It's 104℉ Right Now

[Kellemora]

With all the interruptions I have now, each morning I make a list of the sites I need to visit. Many I used to visit are no longer on my list now. I also jot down when to take a medication, when to do an inhaler if I'm not going back to the house for the timed nebulizer treatment, and if I've done my e-mail.
I had scratched Yogi off the list when I was here, but for the life of me, I could not remember being here, so came again, hi hi.

I was up at 6:45 am this morning, but didn't get to my office until after 11:30 am.
It often now takes me an hour to two hours to get from my bedroom to the kitchen.
Because of this, I have a couple of medications I now keep in the bedroom for my am dose.
One of those medications must be taken a half hour before I eat anything.
So, it starts like this. While I'm still laying in bed, my O2 is at 95 to 97 as it should be, and my heart rate is around 78 to 85.
When I sit up, I switch from the O2 concentrator to an O2 tank and check my O2, which is usually down to 91 or 92 from sitting up, and my heart rate (hereinafter HR) jumps up over 100, sometimes as high as 115 to 117 just from sitting up.
I will sit perfectly still waiting for my O2 to get up to 96 or 97, and my HR to drop down to under 95.
This is when I will take my early morning medication, with a drink of cold water. Then 2 puffs of an Albuterol inhaler.
I automatically slip my feet into my slippers when I sit up, always have, my bare feet never touch a floor, hi hi.
I will reach up and turn down my O2 tank from 4 to 3 since my O2 is now above 95 and grab my pants from the clothes tree, all in one smooth motion without standing up. These small movements run my heart rate back up over 100 almost instantly.
So I will just sit until it is back down to under 95. Then I will slip on one pants leg, wait, then slip on the other pants leg.
Then I will slip off a slipper, put on a sock, put my day slipper on, then do the other foot the same way. My HR is usually back over 100 again and O2 drops down to around 92, so I sit and wait.
By now my inhaler is starting to work, and after my O2 is back up to around 97, and HR down to 95 I will stand, pull up my britches, and sit right back down again, and wait for things to adjust again. Hook the belt, zip up the zipper, then pull my transporter/walker over to me and lock the brakes. All in one motion, I will stand, grab my O2 tank, turn and sit down on the transporter/walker and wait until I'm close to stable again. If I was up at 6:45 in is now going on 8 am or close to it.
By then Debi is up and will pull me from the bedroom, and push me into the kitchen, even though that is not what it is designed for, after all, it is just a walker on wheels. I now have a wheelchair type transporter which would be better for that purpose, hi hi. I can't actually move it myself very well due to it being in reverse, like using a forklift while sitting on the tongs in the front, hi hi. But I do if she is not up yet and I want to let her sleep.
I have everything else I need in the kitchen on the breakfast counter, which is overloaded because of me and looks a fright.
Here, once I'm stable, I will get out of the walker and move to my stool. As I do, I set my small O2 tank on the counter, and switch my cannula to the large O2 tank, and have to rest up and wait until I'm stable again. Then I set out my morning pills which I have in a dispenser tray, plus my two morning nebulized medications, and the two mouthpieces on for each med.
I will take another early morning pill I need to take before food, like the way I have to take the am pills in the morning in the bedroom. Then I will do the first am nebulizer treatment. If Debi is up, she will fetch my breakfast items from the fridge and set them on the counter. If she is not up, then I will take the three steps to the fridge and grab it for myself, then sit back down and wait for my vitals to stabilize again. This happens a little faster after my nebulizer treatment, which also runs my O2 up to 98 or 99. Once it is up that high, I can turn the regulator down to 2.5 while I eat.

I alternate what I have for breakfast, but it is basically the same few things each week. Whatever it is, I only eat half of it, then take the rest of my pills, and finish off the other half of my breakfast. After I sit for a bit, I will do my second AM nebulizer treatment. Now comes the long sit and waiting game. I can keep my O2 up OK, but my HR had to drop below 85 for me to even consider trying to go out the door to my office. And in this heat, it had better be lower than that when I start.
No matter how low it is, standing up and moving to the door will cause it to go up right away again.

It is usually after 9:30 am and close to 10 am before I'm able to attempt going to the door. And each day it is getting harder to even get that far. When I am down to HR of 85 I will open the door and step outside, if it is holding at 85 or 86 I will take two steps toward the trash bin, which is something I can lean on. From there it is uphill to the garage mandoor. I do not want to sit down, because just standing up causes my heart to race. So I will take two small steps, then two more, watching my HR move up. If it only moves up to 87, I will take two more super small steps on the start of the hill. Here I will pause and wait to see which way it is going, if it continues to go up, I stand still until it comes down one notch. At this point I take a single large step, pause for 30 seconds and another single large step, here I can lean against the deck corner if need be. But usually I just stand as still as possible, doing pursed lip breathing the whole time I'm outside. When stable I take 3 long steps quickly so I'm at the garage mandoor and lean against the wall. Unlock the door and open it. Hopefully I can step inside where I do have a tall rack for my outside bird food I can lean over on and rest much easier, even with my head on my arm if need be and just wait. As soon as I'm fairly well stable, but my HR at this time is normally over 105 sometimes as high as 110 and I still have to make it to inside my office.
As soon as I can stand back upright, depending on my HR I will either head to my office or scoop out some bird food and toss it on the ground, then head to my office.
Once in my office, I set down my O2 tank, grab a cold drink from the mini-fridge, turn on the O2 concentrator than go plop down in the chair at my desk. By now my HR is right at or over 120 bpm and I feel like I'm dying. So I sit still, often for a half hour before I even do anything at all, other than turn on my big O2 tank on 4 lpm. When my O2 hits 98 or 99, I turn it down to 3 lpm, then down to 2.5 lpm if it is holding at 97 or 98. Once my HR is down to 105 I will open my drink and take a sip. As I become stable, I switch from the O2 tank to the O2 concentrator, and just lean on my desk until I'm feeling fairly OK.
At this point, I will motion to the frau that I'm doing OK and she can quit watching me, other than on the new monitor we have for her to watch me on. From the time I am up in the morning in bed, until I'm at my office and can look at the computer, it can be anywhere from 4 to 6 hours now. Today is one of those 6 hour days again.
Like RIGHT NOW it is 5 minutes until 3 PM in the afternoon, and I've not been home for lunch yet, and won't be for another hour or so, which means I'm missing a scheduled nebulizer treatment of the new drugs until I do finish here and go home.
I didn't want to head back home until I finished my morning stuff. And if Hospice was here, they mess up my whole day even worse than my bad mornings do.

