Monday (Columbus Day)
Woke up around 6 this morning when the alarm went off from Sunday service wake-up. Checked in with the HAM radio guys while sipping my coffee.
Applying for the Gwinnett Homestead exemption on our home. The taxes are outrageous at $3,400.00 all the documents have to be in one PDF. I had to print them and then rescan them to upload to the county website.
Just found out that we’re cooking chicken in the cold oven and it’s 11AM. 20 minutes to heat the oven, another 30 minutes to cook the chicken. We should be able to eat by 1:00 PM if we forfeit our nap. I set an alarm on Alexa for 10AM so that we catch this earlier. We really should discuss the next day at 7:15 when her alarm goes off. We decided to cook the beef stew meat since it expired today.
Dinner was really good, but we’re still not on the same page today.
We’re keeping the troubles of yesterday and throwing them into conversations today. Emory Brain health appointment is this week, I think she’s a little apprehensive about talking to the doctor. We’ve NOT done anything that he’s asked us to do as far as medications.
Mowed the back yard, we have a lawn service for the front.
We saw an American roach on the wall in the den today. We tore up the room cleaning out any crumbs of food and we laid down a glue trap behind the chairs. I may have to clean out the Den closet if they are nesting in there.
Tuesday
Slept maybe two hours last night. I found out that the grocery list was not made, and we have to toss food that we could have eaten. She’s really worried about the doctor’s appointment on Wednesday and that’s taken a toll on us. We had disagreements all day yesterday.
Checked in with the HAM guys this morning on the HF radio while I update this blog. She also brought me a cup of coffee to sip on.
I worked on the tub of wires for the parking lot speakers, it looks like they are all still there. I separated them into cloth bags and the rest I put back into the tub. The wires are so heavy they broke through the bottom of the tub they were in.
Our 20Yr old, sponsored youth in the Philippines had a child of her own in May. I remember seeing a letter a while ago from her apologizing for something. The letter she wrote in May was sent directly to us from CF Philippines yesterday which I found to be convenient. The tone of the conversation was they thought we’d drop her support because she got pregnant. I know for a fact the CF will drop her if she gets married, that happened to Rochelle. We wrote a letter and forwarded that letter to CF Philippines directly. They are going to work with the community to determine what’s appropriate going forward and get back with us.
We found out in the evening that the doctor’s appointment was cancelled by Emory and that we were supposed to call for a Social Worker appointment earlier today. Oops! We’ll have to wait until Wednesday.
Wednesday
Got up around 8AM and checked in with the HAM radio guys on the Waterway Net. I spent a few minutes gathering information on our financial support of the Philippine children.
I also updated our three Daytimers, by inserting and moving 3 months.
They are absolutely necessary in our current environment. One Daytimer is the current 6 months, 3 months past/3 months future. One Daytimer is the past 6 months and one Daytimer is last year. I also use this blog to keep track of when we’ve accomplished things that we may not have written down in the Daytimer.
Dinner is a frozen turkey breast. It will take 3 hours *1PM before it is done, we’ll start the vegetables and potatoes around noon. Alexa is awfully easy to setup alarms like these.
Todd is probably going to get snow today, it’s only 41 degrees this morning and only getting up to 61 later today.
Made an eye appointment for next Monday, I have a crease in my vision at 5 o’clock just outside my primary vision in my right eye.
Made a huge dent in the loose paperwork on the kitchen table. The entire left side of the kitchen table is for transitioning paperwork and staging stuff.
My back is starting to bother me, need to take a break and lay down somewhere. I took about a half hour nap in the lounge chair, and I felt a little better.
Thursday
We got up waay after 8 so I was too late to join the guys on the Waterway Net this morning. It was only 41 degrees this morning and there’s a frost warning for tomorrow. We checked our grocery list and it was too late in the morning to get groceries before lunch. We needed a break, so we headed to Outback for lunch. The bill kind of surprised us, it was only 55 dollars. We ate at the bar with Armani and had a good time.
We drove to Wally World for groceries, it wasn’t a very heavy bill. The Progresso Soup section was terribly diminished. We also could not find our favorite Pace salsa either, they had Picante but not salsa.
When we got home, we discussed our way ahead with her brain health. We have to start documenting her symptoms, she’ll never remember all the details when she sees the doctor next. Which by the way, the doctor doesn’t come in until Monday and we have an appointment with a Social Worker which is getting in the way of seeing an actual doctor.
The picture of my arm last year was clear.
The larger spot is a little bigger than a pencil eraser. It’s still a little scary!
The doctor said that it is a common occurrence in elderly people. It’s simply a bruise just under the skin. We have an appointment in three weeks, it should be gone by then.
I still have shingles! I just don’t understand how I can have this for months even when I’ve had three rounds of medication.
Friday (Fall is upon us)
It got kinda cool outside this morning.
The space heaters kept the bedroom toasty last night.
