Shhhh! Can you hear the sound of hammers? Can you smell the freshly cut wood? C’mon people! This is important! Close your eyes and concentrate.
Ah, don’t worry: I can’t, either. So far, it’s only a phantom deck going up in the back of my house, but it will be real one of these days. Soon, I hope. I can’t take going up and down the steps to my house much longer, and long for a ramp leading from a deck to ground level.
But there are things that need to be taken care of first. For one, the back porch needs to be cleared off so the nice deck-builders can put a door in that will give me house-level access to the deck. Right now, half of my kitchen is out there cluttering things up.
My kitchen stuff is cluttering things up because I finally (after nearly 20 years of living here) decided on a color to paint the room. Actually, my husband decided for me that it will be yellow. But it won’t be the “Hey look at me I’m yellow! Really, really…bright…yellow!” he wanted. Sorry, but I just don’t want to wake up that fast in the morning. A mellower hue was called for.
The painter is coming later today to get started, so we’re getting there.
Speaking of paint, I’ve been having a lot of trouble breathing. I’ve been putting it down to the effort it takes for me to hobble from one place to another, to climb steps, and stuff like that.
Then, yesterday, I said, “Wait a minute!” to myself. “Don’t you have asthma?”
“Why, yes,” Myself answered. “Yes, I do.”
And, yes, I do take an asthma medicine which, most of the time, is enough. I said “most of the time,” not “always.” Autumn seems to be one of those times when it’s not enough. I don’t know why. Mold from the falling leaves? Air litter from the corn and soybeans harvest? And, while leaf-burning is banned inside city limits, county residents have no such restrictions. I wonder how far that smoke travels…
I also wonder what, if anything, paint is going to do to me. We’ll find out. In the meantime, I got a rescue inhaler to get me through the autumn asthma season. So far, so good.
In the meantime, my foot is…throbbing. And I got a plausible explanation of why my heel hurts so much (to make things even more “interesting,” it’s a part of my heel that wasn’t touched).
First, for the throbbing: The doc had me stop taking antibiotics for a couple of days before having some tests run for infection and inflammation. With the lack of antibiotics, my foot swelled up. Swelling = throbbing. I went back on the antibiotics last night, so the swelling is going down, but I’m spending half my life in the bathroom getting rid of the excess fluid.
As for the pain, the doc opined that I’ve been lounging on my back a lot, which causes my feet to splay out, and creates pressure on the area that is very tender. He suggested I put a pillow under my calves instead of under my feet, so they won’t be resting on anything. That I did last night and continue to do so when I crawl into the recliner — which I’m about to do any minute now!
I have come far enough that I’ve gotten the go-ahead to walk without my air cast on. If only I could! The cast does alleviate some of the pain in my heel.
Sorry for the rather disjointed blog post but, as you can see, things are looking up. And it kind of taught me (and, hopefully, you) that we can’t just pay attention to one thing. We have multiple factors that are interwoven and many of them tend to affect other areas. To keep this on topic, pain and infection can affect your blood glucose levels. So can attitude. I try to at least keep a good attitude (although it’s sometimes difficult or even impossible to do, if only for a short time) and to keep a good eye on my blood glucose levels when things like surgeries and asthma attacks creep into my life.
