Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



You are here: Home / Archives for 2008

Archives for 2008

Waiting for news

by

Chris and I are just sitting here are home for news about our friends surgery. We haven’t heard from our friends husband or Chris’ brother in law who came into town earlier today to be with him.

We did call the hospital a little while ago and we found out that our friend who had open heart surgery today is in recovery. So hopefully that mean the surgery was a success!

Chris and I will be the main people visiting the hospital over the next week, so we’ve decided to stay home this evening to wait for news. Her husband is with Chris’ brother in law and another friend, and of course our friend that had the surgery … well we probably wouldn’t be able to get in to see her tonight anyway … so baring any emergency calls we’ll sit tight for tonight.

I hate waiting for news though. I wish someone would call us to let us know how the operation went.

Update: We just heard from our friends husband and it sounds like the surgery went as planned. No complications. He got to see her in the ICU for a few minutes and he’s feeling better now too.





My house is rattling! Neighbor doing renovations! Argh

by

Our neighbors are renovating again!

They moved into the house next door (it’s attached to ours) in June and for the first month they did some reno work. We’d suggested that they knock down at least one of their living room walls, like we did, to open up the space.

Believe me it really opens up the space in a small house … our house had an entry way, walls enclosing a tiny living room, a hallway to the stairs that allowed entry to the living room and or the dining room, and there was a wall between the living room and dining room. So that was one small space partitioned with four walls! uh, huh … first thing we did – day one – was to knock down the walls.

Anyway, when they were doing their first renovation they had one wall repaired because one of the pipes within the walls was leaking. Unfortunately the leak wasn’t fixed and now they are having major repairs done. They also seem to be redoing their basement and upstairs bathrooms. The other day we saw a huge box that probably contained a tub and other bathroom items like two stone vessel sinks arrive on a big Home Depot truck.

The sound coming from their house over the last two weeks has been almost unbearable. I think today was the first day that the sounds were tolerable. Last week I think they were using a hammer drill or something to break up concrete in the basement, and I’ve heard them use reciprocal saws (maybe to take down another wall?), hammering, drilling and the contractors have gotten into yelling matches a few times.

All the china and crystal in my china cabinet rattles around when they are working next door too. Plus I think there’s enough vibrations going on that it’s rattled a few doors open. I found our one true closed upstairs with an open door last night and neither Chris nor I have been in that closet for days. Weird.

I just hope they’re almost done – at least with the noisy stuff! I haven’t been sleeping well at night for a few weeks and with the noise all day I can’t even nap if I’m tired. It’s terrible. I’m like a walking zombie!

Have you ever had someone do major renovations in the home next to you? Particularly if you live/lived in a semi-detached? It’s horrible isn’t it?

Our friend is about to have heart surgery

by

A couple of weeks ago I told you that one of our friends would be coming to Toronto to have major heart surgery. Well, the time has come. She should have checked into the hospital earlier today, and tomorrow morning she’ll be undergoing heart surgery.

She is so scared of the surgery that she doesn’t even know enough about it to tell me exactly what kind of surgery she’s having. I’m a nurse – I could help ease her fears if I knew what was going on … but she’s the kind of person that when she’s afraid of something doesn’t want to know anything more about it. I think that just serves to make one more scared! I’m sure her imagination is going wild.

All I know is that she has some scar tissue or thickening of the heart muscle and has to have surgery to correct it. That’s the most I could get out of not her ….

You might also remember that when I wrote about her earlier in the month I’d extended an invitation to her husband to stay with us while she was in the hospital. Well .. they never really got back to us about it. Chris had to call them several times before our friend finally told us her husband would be staying in a hotel near the hospital.

Nice of them to let us know, eh? I know they were probably both scared about the surgery and were in avoidance mode, but for me who’s sick at home, it’s a very big thing to invite someone into my home for an unknown period of time. My regular readers know I’ve been going through a bad Crohn’s flare and haven’t slept well in weeks so having a guest in our home would make things more difficult, but I offered because I wanted to help them out.

So as much as I hate to admit this, I’m a little ticked off. I mean, all we were trying to do was give him some support and companionship during this scary time and help him save some money (he doesn’t have a job) … but if that’s what he wants to do I guess that’s the way it will be.

I think her husband staying in a hotel is partly my husbands fault though. He kept telling him that he could take the subway from our house (small town folks are afraid of the subway! not all, but these guys probably are) and that it would take 20 minutes to get to the hospital. Well .. it only takes about 10 minutes and we’re very close to the subway … so I’m sure the travel from our house will be equal to the walk he’s going to have from the hotel (there’s no hotel that I can think of that’s closer than a 15 minute walk to the hospital).

On top of all that my friend who’s having heart surgery wants to diet while she’s recovering! She told me that she visited this page that lists the best diet pill and wanted my advice as to which ones she should buy. I told her she’d better check with her doctor on that. Some diet pills can be hard on the heart and that’s the last thing she needs while recovering from open heart surgery!

When Chris gets home from work we’ll call the hospital and see if we can talk to our friend. If she’s up for visitors we’ll probably go there for a short while. I don’t know if she’ll want visitors tonight though, she might just want to spend some time with her husband before her surgery.

I’m sure I’ll be on edge all day tomorrow wondering how her surgery is going. When the surgery is done the doctors plan to keep her sedated and intubated for a few days so that she can rest and recover. I’m sure that part will freak her husband out as there’s nothing like seeing someone you love unconscious and intubated.

There’s something wrong with the drinking water …

by

Wordless Wednesday

fishy water

When you think about it this sign is sooooo true. There are fish in most water areas and what do fish do … eat and crap … so yeah … don’t drink the water.

Of course … another reason to not drink the water might be because an elephant’s been in it too …

00034980

That’s one way to take a shower!

I hope that everyone is having a great Wednesday!

So very tired

by

I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping over the past few months and it’s starting to take it’s toll.

I have Crohn’s and I seem to get more abdominal pain at night, so depending upon how much pain I’m in it affects my sleep. Sometimes I get very very little sleep.

Of course, the less I sleep I get, and the more tired I am the more I hurt … it’s a vicious cycle and I just can’t seem to get myself out of it.

I keep thinking that if I could just be knocked out for a few days to a week it would break the cycle of pain and get me back into a decent sleep cycle again.

I never used to have trouble sleeping. It’s a terrible feeling to fall asleep for only a minute or two, hear a noise or feel a pain that wakes you up and then be up for hours again before you can fall asleep again for perhaps as little as a few minutes.

Do you ever have trouble sleeping?

I’m only writing about this now because I’ve just gone through three days with only about six hours sleep. I’m baked!

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday