Tag: health

off oxygen

This morning I woke up ready to take off the oxygen. Just ready.

Healing was looking good on Sunday. The nurses and techs were encouraging me to move about the house, to do a few things, nothing extravagent but easy chores.  Christmas still needed to be put away. Ed and Julia had brought up my 4 christmas boxes and I had taken down a little bit a few days before.  I needed to straighten the boxes, put away garland and some of the lights, and then tackle the tree.

And I felt ready.

These sick days have found a rhythm of nurse and PT visits and meals and phone calls and email.  After lunch and a nap, I was ready to tackle christmas. I was puttering when a pain crept up in my chest. It bloomed on the right side of my chest and radiated into my jaw. It was not intense but present and different from anything I had felt before.  I debated whether to call the nursing line, remembering vividly the mistakes of not calling that David made.

And I called.

I relayed my information but the nurse was not too concerned.  She said she would push up my afternoon visit but to otherwise just continue as I was.  Then, 20 minutes or so (my time awareness of the next few hours fractured. It was 20 minutes, it was 2 hours.  I wasn’t 2 hours but it might have been much longer than 30 minutes). Then, the pain happened again. More intense this time, longer, and did not immediately fade.  It retreated very gradually, especially in my jaw.

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

healing

Eleven days into the new year and I have been sick each and every day.  What a way to begin something new no matter how artificial the construct of time and new years are. 

So, first off, I am home and have been since late Tuesday, arriving by ambulance because I was attached to oxygen. I am participating in a Home Hospital program. I am still technically a patient of Newton Wellsley Hospital—my wrist band and IV port prove that—but I am getting my care and monitoring at home. I needed to meet some health criteria—after lots of tests to rule out other causes for my condition, I was found to be relatively stable and treatable —as well as home condiitons like a supportive carer.  I wear a very sensitive arm band which is constantly monitored, two nursing visits each day, PT and PA visits and daily deliveries of meds. It felt like too much activity the first day to keep track of everything. Meds are delivered by the nurses when they visit but I must coordinate for myself the early morning and late night meds including five times using the nebulizer during the day.  It felt like too much to take in and actually do on Wednesday and I was quite grumpy about it all.  It didn’t help that my cough was still wicked then and answering either in person or on the phone was tortuous for everyone. 

For me; however, this is a great program. I am home.  Julia, who had a hard time when I was in the hospital, is doing much better with me home. Other than the visits and care that I am getting, there is nothing more that a hospital stay could offer me.  And I have my best carer, Ed, seeing to what I need.  I feel a bit guilty for all the cooking and shopping and cleaning up and caring for Julia and just making me as comfortable as possible that he has done.  But it is lovely having his support.  He is much more than taking-up-the-slack these days. 

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 4

RSV

Yesterday, after hours in an emergency room bay, I was put in a holding area, hooked up to monitors and oxygen, and told I might be moved to a room later on in the evening.  It had been a long day and I was hungry, head-achy tired and still coughing but the day of oxygen cleared some of my brain and I felt a shift to giving into this process of being sick. 

My not-feeling-so-well of new year’s eve blossomed into just plain sick the next day. The seasonal cough that humidifiers and inhalers and gallons of water could not conquer shifted into something else — a dry hacking that would not stop.  The cough and chills and body aches and an exhaustion that drained every ounce of will power out of me.  

The beginning of January is probably a good time to be sick.  Julia’s activities, as well as mine, are on hold for the holidays. We had gotten through almost all of the seasonal visiting and partying. I was looking forward to a few days of lying low; however, not quite as low as I was laid. 

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

an old lesson, once again

I have spent a month sick, in one way or another—coughing, first and foremost. A chronic cough that I could not shake. From a flu.  It was not so bad as to not go about my daily round, but bad enough not to be able to do anything without cough drops and my water bottle to keep the eruptions at bay.

But they were not really kept at bay. I sat through classes and choir practices vainly attempting to hold back my coughing. I was not, however, feeling ill enough to do more than use home remedies and rest a little bit. Just a little bit.

