Done Since 2019-02-24
Not a good week, on the whole. Some high points, to be sure, but a week that covers an unexpected flashback and my wife going into the hospital (again) (and finding out about new problems) has to be pretty low on the goodness scale.
Well, let's have the good parts first. I published two posts: Writing Without Distractions (a curmudgeon post) and my second Understanding Ursine post; both appear to have collected some comments. (Not very many, but I'll take what I can get.) And I went to j's Bar Mitzvah yesterday, which went very well and included some good conversations with relatives I don't get to see very often.
But, as indicated, C is in the hospital again (Swedish Hospital in Edmonds in case you want to visit). She had a urology appointment on Wednesday; the doctor suggested going down to UW (where she's scheduled for a surgery consultation on March 19th, rescheduled from one of the days we were snowed in) as a way of maybe moving thing along faster. That didn't work, in part because they were out of beds. But it's a good thing we went, and a good thing she hadn't taken her BP meds that morning. She'd seemed weaker than usual over the last month (?), and we were getting worried. Turns out there were Reasons.
Not only was there the expected UTI, but her BP was very low, her kidney function was way down, and she had atrial fibrillation. That last was a new one. It's apparently one of the more treatable heart conditions, but on top of everything else it could be a problem. She's now on beta blockers and blood thinners.
I think I'll cover the flashback in a separate post, if at all. The really interesting part was that I recognized what was going on while it was happening. (Whether an adrenaline spike triggered by a memory counts as a "real" flashback may depend on which definition you look up.)
Notes & links:
0224Su * awake 3ish. back to bed 4ish; dozed without mask * up 8ish; S=5:54; @ MegaPenny (Irregular Webcomic! #1939) & S is a writer -- it's nice to have someone to talk shop with. * menu planning. Doesn't sound like much if any shopping needs to be done until later in the week; will see whether there are any urgent items. % I don't appear to have done much; meal prep, dishes after, and C may account for most & added make target for ursine:; wrote draft for "nevermind" for posting tomorrow; & made spectacled-bear icon : C's hearing may be an issue; hasn't been using hearing aids. She is especially having problems hearing L, forcing me to intervene because L hasn't learned to detect when C is hearing something wildly different from what's being said. % I don't think L and S realize how much of the housework I've been doing. % I'm not sure that I can give C the level of care she apparently needs. I am particularly concerned about her decreasing level of mobility. 0225Mo * awake 2:15; C miserable, having a lot of pain % despairing. see above; everything but the first 4 bullet items were added in the last hour, after the fact. * up 7:33; W=197.4, S=6:43; ! ... and I am now coming down from a flashback. Or at any rate an adrenaline spike. N said "flashback or learned hypervigilance or anxiety flare or whatever, it's still the same thing." (trigger: explaining why I don't want to be a middle-man bear; Bayfilk 5) cf. definition of flashback by Medical dictionary, so, yeah. sources differ. " 2. In posttraumatic stress disorder (q.v.), the sensations resulting from strong emotional sequences acting as triggers. " -> as (something I am coming to recognize as) usual, the spike didn't happen until after the triggering stimulus was over. (makes it harder to identify the trigger) -> took me somewhere between 45min and an hour to recover. Talking about it helped. -> very pleased with myself that I noticed and identified something like an emotion in something close to real time, which is why it gets a ! instead of a % flag. " QOTD: (me, trying to capture a transient thought) Something scurried across my mind, but I'm not sure whether it was a squirrel or a brain weasel " -> as it turned out, it was whether I needed to put olive oil on the shopping list. We had a bottle in the extras cupboard. @ Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure-Stephen Wolfram Wolfram has always struck me as a bit odd 0226Tu * up 5:35; W=107.2, S=6:17; @ Beaker: the Decentralized Read-Write Browser | Linux Journal Hashbase Hosting for the peer-to-peer Web. Keep your files online, even when your computer is turned off. 100MB free, 10G $7/mo Dat Project Dat protocol : email from TS at TekSystems about a possible full-time remote job. * some work on Git for Poets, "helped" at times by Desti. Not really feasible until she starts her nap. @ How to Stop Analysis Paralysis: 8 Important Tips | Personal Excellence (ysabetwordsmith) How to Make Life's Hardest Decisions: 3 Decision Making Methods 0227We & Awake 3:30ish; back down ~5; dozed * up 7:30ish; S=6:11; @ Privacy, Mine: the Right of Individual Persons, Not of the Data | Linux Journal * 10:45 C Dr. Corwin, Providence. Leave 9:15; start leaving 8:50 or 9 -> advised going to ER at UW, because that's the only place where they can do the surgery she needs. Lost 60lbs in the last 2 months. -> lunch at Saffron on the way down. There will be leftovers from C's appetizer plate -> drove down to UW's ER. She's dehydrated among other things. Very low BP. Creatinine 7 (it was 2 last time when she left? Providence) -> she's not getting surgery, and will be transferred to another hospital because UW is over-full. Don't know where yet; hopefully NW or Providence -> Swedish Edmonds -> 6:03 BP 93/65 Yipe. Good thing she didn't take her BP meds this morning. : robo-call from Island Drug. CPAP filters arriving at Clinton on Friday @ Lisp and the foundations of computing [LWN] Lets LISP like it's 1959 - YouTube Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I John McCarthy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.∗April 1960 Lisp I Programmer's Manual LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual 0228Th * Up 6:30ish; W=195.8, S=7:29; @ opersys/gitgeist-poc: A git-based social network proof of concept uses a node.js server for following and comments. Also clunky, but then it's a POC @ France enters the Matrix [LWN.net] Home | Matrix.org, Liberate your communication | Riot : Found some heart problems in the echocardiogram. atrial fibrilation. She's now on beta blockers and warfarin, and has been moved to a telemetry room . Eeep. * 15min: put up a couple of short shelves next to the recliner in the bedroom. * posted my last FAWM song for this year. Only got to 5. Maybe next year. 0301Fr * Up 4:48; W=107.4, S=5:20; * call to cancel! 11:20 Nephrology Everett Clinic x S to Kaiser: 2930 Maple St, Everett, WA 98201 * Carleton reunion reg opens; register TODAY because Watson fills up fast Things start with dinner on Thursday 6/20. Have room to Sunday am. * take down C's spotted cat, toenail clipper, phone charger -> all she really needed was a figure-8 cord, but she didn't know what it was called : Longish talk with C's doctor. "atrial fibrillation" does not sound particularly good. Nor does "increased risk of stroke" They're using Lomotil for the diarrhea; that's great except that it's hard to get and not covered by insurance. coupons available from GoodRx.com She's also on a renal diet. Stage 4 kidney disease. Out of 5. @ Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index - Digiconomist Ethereum Energy Consumption Index (beta) - Digiconomist 0302Sa * up 5:15ish; S=6:52; @ What Facebook and Google Can Learn From America’s First Major News Hoax--Atlantic : T' here in the morning : V will visit C * leave no later than 7:30am x take down N's mail * 9:30am j's bar mitzvah 9:30 AM Saturday, March 2, 2019 -> awesome & Brought N up to speed on C * Dinner at Yu Shan
[Crossposted from mdlbear.dreamwidth.org, where it has
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