Clear Liquids Diet

Good News! The thumb does not appear to be fractured! I would know for sure if I had a tuning fork, but I don't, so I will assume it is just badly bruised. How does a tuning fork help? Placing the base of a vibrating tuning fork against the bone that is suspected of being fractured causes pain if there is a fracture. Bones are surrounded by a layer called the periosteum, besides helping bones to grow and to heal from fractures, they also contain nerve cells. The vibrating tuning fork causes the bone to vibrate, if there is a fracture the bone on either side of the break vibrates at a different rate causing the nerves to be stimulated, which the brain translates as pain. I learned this bit of info from my chiropractor when I had a suspected hairline fracture of my wrist. (It wasn't, it was just so severely sprained I was in a cast to immobilize it to help it heal.)

When it rains it pours! I developed viral diarrhea last night. The first time I had viral diarrhea was about 35 years ago. And I did the worst thing possible for it: I kept on eating. I found out then that the first thing you should do when you have any type of diarrhea is a clear liquids diet. Which means if you can see through it easily you can have it, like water, cranberry juice, apple juice, and plain jello. Black coffee is OK also. But OJ, is not OK. Going on the fast starves the virus out of your system; you should be OK in 24 hours. But if you have lots of vomiting, moderate to severe abdominal pains, bloody or black discharges, or a high fever, though, you should go to the ER. Or if the diarrhea lasts more than 48 hours. So the plan for today was to sleep a lot to conserve energy since I couldn't eat. I told Mom that this morning and that I would just be up to remind her to take her meds, Curt would be there to provide her with lunch, and she should reheat the lasagna from last night for dinner.

About 2:30 pm Dad wakes me up saying I have a phone call from my brother; Curt tells me that Mom is having trouble breathing. Like I said, when it rains it pours! I find Mom in the kitchen, at the sink, holding on to the counter, so I lead her to the couch and have her lie down with her feet up. Her breathing is labored and wheezy, her blood pressure is 150/64; it was 94/49 this morning. Her pulse is up to 86, it was 78 earlier in the day. From what I see in the room, it appears that she did a load of laundry, put it in the laundry cart and carried it from the laundry room over to the couch so she could watch TV while folding, then had trouble with breathing, went to the sink for a drink of water and realized she was in a world of hurt and had Dad call Curt. After 15 minutes of lying down her blood pressure and pulse were back to normal. (I had to put the laundry cart in the next room so she wouldn't sit up and fold it while she was supposed to be lying quietly on the couch.) I think she is low on red blood cells again causing her body to respond to the exertion by pumping more blood and increasing the breathing to try to get more oxygen to those muscles that are working. Mom does not understand that this is what is happening and why we keep telling her to stop doing certain things, depending on how recently she has had a transfusion. Tomorrow we go in for her weekly blood test.

In the meanwhile I folded the laundry and put the laundry cart away. After an hour of lying down watching TV, Mom forgot about the laundry. Dementia has some useful side effects! As to why Mom did not send Dad to the bedroom to wake me up initially, that's the not so helpful part of that same side effect: Mom did not remember that I was asleep, she apparently never told Dad where I was, they thought I was not at home. Fortunately Curt stopped by at lunch time to drop off lunch & the items from Costco and I told him what was happening with me. (Although if he had not known that, he would have called my cell phone to find out where I was since it would take him about 30 minutes to get here.)

Here's some positive stuff. The Hawaiian Humane Society had the opening of their new wing yesterday. It was actually open for business on Friday but the official ceremony was yesterday. Much of the found cat area is in the new wing; cat isolation, however, is still in the old part. They also have a new Cat House that is set up to appeal to cats ready for adoption. It is 3 tiers high; the bottom cube, which has a frosted glass front, holds the litter box. The cat accesses the next levels through holes in the "floor"; the middle cube contains a sleeping box and is solid on the back and sides. The top cube has bars on the front and back so that the cat can look outside at the surrounding area. If there are few cats, there is a door that can be opened to allow access to the next set of cubes. If each cat has its own 3-cube kitty "apartment", they can house 16 cats in the new Cat House. In a pinch, they can close off the access holes and put a small litter box in each cube, like in the isolation units, and house 48 cats. There are also new dog houses, admissions area, and veterinary clinic.

New cat house (photo by Hawaiian Humane Society)

Happy Birthday to Eleta!