Thursday, February 1, 2018

Seizures R Us

Yay! Yay yay yay! Finally: We had a night without you-know-what anywhere this morning. It is such a good feeling.
I have another cord of wood coming (and from a new supplier). It will be the first of six cords I will get over the next couple of months. My plan its to maintain a good supply and never get close to running out again as I am now. Next winter, I’ll be keeping two stoves going.
“My” Cooper’s Hawk came back yesterday. I keep my binoculars at the ready to watch the raptors that come. He’s truly a magnificent bird.
Yesterday I had a serious scare. Very suddenly I got a searing pain in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I could feel myself tingling and getting light headed so I lay on the floor in a panic and started seizing. But the seizure, this time, was a blessing. It got me breathing.
I waited a while and slowly went to rest on the couch. Then, feeling better I went back to doing what I was doing: Cleaning the litter box. But as soon as I got near it, it started again so I went to my computer and Googled “asthma” + “Cat urine.”
Sure enough! Cat urine produces ammonia and it burns lung tissue. So I took the litter box outside to clean it and I still had trouble. So … Back to Google, then Amazon and a “military grade” respirator is on its way. I am a patient of the Pacific Lung Clinic and got the lead from them.
Plus I am going to look around carefully to see if there’s a way I can let the cats outside. It’s not easy when the walls are two-feet thick logs. It’s always something.
Sheba dug a large whole near the base of a tree. In the “soil” of my yard, that’s quite an accomplishment; it’s nearly all rock. But instead of getting angry, I decided to plant something in the hole. That’s why I went to the nursery yesterday.
I looked around and decided on a dwarf blue Rhododendron and took it to the till and that’s where I got into a discussion with Kent. He asked me why I chose that plant and I gave him my answer. And then he said he’d asked because he wondered if I knew that the plant I’d chosen had been propagated on Gabriola.
He told me about the couple who supplied them and I left really happy that I had a locally developed plant in my garden. Sheba came from a Gabriola breeder too.
I had to tell Sea Air people about my seizures. Had Sean, the pilot, not caught me I’d have fallen in the water and surely seized badly and that’d freak people out and they’d likely call 911 and the whole horrid cycle would spin out of control.
It hadn’t occurred to me to do that. Brenda, the lawyer with whom I fly, told me I should do so and she was right to do that. I learned an important lesson about proactive informing. I’m going to have to warn the Arts Council too.
Now, for Crystal et al, I’m off to bake a cake.


















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