OK, what an afternoon.

Hello all my friends. On Monday, I got some steroid shots in my back muscles to help with the pain. But they say it takes three days for full effects. I have to admit depending on how bad / hurting I am, the shots can help almost with in minutes of the injection. Because of people being on vacation I did not see my normal provider so the question I have did not get answered. But let’s move on.

This morning I got up like around 5 AM not able to sleep, that is one of the effects that these steroids have on me, I can not sleep, and I feel better than ever. I can breathe again, I can move better, and I am feeling so much better. But with my fragile bone situation they have to be very careful how much steroids I get. Yesterday I worked on our laundry while Ron worked on the house and I was so full of pain and swollen muscles, Ron wanted to forbid me from any work today. That ended up being not the case, but he is very upset while being grateful.

Hurricane Ian took the roof off the front room of our home, it was about 12 foot by 24 foot, give or take some inches for supports or such. The county says it is 12 by 24, so that is what we go with. Due to our roof being hit by other roofs and debris, our roof (which is a great AMS metal roof that has never failed) split open on a tear on the south side of an east facing room roof and peeled it back over half the room. That was my office and my electronics were in there,

After the storm we had to close off the room because we had a double french door there and so say six or more feet. In the emergency Ron and James but up sheets of plywood we had over the opening to prevent any water coming in and keeping the heat out. It was not the greatest situation, but until the inner roof was installed we had to close that part of the house off. So recently we got the panels that we ordered right after the hurricane, so Ron and James put the inner roof up. Ron has worked for a while to calk and fix any leaks.

Today when as much as could be done to weatherproof the room and with Ron trying to work in that room with no air flow and temperatures between 95 and 120 I declared that the wall had to come down so Ron could work in there without the heat causing him more health problems. At first he resisted but when I laid it all out he agreed it needed to be done. So after trying to work in the room with the high Florida heat he came in and covered in sweat and shaking the guy with MS said he was going to lay down. When he got up he agreed I was correct.

So as Ron was working in the supper hot room that is east facing getting all the morning sun / heat getting it ready to take down the tarps on that side and the plywood on the rest of the house side. I worked to move everything that had been piled / set in front of that are because we did not have room for it. Once Ron was done came the real pain issue for me.

We had two lighter pieces of plywood across the top and on very heavy 1 inch plywood on the bottom supporting the upper ones. Ron made sure when he took the two pieces off he made sure he took the brunt of the weight. But I still had to help him carry them out to the family room where they are now stored. He wanted to wait to take the biggest heaviest one off as he was really worried about my back and health.

But I moved most of the inside stuff and Rom moved the heavy stuff and then we took down the plywood. For the first time since Ian made Sept. 28, 2022, in the Fort Myers area as a Category 4 hurricane, we had a connection to the front of our home from the inside. The ferocious 150-mph winds lasted for over 8 hours as we were in the hurricane eye wall. Our home had with stood every other hurricane, but one woman neighbor claims she had seen a mini tornado caused by the hurricane move over our home and several others in the same east / west direction, which would have caused their roofs to be ripped off and slam into ours.

So here is the photo I quickly took as Ron had taken the heavy stuff he wouldn’t let me handle out, and after I set up the fan. It will be grand to get our room back. But still we have to reapply to FEMA to pay for all the bids we finally got, but now FEMA has closed our account since it has been this long. We have to now start a new account, get a new inspection and hope we get enough money for the 30 grand in home repairs we need after the Hurricane. Hugs

Hugs and love for everyone. I am going to try to eat before bed. Scottie

A health update

A short note. I saw my allergist today. He is the one that called me personally to strongly urge me to go back on my heart rate medication. I was seeing him because I made the mistake of leaving the special soaps he prescribed too long on my face / scalp, and it gave me another bad chemical burn. My face was the worst with first open sores, then red peeling skin as it healed like a bad sun burn. My scalp had sores and was crazy itchy as it heals.

He has prescribed new medications for my breathing and is sending me to a dermatologist as it has become that bad. But the most important part of the exam was when he listened to my chest and asked me questions about my heart / breathing. See the issue was I was on a Beta Blocker to keep my heart rate low, because I was running in the 120s beats per minutes, and when doing things or stressed I would go up into the 150s. But to have the allergy shots I need, I have to stop taking the Beta Blocker medication that slows my heart. So I made my primary doctor remove the medication.

