Archives for 2019

Sorry to say I woke up at 3:15 a.m. to the sound of a generator outside my window, I ended up having to put earplugs in just to get back to sleep. Grrrr! I try to be patient with people, but really, I don’t understand why someone has to run a generator all night long! I didn’t see any medical reason for it, so I don’t know what the purpose was, but honestly, it really is inconsiderate unless there’s a need to run medical equipment all night. It’s one reason we decided again peritoneal dialysis, because it required a machine to run all night, and we didn’t want to do that to our fellow campers. Oh, well! Hubby decided he wanted to skip dialysis today, he hadn’t gained much weight even though he’d been drinking a bit more due to the heat, but I imagine he’s sweating some of it out anyway. We had to take a trip into the nearest big town, Morehead, to get some propane. It’s been a good week of experimenting, between running the generator for dialysis as well as for air conditioning, and we’ve learned that we use slightly more than a gallon an hour of propane. Thanks goodness we have four tanks! One 20 pound tank takes about 4.7 gallons, and lasts just about 4 hours. We took two tanks into town to fill up at the Tractor Supply, got a few horse feed supplies as well as some groceries before heading back for an afternoon of rest and relaxation. Since we’re not dialyzing today, we won’t need to use too much propane except to cool off the trailer at the end of the day, and we should have plenty for tomorrow. Our next stop has electricity, so we won’t have to worry about it too much there, thank goodness! But these are the things we needed to learn about our new trailer, just how much fuel a propane generator uses is just one of those things! Now we know! We stayed outside as the temps cooled down, only coming in after 9:00. A short evening, heading to bed early, happy to say our neighbors with the generator moved out this afternoon while we were in town, and, in fact, we’re the only one left in camp, so we should have a nice quiet night tonight! Yeah!

We were surprised when no other campers showed up yesterday, thinking if anyone was getting Independence Day off they’s be heading out here yesterday, so we were half-convinced we’d have the place entirely to ourselves for the rest of the week, but alas, it was not to be so. Several trailers showed up today, parking a few slots out on either side of us, one for one night and the other for an unknown amount of time. One fellow gave me a couple of pesticide-infused bovine ear tags that he said was good for horses, too, and suggested I zip-tie them to my horses’ halters. I have to admit, the flies here are pretty bad, I killed several huge green-headed horse flies on Apollo this morning. I did as he suggested, and it seemed to work pretty well, though of course, I had put fly spray on them as well, so it’s hard to say which worked better, or if it was the combination of them both. In any event, we had a fairly quiet morning, then it came time for dialysis, and we had a lot of trouble today. I had trouble getting the needles in, probably because when they declotted it yesterday it shifted a little, so it took me a while to get that right. Then throughout the session, we kept getting errors, then Hubby started getting really dizzy and light-headed, and we had trouble getting his blood pressure to register on any of the monitors we had, and he even started going blind at one point, which we know is a sign of seriously low blood pressure. I gave him saline several times, but finally, we just decided to stop the session, he just couldn’t take it any more. Once he was off, he finally started feeling better, but not much. We managed to get him out to his chair in the screen room, and once he was able to get his feet higher he started to recover. Scary moment, that one! I think it may be partly due to the heat (it’s in the 90’s), but we’ve been running the a/c off the generator and that’s been doing okay. Once outside, I directed a fan directly on him and he improved, thank goodness. Too darn hot! That’s the one main problem at this campground, we’re surrounded by a forest, but there’s not a single bit of shade in the campground. I’ve found that to be the case in most Kentucky public campgrounds, they just come in and bulldoze everything, not leaving any shade for horse or human. Very poor thinking on the powers-that-be in this state. This will undoubtedly be a great campground in spring or fall, but summer is just incredibly hot when there’s not a lick of shade. My outdoor thermometer has been reading nearly 100 degrees every day, even though the forecast has only been calling for upper 80’s. What a difference some shade would make! Anyway, we finally settled down for a short evening, as it’s already later than usual with all the problems we had today, ready for bed!

Up bright and early after a so-so night sleep, no breakfast since Hubby’s procedure wouldn’t allow him to eat, and I couldn’t very well eat without him. Took care of the horses, feeding and cleaning, making sure the fence was working since I thought it safer for them to stay in the fence area rather than tie them to the highline where they seem to be getting in the habit of getting tangled up together. Flash still hasn’t quite figure it out yet, though I’m sure he will over time. We left around nine, stopped for fuel before getting on the freeway and driving the 60+ miles to the hospital arriving about 15 minutes in advance. Naturally we took Lola with us, and I got her dressed up in her Therapy Dog vest and she instigated smiles everywhere she went. We got Hubby checked in and prepped, then waited for quite some before he was finally taken back for the procedure. Lola and I sent to the resident Starbucks and had a nice salad, then waited for some more time for Hubby to be finished. They had to do a lot this time, evidently, whereas last time they just did a couple of balloons to expand his veins and arteries. This time they actually put a stint in in additional to the angioplasty, so it took a bit longer. Thankfully, they fed him while he was in recovery, so that saved us some time when we left. We finally headed out after 6:00, stopped at Tractor Supply to fill up the propane tanks (we ended up using about a tank and a half for nearly a full day of air-conditioning), a quick stop at Wendys for Frosties, and finally a quick stop at Walmart for just a few essentials like ice cream, beer and peanut butter :-). Arrived back in camp, which was still completely empty except for us, at around 8:00. Being in Eastern time gave us the extra hour to get the horses fed and the paddock cleaned up, then we settled in for the evening. Turns out that if I put my cell phone in the window of the bedroom in the gooseneck, I can actually get a signal good enough to get Netflix and Amazon Prime, so we’ve been enjoying some old classic films of late. Will be in bed early tonight though, since last night wasn’t the best night sleep. Hoping for better tonight!

