Grumble, grumble, health care

I guess the real doozy of U.S. Healthcare is that for as expensive as it is, you'd hope it would run like a fine oiled machine. But it doesn't. It's pretty repetitive and wasteful.

For example, the hospital that my surgeon is doing my procedure in next week called. It's the same hospital system as my primary care provider -- the one I have had since 2003. 

Turns out that the physical I had wasn't within 30 days, and even though my primary said that doing everything then was fine, the surgical aspect of her hospital disagreed. 

So, I get this nice woman on the phone. And she's not exactly clear, but she's very serious. She starts asking me all kinds of medical history questions -- questions that are on file already with her hospital from the 10 years of medical records she has in her hands. 

What's worse, is she has to ask things like my husband's name. It's like there's no carry over of information from place to place and it's 2012. 

My favorite health question was, "Do you have any swelling in your hands or feet?"

"Yes, in my right foot."

"Does your surgeon know this?"

"It's the reason he's operating."

"Uuuuhhhh, ohhhh! Wait, isn't the surgery your left foot?"

Now I sat with my doctor for 30 minutes this week while he carefully wrote out the surgical instruction of what and where he was going to do things. He had to fill it out twice. Once for his medical clinic and once for the surgery center. I had to sign both of them. I know what they said. 

I read somewhere that I should take sharpie and write on my left foot, "No!" I thought it was odd. Now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a bad idea. 

Plus, she said that I failed to get a check up before surgery. I had to explain to her that my primary had messed up, not me. Then she said I'd have to see some random doctor for it. And I had to correct her that I have an appointment with my primary on Monday at 9. She didn't believe me. So she looked it up -- and yes, I had the appointment. Sigh.

My doctor gave me a list of things I cannot take within 7 days of the surgery. They included NSAIDs, aspirin, fish oil or Omega 3 supplements and any diabetic medication. He said I was fine to continue taking my Vitamin D, iron and multivitamin, as well as the fiber I sometimes have to take to help out with the iron supplement situation. 

Apparently, the hospital has blackballed my fiber. And I totally am going to ask the doctor why when I get in there. Are they afraid I'm going to "be regular" on the table for the less than 3-hour surgery? 

Then she said, "And I guess because of your age, you don't have a power of attorney for your health care or a living will."

"Actually, yes, I do. I've had them since I was 28." 

"Who has your POA?"

"My husband."

"I'm sorry, what was his name again?" 

It's just all very odd -- and annoying.

Right Appendage and Running the Halls

This is the last week before I have surgery on my peroneal brevis and peroneal longus tendons in my right ankle and foot a week from Thursday. I am not allowed to take any over the counter anti-inflammatories this whole week, so I'm going to be in a bit of pain. It'll be me and the ice pack hanging out on the sofa with my foot elevated -- a lot. It'll be good practice for the stupid amount of pain I'll be in when my foot swells up to the size of a basketball post surgery. Dr. Google sucks for things like this. Yes, I know what to expect, but I'm really not looking forward to the first week or so post surgery. I did, however, drop off the prescription for seven days worth of pain pills at the pharmacy today.

The rule is, and I promised my soul to Dr. Kluesner that I wouldn't break it, is that for two weeks, my foot is to be elevated above my heart except 1) when I go to the bathroom, 2) when I go to take a shower and 3) when I'm in the car going to my post operative appointments. So, I'll be stranded in my basement for two weeks. If you want to come on over and watch some TV with me or chat, feel free. We'll be in the pet-free, kid-free basement, which will be like my own private apartment until I'm off of crutches, which will be at least 4 1/2 weeks after the surgery. (4 days with a splint, 2 weeks in first hard cast, then suture removal and then 2 more weeks in another hard cast, followed by an air cast -- which I may or may not be able to stumble around in, it depends on the healing.)

But I'm kind of excited and -- dare I write it -- hopeful. Will this surgery finally end the 16-month ordeal? I mean, I can't even call it "the broken foot 2012" because it spilled over into a two-year period.

But I am also very nervous. Going into surgery is a bit like having to hire a lawyer. You always feel like you're in deep doo doo when you have to use their services.

On the other hand, it means I'm probably 97-ish days from getting in a running shoe again and maybe actually running (very slowly with lots of intervals). And holy cow have I missed that hour. Walking, though I like that alone time, just doesn't get the chemical rush in the brain that running does.