But this time when the medication was removed, my heart rate went much higher and much more out of control than ever before. Plus I started to have serious shortness of breath, to the point where I struggled to breathe just sitting at my desk, while any exertion set off a panic to get air in. So at this doctor’s personal phone call to me, I went back on the medication after a month or more.

Today as part of my exam, he listened to my chest and spent more time doing so than is normal. He went back and forth from my front to my back and only asked me to breathe deep once. Then he asked me how had my breathing been since I went back on the heart rate medication. I told him how it improved but still was worse than it had been before. I described how I still had times of shortness of breath, which means times I feel I cannot get a breath of air in. I told him it happened really bad when I laid on my right side, and if I got excited or was doing stuff. He then asked me a question. Do I ever feel like my chest feels funny when that breathing problem happens? Yes I told him, I feel like there is something inside my chest lurching around. He paused and then told me he wanted me to tell the heart doctor I see on the 30th this, and explained that when he listened my heart was not in complete rhythm. Just sitting there in his office, my heart was not in normal sinus rhythm. It was skipping. He is worried that during that time period I was off that medication with my heart rates in the 140s, I suffered damage to my heart.

Well we will know at the end of the month. I was not surprised by what he said because Ron, my spouse, worked in the open heart ICU for 18 years. When this was happening, he was beside himself trying to get me to go back on the medication. He also has been looking several times daily at my Apple Watch EKG readings and he has been very upset with them, showing me the pauses and different parts that should be differently shown. I was not goods with strips in the ICUs, and so I can not see what he does. He is good with them but like I said he did Open Heart ICU 18 years. I will keep you updated, but that does explain my being so tired, so easily winded, wanting to go to bed so much, and why it is so hard to think some days. Just one more thing to have to deal with. Hugs

And I screwed up again, again

This morning I am reloading and fixing my secondary video computer. Why you ask, did I get malware you might think. Nope I got hit with a case of stupidity, and it was a large dose. I was fixing up a 500 GB drive spare drive I have. The plan was to wipe the drive and partition it. I have good software for this. But the software might not be good enough to overcome my own stupidity. My main drives on each computer are also 500 GB SSDs. I mistook the main drive for the spare and ordered the computer to wipe that drive. Yes they main drive. The program did ask me twice to verify I wanted it to do that and I quickly without reading all the notice I just hit yes continue. As you can imagine, the computer quickly became a rock. This morning I am fixing what I broke. Hugs

So I over did, and I am paying for it, sick for days

I have tried five times to write this post to only put it in drafts and a day later try again. Last night Ron came into the bedroom because I went to bed about 5 PM after he fixed me something to eat for supper, he got really upset because he said I felt really fevered and wanted to take my temperature. I was too restless and just wanted to sleep. I guess I drifted off and he checked in on me often before he came to bed. So I will try to edit this from all the other posts and get it out today, as I already am failing. Ron is upset because my back muscles are not stopping the spasms but are still actively jumping and swollen. Which shouldn’t be happening because I just got my steroid desensitizing back shots.

Those that follow the blog know I am trying hard to expand my activities. The end of last week I tried hard to do things both with Ron and on my own. It caused me to get very sick. What no doctor has explained to me or even looked into is why my body when stressed gets very ill. It happened when I tried to go back to work in 2010, and in four years I went from pretty stable and feeling the best I had in decades to being so ill I was in the hospital more as a patient than a worker. My hospitalist doctor was a friend I worked with in the ICU and he told me I had to stop working and reduce the stress on my body or he would be going to my funeral. And that was going to happen very soon. My body was shutting down.

So I stopped working and I went into a deep depression. That was when I had my emotional breakdown and my childhood abuse became something I couldn’t hide from, couldn’t bury, and couldn’t face. I refused to come out of the bedroom. That was when my doctors that were handling my mental health and my pain doctor talked to Ron about giving me something to do to distract me, which was the candle making. For those that don’t know, Ron set up my computers and a candle making station up in the bedroom and even while he was working nights and trying to sleep I would make candles non-stop. But during that time I started hurting my self again, self harm. I started cutting. Something I had not done for decades.

