A LONG DAY

For Tom it was long because he spent a total of 4.5 hours in dialysis.  Not all of that was on the machine but you have holding time, etc.  It was also not one of his better dialysis sessions.

Right after I posted this morning, his kidney doctor came in and was all smiles.  He was excited with the kidney "output" (that's all I'm going to say about that) and how things were progressing.  It was very encouraging.

Tom is very tired tonight.  I'm not sure why dialysis makes him so tired.  I told him I was going to bring him a hamburger when I returned from home today but ended up being later than expected so I called and asked the nurse to have him go ahead and order lunch.  I don't think he did.  I brought the hamburger when I got to the hospital about 4:30 and he's also had some soup and hot chocolate.

I was pretty excited to spend some time at home and possibly run some errands today.  I did some laundry, ironing and general straightening of things around the house.  A dear friend from Sunday School came over to install two new toilets.  It's crazy that you get so excited about something like that, but I am.  It was very generous of him to take so much time out of his weekend to help.  He even brought his dog along and the puppies enjoyed playing with another new friend.  I decided to take 10 minutes to sit on the sofa and play with the puppies.  I looked out the window and another large limb had fallen on our fence.  If you're not reading all the blog entries, this same thing happened last Monday too.  So, instead of a short break, I grabbed the ladder and hack saw and started removing limbs.  I was able to drag most of the limbs to the front and have called our lawn service who is going to quote me a price to remove the entire tree.  It is a Bradford Pear tree and they have very soft wood.  We have 3 huge Bradford Pears in our back yard.  They are so beautiful every spring but there are millions of leaves to rake in the fall/winter.  The trees do not typically get as big as ours - I think they support each other so when this first one comes down, I think the others will follow soon.  Each year Tom and I hold our breath during storms waiting for them to split.  Naturally, it would happen to us when he is in the hospital.  I marched into his room this afternoon and told him to get better NOW, I was tired of handling all of this stuff!  Needless to say, I didn't run any errands.

I am happy to report that our income taxes got filed this evening.  I did a manual trial run the other night just to see what they might look like - and thanks to Turbo Tax, we will be paying half as much as I originally figured.  Glad that's done.

We didn't see Tom's PCP today so I will plan to stay here tomorrow and will hopefully catch him then just to get a status report.  The nurses are supposed to be pulling his stats for me.  Because of the long dialysis session, Tom did not receive physical therapy.  There are orders for him to sit in a chair but I think it is with the help of PT personnel (how that is supposed to happen 3 times a day is beyond me).  Maybe tomorrow.