This is why I say, it won't be long before I cannot make it up here to my office anymore!

I'll have to respond to the rest later!

[yogi]

Thank you for that lengthy and detailed description of how you get to your comfort zone. It was a bit more detail than I had expected, but it did give me some idea of what you do on your way to the office. To say it's an exceptional effort is an understatement. I doubt that many people in a similar situation would be doing all that you do. I don't suppose Debi can do much more than monitor your progress. She most certainly qualifies to be your Guardian Angel. You are fortunate to have a partner like that at your side.

I don't know how much stamina you have left, but I will agree with you that it may be a good idea to try and make do without being in your office. Conserving energy and taking meds on schedule is important. Even in the condition you are in you are still a creative individual. I have little doubt that you can work out the details necessary to accomplish your daily routine in the house instead out in the back office. Then too, there is something to be said about doing it YOUR way.

Don't be too concerned about replaying to all the blabbering I do here. Some of it is just for your entertainment. I can report that we were rained upon yesterday and today the temps are in the low 70's. Looks like this weather is on its way to Knoxville and that should make your trek to the office a little easier.

[Kellemora]

Besides being Frustrated over not being able to do what I like to do, changing ones lifestyle to fit their predicament is yet another situation one has to work on perfecting, to conserve energy.
There really is no comfort zone in my house for me. Even if I had my desk and chair down there, it is not at all like my office where I have control of lots of things right from my chair.
If I was physically able to build anything, I could make an outdoor stairmaster seat to get me to the office.
Afterall, for my late wife, I built her a deck that lowered down to the driveway level, while keeping the far end flat for her wheelchair. Just took a couple hydraulic jacks powered by electric to raise and lower that far end, and the whole deck would then be a ramp, but not until her chair was moved out the door and to the end of the ramp, then I would push the button for it to lower down to ground level. I had a flat area outside the door too, so the starting end of the ramp didn't lift up in front of the doorway. Worked out great too!
Down here all I would need would be two larger size pipes, about 1 inch in diameter, 4 pulleys to use as wheels for on the track, and a winch to pull me up the hill to the garage mandoor. They could lay on the ground so could be mowed over without hitting them with the mower blades too, hi hi.

The whole thing about my office, besides being climate controlled, is it is like a comfortable old shoe. My heart rate stays low in the mid 70's when I'm up here, and my O2 stays up around 97 or higher. I'm not struggling to breathe. Plus, everything I need is at my fingertips, well most things, hi hi.

In the house, my heart rate usually stays in the upper 80's to low 90's, sometimes close to 100 also.
Plus there are many scents in the house, like dogs, cooking odors, and other smalls that make it hard to breathe too.
And this is even with our kitchen exhaust fan ducted to outside with a large blower.
The best thing about being in the house is that is where the bathroom is, if I need to do a numero two, hi hi.

I need to get to the house now for my noonish nebulizer treatments, and here it is almost 2 pm again.

[yogi]

I'm convinced that relocating your office is the best logical solution. However, the best psychological solution is to stay right where you are in your custom made office. You know, I'm sure, that the body and mind work in unison so that if your psychological state is comfortable your physical state will follow. It's the old adage, you are what you think.

Your moveable ramp/deck was a brilliant solution to a difficult problem. It's yet another example of your creativity at work. Perhaps you cannot build that pulley transport system you described, but I am certain there is some handyman that could. Finding him and being able to pay to have the work done is the challenge.

While there may be several good solutions to your particular mobility problem, I think you are doing great with the resources you have. Seems like the only big problem has to do with disposing of personal waste. There are such things as portable commodes, you know. And, I bet those folks from hospice would be able to set one up in your office if you asked them nicely.

[Kellemora]

I was super late getting up to my office this morning. But I did finally make it.
Right as I was heading down to lunch, the Hospice home assistant came by.
I had her scrub my back down for my while I was doing my first noontime nebulizer treatment.
I was just starting to eat lunch when the Hospice Nurse came, so had to set my lunch aside.
She stayed much longer than she usually does, tested my vitals like always, but then went over all my pills, again.
I have a printed out list of all my pills, the amount I take of each, and at what times during the day or night.
Plus I list the last prescribing doctor for a refill, which is now changing to the Hospice doc on many.
Plus what each of the pills are for now. I've had several changes, so some I was taking was put on hold while I take a different one for a short time. Then it will be back to the normal ones again, I assume.

If I had the money to finish the enclosed front porch, I was going to make into a studio for Debi. That would be the ideal place to have my desk, chair, computer, printer, etc. all set up in. At my present income level, even if I got free labor, I couldn't afford the necessary materials to get that room finished. And no one to beg money from to get it done either, which is a shame.

I do have one option my bro-in-law brought up. Get a new battery for my riding lawn mower, since it climbs hills with ease.
I could park it right next to the house by the back door, so it is not seen from the street, and use it to get up here on.
My neighbor would probably keep it gassed up for me for that purpose also.
Another alternative would be a power wheelchair I could use on my blacktop driveway, and from it to the garage mandoor is on flat ground. But you can't leave them outside in the rain and cold or the heat for that matter. Trouble is, I would never qualify for an electric wheelchair. If I had to keep it inside, it could sit in the kitchen, but I would need a small ramp about 10 inches high and level at the doorway to the garage in order to pull it inside the garage.
Lot's of ideas, but all of them take money to accomplish!

