Musings from my Hospital Bed - part one

Long about Friday I started feeling better. In spite of the downward trajectory of my errant sodium. Sure, there were some discomforts that never eased off until I got back to our mountain cabin five days later. Like the constant buzzing in my head. And the fact that I couldn’t sleep on my left side for the jabbing pain in my upper chest cavity. Not a clue what that was all about!

But compared to Wednesday’s blinding headache and suspected bleeding gut - those things that brought me here - well, Friday came in feeling pretty strong. Comparatively speaking, that is - in reality I was actually sicker, with a new sodium count of 111, four points lower than when I’d checked myself in.

If truth be known, I was clueless about the importance of salt until I was forced to educate myself. Up until then, I pretty much took my sodium for granted. In fact, like a lot of us, I assumed it was sorta bad. I assumed it was responsible for all that nasty bloating in the past. I assumed that, what little salt I did need, was busy doing its job while I was off doing mine.

So yeah . . . I had lots of time to think about my salt while I was "lounging around" in the hospital. I got to thinking how our bodies are a huge percent water and, one way of looking at it is that it’s salt water. We need our levels to be in something called mEq/l . . . 135 to 145 of these. According to Wikipedia, anything lower than 125 mEq/l is considered “sever” hyponatremia. To have a sodium level of 111 and still be standing - well that was baffling to the staff and doctors who saw me. I was an anomaly and I suspect that later I was elevated to a different status . . . I'd become a challenge.

Here’s something else to keep in mind about sodium - once it dips, it’s important to bring it back up s l o w l y. Safe is a maximum of 10 to 12 points within a 24 hour period. That little bit of info will come in handy as you follow the rest of this story. Any faster and it’s like salting a slug - all the fluid rushes to the concentration of salt and the poor thing shrivels up into a potato chip. Just not a very tasty one. Unlike a slug though, when the concentration is in the brain cells, you end up drowning them which results in a surprising plethora of neurological issues.

But being at 111 that Friday wasn’t cool either. Not cool at all. I should have been in seriously bad shape - 110 and below and you’re in danger of things like seizures, comas and other bad stuff like . . . death. But not me, oh no. I was feeling pretty good on Friday. Then, on Saturday, when my salt jumped all the way up to 116, I got to feeling really, really good. In fact Saturday the doctor got a little worried about the jump from 111 to 116 and took me off the heavier drip and onto salt tabs.

So I’m finally free of my companion bag of salt water. The one that dripped into my pincushioned arm for the past three days. I get to tape a plastic bag around my I/V stick and take a nice, hot, wonderful shower! 

I’m up and clean and dressed and walking the halls, free to start laughing at how fun it’d been to tote my companion pole along with me like a skinny shadow on wheels - wires tangled, tripping over this one or that one, left hand wrapped around trying to keep my naked bottom behind its sexy little gowned curtain.

And free to start complaining. Like . . . why am I still here? If all we’re going to do is take sodium tablets, lasix, magnesium and other sundry pills, can’t I do that from the lovely porch of my mountain home? I promise, promise, promise that I’ll come back every morning for my daily blood letting. I pinkie swear!

But no, my doctor, whom I shall lovingly refer to as Doctor Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart), could not, in his professional opinion, outpatient me while I was sill considered sever. This is where I started singing that song: 

"Welcome to the hospital Carolina. It’s a lovely place, such a lovely place."

"There's plenty of room at the hospital Carolina.

"You can check out any time you'd like.  

But you can NEVER LEAVE!

Captive as I was, I set up my hospital room as a workstation and tried to get some writing done. 

My super wonderful husband (whose vacation I was ruining), took to bringing me dinner to help compensate for the food the hospital was giving me (sort of hard to feed a pescatarian on their menu). So dinner on Saturday was rosemary/garlic grilled Talapia, wild brown rice and hand hewn fudge from a local Cherokee chocolatier for dessert!

And my continuing saga . . . well, it continues! You'll just have to stay tuned to find out what happens next. 

I wonder . . .

I’ve been watching Dancing With The Stars these past few weeks. The season just ended and for the finale they brought back some of the original stars from the beginning. One of them was Gladys Knight (Pipless of course) and I got to wondering . . . whatever happened to her Pips anyway? I know Gladys struck off on her own years back and if I google it, I learn that it happened back in 1989. But what of her background singers, the Pips? And what the heck is a Pip anyway?

As far as backup singers go, the three Pips were the best. In fact, I saw a comedy sketch once where the Pips performed Gladys-less. They sounded pretty good too. Harmonized perfectly with their doo waas and ooh diddies. The only thing missing were the lyrics of the actual song which made it somewhat of a different kind of experience, regardless of how well it was Pipped. 

But so . . . where are the three of them now? Did they take advantage of that Pip Pension Plan after Gladys gave them the heave ho? Have they all retired comfortably to some remote island in the Caribbean? Or did they have to go on working even after Gladys decided to go Pipless? Maybe they landed another job singing back up. With obviously less notoriety, a less memorable name for their twilight years. Or maybe they had to get a job doing something they were untrained for: someone’s accountant, a bank teller, grocery store clerk. I don’t know about you, but I sure wouldn’t have recognized a Pip if one waited on me at a restaurant. Or sold me a pair of shoes. Or called to offer me a deal on solar panels.

So just where are those Pips anyway? And come to think of it, where the heck did Tony Orlando put Dawn?  

