Honour Your Inner Magpie
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Lioness' LiveJournal:
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | | 4:34 pm |
and the good thing (CART) continues to look like a good thing
I got email back from the excellent helpful techie guy in Language Services at Fairview, and it is a very encouraging thing for three reasons: 1. I got this email following up on our discussion of yesterday. (That's lightning speed, in my experience, for anything involving access. This is very encouraging.) 2. The email cc's the director, with whom I also spoke yesterday. (We likes accountability, we does -- and we especially likes the implication that the director is keeping an eye on how this goes. She's unfortunately out of the office this coming week, but I got the feeling that she has detailed the excellent helpful techie guy to look after me and to report back to her on how it goes. If so, also very encouraging, as she seems to be gathering data to be used to make things better. I was also pleased by her careful listening to my account of the horrible job of accessibility at the mandatory class* on joint replacement I took a while back at their facility, because I got the feeling Things Were About To Be Looked Into.) 3. The email gave a preliminary schedule with specific times for which CART would be provided, and explained a change in timing by noting that they had double-checked time for rounds and found it was earlier on that ward than they had thought, so they had adjusted the CART schedule so it would be there for rounds as well as morning PT/OT. It said they would be sending me another email as soon as this schedule was definitely confirmed by the CART company. (He said the CART company had said they felt confident they could cover the times requested, but that he was waiting for final word, but wanted me to know they were working on it so I didn't think I'd been forgotten.) That last bit kinda blows me away. Getting back to me after one day so that I don't feel like I've been forgotten? Dude, that is so far above the usual bar of performance that ... that I can't even think of an analogy. It's, like, good. And I'm not used to good, in matters of accessibility for a print-focused late-deafened hard-of-hearing person like me. Right now, they are my heroes. I'll keep you posted on how it all works out. * This was a mandatory class for joint replacement patients which had a printed statement on the front of the registration info brochure that access for deaf and hearing-impaired clients was readily available. However, despite my calling ahead more than a week in advance, there were no detailed notes -- sorry, but a photocopy of the powerpoint presentation is not sufficient in and of itself, though it might make a nice index if the actual content were there -- and nothing at all from the physical therapist and the occupational therapist who each spoke for between ten and twenty minutes, and the video had no captions and no transcript, despite my specific inquiries about that in my advance call. It is REALLY hard to lipread and take notes at the same time. (The director told me that I should have been offered a choice of CART or a note-taker. Neither was mentioned when I called, though they did offer me an ASL interpreter. Which I'm glad they offer, but it doesn't fit for me -- but if you're a regular reader here, you've heard me on that subject, yah?) | | Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 9:00 pm |
| | 4:21 pm |
amidst the frustration, a very good thing
You guys know what CART is? Well, they've got it at the hospital I go to. (I could have had it for that damned mandatory joint-replacement class, if they had told me they had it when I called to check on accessibility and transcripts, damn it!) Anyhow, I'm going to have it! I get it all day surgery day, and on discharge day, and (it looks like) for rounds and PT and OT!!!!! This could be a good thing, I am thinking*. I'll let you know how it works out. * This is wild Scandosotan understatement, as shown by the fact that I used up a week's worth of exclamation points in the previous sentence. | | 8:07 am |
progress: physicals, what appears to be three-bed monte, and factors
1. Pre-op physical today. 2. Bed of proper height will materialize today. (Yay! Have already got futon transferred to back room, where my friend Sonya will be ensconced upon it when she comes to help out. And the daybed that was where the futon is now has been moved to the living room, where the ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jenett can snooze upon it when she stays over. Consequently, the living room has been much rearranged. I think it works, actually.) 3. Got call yesterday: "please to come let us do more labs. We need to check a bunch of blood factor things, to make sure we have the right blood on hand. If not right blood on hand, must postpone surgery." (OK, they were not telegraphic and leonine in their phrasing, but you get the gist.) OK then. Ah, the joys of being A negative.
