Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Still Here, Just Busy, Busy, Busy......

 Doing mostly home owner stuff. Cabinet hinges, hanging things for SLW, and trying to knock out a bunch of "little things", like mount the toilet paper holders with better wall anchors so they don't keep coming loose, and installing a new porch light fixture to replace the ancient, crusty, rusty one.

The recent storm that went through only gave us a few inches of nice, fluffy snow, which was gone 24 hours later. They got hit with 9" out in Greeley where my son lives! Melted pretty quickly, and he kept working right through it. What a trooper!

So more to come, and with pictures, too!

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Griswold faces crushing defeat to ban Trump from ballot

 Griswold is our Secretary of State here in Colorado, and she's so blue you wonder if she's getting enough Oxygen.

Most of us thought she was NUTZ in banning Trump from the ballot for the upcoming elections, and it looks like the USSC is going to smack her down. Even the libtard justices think she's bat-shit crazy to suggest such a thing.

Read all about it here, on Colorado Peak Politics, a site I visit daily, along with Complete Colorado.

Sunday, February 4, 2024

What's Up NOW, Doc?

 Been home about 10 days, and feeling much, much better.

So what happened, or more accurately, what did I let happen this time?

Well.....I have an aversion to Dentists. It probably comes from the Dentist I had from "first teeth" until he retired. He was the brother of our Family Doctor (good old "GP"), and was a Navy Dentist. He didn't use any local numbing, so I had to sit there for cleanings and cavities. Sometimes it felt like that scene from "Marathon Man".

So, I just "let it go". BIG mistake. All four molars (18, 19, 29, and 21) in my lower left jaw went nuclear overnight. I woke up that day, looked in the mirror, and my eyes got about as big as dinner plates. I was having problems swallowing, and my neck under my jaw looked like I had a muffin on one side, and a biscuit on the other. So I got cleaned up, hit the "MAYDAY!" button, and had SLW take me to the ER. A dentist wouldn't have touched me, Urgent Care would have told me to scoot off the ER, so we saved some time and went straight there.

SLW dropped me off at the ER at 1100 local, and went on to one of her Doctor's appointments. I was checked-in, and seeing a Doctor in about 20 minutes. A staff person came in, and started two IV lines, and then sent me down the hall for a CT Scan of my jaw area. Then it was off to a room in the ICU where I gowned up and  waited for the Surgical Team to assemble.

The Doctors were quite concerned they wouldn't be able to get an airway into me for breathing gas, and they went through the procedure for a Tracheotomy with me. They would prefer NOT to do so, as it adds another layer of required medical care. I told them to do what they had to do, and gave them my consent, signed a form (by now I was getting really out of it due to the infection), and told them they had my complete trust, which seemed to break the ice, and we moved forward.

They put the mask on, I took some deep breaths, the Fentanyl came next, and it was lights out. The operation was completed by 1900 local, and I was out all night. I barely remember SLW being there, but I was drifting in and out of consciousness. And I was pretty out of it the next day, too. At least they were able to get an airway in, so I didn't need any holes put in me. I could barely talk the next two days, and was using a dry erase paddle to communicate. I told SLW I should have helped her get her Morse Code speed up past 5 words-per-minute so we could converse, and she cracked up.

The Oral Surgeon said he'd never seen FOUR teeth abscessed so bad. He said it was more of an "excavation" than an extraction, and he was amazed at the amount of "stuff" that was suctioned out.

I was getting a vial of Ampicillin every 3 hours, and an injection of Prednisolone (a powerful anti-inflammatory corticosteroid) about every 6 hours, along with so many blood draws and finger sticks that I lost count. I was on a liquid only diet for four days, as the swelling was so bad that my epiglottis wasn't working properly, and there was concern I'd get some food in my lungs that I couldn't expel. Then I was on a "Minced and Moist" (pureed, actually) for a couple of days, and then the "Soft and Bite Sized" diet for the last two days. Just about back to a normal diet, but still haven't tried certain foods. Plenty of pasta, rice, meat sauce, Jimmy Dean sausage, scrambled eggs (SLW makes killer eggs!), and a couple of 30g protein shakes a day. I have to mix the protein drink with about 40% milk to be able to comfortably get it down as it's a bit too "Clingy and Coating" for my taste. The mixture also makes very good soft-serve from our little ice cream machine.

So far now, "That's All, Folks", and I'm feeling a couple of orders of magnitude better than when I went in.

And I'm getting pretty good at finding things in my little Bible........

<i>Repeat After Me.....He's OK, Still Here, Yes He's Busy.....</i>

 Goodness, I really should post more. I probably will once Winter sets in, but for now, I'm still catching up on Things I Couldn't ...