Plus, X-man has picked up a bit of the running bug lately. His favorite times to run are a) when he's having a squirt gun fight or b) when he sees striped carpets. (No lie!)

I bought new hallway rugs from Amazon.com last week. They're long and striped and cover the hardwood floor on our second floor. As soon as I got them in place, X-man started sprinting up and down the hallway between his bathroom and our bedroom.

Yesterday, while I was getting dressed for my Library Board meeting, X-man ran up and down the hall four times. After the fourth time, he pumped his fist in the air and said, "Yeah! I did it!"

My kid doesn't wear a watch, so he wasn't worried about time. I wanted to ask what he was celebrating, because it probably comes with some bit of enlightenment like, "I out ran a bear!", but I didn't want to ruin the moment with my stupid questions.

Let's see if he's as excited about running the 3k at school on Sept. 22nd. Last year they offered a 1k for kindergarteners and first graders, so he might decide to stay with his own age group, particularly since he did pretty okay in the standings among little people. Mostly, I just want him to enjoy the running and give a crap about the times. But that took me until I was injured to really understand, so you know, he's got 30 more years to "get" that lesson.

Doh!

I have been feeling really tired today. I'm not quite sure why (maybe it's because I only got five and a half hours of sleep last night after getting nine every night for the last week). But I managed to call three people today by their wrong names and look like a total moron.

My husband assures me that he's done this before, too. His solution is just to never call anyone by their names.

It got worse, when on the walk home, my child then called two of his friends by the wrong name (Isaac instead of Isiah and calling the second brother by the first brother's name).

I apologized each time, because I am so sorry. I have no idea why my brain is on shuffle. But it is, especially because one was a person I hadn't talked to in a while and now they probably think I'm the biggest bitch ever because I couldn't get their name right. Sigh.

I also went in for my pre-op appointment this morning with Dr. Kluesner. He was wonderful, but his staff had a few mix ups regarding getting my labs from my doctor (which I had done several weeks ago and they messed up where I elected to have my surgery done, which changed the time from afternoon to early morning). But Kluesner was awesome going over everything.

For the first two weeks I am basically on bed rest. I am not to let my foot go lower than my heart except to go to the bathroom and to get food. He repeated it twice because he knows I have trouble sitting still. He's probably right to be worried about it. I know I am.

I get to have a hard cast the Monday after surgery, and then another hard cast two weeks after that after he takes the stitches out. If things are looking better, I get an air cast. But it'll be 10 weeks before he sends me to physical therapy, which basically means 10 weeks of a whole lot of nothing.

Roots and Recycling

Country Arbors came today and planted our two new Kentucky Coffee Trees. After watching Gingko 12" saplings try to grow for five years with very minimal success (they were 18"), I was very happy to have them. Plus, with the maple borer working it's way through the neighborhood, I was happy not to have chosen a Maple. The maple in the back is taking enough of a pounding. Poor thing.

I left as they were starting to hand dig the holes. I had to pick up the book drop for Tolono Public Library and then I had a series of stops to get rid of kid crap. The first was to go pick up a coat tree that I bought and used with my Clownfish classroom last year. It's a beautiful coat tree, but I don't have much use for it at home, and I'm not going to use it in California. So I took it and X-man's Melissa and Doug kitchen that he got for his third birthday to All Things Kids in Champaign. I hadn't been there in well over a year. (The last time I was there, I was reselling the Haba push car that X-man learned to walk on. I held on to it because I was being all emotional about it. Plus, I took his diaper changer.) As it turns out, I had over $100 on my account. I always figured if something sold they'd send me a check after 60 days or something, I guess I must have shopped there more back in the day and never really got sent a check because I'd recycle my credit into new purchases. After failing to sell three things on Craigslist, I just decided the drop off method worked a lot better for me.

But if you're looking for one of these things, I dropped them off today. They're in good condition, too. Except the timer on the kitchen was broken from so much use.

Because we're getting new carpet in the basement, we needed some space in the storage room to move the basement furniture for tomorrow. KTDID came over last night and went through some boxes that have been in our house since she lived here. As it turns out, she had a lot of paper shredding to do -- and I realized that I hadn't been keeping up on my own shredding of financial documents, so she and I sat on the floor of the storage room last night shredding and shredding. 7 full dumps of a giant shredder later, we were done. She managed to get her stuff from 8 boxes to 4, and I managed to keep my financial records in a decent filing situation (each year is in a plastic tub that is labeled and on the metal shelves).

