UMTravels

Busy day at the shop creating ads for various newsletter, note cards, having friends stop by unexpectedly. Slow day for sales (as are most Sundays), but with all the other projects, no time to work scanning images from Volume 3 of Sign of the Times. I have Volume 3 Number 4 done from a couple of days ago. But nothing more. Though with the entire Libboo team at South by Southwest, it’s not like any more issues will get uploaded until the week that I’m in Kansas City as they are all driving down there in an RV (8-10 people, like a rolling frat party).

After work I swung by the hospital to drop off Swanda’s mail, some clipping, some paperwork. Here is that report:

Chris was in VERY GOOD SPIRITS when I saw him after work today. Curtis was there as well. He looked the healthiest that I’ve seen him in months. There was actually color in his cheeks which means that he’s getting the oxygen that he needs in his system. He was even laughing. They have reduced his oxygen from 6 liters a minute to 4, another good sign. They have pillows on his right side to keep him slightly off kilter to ease pressure on his right lung (where he has had problems of fluids, etc.)

The diuretics are working, as is the diet modification, in getting Chris’ weight down. They actually brought a high-capacity scale for Chris to stand on today for an accurate weight. Today’s weight: 595.2 Yes, an accurate weight for once. The rest were using other methods.

Chris passed along the menus for his recent week, including the menu from “The Market Café” that he is now able with restrictions to order from. Think “Daily Specials”. From the scratched out menu they are doing a high protein (which will help him regain strength), low-carb diet. The things that were scratched out on the menu:

• Tortillas
• White rice
• Fiesta corn
• Corn on the cob
• Buttermilk biscuit
• Brown rice
• Orzo Alondine

And entire dishes were axed:

• Chicken Crispitos
• Artichoke and Chicken Calzone
• Spicy Orange Pork

But, this still left him (with restrictions):

• Pork Carnitas (but no tortillas) Tuesday
• BBQ Chicken (ask for light sauce) Wednesday
• Polish Sausage and Sauerkraut, Wednesday (I’d got for that!)
• Pesto Crusted Rainbow Trout, Thursday
• Pepper steak (ask for light sauce/glaze) Friday

He also sent the standard ala carte menu which is so heavy on the carbohydrates that it would be hard to order from it. Though it still made me hungry so I should be thinking about my own dinner.

The one big milestone for Chris to get into the rehab facility are strength and mobility issues. He is making progress on those daily, but if physical therapy comes immediately after a “code brown” he is still winded from all the movement to be much good completing is PT — “ as all the movement was already a PT session.

Things are looking up. This was my first visit in the last 5 days or so as I had the sniffles, and that makes me “persona non grata” in the ICU, with good reason. Chris has already had one minor cold while in the hospital, and I’m not about to make it number two.

Oddly enough as Chris, Curtis and I were discussing wills, health directives, power of attorney, Curtis ask a question that I didn’t know the answer to. We were talking about using my electronic files of the aforementioned documents as a “boilerplate” that Chris, Curtis, Jeff, Mick and others caring for Chris could just change and insert their information into, get notarized. His question was, “Where does the term “boilerplate” come from? I knew where the phrase “pull out all the stops” (related to pipe organs and blasting it to the max). The answer surprised me:

The term dates back to the early 1900s, referring to the thick, tough steel sheets used to build steam boilers. From the 1890s onwards, printing plates of text for widespread reproduction such as advertisements or syndicated columns were cast or stamped in steel (instead of the much softer and less durable lead alloys used otherwise) ready for the printing press and distributed to newspapers around the United States. They came to be known as ‘boilerplates’. Until the 1950s, thousands of newspapers received and used this kind of boilerplate from the nation’s largest supplier, the Western Newspaper Union.

Some companies also sent out press releases as boilerplate so that they had to be printed as written. The modern equivalent is the press release boilerplate, or “boiler,” a paragraph or two that describes the company and its products.

That’s it for today — health report and English lesson. Sorry it’s so long, but like I said, it’s been a few days since I’ve visited.

And speaking of weight (my own), for those of you who are wondering what that number in brackets is at the end of each post, that would be my weight in the morning. The lowest weight I could find in any of my posts (since I started the practice) was 214 in October of 2008 — three and a half years ago.

Boneless pork chop, green salad, and leftover shop wine for dinner (high-protein, low-carb, and the reason that I weigh less now).

[207.8]