The top ten reasons you should be suspect that the rehab center you have just checked into is not that good.

10. When you arrive they take you down a hallway that you were not shown during your tour of the facility.

9. When you get your meals all of your vegetables are the same shade of grey.

8. They refuse to empty your overflowing garbage can early. They only empty the garbage after four days and not before.

7. If you are in bed when the aides come around to change bed linens you have missed your chance! They don’t come back.

6. You and your roommate share one toilet with the male patients in the next room. Get used to no flushing and strange odors!

5. Get used to be being locked out of the one bathroom by the non-thinking male patients in the next room!

4. Pill time equals quiz time. You find it necessary to question the nurse as to what they are giving you and where are your other regular medications?

3. You are in charge of telling your nurse that they are to be decreasing the use of your oxygen intake and to lower the pressure.

2. They have “Personal Hygiene Police.” They tell you when they want you to shower! And it has to be at their scheduled times and days. They cannot cope with a daily shower-er! They only want you to shower every other day!

1. You are given the wrong medications! I was given high blood pressure pills but because of my medications quizzes I discovered this error. When my blood pressure is 110/68 and shows no need for it to be any lower!

the final stretch...again

Catch-up time. Because I was so sick with the Not-swine flu and that brought on asthma symptoms I had my surgery postponed for two weeks. You had better believe that upset me plenty! But I had to know that they were acting on what would be best for me. So I have had this time to sit around more and not taking my regularly scheduled arthritis medication. So each day I am more and more stiff and in more pain when I move. I use to walk around the house without the cane but now I need it and I have been contemplating the use of the walker! Okay, I am getting desperate!!

On a brighter note I did finally break down and write my name in all of my underwear! I have struggled with this for days! Knowing that I need to do this so I can have clean undies while I'm in the rehab place. I always came to the idea that I was so pathetic that I "needed" my name in my undies so if I got lost or ran over again they would know who I was!! But I bit the bullet and did it. I sat down with my pile of clean undies and a sharpie and began writing "My.Name" in everyone of them. So now that I have abandoned all hope and climbed upon that old age wagon out of town. Knowing that we all have our names neatly printed in the backs of our undies!

Okay…what is next on the list of strange things I need to get?? After searching on the internet I find that I now have pink eye or conjunctivitis. GREAT!! This is turning out to be some grotesque game of weird and strange diseases I can get before I go into surgery. I thought only kids got pink eye but thanks to my now totally expanded knowledge on the subject I know that there are different kinds of conjunctivitis and it’s not just for kids! Oh wow!! I’m going to call the doctor now to get an appointment because it says you need to on the internet and the internet never lies…right??

Ya know I was just staring at my title and this blog seems to nothing about literature. Okay I will work on that today. I think I will post one of my papers that I wrote and that maybe give this a "literary" fix it needs.

Surgery, woodpeckers, and Colin Firth

I am no longer under quarantine! I do not have swine flu…but rather some other insidious creeping crud. With a five-day burst of prednisone under my belt getting the asthma issues under control and some serious nose blowing I am feeling like I might live for the next knee replacement surgery that is scheduled on June 3rd. This time I will have the time to get the house cleaned and laundry caught up and the fridge stocked with the delicious dinner-in-a-box selection from my local frozen food aisle and a butt load of my mainstay of diet coke.

I woke up very early this morning with the sounds of the many birds that all seem to be so thrilled to death that it is morning! It is funny to hear them be so vocal so early then as the sun comes up and it gets lighter they quiet back down: All that is except the woodpeckers. They never seem to loose steam when pecking away for food! It is kind of like when you need chocolate and desperately search the cupboards and fridge for some long forgotten candy bar or anything for that matter. That is how I found the last bag of microwave popcorn last week!

This morning after I shower and wash my hair I am off to the grocery store to stock up on more snacks and food then I plan a little trip off to the library to exchange my videos for some new ones. I think by that time I should be ready to go horizontal again and spend the afternoon in video land. I have the Bridget Jones Diaries movies in this batch and I am looking forward to these again. I first watched these for a class as it is interesting how the excerpts from her diary shows up in the movie as marquees and messages on her computer. It is like the words she wrote are haunting her reality. Through the first movie you suspect that her diary writing and reality are not in the same hemisphere. But that makes these particular movies funny as the viewer does see that poor Bridget does get a grip and a man (Colin Firth) in the end!

Flying Pigs

Did someone say that will happen when pigs fly? Swine flew...or flu?

Being chased by flying pigs.

I traveled to the doctor yesterday only to find that I may in fact be a statistic in the pandemic of swine flu. With an awful swab stuck up both nostrils and rubbed around then sent off to our local Health Department for testing. Now to sit in isolation for the next few days while it gets tested and I am phoned with the results.

In the mean time I sit here and I am running out of my stock pile of diet coke and that is the most important food commodity there is here in the literary life house! How I am I expected to continue with ready and watching videos without a cold diet coke at my side? Life is going to insurmountable!!

Is it the flu or Swine Flu?

As I lay in bed with the over whelming urge just to stay there and be a lump in the middle of the bed! The last four days I have been plagued by a headache, sore throat, congestion, coughing, sneezing, asthma issues due to the congestion. Oh and the hair!! I am suffering from some serious bed head and my head hurts too much to even think about brushing it…not that would make any difference. I don’t have the strength to get into the shower and wash it. Right now the only time I emerge from the pod status is to go to the bathroom or to heat and consume a “dinner-in-a-box” that my freezer is stocked full of since the surgery.

Although I am dedicated to getting my annual flu shot I still lay there and wonder if there was a component of the swine flu in that shot. With the news full of the rapidly spreading epidemic I lay there and just hope that I have been vaccinated enough to not be getting the swine flu. I have been bothered by my susceptibility to get most anything that seems to be going around that I have been vaccinated against whooping cough, pneumonia, as well as hepatitis A/B. Pretty much if there is a vaccine out there I have been vaccinated with it! I am not taking any chances! And still here I am home sick!

Well I have had two cups of tea, some toast, and of course the hand full of my regular medications, and read my favorite blogs and updated my own blog and now I am ready to return to the pod position in the middle of my bed with the trusty TV remote in my hand. So now I am padding off to the world of my videos and sleep.

Happy May Day

Not much to say today, I have not been feeling well and with the news filled with Swine Flu updates I am just hoping that I have just a cold and not the swine flu. I sometime wonder if my annual flu shot included the swine variation or not. Still feeling blue about my situation and with a possible surgery on the horizon. Now with the added illness it makes things even harder to cope with. But I press on and head back to my bed for more resting.

Rain is forcasted for this May 1st but it doesn't seem to be on its way: It is bright and sunny out side and a nice spring breeze is rippling the window curtains. The fresh air is very nice and a pleasure to breath in the cool freahness of outside.

I am thinking of gathering up some of my tulips that are in bloom to bring in to my bedside to cheer me up a bit. Tulips are doing wonderfully this year.