Bye bye summer, I hardly knew ye. Watch for drug interactions.

Why did I take so long to update this time?  I don't know.  This summer was a waste for me; it might as well have been winter.  I was fighting such a low-grade depression that I didn't realize it was there.  There are exactly two people who ever get me out.  One had back surgery this summer and the other was busy doing other things.  I was very distracted.  In fact, by the end of the summer, I realized even I had to prioritize.  I stopped my outpatient physical therapy because my knee pain was gone.  I don't believe in taking advantage of my Medicare coverage just because it's there.  Also, I don't know if the therapy was really making it improve or it was just healing on its own.  Now what came in the place of the pain was a "pins and needles" sensation  which my neurologist called a "neuropathy", but couldn't give me a good reason why it appeared.  So he referred me to a rheumatologist which I will see next week.  In all the research I conducted, neuropathy is a result of diabetes, which I do not have.  So this will be very interesting.

So I had asked the ALS Association for one of their volunteers from a new program they have.  I was told they didn't have a "suitable" volunteer for me at this time.  Then, someone there had a conversation with someone from MDA and it came down that they thought my aides should be taking me out.  Well, guess what?  Home health aides are obligated to take me to medical appointments.  And, a few years ago while my main aide was single and had no children living with her, she went with me to my family on Thanksgiving because she didn't care what time she arrived home.  Now she has an infant, a toddler and a husband, as well as a pre-teen who wasn't living with her, but is now.  So life has changed for her.  In the old days, she and I even went to baseball games and a couple of Broadway shows.  Now, she's not so interested in those things.  And two of the aides who loved to sit outside in the park with me, are no longer with me.  And there was a discussion at some point that I should "make them" go places with me.  Well, I don't believe in forcing anyone to do what they don't want to do; that's not a good recipe for a successful relationship.  So I guess ALSA's volunteer program isn't for me; at least they have determined that I don't qualify because I have aides.  Oh well.  So I barely left the apartment this summer except when I forced myself to take a book and sit outside.  Which left me open to "where is your girl?"  [She can't sit out here in the sun for long, so she is inside cleaning up, and I can text her if I need anything, and besides it's really not your business anyway, nosy neighbor who never cared about me in the 9+ years I have this disease].  There were times I became very frustrated and angry and even defeated myself by losing energy and interest in everything. 

So my summer went beyond not seeing a beach or being invited to a barbecue.  Just leaving the apartment and sitting in front of my building was an accomplishment.  I waited and waited for a surprise.  Last summer, my old friend Liz suddenly emailed me to get together, and my cousin Rich came into town with his kids from Portland, Oregon and we had dinner.  No such luck this summer although I waited for family and a surprise friend to suddenly think of me.  My surprise angels came at the end of the summer when a Facebook friend with MS put aside time and taste buds to go to lunch next week.  Also a bunny rescue person who helped me with Chelsea this spring, had become a reader of this blog and asked me if I would like to go to a museum or the Botanical Gardens with her.  Of course I agreed.  Not to mention that I have an open invitation all the time from a friend from ALSA who invites me to a museum all the time.  I think I can convince my aide on duty next Sunday to agree to go to the Botanical Gardens with me.  The problem is the occasional bathroom duty, which can turn to an emergency on rare occasions.  I need to have an aide nearby in case I need her.  So going out in the neighborhood works; going farther, I pray nothing happens that I can't handle with a friend.

Getting back to my neuropathic pins and needles, my neurologist prescribed Lyrica, a medication usually prescribed for fibromyalgia and diabetic neuropathy.  A few days after starting this drug,  I had a very bad allergy episode and I did what I always do -- I took a Zyrtec.  It was Friday night and the allergy symptoms improved almost right away -- bless that Zyrtec.     On Saturday morning, I dropped off to a nap after breakfast and sent the aide to do some errands for me.  When she came back, I heard her yell my name really loudly.  She yelled "oh my God, you scared me.  You were passed out!"  So I fell back to sleep and woke up for lunch.  What I was typing on my iPad wasn't making sense and I felt confused about time and space.  When I woke up that afternoon and saw the cable box had a time of 3:08, I wondered why there was so much sunlight in the room in the middle of the night, and why I was sleeping in my wheelchair.  Why hadn't anyone put me in my bed?  I heard my aide in the kitchen, but still wondered why it was so sunny at 3:00 in the morning.  I was so groggy and discombobulated that I convinced myself I was in Scandinavia where it is sunny 24 hours a day.  Suddenly, my aide came in with the laundry and I wondered who was in the kitchen if the aide was down in the laundry room.  I fell back to sleep, woke up for dinner and couldn't remember an hour later, what I had eaten, or if I had eaten at all.  The night aide came at 7:00pm and I pointed out something big and black which was scurrying from my bed to my dresser and she assured me that there was nothing scurrying around my apartment. 

