Another Milestone and a New Cap

Don reached another milestone in his recovery on Monday (Dec. 21). Now that he’s receiving dialysis through his fistula, the catheter used for dialysis was no longer needed, so it was removed. It had been inserted during his stay in St. Mary’s Cardiovascular ICU, and I think it was around June 20, so it was there for 6 months! Hard to believe so much time has passed. Because of the length of time, there was some internal attachment – his body must have been trying to make the tube a permanent part of its system – and the doc had to work to get it released and removed. There’s still some soreness, but Don’s really glad not to have that appendage under his shirt, and I’m really glad not to have to put a waterproof glove and bandage on it every day before he takes a shower!

In fact, Don’s now driving himself to dialysis and has asked for an early slot (7 am) whenever the center has one available, as he likes to get the 4-hour session done before noon and have the rest of the day free.

It’s great to have two cars to give us both the freedom to come and go as we wish. And we’re both enjoying the new truck. Today we got the new Leer cap put on. It looks really nice!

The local dealer also installed the mud flaps Don had ordered. The cap seems to make the truck look bigger, but maybe that’s just my imagination. It will be so nice to store stuff safely inside and have room for the dialysate fluid in the motorhome basement.

Since Don lost so much weight, he can now wear a belt he had stored in our shed in Benson. And he found a nifty Navy submarine buckle to use with it.

As Christmas approaches, Santa has left more gifts near our tiny tree on the dash.

We send our warmest greetings for happy holidays to one and all. May your days be merry and bright… And if you’re traveling, please stay safe and away from Christmases that are white!

 

P.S. Note to Bloggers: I encountered a new problem when trying to publish this post. Open Live Writer gave this message: "The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden". I found the solution at this link. Be sure to follow the instructions while you’re in Open Live Writer, not Blogger.

Testing Open Live Writer

I’ve been convinced to try this new version of Live Writer, now that it’s an open source piece of software and has been changed to work with Blogger. So here’s a brief test post to see if I can use OLW as well as I did Microsoft’s version.

Below are some recent pictures for testing. Some have been posted on Facebook, so they may look familiar.

Our little dash tree is working hard this year, especially with a large package that arrived today.

Gigi has learned to claim my chair and afghan as soon as I vacate it. She figures I was finished with it.

What can I say? Don loves giving me my favorite yellow roses whenever he finds fresh ones. These are 3 days old and still looking great.

A clever way of folding the napkin at our FamCamp Christmas Dinner, held at Davis-Monthan AFB’s Mirage Club.

P.S. Hurray! Open Live Writer works! And I didn’t have to delete my previous Blogger account, as some have recommended. Comments are also still an option. All seems to be back to normal – thanks to all the anonymous people who wrote/modified the programs so this new program works as it should!