Great Road Trip of 2017.....Part Fifteen/Day Twelve

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nine of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Ten of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eleven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twelve of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Thirteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  

Part Fourteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

So we got back to the ranch in the afternoon.

Hubs sat on the porch and had some grapes(and Benjamin Button the dog sat and waited for him to drop some, but he didn't-dogs can't eat grapes).  I wandered around the land surrounding the house instead.

I saw this calf out in the pasture so I called to her.

And she came right over to the fence..........

Benny Button sunning himself on the sidewalk...

Some old wheels leaning on the side of an outbuilding.......

I wandered into the greenhouse but didn't stay long as it was hot as blazes in there.  Tomato plants as far as the eye could see.

Then out into the garden area outside of the greenhouse.........

Squash for days!

Here comes Benny checking me out again.....

And here is Cindy's landscaped flower garden.  There was a creek and a decorative bridge over the water feature too.  So pretty.

And here are the horses.......

Ty and Cindy's son came up pulling a horse trailer, unloaded this fella and put him in the paddock.

And this horse too......

Across the road from the house was a pasture with a bull in it.

At this point Ty came out of the house and said he wanted to show us other parts of the ranch.  Kim and Joel came on the tour, as well as Cindy.  

Ty gave each couple a vehicle to use for this trip deep into the ranch lands.

Here is Ty showing Hubs how this thing works.

Take note of the windshield, or lack thereof in the photo.  The windshield barely came halfway up.  This will be important later on in this story.

The other two couples got off-roading vehicles with full windshields.....hmmm.

Hubs strapping himself into our "death machine".  Notice also that there are no doors on this thing.  It had what appeared to be a cargo net for doors.

And then we were off!  But first, the horse started neighing.  I think he knew what was going to happen and was warning me.  Plus Benjamin Button sat right in our path so we couldn't drive anywhere.  The dog knew what was going to happen I bet.  Animals know these things while us humans are dumb as rocks. lol

Here we all are lined up, engines on and ready to take off.  Side note-Hubs has NEVER driven a 4 wheeler while this was old hat for Ty and Joel........

And here's a shot once we got off the blacktopped road onto the ranch further down the road.

We were last in the line and Hubs was trying to catch up with the other two machines as we bumped along on a dirt path.  Oh goody!  More hitting my head on the roof time, as well as brush wacking my right side along the way.....

Some video I took while 4 wheeling on the ranch.....

Hubs caught on fairly quickly to driving this thing.  Some of the paths had very deep sand covering them too but he just handled the sand like we did snow out East in PA during the Winter.

After awhile flying down the path and trying to keep up, we came to a gated area.  Ty opened the gate and we ventured in to where a water source(a pond)was.  There was some kind of small dead critter(things we call "Squeazeel" after an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show "A Cook's Tour" where he was in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Asia and was served a meat and the translator called it "Squeazeel", which was later discovered to be raccoon)laying by the gate that we had to drive over. 8-/

The pond was lovely.  Ty said his grandfather(or maybe his great grandfather)had created this pond as a water source for the ranch back when it was created.  Land is pretty worthless if you don't have access to water out West.  Water for the humans, the animals and the crops.

We went back out the gated area.  After Ty checked in on us and Kim & Joel in the other 4 Wheeler, we headed onward.  We were now in the middle of the pack with Kim & Joel at the end.  Ty gave us the double thumbs up sign and then we were off again. Notice the sky behind him, all those dark clouds rolling in.......

More dark skies ahead.......

                                       

Then I noticed the sky got even angrier and the clouds began to dip toward the land.  I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the sky in the shot below.

My last bit of video on this ride to what almost was to my death.....

Soon after I shot that bit of video, we all took off again(we were heading back to the house/driveway but continuing on in a loop to our starting place).  We still have a fair piece to cover before getting back to the path that would take us back to the blacktopped road.

And not a minute later the skies overhead opened up with a tremendous hailstorm.  The hail was about dime sized and fierce.  It felt like being pelted with rocks!

Ty took off and left us four on the other two four wheelers in the dust(well, mud at that point). 

Being in the vehicle with half a windshield was a bad thing....as we tried to drive, the hail pelted our faces over the top of the windshield making it so we could barely see where we were going and we didn't know where we were going since we had no one to follow now out of here!  At least Hubs had glasses on which protected his eyes and let him kind of see where he was heading.  Unfortunately Hubs has a very bad sense of direction so I shouted to him as it was quite loud between the hailstorm and the thunder, "keep following the dirt trail and as quick as possible so we don't die out here on the prairie!".

So Hubs floored it as I curled up into a ball as much as possible to protect myself from the barrage of ice coming over the windshield, while shading my eyes by cupping my hands around them and praying to God to get us back in one piece!

