Category Archives: Daily Life

Enough With the Flippin’ Smoke!!!!

Posted on by

We’ve got smoke again which is making the western sky look like a gigantic cigarette with the butt being a blood red sun.Â? As the parsonage is anything but air-tight, I guess I’ll be sleeping in the living room again as the downstairs bedroom collects the smoke.Â? It’s probably good that I have the Med-Neb machine on loan from the hospital.Â? I’ll probably need it in the next couple days.

It seems like every day brings a new fire or the explosion of an existing fire.Â? I don’t seem to remember it being this bad last year but we also probably didn’t have the amount of smoke that we do this year.

My dad suggested I walk around with a respirator but that would seem to be overkill.Â? I do know that I’ll be going out with a surgical mask or SOMETHING on until this foolishness ends…

This Is Getting So Old…

Posted on by

I woke up this morning wanting to die due to my lungs being so irritated.Â? I was in respiratory distress during church so I told Jon after the service that I was headed to town to the ER.Â? (For new readers, we live 25 miles from the town where we do errands so there wasn’t much I could really do.)Â? Several people offered to take me in but I insisted that I could drive myself.

Well… I get there and the nurses aren’t sure what to do with me.Â? I guess they called the on-call physician and before he got there, he told them to nebulize me.Â? So… they come in brandishing a peakflow meter and the nebulizer tubing and tell me that they need to do some baseline peakflows.Â? I grabbed my nice peakflow meter (which is marked with the correct numbers for ME as my peakflows tend to run 100 points higher than normal), gave them a lovely one showing that I was in my respiratory distress zone, and watched the nurse fumbling to put together the neb tubing.

I wasn’t more than 2 minutes into my breathing treatment (and quite enjoying the fact that my lungs weren’t hurting when Dr. Idiot walks in and starts asking me questions.Â? OK… I have something in my mouth giving me something to open my lungs — do you really think that this is the time to inquisition me???Â? (I ended up giving him hand motions.)Â? He ended up asking more questions about my blood sugar at which point I reminded him that I was there for my ASTHMA.Â? Verdict: my lungs are irritated (no joke!) and I’m on Robitussin DM to try and get the small amount of crap in my chest out as well as Aleve to kill the pain.Â? I need to check in with a doctor at the clinic in the middle of this week (I’m hieing it to my mafioso doc on Tuesday as he saw me in the ER on Friday and knows what’s up) and meanwhile, I have a lovely portable nebulizer and solution on loan from the respiratory therapy department at the hospital.Â? Dr. Idiot thinks that the irritation is due to all the smoke from the fires (ya think?) and I’m sure that it being harvest time (and thus having dust and junk) in the air isn’t helping.

So… I’ll go give myself a treatment in a bit and I currently have the windows open upstairs to try and get the nasty old air out of my treehouse (the third floor where my study is) as it’s a nice day outside and the Skyland fire doesn’t seem to be belching smoke our way.Â?Â? Let me just say though… I’m getting sick of having my asthma irritated by all this.

Gah!

Posted on by

I thought that my loopiness from yesterday would be gone today.Â? Umm… no.Â? I took 2 Benadryl last night to fight the nasty itchy feeling in my face from allergies and smoke from the Skyland Fire in East Glacier which made me wake up in no shape to drive myself to the doctor today.Â? (I feel like someone is taking my head, shaking it like a snow globe, and putting it back on.)Â? Apparently, all the Benadryl from last week is still in my system and I have at least another day of being completely useless to anyone.Â? (I had to have someone drive me into town to give Jon spare keys last night when his set got locked in the car.)Â? I also have a raging sinus infection among other things and my doctor thinks that the ER doc in Kalispell was a moron for telling me that I wasn’t allergic.Â? (I am so getting a recommendation to an allergist in Great Falls to get everything straightened out with my allergies and asthma and to find out WHAT venom stings I’m allergic to so that I know whether or not I actually need an Epi-Pen.)

Oh yes… did I mention that they’re doing road construction in town so that driving anywhere and parking on Main Street is a freaking mess (as well as the town reeking of tar and asphalt)?Â? And that it was in the 90’s again (it’s been in the high 80’s and upwards for a months now with no break)?

Then I get home and find out that the local hospital entered the wrong amount for a payment and caused a snowball of things to mess up my bank account.Â? (I was on the phone for 45 minutes with my bank fixing it.)Â? Oh yes… I also have a stomach that is rejecting everything put in it so I’m incredibly nauseous and in pain while doing this.

The rest of the day has followed suit.Â? I have an itchy face again, it’s bloody hot, there’s smoke from the Skyland fire (meaning that opening windows is not an option), and I’m just incredibly uncomfortable.Â? The heat is so bad that I have liquid streaming down my face and my stomach — we’re talking going through shirts because they get so nasty from the sweat and of course… we have no freaking A/C (apparently we don’t *NEED* it here — uh huh… right…) so there’s not exactly much that can be done.

Today is soooooo fired!!!! This Benadryl had better get itself the heck out of my system so I can actually *TAKE* my antibiotics and a decongestant tomorrow.

FLBC Redux: The Good, the Bad, and the “Um Yeah…”

Posted on by

I just got back from Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp where I was from Sunday afternoon to today. As I love this method of reduxing the week, here are my lists.

The Good
-the beauty of the camp
-the AWESOME staff
-decent food
-getting to interact with the kids
-worship in the mornings and at campfire
-our SUPER COOL nurses for the week
-the quality of the Passion Play and getting to discuss it afterwards with five cooperative teenage boys
-getting to be one of the players in the Resurrection Service
-the cabins of Trailblazer girls with whom I hung out
-having the Trailblazer girls come up to me and tell me that they were praying for me after both yellowjacket stings
-having my Epi-Pen not hurt when I had to stab myself with it
-finding out that I’m not as deathly allergic to yellowjacket stings as I had been told I was
-being able to play field games with the kids
-being part of the Hunger Drama
-the conversations with Pr. Joel (one of the other pastors-in-residence this week)
-the conversations with the other pastors and their spouses
-volunteering at the canteen

The Bad
-the SWARMS of yellowjackets that were unleashed by the tornado/winds in the Flathead Valley last week that caused the 10+ bee stings every day
-getting stung TWICE in 24 hours after avoiding getting stung for 16 years
-having to go to the ER after the second sting because I was getting so sick
-having to stab myself with the Epi-Pen
-the guilt I felt for using up one of the camp’s Epi-Pens once I found out that I wasn’t allergic
-the brattiness of some of the 6th and 7th grade boys I dealt with at the canteen

The “Um Yeah…”
-finding out that some of the KIDS had seen “Charlie the Unicorn” and could quote it almost perfectly
-watching a cabin try to set up a couple of the counselors
-having the same cabin decide that I should have a baby
-“Electric Campfire” (fun but too loud — it was like being a metal concert)
-the “Saved By Grace” song

Jon had an awesome time this week doing his two “messages” at campfire and worship on Wednesday, participating in “Pastor Hot Seat” sessions where the kids could ask him ANYTHING, hanging with the Trailblazer girls who ADORED him, and just getting to have a relaxed week even though he was technically working. 🙂

===================================================
Sponsor Jen in Blogathon 2007 on July 28th. Come join the fun at her Blogathon site as she blogs for International Justice Mission! Even a pledge of $1 makes a difference!