Tricia's Musings

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



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Our friend is about to have heart surgery

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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.





So very tired

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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!

Reminiscing about our trip to Vegas last year

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Do you ever think about holidays you’ve had in the past? Lately I keep thinking about our trip to Las Vegas last year. It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago I was in a hotel in las vegas actually, I was in Vegas for the first time in my life.

I had a good time meeting bloggers that I’d known for a few years. Well known them interacting with them on their blogs or my own blogs and talking with them on forums.

Unfortunately my trip to Vegas wasn’t the best holiday I’ve ever been on. My Crohn’s was acting up and I also partied a little too hard on the first night I was there. I’m sure the combination was what did me in for the rest of the trip. In fact, on the second day i ended up being so ill (not hungover, ill with abdominal pain from the Crohns and bad fevers) that I had to stay in bed all day.

I did manage to make it to the blogging convention that I’d gone to Vegas for in the first place, but I didn’t do much else. I didn’t even try my hand at the casinos!

Even though a good portion of the trip was kind of lousy for me I enjoyed the atmosphere in Vegas and I’d love to go again … sometime when I’m feeling really good so that I can do as much as I want!

Have you ever been to Vegas? If so did you have a good time?

Pain I can do without

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Sorry I haven’t made any new posts in a while. I’ve been very ill over the last week or so, well probably longer than that. As usual it’s the Crohn’s disease acting up again.

If you’ve ever had the flu or perhaps bad diarrhea you might be familiar with that sharp pain you get in your stomach just before you have to run to the washroom? Well that’s what my stomach has felt like for at least a week and a half – luckily without too many dashes to the washroom, just the cramps and a constant gnawing pain in my stomach. My fevers have also been worse – higher and pretty much constant.

So, needless to say, I haven’t really been able to concentrate on writing, answering comments or emails in the last while.

I am feeling a little better than I was earlier today. If I’m lucky perhaps I’ll start to feel better soon.

A perfect gift for someone recovering from surgery in the hospital?

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Chris was just talking to our friend J. She lives out of town with her husband, but in three weeks she’ll be in Toronto for open heart surgery! She’s had some heart problems for a while and it’s time to get them fixed before her problem gets worse.

When we talked to J’s husband earlier in the week we invited him to stay with us while his wife is in the hospital. He hadn’t even thought of where he might stay or even how much parking would cost if he spent most of the day in the hospital at his wife’s bedside.

We aren’t sure how long our friend will be in the hospital, but we do know she’ll be sedated and intubated for a few days after the surgery so that she can recover from the surgery better, so I expect she’ll be in the hospital for one to two weeks or longer. Can you imagine how much it would cost her husband to stay in a hotel and to park his car at the hospital on and off for two weeks? Or to drive back and forth from where they live (two hours from Toronto)? Yeah, so he’ll save a LOT of money if he stays with us!

Anyway … I know what being in the hospital is like. It’s noisy, it’s boring and if you aren’t feeling well it’s even worse. It’s nice to have friends and relatives drop in, but that can make you even more tired. So I was trying to think of something that we could get our friend so that she could pass the time in the hospital.

I just visited Buy.com to check out their weekly sale page, but I didn’t find anything that might be appropriate for someone recovering from surgery in the hospital. Then I had a great idea. Why not get her a portable DVD player? I was looking at the Philips DCP750 and it looks like it has all the features she’d need.

Now I just have to secretly find out if she has a portable DVD player and if she’d be allowed to use it while she’s in the hospital. I’m pretty sure that once she’s out of Intensive Care she’d probably be allowed to use it. It would certainly be a great way to pass the time and both she and her husband could spend time watching movies on the DVD player.

Does that sound like a good gift for someone spending a couple of weeks in the hospital? Any other ideas?

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