 Eeeeeeeee! | | Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 10:10 pm |
sitcom silliness
I am not as nervous as I might be. Well, right at the moment, anyhow. But I am remarkably fluff-brained. Here: | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 1:12 am |
| | Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | | 12:01 pm |
RANT: my personal list of boobytrapped foods
Many drink and food manufacturers are adding sugar substitutes to all sorts of things, some of which are not labeled as "diet" or "reduced-calorie" foods. This is inconvenient, because I used to be able to use the diet/lo-cal labels as handy warning labels -- most sugar substitutes make me ill. (I have Crohn's disease and a few other things. Trust me, when I say that they make me ill, I mean that if I am visiting you and you give me a piece of the lovely pie you baked with Splenda without warning me first, the smallest room in your house is going to belong to me all day.) I like sugar. How about they just make stuff with sugar, and not boobytrap it, OK? (And do not start with the stevia being natural, OK? Just don't. DO NOT WANT.) AM NOT LOOKING FOR SUGAR SUBSTITUTE! AM LOOKING TO AVOID SUGAR SUBSTITUTES. Please to read for content, yah?*sigh* Here's an incomplete list of stuff I avoid: 7UP Plus - contains sucralose Coke C2 - contains acesulfame potassium and aspartame and sucralose Pepsi EDGE - contains sucralose Pepsi ONE - contains acesulfame potassium and aspartame Propel - contains acesulfame potassium and sucralose Pure Life flavoured water - contains sucralose Sobe Lifewater - contains stevia-derived sweetener Sprite Green - contains stevia-derived sweetener Trop 50 orange juice - contains stevia-derived sweetener along with sugar Here's an incomplete list of sugar substitutes that I steer clear of: acesulfame potassium aspartame cyclamates glycerol mannitol neotame Reb-A PureVia sorbitol Splenda stevia sucralose xylitol ...and propylene glycol, while not a sweetener, also seems to mess my guts up. Alas. It also goes by the name of E1520. The jury's still out on erythritol, but I'm not conducting tests until I can walk easily again. (yep, I know, some are listed twice, as there are chemical names and trade names) | | Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | | 11:30 pm |
| | 6:41 pm |
Looking for rides to and from Convergence tomorrow (Sunday)
Anybody going from (or through) South Minneapolis, Powderhorn Park area, who would have room for an Elise? I have a panel in the mid-afternoon...and should have planned ahead and arranged rides, but I am a space cadet, even more than usual just now. So... anybody? | | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 1:34 am |
Convergence?
Are you going to be there? (I will be; I'm on four programming items.) | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 8:53 am |
progress
Arranging for medical-savvy people to be at the hospital after my surgery, so they can sit with me and take notes on what's happening and relay things to me as needed is a great goodness. It's scary to go to the hospital for major surgery when one is hearing impaired. Besides the obvious other difficulties and potential for misunderstanding or lack of successfully conveyed information -- and therefore lack of consent on my part -- there's also the way they habitually use response to voiced questions as a measure of progress and responsiveness. And even if they've been told "hello, this patient is hearing impaired, and might catch about fifty to eighty percent of what you say, unless it's a noisy day around here, in which case all bets are off," there are generally so many different staff members that there's always somebody who doesn't get the word, or forgets. Am thinking we'll have stickers for my hearing companions, something to say "I'm with the hard-of-hearing chick, and I'm being her ears." Not sure of the wording yet. Am going to have Daniel call the accessibility people at the hospital and see what they say. Maybe they already have such a thing. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 3:49 pm |
Solving the Insurmountable Bathtub Problem
OK, so after hip replacement surgery, one cannot take baths. One can take showers with a hand-held shower device, and those are easily obtainable. Getting in and out of the tub-with-shower, though, is an issue. Mostly it is solved by using a tub transfer bench. The double tub transfer bench is a thingie that has two legs inside the tub and two outside. One sits down on the outside half of the bench and then slides over into the tub, carefully raising one's legs to get into tub. Well, one does that unless one has a beloved old clawfoot bathtub, in which case one is told that a beloved old clawfoot bathtub will require raising the legs higher than is allowed for six weeks after surgery. And then one weeps for a moment or two. However! Through the combined powers of ingenuity and silliness, I believe we have a fix that is practical, inexpensive, and highly amusing. Because I am a tub monster and not a shower person, I don't have a longing for water under pressure spraying at me. And we already have a weatherproof metal cafe chair, a sturdy one, in the house.... Yep. Cheap tiny wading pool + sturdy metal cafe chair + watering can = happy clean Lioness with water hot poured down the back, as Tolkien would say. I figure the kitchen's the best location for this. "Hey! Time to water the Elise!" *breaks up in giggles* P.S. Anybody got a recommendation for the cheapest tiniest lowest-edge wading pool available in the Twin Cities? Extra points for something that I'll think is hilarious. PLEASE NOTE: Don't worry about how I'd drain such a pool, or whether filling it with water from a hose is warm enough, or any of those things; I'm only going to need to catch the runoff from one or two watering cans full of water. I'm not going to be cleared for soaking for quite some time after the surgery. This setup is merely a shower substitute. OK? | | 3:18 pm |
Better Recuperation Through Videos (with captions)
For those of you joining our saga in mid-episode, our plucky about-to-have-hip-replacement-surgery heroine is hearing-impaired and needs captions in order to make most video watching something more than an exercise in frustration. So... I'm figuring that being able to watch videos while I recuperate might be a good thing. Juan has a DVD player stashed away that he says would be just the thing. So what I need is a television set. More specifically, a television set that will do what I need it to do: it has to be large enough that I can read the captions from across the room, because there's only one place I can put the television and lie in the prescribed position (i.e. not on my side) in bed and watch. (Also? Got adjustable bed coming. Woo-hoo!) And it has to handle closed captions well. Don't need HDTV; this thing won't actually be hooked up to receive television broadcast or cable. I just want to watch pre-recorded stuff on it. (Might drag down the old VCR as well, and watch really old stuff. I have a stash of goodies that Mike recorded for me.) If people are selling off their old sets and getting HDTVs, maybe I can pick one up for cheap. (Cheap would be handy, because I, er, just bought this adjustable bed, you see, and it was definitely not.) So... Craigslist? Or what? I basically need a bigass television. Or is there some reason to look for a new one? ( casacorona points out that if I don't need to receive broadcast TV, I might get a killer deal on an analog set on close-out.) P.S. Is there such a thing as a bigass flatscreen television that's not HDTV? | | 3:09 pm |
ArtLog: I Also Has Bead Boxes!
