Can you ever get the country out of the lady?

( I started this post a few years ago and it was promptly lost in the Ethernet. Just found it again and decided to post it because I still had a sense of humor, weird though it may be, and since I now have that problem again, but in the other foot, I’m sure there will be another trip to the ER and another painful interlude coming up in the future.)

Maybe. But it isn’t easy. I lived in the country most of my life and have always gone barefoot. In the summer I was barefoot outside as well as inside. Winters I wear socks in the house and only put on shoes when I go outside. Living in town now and in an apartment building I have to wear shoes when I go out, or if in the power chair, just heavy socks.

I sew a lot, making doll clothes and quilts. And with no feeling at all in my fingers I usually drop a lot of pins and needles, finding them when I step on some and sit on others. Most people say “OUCH” when they see that, but I have MS and don’t have much physical pain, so while I might say something like “oops, I found it” I’m never very concerned. So when my foot began hurting a few days ago it didn’t really concern me much. I had already washed my feet once this month, but decided to take the socks off and wash them a second time. I guess it was a good idea to take the socks off, even though they weren’t stiff yet. Imagine my surprise when I saw the foot was red and swollen just around the big toe! So, being an independent person and a DIY’r, I decided to care for it myself and began picking at a small scab. Whew! what a mess. I won’t go into detail here because I’m trying to eat, but suffice to say it was infected!

So, for the next few days I washed the foot, just that one of course since the other one was okay, put antibiotic cream on the area and bandaged it to keep the sock from making it worse! Okay, okay, so I’m exaggerating a little bit, but seriously, by Friday it was hurting and I made the decision to have my son take me to a clinic to get an x-ray.

The doctor there was telling me how I would have to begin a wound management program to clear up the infection, how it would entail going every day for treatment, blah, blah, blah. Then they showed him the x-ray. He looked a few times before informing me that I have a sewing needle embedded in my foot, but most important, I had to go to the ER for immediate treatment, maybe surgery. Huge sigh!

While I was signing out of the clinic, he told Mike about it and I could hear him tell the doc that I had said in the beginning it was a sure bet that I had a needle in there.

Back out in the rain, climbing back up in the truck, arguing with the seatbelt about who was boss there, getting help from a laughing daughter-in-love, finally getting the seatbelt fastened in time to take it off again at almost the same time, I finally slid out of the truck and grabbed hold of the walker again. Only one person was allowed to go in with me, so while Mike stayed with me Janette went shopping.

I only remember a few of the details of that visit to the ER, just that the PA who was working on the toe couldn’t get the needle out so he just made the entry bigger by means you probably don’t want to know and sent me home to wait for the needle to emerge. While he was working on the foot my darling son took off for the cafeteria rather than holding my hand. Was I surprised at that? Nope! He’s the one who fainted when his youngest son was born.

Okay, such is my tale of past experiences with needles in my foot. And now that I’m remembering it again, I have to say that I was still at the Roosevelt House at the time and had the horrible indoor/outdoor carpeting that catches everything that is dropped and hangs on to it until someone pulls it out manually (or by stepping on it). I am now in a place with hardwood floors and needles and pins are easy to see and corral with my magnet. Still dropping them but so far have only sat on a few needles that embed themselves in my lift chair. Just a mild OUCH for most of them but none embedded in my derriere. At least not yet.

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Nursing Home News

Okay, the hospital is now in the past!  Mike picked me up this afternoon and brought me to Hillcrest nursing home where I’ll be for a couple of weeks before Home sweet home! My Medicare company had me sweating for a little while, refusing to okay the Rehab because I am “doing too well” .  Just thought I’d mention that in case any of you break a leg or hip!  Wherever you do if that happens, don’t walk for several weeks and do a lot of complaining about it all. !probably screaming wouldn’t be out of the question!  It seems they only want to pay for the ones who will be there the longest.

Just thought I would share a few of my older photos along with the beautiful fern a very dear friend.sent to frighten my room! We haven’t had much sunshine so the photo needs some editing but that will have I wait until I get home! And more of this missive will also have to wait until I can convince this kindle to use only the words I type in, and all of the letters I use without adding any on it’s own!

 

 

He’s One In Four Million Worldwide

That would be my youngest son, Mike, featured here along with his children and guess who in the last photo in the group.

Today Mike is celebrating his 13th birthday!  He has said he plans to act like a “terrible teen” now that he has double digit Feb. 29’s under his belt.  He wasn’t sure he could pull it off until I told him he has been practicing for it his entire life.

According to this morning’s local paper he is one of 187,000 Americans with this birthday, and approximately four million worldwide.  The worldwide number is not completely accurate since many countries don’t have an accurate count of the people living there or of their birth records.  Still an impressively small number of people in comparison to the world population!

People are always asking when we celebrated his birthday over the years.  It was very easy when he was young.  His sister was born on March 7, his brother on Feb. 22, so all three had birthdays within a two week timetable and we would have one celebration for all three of them, with a “humdinger”, as his dad called it on Leap Year.  This lasted until they all were in school and discovered their classmates each had a party of their own.  No sharing with siblings?  Unheard of in our home.  Until that fateful day they each entered first grade at St. Mary of the Woods school in Whitesville, KY.  Each of their classmates had a birthday cake of their own I was told.  None of them had to share with a brother and sister or two brothers!  I briefly considered home schooling but when factoring in certain facts — they had already found out this one most important thing about birthdays, they were at that time the only kids their age on our road and needed some others to play with, and most important to me — I had discovered the joys of taking a long hot bath without the door rattling and a kid saying they had to talk to me NOW!  So I baked a cake each week during our short birthday season.  Everyone wants dessert anyway and cakes are still easier to bake than cookies or pies.

