Puppies!

 

Me and "Cleo" this morning

With all the bad news in the world, I decided today was the day I was only going to post about good news.

The picture above was taken about an hour ago at my neighbor's house. The puppy is "Cleo", an Australian sheep dog poodle mix. "Cleo" is short for Cleopatra. 

My neighbors daughter brought Cleo for her father last week. By neighbor, whose name is Bob, had just lost his Yorkie a couple of weeks ago. Last year he lost his wife, brother and son. Just two weeks ago he lost his good friend and another neighbor. Bob is the best neighbor I've ever had. All the years that I've been on my own, he is the best neighbor ever! And ironically he's a Tumper although he doesn't try and convert me (nor do I try and convert him to my "radical leftist socialist" views. We look out for one another. Bob and Bill used to be best friends before Bill's strokes and onset of early dementia. 

Bob goes fishing frequently. I've always walked his dog when Bob is out all day fishing. This morning I went over for instructions how to handle his new puppy. She is a lovey. 

I would love to get another dog, preferable a Pomeranian puppy like my beloved Horace of many years ago. I had him for sixteen long years. I'm afraid if I get another dog he will outlive me. I can't get any kind of pet now as long as I'm taking care of Bill but should I survive Bill, I am seriously considering getting a pet. Haven't totally decided on a cat or a dog. But like Bob, I don't want to live alone. When I come home I want that happy greeting and unconditional love that only a pet provides. 

Have a great day everyone!

Me and my Horace when he was a puppy 

Another School Shooting

Today I was going to write about more good news here at my safe home in Delaware. But after yet another mass killing of children at a school shooting, whatever I write about seems so trite. My heart just isn't in it. I will write about those events in my insignificant life in a later blog post.

There are a few things in life that I have a hard time understanding. One of them is these random shootings killing innocents. I really have a hard time understand why anyone would go into an elementary school and randomly kill children. Children whose only "mistake" was to be in a wrong place at the wrong time. 

When I was in elementary school from 1948 to 1954 the only fears I had was the class bully, Jack S. who was waiting for me to shove me on the early morning wet grass just outside the East Ward Elementary School. Another fear was the Butcher brothers along with Kenny Webb, a trio of older black students who would chase lone, timid little white kids like me (they never caught me, Jack did and more than once I spent the school day with grass and mud stains on my hands and clothes). But the biggest fear I had was the atom bomb. Remember those days? We were given drills that when THE BOMB hit, we were to hide under our desks. Heck, even then I knew my sparse wooden desk with metal legs screwed to the floor wouldn't do much to protect me from being incinerated from the atom bomb. Those were the fears I grew up with. I just cannot imagine having to go do elementary school and having to worry about a random shooter with an AR-15 bursting into my classroom and mowing down. 

I can't imagine the pain of the families of those who lost their children yesterday to the latest Republican?NRA enabled murderer. Yes, I said it. REPUBLICAN/NRA ENABLED SHOOTER. I lay all the blame at the Republicans and specifically at Senate Minority Leader's feet Mitch McConnell. They are all cowards whose only priority is staying in power. They are owned lock, stock and barrel (pun intended) by the NRA. Because of the Republicans and the NRA an 18 year old was able to buy an automatic weapon to mow down those innocent children yesterday. 

The Republicans say that restrictive gun laws won't prevent mass shootings like happened yesterday in Uvalve, Texas. Perhaps not all but some. Do stop signs prevent accidents? Do red lights prevent accidents? Do DUI's prevent traffic related deaths? YES. Do those deaths still happen. YES but not as many with the laws we now have in place. 

So let's dispense with the pious expressions of "thoughts and prayers" and enact real gun laws.

I'm not saying doing away with guns entirely but those is absolutely NO REASON ON THIS GOD'S EARTH WHY ANYONE NEEDS AN AR-15 ASSAULT rifle.

I grew up in a household with guns. My father was a hunter. He had a half a dozen rifles which he kept LOCKED in a gun cabinet. He hunted deer and other small game. I don't remember if me and my two younger brothers were given a warning about staying away from his gun cabinet but we did. We had no interest in guns which apparently didn't bother him. In fact when he died, my Mother told me (as the oldest son) "Pop said you boys can have his guns." Guess what? None of us wanted his guns. She ended up giving them to the son of his neighbor and fellow hunter. 

To me the only solution is stricter gun laws. While stricter gun laws won't totally prevent random violence like yesterday, if just one child's life is save, then it is worth it. Again, NO ONE NEEDS AN AR-15 ASSAULT RIFLE! 

I won't harp on this subject but I had to make my feelings known because I am so angry right now at the Republicans who enable this horrific acts to continue. 

