Millie's terrible day thread. You can post any and of your disappoints for the day, week, month, year, or your life.

[Djmac1031]

So I found myself with several days of personal time I needed to take before the end of the year, and so scheduled the past week off from work.

The Thursday before my scheduled week, I came down with a stomach bug that made me so ill I had to call out that Friday as well. But hey, okay at least I had plenty of time that week to recuperate and get better.

I'm recovered from the stomach issues but now I'm feeling a cold or sinus infection coming on.

And I'm supposed to go back to work Monday.

I suppose in a way the timing was fortunate; if I had to get sick I was gonna be taking the time off anyway.

And it's not like I had a vacation getaway planned. But I did wanna get more done around the house than I have this week because I've spent most of my time off sick in bed.

So yeah. Been a rough week and just when I was feeling better I caught something else.

 

[MillieDynamite]

@Djmac1031 I'm so sorry for you! Truly a week of terrible. Hope it doesn't go on longer.

So I found myself with several days of personal time I needed to take before the end of the year, and so scheduled the past week off from work.

The Thursday before my scheduled week, I came down with a stomach bug that made me so ill I had to call out that Friday as well. But hey, okay at least I had plenty of time that week to recuperate and get better.

I'm recovered from the stomach issues but now I'm feeling a cold or sinus infection coming on.

And I'm supposed to go back to work Monday.

I suppose in a way the timing was fortunate; if I had to get sick I was gonna be taking the time off anyway.

And it's not like I had a vacation getaway planned. But I did wanna get more done around the house than I have this week because I've spent most of my time off sick in bed.

So yeah. Been a rough week and just when I was feeling better I caught something else.

 

[Djmac1031]

@Djmac1031 I'm so sorry for you! Truly a week of terrible. Hope it doesn't go on longer.

Thanks. me too.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

If I ever have an un-terrible week, I'll let you know.

Well into the thousands so far without.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Moved my folks into an assisted living center today and they are in separate wings. Dad's in memory care. I feel like total crap.

 

[Djmac1031]

Moved my folks into an assisted living center today and they are in separate wings. Dad's in memory care. I feel like total crap.

That's gotta be rough. Im sorry to hear you're dealing with this.

 

[iwatchus]

Moved my folks into an assisted living center today and they are in separate wings. Dad's in memory care. I feel like total crap.

I'm sure it was the right thing to do. I say this as my wife and I are evaluating situations to potentially move ourselves into that have easy slides into assisted living or memory care as needed. We don't want to have to make our son make that call.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

As that time approaches, assisted LIVING will not be what I'll be looking for.

 

[MrPixel]

My wife and I are bound and determined not to end-up in an assisted-living warehouse. I've mentioned before we are (trying to) build a modest home specifically with aging-in-place top of the list, including a full-time caretaker's apartment. We may not be fully ambulatory (me) or cogent (her) in ten years, but dammitall, we aren't going to live out our lives the way some of our older peers seem to be heading for.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

There comes a point where it's barely more than existing, not even close to living.

We need more appropriate options.

 

[Rob_Royale]

top of the list, including a full-time caretaker's apartment

The cost of this is prohibitedly expensive and my parents just didn't plan for it and my sister and I are of the blue collar sort.

 

[Comshaw]

Bad day? How about a bad fucking year. It started out Okay. But on May 5th my wife was visiting her mom at the memory care facility. My wife got her foot tangled up in a leg of mom's bed and fell. When she did, her face struck the corner of mom's nightstand and her left knee hit the frame of the bed and floor hard.

She took an ambulance ride to the ER and after a day in the hospital they sent her home with a referral to the Wound Care Clinic. The hematoma on her knee was big. It covered most of her knee. We set up appointments with the wound clinic for twice a week. The injury was leaking blood and fluid, so it fell to me to change the bandage on those days we didn't visit the clinic.

After a couple of weeks, the skin covering the wound sloughed off and the wound opened fully. The clinic measured it at every visit. That first measurement was 150 mm x 110 mm, or about 4"x6". I thought that was the worse. Nope. A week later they began with the debridement, removing dead tissue and coagulated blood to allow for new tissue to grow. In the process they cleaned out several tunnels. Two were 4 centimeters deep. Those were packed with a special cloth tape soaked in some kind of antibiotic solution. The bandages and the tape filling the tunnels needed to be changed daily. My wife was convinced she was going to lose her leg. I kept telling her it would be okay, but I was as worried as she was that she would lose it.

