275) Saturday at the Salt Mines

August 30, 2008
Saturday

El Milagro: I'm here at 4 today because I spent the day doing yard work, trimming the oak trees, cleaning the back porch, edging and mowing, etc. Ann the Nurse checks my BP (100/65), my nursing eval and cannulates me today. She does an okay job and she forgets the thermometer in my mouth and I wait and wait and finally take it out myself. I am feeling exhausted and hope to get some sleep. I notice Rosie and Amanda the Techs, across the room, waving at me... and it takes some time to register in my little brain that I should wave back.

Once I'm hooked up, I lay back and try to go to sleep... turning the TV to some news channel that is reporting about the newest hurricane that threatens the coast. I doze... waking up sometime later, recognizing I am having some cramping in my right calf. I am able to massage and stretch this one out. Then I have one after another in the bottoms of my feet and those are easy to deal with. Then I have one begin in my left leg and I get it quickly... it's almost like chasing a pesky mosquito around my body. Finally, I get a cramp in my right thigh and I end up calling Rosie over and she switches my dialyzer off for awhile. Rosie thinks Ann set me up to take too much off to begin with so it is okay to stop for awhile. Awhile becomes about 30 minutes and it works marvelously to end the cramping. Later, I call her over and ask her to turn me back on...

I flip the channels on the TV and catch the last few minutes of "Meet Joe Black" and then watch the beginning of "Hope Floats" about Smithville, filmed around central Texas, and featuring Harry Connick Jr. wearing a KFAN t-shirt and Sandra Bullock playing herself.

Then I fall back asleep and wake up when Ann the Nurse comes over to ask me to update my meds list, which she has right except for one med. I flip the channel again, avoiding Becvar & Becvar's text laying on my chair shelf, which I brought to review for Class 2, next Thursday. "Thursday! Shoot... I can review my readings next Tuesday..." I tell myself confidently. I find a mystery on PBS (Rosemary & Thyme) and watch until time to unhook, which, of course, happens right before the beginning of the climax of the show. So it goes in dialy-land.

Notes: In at 75.0 and out at 73.8 kgs.