I'm on diuretics, so I do one heck of a lot of peeing, hi hi.
At night, in bed, I have a large plastic half-gallon wide mouth container from a pet food I used to buy at one time.
I fill that sucker up every night, so much so I now have an extra smaller container for the overflow, hi hi.
Up here in the office, I have a row of Pringles Cans. I normally only half fill them, due to being seated while peeing.
So, I may have three, sometimes four of them half full. I have a couple of really old 6-pack soda bottle carriers from days of yore in which six of them will fit. This way I can take them down to the house to rinse them out. I used to just throw them in the garbage can before they began to stink, but I don't eat many Pringles anymore. It is hard to find plastic bottles with a wide mouth. I have OJ bottles which will work, but cumbersome to use sitting down. And yes I have the little Johnnies like they give you at the hospital. They are a pain in the patoot to deal with, hi hi.
When I drove a truck, I had a few really nice Road Star bottles made for truckers. And the only person I've known who hit truck stops often, said he never saw the ones I was talking about, just the normal Johnnie Jugs. Of which, they are very prone to leaking if you lay them down. The Road Star bottles have wings on the top sides so your legs hold them under your lap, and they are shaped such that the neck curves down and the container part is wide and thin so can be behind your legs and in front of your feet. You can put it in place with one hand, and the lid flips open either with your thumb or with your leg when you slide it under your leg. Most importantly, they don't leak, even without the lid, unless they are overfilled, and can't lay down on the floor flat without a lid. But normally, they can be lowered to the floor and just sit there. They were a great design, and nearly every trucker I knew back in the days I was driving had at least one of them on board.
Then for some reason, many of the truckers switched to the self-sealing dark colored bags with a separate ring that sorta worked like the Road Star bottle. Their shape was sorta like a long neck flat balloon. The top was large and you slid it up into the supporting ring and folded the top down over the ring, which was like a cardboard sleeve sorta, so it would not fall back down out of the ring. After you used it a couple of times, you pulled the paper ring up to release it from the holder, and the ring would fall down inside the bag, the paper is what kept the glue area intact and dry, so once you pulled the paper out, the end would roll shut automatically, and they sealed up really tight. I haven't seen these anywhere either in many years.

The frau is calling me to dinner, I was supposed to head home 45 minutes ago.

[yogi]

Two good things came to my attention with your last post. The length and detail of it has returned to a somewhat normal level which suggests to me that your state of being has improved somewhat. The other good notation was your mention of all the attention you are receiving from hospice. It can be a pain in the drain for all those folks to interrupt your daily routine, but they seem to be doing some good.

I don't take nearly as many drugs as you do, but I have a list that is similar. I keep track of all the vital information but I don't comment on what the purpose of the drug is. The only people who will be seeing that list are healthcare providers, and they better know what those drugs are doing without me telling them. Supposedly all that information is already in the my account at the hospital, but each new doctor I see wants their own copy. Fortunately I don't see that many new doctors.

I know what diuretics can do and am very happy that in spite of a kidney problem I don't have to take that kind of medication. I do drink a fair amount of coffee and one of my pills for hypertension is also a diuretic. About the only nuisance factor I've encountered is that I must get up in the middle of the night to empty my bladder. I never thought about long haul truckers needing a portable urinal, but your story makes absolute sense. It would drive me nuts to drive more than a few hours at a time, which is probably one reason why I never took an interest in an OTR career. Then again, they must get paid well. I just read about the Teamsters settlement with the UPS people. Their members are now making $42/hr. With fringe benefits their yearly income is around $140k. I'm guessing there soon will be no more "free shipping" at Walmart.

[Kellemora]

That was yesterday, today I'm as loopy as a loon, hi hi.
They upped one of my Pain meds by 1/2, with plans to move it up to a double dose.
I've gone from one Hydrocodone pill to 1-1/2 to see how I do pain wise. Still have severe pain, and did so most of the night.
The pill, which is supposed to last for 4 hours, only makes it up to around 3-1/4 hours.
When she talked about my taking 2 pills instead of one, I said so take one every 2 hours, and she said no, take two at once.
I reminded her that would push the other half of the pill contents over the daily limit.
So she said, well for now then, let's do 1-1/2 pills and I'll order some 10's instead of 5's, then you can start taking one of the double dosage pills. The current pills are 5 Hydrocodone 325 Acetaminophen. The new would be 10-325.

They also upped another 2 pills to 4 pills, and from once per day, to twice per day. The 2 pills were not having any affect.
And now on these higher dosages, I'm dizzy and kinda groggy. Keep nodding off for a split second.
Last night, even on 1-1/2 pills of the pain killer, I was up sitting on the edge of the bed from 4:30 am until 6:30 am when I decided to just get up for the day. I hurt so bad, I could not breathe in if I tried laying down. Not even on my back which is how I don't hurt so bad. I think I got hit by a Mack Truck while I was having my endoscopy.

I have one short list that only shows the name of the drug, the dosage amount, and when taken. This is the one I give the docs. The list includes everything I take, whether Rx, OTC, or Medical Devices by what prescribed amounts.
I have a longer list that shows all that info, plus who prescribed it, and for what purpose. This list is mainly for me.
For that reason it also shows which of my pill dispensers they go in.

When I was driving OTR, if I made over 250 bucks for a trip, it was a miracle, and a harder than usual trip.
Same thing with when I was changing lamps in radio and TV towers. 150 bucks for the three lower ones, and 250 for the top one. Today those guys get like 20,000 dollars per climb, then more depending on what they are doing while up there.
Antenna workers who work on the actual antenna's make the most money.

