My latest near-death experience is scary

I can shrug off  falls, but what happened Friday night still bothers me.

My heart seems OK after the ER trip, but I have a nasty cold. It was causing me to cough, so I took a cough drop in bed. I sit up in bed, so that wasn't too foolish.

Except I coughed, then took a deep breath. Down one of my pipes went the cough drop. All the way.

My heart breaks again

Once again, hospital TV shows have let me down.

I spent most of Thursday evening in the ER hooked up to a heart monitor. At points during my stay, an alarm went off on the monitor. Not once did a nurse rush in screaming "CODE BLUE" OR "I need a crash cart stat."

I also was receiving a saline IV, but not once did someone sneak in and try to inject poison into the IV. Well, the nurse did inject an antibiotic that almost made me barf, but that doesn't count.

It was not the coolest way to spend the evening.

I wasn't feeling awesome during the day, so my plan was just to nap, but Mom and my sister decided to take my blood pressure. It was quite low.

We called my doctor who thought I should be seen, so in I went. They measured my blood pressure as low but were most worried my heart rate was 45 bpm. What the hell? I was practically a zombie and didn't know? They did an EKG and sent me to the ER.

Once in the ER, my heart and vitals seemed fine. But one of the blood tests was weird, so the doctor did other tests, which were all fine, and waited till I got the full saline IV in me to retest the blood. It should have gone down at that point. Instead, it went up.

That was when they started talking about admitting me.

They decided to give me more saline and retest. That one did behave correctly and I got to go home, about 11:15 p.m.

Mom and I went home

Fame and I questioning the Big Guy

I went to a funeral this week.

Of course, I couldn't really hear anything so I spent a lot of time just looking at the closest statue, one of Jesus, showcasing his sacred heart. I asked various questions that I thought were important, pretty much life or death to be honest. But I got no answers.

For different reasons -- it was  an afternoon funeral that   made her late for dinner -- Fame also asked the statue a few questions. She appeared to anyway, staring at it with her ears raised.  I am not sure, but I believe the questions were: Will you feed me? For the love of God, why is no one feeding me?

She apparently got her answer because she then went to bed for the rest of the funeral.

Faithfully, my Nativity

This year I decided to adhere to traditional Nativity roles, or as traditional as one gets when action figures are involved.

The figures on the left are my three kings -- Grodd, Max and Archer. Grodd is king of Gorilla City (or pretender depending on which continuity you follow). Max is king of the wild things and Archer of the Gorgonites, of course.

Goat Boy, a wild thing, is one of the livestock.

Santa is just there to ensure everyone has a cool Yule.

Cosmic Angela serves as an angel because she is the only accessible figure with wings and ("not much else, says Mom).

Jesus, Joseph and Mary come next.

The Dewback is also livestock, and the stormtrooper will keep in from causing a ruckus. I don't have any shepherds. I know.

Finally, in the rear are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Batman. They will certainly protect the Nativity. But come on, name one thing that would not be better without Buffy and Bats?

Here are the ones from 2007,  2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. These posts also have some background. And God must be amused by this because I have not been struck down yet.

Be careful what you wish for

The bathroom at work really stunk yesterday, unfortunately not a one time thing. Again, it smelled like something died in the pipes.

Another distressing regularity: The bathrooms at work are not often well-cleaned.

So I was quite pleased when I went in the bathroom later, and it smelled fine. It had been cleaned before I complained!

My joy faded a bit when I went in the wheelchair stall, and found a wet floor in the middle of the stall. Granted, that is where the drain is, but who wants  something-died water on one's wheelchair?

Not fir-ever

Once, when I was a child, I was setting up the village underneath the Christmas tree. I think I pulled something a little hard, and the next thing I knew, the tree fell down on top of me. I wasn't hurt and neither were the tree and ornaments.

No such luck this year, when I backed into the light cord and brought my tree down. Several ornaments broke and half the light no longer work.