Look! I found Peeta!

I think he's in here somewhere:

Or wait . . . maybe this is him -->

Or this -->




















Could be in here:

Or here -->













Maybe even here: 

No wait . . . I really think this is him:

Yep. I'm sure of it. Same eyes and everything.

My new "smart" phone . . . and my relationship with it

The first phone I ever had spent it’s entire life on a tiny table next to the front door of my one room place. It was plugged into the wall and, since it’s cord was very short, conversation and mobility did not exist in the same sentence. Not only that but, to make a call, I had to stick my finger into one of ten holes and rotate said finger in a clockwise direction seven to ten times - one rotation for each digit in the phone number.

Fast forward, and skip over several technological evolutions to present time and the phone I have today. I've already overcome my angst over certain terms. Oh yeah . . . it used to raise my grammatical hackles to hear the word “text” used as a verb! But I’m over that. In fact, I've even grown to accept the word “sex” as a verb. 

But that’s a whole other conversation, now isn’t it? This one’s about my phone - I’ll try to leave sex out of it.

I converted to one of those text phones a while back. This, so I could communicate with my son. But alas, that phone was apparently not "smart" since all it did was make calls, take pictures, act as my alarm clock and text. It finally broke down and had to be replaced so I went ahead and upgraded to a “smart” phone. My new android can do everything except wash the dogs, do the dishes and cut the grass. Which you’d think would be great, right? But I’ve come to realize that I should probably go to smart phone training school in order to make friends with the thing. In the meantime I muddle along, trying my best to figure it out.

Take texting for example. My phone has a feature called swipe where I can rub the aforementioned finger along certain letters and it picks the word it thinks is closest to what I swiped. If it thinks I chose the wrong word, it replaces my word with one it feels more accurately represents the thing I want to say. It also has something called talk-to-text where I can talk into it and it transcribes my words into a text message.

So there I was trying to talk to my daughter via text, working frantically to hold up my end of the conversation while she was texting faster than I can even talk. That’s about the time when - quite by accident - I discovered another wonderful feature of my phone, one that converts English to another language. And it does this no matter what method I use as input.

So Holly’s on her own phone trying to figure out why I’m suddenly speaking Spanish. Meanwhile, I’m on my phone hitting any button I can to get back to English. I have yet to realize that I even have a language button, let alone the fact that it acts as a toggle, moving from English to Spanish. From Spanish to what looks like Kanji. From Kanji to what very well might be Swahili and from there into . . . I’m thinking . . . Korean? Beats the heck out of me. I keep switching from Swipe to Talk-to-Text, trying to make things right while erroneously hitting the language button over and over again, rolling through languages faster than the rotations of Linda Blair's head. 

By now I'm laughing so hard my eyes are watering and I’m close to wetting my pants. Holly’s texts back to me have stopped making sense and she’s reverted to questions like “WTF, Mom!” Or “Mom . . . have you been drinking?” The very last thing I said to her went something like this: “desazon m que menja hilinger. And peanuts.” 

That was right before she called me. “Mom, what are you doing?”

“I have no clue! Isn’t it obvious!”

Needless to say, that was the most fun I’ve had with technology in a very long time! Don’t ask me what the “and peanuts” was supposed to have meant. I have no idea. 

So the other day my friend, Beth, sent a great email that I could totally relate to. In it were some of the other wonderful ways our new “smart phones” have enhanced communication. Take a look:

 Ain't technology fun!? 

How the heck did this happen?

On Thursdays I teach yoga. But not the kind of class you'd imagine with spandex clad women stretching, posing and sweating on their hot pink mats.

Nope, my Thursday class is different.

It started when my daughter said "Moooommmm, I really need you to teach me yoga. My body hurts and needs some gentle stretching." Then my son said, "Yeeaah . . I'm more flexible after taking just two of your classes." Then his girlfriend said, "and wouldn't it be good for my back?"

I thought . . . okay, I can do a class for three. But I don't have enough room in my house. So I checked the schedule at The Texas Yoga Center where I teach on occasion and, sure enough, there was a spot open on Thursday afternoons. And when I talked to the owner about using the room, she said, "That would be great! You could ask your son to talk it up at school and see if there are more teens who want to do 'Teen Yoga.'"

So I did. And he did. And since he's a football player and knows mostly football players . . . well, that's what Thursday's class has turned in to. A handful of muscular, athletic boys (and a few girls) who want to learn a little yoga. Yoga of all things! I know what you're thinking. You're trying to picture Terry Bradshaw in Lord of the Dancer's Pose. Or Ben Roethlisberger holding Warrior Two for a few minutes. John Elway in Pigeon Pose. Or Peyton Manning in Bound Tree Pose. Kind of brings some interesting images to mind doesn't it?

True, there's something both weird and amazing about this odd combo and I keep wondering why these young men want to join me in sun salutations till they're all running sweat. Or warm up with Moon Salute, holding Goddess Pose for a breath or two. But they DO! And the harder I make it, the happier they seem.

Our goal pose has been Crow Pose. Also known as Crane. Or in Sanskrit, Bakasana.

photo compliments of luluemon athletica

It's a fairly challenging pose that takes upper body strength coupled with a good sense of balance. And while Thursday's class sure doesn't lack for muscle (emphasis here) we're all still working on our balance.

Some of us have already nailed Bakasana! Next thing you know, I'll be teaching these boys poses I can't even do!