My kids all had Ms. Evans as first grade teacher.  Gina was first, intelligent and eager to learn, then Don, a little bit shy at first, intelligent and eager to learn (this according to our first parent-teacher interviews).  Ms. Evans was shaking her head when I went in for Mike.  She only said “he’s not like the other two, is he?”  I had to laugh as I asked her how long it took her to discover this fact.  Mike always thought that many kids in a room meant only one thing —PARTY!

I don’t mean to imply that Mike isn’t and wasn’t then intelligent.  He just didn’t like being penned up inside a classroom all day.  This is a kid who was working on tractor engines by the age of 4, usually under his Uncle Marvin’s supervision.  He is more hands on than book smart, something as important in running anything as the college degrees.  Could be more important actually.  A degree doesn’t necessarily mean a person can fix something, just that they supposedly have the words to write the manuals — I think.  I don’t have a degree either, just sometimes have problems understanding my sibs who all have those little things.  We all have our place in this world.

Okay, not going to debate the qualities behind each of them here.  Just going to paraphrase a quote by a friend at one time:  “God made worker bees as well as the Queen Bee and He deserves to experience them both!”  (The original quote was comparison between crows and canaries).

Okay, I’ve erased this twice now by resting my wrist in the wrong place so I’m gonna quit while hopefully still ahead here!  A.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKE!

Can I Just Say “AAAArrrggghhh!

This looked like a good time to post again, especially since it’s the first time I’ve been on the laptop rather than the Kindle for several days.  Then things began getting wonky again so I’m not sure if there is such a time as a “good” one.

My sweet youngest came over yesterday to install new batteries in my power chair and I was kinda taken aback when he held his right hand up and inadvertently shot me the bird!  He seems to be kinda accident prone these days, and the middle finger of his right hand was encased in a thick bandage, the result of another farm accident where he got his finger caught in some equipment at the corral and ripped it open.  Twenty one stitches later they had it cleaned, bandaged and encased in a metal finger brace.  I’m sure the apparatus has a different name, but it’s late and I can’t think of it now, even though I’m sitting here looking at my own brace, or support thingy.  Now why would he ever want to copy some of my crazy accidents?  His dad always did say he was too much like me in so many ways, even though he looks more like his dad.

Come to think of it, his dad also had some rather spectacular accidents on the farm.  Like the hottest summer day we had been blessed with in so many years, his dad was looking for something to do, noticed that the corn bin needed cleaning, and climbed inside to do the job.  The outside temps were 100+ F. but it just seemed imperative to this dear soul to go inside the metal bin where the temp had to be several degrees hotter, not letting anyone know he was in there as a “just in case” precaution, and begin working.  I think we are all like that at times, but Edd led a charmed life that day.  He made it to the house before collapsing, and for the first time in our lives together told me I should call the doctor.  Didn’t say why, just call him.  I finally managed to get part of the story from him, called the doctor, and was told to give him lots of milk to drink.  That turned out to be the best medical advice we  were ever given, bringing Edd back from the near dead and giving me yet another natural remedy for heat prostration.  It came in handy many times for the rest of our lives together.

The last one I remember was the night we had been in bed for several hours, or so I thought, when I heard the kitchen door open and some shuffling of feet.  Both of the boys were out on dates that night so I thought at first t was one or both of them returning home, but then I heard Edd calling out that he needed help.  It just happened to be the same corn bin that almost did him in again, this time from falling off it onto the concrete pad surrounding it.  He was almost asleep when he heard the rain start, and like the usual method of silly accidents, suddenly couldn’t remember if he had shut the opening at the top of the bin or not.  So, once again without telling anyone, he got up and went out to check, slipped on the wet metal top and fell to the concrete pad below.  Huge sigh!  The boys both got home about this time and they were sent out to check the bin, close the top which actually had been forgotten, and came back inside just in time to help me get their dad to the car for yet another Saturday night trip to the ER.

The doctors and nurses there knew us well by this time, because for several months I was transporting at least one of the guys in every Saturday night.  One of them would become careless while working the cattle, something it seemed like they did every Saturday, usually while I was away doing the grocery shopping.  I would get home with the bags of groceries and follow the trail of blood into the house, always wondering which one of them it was that particular week.  The scene inside was almost a carbon copy each week, the bathroom filled with dirty, blood encrusted towels, the sink with some stains still there, bandage wrappers strewn every place, but not another human in sight to give me any idea at all about which one it was this time.  I still wonder how they all survived these weekends, but at least they didn’t go so far as to dedicate a parking place to one of us at the hospital.

Okay, I just managed to erase a couple of paragraphs, so it must be time for me to shut the computer down and go to bed.  After I put away the Monterrey Spaghetti that sounded so good a few hours ago.  I ate too much and it is beginning to get kinda heavy inside.  Not a good thing to do this late at night, but it sure is good  I might have to do a few exercises before I hit the mattress though..