Dec 4

Aaron and I got the piece of tin that had blown off the pump house during the last wind storm back onto the roof and I screwed down its four corners. We also drove out to Bushnell Sawmill and ordered 8 foot long 6 inch wide cypress boards at $4 each, but Jim was unable to tell him how many. So we have to count and call back.  I continued trying to call the spine doctor to see what time our appointment was there today.  I called the Embarq tech and she could not get through, so I called the office of the doctor who referred us to the spine doctor to see if could call. She could. Weather or not that any effect on the message my recorder took I'll never know, but at 5 pm I called the number that message left and spoke to a spine person.  She said an order for the x-ray we were supposed to bring was in the packet we brought home from the hospital. I checked that packet and found nothing like that.  I asked her to fax a request to Langley for the x-ray and she said I should check his record at the hospital to get the x-ray  request that is in there. Since it was 5 pm and to late to get an x-ray anywhere, we changed the appointment to Dec 16. So I have a few days to get that x-ray. Jim is blaming everybody else for the things that are happening to his body. So the urologist is bad because he didn't secure that bandages and catheter well enough to prevent them from falling out as soon as he got home. So Aaron and I tried to convince him that he should go up there this morning to see him if for no other reason to let him apologize. I'd like to go up as early as possible if for no other reason to get a good parking space,  but he is fretting and will take a while before he dresses.  It's also cold so he may be slower. Today we may put the tree out front and put the lights on the front porch.  

Dec 3

I used the GPS to get to my doctor appointment and used the shortest route option. I took me on really back roads and got me there at one minute before my appointment time. The appointment went well, but I had to jumpstart the battery before I could leave. I used the GPS to get me back on 301 and stopped at the first gas station to wait for a call from my POF man.  On the way to 301 I received a call from the urology nurse to had already spoken to Jim and wanted confirmation from me concerning his removal of the surgical care devices and wanted me to drive him up there now. I told her I was in Dade City at the other end of 301, that he was urinating just fine and had complaints about this back but not his urology wound, and I would bring him up Thursday morning.  She gave me the name of a medicine and said, well, okay. My POF man did call shortly after noon and so did my other POF man.  The new POF man, Harry, called later to say he had been stopped by DOT which had delayed him. We planned his route and he called again to say he was in Dade City on 301 and I told him he'd be there in 3 minutes and he was.  He was a very nice 57 year old man and we sat in his loadless 18 wheel Mack  truck and talked for about an hour. I turned the GPS off an headed home. I found Melissa and Aaron trying to start a fire in the wood burner to heat dish water, so I helped them. A half hour later Mellisa and I did the dishes.  Later we got the new chair into the bedroom and everybody tried it out and decided it was a really comfortable chair.  But oh, what a night!  He started out in his new chair and I read a chapter from our book to help get him to sleep. It went well for about 4 hours and then he went into high anxiety mode.  Nothing was right. I went along with him for awhile, but I need to sleep so I kicked him back out to his old chair and went back to sleep. Today I will follow up on his hearing aid and we may check out cypress boards at Bushnell Sawmill.

Dec 2

After the surgeon's representative called to say we should arrive at 11 for a 1 pm surgery the people at the hospital insisted it was a noon surgery and we were late.  To make maters worse, they said we missed an appointment on the 26th (my birthday) to have blood work done and I know that if I had scheduled and appointment that day. The surgery lasted longer than the 80 minutes I was told to expect. Fortunately the anesthesiologist thought a penile block would suffice and spoke to the surgeon about that and as a result they did not do general anesthesia.  So he was wide awake when they called me in to see him. I was anxious to get out of there in order to get the chair from Leesburg before dark, but they said he had to be observed for an hour. They slowly detached him and I was somewhat horrified that the said the catheter had to stay in for 3 days. The nurses made a big fuss about how I should care for the catheter and said we should come back Thursday to have it removed and get the dressing changed. So we left with a small bag attached to his leg and a bag containing a bigger bag to use at night.  We made a quick stop for gas and a sandwich and then noticed my bank across the street so in a daring move I crossed 301 traffic and deposited the check my daughter had sent.  I called Sam from Wildwood and told him he could meet me at my house in 10 or 15 minutes. We drove in the west end driveway and he was parked at the east end so I came inside for a minute and found him already there 
when I went out to wait for him. We took the long slow way up and the quick faster way back and Sam backed the truck up the the front porch and we unloaded the big box 
onto the porch. And that's where it stayed overnight. When I got inside I found blood and paper towels all over the bathroom floor. He said the dressing had pulled itself off and from there he decided to take the bag of and of course the catheter hanging there by itself was doing no good so he pulled that out, too. This catheter, the nurse explained had a water filled balloon located at the top of the catheter to help it from accidentally being pulled out. I had asked the doctor what would happen if he pulled it out and he said he would bleed like a stuck pig. Well, he did. He had pulled a balloon the size of a aspirin out of his urethra. That had to hurt!  I told him to wake me each time he urinated and the first couple times the liquid in the urinal was half blood.  As the evening progressed the amount of red slowly declined.  As so did the burning sensation he experienced every time he urinated.  So where do we stand now? When we see the surgeon should I tell him he should have known not to fit him with a ballooned catheter because he had a tendency to do strange things? I have a gyn apt in Dade City at 11 and I must do dishes before I go. We are out of clean dishes. He is really screwed up today and I should take him to urgent care and maybe at least document his screwed up condition.      

Dec 1


It's Monday so it's back to business and I do have a lot of business today.  I am writing this at 3:20 am after 8 hours of sleep. I have to call the spine doctor to ask them to fax a request to his primary physician to issue a request to have a x-ray for Jim to have and then take to Ocala Thursday. Then I have an 8:30 am appointment with my physician to get my referral to an appointment I made for tomorrow. Hopefully the x-ray request will arrive while I'm there.  When I get home I have to call Embarq to see what made us go 87 over our allowed minutes. Then I have to drive to Ocala for an 11 am appointment and surgery at 1 pm. Hopefully while I'm doing that Sam and Aaron will drive to Leesburg to pick up the chair, unload it and maybe Aaron will even set it up. Jim did show some interest in his surgery last evening but Google has no images of lesions that resemble his.  He is now worried that it might be cancer because if it's cancer they cut the whole thing off, leaving just enough to allow for urination.        
 

anesthesiologist