But the garbage guy probably hated me this morning. Because we had our three blue bins full (because we didn't put out garbage last week before we went to Maine), our office paper bucket next to my desk was out, a box full of papers that didn't need to be shredded was out and then the six bags of shred. And we had a full garbage can from cleaning out the basement.

A Man, I Don't Know, Who Made My Life Easier

So the other day in my blow-by-blow of Family camp, I mentioned Bill Baird. A drug rep from the 1960's who had a woman die in front of him after trying to give herself an abortion (She was already the mother of eight children) with a coat hanger. Because she was single at the time, no birth control was available to her. It was against the law to distribute it to her. In fact, Mr. Baird went to jail many times for handing out contraceptives to unmarried people. (A great example to me that not all people who go to prison are there for "bad" reasons.)

In my 21st century brain, that just doesn't make any sense to me. And in 1963, it didn't make much sense to Mr. Baird, either. His name is on three different pieces of legislation that make it safe and legal for all women to tend to their bodies regarding reproduction, and he and his wife run the Pro-Choice League.

He's also done amazing work in trying to bridge the gap between people who live their lives under strict religious doctrine so that both sides can at least respect their differences.

I said in my blog I was writing a thank you note... and I did. I totally stalked Mr. Baird online and sent him an e-mail. He answered back today. It was very sweet, and I'm glad I did it. Mr. Baird is now 80 years old, and he's spent his lifetime working to help obtain reproductive rights for women and I am grateful for him.

Positively Trying

I've been feeling like I'm taking one step forward and two steps back when it comes to various life issues lately. It's nothing major. It's little stuff and it's annoying.

For example, while we were gone an e-mail came out from school about after school clubs. X-man sees the Mathman on Wednesdays in September and if he likes it, he'll continue. On Thursdays he sees his behavioral therapist to work on his anxiety issues. He knew they had clubs last year but didn't want to really be a part of any of them. But he asked about them this year (mostly he wanted to know if there would be an at-school Lego club, because he found out they have them in California). When the e-mail came out, it announced that clubs were available for children in first through fifth grade.

They had some copy troubles at school, so the parent organizer said we could request a permission slip via e-mail, if they didn't come home in folders on Friday. Since we were gone, I just went ahead and asked for an electronic version for the American Sign Language Class. The permission slip came via e-mail -- and it turned out that there was an error and the club was the only one NOT available to first graders. Now I have a sad panda on my hands, because he wanted to learn to communicate better with the kids at his school. I told him I'd get a book at the library and we'd learn a bit of sign language together. And I totally understand the teacher's concern that first grader's aren't great spellers yet, so it makes it hard to teach children the alphabet to sign and then how to spell words. So I'm not frustrated.

It's just that we seem to come up with this kind of thing a lot, where I do some research on something, get the information, tell X-man what I think the right information is and then when it turns out there's been some kind of typo or mistake on the other end, and then I have to do a lot of work rebuilding his confidence and convincing him that the world is not against him because something didn't work out that he was excited about. And I get that it's annoying, when say, a camp counselor calls your mother and tells her what group you'll be in the next morning and with what counselor, but then you show up and the information is totally wrong, because there were two X-men at the camp and they read the wrong line when they called.

It's just the way life is. People make mistakes. But to a six-year-old with an anxiety issue, it's a mess. Sometimes I wonder if this is why I'm so particular about certain things. Did I used to get this bent out of shape when I was a kid and that's why I have plan A through M for everything? Just so that I could get used to the disappointment and them make lemonade 13 different ways to keep a positive outlook so that I don't become an Eeyore?

Speaking of positive planning, I have two more exciting things happening this week to the house. We're getting new basement carpeting and new carpeting in the upstairs guest room. The two new Kentucky Coffee Trees that I ordered come to get planted on Tuesday.

To Maine and Back in 7 days

The family just got off the plane and ate some Subway. We had a fabulous trip out to Maine for Family Camp. We started our journey with a successful short flight from CMI to ORD and then had a 3-hour layover in which we ate lunch at the Macaroni Grill, played for an hour at the play place and then spent 30 minutes in the H/K Admirals Club. Here X-man built himself a stool to match the girl's next to him and watched the Disney Channel in the Kids Room. When we got there they were playing Phineas and Ferb, but then something pre-teen girl related came on and X-man worked to try and relate... :-)

On the way out we stayed the night at the Liberty Hotel because our plane got in late in the afternoon on Saturday and camp didn't start until Sunday at 3 p.m.

