What is everyone doing this Samhain Eve?
I just finished cleaning
and decorating my altar and I am listening to Blackmore's Night and getting ready to bake some pumpkin
bread. I need to clean the litter box and vacuum my floor, too.
Later I
will be communing with Cayenne, my soul cat Eileen who died nine years
ago, and perhaps my grandparents and a few departed friends. Or whoever
else chooses to show up.
I am also going to decorate the urn Eileen
and Cayenne share. Last Samhain, I put Cayenne's ashes in the urn with Eileen's. It is a plain wooden box and I have wanted to do something to decorate it for a long time but wasn't sure what. And I guess just wasn't ready to do it. Now I am.
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Trip to the ER
Last night I went to the ER. I didn't intend to. I intended to go to Urgent Care. My local hospital has both an ER and an Urgent Care and I didn't consider my condition life-threatening or emergent, so I drove over there intending to be seen in Urgent Care. However, they informed me I needed to be seen in Emergency instead.
I was feeling dizzy. I've been feeling dizzy a lot lately and haven't posted much about it because, well, I figure people get bored hearing me complain about not feeling well, and I just didn't feel like talking about it. I have seen my primary care doctor twice for it, though, and we still don't know what's causing it. He is supposed to be referring me to an ENT but I haven't heard from him yet.
Anyway. I was super dizzy and repeatedly felt like I was close to passing out. I felt vaguely nauseous and, I don't know, just not right. Something was wrong, I just didn't know what.
So I went to the hospital, intending to be seen in Urgent Care and ended up in the ER instead.
Isaac went with me, of course. They wanted to take me from the registration desk back to an ER bed by wheelchair since I was dizzy. They didn't want me to faint or fall or anything. Isaac had never walked beside me before while I was in a wheelchair. It never occurred to me to train him to do that, because it's not something he's ever needed to do before. He handled it just fine, though. He kept looking at me like he was not quite sure what he was supposed to do, and I was a little bit worried he'd get too close to the chair and get his toes run over, but I told him to heel and he did great. It might not seem like a hard thing for a dog to do, but heeling with a wheelchair is different than heeling beside someone that is walking.
They took me back right away. I didn't have to sit in the waiting room at all.
They seemed pretty concerned and got me hooked up to a heart monitor right away and then did an EKG. My heart appeared to be just fine. Although at one point the EKG tech said something like, "Oh, that's not good," and I thought, "Crap, there is something wrong with my heart." Turns out she was talking about the machine. A cord was not working right.
I took a towel for Isaac to lie on. He was snoozing away on the floor on one side of the gurney and at one point I had two nurses and the EKG tech on the other side of the bed, all doing things to me. Or trying to. I kept saying, "If you need to get on the other side of the bed, I can tell Isaac to move." They kept saying, "Oh, no, we don't want to bother the puppy! He's fine. We're fine."
At one point I invited Isaac up on the bed with me. He thought it was too high and too small and he did not want up there. He preferred his towel on the floor.
The staff was all really good about Isaac. No one distracted him, no one questioned my right to have him there. One of the nurses asked me about what Isaac did for me, and when I told her some of the things he does, she said something like, "It's just amazing what they can do" and that was it. The doctor didn't ask what Isaac did for me. I'm honestly not even sure he realized Isaac was there.
It was overall a really good ER experience, and I'm glad because I have avoided the ER since my bad experience nearly three years ago. I really like my local hospital. I felt like they treated me with a lot of respect. Of course, I wasn't there for anything mental health-related.
You know how in the ER, you can often kind of hear what's going on with other patients? Emergency rooms are not always the most private of places. Well, a little while after I got there, a young woman was brought in by ambulance. I couldn't see her but I could hear her some. I could hear nurses talking to her some. She was in a lot of pain, I think abdominal pain, and was crying and moaning some. I'm not sure how old she was, not a teenager, but a young woman, I think.
Anyway, I overheard them asking her about her medical history and stuff, and heard that she was on the spectrum. They were referring to it as Asperger's, although that diagnosis no longer exists, technically. All forms of autism are now referred to as autistic spectrum disorder, or ASD. Anyway, even though she had autism, they were treating her the way I image they'd treat someone without a neurological disability. They were talking to her like an adult, like she was capable of answering questions about her medical condition (and it seemed that she was indeed capable of doing so). Her boyfriend was there at first and later I think a family member was there, but the ER staff all talked to her, not to the other person. That may seem obvious or common, but it's really not. It is common for medical people to ignore a person with a disability and talk to their companion instead, like the disabled person is not capable of peaking for his- or herself.
Back to me. They did some blood work, and it was all normal except my blood sugar was a teeny bit low. So I got some orange juice and graham crackers. My blood pressure was low, so they gave me some IV fluids. After a full bag of fluids, my blood pressure was even lower than it had been when I arrived there! So they gave me more fluids.