The diuretics don't seem to be helping me get the swelling down out of my feet and legs very much, but they sure make one pee a lot. I'm up like every hour or less and fill that 1/2 gallon jug every night. It may sound odd, but I don't pee that much during the day.

I'm trying to get this typed up and have to keep correcting typos, that's how dizzy I am, and I keep nodding off for split second at a time, sometimes a bit longer, until my nose hits the desk, hi hi.

It's almost 2 pm, I guess I had better head to the house and do my noon medications, hi hi.
The main ones at lunch are my nebulized medications the LABA types.

[yogi]

I know about Hydrocodone. I had such pills after the hernia repair surgery a couple years ago. The pain was not sharp but it did make me very uncomfortable which is why I took the pills. Normally I try to tough it out. As I recall there was a limit to what I should take and the single dose did not last up to that limit. It might have been that same 4 hours you are seeing, but I'm thinking it actually was eight hours. In any case I only had to use the Hydrocodone for a couple days. Then Tylenol was all I needed, which also did not last the stated period of time. The good part was that I didn't need any pain pills after about 5 days. Also, that hernia surgery reminds me that I did not sleep in bed at all for two days. I stayed in my Lay-Z-Boy overnight. It wasn't all that uncomfortable, but then again, I was taking pain pills. LOL I now have a replacement for that chair which is way more comfortable and has better healing properties. Hopefully I will never need to use it to recover from a surgery.

It's interesting to me that you are prescribed Hydrocodone because that is not what hospice offered mom. She was given a light dosage of morphine. We kept the real thing in the fridge if things got really bad for her. It was more or less an "as needed" thing and mom didn't need much until the very end. To be honest I don't recall if she was loopy or not taking the morphine. She did sleep a bit more however.

From what I understand that fluid in the legs is related to the inability of the heart to pump it out. I'd guess your heart is actually less efficient during the day which would explain why you don't pee that much while awake.

Truckers who were in the Teamsters union always had decent pay. That was a very powerful union back in the day, and now that the president is pro labor they are gaining strength once again. Real wages are on the rise again and inflation is under control, so it seems. It's not gone, but it is coming down to a reasonable level. I think we will be due for another good COLA for Social Security given the high rate of inflation over the past year. It certainly won't cover all the increased expenses, but it should be fairly significant. After that, who knows?

[Kellemora]

I was on one pain pill that I could only take once every 8 hours. It only worked from about 45 minutes after you took it, and then for perhaps another 4 hours before the pain was back, WITH VIGOR, hi hi.
It seems the 1-1/2 pills of the Hydrocodone is working fairly well, so far, so perhaps I don't need to move up to the 10 mg.
Although I do have to watch the acetaminophen level. The 5-325 at every four hours added up to 1,950 acetaminophen. Adding in 1/2 pill more adds another 975, brings me up to 2925. The max limit for acetaminophen is 3,000 mg.
This means I can't take a cough syrup with it in it, or anything else with acetaminophen in it.
This is why perhaps moving up to the 10-325 Hydrocodone might be a better option. It would get me back down to 1,950 mg of the acetaminophen.

I always tease the nurses by asking, where's the Drip Morphine, hi hi.
I know it is coming in the last week, or day of life.

Also I'm sitting up, so the water goes down into my legs and feet. My legs are now swelling up considerably also.
The compression socks don't seem to make a difference. Other than trying to get them back off again after I've swollen up.
My late wife had this crazy pair of socks, which was like a sock on the inside, a sock on the outside, and a balloon sock in the middle. It had this little hand operated air pump to pump the balloon up. It had a gauge with numbers on it which was part of the sock not the pump. She started out at a specific number on the gauge, and that number would go up on its own as her feet and legs swelled up further. Then she had a tiny valve to open to let some of the air back out again. Her goal was to start out at one level, then keep it down to that level. Then after around 4 to 6 hours, she was supposed to release all the air for about an hour, then pump it back up to the prescribed level. She never pumped it back up that far because she said it hurt a lot once you let the air out, to get it back up that high again.
All I can say is that gauge must have been really accurate and sensitive, because pressing on a balloon does not raise or lower its psi by any readable amount. But the gauge was not measuring in psi, if it was, her psi would probably have been less than 10 to 15 psi, while the numbers on this thing were more like 60 to 80 something. At least the socks were easy to put on and easy to take off. They added pressure from right behind the toes, all the way up to just under the knees.
I've never seen anything like it ever again either, not in any catalogs or on-line medical places. But I do know her pair came from St. John's Hospital Home Health Division.

I was non-union, which is one reason I couldn't stop at the normal truck stops. But then too, only non-union drivers get those escorted government loads. When I was driving, it was usually for a company where I could pull job runs from a drivers board. It dictated how much we would be paid to haul a load. Since I didn't have much seniority built up with them, I normally only had a few runs I could select from, which is how I got the Soyosette Long Island run once. Never do that one again even though it paid almost double. Took four times longer, hi hi.
There was a run nobody ever wanted and I liked it pretty well. It was for North American Van Lines Electronics Division, the same one I got the government loads from. The reason none of the drivers wanted it was because of all the bob-tailing.
These trips were from the Saint Louis County, Fenton, Long Haul Terminal, all the way up to Kit Carson, Colorado, where I would drop off the NAVL trailer. From Kit Carson I had to bob-tail it up to a stockyard near Denver, Colorado. There I picked up a reefer that went back to Rolla, Missouri, to Bow Wow Dog Food Company. Then from Rolla, I had to bob-tail it all the way back to the Fenton Terminal where I left the the Rig and took my car back home again.
Sometimes I would find a load in Rolla going to St. Louis, but it would have to be dropped off on the way to Fenton, or only a little bit around that radius. Normally these would be an empty trailer too, which are more dangerous to haul than a full one.
I did luck out several times and got empty car haulers I could drop off at the Chrysler Yard, which was just before NAVL in Fenton, so it worked out great when I got those to pull back. Chrysler is all Union, so I had to mind my Ps and Qs when dropping an empty off there, just get in and out as fast as possible, hi hi. If I was given too much trouble at the gate, they had another drop off point I could use, especially when there was something on the trailer heading back. Like small containers of parts that fit the bottom middle section of car carriers and locked in just fine.

