Getting sick on the road

When I first started reading RV blogs and forums about two years ago, it was mentioned that full-timers (and also any RVers, I guess) should carry a list of their meds and medical history in the rig with them, in case of emergency.  When I first started out on the road as a full-timer in June of 2011, I put together a "master" package and a few copies of any pertinent medical history and the reports of surgeries or procedures I've undergone.   Any time I've been to a new doctor, they always have lots of questions, and I'm a poor historian, so I can bring the packet with me and either hand it to them, or use it as a reference in answering their questions.

I have all the documents binder clipped together, with the cover page listing the documents chronologically and any meds and over the counter vitamins with the dose I take every day.  I've found this to be so easy, and I'm always able to give the medical professionals the correct information.

When I arrived at the Blythe ER, I got one of the packets out of my cupboard and brought it in with me, and they took it to attach to my file.  Now that I have another surgery under my belt (literally!), I am going to call Kaiser's Medical Records department and request a copy of the surgical report and photo of the CT scan showing the problem area.  I'll make some copies and attach to the packets I have on hand.

In my desk at home, I had a file, "Medical," into which I'd place any medically important documents concerning issues over the years that could be useful later.  These documents are what I used to start my "master" file.  It was really easy since I had most of the paperwork, and I requested any that I didn't have, but wanted to bring with me.

Something new that I'm going to do (and you might think about) is add my Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care to each packet.  I was asked at both ERs if I had one, and they both suggested I give my doctor a copy that could be attached to my file at Kaiser.  I will bring in a copy, but also have copies attached to my binder clipped packets, just in case.   I hope I'll never need to use one of those packets again, but if I do, I'm ready, and that's a good feeling to have.

Talking about being sick, Merikay wrote a blog post about being sick in an RV, and it was very interesting. Check it out for her ideas and insights about getting sick on the road  during their first big trip.  :(

I took a photo out my guest room window of The Palms, regally watching over my recovery room:

The Palms, standing guard.  Isn't she beautiful?

 

And here's Katie guarding me from inside the room.  Every time there's a sound throughout the house, Katie is on guard, mostly because she wants that door opened so she can run around with the grandkids, and run outside.  I have a nice window overlooking the front yard, where The Palms is, and also this window that looks out onto an atrium.

Katie is so used to spending lots of hours in a small space with me, that staying in the bedroom most of the time hasn't been a problem at all.  This room is at least twice the size of The Palms, not counting the full bathroom, so we are in hog heaven as far as space is concerned. Get me out of here before I get used to it!!  :) 

Just kidding, I think this weekend I'll be moving out to The Palms, and soon thereafter Katie and I will be driving down the freeway to Santee Lakes RV Park for my scheduled month before we get back on the road.  I'm looking forward to going back there.  This will be the first time I've repeated a stay at any park, but it won't be the last.  There are definitely a few places I'd like to revisit.

When I downloaded the photos shown above, I found a few I took leaving the hospital in Blythe, and this is the one driving along the highway back into the town of Quartzsite.  Already in early January you can see the influx of RVs and sellers and RV sales places.

      Approaching Quartzsite, January 5, 2012.

It will be more than two weeks until the Big Tent fun starts!

As The Palms was roaring across the Arizona and California deserts toward the San Diego Kaiser Hospital, the sun started setting when we entered San Diego County.  It was beautiful, and the way the clouds were formed where the sun was setting, it looked like there were two suns.

San Diego Sunset, January 5, 2012

And one more photo of my son Tom and daughter-in-law Trish with one of his cars.  This is a large, framed professional photo; it was leaning in a chair against the wall in the dining room, not yet hung.  I thought it was such a cool photo, I took a picture of the picture to have on my computer slide show.  The photographer used the selective color option that I like to use with my camera.  They are such a beautiful couple.

Tom and Trish at Balboa Park, San Diego

Hopefully my next post will be written on the dinette table in The Palms.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)

We passed 100,000 Total Pageviews :), and the Final Ride

I noticed a couple of days ago that we passed 100,000 views.  That's pretty exciting - thank you all for stopping by to check my posts, and helping to bring us over the 100K mark.  Never when I started this blog did I think I'd have so many readers and followers. 

Welcome to our new followers:

Kerri, who is a single mom, and hopes to someday become a fulltimer - she's looking for the right rig.
Michael and Dee, who have a beautiful Jayco Seneca 35GS motor home.
Lana, who is planning a move from Houston to a life on a farm, with a cabin in the woods.  Sounds good to me!
Jim - who doesn't show a blog or any other information.  Jim, if you've got one, let me know, okay?

Because it's been so uncomfortable to use my computer in bed, I've just lately gotten caught up on my regular blog reading, and haven't had a chance to read much past your most recent posts, but I will, I will... 