It was also when Randy showed me how much a brother he was and how much he cared. Randy worked long and hard night shifts, but he called me constantly and kept his phone on, often waking up just to check in on me. I do not like talking on the phone as it was one of the things I was punished harshly for in childhood, but I do enjoy talking with Randy. If I felt the vortex coming or it dragging me I would call Randy and he would spend hours talking to me, distracting me, helping me. The God’s only know how much sleep he lost and how much money if he could have billed me for those hours how wealthy he would be today.

Anyway on to today. I have been trying to do more, both for my self to keep my body going and to help Ron. He is working so hard on the outside construction of the house and he is so tired and worn that I am trying hard to do as much as I can inside the house. I was warned, Nan warned me several times in the comments to not over do.

But I over did badly. So much so that Friday evening I carried a misdelivered small package to the neighbor next door who is an older woman who was so concerned about me falling because I couldn’t stand upright because my back kept giving out, she insisted on helping me back home. Over the weekend I was so sick I was throwing up and stuck in bed. I thought yesterday I would be OK but by noon I went to bed and stayed there until this morning. Ron kept coming in to check on me and at one point he said he got scared as I was so still he thought I was not breathing.

I thought everything was back to my normal today when I went for my shower after the Sunday news shows. Oh shit was I wrong. I was fine as I got everything ready, did the normal things like teeth brushing and shaving. But my back kept complaining more and hurting more as I was standing. See standing is the worst thing for me. If I go shopping with Ron, the worst thing is if he stops to comparison shop, I have to keep walking in circles or back and forth. But I got into the shower and started on doing my very long hair.

Very long story short, my back gave out and I sank to the bottom of the shower. I finished my shower while sitting on the floor. When I was able to get back on my feet, get dried off, and got dressed, then I made another mistake. I told Ron what happened. He was mortified and furious I did not somehow summon him. Like how, telepathy? But I also admit I was scared. I couldn’t stand, and it was scary sitting on the shower floor. But I also know I can not show that to Ron. He has enough on his mind with fixing the house and if he thinks I got scared in the shower he will stop what repairs he is doing and rip the shower out to put in one with seats.

But I understand. Ron is like me. He gets very upset when he sees me fail and he knows he wants to help, just as I get upset when I see him fail on something like not being able to do something or his blood sugar or other medical need and I try to help him.

So that is why my online stuff has been hit and more like miss this last week, and why a lot of my posting was either from early morning or just email from my bed. My back has already starting giving out and I have not even done anything but sat in my chair, and I need to go lay down.

So that has been our last week. Ron working hard on getting new bids for FEMA and trying to keep fixing what he can. He has bids on the bottom of the house, the leveling, and he also got bids on the flooring and other things. Me getting what medical help I can and James doing his thing at his job and helping all his friends and us. So tomorrow we all move forward if we can. See you in the comments. Hugs

A call from my allergiest, yes the doctor called me.

The backstory is that I was on Metoprolol to control my heart rate. However that drug interferes with the function of the epinephrine which is a form of adrenaline, as it keeps the heart rate low. I need allergy shots for my allergies. I am a person who really shouldn’t stop them after the maintenance dose is reached. I don’t retain the sensitivity or what ever they call not having bad allergic reactions. So as I was going to be getting my shots again, I needed to be removed from the medication.

When I was removed from the Metoprolol my heart rate soared uncontrolled. The first two weeks I was running in the high 130s to lower 140s. I also had huge shortness of breath and my Apple Watch EKG function showed my rhythm was not even, giving pauses and double beats. Ron worked open heart ICU and he was freaking out. I contacted my primary care doctor, who referred me to my old heart group. The doctor who treated me there was no longer with them, and they simply ignored the referral. Almost a month went by with first me then the primary care office trying to contact their appointment desk and they never answered us. So I got referred to a different group at my request.

In the wealthiest country in the world the next appointment I could get was three months away at the end of May. My heart rate settled down to running in the 100s to the lower 120s. However the shortness of breath remained bad. Here is where the current trouble begins. I used the patient portal to ask my allergist office if they treated asthma and included the details. And the nurse replied that yes they did but due to the heart rate she referred the information to the doctor. Danged if yesterday afternoon I got a call from the doctor himself. He was very concerned. He asked questions and said he felt that the heart rate even at the lower rates it is now down to from the upper rates it was still too high and the shortness of breath which he thought was not asthma but heart related. The allergist really pushed hard for me to go back on the Metoprolol until I have seen the cardiologist. When I reminded him I have an upcoming testing for the level of my current allergies so they can correctly prepare the serum, he told me with my heart rates so high he wouldn’t give me the test nor the injections anyway.

