Sunday 10 February 2013

Introducing Stanley

Friday morning I stumbled out of bed, woke up Linds and we headed off in the snow storm to TGH. Imagine our surprise when the place was practically deserted...what's a matta? 'fraid of a 'lil snow, Toronto?

First on the list was shoving a delicious Tim's breakfast wrap down my throat, along with 30 pills - yes, I seriously have 30 pills to take in the morning. My daily total is about 50; not including the thousands of insulin injections throughout the day. Those, my friends, are a good time.

This was quickly chased by a tall hazelnut pike - remember, blondes are so last year.

Clinic was the first appointment of the day. Annnnnnd I picked up this bad boy:

Stanley, my sexy spirometer

Post new chunkers, we are required to do a few things for the rest of our lives.

1. take our temperature morning and night
2. check our lung function every morning
3. be careful of narsty germs
4. attend a gizzillion medical appointments
5. stay cool in red kicks
6. other stuff

As I've stated in the past, the two major things to watch out for post-transplant are infection and rejection. There are some tools we use to try and catch these - a thermometer and that bad boy in the photo above.

First thing I do in the AM, after I peel my eyelids open, is jam the thermometer in my mouth. After what seems like 15 years, I get a reading. Seriously? Why does it take sooo long??

Next I pull out Stanley. Remember "panting in the box"? Well, there is no box and no panting...so forget that.

I simply take a deep breath, put my lips around the tube that resembles a toilet paper roll and blow out as hard and as fast as I can. Stanley gives me a reading and voila! I have my lung function.

The first time I did it I almost threw my back out. I'm such a champ.

So, clinic, right?

Dr. T is happy with me. My lung function is sweet, my x-rays are looking sexy, my blood work is good and I'm feeling super.

After my nurse, Debbie, showed me how to manipulate Stanley, we were out of there.

Next, we met with the pharmacist to go over my meds. Pretty routine, nothing exciting.

For the next hour we were entertained by squat buddy Mark. He's still in lockup, still waiting to hear about release, but it may be Monday - fingers crossed ***!

Last appointment of the day was physio. Once again, Linds did the stretches with me. I pedaled my face off on the bike, upped my leg weights to 6 lbs (crazy, right?), added leg weights to my box step routine (much better work out) and jumped on the treadmill.

I Immediately asked the physiotherapist if I could increase my speed. She had a better idea. A little thing called incline. Incline of 1. Yup - superstar. Practically a 90 degree angle.

Finally we were finished at TGH. We busted out of there to get home - we had a concert to prepare for...

5 comments:

  1. Jess.....I just want to mention that after spending time with Mark on Friday, I think I may have actually met someone cooler than you. Sorry.

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    1. L-Dawg!!! I thought we had a pact!? Never reveal a person's position on the coolness scale Dawg - they're cool, just cool...you be breakin little hearts Gurl...

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    2. Come on, everyone knows how cool I am. We're good.

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  2. I have a Stanley too!!! I got mine a few months after transplant - for the first 6-8 weeks, we had this crazy monstrosity that connected to the phone line and beamed our daily spiro into clinic. They don't do that any more - I think they decided it was overkill... At around 6-8 weeks I got my Micro - the same model, or very similar to your Stanley. I've had a great deal of luck with mine!!! I've been using the same one for almost 13 years now!!! I hope you get similar performance...

    I log my spiros and medical crap on a spreadsheet daily - I always do all of my medical checks shortly after my shower in the morning... It's just important that you do them in the same relative time/environment every day, whether morning or evening or whenever... On my spreadsheet, I have date/time - spiro - BP/pulse - temp - am/pm blood glucose, weight... I have spreadsheet rows dating back to April 16, 2000 - the only days I missed was when they splayed my guts last Christmas for a few days, and again when they plopped in my new kidney, Mabel, last May! The nice thing about having them on a spreadsheet is, not only can you quickly print off the section for clinic, but you can graph the stuff and see your trends... (And see how getting fatter can drop your spiro readings and whatnot...)

    I have a spreadsheet app on my phone called "Documents to Go" that I find very useful and friendly. On an iPhone or iPad you can probably also use Numbers or something else...

    You take care... You're always a superstar to me... Love, Steve

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    1. I love Stanley. I will love him more once he gives me better numbers. I'm recording absolutely everything. I want to do this right.
      Maybel is a hawt name; proud of you. I'll look up the iphone apps.

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