Hubby

This morning Hubby informed me that he had been up all night in pain!

He said that I appeared to be sleeping well, since he did not see me get up to use the bathroom, although I insisted I did, could we have missed each other in this tiny but adequate home of ours?

Any-who, he knew from past experience to try moist heat, accomplished by taking a washcloth and soaking it and installing it in a Ziploc bag in the microwave for thirty seconds, and then wrapping it in a hand towel, which he apparently did. When that stopped working we tried, a cold pack, and when that seemed to not help…

After several tries before eight A.M. with no relief I suggested taking his temperature, odd one might say… but sure enough he was running a low grade temp of 100.5 degrees.

As we all know can mean infection, inflammation or flu, but he had his flu shot too back in September and so that was crossed off the list of possibilities.

I Google his symptoms, shoulder pain with fever.

And I told him to call the doctor to make an appointment and he tried to, but his doctor would have to fit him in and so he called the walk in clinic associated with our doctors and they said that he should come on over they were quiet.

But when he got there they said since that his HMO said that his doctor would have to tell them to take care of him, and not only that the next thing was, another bombshell; in January his doctor will no longer be accepting his Medicare Humana Gold Plus plan; due to them being slow payers! But some other doctors in the group would be and he would either have to change his insurance plan or his doctor!

And they told him that his doctor would be able to see him at three fifteen this afternoon.

When he arrived home from the walk in clinic the next idea in the interim was an oldie, but a goodie and thankfully we had something that not all homes have… a TENS machine! Between aspirin, four of the 81MG first dose was before he left at eight A.M. next at noon, since that’s all we had in the house for a fever and pain reducer and with those two things he did finally seem to get some relief thankfully! He dozed off in his easy chair and I was relived.

I couldn’t go with him, for he would have to lift my forty-seven pound wheelchair in and out and so I stayed home, but told him to call me when he arrived there and he did, at the clinic and then again in the afternoon at doctor’s office.

But I got concerned when there was no news after an hour, and so I called his phone and it was off, and I did leave a voice mail to call when he got it and waited again for a while and I tried again…and it went right to his voice-mail so I got worried and called the office direct.

The receptionist explained that he was fitted in, and that was probably why, whew that’s right!

But she asked if I wanted the nurse to call me and I said alright, why not?

Hubby called instead and told me that the doctor gave him three prescriptions and felt as we had basically determined that it was a muscle issue, since he was swollen, but he was scheduled for an x-ray tomorrow morning to be sure; soft tissue does not show up I thought in x-rays?

We determined it was probably due to all the work he had been doing on the boat on its trailer, up down, up down, pulling, pushing, cleaning, scrubbing, changing the oil, even painting the prop! 

I must say it looks brand new, but in reality it was new when purchased way back in 2003 our Sea Hunt Triton 202, yep I goofed and said it was nineteen and half feet long, I gypped us out of a half of foot… It is a twenty footer! We felt more than likely all that was responsible for causing THE BIG OUCH; especially, for someone with chronic pain problems from back and other probably now arthritic conditions. The TENS is his from his original back injury in 2005; we both have used it many times over the years, nice thing to have handy.

His appetite stunk and so for two meals he had chicken soup and blackberry JELLO and then a chicken dinner I made slowly cooked /braised in the oven for tonight.

He is medicated now with the TENS on again and sitting comfortably watching the news in his easy chair…

Hope he has a better night than last; damn I can relate only too well to bad ones… on that note of hopeful painlessness for him and everyone here and out there, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share all your overages with you know who and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!