressive one. I am completely off Prednisone and have had no other med changes. My labs are slightly off, but then so am I.

Hope all is well with you, dear reader.

 

Have You Gotten Stuck Yet?

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Two Novembers ago, I was stuck in the hospital with pneumonia. I’d been diagnosed with the flu two days prior at the urgent care center. That day, I’d waited for my husband to get home from work because I didn’t feel well enough to drive myself to the doctor’s office.

I wasn’t surprised to learn I had the flu. I felt bad enough. I recalled how it’d been over a decade since I’d had the flu so I figured I was due. The only thing I remembered from that time was my husband’s near-carrying me the few steps from our front door to the car. I was that sick.

What was surprising this time was that instead of getting gradually better, I got gradually worse, so much worse that in less than 48 hours I barely had the strength to dress myself to go back to the urgent care. When I reported chest pain, their mood changed from what can we do for you? to how soon can we get you out of here?

They offered to call 911, but I said we’d drive the couple of miles to the hospital ER, where, after innumerable hours of waiting, during which they stuck me for blood and IV placement, and took x-rays of my lungs, it was determined that I had pneumonia.

I knew I was bad off. My fever was soaring and I was drowning. When my husband said, “Maybe they’ll send you home,” I heard myself say, “I’m afraid to go home.” As if from outside myself, I realized how truly terrified I felt at the thought of leaving the haven of the hospital.

By the end of five days, I was ready to blackmail someone into letting me go home. By then, the heavy-duty IV antibiotics had done a number on those nasty little bugs in my lungs.

I’ve put these memories away for the most part, memories that are only triggered every October when I take steps to prevent another “November.” Until last Saturday, when my seven-year-old granddaughter, who lives with us, became listless and feverish. She wasn’t displaying asthmatic symptoms, which are par for the course for her when she has a cold, probably because she didn’t have a cold.

My daughter wanted to wait till Monday to have her seen at the doctor’s office, but I nixed that idea. The fact that she presented no other symptoms to explain the high fever was concerning. Sunday she was diagnosed with Influenza A.

I was relieved to know what it was, but I was also worried about how it would affect her, and afraid that the rest of us would succumb. For the next few days I watched her acutely for any worsening, while I tried to tamp down my worry. But she took it like the trooper that she is, instinctively resting and taking in a lot of fluids. And after lolling around the house for three days, she returned to school. Yesterday, she came home tired but in good spirits.

My fingers are crossed that we in this house are done with the flu for this year. It’s too soon to tell if anyone else will come down with it. All we can do is watch and wait. And that brings me to my original question: Have you gotten a flu shot?

 

Not a Second Longer

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So, after all that we have endured in 2016, I hear tell that it’s going to last a second longer. Imagine. Of all the years to add another second to. I’m not all that interested in the particulars as to why that is, I just find that extra second a tad too much.

This year started out pretty much like any other, with promise, like all new years do. There we were moseying along and then, wham!

We’ve lost so many artists this year, my head spins. Including George Michael of Wham! I can’t even get my head around the loss of Princess Leia. Wow! She made girls sit up and take notice way back in the 1970s. What made Princess Leia a force to be reckoned with was the force of the person who portrayed her, Carrie Fisher. (And now her mom. Wow, again.)

Carrie Fisher’s loss felt close to home. She suffered an incident in midair. Where there were no paramedics at the ready to deploy the paddles immediately. There was no IV in place, no monitor to signal exactly when a shock was needed to preserve life.

I feel sorry for her daughter and her family, because there, but for the grace of God, go us. When my husband had a massive heart attack in June, all those variables were in place. He decided to code after the paramedics had him hooked up to monitors and had already placed an IV.

That moment sent us on a roller coaster ride that hasn’t yet ended. The car has slowed down, the dips have leveled off, but we’re still on it, and will be on it forever. But the operative word here is: be. A state of being, as opposed to a state of having been.

The main thing I had planned for this year was to pursue a third copyediting certificate. This one would take four semesters and be the most intensive training so far. The last semester scheduled to end this December seemed so far away. And right when I was due to start the third course, I found myself in the ER trauma room watching them work furiously to save my husband’s life.

His recovery took center stage, but I began my course with faith that I would persevere and so would he. I had little sleep and little rest for months. Every spare moment I had, I worked on my assignments, always wondering why I felt so stressed editing for my teacher when I didn’t editing for others. That was weird.

I also prepared for the inevitable flare-up that would appear. I waited for the mother of all flare-ups to knock me down and not even let me type. But when I went to my rheumy in September, all was normal. I sat speechless. How could that be? After three months of intense stress? There was no explanation.

By then, my husband had returned to work, thanks to the collateral circulation his heart had built up during all his years of being an athlete. The doctor called him his “Miracle Man”  when he sauntered into the doctor’s office wearing his Stetson Fedora with the brim tipped down rakishly over his eyes. I couldn’t tell if the medical students trailing the doc that day were more in awe of his cardiac history or his hat.

