IASA #38

 

Thwarted once again in my effort to donate blood.

Lazy Sunday

It was a lazy Sunday. I did very little except feed Kai. For breakfast he had the maple & brown sugar instant oatmeal again. Lunch was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. And dinner was by that famous Italian family, the Campbell's; he had Spaghetti-O's tonight.

I am not a fan of chicken noodle soup; reminds me of being sick.

They took all the O's from the alphabet soup!

The Roomba cleaned the east part of the house today. I'm fine with it skipping part of the house since it seems to get the skipped part on the following day or maybe 2 days later. It has not consistently skipped a room unless the door slams shut. Right now it is not doing the bathroom in its 1st morning run since I am keeping the door closed to keep the kittens confined until they are well socialized.

The Potential Most Favorite Roommate had to take a COVID self-test today for work. Since he was living in a household with someone who has COVID-19 & he had no symptoms, he had to test 5 days after his last exposure to see if he had caught it. He tested negative. Since Kai has been very good about isolating himself & then sanitizing everything he touches after he uses the bathroom, I think he is safe from catching it from Kai. If anything, I had the highest likelihood of being infected since I was in a car with Kai for about 30 minutes & he did not have a mask on since he forgot it. This was the day before he began feeling ill so he was unknowingly actively spewing virus particles; fortunately I had my mask on & kept it on since he had just gotten off of a 6-hour plane ride.

(Photo by The Potential Most Favorite Roommate)

Since I have not been able to get out to shop for supplies for Kai due to keeping myself in quarantine while I see whether I am an incubator, we are using household supplies. These throat lozenges are part of the household supply. Kai says the Mucinex throat lozenges have been more effective for him than the Hall's; he says at this point he throat is raw from coughing & the anesthetic in the Mucinex has been more effective in numbing his throat so he does not feel as much pain.

I finished in the top 10 for Duolingo this week. I have not been as on top of doing my lessons as I had been the previous weeks. Partly because of the surgery, partly because of packing books & cleaning up other things in the house, & partly because of taking care of Kai.

Another COVID-19 Self-Test

I did a COVID-19 self-test this morning. It was negative! Hulō! I will test again on Monday morning since I am having lunch with friends later that day. This is a different type of test than I have been using before. It says it is "fast" but also says you have to wait 20 minutes for the results to appear. Which is twice as long as the previous test I have used; I guess it is all relative since other tests such as the PCR can take up to 24 hours.

The parts for one test kit.

The test substrate.

Collection swab inserted in test substrate.

The reagent & biologicals start to migrate across test substrate.

The results after 20 minutes. (The angle of the photo is a little misleading. It's negative.)

FYI Just because the test result is "negative" does not mean I do not have COVID-19 at all. It just means, at this time, statistically, I do not have COVID-19. Originally, they found that it could take up to 30 days for SARS-CoV-2 to incubate to the point that a person was infectious. But since about 95% of people showed symptoms within 14 days the original guidance was to isolate for 14 days. But humans have a difficult time doing that, so the guidance was amended to 10 days which is when about 90% of people would show symptoms. So the CDC had to gamble because humans are stupid. They knew they could not have people isolate for 30 days, so they tried for 14 but found many people still could not follow that so they reduced it further. The guidance is now similarly moderated for those who are fully vaccinated. Now you have the information, you can adjust your behavior as you choose.

Since the test result was negative, I went to give the neighbors across the street some calamansi marmalade; I always stay in their open air garage. I met their daughter-in-law Nikki who is visiting from California; everyone in the household has COVID-19 so I just set the jars down on the table in the garage & talked to her from there while she had an N95 mask on & stayed in the house a couple steps back from the door. I hope Mr. & Mrs. Loi pull through with no long term effects; I think they're in their early 90's like Mom & Dad were.

I also dropped off a couple jars with Donna & Gerald next door; I also stay in their open air garage. They're doing fine. One of the jars is for Mrs. Vea; she is also doing fine, she just doesn't go out much in order to minimize her chances of being exposed to COVID-19.

While I was outside the house, I walked around & checked out the plants that The Potential Most Favorite Roommate has on the back patio. He has expanded his plant collection quite a bit! And he is training many of them for bonsai, including some native Hawaiian species. The ʻohiʻa ʻai seeds that he sprouted are doing really well!

Looking southeasterly.

Looking northeasterly.

Some plants on the northerly wall.

More plants on the northerly wall.

The northeasterly corner.

Water feature below plants in northeasterly corner. Note guppies to control mosquitos.