After awhile(what seemed like hours)we hit the blacktopped road and Hubs could go faster.  We had left Kim & Joel in the dust somewhere as they were nowhere in sight.

Since Hubs is directionally challenged I had to watch for the driveway to the ranch so we didn't overshoot it and end up 3 miles past the turn.  Kind of hard to see with all that hail pelting us.

I screamed at him to "turn in here" and we were back at the ranch in the yard.  I undid the seat belt but then in a panic, I couldn't figure out how to undo the cargo net door.  I was about to freak out and dive out the front, over the half-windshield, when Hubs came around and found the latch on the net and let me out.

I stumbled up to the house and Cindy was there with a blanket to drape over me and she pulled me under the porch awning.  I guess they got back to the house quite quickly as she didn't look like a drowned rat like I did.

My teeth were chattering at this point, I was shivering with cold and my dress was drenched.  She led me into the shower room by the backdoor and threw me into a hot shower to warm up.

After warming up I tired to take off my dress.  Cotton knit clothing like I had on was not very happy to be removed at this point.  My dress weighed a TON as it had about 30 pounds of water in it. lol  I couldn't get it over my head to remove it.  It was like Sisyphus rolling that boulder uphill, almost an impossible task.

I called out to Hubs to come into the bathroom to help me get out of that dress.  He ran upstairs and got me warm clothes to change into after that.  I sure could have used a stiff drink at this point, and I'm not talking iced tea!

Meanwhile, as I was taking a hot shower and wrestling with my dress, Kim & Joel still hadn't showed up in the driveway.  So Ty took his pickup truck out there to go find them.  He located them still back on the dirt trail somewhere, jumped out of the truck and took Kim's hand and led her to the pickup.  But when they got to the truck Kim resisted getting in and pulling away from Ty's grasp.  She told Ty she couldn't get in the truck because she had gotten so scared that she had peed her pants and she didn't want to get his truck dirty. lolz

I don't know what Joel was doing while this was going on but somehow Ty got them both back to the house.

Kim got taken upstairs to the bathroom up there for a hot shower and to change her clothes while I was still downstairs and trying to accomplish the same.

Kim described trying to take her shirt off over her head later and she couldn't remove it.  Kim has RA and her arms/shoulders seized up on her.  She demonstrated what she looked like trying to get the shirt off later, and she looked like a chicken with her arms pinned to her sides, flapping and clucking. 8-))  I think Cindy came to her rescue to help with that shirt.  We were all in hysterics later laughing at "Chicken Kim".

After I recovered from this "adventure", and the storm had stopped raining down ice, I had the presence of mind to look around the yard and take these pictures..........

The hailstorm and the driving rain that followed decimated Cindy's garden and sheets of water were flooding the yard,

This is a photo from the porch of the flooding of the front of the yard, the road and the driveway.  What a mess!  At least Ty was able to recover some of his feed crops and they weren't a total loss.

The ever wise Benjamin Button, their Corgi, seemed to stare into my soul at this point.

In my head I heard him saying(if he could talk), "What the heck were you thinking going out four wheeling with Ty?  Don't you know he's a madman daredevil!?  And I tried to warn you not to go by laying in the way, but Nooooo, you didn't listen!" 8-)

Come to find out later that Ty is known for his daring do.  One story goes he was out on the ranch with a horse when a lightning storm rolled in.  Next thing he knew, he was waking up, laying flat on his back on the ground and the horse was dead.  A lightning strike took out the horse and almost took out Ty!  He crawled home on his knees as he couldn't stand up.

Cindy apologized for what had happened(not that anything was her fault!)and then said, "You know Ty use to be worse....he's much better now."  Lord, I would hate to see Ty acting more reckless. lolz

As the sun set Ty made us all a steak dinner.  I should have photographed those steaks....they were HUGE!  The cow those came off of must have been a behemoth!

After talking a bit we all went to bed.  We were all warn out because this day(and Ty) tried to kill us all!

Sluggy

My Life as a Water Balloon

Here's my story about the latest crap that has happened in my life.
Pull up a chair and pour a cup.....this is going to take awhile.

First let me say that I am not in the best of health.  I have chronic conditions that necessitate that I make regular visits to my doctor.
Sometimes that's once a month, sometimes I can go about 3 months before needing to be seen.
I was under the care of a doctor that was monitoring my health, or so I thought.
I have high blood pressure and I'm overweight.
I am prone to develop cellulitis in my legs. About 5 years ago I was in the hospital for antibiotic therapy for it. I also have a swollen foot.  I've had it since #2 Son was a baby.  Stuff doesn't circulate in and out of it well, so it is always swollen.

