Trying to Get Healthy

OK, so here we are, a bit over a month since the hubby's "mild" heart attack, and I've lost six pounds. Yeah, I know. That's a good thing, pat-on-the-back and all that, but what I can't figure out is why I've only lost six pounds. I mean, seriously? Six pounds? Come on. I've eaten more celery in the past month than in all my....well...several years on earth previously. And I've been lots more active, what with the garden going full-tilt (working like crazy with those blasted tomato plants so they wouldn't die....and they haven't), and my pet sitting business picking up a bit (doing a lot of dog walking lately, and those darn dogs just don't believe in getting their business done none too quickly either).

I do admit to a small treat here and there. Like tonight for instance. Tonight I'm going to make one of my special milk shakes: some chocolate ice cream (not a lot, it's a small drink), a bit of milk, and some chocolate-espresso wine. I guess I could give up my milk shakes completely for a while; speed up the weight loss process a bit.

Ya' know, six pounds in a month really isn't too bad at all. **pat on the back**

Things I (Probably) Wouldn't Be Saying If I Had Kids Instead of Cats

Being a cat mom instead of a regular/"normal" mom, I have found myself saying things to my cats that I'm sure I'd never have to say to a young'un. Or would I?

- "Stop sniffing your sister's/brother's butt."

- "Stop biting your sister/brother on the neck. I don't think she/he likes it."

- "Hold still so I can pull this hair out of your butthole."

- "Why in the world would you want to eat a plastic bag in the first place?"

- "You can sit on my chest, but please turn around so I don't have to stare at your butthole."

- "No, you can't sit on my lap while I'm using the bathroom."

- "If you would chew your food, you probably wouldn't puke most of it back up on the living room carpet."

- "Stop beating on the door. You are not sleeping with us tonight."

- "Must you sit there and stare at me for hours at a time? Really?"

- "Stop eating my hair."

Oh, the life of a cat mom.

Gardening 2012 - Part 3

So, here are the latest pictures from my garden.

 The potatoes are growing like crazy. 

I added the second tire to each stack, put in more soil, then promptly had to return to the store for even more soil. Bought their last five bags. Sure hope they get more in soon.

The peas are doing great, and I will have to move some of them to another box so I can get them all tied up and climbing. The black radishes are doing OK. Thinned them out a bit and we'll see what happens. 

The box in back was onions, but only about three ever came up, and they never grew. Bad batch of seeds maybe? Who knows. I am transferring some of the peas to that box and will go from there. The box in front is a late planting of a small breed of carrot. They are coming up well and will have to be thinned out.

My red and yellow bell pepper plants. They started looking a tiny bit sickly, even though there was already a pepper on one, so I decided it might be best to split them up. 

They are now in two separate buckets. 

Here's hoping they will thrive with the extra room

My tomato plants never really grew much, and the leaves on the bottom of them started turning yellow. After talking with a friend about what the problem might be, I went out and bought some Miracle-Gro and have given them one dose so far (and removed the yellowing leaves). They're already showing lots of improvement, and when I researched the issue on the internet, most things I found said it could be a low nitrogen issue. Guess the plant food was the right idea.  

Got my corn planted. Doesn't look like much, but most of it is really growing. Two at the bottom have died, but that was my fault. Should have kept the area more uphill and should have moved more of the dirt/grass out down there. They ended up with lots of standing water and that's probably what did it. But, you learn from the mistakes and do better next year.  

It's a bean. I get my crates from a local produce stand, and some of them will have a bean or two still stick in the bottom, caught on the wooden slats and such. So, I decided to look at that as a gift and try planting them. This is one of the first ones I planted. I have others planted in around the tomatoes and peppers, seeing if they will come up. If they do, I will carefully transplant them, maybe in with the corn so they can grow up the stalks. I may have green beans this year as well. Cool. 

Google tries to watch what I'm doing sometimes, but once the water hose is pulled out, 

he doesn't usually stick around for long.

Better than any old French manicure if you ask me.
:-)

Worst. Week. Ever. (Part Three...final part, I promise)

So, here it finally is, the third and final part of my long-winded report on the Bell family's worst week ever.