I don't know how I did it, but I got to the computer and looked up Lyrica drug interactions.  There it was:  do not take Zyrtec, Claritin, Benadryl, Allegra and a listing of any and all antihistamines and allergy pills known to man.  It was bad enough that decongestants became verboten when I was diagnosed with hypertension.  But now what? It was now hay fever season as well as my usual allergies to dust and the rabbit hay.  How will I get through it?  I hope the rheumatologist come up with a solution.

Book on what to say and what not to say, and beware of the "miracle cure"

Listen to this excerpt from a "Today" show segment.  Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a famous feminist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem. She has survived breast cancer.  She talks about things to say and things not to say to a sick friend, and has a new book out about the subject.  My absolute favorite line when I told a long-time friend that my long road of diagnosis had finally come up with an answer:  "Okay, so now that you know what you have, you'll deal with it" and then she followed this up with "you know, they make canes with little stools.  I've seen some old people in the neighborhood using them, and they're very cute".  I was 48 years old, facing a prognosis of 2-5 years and the last thing I wanted to look like, was a "cute" old lady.  It went downhill from there.  She followed that act with a set of emails giving me links to wheelchairs and walkers on eBay. Then, when I was dealing with the loss of my teaching career,  she dropped off a 16-page article she was required to read for her Education Masters at Queens College.  When I looked baffled she said "Here, read the article for me and summarize it.  I'm too busy and you have nothing but time on your hands.  Besides, it will lift you out of your depression and make you feel useful".  I was stunned.  The straw that broke the camel's back was when she came waltzing into my apartment one evening through an unlocked apartment door. It had been about five months since I last saw her.  She just said "hi" and sat her ass down. My aide was horrified.  "Don't you knock?" she asked.  My soon-to-be ex-friend replied, "Why?  Am I interrupting anything important?"  She moved out of the neighborhood to a fancier part of Queens and I never saw her again.  But about a year ago, I accidentally sent a blast message to all my Facebook friends, of which she is one.  She inboxed me: "It's good to see you're still around.  My teaching job is so tiring.  I bought a condo in the Bay Club and had the realtor from hell. Bye". I would do anything to have a job to be exhausted by.

There is an ALS patient who publishes a blog. To protect the author's privacy, let's call her Beth.  Well, in the course of any disease, you will get desperate enough to do anything sometimes.  Although I am following a healthy diet which I blog about in "Meat's No Treat", this is not to cure or improve my ALS.  Rather it is to prevent or help other conditions [eg. cancer, hypertension], and to take off excess weight and keep up my immunity.  The last is because ALS patients often die of infections they cannot fight off.  But Beth started blogging about a Far Eastern "practitioner" who claimed to be able to cure her with some sort of Eastern medicine.  So Beth drove halfway across the country with her husband, blogging that when she returned, she would be back to her "former life" before ALS.  I kept thinking, "does she really believe that?  If it was some miracle cure, wouldn't we all be doing it?"  There is a group of people out there who believe the medical profession is "conspiring" to keep us all sick, because they are "in cahoots" with "Big Pharma".  I subscribe to the lists of some of these people because they are believers in nutrition and natural medicine, but I don't buy a lot of their philosophies, such as anti-vaccination and avoiding cancer treatments.  And I am able to sift out the extremists, like the nut who was emailing me constantly saying he "solved ALS" , until his emails got so weird I told him I would turn the emails over to the police if they didn't stop [they stopped].  Anyway, Beth didn't get cured; instead she ended up in the hospital with some infection [probably from a weakened immune system from the car travel and/or distress at having her dream of a cure shattered].  Moral:  there is no cure -- yet, and won't be for a long time.  I am keeping myself as stress-free and nutritionally as strong as possible to prevent additional diseases, preserve what I have, and not flirt with any more danger than necessary.  Most of all, I want to stay out of any hospital !!  There are always charlatans who prey on the desperate and vulnerable.  Physicians get no nutrition training in medical school, but they have come up with cures for major diseases, with the cooperation of "Big Pharma".  It's big business and profits come before people and compassion, but that's the way it is.  There are many diseases that can be prevented by nutrition and avoiding obesity-- eg. type II diabetes and heart disease.  But once you get these diseases,  the medical profession is the only hope in most cases. 