Welcome to you all - I really appreciate you following along with Katie and me as we continue having adventures in The Palms. 

Today I drove The Palms down to the Kaiser building in San Diego, to the Plastic Surgery department, where a nurse took out my 16 staples.  I've never had that done before, and was a little apprehensive about it, but it didn't hurt at all.   The nurse said everything looks good, so I'm almost done with check-ups.  I have an appointment with the surgeon who did the operation on Friday, January 27th, and assuming all goes well, I should be released after the 27th.

It was really nice to get back into The Palms.  I had gone shopping after I left the ER in Blythe, and rather than putting everything away (except for fridge and freezer stuff) I put the grocery bags in the shower to keep them safe, and today I finally went through them to see what I had. I cleaned up a little clutter - I had stored my hats, mittens, gloves, and assorted other things in Katie's crate on the passenger seat of the rig, and when my son, Tom, brought Katie home, he put all those things on the couch so he could bring Katie's crate with them.  So I got all those things put away, and The Palms is again in good shape.

I enjoyed driving her again, 1/2 hour to Kaiser and 1/2 hour back.  Pretty short trips for The Palms.  On the way home I stopped at a Super Cuts. I was already weeks, maybe months, past due for a haircut, and after laying around in bed for two weeks, boy! did I need a haircut!  It was driving me crazy.  Luckily I got a good hairdresser, and I was really pleased with the cut she gave me.  Nothing like a good haircut to make you feel better, right, ladies?

When I first got here to Tom and Trish's house, Tom told me about a friend of his whose father had died, and he asked Tom if he could borrow one of his cars for the funeral.  Tom was getting it ready, polishing it up, etc. for Reese to pick up the next morning.

I thought it was a really touching story, so I asked Tom to e-mail me some photos of the car.  He also sent along an explanation, which just touched my heart.  I've edited Tom's text just a little, and here it is with the photos:

1968 California Special Mustang

 
"This is the car that my friend, Reece, drove his Dad's ashes in to the funeral service at Point Loma this week. Full military honors - he fought in the Korean war.

"He and his Dad had restored a 65 Mustang fastback when Reece was 15. It was his first car, so he thought it would be fitting to give his Dad his last ride in a vintage 60's Mustang. (Reece regretfully sold the 65 about 14 years ago).

"This is a 1968 California Special Mustang. A rare one-year, California Ford dealer-only limited production Mustang with only about 4000 being produced in 1968. There are said to be less than 2,000 left today.

"This car has the original 302 motor with a C4 automatic transmission, power steering, disc brakes, air conditioning, power door locks and a whole lot of chrome under the hood!"

Isn't that a sweet thing for Tom's friend, Reese, to do for his father's last ride?  A really nice "human interest story."

Tom was going to sell the car on E-bay, but after getting it ready for Reese, he's decided to keep it for a while.  Tom has been an entrepreneur since college, currently owning and operating five different businesses, one of which is restoring classic cars.  Most are 67-68-69 Camaros, but he does have other cars he's restored through the years, including some Mustangs. 

As a side note, the morning of the funeral, Tom was driving along the freeway with one of his employees, and the guy said, "Do you still have the California Special?"  Tom said, "Yes, why?"  The employee, who had worked on that car for Tom, said, "I just saw one driving in the opposite direction - it just passed us."  Then Tom explained that the car he just saw was his California Special, and explained the situation.  Weird, huh, that with all the freeways in San Diego, they would actually pass each other?

I was showing Tom some of the blogs I read, and when I showed him Denise's blog, and her Harley, Tom said, "I have the same one."  (I think the handlebars are different, and maybe some other things, too, but it's the same model?)

I asked him to send me photos of the motorcycle, so Denise could see it - here it is:

These are taken at the shop in his office building - he "stages" the vehicles, usually in front of his house, when he puts them up for sale.  He's not ready to sell the Harley yet.

Denise, Tom thought your Harley was beautiful!  And of course, IT IS!  :)

See?  Even if you're in bed all day, there are still some interesting things that happen.  (Well, I'm doing some walking at least a few times a day to get back some strength, not laying in bed ALL day.)

From Me and My Dog, have a great Wednesday evening, everyone!  :)

Quick update - Happy Birthday to Me :)

Just a quick update - thank you all for your caring and concern!  I was discharged from Kaiser Hospital Wednesday morning, and I'm recuperating at my son and daughter-in-law's house, here in San Diego.  I couldn't have better care, and each day is a bit better than the last.  Still somewhat difficult doing normal things, but that will all come soon, I'm sure. 