So as of yesterday afternoon I am back on the heart rate medication, my heart rate has already fallen into the high 80s, low 90s after exertion. The allergy stuff is on hold. Hopefully I will be back to normal me soon. I was already feeling much better as the heart rate settled in to the 100s, but when it gets back into the 70s I will feel even better. This is not the result I wanted, and the allergist was not sure if I would ever be able to get my shots because metoprolol is the only drug doctors use to slow the heart that he knew of. Hugs

Just remember this is what the republicans are screaming vehemently against

Woke = Compassion, caring, sympathy/empathy and love.

I am angry.

I have not been well. I have heart rates in the high 140’s. Twice I have gone into serious atrial fibrillation territory. Yes heart attack or heart shut down. The doctors are changing my medications to get my heart rate, my pain, my other issues under control. I get very few hours right now on the computer to read what I think is worth reading and even less to share it. Now I am hearing that because I have not been able to get to comments due to my health and thinking the people who come here would be science based reasonable people who would understand the majority of the medical community agrees with trans affirmative care I could rest while my doctors find ways to help me.

Turns out I was wrong. Decent people would have understood the situation I am under, how some days I struggle to breathe with my heart rate so high, how sitting in my desk chair causes me to feel ever building pain and yet I don’t have the money to buy / build the things I need to keep doing what I did.

Turns out the anti- trans trolls who I already fully debunked moved in in my absence and tried to full spread their lies, their myths. In the process they have sucked in normally reasonable people. All because I was not feeling up to getting to the comments something I have been struggling with for the last year.

I thank those that contacted me with the situation. I do my blog to counter the misinformation and hate put out by the regressive religious right. My side is backed up by science and peer reviewed studies, something the other side cannot claim. They want to hold on to tradition, to the way it always was in their lifetime, not realizing before that it was different also. I am done and angry.

Let me say that again. I am pissed off and angry. For now until I can go back threw all the comments and correct the misinformation and hate I am shutting comment off on things I post, if I manage to find time to post anything at all.

Last night I went to bed about 7 PM, my pulse was racing, my pain high and due to my medications and my supper I was very tired. I had a good blood sugar before supper of only 104, but I knew to cover more than that with my insulin. I had more tabs open and things I wanted to get to on both computers than I can describe. I would love to share that news with everyone, but the regressive haters seem not to want that. OK then if it is a constant fight on FACTS you want to have I guess I have to divert what energy I have to that.

The truth is on the progressive accepting side! The regressive traditional side is wrong. Just as it has always been for all of history! The earth is not flat, the sun doesn’t rotate around the earth! Black people are not less than whites, Jews are not evil as a group. Grow the fuck up all you people who say that it was not that way before. Yes I am angry. I don’t feel well and I must now deal with people that think the Florida administration that claims vaccines are bad and dangerous to your health has the right take on teaching. Dogs that love gravy do you people ever get out of your bubbles and look around the world. The rest of the world is leaving the US behind on how to treat people, education, healthcare including child / mother death during childhood. The last bastion of resistance in a capitalist society is centered in the US while the rest of the developed nations soar above us in how they treat their people. But you in the US just keep worrying about who uses the bathroom and be suspicious if they don’t look how you think they should. Oh crap those undeserving people might get enough government assistance to eat a full meal today. Keep watching so the corporations can steal everything you have with the government supporting them!

So to those that sent me messages of the mess my comment sections have become I thank you. To those assholes who wanted to abuse my faith in humanity I am going to deal with you. And I am angry! Hugs

The two screens I have been trying to get to

Hello everyone. Here are the screenshots of the stories I want to read and then I have a story to tell everyone. Notice the open tabs.

