Crazy Old Cat Lady

I went to the URL for CatLady to see who got my preferred URL name and it's just one useless entry and then I checked out my next preferred URL name of CrazyCatLady (son#1 calls me "Crazy Lady" and the rest of the world calls me "Cat Lady" so I thought a URL was born) and she's a great writer, but I can't find any way to add a comment telling her so. So my URL ended up being CrazyOldCatLady. My web page is http://cvanhorn.homestead.com/

Monday, January 02, 2012

1-2-12

January 2, 2012
All of the holiday company has gone home to Virginia (Peter) or the Valley (the twins). The cats are starting to feel safe to come back into the house before midnight.
I sprained a muscle in my chest over my heart and lungs on Nov 15 that put me out of action for several weeks- when I used my left arm, it would put strain on the muscle and give me a muscle spasm that hurt and made it hard to breathe. When I first did it, I kept my left arm over my chest and could only grunt and make other weird noises so Bill thought I might be having a heart attack or a stroke. I thought it was a muscle spasm because I have had those before, but not for many years. Had my first one more than 50 years ago and had several more before a daily dose of Vitamin B12 helped ward off more, but I over-did using my weak left side that the vitamin couldn't handle. Bill wanted me to go to emergency, just in case. I did take an aspirin, in case that would help (is that for a stroke or heart attack?) After a few hours, I finally agreed to go and sat in emergency for 6 hours before I got an EKG and chest X-ray and pain medicine and a "sprain" diagnosis. Got back home about 11 PM after going to McDonald's for my first food of the day.
So that put me on pain medication for 10 days (I wanted to take more, but Bill had never seen me take any for that long so he was discouraging me). When I finally saw one of my doctors a couple of weeks later, he said that as long as I don't take more than 6 a day (I was taking 3 a day) I would be OK. (Then, of course, I was mad that I hadn't asked a dr sooner and had needlessly suffered the pain.)  I didn't use my left arm for a couple more weeks as using it pulled at the sprained muscle that would spasm again.
So all of the usual Christmas chores were not getting done and the house and yard were looking worse. The winds got violent and blew done part of our fence and ripped a tarp apart on our storage tent. A lot of my plants in pots that usually got watered every other day died. And Christmas kept getting closer.

(My right hand goes numb when I type so time out to recuperate.)