By all that is written, he shouldn’t be around sauntering anywhere, but he is. I shouldn’t have aced my certificate program, but I did. And I shouldn’t have a second round of normal lab results this month, but I do.

Color me bewildered. I don’t understand it. But as they say, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Today is my birthday, and maybe after our dinner out I will stop to buy a frame for my new certificate from UC San Diego. I didn’t know they were going to make it look so impressive. Everyone says I must hang it up.

I’ve never been happier to say goodbye to a year as I am to this one. I give thanks for all the good this year has given us, but I don’t want to have to wait a second longer than necessary to hang it up.

I wish all of you kind readers a Happy and Prosperous 2017!

Life Happens

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Remember the saying life happens when you’re making other plans?

So true.

I have mentally blogged many times in the past month. So many little life episodes that I have subvocalized as if I had a tiny, invisible stenographer sitting on my shoulder. Alas, I do not, and as our nursing mantra goes: if it’s not written, it’s not done.

A lot has happened.

We had another anniversary, 35 if we go strictly by the calendar. That’s a freakishly long time. I remember seeing a documentary about George Harrison after his death. His wife of 23 years was asked how you make a long marriage. Her answer was striking and it has stayed with me. It’s simple, she said, you don’t get divorced.

So, so true. In 35 years you collect a lot of reasons to get divorced over.

But you also collect, or can collect, many reasons to stay together.

This year we celebrated by going to D. C. I’d always wanted to go, just to soak up the history. The place is so alive, you can inhale the adrenalin. It has a vitality that defies explanation or description. In short, we are going back.

We decided to drive, so that gave us four full days in enclosed proximity. If anything is going to drive you batty in regards to another person that will certainly do it. But the whole trip left us with nothing more than pleasant memories.

Except for one other thing. Within five days of our return my husband was complaining of UTI symptoms. I confess my initial reaction was: Been there, done that. But his being a man meant that his symptoms were far more complicated and unendurable than anything women might go through.

Of course.

We saw a kindly urologist. I’ve rarely run across a doctor so personable and I’ve run into many. Along with giving him some prescriptions, he suggested we buy a couple of books. One, he said, is called How Not to Die by Michael Greger.

I admit I laughed when he mentioned the title. Advice on how not to die seems kind of facetious. Snake oil, anyone? I mean, does anyone live forever? Does anyone want to?

Its subtitle, however, is: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease. And I am nothing if not a sucker for anything that has been scientifically proven. So we shall see what it’s all about when I delve into it, because I know he won’t. He’s symptom-free now so that means it’s all so yesterday.

The book will have to wait its turn, though. Right now I’m knee-deep into the Konmari Method of tidying. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Her initial advice: “Start by discarding, all at once, intensely and completely.” And she advocates keeping only the things that “spark joy.”

Hmm . . . . That reminds me of the woman who said she got rid of 175 pounds all at once.

She got a divorce.

Cherry blossoms

Me among the cherry blossoms

 

That Which is Me

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I usually don’t focus on how sick I was. Mayhap I’m hoping that if I “forget” it, I won’t have to relive it.

But I was. Sick, sick, sick. So sick it made me sick to my stomach. You know, holding-the-bile-down kind of sick while you try to function with every single cell on fire, and without letting on how vilely ill you truly are. I even withheld the truth from my rheumatologist. The real one, not the “fake” one who let this disease land me in the emergency room, excuse me, emergency department.

I’m fine, I would say, not letting on that it took every drop of willpower to lift myself off of the waiting room chair, which I’d been locked into for hours, and walk as unobtrusively as possible down the hallway to the exam room. I refused to show that every step was agony. I was a pretender, pretending that nothing was wrong with me.

The lab numbers told a different story of course. Your blood cannot lie as well as you can. But, hey, everyone has an individual tolerance for pain, a pain threshold all their own. Therefore, he accepted my story that it hurt here and there, but not too bad. When in truth the pain was so bad I wanted to run down the street screaming, except that I physically couldn’t do that.

And then, everything changed. I don’t really know if it was gradual or all at once. But I’m pretty sure that what jump-started the process was me taking a breather from my job. That’s all I thought it was. I’ll just rest a few months, I thought. Those months turned into years, and still counting.

And then my kid graduated and went off to college. Check! Last kid launched.

And then, I started to actually pay attention to me. I was no longer a pain-wracked automaton. I was a person, a person with needs and wants. And my biggest want was for the pain to go away. I was feeling better, thinking better, the brain fog was all but gone and I realized that I wasn’t going to continue to go downhill and die.