At first I was like, "Whatever. Isn't everything in New England named after liberty?" Then we got there and suddenly MacTroll and I said, "Oooohhh yeaaaahhhh."We had read somewhere about this hotel. It's a remodeled prison! The prison held famous people like Malcolm X and Bill Baird (who if you ever were unmarried and had sex using contraceptives you should write a thank you letter to -- he helped give you that privilege. I'm writing mine now.).

It's a beautiful hotel that X-man was totally enchanted with. He loved that Clink, the restaurant, (the bar is called Alibi) had the original iron doors. MacTroll and I thought it was cute that the "privacy" signs had original jailhouse keys tied to a piece of thin material that said, "Solitary."

Plus, it had a lovely view of the city and the Tube.

We ended up going to bed early and getting up to walk down the street to Finagle a Bagel, which had another unexpected element to it... the bagel cutter. It's kind of hard to see here. But if you see the worker in the middle, in front of him is actually a spinning circular saw. They put the bagels down spaced a bit apart on that conveyer belt (where the staff is in the distance) and it takes it down the line. When the bagel reaches the saw it saws it in half and THROWS the bagel pieces down to that shiny metal block at the end that drops them into a medal bucket for the lady in the green shirt to prepare. Safe for allergies -- no. Super cool for a six year old who ran back and forth between the basket and the saw blade -- YES!

Then we got in the car and we drove up to Portland, Maine. It's a very boring drive that takes you up Highway 1 to 295, which isn't the loveliest of highways. There are lots of tolls. On the way though, MacTroll stopped in New Hampshire (which is a very short part of 95) in order to pick up alcohol sales tax free for the adult "Happy Hours" at family camp.

When we arrived in Portland, we ate at Silly's, which had tripled its space since were were there two years ago. This time, we ate out on the porch. The boys enjoyed milkshakes and sandwiches while I had a Buffalo Tofu salad.

After our bellies were full, we had some time, so we drove toward the water. There on the point just a bit north of the Old Port were some memorials and some historical markers.

It had warmed up and so MacTroll asked X-man if it was okay to put the top down on the Chrysler Convertible we got from Hertz. (We use MacTroll's travel points a lot for family travel so our flights, car and hotels were "free".) He looked adorable as the sun hit his head, even if we had to take some of our bags out of the back and put them in the seat next to him for the drive up to Kingsley Pines family camp.

I didn't take very many "scenic" photos of camp, so you don't really get an idea of what it looks like. For that I apologize. But basically, you drive in from the little town of Raymond on a long entry way that passes by a soccer field and a climbing wall and a high ropes course and a baseball diamond. Then you come into the center of camp next to the office and the lodge and the tennis court and basketball court. I am standing on the porch of the lodge (which is the game playing room and where adult happy hours usually take place) looking down on my favorite tree. It's a giant oak that shades all of the picnic tables where you eat each meal. If it's really storming, you eat inside the cafeteria, but that's boring. I'd much rather eat and overlook the lake.

I know a lot of people grew up with crappy camp food experiences (oh boy, was my Girl Scout experience one of those). But food at Kingsley Pines is pretty awesome. And if there's anything you're not thrilled with there is a killer salad bar at lunch and dinner, a lovely yogurt parfait bar and a cereal bar at breakfast and peanut butter and jelly is offered all day long. MacTroll really likes the eggs to order in the breakfast. George, the chef/cook, makes a damn good omelet. 

X-man developed a love for "oversized" games this time at camp. They had oversized everything. Chess was his favorite, not because he wanted to play "real chess" but because he liked to have pretend war with the characters. The bigger kids didn't understand his distress about playing chess -- the game. But I sat down played his version of war with him, and this is what I love about my kid. One team, knocked over the other team in a long drawn out war. And then two pawns, from different families fell in love and wanted their families to act better and get along and not hurt each other. At first the families feuded (like a 6-year-old version of Romeo and Juliet) but then the queens were swapping gardening stories and the bishops were marrying knights from different families and then all the pieces were mixed up all over the board and life -- was better than it was when it began with one kingdom on one side and one on the other side staring each other down. He took a mess and brought about peace.

