More Orchid Activity

This morning Curtis took the first shift arriving at the hospital at about 7:30 am; in the meantime I had called in Dad's breakfast order. I stayed at the house to clean up while Dad was out of his bedroom; I ran the Deebot, mopped the floor, cleaned the toilet, and changed the sheets. I also did a load of laundry and hung it out on the line to dry. As usual, while hanging out the laundry, I checked up on the plants in the back yard; especially the orchids. Mom's last surviving orchid that she raised is sending out a shoot! Since I know next to nothing about orchids, I don't know if this is a flower shoot or a vegetative shoot; I'll have to keep an eye on it.


While I was closing up the doors I looked out in the cat run and noticed that there is a ripe strawberry! The first crop of berries last year was the best; the plants had not yet been baked in the hot summer sun. What I have learned from this experiment is that the microclimate of this area is too hot for strawberries. Perhaps if I were somewhere with a cooler microclimate I could grow good strawberries; I know they have grown strawberries commercially on the slopes of Mauna Kea and Haleakala.


Before Kai left, he bought some omiyage for friends. But he didn't have their addresses so he just packed the boxes & left them with me to mail later. Which was today. I hope he appreciates what I went through to mail his boxes today! On my way to the post office the usual route was temporarily closed due to utility work, so I followed the signs for the detour. Right at the end of the detour route there was an accident in the intersection! Auwe! I turned around, flagged other people down who were going to turn in that direction and used another route to get to the post office.


The post office was my last task before I headed to the hospital; I arrived about 1pm. However, on the drive there I got several calls; Jodi is a social worker who works with Kaiser members while they are in the hospital, Maria (who I talked to a couple weeks ago) works with members who are outpatients, they coordinate to make sure the transition is smooth. Flo also called, she coordinates the Home Health portion of Kaiser member care. Both of them provided good information about Kaiser services that will be available to Dad when he is discharged; they said we should thoroughly check what the VA will do regarding at home physical therapy and home health care. Several years ago Dad had asked me to help him find out how to get in to one of the VA assisted living homes, I found that he has done everything he needs to get in to one of their homes, his VA doctor just needs to verify that he needs to go. However, I neglected to ask about temporary in-home care which would be the type of care he would likely need when he gets out of here. That will be my task for Monday.   

Dad's room has a view of the zen garden. Its nice and quiet, unlike the room last night with Bruce. Curtis said he actually heard Bruce yelling for a nurse this morning; Bruce either doesn't remember how to use the red call button or he likes yelling for people. I'm glad they were able to move Dad to a quieter room.

Zen garden outside Dad's room.

Since I only had breakfast at home, I picked up lunch at Sunrise Cafe, the Kaiser cafeteria. Today I tried their Hamburger Steak, it was surprisingly good. I would order this again.


Curtis left about 2 pm and I took over keeping Dad from getting out of bed or pulling out his IV line. I left about 7 pm so I could get back in time to give Xander his insulin shot. Curtis was going to come back after dinner and stay till about 10 so that he could keep an eye on Dad. But after he got home this afternoon he started to run a fever. So he stayed away, which is a good idea; Nurse Gary said he would keep an eye on him. Curtis is hoping to be able to come back tomorrow morning; we shall see what happens.

Traffic jam on the way out of the parking garage.

I went back through the blog this morning and checked, yesterday was ER Visit #18 for the period beginning in June 2016 and the 2nd for 2018. This post has a short summary of my ER visits. If you want to read some of the posts about ER visits, on the right side of this page is a list of categories, click on "ER" to see the ones I labelled once I figured out how to label the posts. (I had to find the June 2016 post by hand, but it was a pretty unforgettable day so it was easy for me to find.)

Dad has been a little more disoriented than usual, the nurses say that the infection & pain can disorient elders. Hopefully getting rid of the infection, and thus the pain, will clear up some of his confusion.

Happy Birthday to Joan, JJ, Maria, & Laurie!