Well, I was right about it being a long day. We had one tech off, and we pretty well strained our resources, as they (yes, *that* "they") say.
Well, what really strained things was a literal strain... one of the other techs strained his back, and had to leave early. I certainly hope that he's better by Monday, for his sake and for mine. He's had several bouts with his back, just as I have. It's really hard to avoid in this business... even if you are doing everything right, if a patient decides to do something unexpected, suddenly everything is wrong, and you're having to lift from a twisted position, and... well, that's the story. You're not allowed to drop patients, of course... Speaking of backs, mine is not doing well, but nothing drastic, I hope, just the same problem that I've had for years and years, flaring up again. I'm trying to decide if I should take one of the muscle relaxers that I've squirrelled away and go to bed, or save it and try to stay up a while. Karen, of course, is still in Wichita, so I have nothing to either keep me up or force me to go to bed.... The more I think about it, the more I think that I'll go lift some weights and then decide. 16:33... She'd decided to come home early, surprising me. Her and Kim and Lacee got shopped out early, I guess. That's a *good* thing, incidentally. 19:20... I figgered out how to get the voice mail on our phones, so I finally got all of the messages off of both phones... Karen's was full, but it's all better now. Tomorrow, Andy is coming over to help me with the hot tub, I've got a problem that a mechanic should be able to solve, but I'm not much of a mechanic, I'm afraid. Aside from that project, we really have nothing planned for the weekend, probably just slouch around the house. I just talked to Andy, Drew had four more seizures during the night. There is lotsa information on the web, of course, way too much, and I'm very confused right now, but I'm thinking that it's epilepsy of a strange kind, and I'm wondering what the doc is gonna figger out. And even with Karen here, I'm going to bed early... I'm really tard tonight. O'yeah, JD finally put up another entry, but Annette hasn't....
However, before I did that, I thought that I'd see if any cats wanted in, so I walked out onto the front deck... and I heard Karen talking to Callie... she had just pulled into the driveway!
I thought that I was going to get to apply the Heimlich Maneuver for the first time in my life... to Karen. She had fixed some hamburgers and I just put grape jam on mine but she had to fancy hers all up, so I was done eating by the time she sat down. I came into the computer room to continue this entry whilst she finished eating, and suddenly I heard her coughing. It was a different cough, and sure enough, she'd aspirated something... a piece of something had "gone down her windpipe". She was eventually OK without any intervention by yours truly... I was ready, though... I was ready.