VOTE ALL REPUBLICANS WHO SUPPORT THE NRA OUT OF POWER!

"Getting Old Ain't For Sissies" Medical Update

 

Our backyard this afternoon. Oh how I LOVE our backyard. So peaceful and relaxing. This is the best time of year!

Momentous news this week folks!

July 21st is the scheduled date for my first cataract surgery. I got the call yesterday. This surgery is for my right eye, which has a noticeable cataract in it. You can' see it from the outside from inside my eyeball I'm looking through a foggy or smeared with grease glass window. I can't wait to get that eye corrected so I can see normal again. Also, this should help out my double vision. To get cataract surgery you have to have had a current EKG. I have one that is good for my first surgery but it will have expired by the time of my second cataract surgery. I made the call to my cardiologist's office this morning and left a message requesting an appointment for that EKG. My life is a series of doctors' appointments, I just can't get away from it.

Today the head coordination for Bill's at home hospice service came by with papers for me to sign discharging Bill from hospice care. She assured me that he can go back on at anytime I deed it necessary. It won't be necessary now because Bill has stabilized but he's not the person he was before his two strokes. Health wise he's good but mentally he's getting more confused. I can see the dementia slipping in. Thank God me still knows who I am. I think that would be the line that I don't want to cross. I don't think I can care for a stranger. I have my hands full taking care of Bill as he is now. He still can't dress, feed, bath or take his medication on his own. He just can't connect the dots. Cognitive issues. I've seen it with other friends of mine who have since passed on, including my Mother.

This morning I woke up with very little hearing in my right ear. Bill's worn a hearing aide for over thirty years now. I've always prided myself on my excellent hearing. I don't know what caused this hearing loss in my right ear. I think it's temporary. My ear feels plugged up like it does when you get off of a long plane ride. Last week it was plugged up like that but after I took a few hard gulps, it popped. I tried the gulping today but no pop. Maybe when my caregiving days are done and I'm still alive I'll see a hearing specialist. That's something I can put off. My cataract surgery, I can't.

Every day I get up my whole body aches. I put this down to just an eighty-year old body that arthritis is slowing over taking my joints. Right now my back is aching. I'll take an Advil for that pain. Advil works for me. Tylenol doesn't. My other joints all ache. It's tolerable but I'm no longer the springy guy I used to be when I visited the Veterans Hospital in Wilmington, Delaware and prided myself that I didn't walk like an old man like so many of my fellow veterans. No longer, I'm starting to walk like an old man.

Sometimes I think I've lived long enough. I have to stick around to take care of Bill but after that assuming I survive Bill, I have to evaluated my quality of life situation. Like today, it was a beautiful sunny 72 degree, low humidity day. Our backyard is beautiful, inviting, and relaxing. I like nothing more than to putz around in our backyard doing yard work. Yesterday I mowed the lawn, which I love. Today I did the trimming which is a little more onerous (a lot of bending and stopping) but still pleasant and relaxing for me. But when I bend down on my knees to transplant some grass plugs, I have one helluva time getting up. I'm thinking what happens if one of these days I can't get up? I'm just laying out there on the grass like some old man who has lived too long? My father died when he was eighty years old. He smoked his whole life and ate greasy food almost every day. Up until two weeks before he died he managed to work in his garden. He loved to plant and grow corn. Way more than we could ever eat, he gave most of it away. But gardening is the one thing he truly loved. More than his sons, that's for sure but I digress. Wouldn't it be ironic if I kicked the bucket during one of my transplanting grass plugs days or just trimming the grass with my grass shears? Some actors would like to die on the stage, me I prefer my bed during a good dream. Speaking of which, I've really been having some weird dreams lately. Can't remember the details (I rarely do) but I do remember if my dreams were good, bad or just weird. Having some weird ones lately folks.

This Friday Bill's regular hospice nurse comes by for the Last Visit. She'll take his emergency drugs (morphine) and dump them down the toilet. She'll say "goodbye" and Bill and I will enter this new phase of our life. I feel like I'm on HOLD. But here we go, life goes one. And believe me folks, if I have anyone young reading this blog post (which I highly doubt), getting old definitely ain't for sissies!

Misty Backyard

Last night, at dusk, before dinner I decided to mow our grass. 

All week nothing but rain, rain, rain. In fact it's raining now. Our backyard was beginning to look like an Iowa prairie. I was starting to imagine American buffalo's roaming our almost one acre backyard if the grass got any longer. In fact I think I saw some prairie dogs scouting our backyard for a new home.

I love mowing grass. Before Bill's strokes that was always his job. He didn't like it so much, it was more of a job to him than a stress reliever that it is to me. 