Some Thing That Make Me Sad; Some Things That Make Me Glad

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I am very sad about a couple of things this week. First, I am really sad about the death of Natasha Richardson. It was so quick, so senseless, so arbitrary, so unprovoked. It is a reminder, once again, that life is so fragile and so precious. You can be fine one minute, and dead the next. They called it "talk and die" syndrome. One minute you're fine, talking, walking, refusing medical help, and suddenly, [could be a few hours or minutes later], you're vomiting, you have a severe headache, and may even collapse. Very scary, and very sad. The news reports that I heard, said that impact on either side of the head is more dangerous than impact to the front or back of the head. Hitting the side of the head can actually knock the brain around, and cause blood to collect in a hematoma. I thought back to how many times I have fallen, especially in the early stages of my ALS, knocked my head, and felt just fine afterwards. I think we can all look back and recollect an incident like this.

I am also sad that our sensitive and ultra-conscious president found it so easy to make an politically-incorrect comment on the Tonight Show yesterday. He was actually making fun of his bowling, and said it was like the Special Olympics. His staff called the Special Olympics to apologize even before the show aired. We are all so aware of racial and ethnic slurs, but slurs against people with disabilities still roll off our tongues so easily. I am also guilty of blurting out words like "retarded", "lame", and, ironically, "spastic". This is ironic because "spasticity" [stiffness] is my most troubling symptom.

And here's the thing that makes me really sad [and mad too]: after a huge mess last year, where my bills fell behind, through no fault of my own, I have been really on top of things, and my bills have been meticulously up-to-date. But apparently, my fax machine stopped working properly, and the pooled-income trust received faxes from me that came in all black. They knew it was from me, and neglected to contact me to tell me. If I didn't notice that my balances online showed that the bills hadn't been paid two weeks after I faxed hem, I never would have known. When I called to find out why my bills hadn't been paid, and asked why nobody called to tell me there was a problem with my faxes, I got the most ridiculous answer: "We didn't have your number". I found this unacceptable since they have a whole file on me. I had to give them all to a friend to fax from the office, but the phone calls are coming in already, and I'm embarrassed. And the thing is that nobody has the least bit of compassion when I tell them that the bills are paid through a trust. They probably think I am some rich trust-fund baby, when nothing can be further from the truth! So, late fees are coming my way. In order to let the NYSARC trust know how damaging this was, I will have to send a letter, because nobody was willing to call and make the noise over the phone. Needless to say, I had to shell out money for a new fax. Oh well. In the scheme of things, I guess this is a minor rant.

But here's something that I found really sad, and I hope my feedback helped her [she said it did]. I met a woman Tuesday night whose brother has ALS. She's in the city and he is on Long Island. She hasn't seen him in a year. She can get to him-- that's not the problem. He is extremely depressed and stays in bed in the upstairs of his house. His wife is installing a stair lift for him in the hope that he will go downstairs. The sister I met says that when she calls on the phone, they don't want to talk about ALS. So she says that she sees nothing they can talk about, so there is no reason to visit him. I told her that it is probably depressing him further that his own sister will not come to see him, and why do they have to talk about ALS? I reminded her that there is still an intelligent person inside. So she said "well I can't tell him about anybody else's life, because it will upset him by reminding him of what he can't do anymore. I can't talk to him about politics, because none of that is relevant to him anymore. Same with the arts." I suggested they watch TV or a movie. She was concerned that the media was not relevant to him anymore. I told her this saddened me because he is not his disease, he can still live, and be entertained, and laugh. She said I helped her, that she will go see her brother and try to get him out of bed, or at least watching TV, or read to him. I don't know why people think PALS are not people anymore, that the only subject that interests us is our disease. When I see people, aside from explaining a few things they need to know, I don't want to talk about my ALS. And when I don't hear about their lives, it distances me further. I have people I was very close to, that I either never hear from anymore, or if I do, tell me nothing about their lives anymore. Because of this, I don't feel attached to people I felt a closeness to, before ALS. Or maybe it's a way for them to break the attachment, either purposely or subconsciously. I don't know. What I do know is that many people who were a big part of my life, are not in my life anymore. I'm told serious illness can bring them closer or further apart. I'm happy to say that, in most cases I know, it brings people closer.