I had another rough morning where I couldn't get my pulse down below 112 for over an hour, which also meant I had trouble getting my air up over 92. This was one of those mornings I would have gone to the hospital, but now that I'm on Hospice, no more hospital trips, other than for a couple major things, and even then, it is iffy if they will let me go.
I did not get to my office until after 11 am, and I was up from 5:45 am until 8:30 before trying to get to the kitchen. Debi took me to the kitchen using the Rollator. Even then, I still had to sit on it at the breakfast counter for around a half-hour before I could transfer my old bod to the stool and start my nebulizer treatments.

[yogi]

The concept of unionized labor always was foreign to me. Union shops did pretty well as far as pay and benefits go, but the work rules sucked. You could not help out a buddy, for example, if he wasn't in your union or at your grade level. The shops were ruled by a union overlord, who was no different than a Mafia Don. It was supposed to be a brotherhood atmosphere, but always seemed to me like a well disciplined dictatorship. Most of the members liked working that way in spite of the union dues they had to pay. Those people were lazy bums and did not have to do a thing in order to benefit from the union's power over management. They did their jobs very well, but from what I see there is no incentive to do better. No need to. The Don will take care of you as long as you are loyal to him.

It's good to see the Hydrocodone working for you. It seems as if you are taking a lot of acetaminophen, however. I know they say there is a limit to that stuff, but that's for normal people. You are not in a normal situation. Then, too, you should follow the instructions of your doctor.

Those balloon socks you describe sound amazing. I have not run across them either but I did wear some strange vibrating socks in recovery at the last surgery I had. Not sure how they worked but they massaged my legs during and after the surgery. The psi in those balloon socks most likely could be inflated to beyond one atmosphere of pressure. Tires on bicycles, for example, do that kind of thing all the time. The compression socks you and I wear are rated in mmHg which somehow translates to psi. I'd have to find a conversion table to see what my socks are supposed to be doing.

You certainly had some interesting experiences while you were trucking along America's highways. I have to wonder why only non-union drivers were allowed to transport government cargo, escorted nonetheless. It would seem to me the union guys would be the elite drivers of the world. Why would the government not want the best to haul their garbage around? That sentiment is sarcasm, of course. I am certain you were a top driver, which might be why you got to haul those federal loads.

So ... I got around to reading the instructions for my hearing aids today. LOL Actually I wanted more information about the app software that comes with them. That software is optional and the aids work plenty well without it, but they added some really cool features. One such feature is real time translation. I can put the app in the translate mode and it will decipher what you are saying in a foreign language. The translation will go to text to be read, but it also can simply go straight to the hearing aids. It works in reverse too. I can hear what you say in real time and answer you back. The app will take what I say and translate it to the foreign language as text. I can then show the person that text and they will know what I said. Truly amazing stuff.

[Kellemora]

We had a Union try to get our delivery drivers at the Florist to join. It backfired on them royally for a few reasons.
I guess the main one was, we already paid higher than Union Scale to our permanent drivers.
Another was, many of our part-time drivers were Police or Firemen working on their days off, and already belonged to their respective Unions.
Plus, we had health insurance policies for those who did not already have it, if they wanted to contribute to the plan.
Those who didn't need it, got a bonus equivalent to what we paid out for insurance for others.

Hospice was here again today, and their doctor is putting me on Morphine drops as a recovery for exacerbations, and has added another controlled drug for when my heart rate is just a bit too high. The same type of pill which is used for Anxiety, and also for some people in a much larger dosage as a sleep aid. Also upping my Hydrocodone from 5/325 to 10/325 as expected to help deal with my ever increasing pain.

Union drivers haul normal government loads, just not these special runs that require an escort and non-stop driving. Most truckers don't want to run 18 hours straight without stopping. Nor put up with the cackle by the feds to keep us awake.
I also had no idea what was in those trailers either. It could have been some dangerous stuff, or else something well sought for by the enemy. It had a very high risk factor. But heck, I was younger and loved challenges, hi hi.

Sounds like amazing stuff they are doing with the hearing aids these days!

You know me, I'm going to do my best to make it up here each day. Today I had a super hard morning once again, and didn't make it to my office until after 11 am. So, needless to say, I've not got done hardly any of the things I planned on doing today.
I've not yet loaded a new OS in my little old Netbook, honestly have not had enough time to do so yet.
But I could come here on it after I get it loaded up that far along. I just need to get it done, and fast.

[yogi]

Motorola was non-union for the same reasons your florists didn't go that route. Motorola paid union scale or better when you consider all the benefits that came with the job. They did try to establish a union a few times, but never were successful. The guys working for Motorola and who wanted a union vote obviously were plants from the godz know where. It was only a few people who talked it up and tried to get everybody on board. They only got to the point of an actual vote once that I recall, and that was in the first year or two that I worked there. Motorola had spooks in other places too. They knew what the big unionized companies, such as Caterpillar, were paying their employees and adjusted its pay scale accordingly. It was all pretty clever on both sides of the fence.

I understand now why teamster drivers would not take those hazardous government hauling jobs. Working 18 hours a day is not in their job description. In fact I'm surprised you were able to do it because I thought there were laws to limit how many hours a driver can spend behind the wheel. Then again, when working for The Company maybe the rules are different. Yes you were young and daring. Did you notice any heavy artillery or anti aircraft devices in those escort vehicles? LOL Probably not, but I bet they had assault weapons on board.