I had just put Bill to bed (he goes to bed around 6 PM). This was my quiet time which I treasure every day. It wasn't raining but the grass was still wet but I decided to mow anyway. Also, there was no wind blowing which is usually the situation when I mow grass on a sunny day. All that "stuff" blowing in my eyes. I wear goggles but the goggles dig into my skin. Last night I just wanted to sit on our John Deere zero degree turn tractor and ride. Smelling the cut grass and the chirping of our resident birds preparing for their evening respite.

I'm pretty well resigned to being here for the next several years. It's been two years now since Pat and I traveled to our favorite destinations of Palm Springs, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and of course Pat's home town of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. 

Oh how I miss our quarterly trips. I have American Airline credits of over $1,500 for missed trips because of COVID then Bill's health. I'll probably lose that money. I'm not going to get upset over it. Can't do much about it.  These days I'm just not going to stress out over things I can't or have little possibility of changing. 

I would love to go back to my part-time job at the hotel. I loved that job. It was the best kind of job; getting paid for something I like to do. I have no idea when and if I could go back to that job. Bill could live another five years or more. This September will be his 94th birthday. Our friend Bart lived until he was 97 years old. He died as he preferred, in his favorite chair. His neighbor checked in on him in the morning and Bart was in his chair. That afternoon his neighbor checked in on him again and noticed that Bart hadn't moved. He was dead. That folks is the way I want to go and Bill has said that's the way he wants to go. But for now he's stabilized and he take each day at a time. 

I treasure those times like last night when I mowed our backyard in the quiet of our wonderful neighborhood. 

Of all the places we have lived, this is the quietest place ever. And for that I am so thankful. At this time of my life I value serenity and quiet. And I especially value our wonderful expanse of green in our backyard. Been my dream my whole life folks. To have a little bit of earth that I could call my own.

Have a great day!

;  

Bill's Daily Walk

Every morning, after I get Bill ready for his day, Bill takes his Daily Walk. 

Bill's Daily Walk consists of him making twenty loops around our finished basement room. 

This was done first to improve circulation in his lower legs where he has edema. When he first came home from rehab, his lower legs were so swollen, it was painful to look at them. Both legs oozed clear liquid and had open sores. Since Bill began his walks, the swelling is down considerably (still there) and the clear liquid oozing is completely gone. Occasionally he has an open sore but I dress them and they go away in about four or five days.

I am so proud of Bill. He has made so much progress since he came home from his two week stay at the rehab facility where he was sent after his near death at the ICU at Thomas Jefferson Hospital  in Philadelphia. 

When Bill first came home he didn't want to do anything. He couldn't do much. But little by little he has regained his strength to the point where he can pretty briskly walk every morning. At first he was getting mixed up how many loops he was making. I corrected that problem by giving him twenty quarters. After each loop he drops a quarter into a bowl until he runs out of quarters. 

Next week Bill will be officially discharged from home hospice care. But that doesn't mean Bill has completely recovered. He hasn't. He still needs me to help him dress, shower, eat and take his medications. He still gets confused and is still weak. But he has stabilized. He isn't getting worse. But he's only about 60% of the person he was before his strokes.

A couple months ago we took him off of Eliquis. He is still on his other medications. Taking him off of Eliquis means that he could possible have another stroke through a blood clot (his other strokes were the result of blood clots), but one of the Eliquis side affects was causing him dizziness. His risk of falling was greater this his risk of another blood clot. No really good choices here folks but we felt we took the one of least risk.

I am so thankful that Bill has stabilized. He still gets frustrated by his lack of eyesight but overall we have settled into a comfortable daily pattern of living. 

We are both blessed that our situation isn't much worse. We manage and for that we're thankful.

the Day The Earth Stood Still

 

Time for a rant folks. 

Regular followers of my blog know how I like to rant but I haven't done one in so long. But last night I was watching a movie and I noticed something that so angered me I just have to rant about it. So get ready folks, here goes.

Last week I bought some DVD's at the local thrift store for a dollar. One of them was "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Normally I wouldn't watch a movie like this because there is nothing there except CGI and a ridiculous plot (even if there is a plot). But last night I just didn't want to watch any more of the MSNBC shows because they were having a glitch with commercials interrupting the regular show. So I thought I would wallow in the trash and watch the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still", knowing that I would learn nothing from it except for what I guess was the message, "Peace in the world." Who doesn't want peace? Apparently a lot of folks in this world don't including some Americans but I digress.

So here we go. 

