my time in TBay

Wow, it's been a long two weeks. I'm glad I went though. I learned all kinds of things about arthritis and my treatment. The following post will be my journal while in the hospital. It may take me a day or two to get it all entered.


Day 1 - January 2nd

We arrived at the hospital at 9 and I checked in. I share my room with a little Finnish lady who had a hip replacement. She doesn't speak much english but seems relatively friendly. The nurses came and asked me a bazillion questions about my check in. Then Terence came at 12 and we had lunch in the cafeteria. I did my initial assessment with Joanne and Noel? (I think that was her name) and started some exercises with Joanne. She wants me to work on my shoulder to help increase mobility. After my assessment, I rested and read my book until supper (roast beef and potatoes) and then went to safeway. I called Terence at 8 and we chatted for a bit. He made it home safe, no animals on the road :)

The showers here are ok, I think I'll shower at night when it's not busy. The only odd thing that happened was the tv for the empy bed beside me kept turning on randomly by itself =O Made me kind of creeped out.


Day 2 - January 3rd

POOL! Yay for pool :) It's bathtub warm and soooo good. My instructor Nancy seemed kind of standoffish at first but she warmed up after a little bit. The assessment for my lower body was fun lol round and round the mulberry bush hehehe. They put out these little pylons in the hallway and made me walk around them for 6 minutes. I did like 15 laps by the time I was done. Lunch kind of sucked, cabbage rolls and mushroom soup, but I ate some extra granola crunchies to top it off. I really like the nutrition class. It was very informative and Julie was very friendly. Joanne jave me a booklet with some good exercises for helping my shoulder and some for every day to help keep my range of motion and keep me fit. Nice light stuff to do while at home. Noel also gave me a little block of wood to squeeze to help strengthen my grip as it's below functionality level. I will make it a point to work hard on this lots as it has been a point of annoyance for me. They will do another assessment at the end and hopefully I can make it a little better by then.

Supper kicked ass today. Chicken! mmmmm tasty chicken :P Dessert was no hell though, pineapple cake, uck for pineapples. I met a nice man named Wayne Hodges. He has a big barn kitty just like Grizzy that is waiting for him at home. He's for a car accident that took his arm and broke his leg. I am glad that all my people are whole and safe and sound. We had a good talk about solar panels and being off the grid. Turns out he knew Charlie when he used to drive truck 30 years ago and he might have worked with Gerald about 10 years ago. I hope I get to meet his kitty some day, he sounds like a nice kitty.

Terence is doing pretty good, he merited today and is doing some assaults. Carmel is doing ok, being a chatty little kitten. He says Misty might have a cold, she was coughing earlier. I told him to make sure he keeps her in and only lets her out to pee and stuff real quick. He said he's watch her close. I'm kinda tired today. They ran me pretty hard during my assessment and exercises heh. The pool was good and I'm looking forward to tomorrow again. I'll read for a bit and then probably go to bed early. Wayne came to show me his pictures of his buddies. His big boy looks just like Grizzy! Made me miss my buddies even more ::sniff sniff::


Day 3 - January 4th

My god I love the pool! I have to find a way to either put in a hot tub or convince the town to add a heated pool lol. After pool I had a chat with Jane the social worker. Suprise suprise she made me cry... We got talking about Mom and Dad and family and self image issues. I'll have to really work on some of the issues I have there but we all know how good I am at self expression HA. We did some hot wax treatment and ultrasound on my hands today mmm the hot wax felt good :) I also talked to Noel about some of the tools for my hands. She gave me some good ideas on where to get some of them. I got some good hand exercies from Nancy and we talked about our buddies and cars and all kinds of stuff. Joanne did some more tests on my shoulder and is going to find me some movements to help "floss my nerves" hehehe. Nancy gets to go to Vegas and Arizona next week (lucky girl) and she's all excited about it :) I remember how exciting Indianapolis was for me.

My lecture about Coping with change and loss was hard, but good. I learned some things about myself and where I am with my disease. I also learned that it's ok to be mad but to make sure I'm mad at the arthritis and not at me. It's not my fault, it's no one's fault, it's just crappy ass life's fault. It's ok to grieve for things but to try to understand and move past and over the grief. But there's still lots there that I need to deal with. Tai Chi was lots of fun. I really think its like swimming, very fluid, very relaxing. I'd like to learn lots more about it. My nurse today kind of sucks but I guess you can't win em all. Kind of a crappy day to get a crappy nurse though :( Hopefully tomorrow is a better day, I get to spend the day out and about. I'm going to take the but down town and to the mall. It should be a good day :) Terence is doing KS99 right now. Pray for the BT to drop!

And it dropped!!! Only one more piece to go! Now if he could get the egg-egg to drop. He's having fun watching Silent Hill right now on DVD. He says he needs it in Bluray so it's that much more splattery lol.


Day 4 - January 5th

I woke up at 6 am today, guess that's what I get for going to bed at 10. Doing my exercises and #5 on the hand chart makes my middle finger tight but that could be from my wrist though. I finished Road of the Patriarch. Poor Artemis... :( I hope he finds some happiness in Calimport. He's so sad and angry all the time :( My exercises are done, time to shower and head to town! I looked at all kinds of fun things today, cameras, fish tanks and plants. I talked to the people at Petsmart about my paludarium. They said a $40 filtration system with some pvc piping would do the trick for my waterfall and circulation. They sell live plants there too!

I also checked out some Tai Chi stuff at Chapters and picked up a video. New shoes, a tea mug, a puzzle book and a plant for my room rounded out the day nicely. I met a crazy (or at least my table did lol) at lunch today. I was eating my burger when this old guy comes over and starts gibbering away at me in some foreign language. I glance up and he's not really looking at me. He's staring at the vacant seat across from me >.> So I watch him for a minute or two and yup he's talking to my table??? Needless to say, I picked up my tray and slinked away to another table. Mr. Crazy just stood there jabbering away at my table heh. The bus rides were ok. Walking from Chapters to CTC was dumb though. I'm tired now and a little sore. Gonna get some drugs from my nurse to help it. Yay for drugs! lol.

Terence got his monk pants today. 5 for 5 lucky guy! He also got three pieces of elshimo marble o.O TH4 ftw! I played cards with Wayne, his daughter and one other patient. Wayne's daughter and I kicked butt! She's gonna bring his kitty in to visit some time next week. I hope I get to see him.


Day 5 - Jan 6th

I hardly slept last night ;( I got a new room mate named Carol. She's not doing so good after her back surgery and kept us up most of the night so I may nap today. Pancakes for breakfast! So tasty with yummy sausages. I played some cards with Wayne again this afternoon until some cranky old man came in. I really hate being around them kind of people. They just never stop whining about stuff. I went and checked out some of the stuff on kitchenstock.com. The cutting board looks interesting but I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for. I'll have to poke around online a bit more.

Kailee's coming to visit me on Tuesday :) Stewart has to go to court to testify about some crap from a few years ago. I just hope nothing happens while he's here. He's got so much history here. Mom had a look at the tanks on the CKDR site. She says offer him $75 and see. I don't know if he'd take it though and I don't want to sound cheap but I can't see it being worth much. I really liked the archer fish idea the petsmart lady had. Hehehe little spitting fishies lol. Mom says I'll need to get a suckerfish to deal with the algae. I like the suckerfishes so that's fine.