I was going to live! So I began to celebrate, with spirits. No, not with THE spirits, but the spirits that come in a bottle. In the Before, I could count the drinks I had during a year on one hand and have fingers left over. I went from being a near teetotaler to having one drink, maybe two, in a single week.

And that numbed the pain even more. Not the orange juice with the dash of vodka or the glass of sweet white wine, but the thought that I was letting myself enjoy life, whatever life was still left to me.

And that loosened up my inhibitions, voilà, to the winds. I grabbed my pen and I began to write, and write and write. Millions of words either gushed forth or were purged from my lowest depths. A catharsis, or an enema for the soul, who’s to know?

All I knew, know,  is that my new-found energy and sense of well-being was the biggest high money could buy. I exercised, or maybe exorcised, my bane away. I don’t know what produced more endorphins, my daily workouts or my renewed sense of self.

Or perhaps it was the anxiety seeping out of me,  along with the steady flow of blue ink from my pen, that made the difference. Who needed a couch when I had my blank page? I found me on those pages, and though my writing did tend to lean toward the hopeful and sentimental, it did sometimes take a turn toward the naughty.

But nice.

DELECTABLE

 You look so sweet,
so smooth and slick. I
wrap my hand around your
stem. My fingers grasp and
gently tug that which is you to
bring you close and firmly wrap
my lips around your rounded rim
whose velvety feel brings forth
ambrosia the gods themselves
were not allowed. I take a sip
inhale deep the silken fluid
clear as the light that
gushes forth, ever
so sweet, blankets
my tongue. I
swallow
deep
and
lick
my
lips
so’s
not
to
lose
a
drop
of
savory dew, that which is you

 (© 2011 Irma A Navarro)

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Food

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blueCommon dietary advice for both eating healthy (healthily) and maintaining your weight, and your waistline, is to fill your plate with color. Half of it should be fruits and vegetables, they say, the richer the colors the better.

I’ve also read that to lose weight, you should not only downsize the food portions, but should also downsize your plate size. The theory being that you trick your brain into thinking you’re eating a lot because your salad plate, serving as your dinner plate, is heaping, seemingly overloaded, with food.

These are good ideas to not only trim your size, but to keep it trimmed. Not to mention improving your overall health.

As a quilter, I love color. And not only do I love splashing color onto my fabric palette, but I also love adding it to my food palette (palate). I marvel at the colors nature has bestowed on us, the translucent slices of red and white radishes, delicate slivers of orange carrots, shiny green leaves of romaine lettuce, light green slices of succulent avocado, luscious rounds of red tomatoes and the deep, rich red of my favorites, strawberries and watermelon.

I could go on, but you get my drift. It seems that nature has provided us with edible colors of many shades and hues, except for one. Blue.

Yes, the word blue is half of the name for blueberries, but they are not truly blue. They are more of a purple violet. The only “blue” food that I’ve eaten (overeaten) is the food that I eat when I feel blue, whatever its actual color might be.

Well, apparently, there is another food association with the color blue. According to a study referred to in the October/November edition of AARP Magazine, if you eat off of a blue plate it will make the food look unappetizing, and ahem, put you off your food.

I’ve had many sets of dishes over the years, in different colors, but never blue. I can’t think of ever seeing blue plates. I’m sure there must be, I just haven’t been looking. Perhaps there was a subconscious reason for that, but now that I’ve read this, I think I shall go shopping for a small blue plate to eat off of during my feeling-blue days.

Peripatetic

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At The Met

At The Met

An editing client/friend called me peripatetic. It sounded like a disease so I rushed to my reliable helpmate, my dictionary. Though the sound of the word brought up visions of dyspepsia, it turned out to only mean one who travels a lot.

He called me that after I’d returned from St. Augustine, Florida for the third time this year and found out I was soon to leave for New York City. Again.

Interesting that the word also means “given to walking.” I’d forgotten that I had downloaded a health app onto my phone. While lazing in bed with my feet throbbing from all the city walking one day, I decided to open it to see what it did. Imagine my shock to discover that I’d walked 12,000 steps that day. And climbed twelve floors. (My daughter’s apartment is two steep flights up. And down.)

I was flabbergasted to see how my activity level had spiked tremendously since I’d left home. It had literally gone from sloth to cheetah level. I bored everyone with my new-found information. Look what I can do! In one day. And live to tell about it.

After my excitement died down, I admit I was a little weirded out to know that my phone was tracking me. How rude. But I had asked it to, I suppose. I don’t remember what day that was, but it could have been the day we spent at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have no words to describe the treasures it holds within. You must see it with your own eyes. We only got to see barely half. We shall continue on our next trip.

Now that I know what that app does, I will use it to my advantage in my battle with RA. It can’t catch me if I don’t stay still. I know I haven’t beaten it, and most likely never will, but at least I win some of the battles. And that’s good enough for me. 12,000 steps, booyah!