—From EF—

It’s Tuesday, the Fourth of July, and this is the blog entry I should have written on Sunday. It’s a big-ass holiday, and everybody’s celebrating, but I’m just settling for being here with Conrad and the cats and being quiet and low-key.

Fun and entertainment for this morning: the washing machine malfunctioned and didn’t stop filling when it was full. I was at the other end of the house, blissfully ignorant, until I went in to put things in the dryer. When I found myself standing in a pool that covered the whole laundry-room floor I hit the machine’s off-button and grabbed a mop and dishpan. This was beyond floor-towels, and it took me four trips to the kitchen sink to empty what I laboriously wrung out into the dishpan. Luckily, the spinner part still worked OK, so I emptied the wash water, refilled the tank, spun it again and called it quits. The agitator didn’t ever kick in, so stuff was just soaked in soapy water and then rinsed. I am NOT going to traipse up to the laundromat today. The clothes are in the dryer and will be declared clean, whatever the Supreme Court would say.

Two days ago when I was scheduled to write, Conrad’s cellulitis (third bout) came roaring back with fiery red hot skin and a fever. 3 AM, Sunday, on a holiday weekend, he’d collapsed in the bathroom and couldn’t get up without assistance. Even getting his legs swung into bed was a major project. I kept him hydrated, bugged him with periodic thermometer readings, and waited for daylight. The on-call doc at our medical clinic returned my call quickly and was magnificent. She took me seriously about our desperate desire to avoid the ER, took time to read his on-line hospital notes from cellulitis #1 and #2, and agreed to give oral antibiotics a 24-hour trial with me wielding the thermometer frequently. She made me promise that if he went above 100.5 we’d go to the hospital, and told me to do the Sharpie routine again (drawing a dotted line around the red areas to judge whether it was spreading.)

So now I have new entries to the iPhoto album called “cellulitis” that started back on Apr 26. Amazing shades of red and strange Australia-shaped Sharpie maps. But so far we have dodged the bullet, his temp is back to normal, most of the red has subsided, and the pressure ulcer he got from the weeks in the hospital beds is starting to heal. It took me half a day to find a pharmacy somewhere that had MediHoney. Don’t laugh, it’s real, and has a solid track record. All honey has wound-healing properties, but this is unique, gathered from bees working on shrubs and trees related to the Tea Tree family. A sterile product in a tube, it’s effective in difficult wound care and I can already see the improvement. Once that open wound closes, CB will not be so vulnerable to further infection.

On July 11 the 10 days of antibiotics will be over, the wound should have healed, and with decent karma we’ll have avoided the clutches of the hospital. His physical therapy to deal with remaining balance issues will go through the end of July, and life could again be as normal as these weird days will allow. As they say—ground, center, breathe.

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