Day +14 Doctor Free Day

Monday July 30, 2012
Quail Run RV Resort Site 15
Marriott Residence Inn Room 118

 

I’m up at 6am but it's not light enough to go running so I post the blog comments that came in after I turned off my laptop last night.  I continue to be amazed at the wonderful comments from such caring people.  I put on my running clothes and when the buffet opens at 6:30, I go out and get a breakfast for David in case he wants to eat before I return. 

The run turns out to be a comedy of errors.  First the Garmin GPS sports watch I use to tell me how far I’ve run, total amount of time, heart rate and calories burned, can’t figure out where I am and find the satellites.  This is my fault because I turned it on initially in the room and it looked and looked and finally asked me if I were indoors.  I say yes, and it appears to be ready.  So off I go.  I run up to Fletcher Avenue and I can see as I’m going in that direction that the cars are stopped at the light but I can’t get there before it turns back to green.  So I run up, push the cross button and then run around in circles and back and forth across the side street crossing waiting for the light to change.  I’ll bet the folks in the left hand turn lane watching me were having some great conversations.  

FINALLY the traffic stops and I run across Fletcher to the park gate and find it locked.  It’s 6:55 by now so I run around and around and around the small entry way until 7am.  By now I’ve been running for 10 minutes but haven’t gone anywhere.

At 7:00 I get inside the park and decide to move my watch back to the data fields showing not the time of day but the amount of time I’ve run, my current heart rate, how far I’ve gone and how many calories I’ve burned.  BUT both calories and miles are at zero still although I’ve now been running for 13 minutes.  The watch has not picked up the satellites evidently.  So I shut it off, turn it back on and wait again for it to try to find them. 

I didn’t want to go into the bedroom this morning for fear of waking David so I need to stop and use the restroom in the park.  The watch STILL isn’t finished hunting for the satellites.  So with a bit of trepidation, I take the watch off and leave it outside to do its thing while I go inside to do mine.  I don’t want to confuse it all over again by taking it indoors.   My ears are on hyper alert for footsteps.  I’m not in any humor for a disappearing watch.

When I return the watch has managed to find where we are and I reset it although what good will it do me now since I’ve already run more than a mile?   But I run around the park which is a great place to run in the morning since there are few if any people here AND I am very lucky because usually the park does not open until 8am but this week there is a children’s camp and it is opening at 7am.   8:00 in Tampa Florida is too late in the day to be running IMO.   I learn just how really lucky I am on my way back when I see how much traffic I would be running with if I couldn’t run in the park at 7am.

I’m not quite sure where I am but at about 7:45 I start back toward the gate and the very same thing happens with the light.  It’s almost funny.  I’m too far away to sprint to the road and cross it but I have to run around and around waiting for the light to change again.  There is a lot of traffic on Fletcher with the poor working folks going to spend their days mostly doing someone else’s bidding.   I wonder again at how we got ourselves into this set up where you spend the best years of your life spending the majority of your days away from your family while hopefully doing something you don’t mind too much.  But usually not doing something that is just what you would be doing even if you didn’t have to.

Running along Telecom Parkway, which is actually a lovely road,  is an eye opener for someone who never runs in town.  So many cars going to work, so much auto exhaust actually makes me feel slightly nauseas and I’m glad to get back to the hotel.   I make myself a breakfast plate and return to the room.  I do my stretching and exercises although I’ve left the weights in Winnona.  Not sure how much good they are doing my flabby arms.  While we are stuck in Lodi, I should probably hire a trainer at a gym to map out a new exercise regime for me since my arms aren’t paying much attention to what I’m doing now.

David is up and dressed, has taken his temperature, his morning medications and has eaten his breakfast by the time I return.  He says he slept well last night.  No back pain, slept in 90 minute intervals and went right back to sleep when he awoke.  If he could get the intervals increased, he might get back to fairly normal sleeping.  But he seems much cheerier as a result of at least a better night’s sleep.  I wore ear plugs last night and put taped pieces of cardboard over all the electronic lights everywhere in the room to make it DARK so I slept pretty well too. 

I go out and get him a cup of coffee and he drinks it while eating the chocolate muffin I got him for breakfast.  He’s writing again in his record book.  He has two books, one for his numbers and lists and one for his feelings, more like a journal.  The latter gets little use.  I think in future years he may be sorry since how he was feeling about what he was going through may be much more interesting to him then than the statistics and numbers at that point.

