One year of Plavix. Enough. This is day one of my post-Plavix life. The weather has changed. In October it was hot and hotter. Now, in November, it is just warm and comfortable with the occasional storm that passes through and makes it cold and windy. Today, we’re back to eighty and calm. We’ve started up with the Christmas decorations. Old habits… We’ve wrapped some palm tree trunks with light strings. We’ve got colored lights on the shed. Judy is accumulating yard decorations. She’s covering the solar yard lights with colored cellophane for the season. We won’t light much until after Thanksgiving, but we want to be ready. No more talk of a yard train so far. Judy is organizing a parade of lights. Golf cart. Three wheeled bikes. Maybe even the Trikke. Life on the beach.
Mercy Rule
This summer, I started the blog. I set it up so each new trip report would automatically post to it. Since then I’ve gone back and posted all the old trip reports, starting with 2004. We were still living in the house in Louisville at the start of that year and ended it full-timing in the diesel Bounder. The trip reports are all in one place now. They’re even indexed and searchable if that would ever make any difference. http://steveandjudystravelblog.blogspot.com/ I wrote trip reports before 2004 too. Not every day, but I wrote reports each time we were on trips. Not easy to find stuff that old; I’ve been through several computers in that time, but I’ve found some of those old reports, so I’ll add those too, as I can. What does this have to do with a mercy rule? Having everything on a website changes the dynamics of my trip reports. If anyone wants more control over whether and when they get the reports, they can opt out of the direct emails and get them from the blog instead. Anybody wants off the email list; let me know.
Neurologist
Finished up with the neurologist today. They went looking for brainwaves with the EEG on Tuesday morning at the hospital. It took an hour. We had to get all the electrodes attached to my head. The technician demanded that next time I come back I should come back without all this hair. Guess I made her life difficult. She also told me how she found me. She came out of the hospital elevator at 4 o’clock in the morning. Judy and I were sitting in chairs outside the elevator bank because my room was uninhabitable (think sick people). We said Hi. She said Hi, and walked on by, pushing her machine. A few minutes later she came back.“Mr Taylor?”“Yes.”“I went to your room. You weren’t there. I asked at the nurse’s station and they said you were out for a walk. I asked them “You mean that old white guy that looks like Santa Clause?” and they said “yeah”. She was my EEG technician.This was a more extensive EEG than I’ve had before. Just as I was settling in to fall asleep, she made me hyperventilate. I had to do hyperventilate breathing for three minutes without stopping. I did. Hell of a buzz. Once I got comfortable again, she told me to open my eyes and look at the ceiling. Thus began the strobe-light-torture phase. I think she was trying to break me, but I didn’t crack. I never revealed a thing. After that she let me fall asleep, then woke me up to point out on the screen when I started to doze and when I fell asleep. That was it, except for part where she had to rip off all the electrodes she had stuck onto my head.Got the results back at our visit with the neurologist today at his office. Nothing. No trace left behind. They went looking for brainwaves and actually found some, but no other junk, so the news couldn’t have been better.The conclusion? TGA, Transient Global Amnesia. It wasn’t a stroke. It wasn’t a seizure. It isn’t Alzheimer’s. It was most likely TGA. Probably a tiny bit of plaque broke off into the bloodstream and blocked flow to my brain momentarily. Whatever, he said once it happens, it rarely happens again. I’m done. No further examinations or treatments. No reason to expect a recurrence.It’s all good.
Rocky
Remember Mom’s cat Rocky? It was so important to Mom to get the cat to a good home. Rocky is still alive and well at Becky’s house. She’s eighteen now. Becky’s house ended up being a good spot for her.
Well.
That was a great night’s sleep. Eleven hours uninterrupted. A little catching up to do. It’s good to be home. Home is more than just the motorhome. Home is the community we live in. We’re surrounded by friends. We didn’t ask for any help on Monday. We never got the chance. The coach was taken care of while we were gone. The Trikke got wheeled off to Pete and Kit’s. Annie went to Leon and Sharon’s for a sleepover. More offers of help than we could accommodate. Thanks all. It’s good to be home.