They also wanted to do a urinalysis. I didn't think I had a UTI, there was no reason to think I did, but whatever. They wanted me to pee in a cup so I peed in the cup. And guess what? I have a UTI. Apparently a pretty bad one. I have no idea how I could have a really bad UIT and not know it. I have no pain, am not peeing any more than usual, have no fever, my pee seems normal to me... I don't know. But it was bad enough that they wanted to give me some IV antibiotics while I was there. And they sent me home with a script.
I don't think the UTI is causing my dizziness, though. So that has not been resolved. At least I found out I have a UTI, though. At least I'm being treated for it. I just don't get how I didn't know I had one.
I was feeling dizzy. I've been feeling dizzy a lot lately and haven't posted much about it because, well, I figure people get bored hearing me complain about not feeling well, and I just didn't feel like talking about it. I have seen my primary care doctor twice for it, though, and we still don't know what's causing it. He is supposed to be referring me to an ENT but I haven't heard from him yet.
Anyway. I was super dizzy and repeatedly felt like I was close to passing out. I felt vaguely nauseous and, I don't know, just not right. Something was wrong, I just didn't know what.
So I went to the hospital, intending to be seen in Urgent Care and ended up in the ER instead.
Isaac went with me, of course. They wanted to take me from the registration desk back to an ER bed by wheelchair since I was dizzy. They didn't want me to faint or fall or anything. Isaac had never walked beside me before while I was in a wheelchair. It never occurred to me to train him to do that, because it's not something he's ever needed to do before. He handled it just fine, though. He kept looking at me like he was not quite sure what he was supposed to do, and I was a little bit worried he'd get too close to the chair and get his toes run over, but I told him to heel and he did great. It might not seem like a hard thing for a dog to do, but heeling with a wheelchair is different than heeling beside someone that is walking.
They took me back right away. I didn't have to sit in the waiting room at all.
They seemed pretty concerned and got me hooked up to a heart monitor right away and then did an EKG. My heart appeared to be just fine. Although at one point the EKG tech said something like, "Oh, that's not good," and I thought, "Crap, there is something wrong with my heart." Turns out she was talking about the machine. A cord was not working right.
I took a towel for Isaac to lie on. He was snoozing away on the floor on one side of the gurney and at one point I had two nurses and the EKG tech on the other side of the bed, all doing things to me. Or trying to. I kept saying, "If you need to get on the other side of the bed, I can tell Isaac to move." They kept saying, "Oh, no, we don't want to bother the puppy! He's fine. We're fine."
At one point I invited Isaac up on the bed with me. He thought it was too high and too small and he did not want up there. He preferred his towel on the floor.
The staff was all really good about Isaac. No one distracted him, no one questioned my right to have him there. One of the nurses asked me about what Isaac did for me, and when I told her some of the things he does, she said something like, "It's just amazing what they can do" and that was it. The doctor didn't ask what Isaac did for me. I'm honestly not even sure he realized Isaac was there.
It was overall a really good ER experience, and I'm glad because I have avoided the ER since my bad experience nearly three years ago. I really like my local hospital. I felt like they treated me with a lot of respect. Of course, I wasn't there for anything mental health-related.
You know how in the ER, you can often kind of hear what's going on with other patients? Emergency rooms are not always the most private of places. Well, a little while after I got there, a young woman was brought in by ambulance. I couldn't see her but I could hear her some. I could hear nurses talking to her some. She was in a lot of pain, I think abdominal pain, and was crying and moaning some. I'm not sure how old she was, not a teenager, but a young woman, I think.
Anyway, I overheard them asking her about her medical history and stuff, and heard that she was on the spectrum. They were referring to it as Asperger's, although that diagnosis no longer exists, technically. All forms of autism are now referred to as autistic spectrum disorder, or ASD. Anyway, even though she had autism, they were treating her the way I image they'd treat someone without a neurological disability. They were talking to her like an adult, like she was capable of answering questions about her medical condition (and it seemed that she was indeed capable of doing so). Her boyfriend was there at first and later I think a family member was there, but the ER staff all talked to her, not to the other person. That may seem obvious or common, but it's really not. It is common for medical people to ignore a person with a disability and talk to their companion instead, like the disabled person is not capable of peaking for his- or herself.
Back to me. They did some blood work, and it was all normal except my blood sugar was a teeny bit low. So I got some orange juice and graham crackers. My blood pressure was low, so they gave me some IV fluids. After a full bag of fluids, my blood pressure was even lower than it had been when I arrived there! So they gave me more fluids.
They also wanted to do a urinalysis. I didn't think I had a UTI, there was no reason to think I did, but whatever. They wanted me to pee in a cup so I peed in the cup. And guess what? I have a UTI. Apparently a pretty bad one. I have no idea how I could have a really bad UIT and not know it. I have no pain, am not peeing any more than usual, have no fever, my pee seems normal to me... I don't know. But it was bad enough that they wanted to give me some IV antibiotics while I was there. And they sent me home with a script.