I am happy that my friend Andrea is coming today, and I can ask her to help me with some things that have been hanging -- a new rug for my bunny's cage, a package that has to be sent from the post office, pictures to be hung, etc. And Judy is coming for our weekly Starbucks outing. I am also happy about my physical therapy, which started yesterday as an outpatient. The PT is trying to strengthen my stomach, and loosen up my legs. So far, it's the closest thing to a gym workout I can have. I hope to burn some calories.

Frugal!!

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Last week the Access-a-Ride driver referred to my aide Lynette [who is one year younger than I] as my granddaughter. I looked in the mirror, and I knew why. I have had to stop coloring my hair and getting haircuts. Before ALS. I colored my hair at home with a $7 box, and had the salon color it when I had extra money. But now, $100 for a wash, color, cut, and blow, is totally unjustified when I am working hard to buy food and toiletries. So I guess I am destined to look like a grandma. Thank goodness my sister introduced me to a site where I can do work online for Amazon gift certificates. I was able to buy Depends through Amazon last week.

A few dollars saved is my big high lately. At support group on Monday, I said that money has been a challenge for me, since the $725.00 that Medicaid allows me to keep every month, is eaten up by monthly minimums on old credit cards, which have gone to 25 or more percent interest due to [in some cases] one month of a late payment. There is no way this can ever get better for me, so I can look forward to scrounging for basics and looking like a grandma of a 50-year-old for the rest of my life. It's a good thing I rarely get invited anywhere anymore. A few people at my support group were my angels last week when I said I didn't know where I was going to get the money for groceries for next week, and so was going to put my fingers to the keyboard for Amazon credits.

Speaking of putting my fingers to the keyboard, reality hit hard last week. I told my sister I needed to make more online to straighten out a miscalculation that is putting me more and more in the hole. She referred me to a site that answers questions from people on mobile phones. But, alas, I don't type fast enough on the laptop keyboard, and I failed the test. My rinJg finger and pinkie on my left hand are stiff, and slow me down. But thank goodness my sister Haley finds these opportunities, because often they keep me going in groceries. And the groceries she sent from Trader Joe [my favorite place!] and the cash help Dad gave, came just at the right time!!

But I did go to PS1 with Jen and Judy. Moneywise, I really shouldn't have.......$5 to get in, $4 access-a-ride, $7 in the cafe. I just really needed to get out of the house and go to a museum. Jen and Judy are two people who still want to explore places with me. Exploring neighborhoods and venues was a big pastime of mine, pre-ALS. Sadly, I am going to have to tell my neighbor I can't swing dinner out this week. It's a real case of "be careful what you wish for", because it will be a while before I can accept fJriends' invitations, if ever! So I don't complain about loneliness anymore; time alone in the house is money not spent. This is all very depressing for me, especially in summer. But it has to be this way. And, as lonely as it gets, the payoff is that eventually the phone calls may stop, and I can avoid getting sued and bankruptcy. Frugality is good for the spirit.

Yesterday, I went to the final appointment at the NYU Dental Clinic. For not having been to the dentist since January of 2003, I was pretty amazed that they found no cavities. And here was the best part: Lynette got them to reimburse my access-a-ride! I don't even know to ask for these things. They even gave me the name and number of an ambulette I can use next time to get transport for free. Evidently, with Medicaid, you get free transportation to and from medical appointments. Why did I not know this, and who was supposed to tell me? The doctor's offices when I booked the appointment and told them I was on Medicaid? The social worker at the ALS clinic? If you don't grow up in a home where family members collected benefits [handouts] from the government, you don't what to ask for, and they don't tell you. It really irks me to see immigrants/refugees in my neighborhood paying for groceries with food stamps, getting into private ambulettes and walking around [often with no cane or walker] with their home attendants. How do they come here, speaking no English, but finding out this information I never know about, even though I have worked hard all my life, voted, and paid taxes???!!!!!

So, I can't justify any unnecessary spending, like entertainment, eating out, beauty treatment. Maybe this was meant to happen, so that I could have more time alone, and not focus on what I am NOT doing this summer, and who is NOT including me in summer fun. Instead, I have to, once again, see what I can sell on eBay.