Other "giant" game versions included JENGA (Holy cow, you could hear that mother fall from everywhere in camp), Connect Four and the program director was working on creating Scrabble (no lie). I told her about the giant Monopoly game in San José, just in case she wanted to check it out and rob them of their "world's largest" standing.

This is a photo of the waterfront from the sand volleyball court/ping pong area, where I spent most of my time at camp. :-) You see the big white thing in the distance. That's called the iceberg. It has climbing grips on one side. You climb up it and then you either jump or slide down the other side. To the left of it is the water trampoline with three different apparatuses attached to it. One is the big yellow log that you're supposed to run out to the end on. The other is a "walk the plank" log that you climb up and then try to get to the end of (it's about 6 feet up out of the water on the end) and in the back is the "blob." A small say 50 lb child crawls out carefully to the end and sits on a dot looking forward. Then a 180 lb mother or father jumps on a dot near the water trampoline and propels the small child out 10 feet or so into the water before the mother/father falls into the lake two. It is my most favorite item out there, and we did it a lot (all wearing life jackets, of course). I do want to note that on day 4, X-man made it all the way to the top of the iceberg BY HIMSELF. He STOOD UP (which most Dads admit they're too chicken to do, because it's really pretty high) and shouted, "I'm king of the world!" before he slid down the other side. No, he's never seen the movie, but it was pretty awesome. He was the only one in the 6-7 year old group to make it up there on their own during family camp this year.

They had some new things for us to try this year, because we actually had some wind! So MacTroll went out and learned how to windsurf. He's the one in the front learning how to stand up with Mark, one of the counselors, giving him the run down. Later, just so you know, the wind kicked up and pulled the sail over... with MacTroll on top of it, and he broke the mast in two. He didn't go out and try that again. But he did do an afternoon of sailing a sunfish. X-man and I learned how to paddleboard in less windy conditions, which was a lot of fun, particularly if you use a very stable windsurf board as your base. :-) It doesn't turn quite as well as an actual paddle board, but you are less likely to fall off. 

 

Each night from 5-6 p.m. the kids would have their "happy hour" with smoothies and a special snack down at the "Field of Dreams" while the adults did this... Not so bad, right? You could also sign up to take a "booze" cruise around the lake in the speedboat. 

Our accomodations included a rustic cabin that had electricity, a small, but warm shower, his and her sinks and two toilets. It's a cabin that usually has the 8-year-old girls in it for summer camp. So there were 10 bunkbeds and two counselor beds. MacTroll and I slept in the two counselor beds. This was mine. 

There was open water front with about 10 lifeguards for the kids to go out on the blob (without parents), if they wanted to. As the week went on, they scheduled other things during this time. For example, each age group had an assigned time (if the kids were 8 and up) to go tubing or out on the water banana. On Wednesday, it was the grown ups turn. So MacTroll and I both wanted to go. It was nice to know we could go out on the tubes and leave X-man behind and know he was watched over not just by the guards, but also by the parents that were there. It was also cool because rather than blobbing it, he decided to take part in the GIANT FOAM slip and slide the entire time. Seriously, he spent from 3:15-4:30 going up and down the hill. 

Each night at family camp they have a family activity after dinner. The first night was a "Never ever have I" night with a list of activities kids and adults might never have done. Here X-man "Never ever have I been a jedi master" uses the force to noodle joust. He also did a live version of Angry Birds, had a "snow ball" fight in August and made a duct tape wallet. 

The next night we had a trivia contest. X-man could have cared less, even though he totally could have answered a lot of the questions related to cartoons and Disney. As it turns out our table was made up of three families and one young counselor from Scotland. We won the trivia contest and each family got $20 worth of ice cream at the local ice cream place, the Mosquito. Since we were in Maine, MacTroll and I both got Moose Tracks ice cream. X-man told the guy he was last there two years ago and got strawberry, but couldn't remember how it tasted, so he tried it again.

