Please only do these antics if you are aware of your situation while in the can. Make sure your CF doctor even knows you’re there by calling the clinic number and getting whomever is on call. They NEED to know you are there!

I don’t get put in the can much at all – and usually only for blockages. Beautiful has only seen me in the hospital for my lungs once since she’s known me, and it was even before we were dating. Geez, I think it was something like February of 2001 when I was in for 3 days! Even overnight stays can be miserable if you don’t take things into your own hands.

I don’t try to be this way to be obstinate, though I am a very stubborn person, as is Beautiful, but it’s the fact that I’m in the hospital for observation, not control. My life is to be lived just as it were at home on home IVs, only they want me close to do more blood tests and to monitor my O₂ levels.

Here are Fatboy’s “recommended” rules to break when in the can.

• Bring your street clothes to put on ASAP in your room. Grab baggy PJ bottoms and white undershirts to wear. No one wants to see your butt or more any more than you want to show them. If the nurses protest, insist that they complain to your CF doctor. You can guess what their response will be about such a ridiculous complaint from a floor nurse.

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I married a neat-freak. I’ve grown accustomed to it, and appreciate it immensely now as a vast improvement over my former way of life. That’s not to say that Beautiful and I haven’t had our fair share of verbal disagreements over where to put my medical supplies to make it easier for me. I’m going to come completely clean with this admission:

If it is out of sight, it is literally out of my mind.

I need visual reminders to do my meds, as I grew up in an environment where a stack or a pile was fine, as long as it was a stack. Over time, my mind grew used to seeing things of non-function in the same place every day. To this day, if I leave something somewhere (say, on the stairs) for more than a day, I will walk by it dozens of times as if it has become a piece of furniture to walk around. That being the case, you can only imagine how hard it is for me to remember something that is put away.

Besides, who wants to drag out your RespirTech inCourage Vest every day? We had to come up with a creative solution. I honestly can’t remember which came first, the vest or the end tables, but I think it was the tables. Maybe Beautiful will fill us in on that in the comments. I posed that if she would let me store it under the end table on the side of the couch I use to work most of the day, I would do it every day. Then came the “discussion” about what to do with the hoses and vest. LOL! It does fit nicely back there, but I have to be careful to not scrape the hoses on the paint on the wall.

We have placed my vitamins nicely on the table where I keep my drink(s) – notice 2 coasters so I can have both a Boost Plus and a chaser at the same time – along with my treasure chest of various pills that don’t go in the daily container. Everything looks nice so far, but it gets even better!

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