To be brief, it was a 5-month process using a wonderful machine called a wound vac, weekly visits to the clinic for debridement and stuffing high-protein drinks and energy bars down her to get her body to heal. By mid-September the wound had closed completely. When she walked out of the clinic that day we figured the rest of the year had to be good. Uh-hu.

She had been having these weird passing-out episodes. One in late 2024 was so bad the paramedics were preparing her for transport to a specialty clinic, thinking she had a stroke. Unfortunately, the life flight helicopter was in use, so she went to our local hospital. By the time she arrived at the hospital, she was almost back to normal. They did all kinds of tests on her, EKG, EEG, a CAT scan and found nothing.

She didn't have another episode until the beginning of October. This time the cardiologist caught something abnormal on her EKG. It wasn't much but something he thought wasn't right. He suggested an implanted monitor chip to keep track of her heart in real time. He put it in and said it would send a signal to her phone, which would be relayed to the computer at their clinic.

Everything seemed good until the 26th of that month, then I got hit with a case of diarrhea. I've had it happen before. Some bad food or a bug from who knows where. Big deal. Suffer with it until it goes away. But by the next weekend it was still with me. Trips to the toilet were about two an hour, day and night. Sunday the 2nd of November, my wife was lying in bed and had another of those episodes.

It didn't last long, a minute or two before she came out of it. We were both happy that the doctor had insisted on the implant because we figured it should have caught what was happening. The next morning she called their office and they immediately told her she had to go to an ER at a specialty heart clinic (an hour and a half drive). I knew I'd never make it because of what had hold of me, so my daughter volunteered to drive her there.

When she arrived, they did some tests and had the readings from her monitor sent to them. Within an hour, she was admitted to the hospital and scheduled for the implantation of a pacemaker/defib unit. It seems that the monitor had recorded her heart had stopped for over a minute on that Sunday. I was both angry and guilty because I hadn't gone with her. But I also knew I couldn't have done it because of the thing that had hold of me. They did the implant and kept her for two days before she was send home. Any one of the episodes she had could have killed her. We were luckly, very, very lucky.

The bug that had hold of me didn't want to let go. I hadn't eaten anything in days. I was drinking liquids, sports drinks and such trying to keep my electrolytes up, but it was coming out the wrong way. My sister's a nurse and she began to get concerned. On the 10th, she came and took my blood pressure. I was so dehydrated it was 89/42. My wife couldn't drive so my sister took me to the ER. They stuck me in the hospital and pumped liquid into me via an IV, four liters worth. They did some tests and couldn't find anything that would account for the bug. They sent me home with the admonition to stay on a liquid diet and drink plenty of sports drinks to keep my electrolytes up, like I hadn't been doing that for the last two weeks.

Everything stayed pretty much like it had been. The damn bug that had hold of me wouldn't let up. By the time the 17th rolled around I was feeling pretty damned ragged. My sister came by to see how I was doing. My heart rate was up to over 100 bpm and my blood pressure down again to 90/53. My wife was able to drive by then so she took me to the ER. After a bunch of tests (again) they stuck me back in the hospital because my potassium and magnesium levels were critically low.

They began pumping potassium and saline into me (damn but potassium burns going in!) and a wide-spectrum antibiotic as well as an antifungal medicine. At one time they had five bags hanging off my IV stand pumping stuff into me. They took blood tests and stool samples. The second day the attending doctor came in to let me know what they had found...nothing. He said it was probably a virus and they couldn't do anything about it if it was.

So away home I went, again. The bathroom visits were still steady at two or so an hour. I was hoping it would be done by Thanksgiving. Not that I figured I'd be eating a lot, but I just wanted to be with the family without having to be running off to the bathroom the entire evening. On the 22nd. The trips to the can began to slow down and by the time Thanksgiving rolled around those trips were down to only three or four a day. From December 1st to today, things have slowly gotten back to semi-normal.

I lost 30 lbs from the 26th of October to today. As an old fatman, I don't mind losing the weight, but I wouldn't recommend anyone do it the way I did.

So yeah, it's not been a good year. The one good thing that came out of it was discovering the problem with my wife's heart and getting the fix in before it quit on her. In that respect it wasn't so bad year after all.


Comshaw