mdlbear | Done Since 2019-09-01 (Reply)

The week started out pretty well -- I've actually been making progress on the pile of mostly-unopened mail by the desk, and C had a good PT session -- but went rapidly sideways. Tl;dr: C's condition started deteriorating Thursday afternoon, and Friday afternoon I took her to the ER; it looks like another round of IV antibiotics.

Tuesday she had a bladder study at UW; tl;dr: none of the options we'd been considering look very promising; most are simply impossible. We also had a few communication difficulties. It occurrs to me that some of that may be because C's poor hearing leads her to distrust what people tell her even when she's heard it correctly.

I've also been making progress puttering around with household IT (nova's been upgraded to Bionic Beaver, and its new hard drive is ready to install), web songbook indexing, and programming, and did a little chord tweaking and practicing.

I finally ordered a new (to me) laptop, having settled on a Thinkpad X230. It will arrive in a week or two, which leaves me with the question of what to call it. If I'd ordered an X1 Carbon I'd just transfer the name Cygnus to it; it's named after Cygnus X1, the first confirmed black hole. As it is... Most of my Lenovo laptops are named after black things -- I also have Blackroot and Blackbird. I'm leaning toward Onyx for this one, but it's still pretty open.

ETA: Last night's thunderstorm was glorious.

Notes & links:

0901Su
* up 5am;
% woke up with my R eyelids gummed together. *adds eyedrops to list*
@ Bodies Aren’t Binary, So Why Are Sports? - by Colleen Tighe
@ The Best TSA Approved Multi-Tools for Travel | Everyday Carry
! calm but slightly out of it
& can't find the spare Acer power cord -- possible that N has both at home.
: ... and Firefox seems to be broken in the non-admin account I made for her. WTF?
: ... and somehow, iGo chargers have vanished completely from Amazon, et. al.
" iGo, Inc. has been a provider of mobile accessories since 1995, offering power
management solutions and accessories for laptop computers and electronic mobile
devices, and has been evaluating alternative strategies for uses of its capital and
the iGo brand. " -- iGo, Inc.
* pick up C's spironolactone at Rite Aid. x And maybe another bag of pantsu ->still out
* SL: eyelid wipes; wheat thins, yogurt (plain + flavored), + coffee x eyedrops, juice
% converging on an X230. Other things being equal, the i5 is $100 cheaper and may well
have better battery life.
* $ HW $528.61 from HX via Paypal. Thinkpad X230; i5 16G 512G SSD Ultradock DVDRW
Part of the reasoning is that it gives me a machine in the LR capable of ripping.
The main thing that worried me about the X1 is the size of the trackpad.
! mood: tense; second-guessing myself. I've overthought this six ways from Sunday.
# of course, that will give me a _second_ unfinished IT project (after nova)...
@ Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones started from failure | Ars
@ My favourite Git commit | fatbusinessman.com
% 10sish sleepy
* change CPAP filter (0901) -- device was blinking a reminder, and I had a filter.
Makes sense to do the changes on the 1st and 15th regardless of delivery date. Mask
parts on the 15th, so I'll have them by then

0902Mo Labor Day
* Up 7ish; W=198.6, S=7:41;
& used Starshine; Sherman is still in the box room. Need to go over there anyway.
@ Why Nazis are so afraid of these clowns | Waging Nonviolence
* 15min: gathered and stacked up unopened envelopes from desk
* 15min: took the stack of file folders off the top of the deskside shelves.
ought to be looked at -- mostly old letters, some from names I don't recognize.
* retrieved Sherman from box room; checked laundry. Left the charger; may get it later
! 11:59 mood: relaxed, activity: reading (note plausible noticed-mood format)
* finish reading Hacking Your Executive Function Masterpost – Aut of Spoons
& introduced V to Knuth's Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
lent it to her.
@ Medicalizing Sadness – Aut of Spoons
" One of the main elements of therapy for me has been learning that negative emotions
are necessary, provide information, and can be tolerated. "
@ Depersonalisation disorder: the condition you’ve never heard of that affects...
via Dissociation – Aut of Spoons
" Most research suggests it’s a coping mechanism to dim bad feelings " Hmm.
* music: fixed chords, added scripting on "Weird Load". Still some problems
involved related fixes in MakeStuff, and a certain amount of singing.
there are still some build problems, as well as chord problems. Grump.
/ 9ish cleanup needed... and again ~10:15
% managed to stay reasonably calm and in control. A couple of moments where I needed
her to stop trying to help because I needed to move the wheelchair in a different
direction from what she thought.