In preparation for my new hip and the subsequent recuperation, I'm tidying the workshop, since sending people up to fetch beads for me will be a lot easier on all of us if they are boxed sensibly and labeled. I did buy some lovely clear (not translucent, really clear, which makes a big difference to me) bead boxes a while back online, but I didn't get nearly enough of them. As we're coming down to two weeks until surgery, I opted for local-and-therefore-convenient, and compromised, which is why I now have nine translucent bead boxes from Michael's for the rest of the stuff. (Am going to swap glass beads and some findings from some clear boxes into these, and then put the stuff I really need to see through the top to in the clear boxes.) Am also updating the inventory as we do this. Might as well take the opportunity, yah? And if I get that tiny little cheapie minilaptop that runs my inventory program, I can work on inputting as I recuperate, because counting beads is soothing, right? | | 3:05 pm |
I Has Bed!
Or I will have one, anyway. Went today, shopped, and bought something totally other than what I expected, but it was the right thing. Darn those discounts. Darn them all to heck, she said, tongue firmly in cheek. Simmons Beautyrest. On an adjustable bed. I can has relief from reflux, adjustability, and sitting up to watch interesting captioned thingies, if Juan brings the DVD player downstairs and if we find a nice cheap (secondhand?) television set. It felt almost as good as the Good Bed! WIKTORY! And they will deliver it and set it up. OK, next thing on the list, which is solving the insurmountable bathtub problem. Surgery: two weeks from today. Whee! | | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 1:13 pm |
finding my good recuperative bed
Since the mattress-shopping talk is looking likely to take over the New Shinies post, I figure it might be good to have a post specifically about that. If you've got testimonials, et cetera, this is the place for them. (Please don't be offended if I don't take any one set of advice, though -- I have some pretty specific medical needs for this particular bed. If you have similar health stuff, you probably know what I mean; if you don't, then maybe take a moment to be thankful, yah?) Thanks, you guys. Onward. ( Here's what I'm considering, and some of the parameters of the situation. ) | | Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | | 6:58 pm |
ArtLog: New Shinies, finally!
Greetings from snailsville, where the snails are starting to get excited about this upcoming hip replacement thing. The snails are also getting industrious, because the nice physical therapists say that that futon on the floor is not acceptable, and there needs to be a real bed, high enough to reach high-mid-thigh on this Lioness. Have you seen what mattresses and box springs with edge-support and some cushiness* cost nowadays? Yikes! Here are your shinies of newness, a smidgen late: ( Oooh. Shiny! ) | | 2:05 pm |
new shinies upcoming
Here are the names of the things I photographed: "A Botanist in Faeryland" "A Dragonfly and a Scholar" "The Elixir of Longing" "Evensong Under Branches" "First Flight" "Grape Magic" (which makes me giggle because of a story Neil told on himself) "High Summer at Evergreen House" "The Ice Cream of Paradise" "Idle Thoughts While Watching A Faun" "The Keepers of Lake and River Magic" "Life Is a Carnival" "Long-Tailed Dragonfly Queen" "The Lure" "Madame Goes To the Circus" "Mama and Papa Circus" "Off to Look for my Island" "One Perfect Enchantment" "Poet's Blood" "A Proper Ocean Gardener" "Return of the Summer Queen" "The Rose-Queen's Apothecary" "Singing Songs to the Sun" "Sister in the Forest" "The Social Register of the Drowned Cities" "Summer at Dragonfly Lake" "Tiny Golden Dragonfly" "A Very Fey Childhood" "When Eldest Sister Grew Her Wings" "The Woman Who Built a Clockwork Universe" "Candy for the Dead" ...and an unnamed harvest-themed hairstick (As you can see, I was thinking of dragonflies a lot while working on these. That's because of the Swarovski crystal beads. You'll see.) | | Saturday, June 27th, 2009 | | 5:09 pm |
progress
Going out to photograph a few earrings, and then putting the wires on the rest of them. Yay, progress! Later: got five pair photographed, and must put camera battery on charger. Going up to finish the rest, or as many as I can manage. Later: WIKTORY! Photographed all the gold filled ones, and put earwires on all the sterling silver ones so I can photograph them tomorrow. Going to go have supper and hang out with the Juan for a while now. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 12:29 pm |
ArtLog: in progress
Remember that gorgous lampwork I made earrings from a while back? I found my stash of Lori Robbins lampwork and Beau Hawn lampwork. Expect earrings soon. I know we're totally off-schedule for New Shinies and Current Shinies, but I'll try to get back on track... just in time to get off-track again when I have surgery, but oh, well. Work is good, on whatever schedule. Current Mood: loving my job |
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