Every Day is +Time
My heart treatment experience left me with great confidence in the local cardiac community, the cardiologists and heart surgeons of Panama City. They have a fine reputation and I am told that from year to year they only have to send out of town three or four cardiac cases that like mine are so complex that they need to be seen by a major center. With me the doctors were very clear about what they would do and what they had decided to refer, and so earned my enormous respect and trust.
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Church friends have been asking both by email and on CaringBridge GuestBook when I can eat normally again, when we can go out for dinner, to their homes, to restaurants. What can we say?
For starters we can say “yes qualified” and “now qualified.” Unfortunately the qualifiers are heavy. So a good response is “Yes-But and Now-But and with a Be-No List.”
We can’t leave my mother home alone anymore; someone must be here with her round the clock. Except when we have a CNA or other trained and qualified person here with her, we can’t leave the house. The situation keeps changing, and the latest is that we can’t even leave her in the room alone because she gets up and walks, sways, falls against the wall, falls backwards if there is no one to catch her, is determined to walk and get about on her own and cannot remember not to do so. At the moment we have an off-duty CNA coming two mornings a week, and we need to expand that and are looking to expand for more daytime hours and days. But it must be an experienced and qualified nursing-type person in case she falls and because of the personal assistance she requires. Blessedly, at present we do not need anyone here overnight. But for Linda and me, getting out to visit friends or even to keep doctor appointments or a haircut or beauty shop appointment requires planning and scheduling -- which means we no longer can do things on the spur of the moment or even “next week.” As for evenings, the CNA who comes says that with advance notice she should be able to come on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. So that’s the first major qualifier.
The other qualifier is the Be-No List about what I cannot eat, both short term and long term injunctions! Just look at the list -- and this for a Panama City Native whose favorite meal was a fried seafood platter with so much piled on it I needed a go-box!
Permanent life-long there will Be-No
No fried food, none, nil, zero, zilch
No salt-added in cooking
No salt added at the table
No coffee (not even decaf, which still has caf)
No caf tea, iced or hot
No shrimp, lobster, crab
No ham bacon sausage
No cream soups gravies or sauces
No cheese except occasional Swiss
Low fat ice cream only, and that sparingly
Light on the desserts
No heavy meals; eat light
Ain’t that a helluva note?
Temporary injunctions there will Be-No
No chocolate until April
No wine until April
No riding in the front seat until April
No driving a car until April
Kindhearted and hospitable friends reasonably may have second thoughts about getting involved with the likes of us!
But I can honor any Be-No list.
After all
Every day is a beautiful day
And
Every day for the rest of my life is +Time.
TW+