I started feeling not quite right sometime in January.  Just more tired and lethargic than usual.  I started having trouble climbing the stairs in the house.  At my Jan. visit to the dr. I mentioned it and nothing was noted and no action was taken.
Then in February I noticed that my legs were swollen, I was even more tired and I was having trouble breathing, especially at night in bed. The last of this also meant that I was waking up at night constantly(which would explain why I was so tired; I was not getting deep, restorative sleep.).
I didn't have an appointment in February and thought these symptoms would keep until my appointment in March.

Also in February, #2 Son got sick with a sore throat.  After more than a week and no improvement, I called late in the month to make a dr. appointment so we could rule out strep and/or get some drugs for it.

Some background information before I continue.....
Our doctor had recently undergone a total office reorganization with a new receptionist, new nurse, new business manager.  I got off on the wrong foot with the receptionist.  She is a little 20 year old and came into the practice with an attitude and the ego the size of a doctor's.  Her first day on the job she argued with me(though she didn't know anything about the practice or my insurance copays)and insisted my copay owed was double what it has been for the last 2 years.  The office never updated our insurance information file so instead of taking to me like a person, smiling, and trying to figure out why her information wasn't lining up with mine, she stood there and just proceeded to bark at me that I owed $XX because her file said so and I was NOT leaving until I paid it.
Yes, she pissed off this family of 5, who had been longtime customers for the last 12 years.
Great new support staff, huh!

So back to February.....
I called for an appointment for #2Son and I get a voicemail, so I leave a message to call me back about setting up an appointment.
And no one returns my call that day.
So I call the next day and get the voicemail again and leave another message.
Late that day I get a phone call from the Nazi Receptionist.  She says that I can't make an appointment because the doctor is out of the office all week and she doesn't know when he is returning.
Huh?
So I ask her to give me the name of whoever is covering for him.  NR says that he no longer has another dr. or group taking his patients.
So I ask her, so what do I do?
NR says to go to an Urgent Care or the ER.
And she says it in a snippy, exasperated tone, like she is talking to an imbecile.

Now let me give you a little background about my doctor's office.  Up until this shake up at his practice, the doctor has always had a voicemail message that said, "We can't answer the phone so leave a message. If it's a medical emergency, call xxx number and I will return your call right away or go to the emergency room."  If he was on vacation, the message would also have the name and number of whichever doctor was seeing his patients in his absence.

The new voicemail message was just "This is the office of xxxx. Please leave a message."
So I lay into her........first off, nobody called me back for a day and a half.  If you had put a voicemail message up that noted the dr. was out of the office for an extended time period and there was NO coverage being provided by another doctor I could have not sat for the last day and half doing NOTHING to get my son better, I could have sought treatment elsewhere sooner and had him recover sooner.  Not only that but since Dr. xxx has chosen NOT to have a doctor cover for him, I am going to have to pay more to go to an Urgent Care or an ER, even though he doesn't need that level of care.
This is just bad office management.
All she said was, "I'm sorry".  And she said it in a very cold and unfeeling sort of tone.
So I screamed into the phone, "You are NOT sorry.  Your 20 year old ass couldn't care less!"
And I hung up.

So #2 Son went to Urgent Care and $20 worth of antibiotics later he was over his strep throat.
But I was still not feeling well.

By March, I am feeling progressively worse.  I now notice that my stomach is getting hard and swollen.  It's so swollen that I can hardly get behind the steering wheel.  I don't have a scale so I can't weigh myself.  I hadn't changed my eating habits so I don't think I could have possibly put on that much weight in 1 or 2 months. 

Thankfully I had calmed down by the time my next doctor appointment rolled around in March.
I walked into the waiting room and noticed right off that most of the furniture is missing, as well as the magazines and the artwork on the walls.
I checked in and sat down.
And a few minutes later the nurse comes out and I ask her what's going on with the furniture.
She tells me the office is moving.
Huh?
Evidently they are moving down the road about 1/2 mile into a small house that was being turned into a doctor's office.
And they were starting to see patients the very next day at the new location.
And nobody had ever mentioned the change in location to us!
Good thing my appointment was not the following day or I'd have showed up here to a locked door.

About then the doctor saunters out into the waiting room, which is empty except for me.
He sarcastically asked how I like the new look of the waiting room.  I said fine except there are no seats.  He mentions they are moving and then goes over to the Nazi Receptionist.  I listen to them a bit and honest to goodness, he is flirting with her!  He's not talking business......he's talking about her skirt and how she should wear her hair and I feel like I need to go shower I'm feeling so icky.