Well, hospice is certainly doing its thing. Keeping you comfortable is their mission. Way back in the beginning days of this here website there was a member who was a Viet Nam veteran. He was damaged severely while he served but I don't recall all that was wrong with him. He had a constant morphine pump going somewhere on his body and like you was in constant pain. His attitude, however, was something else. He had a sense of humor that could to be beat and remained positive until the end. I think he was here three, maybe four, years before his body could not deal with his injuries anymore.

This website is low maintenance and not demanding at all when it comes to computer resources. You certainly can get here via any browser installed on any operating system. I've been here personally on the desktop, the laptop, an iPad, and through the smartphone. It looks pretty much the same on all platforms. The phone is a pain in the butt typing so that I don't do that, but I have perused the forums a few times. Thus, I now you will be able to see this place and participate no matter what hardware and OS you happen to have handy.

I think one of the reasons I am getting along with the hearing aid as well as I am is due to it's technical capacity. The basic hearing aid is pretty good as a stand alone instrument. The audiologist programs it remotely via Bluetooth and her settings are pretty much what I've been using most of the time. The connection to the app on the smartphone adds a ton of features that only geeks would appreciate. LOL There is a way to be in a crowd, say maybe at a music concert, and focus on a single person's voice. That person must say a few words while I press the right buttons and it captures their voice pattern. Then It can be enhanced to rise above the background noise. If that's not enough, then some noise cancellation can be added on top of that. Should all of that not single out that one voice, there is a way to adjust the individual audio band filters manually. That means I can capture the voice and then store programs for different environments, such as in a car, out on the patio, or watching TV. Well, I read all about that but have not tried it yet. I will experiment at some point when I can get my wife to cooperate.

[Kellemora]

I do know my escort vehicles were bullet proof, and probably heavily armed.
I didn't have to obey the speed limits, in fact, they kept pushing me to speed it up a bit, hi hi.
During our trek across the country, one the rear cars would come zooming past and get in front, then the one right in front of me would pull out and slow down and pick up his place right behind me.
There were cars well ahead of me too that would pull off long before we came to an exit and be ready to come back on again after I passed the entrance just beyond the exit.
Some of this did make me a bit nervous about what I might be hauling. But as far as I know, it was all electronics.

As usual, my problem is time to get anything done. And now with Hospice here three days a week for one thing or another, they burn up what little spare time I did have.
That, plus my getting a later than usual start each day, eating lunch super late, like at 3 pm, then getting back up here this late, you're my first stop on getting back up here. So I told the frau, no dinner tonight until after 7 pm or maybe later. I will try to get my afternoon and early evening stuff finished so I don't have to try and come back up tonight again, hopefully.
I never know until I see what I have to do tonight if I can skip some until tomorrow. I'm already skipping tons of things I used to do, like no more promoting for Dutch Rhudy or for my book promoter.

Back in the late 1980's, I had an audio system to die for. Better equipment than some DJ's had, plus fabulous recording equipment too with directional microphones, and an audio signal control box a lot more versatile than an equilizer.
I know today's equipment is even much more sophisticated, like your hearing aid there.
Glad it will be working out for you!

PS: If USB was so great, why did they need all the other versions of it, hi hi...

[yogi]

Well, you never know what the government might be hauling around, or have YOU haul for them. I would hope that if there is any danger of explosion or other toxic contamination, they would at least warn you of that danger. But, for all you know it could have been a truckload of gold being transported from one central bank to another. Or nuclear waste. It's interesting to speculate and I guess I can understand why you didn't have to follow all the rules. Who was going to argue with that kind of escort?

I can also understand how your time is being consumed by healthcare and consequently you need to refocus your other activities. I did note that you were no longer posting Dutch Rudy stuff and I though, perhaps, it might be related to the way that site is being run these days. Musk decided to make people pay to use what used to be known as Tweetdeck. That was my go-to news aggregator and general information source. Many of my good sources already abandoned X/Twitter so that I wasn't getting the kind of inputs that I enjoyed prior to Musk. Now that he has turned full fascist and is forcing subscriptions for just about anything worthwhile I no longer visit the site. The Brainformation account is still active, but I never did much posting or reading there. It was just a way to get in touch with the people who still followed me there. Been off it for a few weeks now, and frankly I don't miss it. I do miss the Jack Dorsey era, however.

A lot of the technology in my hearing aid is old school, relatively speaking. The new part is that they applied some of that technology to hearing aids of very small proportions. My greatest pleasure with it all is that it is invisible from most points of view. You really have to look hard to see it. LOL

And, I think you already know why they have so many versions of USB. When it was first introduced, for example, the WiFi connections were a full 100 MHz. Today those same WiFi ports can do 6 GHz. That old slow USB, model A, simply could not handle today's LAN speeds.

[Kellemora]

I knew it was nothing explosive or hazardous, like Nukes, hi hi.
For the simple reason we took the main highways and passed right through congested towns and cities.
The hazardous stuff may use the highways, but they avoid almost all the towns as possible.
Also, they wouldn't be running a driver for 18 hours straight if there was a chance an accident would cause a major disaster.
But apparently, what I did haul was very time sensitive. Perhaps medical items like body components, but not things like hearts that would be flown by jet and helicopters on the last legs. What I was hauling was very heavy. So I'm thinking along the line of computer mainframes, or possibly control centers, where they could open up the trailer and use it like an office for shooting missiles or whatever.
The whole thing is, what is in Kit Carson Colorado? Or did they take the trailer somewhere else after I got it there?
The only thing I know about the area is that there is a military branch for every military service all around the Fort Carson Army complex. Plus there is a huge data complex there as well. And since I'm hauling for North America Van Lines Electronics Division, it only stands to reason I'm hauling electronics, probably a computer, or data storage cabinets with data on them.