My sister came into my room at the sound of the crash. I just sat there, not saying anything. It is probably a good thing as I was so mad.

As with the lift, Mom tried to take the blame, saying she shouldn't have left the cord for the lights hanging down. Mom's wrong.

The tree has been with me since 1995, through moves from North Carolina and Herndon. It's a good little tree. Too bad I broke it.

Tis the season

We put up my Christmas tree over the weekend.

Well, Mom put it up and decorated it. I unwrapped the ornaments.

It always makes me sad, in both a good and not so good way.

Ornaments, like the red disco ball and the flat angels, remind me of both sets of grandparents, reminding me I sure miss them. I have an ornament of a yellow dog for Claren, and I miss her, especially her lightning-fast hurrying tendency (really missed on  cold nights like this).

But, there's the less good.

I see a fish and am reminded how much I loved tropical fish -- everything about them. Watching them, feeding them, cleaning their tanks. But I had to give it up. I can't care for myself these days, let alone fish. Same with the parrot ornaments. The worst are probably the horse ones.

None of this is surprising, which also makes me feel kind of sad.

Broken

We broke my lift yesterday.

I say we because Mom insists it was her fault. I know better.

I am the one that needs the lift. I am the one who called her and asked her to come her me off the floor. I am the one who was sitting on the floor right near the leg brace and didn't notice it was caught under my chair. I didn't even notice it was trapped under the chair when the lift wouldn't raise up.

Of course, it did eventually raise up ... after it broke the brace.

A new one is coming, till then we are improvising and I am still mad.

Saved

My joystick cover is too big to fall down the crack in the floor where an elevator's doors are.

Who cares, you says, only a doofus could knock it into the crack.

Just call me a doofus who is really glad.

Working with my family

On Thursday, exterminators visited our office. I was home teleworking, but when my friend mentioned it to me, I worried Fame's bed might get bug spray on it.

My friend had told me at lunch, and on the way back to the office, we ran into our program's safety coordinator. He wasn't sure, so I planned to check with the building manager. My friend, though, offered to carry the bed out to the car, so I was set.

I swung by her desk to thank her, and it turned out I didn't need to call the building manager. She had already called him and learned that the exterminators would just be putting out traps.

When she heard this story, Mom laughed and said it was "like working wit you family" because everyone is looking out for you.

This seems to happen wherever I work. On 9/11, someone carried me down the steps from the 22nd floor of my last job. My boss always got Claren water.

Mom was also talking about the person who sewed me a new wheelchair pouch with some awesome material she picked up

This friend also gets some of the family dynamics.

On Friday, we were chatting and I forget why but I said to her, my sister told me about a kid at her school who has Christmas lights on his wheelchair. (She also apparently told him that he drives as bad as her brother.)

My friend responded to the light comment by saying, we could  do that to yours right now (I work next to a Target). I replied, but my sister would make fun of me. To which she said, Matt, your sister will make fun of you anyway.

Today is that sister's birthday, so before she yells at me for allegedly being mean to her in my blog again, allow me to say that she puts up with an awful lot -- middle-of-the-night calls for help, falls, my unique way of thinking (she might say stupid) -- and I am very lucky to have her. I might even admit to loving her. But I will NEVER give her a guest post to try to rebut my claims!

Good or bad

My sister and her daughter were discussing the nature of mankind: good or evil. My sister said most people are good. My niece said, well we studied Calvin in history class and he said people are evil. (Two things: I love that my niece brings up history class, and  I am not sure it was Calvin.) Here are my two cents:

Again, I was on the bike trail. Fame pooped. I lined myself up to pick it up, bent over, couldn't reach, reset my chair, tried again, couldn't really reach and was bent over for nearly a minute. Someone stopped then and helped me. More people passed right by.

It was pretty apparent, I believe, that I was struggling.  But most people decided not to offer help.

Mom said to focus on the guy who did stop, but that means ignoring that most people don't care.