0903Tu
& awake ~12 for cleanup, 4-something am for desitin.
% mouth and throat so dry I could barely talk -- forgot to re-fill CPAP humidifier
: Ticia wanted to be cuddled whenever I came back to bed and when I finally woke up
* up 5:54; S=6:44;
* Get C up ~9am
~ leave a note for Libby to work on the icemaker with L
* leave no later than 10am, after breakfast
% lost it briefly parking. Communication, mostly; valet was using hand signals.
Combination of that and, later, something with C.
* 12:45 checkin 1pm C UW urodynamic study -> forgot to bring cat bag from car, so
re-using her depends.
-> Her bladder is small and inelastic; everything goes to kidneys. One of which isn't
working well; the other has a large cyst on it. Urostomy wouldn't be feasible at
all; nephrostomy tubes _might_ work.
-> C figures that she has maybe another 2 1/2 years at most. It's a pure guess, but
she used to do the same kind of guesswork estimating the cost of car repairs based
on the sounds it was making, and was often surprisingly accurate.
* working on song indexing. Some of the formats aren't needed.
* tabular index in Songs should include PDF link for songs we have the rights to
Could also index only songs with either lyrics, audio, or body text
% leaving UW, pulled a stupid and bungled a left turn out of the driveway. Doesn't
appear to be any damage, but I was very shaken up. I apparently thought I was
supposed to have been on the far side of a barrier rather than the near side, and
mistook a shadow or something for a gap to drive through. Idiotic bear.
% Apparently I was in a flow state while working on it
* lunch at Saffron
: the new laptop has a shipping label. Need a name for it.

0904We
* up 7ish; S=6:28 mask fit 90%; cat cuddle before getting out of bed
* called Surety Pest Control to transfer account from L to me
/ labs (V)
/ 2:20 C Dr. Rochier
-> lomotil (need paper prescription for Rite Aid)
Diphenoxylate/atropine 2.5/0.025 4/day AM NOON PM BED (every 6 hours as needed)
-> diltiazem (for cardizem) to express scripts
Diltiazem (Cardizem) 30mg 2/day AM PM Ca channel blocker for hypertension
-> approve spironolactone at express scripts
Spironolactone 25mg 2/day AM PM
/ 4:30 (PT)Etta (0904) ?Discharge from PT
@ What Time Feels Like When You’re Improvising flow states
% lost temper at C after she snapped at me. Stressed, but for no good reason I can
detect.
/ (0904) Needed to have her catheter flushed.

0905Th litter boxen
* up 5am; S=5:56;
/ C awake all night again
/ flush catheter again; try to re-seat balloon. C claims to have been awake all night
% more stress. Saying something like "give me a break" does the opposite.
% back pain - right QL. 2 naproxen
/ 6:19 I hear snoring; she might be asleep but hard to tell. -> no
/ C not hungry; vomiting; catheter still leaking
x 2:30 C vision appointment -> 0926. We could have gone, damnit
% 3:30 about an hour of mostly depression/anxiety/decision paralysis/damned if I know.
Basically unable to pick something and do it. Everything seems useless.
: N has a job! She had an interview today
* 6 Steps for Minimal Ubuntu Installation Using debootstrap
& tech support for Chaos: dh and ssh
% 10:40 headache, back twinges, sleepy, somewhat out of it.
* started upgrading nova to 18.04 -- if that works it will simplify things.

0906Fr
* up 6:30ish; S=7:37; back pain
/ C: more vomiting and diarrhea last night. need to call. C will do that as soon as
her phone is charged. This seems different from either UTIs or sepsis, so... weird.
-> Carla. vague. sort of up to us. C seems weaker than yesterday
: Nova upgrade worked. So if I want I can copy / to the new disk and I'm done.
-> copy worked fine. No good way to fix grub, though. We'll see.
-> one can edit grub.cfg directly (i.e. using sed)
@ The researcher’s guide to beating the search engines – Gary McGath
/ (0906) 3ish To ER in Coupeville.
% back hurts mostly R QL but not just that.
% 6:47 back is well on its way to a major problem -- it's 4 now, spiking to at least 5
when I bend (i.e. don't do that). Not fun.
: L having trouble breathing; called herself an ambulance. Maybe I can visit her
tomorrow, too. -> Rm 2206 pneumonia
/ (0906)Admitted to Whidbey General. -> Rm 2201 Getting meropenem
@ The Wimsey Papers—The Wartime Letters and Documents of the Wimsey Family PD.ca
The Wimsey Papers - Howling Pixel Wikipedia
page images from The Spectator backed up at archive.org
Special Collection: Dorothy L. Sayers
% 2 naproxen; tizanidine

0907Sa
* awake 5:ish; dozed for an hour
* Up 6:05; S=4:53;
: call from L, who is in rm 2206 with pneumonia
* SL: juices, cereal
* Got up to the hospital a little before noon after having to go back and fetch my
laptop. Added cane and Plink. Slightly different precautions this time -- only the
staff have to use gowns and gloves. Nice.
* pulled up the Whimsey Papers on C's kindle (browser)
* guitar: noodled a bit. Bad Guys, The Band Played... Something off about my playing
& L forgot her phone charger. Apparently, so did I. Lent her my battery (which is only
3/4 charged, but that should get her through
/ (0907)catheter changed at hospital
& ordered 2 purple 3-port chargers for C.
o SL: Tums (reload first aid kit in backpack),
: rain and, at 8:17, thunder! There's some chance we'll lose power -- saw a flicker
* finished reading The Wimsey Papers
: have to toss the remaining apple crisp and apple cake -- mold.
/ gg '[0-9])D' | wc -l -> 19, so C has been hospitalized 20 times since 2008.
gg '[0-9])A' | wc -l -> 17, so I apparently missed a few
-> some editing trying to track down the differences. now 20A, 18D,