Up and Down

Monday was up, Tuesday was down.

Mary felt pretty darn good on Monday. So much so, she was out in the kitchen with me preparing a ravioli dinner for us on Monday evening. She did get tired--standing and bending--so I finished the preparations and we enjoyed a very nice meal at our dining room table. She had joined me at the table for all three meals on Monday and was active in preparing all of them from setting the table to helping me cook the oatmeal for breakfast. Basically, I have no built in meter for when a dish is ready to serve. When I get close, and given that Mary is up and active, I ask her to come and confirm the dish is ready. By now I have mastered fried eggs, steaks, chicken, fish and a few other things, but oatmeal was new to me and I really didn't know when it looked "done". Same was true for the ravioli on Monday night.

We put new fentanyl patches on Sunday evening and used the last one from the current box and the first from a new box. Turns out, the expiration date on the old box was April 2010 and the new box is August 2011. We are now wondering if the older patches have less punch which is why Mary had such a bad week last week. The patches are put on in pairs every three days and there are five patches in a box. Sunday night was one 2011 patch and one 2010 patch. Wednesday night will be two 2011 patches and we'll see how she does.

I ran a bunch of errands on Monday and although Mary was feeling much better, she stayed home and read the paper. We get the New York Times on Fri-Sat-Sun and we don't throw them into recycle until we've had a good chance to read all three days. Mary also spent time reading one of her books. That was a really good sign because she hasn't been very interested in reading anything for a week or so.

We did watch the Vikings lose to the Bears on Monday night. Hard to believe how that team started the season at 10-1 and is now 1-3 the last four games. Not a good sign going into the playoffs!

Notwithstanding the fentanyl patch freshness theory, today (Tuesday) was a downer. Mary did come out to the table for breakfast and I served a fried egg, toast and tangerine. She ate the egg, nibbled on the toast and ate a few wedges of tangerine. For lunch, I had purchased a number of microwaveable frozen thingys that Mary likes for quick meals on the theory that Mary's system seems to like warm food better than cold food such as sandwiches, cold serial, etc. Unfortunately, she wasn't feeling up to eating any of the frozen items or even a sandwich. I prepared the old reliable of saltines, apple slices and peanut butter for her lunch which she while remained in her lounge chair--its the one cold dish that seems to agree with her.

For dinner I had taken a breast of chicken out of the freezer to cook for dinner. By dinner time, Mary wasn't interested in that or anything else. As a result, she had half a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup (Healthy Request), again delivered to Mary in her lounge chair.

Today was really quiet for Mary although I ran to Stanford to pick up the next prescription for fentanyl. The also included scripts for her nausea meds, Zofran and Compozine. From there I hit Costco for household sundries and discovered that weekday shopping is a veritable feast! On weekends the food sample stations are working, but usually they are preparing the next batch of whatever so you have a choice of hanging around and waiting or simply moving on. During the week, each stand's food preparer was ahead of the crowd. Man, what a spread!

And yes, I did see the older couple with nothing in their cart but soft drinks purchased at the food stand. They had positioned their cart to block access to the front of their favorite sample station, were standing at the side to block access from that angle, and proceeded to grab and eat as many samples as the demo lady would (could?) put down. I watched them as I walked up and down the aisle and they hung at that one food station, blocking access and snarfing everything she prepared for at least 15 minutes.

I shouldn't complain, but the time I got out of there, I was stuffed too. I hadn't eaten lunch, figuring I'd grab something while running my errands, not realizing what would be available while shopping while shopping at Costco. A feast!