Heat Bites

It's been an interesting week. In my last post regarding our health exploits I detailed Marty's gastronomic adventures last Sunday. Well, I think the gastro gods got their revenge, because I awoke early Tuesday morning to the familiar call of the porcelain bus, "come hug me, come hug me".

Yes indeed, it appears the antibiotic Marty was taking did not make her nauseated, it was apparently a 24 hour stomach virus. I can attest to the virus, the stomach and the 24 hours because that's about how long I felt really crappy. The good news is that Marty can still take Merrem and it won't make her sick, the bad news is, I really hate the dreaded stomach bug.

Marty had a follow up Doctors appointment on Tuesday, the same day I was knocked out of commission. I know people who get the stomach stuff and just keep on doing stuff, not me. I don't often get sick, but you can't count on me for anything when I do. But, I got good people and Renae took Marty to see the great and wise Dr. Martindale. All things were excellent. The white blood count, which is a good first marker for infection, was normal, and Marty's sodium, which is a good marker for respiratory infection for Marty, was normal for her. Good stuff and she had largely recovered from her bout with the bug.

Wednesday was largely a day for recovery for me and Marty, but we did manage to go see the movie "I Love you Beth Cooper". Very lame, but it started at a time that was convenient for us. If anyone cares about my movie review, one star at best, big sucking hole at worst. Hopefully next week we will shoot for Harry Potter.

Thursday was a bit different. Nikkie, one of our caregivers started to come down with Marty's disease and I sent her home, which gave Marty and I some time for quality time alone. I mentioned this to Marty and she said, "so???". The bloom is off this rose. All was cool, the most excellent German nurse came and removed the PICC line and that went very smoothly. I cooked a really excellent Parmesan crusted Tilapia and then the air conditioner quit.

Being an old grouch there are a lot of things in life that I find aggravating, that really tick me off, that make me the old grouch I am. But I got to tell you, throwing up and being unnaturally hot are really two at the top of the old grouch list. And the best thing is Lochridge Priest, a large air conditioning company in Waco, had been out 24 hours earlier and blessed my a/c as working well. What a coincidence????

A really nice guy with Lochridge Priest did come out about 10 p.m. to tell me that could fix it tomorrow as the house heated up to about 85 degrees. I started to blow, Marty's face was getting red and Maggie, the dog, was panting so I said we're going to the lake because we got air there. Two hours later we are in the big red house at Richland Chambers with the air on 70 degrees and Renae shivering, so sorry.

We came back to Waco Friday after just one day at the lake. The Waco a/c is working fine, none of us have thrown up in three days and things seem to have smoothed out for the week. I think we have finished the latest of Marty's infections and we have discovered a new capability (home IV)that will provide us additional responsibility but more flexibility. Thus is life, thus is our life and today we are okay.

One aside -- the death of Walter Cronkite is really very sad. For those our age he was a credible fixture who chronicled our country's evolution through some very difficult times. We already missed him.