Monday, the carpet was finished here in the house so after a day at work that began about 6:30 AM when I left the house and ended about 7:30 PM or so when I got home, we put up some wallpaper in Stephen's room, then reassembled Stephen's bed. You can read some of the details on Delanae's page here and please do because there is an apology there directed to me. After doing that, we moved some furniture and by that time it was close to midnight, so I went straight to bed.

Yesterday, Tuesday, began the same way but I did not get home until close to 10 PM. After moving a little more furniture, I was too tired to write anything so did not. Now, I am doing this while waiting for a telephone company technician to get here to fix a two line telephone jack downstairs in my office. This jack was installed by the telephone company sometime after we moved in but has stopped working sometime during the last two months while I have been out of that office. I checked it Monday night before reassembling my office in that room and it was completely dead. We had some static on one of our lines in December or January and the phone company came out to fix that and I am wondering if they disconnected that jack at the junction box for some reason. Anyway, we need that jack back working so I have internet access without having to run a telephone wire fifty feet or so down a hall.

In other(unrelated) news, I have had one patient in the hospital since yesterday morning. This is an unfortunate 40 year old man who has now had two strokes but has been lucky enough to have very little residual weakness. He came it Monday night having the second stroke but has made a tremendous amount of recovery already. He is talking normally and has only a little left arm weakness which should resolve completely with physical therapy. He has been on an oral blood thinner, Coumadin(Warfarin), since his first stroke about a year ago. Unfortunately, he had an auto accident on March 21 near Barstow, California and was taken off the Coumadin there because his blood was a little too thin. He did not follow up with me as directed and his blood got too thick and he has had his second stroke now. This has been his pattern, not following up when he is supposed to. If he had done as he was told, perhaps he would not have had the second stroke. He will now be unable to drive for at least a year, probably, and will never be able to go back to being an interstate truck driver which is what he was doing at the time of the stroke. Before someone asks me the logical question, he has one totally blocked internal carotid artery and we are investigating to see how much blockage is present on the other side. He may be a candidate for carotid artery surgery if he has a greater than 70% blockage on the opposite side from the completely blocked carotid artery.

After seeing him this morning and helping Delanae pick out new linoleum for our bathroom, I made nursing home rounds. When I am not rushed for time, like today, it is always fun to sit down and talk to the nurses at the nursing home about each patient and what progress they are making or not making. One of the patients is going home Tuesday, less than a month after admission from the hospital following a stroke. That is always a cause for celebration by the nurses. We also talked about the gradual degeneration of a couple of patients with Alzheimer's Disease. They no longer know the month or year this is and don't know their own family. There is nothing more we can do except to keep them comfortable, they have not improved on the present medications we have for Alzheimer's Disease.

Before I close, let me welcome the newest Daynoter, who is known as Warlock. We have known his alter ego for sometime and were just waiting for him to get his own daily journal online. I've enjoyed his e-mails and know you will also enjoy his journal entries as much as I do.

Now, I have some other things to do while I wait for the telephone repairman(technician) so I will close for now and I do plan to be back tomorrow.

The stroke patient continues to improve. His speech is back to normal but he still has some left hand weakness which should resolve completely with therapy. He is still in the hospital because his blood is not thin enough on Coumadin to take off the IV Heparin yet. Once it is, he will be discharged, hopefully tomorrow. He is getting a little tired of the hospital already.

I had a fairly strange visit with a patient in the office today. She had come in for a scheduled physical and said she wanted to talk about allergies. When she got to the office, she smelled of alcohol but denied daily use of it or problems with it. She also proceeded to tell me about the abuse she had suffered first last summer then around Thanksgiving at the hands of the man she was with. When I tried to pin her down on the exact times she became very evasive. She also told me she lived alone now and the man who had abused her was in jail.

During the exam, I found some bruises on her arms which were obviously very fresh. She told me one was from the Thanksgiving episode and the other one was from when someone helped her up after she fell recently. The latter bruise looked like someone had grabbed her arm and squeezed very hard and the former bruise was obviously not more than a week old at the most. I then asked her to get dressed while I stepped out of the room for a moment. When I went back she had left and the front desk girls said she had left hurriedly with a man and a small girl. I am concerned that she is still being beaten and came in to get help but chickened out at the last minute and fled with the guy who is beating her. She is 41 years of age and probably using alcohol to dull the pain both physical and emotional.

We got an offer on our house in Arkansas today. Unfortunately, it was a lot lower than what we are willing to sell the house for. We countered back with a more reasonable price and we should hear back tomorrow whether it will be accepted or not. I don't have much hope that it will be but stranger things have happened. The couple renting it now want to stay in it for three months longer than their lease runs since their house won't be ready until sometime in July. If this offer is rejected, then we will probably be able to continue renting it to them. Hopefully, this offer means the market is picking up again back there.

The weather was beautiful here today, or so I hear. It was sunny and in the 60's. Now the forecast is for this weather to hold through Saturday so we may be able to till the spot for the garden after all. I found out that one of my neighbors has a tiller which we can borrow. Now if the ground is dry enough by Saturday we will try to use it. It should be a busy weekend with furniture to move, wallpaper to put up, and outside work to be done. Stephen will be disappointed to find out that he will be staying home this weekend to WORK around the house.

Delanae and I watched a good movie tonight. It is "Message in a Bottle". If you are in the mood to just kick back and watch a movie with the one you love, this would be a good one. One warning, have kleenex handy.

Sorry for the short post. I must get up in the morning to be ready for the telephone technician in case he shows. Notice I don't have much confidence that he will. Oh, we still haven't heard back about our counter offer which probably means it has been rejected. Maybe more on this tomorrow.