Saturday, January 2, 2010

Boring Saturday

This has been a boring day. It is 17 degrees out there and we have simply stayed home and stayed in. I will bake some cornbread after awhile. Bob fixed beans today. I am a little leery of eating them. A couple of weeks ago, I ate some and they made me sick....queasy anyhow.

I read most of the morning and finished one book and began another. I worked on my budget and brought my checkbook up to date. I posted on our churches web board a couple of times too. I also worked on my classmates newsletter. It's ready to go to the printer's now if no one else writes me a letter. It's ten pages long (five pages on each side).

I have read several blogs today and read the news online. Not much going on..it must be too cold.

This will be short.

Friday, January 1, 2010

New Year's Day

Well, it's New Year's Day and we went to the party last night but only stayed two hours. We were both tired but we were mainly worried about Slinky barricaded in the kitchen at our house. We were afraid he would get desperate and break out and do something drastic in the house like he did last January. It's terrible being trapped in your own home because you have a dog.

Today we are supposed to go to Leslie's for lunch with John's family. I really am not up to it. I have to worry about Slinky the entire time we are gone. If I go, I will put him in the garage. It's cold there but not as cold as outside. The hot water tank is there and that takes the edge off the cold. There's a rug down by the tank and I also move his two rugs out there too. He hates the garage but that's the only way I can have peace of mind while we are gone.

I am to fix a large salad for the dinner. If I don't go, I'll send it with Bob.

More later:

I felt better after awhile and went on to Leslie's dinner. It's a good thing I did. She had 12 there and two of them were small children and she needed lots of help. Everything was wonderful! The food was really good and Leslie's house looked really nice. Sage opened our gift and she was delighted with it.

Slinky had decided he wanted to be outside in the sun even though it was very cold so we left him out there. When we came home at 3:30, he was ready to come into the warm house. He is asleep now and it was 5:30 when he went to sleep.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

New Year's Eve

It's New Years Eve (day) and I simply must clean house today even if I can only give the kitchen a lick and a promise. Tonight we will go to Dick and Sue's New Years Eve party. Tomorrow we will go out to John and Leslie's for dinner. She is having all of John's relatives and us. I am to fix a large salad.

We never did get any more snow yesterday. There was just a little new snow on the ground from the night.

We are supposed to get the results of Bob's tests today.

I will call Melissa's office if I don't hear from her by 10:00. I am very unhappy that she waited a week to give us the results of his ultra sound and chest x-ray. We were to have had those results the next day. Even then, Bob had to call her office to get them. To my way of looking at it, that's poor doctoring. She surely realizes that the patient is concerned and needs to know the results ASAP.

The kids have been very concerned over Bob's tests. They have called nearly every day. Leslie called last night again to tell us that she would be going to Bartlesville this morning to get her brakes fixed on her car. She still wants me to call her on her cell when I learn the results of the CT scan. I hope we really will get those results today.

I was awake a good deal early this morning wondering how I will pay for any treatments he may have to have. Bob is without a supplement for his Medicare. We still owe the surgeon for our part for his last skin cancer surgery. Medicare has not paid yet so I have no idea what we will owe. Then we will owe the hospital for our 20% of the CT scan too. That's almost $300.

When we tried to buy a supplement several years ago, they told him he was uninsurable. He had had those two melanoma. I think if worse comes to worse, when we run out of funds, we will sell the house and rent. We still owe $44,000 on it. And it is getting harder and harder to find the money for taxes and insurance on the house.

But I guess I'll worry about that when the time comes. I try not to worry about things I can't change and that may never happen.

Update:

Melissa, Bob's doctor called. She thinks this large lymph node is an infection. She will treat it for two weeks with an antibiotic and then if it doesn't respond to treatment, she will do a biopsy. She does not think it is cancer.

Needless to say, we are relieved.

This morning, Leslie, our daughter called. She had locked herself out of her house and her purse was inside. I have a key to her house and she wanted me to bring mine out there so she could get in. I had two keys on my car keyring but didn't know which one was her house key. I was about halfway to the church when she called me back and offered to meet me half way. It's 18 miles out there to her house. I told her I didn't know which key was their house key and which key was the church key so I would stop at the church on my way and try them in the door there. Then I thought, "Why should she have to come in the opposite direction to her destination when I wasn't doing anything special anyhow?" So I told her I would just pick up a couple of pounds of ground beef when I got there and for her to just stay put. Even though she had her car keys, her purse and driver's license were in the house in her purse.

I got there and handed her my keys. She tried both keys and neither one fit. So I went back out to my car and looked in my purse for another key. The only other one I had must have been the extra key to the Ford truck Keith has. I was getting ready to leave when I noticed my little coin purse on the dash. I looked inside and there was Cyndi and Jeff's key....and another one unlabeled. I ran to catch Leslie before she got out of the drive and showed her the other key. She took it and tried it and sure enough, it was her house key. Wow! She was delighted. So was I. Then on the way home, Bob called with his good news. I called her right away. When I got home I e-mailed the boys. They both responded with delight too. We have the neatest kids!