The following night was a casino night. Here X-man bets on his elephant in the "horse races." He won and had a good time. MacTroll ruled the blackjack table. I wasn't excited about gambling, so I went and sat with a bunch of moms in front of a campfire. It was nice, because, honestly, besides one other mother, I never saw any of the other moms. The daily activities are broken down so that the kids go to sessions with kids their own ages. Sessions are one hour long and there are three of them through out the day. There are also four parent sessions EACH hour. So at 9:10 a.m. you could choose between volleyball, ceramics, yoga, mountain biking. And then at 10:10 a.m. you could choose between tennis, jewelry making, water skiing and sailing, etc. And I guess besides one other Mom, I never chose the same things as the other women because it was basically me and the Dads all week long. But it was nice to chat with them at the campfire.

It was also nice to see this happen. We don't get a lot of quality time with MacTroll given his travel schedule. So it was heartwarming to see in Maine.

During the last night at camp, we had a steak and lobster dinner cookout. X-man and MacTroll had their steak fix. X-man played with a leftover lobster claw, as he had when he was 4, but wouldn't go near the actual cooked lobster. The veggie options, which had been outstanding all week, had eggplant in it (I'm not a fan) so I had a giant salad and some corn on the cob. After we ate, we had Carnival Night. Here MacTroll shows Counselor Colin how to cover a big red dot in recycled Cds. Such a smarty pants. 

X-man totally sunk a shot worth 50 points at the "skeeball" table.

Then he took on Mikel from Spain in the arm wrestling competition while Mark totally kicked MacTroll's butt (all while Mark casually ate some cotton candy). 

If you're wondering what I did, I played volleyball every morning. I was 3-1 when I left. Then I sometimes played tennis or MacTroll and I took a canoe out into the lake or I went paddleboarding by myself. One day we had to go to Wal-mart and get a single thing of Tide to do laundry (machines were available for free) because X-man kept jumping into the lake whenever they were down at the docks in his full clothes. By Wednesday, I'd just figured out to put us all into our swim suits and forget underwear. MacTroll also did some rock climbing. And during the afternoon adults sessions, I will admit -- I sometimes freaking napped. It was awesome!

X-man already is asking if he can go there for a 2-week sleepaway camp when he's 8. Because then he gets to pick his activities for the sessions versus getting assigned to them. He said pottery was fine, but he doesn't like crafts. He also did tennis, tie dye, sailing, canoeing, boating, Nuke 'em, Gaga ball and made shaker bag ice cream. He really wants to do fencing, archery and ride the banana tube, but you have to be 8 to do all that. (By the way, the funniest thing all week was me getting on the "check your pants" round tube with MacTroll leaving four dads in their mid thirties to mid forties to get on that banana together. Four grown men on a giant banana tube being pulled behind a ski boat is really, really funny, especially when they look -- unsure about it.)

I told X-man we'd be going back for family camp again when he's in third grade. And then we'd talk about sleep away camp. What's nice is that by then... he'll have already been there three times, and he'll know where everything is and what to do. It was already really cool that some of the counselors were the same as when we were there two years ago (particularly my volleyball buddies David and Danimal). 

After our last breakfast at camp, we got in the car and drove back to Portland. There were no "free" flights available on Friday, so we decided we'd spend some time in Maine and take a "free" flight out on Saturday morning. We took X-man to the children's museum which was good for 2-3 hours worth of play. Here he makes a robotic arm try to pick up things in one basket and put them in another. 

Every children's museum has a grocery aisle, but do all of them have LOBSTER?

Outside was a pirate ship, that I'm pretty sure used to just be another lobster ship (there's one inside the museum, too). But they raised a Jolly Roger on it (which the kids could take up and down themselves) and put a "brig" in underneath. X-man found a couple of boys to go plundering with. But here, he's catching some lobster dinner for them in the red bucket. 

And, as always, a photo of my child looking smashingly ADORABLE in a firefighter uniform. Seriously.

And that was our vacation in a nutshell. The flight back this morning from Boston was uneventful, thankfully. We didn't get caught up in any weather at O'Hare (which is a first this summer). Now X-man is happy to be playing with his toys and the cats are snuggling up to us like they remember us. We had a wonderful new petsitter this week. Her name is Martha McFarland. And I'm happy to pass out her info to anyone. She lives in Savoy, but takes care of pets in the C-U area and is $12 for a 30-minute visit. Plus, she comes highly recommended by several staff members at Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Urbana. She had to come twice a day to help medicate Maya and give her an evening force feeding, and I think our girl is back to being her totally fuzzy, curvy girl self.

Now to get on with the holiday weekend by doing a LOT of laundry.