mdlbear | River: State of the FlowerCat Episode 6 (Reply)

You may note that there is no cut tag in this one. Colleen transfered from the to Prestige Post-Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Edmonds on Tuesday. She traveled by "cabulance" -- wheelchair van -- and managed the bed-to wheelchair and wheelchair-to-bed transfers under her own power.

She did a little walking yesterday and more today, and is looking and feeling a lot more like herself. Her recovery has been impressively fast, probably because she has -- or maybe we have -- gotten the hang of getting her back on her feet as quickly as possible. In the hospital, that meant getting a couple of nurses to help several days before PT showed up to evaluate her.

Things went fine until lunchtime, when a pair of miscommunications about bed rails (no, she does not want them to help her maneuver on the bed) and diet ("soft food, small bites" does not include tasteless ground-up meat and mashed potatoes when she ordered steak tips with a sherry sauce over noodles). Colleen is prone to meltdowns when something like that happens. Fortunately I was in the room and able to translate; I think we have it figured out now, but there will probably be more discussions tomorrow.

After that, of course, it was my turn to have a meltdown. Fortunately mine are quieter, and probably look to an outside observer somewhat like clinical depression mixed with a combination of apologies and curses. You see, I was trying to get her phone to call home and sync, so that I can replace it with the new phone I ordered last week. It did not help at all that she hadn't done anything requiring a login for years. (I had apparently managed to log in earlier in the month because I needed to get something out of her email.)

The phone/Google login kerfuffle was on top of an ongoing frustration with Sable, which keeps randomly shutting itself off. There is apparently a screw loose inside -- I can hear it rattle when I tilt the case. It works perfectly sitting flat on a desk. I'm going to have to go in there with a screwdriver. Later. And after a drive up that was somewhat more exhausting than usual because of unfamiliar exits, construction work, and ambiguous lane markings. Ambiguous to me, anyway. After all that I was pretty close to the edge, and the phone was just enough to tip me over.