Also, today is my 67th birthday!  Sure glad I've made it this far, and I can honestly say I'm healthier today than I was last week.   I'm happy to have this episode in my rear view mirror, and now it's all forward to smoother sailing.

As a side note to my hospital stay, I was so fortunate to have for one day as a room-mate a woman I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and talking to.  Her name is Dawn, and at 73 years old, is married to Paul who will be 90 this year, and they have been volunteers at Yosemite National Park for more than 19 years.  They are entering their 20th year of service and were recently honored by the park for their work.  He does the camp hosting duties and she does other volunteer work.  And get this:  they don't have an RV.  They TENT CAMP!  It was a chance meeting, and when we left, I felt like I had a new, good friend.  I'll be curious if any of you know Dawn and Paul.

Katie is doing great, happy to have me home, and won't leave my side. 

I probably won't blog for another few days, but wanted to let you know things are moving forward, and getting better.

From Me and Katie, have a great Friday, everyone!  :)

I'm finally on the mend-in the hospital

Thank you so much for all your caring comments and e-mails.  You will never know how much they meant to me.

Right now I'm sitting in a Kaiser Hospital in San Diego. I called the Kaiser Nurse on Monday and she said to drive to the closest emergency room, so I went into Blythe.  I was there all night, from around 8:30 pm to 7:30 am Tuesday. I had a weird diagnosis that I won't go into, because it was wrong. I stopped at Quiet Times to pick up a package, dropped off my library books, dumped tanks and filed the water tank, and was driving out toward the 95 to go back to La Posa West when my phone range.  It was my doctor from San Diego. She said the radiologist at the Blythe ER had gone over my CT scans again this morning, and he had misdiagnosed the pictures, and my doctor wanted me to drive to the nearest Kaiser ER right now.

I told her I was in Arizona, the nearest Kaiser ER was in San Diego, but I'd rather be there, because that's were I'm from and my son is there with his family, and they can take care of Katie.  I never went back to my campsite, just left everything there and started driving.  I called my neighbor Hazel, who has been great, and she will take care of things for me.

It took five hours to get to San Diego and I was still feeling okay.  My doctor said if I started to get ANY stomach pain I was to drive to the side of the road, call 911 and have an ambulance drive me immediately to the closest ER.  That gave me more confidence - to have her permission to do that, and still try to get to San Diego.  There was some worry about an intestinal rupture.  We stopped once for gas and potty for Katie, and Arrived early evening in the ER check in, where we waited for hours to be seen.

Kaiser Zion ER is the only Kaiser ER in the entire San Diego area, so, although it's large, it's really busy and constantly moving people in and out.  From what I was told, they planed to build another hospital with an ER in South San Diego, but were not allowed to, unless the opened up the ER to the people in the area that don't have insurance, and let them use it.  Kaiser declined. You can imagine what would have happened - but I don't want to be political on my blog, so...

I was finally seen, they did another CT scan of my abdomen, and scheduled me for immediate surgery, where they took out a foot of my lower intestine, which was incorrectly shaped, or something weird. (While they were in there, the doctor told me later, they also removed my appendix.)  I'm just now feeling pretty "with it" so I need to get more info from my doctor.  Nothing else wrong, no cancer or anything like that.  So, surgery around 1:30 Thursday night (Friday morning) and it's now Monday at 8 a.m.  I'm still having a problem getting around, but MUCH better than before.

I think I'm going home tomorrow, and I'll be at my son's house in their guest room.  I'm thinking when I feel better I can live in his front driveway in The Palms - using the couch as a bed - until I'm back to normal and then find a place to stay around San Diego for a while. I know it can take up to a year to totally recuperate from major surgery and I want to take it easy.

So that's it.  It really was something, just not appendicitis, and now - thank goodness - it's been fixed.

Again, thank you for all your concerns, I'm definitely on the upswing now and will post again soon with another update.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Monday everyone!  :)

Feeling a bit better - Santa photos

Just a quick update - thanks for your concern and comments, I really appreciate every one!  I made it through the night pretty easily, and this morning I'm feeling a little better.  I'm still going to keep the wait and see plan for now, though.  I won't take any chances, if the pain gets worse, I'll pack up and start driving,  but so far, so good today.

I was walking over to the dumpsters last week, and who should I see?  A man with a white beard and a red RV!

He said his name was Santa.

 

Santa's Post-Christmas hide-out.

Katie likes her orange squeaky toy guy right in the middle of her chew toy.  She gets them together, then starts chewing on the chew stick.  Maybe she thinks she's sharing it with the little orange guy?

 

Bless us, O Lord, and these our gifts...

Oh, Man, I love these seeds!

 

Quit taking my picture!  Let me eat in peace!

 

 Sweet Katie, resting outside on her rug.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Wednesday, everyone!  :)