September 10, 2008

I was rudely awakened by the Patient Care Technician (PCT) putting up the rail of my hospital bed this morning. I always jump when I'm woken up by a noise and I scared her. I asked her where she was taking me and she said to dialysis. I looked at her and said "Um, NO! I'm walking! I'll sit in a chair for my treatment." She said she would check to see if they had chairs. I was thinking to myself the whole time 'I know they have chairs, because I've used one many times before!'

I got up and dressed, brushed my teeth and hair, gathered my stitching, iced tea, book, and iPod and walked to the dialysis suite for my treatment. I didn't do any stitching because I only slept for about two hours. I just couldn't concentrate on stitching so I read my book instead. I brought three romance novels to the hosptial with me because I know how bad my memory and concentration are when I'm in here. Romances don't require thinking but they're great for at least staying occupied.

The infectious disease doc, Dr Y, came by on her rounds. She let me know that the staph I have is not the MRSA that did so much damage to my kidneys from 1999-2000, so that was a relief. She said that there was an antibiotic that I could get during dialysis so I may be going home Thursday or Friday, depending on the results of the blood cultures that were done today and yesterday.

The IT technician came into the dialysis suite during my treatment to find out where my laptop was. When I told him it was in the safe in my room, he said not to worry, he'd come back after I was finished. Miss Irene accompanied him and 'Lo and Behold! It worked! Out of the blue, it connected to the internet. Luckily he knew I wasn't making anything up because of Miss Irene's visit yesterday, but I was so mad! I'd like to know what happened and what changed all of a sudden and now there's no chance of that.

When I finally got to Yahoo, I found 181 email messages. That's what I did for the next several hours: reading and replying to the posts, as well as finally being able to send out a blanket post letting everyone know why I'd been MIA for more than two days.

Carol B called me and said that she was planning on coming down for a few hours tonight so that we could have a stitch-in in my room. Earlier, I'd emailed her best friend and told her that I was upset about missing the Heirloom Stitchers' meeting last night and that I wanted a do-over! Now I get it because Kim W is coming over to join us!

Kim only put in about four stitches on her L&L Enchanted Alphabet, but Carol got some progress made on her current LHN project and I worked on Charmed Dreams. We watched PS I Love You, which is why Kim didn't get much stitching done. Carol and I have both seen the movie (ok, you knew *I* have seen it because I talked about it too much...deal with it!) but this was Kim's first time seeing it. Now she says she has to see it again. Another convert! So now, how many people have watched it because I've reccommended it? Head count, please! Debi, Carol, Meari...who else?

The girls started gathering their stitching and headed home around 10:15pm. They were afraid their husbands would start worrying that they'd been admitted to the hospital, too! One of my nurses, Ellen, was kind enough to come in and take this picture of the three of us with our stitching bags. Pictured from left to right is Kim, me, and Carol.
My stitching mojo was still flowing, so I continued working on Charmed Dreams until the wee hours of the morning. This is my progress as of midnight. I have one-fourth of the stitching done, minus the beads. This design is a repeat of the first five motifs, so I have to stitch the purple star and the cream circles with the backstitched motif three more times. Then all I have to do is add the beads and the center medallion and this project will be completed!