Chilly day

It's a beautiful clear sub-freezing morning. And a whole new week. K has another, hopefully minor, surgery on Wednesday. Jen's husband Bob is home from hospital, and recovering from a critical head injury, so she'll be out all week. I'll have Mandy with me, out in the car, since K is planning to be out most of the day. I'm so glad the dog loves going anywhere with me in the car, and doesn't seem to mind sleeping most of the day out there.

Home at last!

FINALLY got K home from the hospital tonight! What a long, arduous process. She and I started talking in the morning, about when to pick her up. By the time they had done a nurse shift change, measured her glucose, fed her, administered meds, and processed the paperwork, the 3pm estimated discharge time had turned into 6pm. Then by the time we got to Walgreens to pick up her prescription, their pharmacy was closed, so we went a few miles down the road, to the 24 hour pharmacy. By the time we got out of that Walgreens, with the usual and various complications, it was 9pm. SO tired...

All hail the great hospital doctor. Their sliding scale for insulin was going to kill her, if they didn't discharge her soon. Would be nice if they paid attention to mine. They were giving her much more insulin than I felt was appropriate for her measured glucose levels. I told them to subtract 150 from Blood Glucose, and divide the result by 150. So instead they gave her 9 units for a BG of 350. No wonder she kept crashing in the mornings.

Procedure complete

The arteriogram (angiogram) procedure on K's left leg is all done. Dr Morin's goal was to find something he could fix, to improve the circulation, and help her ankle wound to heal. He had me wait in the employee's lounge by the Catheterization Lab during the procedure. He called me in after 20 minutes, to show me the pics on the computer. He said he didn't find much, and showed me that most of the arteries looked healthy and clear. He pointed out one very short narrowed section of artery, really just a "kink", and suggested putting in a stent there. It seemed like the thing to do, so I agreed, and he went back in, and installed a short stent. He showed me the "after" pics as well, and the artery looked much better with the stent in it. Hard to tell how big the stent is, from the picture on the screen, but it looked about an inch or two long He wanted to send her home today, but by the time they got her into dialysis, to clear out the dye from the arteriogram, it was 4pm, and she came out after 8pm, so he decided to keep her overnight, with the plan to discharge her tomorrow.

Happy dog

Mandy's a happy dog. She got to drive to work with me today. She gets to sleep under the warm blankets in her bed in the back seat of my car, in the nice cool shady covered garage at work. Then she got to go for a chilly 43° walk at lunch time.

Low morning BG

Stopped by Swedish to give K some strawberries, and found her complaining of low blood glucose symptoms. I remembered that I was concerned about that last night, as they gave her more insulin than I would have, but then I forgot. Got the nurse to measure ("we will soon, after shift change") NOW, and found it to be 45, godawful low, especially for being in hospital. Fed her the strawberries, while they looked for apple juice. Fifteen minutes later it was 40, but that's a normal delayed reading. We took bets on what the reading would be after 30 minutes, and K won, as it was 80, heading back up faster than I predicted.

Today is supposed to be the "safe measures" day... I interpret that as "can you just try to keep her alive, until she can start the procedure tomorrow with a normal blood glucose" day. Fail.

Keeping her until Friday

Katherine at the Cath Lab just called to let me know, they will be keeping K in the hospital until Friday. The dialysis isn't done yet, and there's no time left to do the procedure today. There are no open slots tomorrow, so they will keep her inpatient at Swedish, and apply "safe measures" to ensure that she is ready for the procedure on Friday. It will probably be around 11am, but no guarantee of the time. Heavy sigh...

Procedure deferred

They deferred the arteriogram procedure scheduled for this morning, until after they can dialyze her later today, to get her creatinine level down. It's hard to imagine them getting the dialysis, and then the procedure done, before it's too late to discharge her, so I'm guessing that means they'll be keeping her overnight tonight. So now I'm calling around to cancel her regular dialysis appointment. Probably should cancel the morning caregiver, but they haven't committed to keeping her yet, so the schedule is in limbo yet again.

K at Swedish Hospital

K is at Swedish Hospital tonight, in preparation for an arteriogram tomorrow morning. We took her to the Cath Lab for this procedure on Friday, but the doc didn't like her blood glucose, and deferred it. The doc decided he wanted to admit her to the hospital overnight, so they could get her BG under control, for a morning procedure.

Ear maybe better

She saw her ENT Friday. He prescribed antibiotic ear drops. She's taking them in both ears every day for a week or two. I think the infection in her right ear is improving, but not positive about that.