Had a fabulous night sleep last night despite it only going down to 70 degrees with high humidity. Got up and fed the horses just before some heavy thunderstorms came in, clinching my decision not to ride today. Once the rain eventually moved off, I put the portable electric fence up so the horses would have more room to move around, and to get them off what was quickly becoming a quagmire around the highline. By 1:00, we decided to start dialyzing so we could finish early. It became so hot and humid once the sun came out, we were compelled to run the generator in order to use the air-conditioning. We’ve been wanting to experiment anyway, to see just how much propane we use when we’re running the generator, especially when we have a heavy draw like the A/C. Anyway, I started getting Hubby ready for dialysis, but when I first tried to cannulate him (stick him with a needle with a tube so we can connect him to the machine), I got a very poor result. I tried several times, even completely resetting the entire machine up a second time, but everything worked against me, and eventually I realized that his fistula was too blocked up to dialyze him at all, darn it! We had just had his fistula cleaned out in Florida in April, and it was supposed to last at least six months, but I suspect that since Hubby’s blood pressure is typically so low that may be contributing to the problem, but I’m just guessing. Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon solving that problem, getting in touch with the nearest Fresenius, who then contacted their resident nephrologist, who arranged for us to go into the St. Joe hospital in Lexington for a fistual declot. Our current clinic got them all the records they needed, and by 4:30, we had an appointment for 11:00 tomorrow morning. Disappointing that this happened, but we expect we’re going to cope with a lot of medical stuff on the road. Kudos to Fresenius, though, for handing this with such efficiency and aplomb, everyone was quite helpful and cheerful in that help, even though it undoubtedly kept them working past their regular hours. We settled down for the evening and went to be early, since we’ll need to get up fairly early tomorrow to drive the 90 minutes or so to Lexington.

Got a call late yesterday from our nurse in Tullahoma, saying that she finally received the comm unit that will allow us to be able to use an Ipad with our dialysis machine rather than all those paper reports that I have to do now, so we arranged to meet at 9:00 today in Cookeville to pick it up. While we were there, we went shopping, filled 3 of our 4 propane tanks because we wanted to be sure to have enough energy for next week when we’re going to be in the Daniel Boone National Forest without electricity, had breakfast at IHOP where we met a group of ladies who bred German Short-hair Pointers and who were admiring Lola, who was lying under the table with us. One had just come from the courthouse finalizing her divorce and was rather upset, naturally. In his usual way, Hubby offered words of encouragement, so hopefully she will be inspired to move forward in her life and not dwell too much on the past. It was nearly 1:00 when we got back to camp, and after unloading the groceries, covering up the hay because it was starting to cloud up, and starting Hubby’s dialysis, the afternoon went quickly. We are so tired of watching modern movies where the only resolution seems to be that someone has to die in order to resolve whatever the issue is, I checked out the Amazon Prime library of pre 1969 classics, and found a long list of great old movies, which we started watching. So nice to have movies where Good vs. Evil is clear-cut, the bad guys can be redeemed or otherwise get what they deserve, and it is possible to still have a happy ending. What a relief! It made the afternoon go quickly and enjoyably. I’ve been told there’s no cell phone signal at the next horse camp, so I expect we’ll be doing a lot of reading, which is fine by me. Of course, no cell service means no television, as we left our satellite dish back at the house. Had an enjoyable evening, and looking forward to tomorrow, when, weather permitting, I plan on taking a long ride on Flash.

Started the day off by cleaning the outside of the trailer. Got the pressure washer out of the attic and washed the inside of the horse trailer in anticipation of our supply delivery today, then gave the outside a much needed bath. Had several more phone conversations in preparation for NEXT month’s clinic and delivery before finally settling down for lunch. Not surprisingly, just as I was getting ready to eat, the delivery man arrived, so I had to put my sandwich back down and get the trailer loaded up with Hubby’s supplies. Finally, I was able to get back to my sandwich and settle down for the afternoon. I put Flash in one of the corrals behind us, the only one that isn’t totally muddy, and put Apollo on his anchor line, with just enough length to get him to his highline where I hung his hay, and short enough to keep him out of trouble and away from Flash’s hay and the feed at the back of the horse trailer. Oddly, he would come out and eat some grass, then eat some hay, then go back into one of the stalls for a while. Crazy horse! Door’s open, so he’s coming and going as he pleases. Finally settled down in the late afternoon, doing a few odds and ends, feeling like we had a very productive day. Even though I worked quite a bit today, though pacing myself between jobs, it still felt I wasn’t working anywhere near as hard as when we were at home, which was quite luxurious! Not having to dialyze today was also a great break, we’re really enjoying this new four day a week schedule!