The movie opens with Keanu Reeves struggling in a snow storm in the Himalayan Mountains and he comes across a "something" that just landed in the snow storm from space. He enters the "thing" them the movie is transported to the present (2008 time that movie was made). A warning goes out to gather all these "experts" because the United States knows a "thing" from outer space is going to land on New York City. Of course the movie has to focus on someone and this person is the actress Jennifer Connelly, she of the heavy eyebrows. 

The action picks up and then slows down when she begins interacting with her stepson, a biracial boy of about ten years old. Oh, okay. Politically correct movie, I get it. But the movie slows down every time she interacts with this kid with the cock rooster hairdo because he can't act. His acting is wooden. I can't get past the hairdo. But that's me. 

Then the movie picks up again and lots of action. Then it goes back to the cock a doodle hair do kid. What? Every time it goes back to this kid I'm thinking "What does he have to do with this movie?" I saw the original  movie back in the Fifties and I don't remember this character and what he has to do with the plot of the movie. 

The action picks up again only to again revert back to this bratty kid. WHAT? So now I have to look up who this kid is. And I find out. He is Jaden Smith, the SON OF ACTOR WILL SMITH. You all know Will Smith, the actor at the Academy Awards who thought it was alright to walk up on the stage at the Academy Awards and assault Chris Rock, the comedian who made a lame joke about Will Smith's wife. Yes, THAT Will Smith who showed his true thug colors by thinking it was alright to assault another human being in prime time and then strut back to his seat all proud of himself for protecting his woman Jada Pinkett Smith whose feeling were hurt by Chris Rock's joke. Then Will Smith not once but twice used the F word to respond to Chris Rock. 

Will Smith, Hollywood royalty who obviously used his power to insert his son Jaden into this movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It would be one thing is Jaden could act. He can't. But to subject the viewer to his push to make his son A STAR.  Didn't work did it Will? 

Will Smith put his son in more movies like "Happyland" or something like that but little Jaden still isn't a STAR is he? 

Sometimes there is justice in this world. Will Smith, after his slapping incident, will no longer be able to insert his kids into movies. Especially roles that are created especially for their little darling kids. 

I admit I generally don't like kids in movies. Most of them are brats in real life. Some are good but the majority of them I find BORING and irritating. 

So when I found out why the kid was in that movie last night I did what I will always do when I don't like something, I ejected that movie. 

Keep trying Will, but you blew it when you slapped Chris. Tell your kid to get a real job.

Eye Doctor Appointment

 Just got back from my annual eye doctor appointment. As I suspected I need cataract surgery.

My right eye vision is like looking through a greasy window. My left eye is better but not much.

Me in the chair this morning awaiting for my exam

I really like my eye doctor. I've been going to him ever since we moved in Delaware in 2006. 

I've watched his hair grow gray. Of course I haven't changed much at all except for my vision. (HA!)

I was a bit nervous about getting cataract surgery since my late brother John's botched cataract surgery which left him almost blind in one eye. It was that surgeon's first cataract surgery and she shattered the new cataract lens in my brother's eye. What a mess that was getting all those pieces out. After it was all done he was legally blind in his one eye.

After finding out that my eye doctor will personally do my cataract surgery I am much relieved. He has EXPERIENCE.

I know many people who have had cataract surgery and they all have expressed extreme satisfaction with the results. That's what I'm looking forward to. Seeing clearly again and seeing the world in bright colors.

Can't wait!

P.S.

Short post because my eyes are still diluted (dilated).

Bill's Medical Update

 

One of Bill's hospice nurses taking his blood pressure, which is normal now thank goodness!

After fourteen months on home hospice care, yesterday Bill's hospice nurse and I determined to discharge him from home hospice care.

The reason was that Bill's conditioned has "stabilized." That means he's not getting worse.

Bill still needs my assistance in dressing, showering, preparing his meals and administering his medications. Because of his blindness (macular degeneration) and cognitive damage because of his strokes he will always need someone to assist him in his daily routine. 

I was worried about getting him off of home hospice care because if he had another stroke, both of us didn't want him to go through what he went through last year trying to save his life. Save his life they did for which both of us are very thankful but no more. The main reason being because of Bill's blindness. He can't do what he used to do. So often Bill gets depressed because he can't read or do his projects which he used to love so much doing. Now he feels he has no purpose in life. I try to get him focused on the many positive things we still have in our life. Most days I'm successful. 

However, I need not to worry. Bill's hospice nurse told me yesterday that if Bill starts to fail he can go back on home hospice care. She said that is a lifetime benefit of Medicare. Wow, what a relief that is for both of us. If Bill had another stroke that doesn't cause his death, neither one of us wants extraordinary measures to keep him alive. May sound harsh, but that is our decision. We've both had long, good lives. Oh sure, a few bumps here and there but overall we have been extremely blessed with a good life. When our time comes, we will be ready.