Surprises 2

Thursday morning I rediscovered that a little paranoia can be a good thing. It all depends on what you are paranoid about, of course, and what you do with it.

I was switching over Daddy's Oxygen lines from the bedroom line to the living room line in preparation for moving him down the hall in the morning. After plugging the new line in, I put the cannula portion next to my ear to make sure I can hear the O2 flowing. That's the part I'm paranoid about.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not even a whisper.

Oh oh!

So I plug back in the old line, let Daddy know what's going on, and go wake up Richard to try to find out what's going on. I'd do it myself, but it involves lots of knee work, and he's only got one bad knee. After about ten minutes of grunting, groaning, and swearing (him, not me), the problem is located. It's not a crimp. That much I had determined myself as well as I could. It's a hole in the line, a nice angled V slice through it, pouring out the oxygen onto the floor, a place where it's not quite as well appreciated as it would be pouring out the cannula.

Some times it's nice to be a little bit of a pack rat. After he'd been on O2 for over a year, the company supplying the rental equipment mentioned that the tubing parts should be replaced monthly. Oh, gee, thanks. So we got new cannulas and new 50' tubing. We'd prefer something shorter, but 25' is the only other option, and that's too short. So, we use the 50' and push the machine up to 4 to overcome friction and make sure there's actually pressure in the line by the time it reaches his nose. But we saved the "perfectly good" piece of old tubing when we made the swap, "just in case."

Here was the case. Six months later and here was a need to swap out his tubing again. Of course, why replace perfectly good tubing just because the calendar said to? Or just because Medicare will pay for it? Holes, now, are a different thing.

We speculated that this had actually started at least the afternoon before, when Randi measured his sitting blood O2 level at 71. Nobody had thought to check the equipment. It may have even been a minor problem before that, a tiny hole that grew with rubbing and tugging. It seems that a screw at the bottom of my chair was sharp enough to have caused the tear. It was the only likely culprit near the site of the tear.

After setting Daddy up for the day, I rushed off to work. This had put me half an hour later than my usual late. Richard promised he would cover the screw with duct tape. I promised to order more tubing.

When I called in the order, they asked if we had tubing available. My guess is that had I said no, one of my coworkers would have gotten a nice run up to Shafer from the midway area of St. Paul, one of the local branches of this company. Since we had saved the old tubing, the new got shipped UPS. I figured we'd see it the middle of next week, but it arrived Friday.

Meanwhile Daddy's perking up. When his physical therapist arrived on Saturday, he was joking with her, and working harder than he had been able to. His pre-exercise O2 level was 96! After walking down the hall, he was lightly out of breath, with the O2 dropped to 84, but recovered quickly. Most mornings lately he's been so out of breath in the mornings from the (1-way) walk down that same hall that he lies like a fish gasping for water after it has been caught. Cathy commented that that was as fast as she's seen him complete that walk. She also agreed that the best thing we could have done for him was to park that wheelchair and make him walk.

She was a little surprised at the sense of humor. She hadn't seen it before, and asked if he'd used to be like this? I assured her that he had. I'd seen it just that same morning. He'd finally wakened just after six, and I decided that it was pointless to coax him back to sleep. I might as well get him up and going for the day. I mentioned to him that I had to leave for a bit at one point, because his bed was as far as I'd gotten when I got up. Much needed to be done.

He looked at himself sitting up at the edge of his bed, and commented that his bed was as far as he'd gotten when he got up this morning too.

He's back!

For now, anyway.