When last we left our blog, Chris (the hubs) and I were patiently (well, kinda patiently) waiting for him to be taken down to the cath lab. Finally, a nurse came in to do the little shave thing that he was so looking forward to. (I have to say, she was wonderful and very good at keeping things modest for the hubs. She moved the blankets around as needed, and nothing "private" was every exposed to her even. Great job.) Once she got the area shaved, she then brought in the bed to take him downstairs. This woman was not only great at the shaving thing, but at the bed moving thing as well. When I had to wheel Chris into the ER on Tuesday morning, I was hitting the doorjambs and such. She wheeled that bed out of the small room through the small door, down the hallway, into the elevator, etc. without so much as a bump. Awesome.

Once we got downstairs, there was a bit of a wait there before they finally took him back for the procedure. I sat in the small waiting room with these tiny windows that looked out over a rooftop and a wall (with a small patch of sky if you leaned in and looked straight up), and sat down to wait. I tried to read, then I got on Facebook for a bit, then I just sat. It of course seemed like I sat there forever, but it really wasn't too terribly long.

{Side note: It started storming like crazy while I was waiting. I could hear the thunder, see a bit of the flashes of lightning through the little windows, hear the rain pounding. I thought how it kinda figured a storm would hit then as the windows in the hubby's room upstairs had this great view of the mountains that I just knew would make for some great pictures if it stormed while we were there (almost always have my camera with me). No way to get any good pictures in the waiting room, and of course the storm was over by the time we got back upstairs, and though we had rain off and on, we never did have another storm.}

OK, back to my story. I guess about 30 minutes had gone by when someone came in (the PA maybe, or something, so many professionals and I was having trouble keeping everyone straight in my head), and he told me that they had found a 70% blockage in one of the arteries of Chris' heart. They were going to put in a stent to open up the blockage, which would take about 30 minutes. Modern medicine is an amazing thing. I think start to finish, the whole procedure (cath and stent) took about an hour, maybe a bit more.

After all was done, Chris had to lay perfectly still in the recovery area for about 30 minutes or so with the pressure dressing on his groin area where they had cut into the artery. That was no problem of course, since with all the drugs and stuff in him, he was pretty much passed out cold. He'd jolt awake for a second, then go right back out again. Then they took off the dressing and put the new one on (I had to head on up to his room for that as I wasn't allowed to be in there) and he was brought back to his room. The moved him over to his bed and he had to lie still again for about 4 hours. He could move his arms a bit, and could raise up some (no more than about 30 degrees they said), but nothing else. He was awake enough for a bit to eat supper, which I had to feed him (a fact he's going to be thrilled to know I shared) and then he was pretty much out for the rest of the night. Well, not counting the times he would jerk awake when someone would come in the room to check vitals, take blood, etc.

The next morning, the nurse had him sit up and they checked his BP, then checked it with him standing. Then the nurse had him get up and walk around with her for a bit. We were at the hospital until that afternoon while they got paperwork on him done (had the wrong GP listed and we had to correct that or they would have sent his records to someone who's never even seen him), gave us prescriptions for some new meds, etc. Follow-up appointments were made and we packed up and were sent on our way.

About 60 hours after the hubs first  hit the floor on Tuesday morning, maybe 59 hours after we'd first walked into the local ER, we were on our way home. Less than three days. It amazes me how fast modern medicine can sometimes work.

So, that's pretty much what happened last week. We now have new meds added to the ever-growing list that the hubs has to take. We're also trying to keep more healthy food around, which is hard when you have pretty  much no money and the healthy stuff seems to cost so much more than the bad stuff. I've also gotten a bit paranoid and every little ache and pain that the hubs gets, I worry about what's causing it. I have put my AFLAC training on hold at least until his first follow-up appointment which takes place next week. I don't mind being out and about near home, where he can get hold of me if needed, but I'm NOT going to be off in Hickory or Hendersonville, a good hour or two away, and have something happen. I'm sticking close to home.

Now I reckon the dance with meds and treatments gets going big time. We're still dealing with the Fibromyalgia, Hemachromatosis, and Type II Diabetes (although the Diabetes fight has been going pretty well). Now we have to deal with the heart stuff. He does have a family history which I got clarified through his dad recently (his dad had a heart attack and triple bypass at 47, his granddad had a heart attack at 36 or 37 then died from one at 41). That all just means we need to be even more vigilant.

I am also going to try and get past the paranoia thing, but it may take a while. Until then, I'm just taking deep breaths whenever I can, tending to my garden, and researching like crazy. Always new stuff going on in the medical world.