Native hibiscus (L) & gardenia (R) in training as bonsai.

The ʻohiʻa ʻai seedlings waiting to begin bonsai training.

For Kai's breakfast this morning I made Quaker Oats Maple & Brown Sugar instant oatmeal. It's been a while since I have made any instant oatmeal; since when have they had the 2/3 cup mark on the bag? Is this so you can easily make it at work & not have to go looking for a measuring cup? 

For lunch I heated up a can of Campbell's Chicken & Rice Soup for Kai. It is now a single serving can with a pop top! When did that change? I guess more things have gone the route of being more convenient for single servings & opening without additional tools. Which makes these useful for emergency supplies.

For Kai's dinner I heated up a can of Chef Boyardee Lasagna ... in a can; this is the one I had been wondering about back in January this year. Now I have the answer! They use the frilly noodle edges in a meat sauce & call it lasagna, in a can. I suppose that is what the picture on the front of the can is attempting to show. (It is also in a pop top can.)

I think S'mores is a little annoyed with Kai. The guest room that he is in is where she usually spends her days & evenings. Since he has the door closed except for when he pops out to use the bathroom or to pick up his meals, she does not have a chance to hide under the bed. This evening, while I prepared Kai's dinner, she was hiding in the family room & giving me the evil eye.

I only worked on 1 box of books today. These books came from Mom's desk that she had in the bedroom. Most of the books looked interesting so I am shipping the whole box.

I did not hear of another plea from Hawaiʻi Island to reduce electricity use during the evening. So the 2 generating stations that had technical problems must be back on line. Or the 2 that were down for routine maintenance must be completed. Either way, it would not really have affected me since my solar panels provide much more power than I need & the Tesla battery can power the house through the night (except when I need to fully charge the car up after dark, which is a rare occurrence).

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Roblin!

IASA #37

 

Cataract surgery on Monday, seeing 20/20 on Tuesday!

Cataract Surgery

Curtis took me to the Kaiser Mapunapuna clinic where I was scheduled for bilateral cataract surgery at noon today. On the way there Kai texted that he had just landed! His plane was a bit early so it would work out really well for Curtis to pick him up right after he dropped me off. The plan was to have Kai pick me up at 3 pm when they anticipated I would be released from surgery; I sent him a photo of the entrance & the waiting area.

The entrance is to right; waiting area on left.

RN Suzanne was my pre-op prep nurse. She was very informative & pleasant. She explained everything that she was doing to get me ready for the surgery, then she explained what would happen during the surgery. Part way through the prep, Dr. Lin, who will do the surgery, came in. Scott the anesthesiologist and RN Becky the surgical nurse, also came in & introduced themselves. (My phone was locked away during prep & surgery so there are no photos.)

Scott wheeled me in to the operating room when it was my turn. Dr. Lin started on my right eye, which was the one with worse vision; the astigmatism in that eye was pretty bad & he was replacing my lens with a toric lens to correct as much of the astigmatism as possible. (My uncorrected vision was worse than 20/200 & is actually listed in my chart in diopters since it is so severe.) An instrument secured my eyelids to keep me from blinking & a bright light was shined in my eye through a microscope that aided Dr. Lin with the surgery. Because of the drops that RN Suzanne administered during the pre-op prep I did not feel any pain, only pressure as Dr. Lin cut open my cornea & removed the lens; inserting the new toric lens was just as painless. The whole process took 10 to 15 minutes & when they removed the microscope I could see the pattern of the ceiling tiles! It was amazing!

The left eye went just as smoothly. As Scott was wheeling me back to the surgery prep area, I marveled at my view of the ceiling, which now had a lot more character than when he was taking me to the operating room.

As RN Suzanne was cleaning me up after the surgery, I was looking around & able to read signs & see things that were only big blurry masses before the surgery. It was amazing! She said she had called Kai & he was on his way to pick me up; she had me text him to just have him call from the parking lot & she would walk me out to the car. That worked really well since he had forgotten his mask & would not have been able to come in to the clinic because of that.

On the drive back, Kai told me had only had enough time to change out of his dirty travel clothes & in to his shorts when RN Suzanne called. It was about 1:30 when she reached him. We went straight back to the house since my pupils were very dilated & it was too sunny for me; I had my eyes closed for most of the ride back.