Finally, I was too long coughing and thought something funky was going on with my eyes, I visited the doctor, had an x-ray taken and sent home with the usual rest and fluids instructions. Oh, and medication for conjunctivitis.

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

sentences

Grandma cough. Mama cough. Dada cough.

Wilbur put nouns and a verb together.  I don’t know if it is his first sentence but it is the first I heard.  

It was Wilbur on FaceTime last week, on a Friday when I had planned to spend the day with him and his mother, but they are all sick from something that Justin brought home after a work trip. I didn’t need to catch it and so, I stayed home and got to spend some phone time with the precious boy.  

And heard him practice a new acquisition. 

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Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

of dominos and labyrinths

9F1F4878-C5ED-48A9-8C6E-2C7CB08D69BCAnd it is only Thursday.  Now, Friday.

Like dominos.  Like those elaborate domino runs that are impossible to look away from. Got to watch them to the end.  All week, I compulsively check NYTimes.com. COVID19 and the stock market.

Two weeks ago, a group of high school students from Newton returned from Italy and went into quarantine. There were two emails from the school about that and more emails about possibilities and procedures if necessary. On Sunday, there was an email about a Newton resident with a student in middle school who was diagnosed with a presumptive case of COVID-19. The child, without symptoms, was following the quarantine protocol.  Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

fear

Living in Fear as a Special Needs Parent

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By Due Huynh

I read this post midday yesterday and tears were in my eyes.  My life, our family life, has never been so desperate, so hard, but I know fear. 

Two days ago, the mail carrier brought two letters from MassHealth which is Julia’s current insurer.  MassHealth has lots of rules for lots of programs and it is challenging to figure it out. There are help lines and FAQs both inside the MassHealth world and outside in the form of advocacy groups.  Still, MassHealth is labyrinth which makes the Triwizard Maze look like a walk in an English country garden. Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

living into questions

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Cheshire coxing for a senior boat at Head of the Charles.

Believe it or not, I have been journal writing a lot this month and yet I’ve been unwilling to bring anything to the point of posting and publishing.  

Just interesting.

I read a poem every morning curtesy of Joe Riley  and his email list called Panhala.  (I can’t find a working link for the site but a subscription request might be here: panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.).  I took up this habit about 8 years ago because I never liked reading poetry and it seemed that all the work I was doing and the people that I was working with valued poetry and always had something inspirational to read to begin meetings.  At that time, I also remembered that I had promised myself to read poetry (and also Proust) in my old age, assuming as I did when I was very young and callow, that deep understanding would be mine by the time I reached oldladyhood. Somehow I came across Joe Riley’s work of sending out daily poems and I subscribed.  I deleted many without even a read when my email inbox got overwhelmingly full and I stopped in the middle of reading many times because I just didn’t get it; however, little by little, over the years, I have come to some understanding of poetry.  And I now envy poets, like painters, who can say so much, move so deeply with a minimum of words.  It is not my talent, as this long paragraph attests to, but my appreciation grows with every verse I read.   Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 1

adventure

It is cold (but not like NYC with 6 inches of snow.  What’s up with that?). The garden has been put away. I am not forgetting to put on a hat and grab gloves when I go outside. Julia is wearing a coat (Why do teenagers think that underdressing is cool?). There is a thin coat of ice on our little bay.  There were large patches of gray, still water yesterday with just a few ripple-ly circles. 

Winter is coming. Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 0

lice update

I have a free hour and 24% on my laptop.  Time for a lice update.  (Musical introduction, please!)

Within an hour of publishing the last post, I had heard from five different sources, not all local, about an expensive but definitive lice treatment.  One of the sources was our family doctor (Julia needed a flu shot).  She related her own experience of a multi-month war against the tiny critters with a daughter who has long, thick hair.  After persevering for months, she brought her daughter to The Bright Side salon in Sun Prairie for treatment and the war was over.

Yesterday was two days post Monday’s treatment and Julia took a bath after her doc appointment, washed her hair and I combed it out.  I found many nits but I was still imagining that I could handle those nits myself. 

Comments and email kept coming in.   Continue reading →

Posted on by Suzanne Buchko 3