He says he’ll take a nap now and then we’ll go for a walk.  So I begin working on the blog with no pictures except this one of Nap #1 for today.  He naps until after 10:00. 

By the time he gets ready to go it’s 10:30.  Pretty late in the morning to go for a walk in the heat. 

Before we go I suggest he have a little snack – multiple small meals – and he enjoys one of Catherine’s Cookies. (See I did save some for him) This is from the batch she and Jo Beth left on my doorstep when they came to visit Quail Run.  She put raisins in this batch because we like them even though she doesn’t usually include them.  I think she should start her own Label  Catherine’s Custom Cookies.    Looks great doesn’t it??

We walk over to Lettuce Leaf park.  I’m thinking we’ll add 5 minutes to the 25 minute walk he took yesterday.  So when we get about 15 minutes in, I suggest it’s time to turn back.  But he wants to see Cypress Dome.  Chrome dome meets Cypress dome would be the captain on that picture.  He claims it’s “just a little bit further”.  So since I know it is just a short board walk I go along.  It is a lovely boardwalk that takes you into the swamp where you are surrounded by the black water, the cypress trees and the ferns.  I take some pictures we return on the board walk and I start to head back.  Here is where he really ignores my advice and insists that it’s so lovely and he feels fine.  He claims the visitor’s center is not too far away and he’ll get some water and rest there.  Well the VC is not close by but luckily there is a playground area with water so we stop there, he uses the restroom, has a drink from the fountain without touching it and I get to use the swing set.  There is a hawk nearby calling and I’m trying to find him.  The sky views from the swing are wonderful.

But it isn’t until we start off for the road coming into the park that I spot the hawk high up in a tree calling away.  By the time we get back to the hotel he’s been out for an hour and 20 minutes and it is NOON.   SIGH………….

Thanks to a blog done last year by the famous blogging technical guru Rick Doyle of Rick And Paulette’s RV Travels, I am testing my first slide show.  I haven’t figured out if there is a way to add captions yet or to edit the photos once you’ve put them in the slide show but just managing to get it done shows what I’ve been doing with my 90 degree + afternoon while David watches Team USA Women’s volleyball against Brazil.   THANKS RICK!!!

 

 

Amazingly he doesn’t seem any the worse for the long walk and doesn’t take a nap even after the volley ball is over and so is lunch.  Can’t wait to see what his counts are tomorrow.  He really is feeling so much better.

After the Women’s volleyball on  comes women’s water polo in which he is not so interested.  So he begins composing the latest “Update on David” being sent to his family.  On February 11, he sent out the first one telling family and friends of his shocking diagnosis.   From then on, I did them and have sent out a total of a dozen.  I ask him if he could take this over now.  I’m sure his family would rather hear from him than from me.  The only problem is it takes him hours to do what it took me 15 minutes to do which is one of the reasons I’ve always done them.  I am trying to hold fast in not volunteering to rescue him to save time. 

He gets it finished, I get it posted out to family and friends.  He does slip into a nap around 4:00 but wakes up an hour later in time to see the US Beach Volley Ball team lose to Poland.  That was the game he wanted to see.  Oh Well…..

At about 6:15 we go down to see what Marriott’s hospitality hour consists of.  Cheese, crackers, apples, bananas, brownies and wine.
No one in the kitchen to get him a brownie that wasn’t on display so we come back and I give him garlic hummus and chips as his “appetizer” while I TRY to get water to boil on the Marriott’s count top burner.  After nearly an hour the water still hasn’t boiled, it’s 7:30 and we still haven’t eaten.  I’m pretty irritated as you can imagine and then all of a sudden I see the giant electric skillet I brought from Winnona.  In about 5 minutes it has that water boiling and we’re on our way to spaghetti with mushroom sauce and fresh broccoli for dinner.   Color me UNIMPRESSED with those black smooth topped burner surfaces.

He catches up on the blog starting at Day +10 while we wait for water to boil.  He’s further behind than any of my commenters.  HA!  And it’s really the This IS Your Life David Boyd blog at this point.

Time for another walk after dinner but a short one this time since it is so late.  We go out at sundown and walk until after dark.  When we come back for the first time in WEEKS, David does the dishes and I read to him from The Secret Life of Bees.  Life is slowly returning to a new version of normal that has at least some of the elements of the old one in it.   Let’s just hope there is no set back in the near future.  He has definitely had a lot more energy today.  I wonder how high his counts will show up to be tomorrow morning when we return to the outpatient clinic at SEVEN AM!!