After returning to the house I began administering the eye drops I had picked up earlier. One prescription is Moxifloxacin, an ophthalmic antibiotic administered 4 times each day for 1 week. The other is Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory which is administered 4 times a day for 2 weeks, then 2 times a day for another 2 weeks. The 1st 2 rounds of drops were extremely painful; I was expecting some pain since Dr. Lin had just cut up my corneas, but not that much! For 15 to 20 seconds it was intense searing pain, it slowly subsided & went away after about 3 minutes. The next 2 rounds were less painful, that was a positive development.

I skipped my shower tonight, the only thing I really did today was the surgery. Besides, I had these eye shield I needed to keep on overnight in order to keep anything from putting pressure on my eyelids. I would have had to keep them on in the shower as well tonight. Starting tomorrow, I will only need to wear them when I sleep during the next week.

While I was waiting for Curtis this morning, I checked out the landscaping in progress that The Potential Most Favorite Roommate is doing. He removed a lot of the weedy invasives at the corner of the area in front of the living room window & repositioned the large lava rocks there. He also started trimming the kokutan (Yeddo hawthorn, Rhaphiolepis umbellata) with the help of his bonsai teacher; they are going to retrain it. 

Weeds removed & rocks repositioned for new landscaping project. (Kokutan upper right.)

This kokutan in foreground being trained for bonsai used to look like the one in background & previous photo.

Travel Day

This morning Laurel gave me a ride to the airport; cataract surgery is tomorrow in Honolulu. On the way to the airport I got a phone call from Kai, which was surprising. I was expecting him to still be on the plane to meet me in Honolulu. Not. He got his departure times mixed up & arrived about 6 hours too late. There was no one at the Hawaiian Airlines counter since the last flight for the day had left ... 6 hours earlier. He wanted to know what to do; I told him to stay there, I would make arrangements when I got to the Kona airport.

This is the plane I was on today.

This was the 1st endangered bird Terri & I saw in April.

As I was checking in for my flight, I asked about rescheduling Kai's flight. The counter person said that he had to rebook himself at the airport. When I told her there were no reps at the Hawaiian Airlines counter she said to have him talk to anyone with a Hawaiian Airlines uniform on & they could help him rebook his flight. When I called Kai he was sitting in the Delta Airline baggage claim area, it was the closest place with seating. I told him to ask the Delta folks where the Hawaiian Airlines baggage claim office was, go there, & ask them to help him rebook a flight. 

After I got to Honolulu, Kai called. He was unable to book a flight with any carrier for today; all planes from Sea-Tac to Honolulu had already left. Except one. But he would have to fly to Boston & transfer to a flight to Honolulu that would arrive later than the flight he did schedule & at a much higher cost. He is now rescheduled for the same flight as the one today on Hawaiian for tomorrow morning. At an additional $300! Auē! He is scheduled to get in about an hour after I have to check in for surgery so Curtis will have to take me to the clinic; Kai will pick me up when I am done.

The morning started out a little overcast but not drizzling or raining. Paiʻipaʻi & ʻAlani were sitting in the bathroom window & watched me as I was waking up.

L to R: Paʻipaʻi & ʻAlani.

Trudy will be taking care of the kittens again. All except ʻŌhuna got quite chummy with her back in September; I expect they will continue to be comfortable around her. 

L to R: Paʻipaʻi, Hoʻokoa, & ʻŌhuna.

This has become a favorite perch for all of them. L to R: ʻŌhuna & Paʻipaʻi.

She is still not totally comfortable with people.

My suitcase was not overweight! It did not seem to be as heavy when I was hauling it around this morning; but then I was not expecting to do a bunch of visiting since the main reason for this trip is the cataract surgery. Though I am hoping to see Tricia again, hopefully she has been able to finish moving to her new place.

Wow! I wonder what I forgot to pack?

When I got to Honolulu I had to use the bathroom before I went to baggage claim. The set up in the bathroom has the hand dryer incorporated in to the sink/counter area. It also has an interesting feature to trigger it to turn off. The hand dryer projects the word "DRY" on to your hands. I think when it detects the difference in the light refracting off the water as it dries it determines when there is no longer any moisture on your hands & shuts off. Or at least that's what it seemed to be doing. Yes, I was rewetting my hands & watching how it reacted.

When I arrived at the house, I found that The Roommates had some Halloween decorations set up in the living room. It was somewhat cat-themed.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e David!

IASA #36

 

The church held a Mahalo potluck for Lefty, one of the last of the old timers.

IASA #35

Kai's new favorite frozen dessert, Trader Joe's Black Tea & Boba coconut non-dairy frozen dessert.