Living Forward -- A New Normalcy

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Here is a link to an excellent article about "Living Forward" with a disability


and in that spirit, I decided I would just merge my 3 blogs into one, because it reflects who I am, as a whole person. I started out by writing about my life as an ALS patient. Then, I started a blog about my life growing up as a boomer. Then, I recently started a third blog about Rego Park. But then I had less and less to say about ALS, not because I don't have it anymore, but because my life isn't only about ALS anymore. I am forging ahead in a new normalcy. I am lucky to have reached a plateau in my progression, and I hope to stay here for a long time. I have had to find a new purpose, and a lot of new people in my life. Sadly, most of the people I knew before have had trouble dealing with who I have become. Who I have become is not fundamentally different from who I was. But the outside packaging has become too scary and too hard to deal with, for most of my friends and relatives. So I went through periods of intense loneliness, depression, and disappointment. I still go through all of those, but I am able to take it for exactly what it is: that other people can't take my disability or that they can't adjust to the more dependent person I have to be now. I can't just get up and go the way I used to. People have to come to me and do certain things for me. Whether that means that I attracted only takers in my former life, who depended on what they could get from me, and now can't give, or whether these relationships meant more to me than they did for the other person, is neither here nor there.. What is important is that I have a few of the old people who could make the transition with me, most who couldn't, and some new people who never knew me able-bodied, and who befriended me despite, or maybe because of, ALS.

At this time last year, I had hopes -- a cure for ALS, the chance to move to a more suitable [accessible] place to live, fulfillment of a "bucket-list" of things I wanted to do before I die. Now I have no hope of a cure in time for me, I'm stuck by circumstances in a very unsuitable and inaccessible apartment, with no hope of ever being able to get out. And, the bucket-list? Well, let's just say it kicked the bucket! With very few people in my life willing or able to accompany me places, and no more money to pay for alternatives, I have very little hope of going very far away from my four walls, and no hope of my finances ever improving. On the top of my list was to publish a book. I was willing to self-publish to move it along, but that's expensive. It's not likely that a legitimate publisher would pick it out of the millions of manuscripts they receive every year. So I am down to writing 500-word articles for online publication for a few dollars, or gift cards. It's a daily struggle just to have enough to buy groceries and health items, let alone pay the bills and high-interest credit-card debt from before ALS.

Anyway, this is how it's supposed to be with a catastrophic illness. I am supposed to be worried aout where my next penny is coming from. I'm not supposed to be able to buy anything beyond absolute essentials. I'm supposed to be just grateful to be alive, and grateful for the 3 or 4 people who find time in their busy schedules to do my bills or meet me at a museum. I'm not supposed to expect anything more. And I do look at children with cancer, homeless people, and the people in Darfur as much worse off than I.

And I've learned that a lot of those people who come to support groups who claim to be surrounded by friends and "loved ones" are often saying what everyone wants to hear, because the friends don't come as often anymore and the "loved ones" go to the caregivers' group and cry about how exhausted and angry they have become, even admitting that they never imagined what they had signed on for and saying that if they had known, they never would have done it, but in the same breath saying that they don't regret it and would do it all over again [I know "huh?"]. I heard one "loving, supportive" wife admit that her [very wealthy] husband's decision to go on mechanical ventilation made her furios ["what about ME?" she said] [He ultimately went to the ER in crisis, and was not intubated, I imagine on his wife's orders, and died. She is living very nicely on the money he left, which would have been used up if he were allowed to live on a vent, possibly for many more years]. All this makes me happy I am not married, because my decision not to "vent" was circumstantially made for me.

And so I will put everything in this one blog, because I am not just an ALS patient, and the people who read this like to read everything else I write. And maybe one day, I can find the resources to publish a book. That's about the only thing left on my bucket listthat is remotely possible, because I don't need anyone to do it with me. The trips, cruises, the one-day excursions, painting my apartment, making it more accessible, tooth whitening, anything not covered by medicare or medicaid -- forgotten!

Would YOU Choose to Live Like Me, If It Meant Living to 150?

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For those of you in the NYC metro area, why not check out my latest posting to metblogs and vote for the most annoying TV ad spot ??

And everyone can check out my articles: Would You Want to be Frozen Until They Find the Cure? on Associated Content, or If You Could Live Until 150, Would You? which I wrote after I watched the Barbara Walters TV special last week.

which leads to a subject which is probably going to be a subject for another article:The "I'm Dying Anyway" Syndrome. When you think about it, we are all dying. Some of us will live long and die of old age. Some of us will die of a terminal disease and know we have limited time left. Still others of us will just not wake up, die suddenly, or meet with a tragedy. The top story today in NYC is a 24-year-old Columbia University graduate student who was running from muggers, and got hit by an SUV in the street on Broadway and 122nd Street. He died early this morning at St. Luke's Hospital. A real senseless tragedy. Thankfully, very few people die in such horrible circumstances. But how about people like me who are diagnosed with an illness that typically causes death within 2-5 years of symptom onset, on average. "Average" is the operative word here. But when I was diagnosed, I fell into the "Let me enjoy life since I won't be here long anyway".