Home from ER

I brought K came home early (2am) this morning -- an unusually short turnaround for a hospital visit, for us. The ER doc assumed her ear is infected, and said there's no sign bone infection in the CT scan. She needs to get an appointment with an ENT and be cleared by them, before going back to her daily hyberbaric treatments.

K to Littleton ER

Took K to the ER with intense ear pain and bloody drainage, dizziness and nausea. She's in an ER bed. No big discovery yet. Gave her an anti-vertigo med. Going to get a CT scan to check mastoid bone for infection. — at Littleton Hospital ER.

Right into it!

Oh yeah. This is the time of year, when the sun and the traffic signal are in the same place in my windscreen. Ow.

AppleCare to the rescue

So, the AppleCarePlus coverage paid for itself, this time. And last time. I'm feeling a little better about dropping the cash, after this disturbing trend. — at Apple Store, Aspen Grove.

Her iPhone 5 was working fine, even after it fell in a bowl of water. But then the "stick it in a bag of rice to dry it out" trick produced a phone with little bitty grains of rice jammed in the important openings. The charger cord wouldn't go in after that. Turns out, the contacts in the Lightning connector got wrecked somewhere along the way. The only fix was to replace the phone. I was pretty disappointed that I had to wait 24 hours to get an appointment at "The Genius Bar", but it appears to have been worth it, as we spent $49 to replace the phone under AppleCarePlus, instead of the $300+ it would have been, without it.

First Open House

We had our first open house at our new work location in Centennial... We watched videos of the MSL launch in our Denver launch support center, ran across a few of my coworkers, toured our development lab, chatted about the big pictures in my office, of our old facility in San Diego. We missed out on the free pizza, but had free burritos and red velvet cupcakes instead. Mandy waited for us in the car, sleeping while curled up in her nice warm bed in the back of my car, in the cool shady parking garage. She's gotten to be an old hand at that. Not a bad outing. My visitors seemed to enjoy it. — at United Launch Alliance Corporate Headquarters.

Planets are aligned

What looks like it could be the moon, is really Saturn and Venus, really well aligned tonight!

Huge unexpected bill

Life Care of Aurora, the nursing facility K was in last year, who led us very strongly to believe all her expenses would be covered by Medicare, has billed us $10,000. I am angry beyond words. This feels so much like fraud. But I have no idea who to complain to, or who could help us fight this.

Trader Joe's is coming!

I think I just figured out where they're putting our first Trader Joe's. Right next to my favorite breakfast place. I can already visualize what my favorite morning's going to look like! — at the original pancake house.

If it's not one thing...

Yeah, it's another... while I was flossing my teeth tonight, I flipped the crown off of a tooth, right out of my mouth, and onto the kitchen floor. I'm thinking, all the good luck that's been carrying me all my life, is not being as loyal as I have come to expect. I left a message at my new dentist's office, since my old dentist decided to retire last month. My tongue is keeping itself busy, tearing itself up on the remaining part of the tooth.

On the lighter side...

And, on a lighter note... Our Sonos system is working again, yay! I finally figured out that the AC power adapter had gotten fried by a lightning strike several weeks ago. The replacement power adapter arrived in the mail today. As we're getting ready for bed, we've got the soundtrack from Mama Mia! Playing. Take a chance on me... Take a chance, take a chance!

K back home again

I picked K up from Sky Ridge hospital tonight. We're back home. Mandy's a happy dog, to have her pack all together again. Next on the agenda: K needs to have her fistula repaired at the Renal Access Center tomorrow, so she can be dialyzed on Friday.

Apps are updating

The app updates are coming fast and furious on my iPhone, now that IOS 7 hit the release channels at 11am MT this morning. I accepted 30 updates an hour ago, and I just noticed there are 7 more queued up already.

Starting dialysis

I checked with the hospital, and K's starting dialysis, as I'm heading into work for a half day. The plan is now definite, to discharge her after dialysis is complete this afternoon.

No rest for the weary

Unfortunately, I had a lot of interruptions, as people were texting me and posting on Facebook, asking how K was doing, so my phone kept beeping. And, the morning caregiver, who we thought "someone" had canceled, showed up at 7am, with no idea of what had been happening. Then our regular 10am dog/house helper showed up an hour early. So by noon, I had gotten maybe an hour of sleep, and headed back into work.

AV041 Launched!

We launched AV-041, carrying the AEHF-3 payload, early this morning. By the time I got home, it was just about time to be heading back into work, but of course my plan was to take the morning off, and get some sleep.

Back at work

I'm back at work, for the AV-041 launch countdown. I took the mid-day off for a short nap to balance my work and sleep hours. K got dialysis 2-6 today. I stopped by to drop off some of her rarer meds, that the hospital pharmacy doesn't carry, on my way back in. They say they may discharge her Wednesday. The nurse also casually mentioned, that she does indeed have at least one rib fracture on the right side, where she's hurting so much.

