Plodding Along . . .

We keep plodding along.  Not much happening.  Things are mundane.  

Football season has started.  I do not watch pro football anymore unless someone else watches it.  I just do not select it.  I find it very predictable.  College football is exciting, it is unpredictable thus much more entertaining.

LSU is off to a poor start.  The primary quarterback broke his left arm just before the season started and the number two quarterback is in play.  He has done so so.  The offensive line is already beat up after the first game and thus they look kind of lackluster.  I think it is going to be a tough season for the Tigers this year.  Lots of potential but no real winners abound.

It is getting cooler at night indicating fall is approaching.  Days remain hot and Hurricanes abound.  Right now it is Nicholas but it is not gonna bother us up here in North Texas.  We had some cloudy days and a bit of spitting sprinkles but no rain, nothing, nada.  South Texas and South Louisiana are gonna catch it again but mostly rain with some wind, but nothing like Ida.

New Roads that escaped any serious Ida weather will probably get a lot of rain out of Nicholas.  And that will not go down well.  The people are getting tired of it.  False River will probably rise and be slow to fall as the run off will be slow.  The country side is soaked, so the water has move on down to the Gulf of Mexico as there is now where for it to soak up.  That makes all the rivrs, bayous, and sloughs slow to empty.

Soon it will be grinding season and sugar cane will be harvested. Pointe Coupee Parish is now the largest producer of sugar in  the state.  We always did well but were second to the river parishes.  Times have changed much of the river parishes are now chemical plants and industrial development.  Pointe Coupee being up river will probably not have that happen anytime in my life time.  I do expect it will happen but not for the next 20 or so years.

Time keeps rolling on.  Take care. 

Healing . . .

 Judie's pressure wound is healing well.  We are neat the end.  We were told to pack up the vacuum pump and ship back to the owner's.  No butt patches, drape tape or vacuum leaks to contend with anymore.  Iy has been along trial.

Now using a different bandage, with a transfer gauze patch.  The wound has grown more and more closed.  It is now less than a  quarter in size from was one a fist wide gape.  She is more comfortable and perhaps less turning left and right.  She will continue to live on an air pressure bed.

The bed has an air pump and runs through a cycle, four minutes with half the tubes inflated, then four minutes with the other half of the tubes inflated and then four minutes with all the tubes inflated.  It is nothing you can feel but it does the trick to prevent pressure sores from developing.  It took several months for them to develop probably while she was in the rehab hospital.

I believe the surgeon who cleaned them out was a butcher, cut her up something fierce to get all the bad areas out.  I think he did more than he had to do but I am not the surgeon and that is all in the past now.

We still have a couple more visits to the Baylor Scott and White wound care clinic to go.  But we can see the end is in sight now and are pleased we are getting over that.

We seemed to have learned everything the hard way.  Her heart surgery, day surgery, was far more severe than we thought it would be.  She is still sore in spots on where the worked on her.  But the clip is installed on her heart and after two bouts with A-Fib, the A-Fib has all but disappeared.  And the risk of a stroke is greatly reduced to almost nothing now.  In reality it was a mile stone and we are now past it.  He Cardiologist says one more visit three months from now and then probably not again for a year.  Sounds great to me.

And it is a little cooler today, a rain storm past over us and we had a light shower.  It is all dry already and soon the temperature will soar again.  This time the humidity will be off the scale so it will not be comfortable for the rest of the day.  We of course will be just fine in the air conditioned house.

Now we need to hear from Generac that they have our back up generator and will install it.  Ida caused a further delay as they sent all the generators to Louisiana.  That was kind of disappointing with the further delay but very understandable.  The Generac guy started to him and haw, and I said I paid for this thing back in April and I was getting tired of waiting.  If not installed by October I will consider cancelling the order.  They keep advertising their products but neglect to tell you they can not deliver them.  A sorry out fit.

And the beat goes on . . .

Judie's Doctor Day . . .

 We are back seeing doctors again.  Today we had two appointments yesterday, one in the AM and one in the PM.  The first one was with the Cardiothoracic Surgeon.  The second with was with Electro-Cardiologist.

We had to drop of an Oxygen test kit at the lung doctors office first.  So we charged over to his office to drop of the kit.  We will hear later about what ever the test results are.

In the case of the surgeon, we learned at his office that she had a telephone appointment with the doctor that took care of the office visit.  So we turned around and loaded up the van.  We decided to go eat breakfast at the "Old Pancake House" which as modest restaurant chain located in Fort Worth.  This particular establishment was also often visited by the pianist Van Cliburn.  He has since past away but it was one of his favorite spots.

The second visit with the Cardiologist was successful.  He had been treating her for A-Fib and since we stopped a counter active drug, the A-Fib has also stopped.  The contra active data came from Express Scripts, the military Pharmacy.  They would not fill either prescription until the doctors or someone took action.  We elected to stop the other drug and maintain the Pacerone which treats A-Fib,  As said, since then she has had no A-Fib attacks and her pulse rate is normal again.

We saw a spine specialist last week and he did an electro conduction test on her right hand.  He confirmed she has a severe case of Corporal Tunnel syndrome.  He said perhaps she could be treated by a shot to reduce the inflammation.  Judie is shy of getting surgery for anything now days.  He also said she had had a neck injury some time in the distant past.  We could not recall such an event but accepted his opinion.  There was nothing that could be done for the neck injury.

We also saw last week her Pulmonologist, the lung doctor, in Weatherford.  He was the one that ordered the Oxygen test.  She had to where a device that measured her Oxygen levels through the night while she was on Oxygen at a 2 liters per hour rate of distribution.  We have an Oxygen concentrator, a bit blue device on wheels that literally filters Oxygen right out of the air.  They have to change the filter periodically, I think it can send a signal out indicating when it needs to change the filter.

The lung doctor put her back on a breathing treatment twice a day use her breathing mask.  The treatment takes about 7 or 8 minutes.  I do not know nor notice any relative improvement but neither do I note any degradation.  Sometimes I think that doctor tries different things here and there on her with little or no effect.  He had her on a sleep Apnea machine for a while and that was a paid in the butt.  She eventually just stopped using that machine, it is in the closet somewhere.  She has yet another machine that literally thumps her chest, we call it the thumper.  She did that for a year or so with no change in anything either.

So we are finding ourselves back into a more regular routine.  It is a job to prepare her to go out and I know it is taxing on her meager reserves, but it is getting done.  We have yet to do the hand doctor again and Urologist yet.  But that is coming up soon.

The beat goes on . . .