Thursday

Around 6 am, I half woke, looked at the time, realized Fred was up and thought, “I’ll get up about 7 am.” At 9 am I was woken by the phone. It felt like just a few minutes since I had been awake and so I thougt it was still 6 am and leaped out of bed to answer the phone because a phone call at that hour has to be some calamity or emergency, right? Imagine my suprise and confusion when it was a visiting nurse I had never spoken to before introducing herself and saying that since Nikki was unable to come, she, {Diane} was coming instead and was 11 am all right? I pulled myself together enough by this time to say we would prefer later because Fred often didn’t get up until 11 am since he was a night owl. So, she said she would come about 1 pm. I put down the phone  and ten minutes later it rang again and she was changing the time to later. Now, I would like to tell you what she said but I can’t since I immediately forgot it!

Fred got up and I told him that this new nurse had called and was coming “sometime this afternoon!” he looked a bit surprised but he quite likes it when I have senior moments like this since it reassures him that he is not the only one. I pottered around doing stuff and so did he. His stuff included making me some of Fred’s Famous Oatmeal {Yay!}, doing his leg-strengthening exercises, walking down stairs and back up twice, and a couple of turns around the table. I went for a 30 minute walk and then measured out ingredients into the breadmaker so it could do its thing. I played a lot of Bookworm, made a shopping list  and wrote some email.

Around 3 pm, I told Fred that if he wanted home-made gingerbread tomorrow, I had to go to the grocery store and even if he didn’t want gingerbread tomorrow, I still had to go to the grocery store because we were almost out of coffee filters. So, I got out the list I had already made when I looked at the recipe in the King Arthur Flour Cookbook and added coffee filters and one or two other things to it. And headed out. I told Fred that when this nurse did finally come {and she wasn’t late because I couldn’t remember what time she had said she was coming LOL} to ask her about checking his pulse-ox level and be sure she had a look at his incision because it looked a little redder than it had looked about three days before when I had looked at it. There was a tiny bit where a staple had come out too soon and that is what I had been concentrating on. However, that was scabbing up nicely and I now was a bit worried about the redness.

So, I head out to the grocery store about 3:00 pm and get caught up in the traffic coming out of school. When I get to the store, I find everything pretty easily except the filters. These turn out to be tucked away under the gourmet coffees where, of course, I hadn’t checked because to my mind coffee comes in cans and that is where I expected to find the filters. By now, I was really working myself up into an irritable state. And I was even more irritable when I reached into my pocket for my cell phone to call Fred for directions to the filters to find that I had not transferred the cell phone to the pocket of this coat from the other heavier one. I am pretty sure I can drive in the dark now with my new eyes, and I know I can drive at dusk {and in freezing rain because I did it after my last massage} but it still gets dark early here, and I really DIDN’T want to be backing my car into the small off-street parking space space in front of Fred’s car when it was dark. {In these winter months, we HAVE to park out cars off the street at night so the snow plows can come through, and it is a pretty heavy fine per night if the police find your car parked on the street after midnight.}

In addition, I had to wait at the bank counter {still in the grocery store} while they went through a long and involved procedure to order me a box of new checks. And this young lady said she thinks she did it wrong and I will get charged for them when because of my age and the kind of account I have, they are supposed to be free. She said chirpily, “Well, look at your statement and if I have done it wrong, come up here and tell us and the money will be refunded.” By this time, it was very hard for me not to snarl, “Try doing it correctly the first time, chickie!” at her. But I didn’t. I got my groceries bagged up and headed home.

Since I had only three bags, I backed into my parking space first and then got my three bags and started down the pavement to our door. And that is when Diane, the visiting nurse. came out. She told me she had looked at the incision and immediately called his doctor and he had an appointment at 11 am tomorrow which he had to attend. I assured her he would and that I would drive him. When I got in, Fred told me what she had said and remarked, “I am glad you had made the comment about the incision being a bit red or I might have thought it was a ploy to get me to go to the doctor’s!” {You can imagine the eyeroll this got him.} I hope it is something that can be fixed by an antibiotic. As a diabetic, he always has the worry of things not healing well, and if he does need an antibiotic, this will be the second one…

And he will be at the doctor’s at 11 am tomorrow!

Until later…