All things I did under the Dutch Rhudy log-in I have suspended. However, my promoter is still posting my books from time to time. Basically, all I did when logged in as DR is go around to all the newly posted books placed by my promoter and hit the Like button on each of them, and on Twitter, I would Like them and Share them, since I had such a large following there.
Other sites where I did the same thing for my promoter has been put on hold also. It took about 2 hours per day to go to all the sites where books were posted, and since Hospice is burning up that much of my time, it was the most logical thing to put on hold, hi hi. Also, my promoter said due to my health, I should stop doing that for her company. She will still post mine as they come around on the queue.

One of my uncles had a hearing aid where no part of it was inside the ear at all. It was rectangular box on the end of his glasses frame earpieces that touched a bone behind the ear. You can hear one heck of a lot that way.
Heck, at night when I lay down to go to sleep, I can hear the air flowing in the cannula tube on the ear I'm laying on. It is loud at some times, until I move around so there is not so much pressure on my ear that is in the pillow.
Back when I was doing transcription work, I had several types of earpieces. The majority of transcription earpieces have the speaker inside the box at your chest with the two tubes running up to your ears. But others have the speaker inside an earpiece that goes in your ear, like the headphone type of ear plugs. A couple of brands, like Linear Transcription equipment, the earpiece is an ear clip with a small tube that sits just inside the ear, but not an ear plug. In other words, they do not block any sounds in the room like an earplug does.
However, the reason I brought that type up, is because if you wear it so the speaker unit is just below the bone that sticks out a bit, a little higher than the back of the, you can hear what is said clearly, even without the tube in your ear. The only thing is, keeping it in that position for hours causes a sore on the bone just above the soft spot where you can hear it the best.

Yeppers, on the USB info!

[yogi]

It makes a lot of sense to use an Electronics Moving specialist when you are transporting sensitive computerized equipment. Personally I would never trust those guys. When we moved down here to Missouri the moving company told me that they could move all my computer equipment safely. They had insurance to cover any damages too. I let them move everything but the tower. That I hand packed and carried with me in the back seat of the Saturn. I told the guy that if I wanted a new computer I would let them do the move, but I could not afford the time that I'd be down trying to settle an insurance claim. He then agreed that I should hand carry it. LOL

I never see many ads on Twitter other than what you post. And those I only saw on the Brainformation account, not on my personal account. The claim was, and is, that they get most of their income from embedded ads. I'll agree that under Musk there are a lot more visible advertisements on my private timeline which did not appear before he took over. I don't know who is seeing them. Your presence there had to be in a group of people with similar interests. Those folks would benefit from anything you posted and vice versa. I had no such affiliation and would on occasion see an ad, but not very often. Today it's all a different environment.

You told me before about the technique of hearing sounds via a head bone. I have read about that sort of thing as applied to people who were deaf. The sounds they heard were recognizable, but did not have the fidelity of a hearing aid which also is limited. I find it very interesting that you can actually hear the air flow through the cannula while you are laying down. Something like that would probably keep me awake all night. The gizmo in my ears is about the thickness of a wooden matchstick with a rubber plug on the end. That plug, I suppose, seals the stick inside the ear canal. I discovered that if I cover my ears with my hands, the loudness of the sounds increase significantly. I'll have to ask why that is true because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The business end is already sealed in the ear canal. Covering the ear to make it work better seems counter intuitive.

[Kellemora]

When I moved from my apartment in Kirkwood, I had planned on doing it all myself. Since I had access to large trucks and the like. But I had a lot of heavy furniture, and other heavy equipment, like a washer and dryer, plus my Milbradt mowing machine.
I had called the moving company to move just the heavy stuff, but the guy came out and saw how small my apartment was, and how there was nothing visible outside of the closets, and my little storage area.
He went through and counted the sticks of furniture, my stuff from the laundry room, and checked my storage closet.
They estimate closets, which are usually full, by how many cubic feet they are, and rooms only by the square footage of the room, and number of pieces of furniture.
They gave me a quote to do all the packaging of my stuff, and provided all the packing materials, boxes, protective pads for the furniture, etc. The guy doing the estimate must have really goofed up, and they said they could move me for like 600 bucks, and this including doing all the packing too. They also knew the destination had plenty of room to unload easily too.

I had to laugh the day they came to pack me up and move my stuff. They brought a small truck for the mower and washer and dryer and free-standing tools I had in the storage area. And something like 25 6-cu.ft. boxes and 30 4 -cu.ft. boxes.
While they were packing up my stuff in the apartment, a large straight truck pulled in to start loading the furniture, and they figured they could fit everything onto this one truck, hi hi.
They had to call in and have more boxes and packing material delivered, TWICE, hi hi.
In the end, they had filled 135 4-cu.ft. boxes, and 38 or 40 6-cu.ft. boxes, plus 6 hanging garment boxes.
So, besides the Utility truck for the mower, and etc. The large straight truck for the furniture, and whatever boxes they could fit in there, they had to bring out another even larger straight truck and filled it. Rather than them call for another truck, I had one of the step-vans from the greenhouses to load a bunch of things on I didn't want them to handle. So I took what they could not fit in their trucks and put it in mine until it was packed. My wife even took 4 of the 4-cu.ft. boxes in the car.
Now if that guy who did the estimate didn't get fired after that blunder, I'm sure he was in heap big trouble, hi hi.
The boss even came out to my house where they were unloading, and couldn't believe that much stuff was in my apartment.
But then too, they used large boxes to pack things like table lamps, and light loose things from the closets. Which wasted a lot of space the way they did it. They could have put four table lamps in a box easily, if they packed the shades for them separately. But no, they packed the lamp with the shade in a bag with a lot of packing material around the base of the lamp.