I don't think the UTI is causing my dizziness, though. So that has not been resolved. At least I found out I have a UTI, though. At least I'm being treated for it. I just don't get how I didn't know I had one.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Isaac at the Halloween Store
I just realized I forgot to post about our trip to the Halloween store!
I took Isaac to the Halloween store so he could experience something new and to practice working in a challenging, distracting environment. Isaac did great! I expected he would; if I thought he wasn't ready for something like this, we would not have gone.
When we first arrived, we paused right inside the door so Isaac could get used to the lights and sounds. Then we slowly approached a display of large decorations. It was set up so that when you stepped on a certain spot, which was clearly marked, a display item would turn on. The witch would cackle, the eyes of the monster would light up, whatever. A friend was with me, so I asked him to step on the spot to turn on the decorations while Isaac and I stood back a bit. That way we could see what was going to happen without being too close. That way Isaac was less likely to be startled.
I then allowed Isaac to approach the displays, gently encouraging him but not making too big a deal about it, and offering yummy treats. Isaac did not seem concerned about the decorations or displays. He was interested in treats, though! One easy way to see if a dog is getting too stressed is to offer a treat. A dog that is stressed out will not want to have a treat.
This three-headed dog or wolf or whatever it was had eyes and mouths that lit up and smoke also came out of the mouths. Isaac wasn't worried about that at all. He was happy to take a treat that I held right beside its foot.
This witch cackled and talked. Isaac was happy to take a treat that I held right beside her hand. He was very happy that I allowed him to sniff her hand.
I took Isaac to the Halloween store so he could experience something new and to practice working in a challenging, distracting environment. Isaac did great! I expected he would; if I thought he wasn't ready for something like this, we would not have gone.
When we first arrived, we paused right inside the door so Isaac could get used to the lights and sounds. Then we slowly approached a display of large decorations. It was set up so that when you stepped on a certain spot, which was clearly marked, a display item would turn on. The witch would cackle, the eyes of the monster would light up, whatever. A friend was with me, so I asked him to step on the spot to turn on the decorations while Isaac and I stood back a bit. That way we could see what was going to happen without being too close. That way Isaac was less likely to be startled.
I then allowed Isaac to approach the displays, gently encouraging him but not making too big a deal about it, and offering yummy treats. Isaac did not seem concerned about the decorations or displays. He was interested in treats, though! One easy way to see if a dog is getting too stressed is to offer a treat. A dog that is stressed out will not want to have a treat.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Picture Time!
First, Whiskers. Today was Laundry Day, which is probably her favorite day of the week. She loves to sleep on the clean, warm laundry as I fold it and stack it on the couch.
And here is Isaac on a recent hike in Mohican State Forest.
Monday, October 26, 2015
More on Service Dogs in Ambulances
I recently wrote about an online discussion with an EMT in which she stated that she didn't care what the law says, she could and would decide whether or not to allow a service dog in an ambulance with their handler.
Here is what the U.S. Department of Justice says about it in their recent document entitled Frequently Asked Questions and Service Animals and the ADA:
Here is what the U.S. Department of Justice says about it in their recent document entitled Frequently Asked Questions and Service Animals and the ADA:
Q16. Must a service animal be allowed to ride in an ambulance with its handler?
A. Generally, yes. However, if the space in
the ambulance is crowded and the dog's presence would interfere with the
emergency medical staff's ability to treat the patient, staff should
make other arrangements to have the dog transported to the hospital.
There are two things to note here. Well, actually, three things.
1. The federal law says she is generally supposed to allow service dogs to ride an ambulance with their handlers.
2. If the dog cannot ride in the ambulance, arrangements should be made to have the dog transported to the hospital. One person joining that online discussion mentioned that when she had to be transported by ambulance, police officers drove her service dog to the hospital. But the EMT that said she did not have to follow the law made no mention of making such arrangements.
3. Even though the law says your service dog can ride with you in most cases, and that staff should make arrangements for your dog to be transported if he can't ride with you, some EMT's don't care about the law and will violate your rights anyway. This is really scary to me.
There are two things to note here. Well, actually, three things.
1. The federal law says she is generally supposed to allow service dogs to ride an ambulance with their handlers.
2. If the dog cannot ride in the ambulance, arrangements should be made to have the dog transported to the hospital. One person joining that online discussion mentioned that when she had to be transported by ambulance, police officers drove her service dog to the hospital. But the EMT that said she did not have to follow the law made no mention of making such arrangements.
3. Even though the law says your service dog can ride with you in most cases, and that staff should make arrangements for your dog to be transported if he can't ride with you, some EMT's don't care about the law and will violate your rights anyway. This is really scary to me.
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