Every morning when I get up I round the corner from my bedroom to out kitchen.
It's Ground Hog Day again.
First thing I check is to see if Bill's pill bottle is there. This morning it was as it has been for the past year or so.
Bill gets up during the night and comes upstairs from his basement bedroom to the kitchen to get some Oreo Lemon Thin cookies. He also brings up his pill bottle to be refilled.
Daily he takes a Tylenol twice a day.
He originally started taking Tylenol to combat the occasional pain he received in his legs from blood clots. They work.
I also give him his meds twice a day. He has three medications that he takes in the morning before breakfast and three he takes at night before he goes to bed.
He takes a heart pill (Eliquis). Another pill for his stomach (he had a stomach hemorrhage several years ago when he was abusing Extra Strength Excedrin, Dioxin (I forget what those are for), sleeping pills, prostate pills and one other pill I forget now. Bill takes a lot of medication to keep going. I takes several pills too but not as many as Bill.
At first with the Tylenol I gave him the whole bottle to take with him to bed just in case he had pains at night. I couldn't continue to do that because he would forget how many Tylenol he was taking and then he would be back on that track of abusing the pain killers. I don't want to find him on the floor, unconscious, with blood coming out of his mouth like I did about five years ago. That was a trip to the Emergency Room that I don't want to repeat.
In my previous post I posted a picture of an old man holding the hand of his dying wife. That is the way I prefer to go and for Bill to pass on. However, I fear that one morning I will wake up, round the corner from my bedroom and NOT see Bill's pill bottle.
That is the morning I dread.
Please don't be concerned about me folks. I'm not depressed. I make the most of every day Bill and I have together.
In so many ways both Bill and I are so fortunate. The VA and the U.S. Government through Medicare is taking such good care of Bill. But these are the days that both Bill and I are nearing the end of our wonderful journey together.
This July 3rd, just two days from now, Bill and I will mark out Fifty-Ninth Anniversary. Just how fortunate and lucky can two average guys be? We both know that we have had a wonderful life together.
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| Hamburger and Sparky, our Philadelphia Poms |
These days we often talk about our past memories. Of the times when we lived in Pennsylvania with our three wonderful Pomeranians. We even talk of the time when we lived in center city Philadelphia with our two Pomeranians who preceded our three Pomeranian dogs of our East Brandywine Township living in the woods stay.
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| Horace, "T" and BabyDoll - our East Brandywine Township Poms |
One thing we never tire of talking about is that night so long ago in Philadelphia when Bill noticed me standing across the bar from him with my friends Ron H. and Ed C. at the Westbury Bar at 15th and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. He told me then and there he decided he would spend the rest of his life with me. It wasn't love at first sight on my part but over the years and many months of trying to meet me that I realized that Bill was my destiny. What a life we have had and continue to have.
Don't worry about us folks, we're doing fine her at Casa Tipton-Kelly.
Happy Fourth of July and happy anniversary to us!
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| Bill and me 2010 Milton, DE |