At least at my house where they unloaded, each box was marked as to where it went, and all they had to do was bring them in and set them down. Lots of room in that 18 room house to do that, hi hi.

Ads used to Never Appear in your individual pages you got to by making Lists. But they did away with Lists long before Musk took over, just so you would see the ads. Even so, I rarely if ever saw any until after Musk, now I see at least three or four, when I was still going to Twitter.

I have to move around several times once I get comfortable in bed so I don't hear the air in the cannula.
Think of the air outside your head like a shock absorber. When you cover your ear, it gives not only a place for the sound to reflect from, but also turns the now stagnant air into like a resonator.

The same thing happens if you are in a small room with your stereo going. If you close the door to the room, the sound inside the room becomes louder, just because there is no outside air acting as an absorber, and basically seals the room and its reflective surfaces. This way the air in the room itself vibrates like a resonator. If that makes any sense.
This is also why some musical drums have bottoms on them and some don't. It depends on their purpose and the sound level they want to achieve from them.

If I had a hearing aid, I don't think I would want one that closes off the sounds from outside the ear. It is good to hear those sounds also. Especially if you turn down the volume of your earpiece.
It also seems that using a higher volume on an earpiece is self-defeating as to damaging the ear further.

[yogi]

The movers that brought our stuff down here to Missouri charged us by the number and size of boxes. I think weight might have also been a factor, but I don't recall. Also not very clear eight years after the fact, I believe we had to agree to pay extra per box that exceeded the estimated limit. That clause in the contract probably arose form moves such as the one you described for your small apartment. LOL I also believe that our lamps were not disassembled by the packers. For one reason or another they were only allowed to pack things not take them apart to fit into the truck. I had to get permission from the moving boss to wrap my tower computer with their shrink wrap. Plus, after they did that minor task they wrote all over the package that this item was packed by me, the customer. I don't know why they did that because I took the package directly to the Saturn and none of their guys touched it once it was off the table. Anyway, those movers knew how to cover their rear ends, obviously.

I'm not sure what you are referring to about lists on Twitter. I had seven lists well before Musk came around and still have those same lists functioning today. That was the reason I liked to use Tweetdeck. Each column displayed a different list. Now I only show one list instead of my general timeline. As far as I know it is still working, but honestly I have not checked on it recently. One of the craziest ads that did come across was from the engineering school, MIT. Almost all their posts were marked as being sponsored, but they didn't seem to be selling anything other than their name.

You have the right idea about closed containers with sound inside. There are reverberations that could possibly resonate and amplify certain frequencies. In fact they use that technique in automobiles to cancel noise. The reverberations are out of phase with the source and thusly cancels certain noise frequencies. The hearing aid has a microphone and a speaker. The microphone typically is in the box that hangs on your ear. The speaker is what sits in the ear canal. The speaker in my case looks like a small lollipop, a Tootsie Pop to be exact. It has a bulb of soft rubber on the end with a hole in the middle to let the sound out. I think it is designed to be comfortable and not necessarily to improve acoustics. My ear is not spherical shaped and thus there must be some air gaps around the lollipop. So, when I cover the ear canal, I suppose some reverberations could occur. Hard to believe that is possible in such a small space, but what do I know? One of the benefits of this design is the lack of feedback. A lot of older type hearing aids will whistle if you crank up the loudness too much. The mic is physically too close to the speaker to prevent it. That doesn't happen in my case and I have cranked it up to full volume just to check it out. Damage to the cochlea is done by a high intensity SPL, sound pressure level, over an extended period of time. From what I can tell no hearing aides can be cranked up to that high of a level. Damage is also the result of old age where some of the hairy cells responsible for hearing high frequencies simply die off or become less effective.

[Kellemora]

This company specialized in moving folks from apartment to apartment. They even offered storage so you could fit things in as you got to the boxes. Storage was only 25 days, then you had to start paying to keep things there.
So many folks move to smaller apartments, they don't have room for all of what they brought, either that or it doesn't fit in like it did in their other apartment.
But they billed based on how many square feet your apartment size was, plus the cubic feet of the closets.

My Hospice people are here, got to go.

[yogi]

The movers we used also stored our furniture for a couple weeks. We packed enough in the car to hold us over and stayed in a hotel a day or two until closing was complete. We bought a new mattress the day we arrived and they were nice enough to deliver it the next day; for a price of course. So we had something to sleep on while waiting for the movers. Also, Spectrum came on the same day we closed to set up the cable which gave us Internet access while we were waiting. We also spent time shopping for appliances and Home Depot too was prompt with their deliveries. After we got all the new stuff set up we only had to wait another day before the movers came. They said it took so long to arrange the move because while people were moving out of Illinois, nobody was moving back in. Thus they had to return home with an empty truck.

I don't recall many of the details now, but the move to this new house went better than expected. There were no major problems and the entire transition went smoothly. I don't recall any of our previous moves working so well.

I've been exploring the hearing aid software and managed to make things worse in some instances. LOL The idea is to load their pre-configured profiles for various environments, or to make your own and use those. Eventually I was able to do all that but the software on the smartphone is not intuitively obvious. There is a user manual which I resorted to reading and they explain things very well. The mechanics, however, are general and may be different for various hearing aid models. For example they keep referring to a "Save" button but I don't have one. I do have a check mark, however. It took some time to figure that out. Then I recalled the audiologist did show me how to do it a couple weeks ago, which of course I forgot all about. I'm used to programming real software and this app is nothing like that. I want to do things, like modify existing profiles, that apparently can't be done. Also, the new profiles I create are temporary and it all reverts back to the default settings unless I do something special to save them. It took a while to figure out how to save them, and then delete them because they were not better than the defaults. I did all this just to familiarize myself with the techniques. There may be special situations where I'd want a custom profile at my disposal, but for the time being I can't think of any.