To all my friends here

[Margm]

I was in Barnes and Noble today.  Bri had received money from relatives and that is her first place to head.  She loves to read poetry of some of the modern poets and I am still stuck in the past.  I picked up some books.  I didn't have the money to buy them, but the feel, the smell of a new book is something you cannot find on a Kindle.  But, also, you cannot find the ease of reading without reading glasses.  I love my Kindle and keep my Amazon in Billy's name.  I have the 10 inch, but it does not have the weight, smell or feel of a real, live book.

I know in what writing C.S. Lewis said this, but sometimes I pretend my life was a fairy tale, after all, he did say  “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”   And, I am. So, I do.  

Addendum:  And, I did not mean to add this to this post.  Someone had mentioned Kindles.  Sorry, thought I was answering that.  Going to bed.  Seems like I need to.

[Gwenivere]

On 12/25/2019 at 3:44 PM, widow'15 said:

Gwen:  Wow, sounds like you had fun choosing your food selections.  Let us know about the 'keto pizza'.  I crave pizza some days but have to talk myself out of it due to the bad calories.

 I found out Maddie loves deli turkey slices - hope it is okay to feed her that, but was not being successful finding dog food she will eat.  

Dee, the keto pizza was a pizza casserole.  Extremely filling.  Don’t think I will get another because I do like carbs.  The salmon dinner I got had cous cous and asparagus.  Found I didn’t like the cc so had half a bagel instead.  Sometimes bad calories are good, like lonely holidays.  I’ve had more chocolate than usual.  I always heard it creates endorphins and I’m a believer.  That belief frees me to indulge more.  😇

Turkey slices are fine for dogs.  Mine split a can of either chicken or turkey every night.  Show me  dog that doesn’t love meat and it isn’t a dog.  I keep their red meat to a minimum.  Only special occasions like their birthdays.  I let them split a whopper patty.  I buy turkey meatballs and hot dogs and they love those.  And I don’t have to feel guilty.  Have you tried canned and fresh veggies with Maddie?  Mine love them.  Keeps them full without many calories and also good for them.  Corn is the one I limit for sugar and calories.  

Hows Maddie doing otherwise?

Ally is progressing with less ability to move as she would like.  Dogs just adapt tho.  What she doesn’t understand is when I leave her home because I know getting into the car would be tough on her that day.  Talk about a dejected look that tears ya up!

[kayc]

Oh I don't mind the cooking fiasco, those things happen...what was really hard was seeing my daughter's pain.  But I'm glad she was able to open up to me especially as she said, she's been closed down this last year.  This has been going on longer than anyone should ever have to endure.  She is such a sweet person, she doesn't deserve what she's going through.

Karen, I bought a kindle right before having surgery five years ago.  They're great for reading books on.  I never did get accustomed to the operating system, preferring my PC or laptop for other stuff, but the kindle is so compact, so easy to make the words larger by spreading with your fingers, so much easier on the eyesight!!  You will get used to it in no time and come to love it for reading.

[Gwenivere]

Now that I am getting older and my eyesight is affected, it may be a Kindle down the line.  Steve had come and loved it.  I’m still hooked on actual books.  The feel, smell and bookmarks.  They are kinda a comfort thing having around.  I think back to, tho, if someone would have told me I’d have a computer on my desk, especially when the monitors were like small TVs, I would have thought they were daft!

[widow'15]

13 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

Dee, the keto pizza was a pizza casserole.  Extremely filling.  Don’t think I will get another because I do like carbs. 

Turkey slices are fine for dogs.  Mine split a can of either chicken or turkey every night.  I buy turkey meatballs and hot dogs and they love those.  And I don’t have to feel guilty.  Have you tried canned and fresh veggies with Maddie?

Hows Maddie doing otherwise?

Ally is progressing with less ability to move as she would like.  Dogs just adapt tho.  What she doesn’t understand is when I leave her home because I know getting into the car would be tough on her that day.  Talk about a dejected look that tears ya up!

Gwen:  The pizza casserole sounds good - I like any kind of casserole.  Oh yes, carbs are too good.  It's too bad it's what puts the weight on me in the wrong places.

Will try the turkey meatballs for Maddie.  Her oncologist changed her treatment which has caused a low white blood cell count - she has no appetite, so have resorted to hand feeding her when it is time for her medication.  The medication is really hard on an empty stomach.  She is also on an antibiotic.  So hard to remember whose turn it is to take a pill, she or me.  She seemed pretty perky today when the dog walker took her for her walk.   I know that dejected look - Maddie knows how to work those big brown eyes.  Thanks for asking, Dee.

