Sheesh, it's been a rough week. And it's only Wednesday morning. Monday morning about 7:00 a.m. my dad called me and said he was calling an ambulance to take him to the emergency room. He's 81 years old and has congestive heart failure (among other things), and when he gets in the condition where he is having trouble breathing and feels very weak, and the scale shows he's gained several pounds in just a day or two, it always means he's gotten a build-up of fluid around his lungs, and has to go into the hospital to get it taken care of. Me, feeling weak, having difficulty breathing, and gaining a couple pounds in a day just means I gave in my urge to buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's, and ate it all in 24 hours.
I used to take him to the hospital when he needed to go, but we decided it's really better for him to call an ambulance ... he gets right in, no waiting. When I take him, we have to sit in the 'triage waiting room' for sometimes hours before they get around to him.
So he went to the hospital, I went to work, and then went up to see him. Actually it was all good, he was feeling much better by the afternoon. And then even more good news followed. Last fall sometime, during yet another hospital stay, we were informed that his kidneys were not working well at all - down to about 30%. I was given to understand this was because of the large amounts of diuretics he had to take to control the congestive heart failure, and that there was nothing that could be done about it, other than monitor it carefully and try to slow the otherwise inevitable progression down. In December the number had dropped to about 20%. It was disturbing news.
But yesterday three different doctors told him his kidney function seems to have improved, although none of them could seem to agree on how much. The numbers he was given ranged from 30% to 60%. I wish I had been there to ask the doctors why the difference ... dad wouldn't ask. But regardless, any improvement is good news.
They will probably release him today, so after work I'll be going to pick him up and take him home.
Yesterday, for a variety of reasons, I couldn't make it to work on time. I only work 10:00 to 2:30, it shouldn't be that hard, but I couldn't make it in till noon. To (mostly) make up for it, I stayed till 4:00, but that made for a weird day, as I'm used to leaving so much earlier.
The whole week has just been weird, weird, weird.
I have been working on the log cabin blanket, and it's chugging right along, getting larger and heavier all the time. If I keep on at this pace, I imagine it will be done in another couple weeks. It may take longer than I expect, because of course with every new round the patches get larger. I used to be able to do two, maybe three whole patches in a good slothful night of laying around watching television. Now I barely get one done, if that.
I haven't gotten to work on the quilt any during the week. That's something that usually gets reserved for the weekend, when I have a large block of uninterrupted time. It's not something I seem to do well at just grabbing 15 minutes here or a half hour there. It seems to need a bit more of a committment in one chunk. But it's progressing along nicely ... the next step is finishing the sunflower leaves I mean flamey bits around the eye, and doing a second dragon I have planned for the upper left corner of the center square. Then I have to think again, because I have to come up with two more motifs for the two remaining corners of the center square - not more animals, something of a vegetable or mineral nature I'm thinking.
After that, I begin designing block patterns. I already know the first one is going to be the doors of Moria. Then I'll have to see what else strikes my fancy.
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