365 x 14 ?

A funny thing happened on the way to last Wednesday. As I started my outdoor spring activities, I had been feeling winded over the slightest exertion for about three weeks. As is usually the case with these things .... they sneak up on you. Sort of a feeling at first, "Wow, am I ever out of shape from sitting on the couch all winter". Then SWMBO (in her gentle, concerned voice) politely suggested that I should: "GO TO THE F**KING DOCTOR". So I did, two weeks ago. He listened, got a low O2 reading from my blood and was concerned enough to order a same day chest x-ray (negative) and prescribed a Breztri inhaler in case I had the start of COPD (which ultimately killed mom). A breathing test was scheduled for June 11th. I had ordered and received my very own little O2 sensor to track the vast improvements the Breztri inhaler was going to make? Ya, not so much. I slowly went downhill from there and by last Wednesday, I was having trouble just sitting at the kitchen table. So, I had a little cry, hit SEND on my blog a day early ... and called 911.

Each day, we are flooded with coverage about our failing health care system. I count myself as lucky on a couple of fronts. First, we live in a paradise. For about half half the world's population, I'm not sure having your blood O2 at 78% is survivable for very long without modern medicine? They'd just call in the ikd women, gather in a circle and with me the best. Here in paradise, it took eight whole minutes for paramedics arrive and have me on oxygen. A few minutes later (say that with a French accent), the first of many ECG's was off to the hospital with me in hot pursuit. Prod, poke, stick, bleed, jab, jab, and a bed in emerg. Shortly thereafter, blood work, chest x-ray (negative again) and the decision to admit me. Four hours after that (at 4 in the morning), I am whisked up to a luxurious semi-private room (thanks RBC Pension Plan) and placed in a Hillrom-Baxter Progressa Bed, which I looked up. Forty grand! It cost more than my new Mazda. So, for the next six days, a small army swarms around me like bees on a giant beetle. There are people in the wings, doing laundry so I have clean face cloths. People are cooking somewhere and another whole team is bringing it to me, three times a day. Blood cultures are run, my spit is being analyzed. I got inside peek at their axial tomography scanner, six doctors have looked in on me and there is one smart one off somewhere (spoken of in hushed tones), who looks at my scans and makes pronouncements:

• bring me his urine
• bring me a toenail, do not wash it first
• anything that he coughs up

There are givers & takers, wheelers & dealers all riding up and down elevators, scurrying up and down hallways, rushing in and out of our cloistered lives seemingly with purpose. There are cleaners, water bringers, towel people, porters who wheel me all around the hospital and then the glue that holds it all together ... nurses. They are young, painfully cheerful, considerate, compassionate, and simply work their assess off for twelve straight hours. Go home for twelve, then come in and do all over again. We must seem like cars on an assembly line to them? We are wheeled in on our worst day, they tend to our every need, every question, every complaint, then two or four or fourteen days later, we go limping out of their lives forever and a new beetle is dropped into the hive for all of these workers to hover over. It seems a strange thankless existence to me, so I thank them every single time I get a chance. As a "process guy" I must say the enterprise just amazes me. How do they bring all these disparate functions into one giant ediface and just go on doing it day after day? Sick people go in one end and healthier people go out the other.

So, I got out yesterday. The diagnosis is RA-ILD. You can look it up. The way I put it to my buddy (CO) was Grandma, Grandpa, Dad and finally mom were all right around 90 when they snuffed it ... so I thought that I ... might have the same twenty-five years? The runway just got a little shorter. Hard to get there ... with this. The only thing that pisses me off is I deferred my CPP and OAS thinking I was going to clean up! The answer to the question posed in the title of this weeks' BLOG (365 x 14) ... is just over five thousand days. That's my sentence. The one I am imposing on myself. I need to get fourteen years of monthly payments out of the Feds to break even. That's a bit of a stretch over the grimmest reading material I can find. Do you think that with a couple of advances in treatment and clean living, I can get there? Watch me!

Our Optimum Week

SWMBO can cook. She's just not as good as I am. What she really hates, is when she goes to cook something ... she wants to find the kitchen has been scoured by a NASA clean room team. All her ingredients must have been brought to room temperature, peeled, washed, cubed, chopped, grated and laid out in neat piles and placed in alphabetical order. The dogs may not play, the TV should be muted. Speaking to her is to be avoided, lest she is loses count of how many eyes of newt she has added to the cauldron! Best if the dogs and I just go to bedroom, stare at the wall and take an hour for quiet reflection. When she asks for chicken, if you tell her there is a frozen whole chicken in the freezer downstairs or place a misshapen grimy potato on the counter in front of her, it's Plan B. Plan B is a bowl of minute rice or she goes back to her couch and eats whatever I make. Needless to say, my kitchen is usually in this configuration:

So, as planned, I am now spending down my Optimum account. I used 370K for a grocery order to help SWMBO fend for herself while I am laid up. I did snag 44K back in points on continuity spends. I will do that twice more, between now and the end of June bringing my grocery budget for that timeframe to zero. That will generate a $1000 in savings from that line item which I will invest in PT lumber, topsoil, mulch, etc. etc and perhaps some labour to wrest those those 200 lb timbers into place. I seem to have slightly less time to spend my money, so what the hell. I love it when a plan comes together.

No list this week, but look for cookies and strip loins in your flyer. Avoid the USA sourced corn on the cob. They can stuff that up their ass. "Start with the silky pointy end boys." Leave lots of stalk on the other end for grip? I will easily spend the $43 and get these 14K back in points before next Wednesday:

I Am Reading

Grim news about auto-immune diseases.

We Are Watching

Project Hail Mary - About twenty years ago, I conceived of a business model where any Hollywood producer, director, screen writer could hire someone with some basic Grade 7 science knowledge and they would review all of the content before it gets put up on the big screen? That person would of course, be me and they would pay me millions to sit around, stare at Gillian Anderson (in all her glory) and warn them when they were about to break some basic laws with respect to physics, chemistry, astronomy, genetics, geology, etc. The name of the company was to be Hire A Twelve Year Old (so you don't look like a moron). Project Hail Mary is a wonderful film. Having read this book twice (and The Martian three times and Artemis twice ... all written by Andy Weir), I can tell you that one things he really strives for is getting the science correct. Those of us who grew up watching NOVA on PBS every single Wednesday night for forty years ... appreciate that. Why, oh why do Hollywood movers and shakers insist on screwing it up so frigging badly. Two quick ones. Spaceships, in space travel in straight lines. They do not fly in curved pathways (except under gravity) like go carts. If you turn off the engine ... they coast. They do not stop like an unpushed base for a snowman on your front lawn? Secondly, if you are using centrifugal force to simulate gravity and you are floating in a weightless environment and start your ship spinning, you will stay still and the wall will come and hit you in the ear? Even worse, as your simulated gravity starts to work, you WILL FLOAT TO THE CEILING OF THE ROOM YOU ARE IN!!! Did these people never take a pail of water and swing it around in circles when they were twelve? It's a great movie. Ignore the man behind the the curtain.

... and finally

So, I am home. SWMBO nearly died of fright but kept the puppies safe and my seedlings alive. I didn't have any news until Sunday, so I didn't share any. My patio will be open shortly. There will be red wine and cigars consumed. This is not a dress rehearsal. 14 x 365!

Mitch & Maddie