Everything worked out fine after all.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

More Bad Weather

There is more snow forecast for this area. We actually got a little of it last night. Juanita called this morning and said she did not want to get out to go to breakfast so I just went up to get my hair done and came home. Bob did not want me to go but..what the heck! I got home just fine. The snow never showed up.

Today we have no plans. It's Wednesday and I made my peanut clusters for the New Years Eve party at my cousin's home tomorrow evening. I had decided to either do it today or tomorrow.

I need to clean house but Slinky seems to be a permanent fixture in my kitchen and I don't know how I would work around him. So I got some laundry done but no house cleaning.

A friend came over this afternoon and I helped her to get her insurance converted to a supplement. She had been paying over three hundred dollars a month for insurance when all she needed was a supplement. She is 76.

Tomorrow we should know what Bob's CT scan shows. If I don't hear from Melissa by 10:00, I will call her office and ask for the results.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

CT Scan Today

Today at three is Bob's CT Scan. First he was reluctant to have it done. But after I told him Medicare would pay for 80% of the cost and we needed to find out what we were dealing with, he reluctantly agreed. Then he said he would not have any surgery. I told him to reserve judgment until we learned more about it.

I went to my sister's home today and once again heard all about her confused memory. Last week she said her husband told her I took our dad's oil painting to Wal Mart and sold it. Today she told me she had loaned books to a mutual friend and never got them back. Then 90% of what she said today, she had said the past twelve weeks. It is so sad! Such a good mind...slowly going.

I am in the midst of laundry and if it warms up and I can put Slinky out, I will clean the kitchen too. I want to get the towels washed and perhaps the white things before lunch.

After lunch, I went ahead and fixed my goulash for supper. I have no idea when we will get home from the hospital.

More after 3:00:

We will not know the results of Bob's CT scan until sometime Thursday. I hope Melissa doesn't wait a week to tell him. In fact, we had to call her office yesterday to ask for the results of last week's ultra sound and chest X-Ray. I don't think the patient should have to do that.

You can tell I don't have a lot of confidence in doctors.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Sunshiny Monday

This is a lovely day! It's cold but lovely. The snow is slowly melting. Slinky wanted to go out on the patio on the chaise lounge in the sunshine. That dog is crazy about the sunshine even if it is cold. He did not wake me up last night until 4:30 this morning. My leg did not hurt and I slept well.

I have been working on Sunday's sermon. It will be a tough one. I do not really like John's gospel and the scripture comes from there. The theme is "Praising the Giver of Gifts". The theme is fine but I just don't like the accompanying scripture.

Bob and I went up to the market and bought a few items for supper. We are going to have chipped beef on baked potato. Every once in awhile that is what he wants. We have eaten so much lately that something lighter will be good.

We are hoping for a quiet day. I got the tree down yesterday afternoon and all the decorations put away. Now I need to do some cleaning.

More later:

We went to the market and bought a few more groceries. Then finally Melissa, our doctor called with the results of Bob's tests from last Tuesday. He has no blood clots but he does have a "node" of some sort in his left chest. This "node" has caused the swelling of his left chest, arm and hand. Tomorrow at 3:00 he will have a CT Scan to find out exactly what it is and what can be done with it.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Sunday After Christmas

We will have church today. My son-in-law went out there with his tractor and cleared the parking lot. Bless his heart!

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Slinky woke me up at 10:30 to go out. Then Missy slept on my legs most of the night. The right one ached most of the night and that kept me awake.The phone rang at 3:30 and when I answered it, no one was there. About 3:30 or 4:00, Missy wanted out and woke me up. She had been into the Christmas tree again. She had left it alone as long as there were gifts around it. Slinky woke me again at 5:00 and I came in and bawled him out. He then let me sleep until 5:30...except I didn't sleep. What a night!

We will put Slinky in the garage when we leave. He will hate that. He hates the garage. It's cold in there but not as cold as outside. It's 20 degrees outside and almost 40 in the garage. He will bark and whine until we get home. That's what he did the last time we were gone for several hours. I don't know what else we can do about him. He will just have to tough it out.

We may eat out with Leslie today at Hong Kong Delight. I'm not much on Chinese food either but Bob will probably want to go with her there. I would rather go to Sirloin Stockade where they serve American food myself.

Anyhow, then tonight we have "Living the Questions" at Jack and Marilyn's home. I am really tired of this book we have been studying. I would rather watch Bob's "The Power of Myth". In winter, I would really rather just stay home. You can tell I'm getting old.