I’ll make a call to the dermatologist after their office opens this morning. I sent an E-Mail to their office last night with a picture of my arm so see if they want to move up my appointment. She got up a little while earlier and had a bowl of cereal. Her fingers were really bothering her this morning and she appeared to have difficulty writing in her story book. (AKA Diary)
The doctor gave us the green light and we headed home. We had leftover turkey for dinner and took a nap. We also took a short walk about 3PM. It’s a beautiful day here today, cool and bright sun. I wanted to catch the mail lady, but she managed to pass me between the houses LOL.
I had soup for dinner and she had a ham sandwich on rye. We watched Teagarden mysteries until 7:15 and then we worked on inventorying the meat in the refrigerator.
Wally World ground beef gets terribly bloody when it reaches the use by date. We also have lost three frozen turkey breasts and two pork tenderloins for broken packaging. (They leaked when thawed.)
The package always leaks, and it got all over the small refrigerator yesterday. We use this refrigerator to offload the long term storage of fresh items from the larger refrigerator. (Dairy and Meat mostly.) We used to use it as a freezer, but our needs have changed since COVID.)
The colors correspond to the storage type, blue is fresh, and green is frozen.
Saturday (Landon’s birthday)
There’s something going on with my eyes. I have had a spot in my left eye for more than a year from the sign in Ohio. It’s just off center at 11 o’clock. There’s also a stripe in my right eye about 5 o-clock that is annoying. I see an eye doctor on Monday, she’ll take a good look at my pupil and my retina. I know I have cataracts. They are causing a shadow to appear below my vision. I am still able to see pretty good at night, if that changes, I’ll get the surgery. She cannot see at night, and I have to drive. Today for some reason I am seeing lightning at the 12 O’clock or 5 O’clock far corners under low light. It doesn’t happen in darkness.
It’s still quite cool today, great weather to work in the attic.
I took a nap for about 30 minutes after eating lunch. I am nauseous and my back is rather sore. I am emotionally worn out from the difficult discussions yesterday and today. We made excellent progress in expressing our feelings of the progression of her symptoms. We’re also taking notes on what the symptoms are and where we are.
To that end we’re capturing benchmarks twice a day to ground ourselves in where we are.
- Hands tingling 1-10
- Sour Taste in mouth 1-10
- Tired 1-10
- Hungry 1-10
- Emotional 1-10
- Worried 1-10
- Confused 1-10
- Frustrated 1-10
- Happy 1-10
Describe the following during the last 5 hours.
- Exercize
- What’s been eaten
- Preparations made today/tomorrow
Pick 5 feelings out of the emotional wheel twice a day.
Speaking of symptoms, her finger sensations have gotten much worse. I put her fingers in a bowl of water, and you can almost see the ripples on the water between her fingers.
I FOUND my hat today, now that we can go for walks. It’s very dirty though!
We had our Soup & Sandwich and watched I Love Trouble together.
Sunday
I ate too many calories yesterday evening, it is so easy to get carried away with munching while watching TV. I have two medicines for my skin, one is antiviral, and the other is anti-bacterial/yeast. The yeast medication seems to be more effective this morning. We’re staying home from church today since the red patch on my back is still there. It bothers me the most when I am emotional.
She woke up early this morning about 6:30 and had a bowl of cereal after removing her braces. She went back to sleep without putting them back on. When she woke at 8:30 she had a terrible headache and her right lower molar hurt really bad. After putting her braces back in the pain quickly subsided. I’ll have to remember that she’s getting to the point where the back teeth are moving pretty rapidly. I also have to remember that she is forgetful and can’t correlate even the symptoms she can remember to a cause.
We’ve added another large Daytimer for a total of three. One Daytimer is a calendar of events for both of us. One Daytimer is documentation of her symptoms and the third is our walk with the Lord.
We found the wife’s Kindle; it was accidentally put in storage as Patricia’s. Patrica’s is a 7″ version of the Kindle Fire and is still supported, I don’t see a need to keep the device since I can use an Android tablet to read Kindle books. Grandma’s chili for lunch with crackers. We Zoomed in for church today since my Shingles spot is still quite prominent on my back. I do not know why I still have shingles almost two months later. Having diabetes increases the risk of shingles and severity. My A1C at the doctor has put me at “At Risk or Pre” but not diagnosed with type II diabetes. I know it is getting worse because of other symptoms with my feet and skin infections are becoming more frequent. My eyes are also having issues other than the cataracts if I’ve eaten at night. This morning, I have medium pain on my torso and slightly more around the shingles rash. It made it difficult to sleep last night for sure. I’ve ordered a glucose meter and test strips. I don’t know why doctors of pre-diabetes patients don’t just prescribe the device to help patients be informed as their disease progresses.
Found out that she stopped taking LAMICTAL (lamotrigine) cold turkey a while ago. She didn’t tell me or write down when she stopped taking that medication. The side effects of stopping that medication are many including tingling fingers and toes. It’s not recommended to stop without talking to a doctor and then tapering off the medication slowly is highly recommended. It also accounts for the aggressively nature of our discussions over the last couple of weeks. (Bi-Polar came back.)