Admitted to Sky Ridge

K was admitted to Sky Ridge hospital tonight. Her caregiver took her to the ER, where they gave her an initial "triage" evaluation fairly quickly, but then she waited an hour to be seen. I got there while they were waiting. They thought they would be admitting her, after hearing the abridged story, of the severe pain on the right side, the refusal of dialysis due to the clogged fistula, the refusal to repair it, due to the high potassium. But first they setup IV access, took and X-Ray picture and blood samples, and made her wait awhile longer. They said the X-Ray images did not show any broken ribs on the right side, which got us worrying about what was causing the pain, maybe something more serious internally. When the labs came back, they saw that yes, potassium really was very high, and decided to admit her to hospital. She stayed awhile longer in ER, waiting on a room. They gave her a "cocktail" injection to lower potassium, with a large dose of insulin (yikes!), sodium bicarbonate, calcium, and, oh yeah, a bunch of dextrose to balance the insulin. I warned about the insulin, and her brittle blood glucose. On the way to ICU, they detoured with a stop in surgery, to insert a catheter in her neck, which would enable them to give her dialysis. That took about 40 minutes. The Doc said the surgery went well, and she'd be in ICU soon. Then a surgical nurse said she was in ICU, but we couldn't visit until 8pm, because the nurses were changing shift, and visitors weren't allowed. Argh! Finally we were able to visit, after she was settled into her ICU room. They started a 2-hr dialysis, and planned on another session on Tuesday. I headed home after 9pm, wondering if the dog had survived her long 6hr stay at home alone, but she was fine, sleeping in K's closet. She sleepily rolled on her back for a belly rub, as soon as she saw me.

K to Sky Ridge ER

K will be heading to ER at Sky Ridge Medical Center later today. She has several things not going right. Multiple problems are falling on top of each other, complicating things mightily. Severe pain in her right side, combined with nausea and vomiting, are the latest to join the fray. The Dialysis Center turned her away on Friday, with a clogged fistula and thick black blood. They warned her that her potassium was already high, which can quickly become fatal, and to be very careful over the weekend, with what she ate. They were going to schedule an appointment at the Renal Access Center for today, to get her fistula repaired. Since she'll be enroute to ER, she'll miss her hyperbaric oxygen treatment, which is to try to get her foot wounds healing, so that's a concern. She'll also not be able to get her fistula treated at the Renal Access Center, if she's in ER, so there's talk of catheterization to enable dialysis, and she's very unhappy about that prospect. Her caregiver schedule is falling apart, as people are drawn away by other obligations.

Sore rib?

K is very sore under her right arm. It acts a lot like a bruised or broken rib, but there's nothing on the surface to show for it.

Looking forward to IOS 7

I'm looking forward to using the new iPhone Operating System, IOS version 7. From the keynote address, and the New Features page on the Apple website, it sounds like it has some really nice new features, that will make the phone even more simple and fun to use. I don't see anything earth-shattering, but it looks like a solid step up. In summary:

A new way to control the most-accessed settings -- Control Center -- that will be easily accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the phone. It will have a built-in flashlight, so I can delete the three flashlight apps I've been waffling between, on my phone. Yay.

A new easier to read Notification Center, with new features that sound very handy.

Some really good improvements to the way they do multitasking, that make it smarter, and will contribute to longer battery life.

A new Square aspect ratio option for the camera. They say square pictures work better for the social networking sites, like Facebook, which I use a lot.

Other new picture-related options, like color temperature and monochrome filters, and a great new way to find the one cool picture in the large list of pictures on the phone.

A new service called AirDrop, that lets you share stuff with nearby friends, if you want to. They poked fun at the Android, which requires you to go around the room, and physically bump the phone of each friend that you want to share with.

A much-improved Safari web browser, which is good news, for those of us who use that thing a large percentage of the time we're using our phone.

A new iTunes Radio feature, that gives access to online streaming music through a new method.

More improvements to the Siri advisor. It sounds better, and it does more things.

New security features to make it easier to recover and restore a lost phone.

New bluetooth features that allow the phone to integrate seamlessly with the bluetooth system in a car. Shoot. *Now I need a new car.*

Here's a link to the Apple "What's New" IOS page...

Fine on Friday the 13th

Good morning! It's Friday the thirteenth! How lucky are we?! It's still raining, but the Littleton flood Warnings are being cancelled, as the various rivers (Plum Creek, South Platte) have crested, and appear to be receding. I'm considering breakfast at our favorite place by the river...