[Gwenivere]

I know what you mean about whose pill or time it is for what.  My kids get chewable vitamins and glucosamine and I accidentally gave one of the kids a pill of mine.  Luckily she chewed it and spit it out.  Fortunately I have never tried to eat a dog vitamin.  🙂

[kayc]

There was some kind of pill the vet prescribed a couple of times that were huge round chalky, no way could you shove those down his throat nor would he willingly swallow them.  I asked him about grinding it up and putting into his homemade food and he said that was fine, so that worked.  Capsules, etc. I had to shove down his throat, followed by giving him a treat.  Bribery worked wonders with him.    At the end I had him on probiotics, metamucil, SAM-e, Milk Thistle, and Hemp oil.  He rebelled against the fish oil so I dispensed with that the year before.  I didn't make him take any pills on his last morning.

Meatballs didn't work for Arlie, he'd eat the meatball and spit out the pill.  Whatever works!

We would do anything for our four-legged friends.

[Margm]

So many doctors, so many years, and then the different dialects.  I wondered how my little redneck friends from way out in the country were going to understand directions.  Billy's chief of nephrology and I swapped back and forth the word "ten and tan"  It was a tan pill.  Finally his assistant explained it to me.  We in the south, especially from small towns all our life took on the dialect of our neighbors, friends.  Had to explain one time they were speaking a language they learned as English, but this old great-grandmother spoke an even older, more complicated (for them) language.  The doctor that saved my life had to go into anger management.  Not for me, but you learned, surgeons are not used to a bedside manner (some exceptions to every rule), but your family practice and internal medicine doctors needed a little personality, bed-side manner.  You no longer had the GP that came to your home.  If only we could have kept the "Doc Adams" variety of physician we would understand more.  But medical science has branched into so many branches, and most insurances will only pay if your home physician (or whatever they are called) officially sends you.  I have been asked who referred me and I say "me."  I can do that.  My friend waited and waited and never could get in to see a rheumatologist, although there was a medical school up interstate and a small city down interstate.  Medicine is not what it once was.  I have learned (and I keep my medical history, typed by a knowledgeable medical transcriptionist in the front of my purse.  I drag it out, put it in front of them, say "read it" and have actually been thanked for doing this.  But, where do you put pieces of paper when they use a computer trail for your medical history?  The gurney in the hall is where they kept us in 1982, at MD Anderson, waiting in line for the treatment.  I pulled the cover up to my nose and was crying.  Doc stopped and asked what was wrong.  I was scared to death.  They had detected a heart murmur.  He said "so what, I have one too" but he was not  on the  gurney.  

It seems there should be a teaching class with the doctor/resident/student being on the gurney awaiting some procedure lined up against a wall waiting their turn for whatever torture that  we wait on.  They really stripped this old great grandmother naked, put me on a cold table awaiting my turn for the MRI or CT scan and all I could picture was the half of a cow, skinned, waiting to have the different parts dissected (or quartered) and wrapped in packages and thrown in the freezer.  I had to think, with people coming in and out, if it was your mother or grandmother, wouldn't you at least provide a sheet.   

[Gwenivere]

John Hurt was in a movie years ago called The Doctor.  He was a snooty surgeon that got cancer.  He had to become a patient and experienced that side of the fence.  When he went back to training med students, he had them all order tests for each other thatthey would be ordering for future patients.  Just showed you have to experience it to truly know.   

You didn’t have a hospital gown, Marg?  That’s insane!  I’m such a veteran at medical crap and ER's I make loud protests to things I feel are disrespectful.  I don’t care what they think, they are supposed to be helping me.  And if they try that making me wait longer FOR complaining, I get more so.  I’ll even go to the nurses and doc station if they do that.  In some cases the squeaky wheel way works better than honey.  I did the same for Steve when he was in there and they would be standing around when I called for them.  I know ERs are busy, but if they can stand and chat, they have time.  And I don’t buy the I’m not assigned to you crap.  Then find who is.....now.  Or are you incapable of getting another blanket or alerting the doctor something is wrong?

[Margm]

No gown, no sheet, scared to death.  Surgery by interventional radiologists and I retired from this Catholic Hospital (last of my two retirements).  I was just a piece of meat.  I know about complaining to officials, CEO, etc., but was semi-comatose and certainly not "me."  I was going to complain about Billy's stay in the waiting room also, but he was gone, but it might have helped someone else.  Something about it all took the fight out of me.  I did fight for my mom's five hour stay in the ER here at this hospital in the town I live in and you are seen faster now than you would be if you went to your doc's office..  No wait.  Still don't have my fight anymore though.  

I saw the John Hurt movie.