But what I really want to talk about it four days ago a woman I have done computer work for in the past. She knew I had pulled back from helping people during Covid but she had hired someone to help and things were worse and now she couldn’t even get online and her computer refused to respond to the keyboard. She said she did not know who to call and I said I would help. I went to her home and I got angry at the story she told me. She was being scammed. A couple years ago during Covid her old computer died and she wanted to just get an inexpensive computer to do her family genealogy hobby and a couple other things, but she really did not spend much time on it. The couple is in their 80s. The computer person sold her a really old poor laptop, A Toshiba Satellite L505D-S5983. I came with windows 7 so the computer person sold her windows 10 at a profit. Then the computer person set the computer up with an anti-virus. I looked up the company and it has a good reputation, but one thing I noticed was the product was sold as a business product so covered a lot of computers in your business setup. I noticed the price was reasonably low for that kind of deal but again the company had good reviews and ratings. When I was telling the woman this she asked me the price and I told her, a little over $33 dollars. From the look on her face I knew something was wrong. The computer person she had bought the computer from who set it up was charging her over $50 dollars for the security software. Also the woman paid a fee to the computer person so that if the computer had an issue the computer person would fix it but again a cost, a reduced cost because of the repair deal but still a cost. Then because of the problems the computer person let slip that they had remote access to the computer and complete control over it. The woman who called me was angry and upset, she did not want this and know what to do. She was being legally scammed which she stopped any business relationship with that computer person because if I couldn’t repair her computer she would replace it or just go without. I explained to her I could reset it and get her functions back while removing the remote control set up the other person had installed. I explain the computer had a small AMD dual core processer so was going to be easily over loaded and that was why after starting the keyboard seemed not to be working because the computer simple need a lot of time to get to the new commands. There was too much happening at start up that was set up by the other computer person and the remote software, plus the security software was set to do complete scans and do updates when the computer started taking all the resources. Yesterday Ron and I got the laptop and accessories she wanted me to fix. Before I connected it to my systems, I backed up the data on the computer to two different separate drives. After making sure it was backed up I reset windows still offline. That took all day yesterday. Then this morning I went through the settings and privacy of the system, and only when I was sure as I could be I connected it to my set up putting it online. I then reset windows from the cloud. The download was quick but the computer is stressing to install windows and is at 26% moving very slowly.

It makes me angry that people think nothing of taking advantage of older people who live in an old mobile home park just trying to have something when everything costs so much these days. I ask why someone would try to milk these people of their very few dollars. I told her I would do my best to take care of their computer needs like I did before Covid. But they have had enough and are selling their home. The hurricane Ian really frightened them. I am investigating if windows defender is a good option for a security system anti-virus software. Hugs

I hope this will help explain why I am so frustrated.

I have been able to get to my computers on and off today. Most of my day I sit at the computer for a few minutes and select a few news articles to read, then I have to leave the computer for some reason often to lay down due to pain. Then at the end of the night like now that I am tired and want to go to bed, I have my news / bloggings screen like this and that doesn’t include the many videos on the other screen I wanted to watch yet have not been able to watch yet. I am so frustrated these days. Hugs

Full screen pic

A little while ago hurt myself bad

While watching the morning Sunday broadcast shows I was helping Ron deal with getting Sunday breakfast together. Ron likes to do a big breakfast on Sunday morning, but as we age it has shrank in size but not in stuff. As we were getting stuff out of the bottom freezer drawer Ron was on one side I was on the other. After getting stuff out I was holding a couple things in my hands so I lowered down and stretched out to place them on Ron’s side of the large drawer to better even things out in the freezer. As I was putting the first of the things down I got a horrible stabbing pain in my middle back and then the muscles contracted adding more pain. I gave a gasp and cried out. I dropped the things in my hands and partially stood up, turned and leaned up against the nearby door frame and just tried to breathe. My right leg from the calf down went numb. Ron rushed over to me but the damage was done. I was in trouble. I shuffled to my desk, took more medications, sitting was very painful, but standing was also very painful each time I tried. I am not going to be able to help Ron with breakfast as we planned. Just that damned quick a mistake, an action without thinking has seriously impacted me this morning.

A time later. Ron made a great breakfast of hashbrowns and an egg scramble with mushrooms, tri-colored peppers, and bacon. Normally we have ham steak and maybe sausage with breakfast but after I hurt myself Ron declared we did not have those things and did not need them. Plus we had toast. I ate until I was a bit overfull. I won’t be able to help him clean up like I normally do and when the current show “Face the Nation” is over I am going to bed for a long while to release my back. I took extra medication when it happened and that plus the food is making me very tired. I hope when I get up, I can get to some comments. If you don’t hear from me, you know I was not able to do so. My right foot still is screaming with the stinging numbness feeling. Hugs for everyone.