So a good 5 years after my symptoms appeared, I let a lot of things go. I am embarrassed to say that I haven't been to the dentist in over 4 years. As difficult as it is going to be to find a dentist to work on me, I was referred to the NYU School of Dentistry Clinic. Before my teeth fall out of my mouth, I have to go. And then there is the issue of my weight. I figured I could just eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted -- NOT!

My wheelchair is in repair, so I have been using a loaner from the ALS Association. My blood pressure is lower, but not as low as it should be. I must lose weight, not an easy task when you can't exercise. I am hoping when I get the new shoes next week, that with the brace I can get some physical therapy approved. Medicare only wants to give [limited] physical therapy when it is to improve a patient. They could care less that range-of-motion exercises can greatly improve the quality of life of an ALS patient. There is still the attitude in the insurance and healthcare field that people with ALS are "goners" anyway, so why improve our mobility or quality of life?

Anyway, I posted the question on one of my discussion groups, "Would You Want to Live to 150?" and I got some responses like "not if I have to be in a wheelchair and have my diapers changed", or "not if I couldn't drive anymore, and definitely not if I couldn't walk or talk" or this one "I would only like to live to 150 if I could take care of myself and be totally independent. If someone had to take care of me, I would rather be dead". I laughed to myself, because 5 years ago, that would have been my response.

Strong in the Broken Places

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When I was in DC in May, we met up with Richard Cohen, who is the husband of the Today Show’s Meredith Vieira. Richard was in the process of writing his book, which is now released. Called “Strong at the Broken Places”, it is an account of five people who are living with chronic diseases. Richard himself has multiple sclerosis.

One of those five people, Denise Glass, is living with ALS. You can watch a video online about the book, and Denise here

The Today Show has been profiling the five people from Richard Cohen’s book all week. According to Cohen, the book shows that chronically-ill people are not their disease and should not be defined by a set of symptoms. He also says that, although the book deals with the changes that come about as a result of a chronic diagnosis, the person inside is still there. Amen!!

bathing woes with ALS

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071007
It is amazing what you can get used to if you really have to. Today is my third day in a row getting spomge-bathed. Not too bad, and I am just as clean. But what to do about the hair. I am going to have to go to a local salon and get a shampoo and blow-dry. I am supposed to go to the kickoff party for the Long Island Walk to D’Feet ALS on Wednesday night, so I want to look halfway-decent for that.

I was able to get into the bathroom this morning but I couldn’t make the turn to get into the shower. It involves a pivot-turn on my right foot while holding on to the sink, and then swinging my lleft foot around. If the right foot starts to turn before I get the left foot around, it’s all over. Then the ankle turns and I am standing on a twisted foot, and starts to swell up, I get fatigued and out of breath, and it only gets progressively worse. I tried three times and then I gave up. I didn’t want to get so fatigued that I wouldn’t have the strength to get out of the bathroom or, worse yet, fall and break a bone(s).

I am trying to get my gastroenterologist on the phone to make an appointment this week.
And I am also trying to find out from Home Medical Equipment if my bed can be fixed, or if Medicare bought it, in which case I will have to pay for repair. After 2 years Medicare purchases equipment so then the repairs become the patient’s responsibility.
I slept in the recliner last night and woke up with no backache, which I can’t say for my nights in the hospital bed. Maybe I should just sleep in the recliner from now on—that hospital bed has never been comfortable!

Warren stopped by last night to pick up my I-Mac manual because he is going to put my old desktop on eBay. Saturday, Ellita and I met Jody at PS1(Museum of Contemporary Art). I could actually live in Long Island City—great neighborhood resurgence and magnificent views of Manhattan. I may just take a field trip over there and look around. I could hang out at Gantry Park on the water and shop at Costco……worth a look.

My mercury problem is still looming, and my rep is on vacation. Thank goodness for ALSA and the loan closet!!!!! I also told the attorney that I would feel more comfortable sitting with him and going over the contracts before I sign. They amended the erroneous selling price of the original, and now give me 5 days after closing to vacate, after I questioned the original stipulation, where I had to move out before closing, which was crazy!