I get called back by the nurse and she takes my blood pressure and temperature.  She doesn't weigh me(nor had they during my last appointment).  I tell her about my breathing problems and the swelling in my middle and she puts me in an examination room.

When the doctor comes in instead of asking me how I am feeling and what my complaints are, he talks about the new office, asks me what I think about the receptionist(isn't she cute?) and then goes on to tell me he is going to buy a little house on a river and go fishing and he'll bring me some fresh trout.
???
I notice that he is slurring his words and just sounds goofy, beyond what he is talking about, which is also goofy.
He does listen to my lungs and doesn't say anything is not right.
He goes off on a tangent, asking me about my Daughter and college and then without another word starts to leave.
I stop him and tell him my complaints.  He writes an order for a respiratory test and leaves.  Never even examined my middle or my problematic legs which are very swollen.
He tells the Nazi Receptionist I am to come back in a month and goes back into his office.
I make an appointment and go home.

Over the next few weeks I continue to feel worse and worse.
About 10 days before my appointment, my daughter says she tried to make an appointment with the doctor for a check-up(before she leaves to go to Louisiana)and she got a voicemail that the doctor was on an extended medical leave of absence with no other directions or information.  I guess he still had no doctor covering for him.

2 days before my appointment I called to confirm it and I got the same voicemail about being on medical leave until further notice.
You would think the office would be calling and telling patients with appointments that they were not going to be honored!
At this point I told Hubs that I can't wait to see this doctor any longer and he needs to take me to Urgent Care.

So he gets off work a bit early and take me to the local Urgent Care.
They have since stopped doing x-rays at that Urgent Care so they tell me to go to the ER.
So we toddle up to the ER.  I tell the front desk triage nurse I am having problems breathing and take a seat in the waiting room, which is packed.

There are 3 ways to get seen right away at an ER--Be in active labor, be having a heart attack or stroke, or not being able to breathe.
The nurses called me back about 5 minutes later.
My oxygen saturation at rest on room air was 88%.  I was weezy and swollen.  Even my eyelids were swollen.

I spent the next few hours being poke and prodded, stuck with needles and given meds.  Something or other important was 1000% the level it should have been.
I was admitted.  I was filling with fluid and going into right side heart failure.
I ended up spending 24 hours in the ER waiting for an open bed on the cardiac floor.
The doctors there feel I have severe sleep apnea(even though I had a sleep study done 8 yrs. ago and they had no recommendations since it was a mild case).  The apnea leads to fatigue, less oxygenation, which leads to the heart working harder to reach all the cells and supply oxygen rich blood, which leads to fluid  retention and breathing problems....or something like that.
It's all a big vicious cycle, or should I say a big vicious spiral that leads to death if not treated.
Not fun.

After multiple diuretics in the hospital I lost 18 lbs. of fluid. 
I am required to keep to a low sodium diet, since sodium makes you retain fluid.
I am also on oxygen 24/7.  And a slew of drugs.  And I have a bonus of a slew of doctor's appointments in the coming months.

The restrictive sodium diet is why I am having to change my eating habits. 

I've been home 10 days now and I've dropped an additional 22 lbs.  I suspect it's mostly fluid and not "weight" so far.  My swollen foot is no longer swollen.  My legs and middle are no longer hard and taut, my eyelids are normal again and I can fit behind the steering wheel in the car again. ;-)
My oxygen saturation on room air in the hospital dropped to 56% when they walked me down the hall.  The Advair(mediation)helps and I hope to get off the oxygen eventually.

Now here's the crazy part--
While being examined by the nurse assigned to me in the ER, after they had decided to admit me, they started getting my medical history and doctor information.  When I told her who my doctor was, she just stopped and looked at me, then said, "Oh!"
I said, "What?".
She said, "Didn't you hear?  He lost his license."

It seems that in this little town, if you are "special" and get into legal trouble, it is covered up.  And when it does hit the newspaper, weeks later, it is buried deep inside next to the travel ads and the bingo parlor hours.

Here is from one paper online
Doctor arrested

Here is from another paper online
Doctor arrested

All I can say is Medical Leave my ASS!!!

I've since heard he was abusing prescription drugs and/or giving out fraudulent prescriptions.
We do know that he has been seen drunk in various restaurants in town.
This all happened in late Feb., about the time I was trying to get an appointment for #2Son for his strep throat.
Of course, I don't read the local daily papers(just Sunday's edition). 
I guess things didn't go well for him at his hearing since the nurse knew he had lost his license to practice.

And it's no wonder I ended up in the state I was in.
I didn't have a competent healthcare provider now, did I?

And add in to all this fun that my computer died the day I went to the ER.
Thoughtful Hubs went out and bought me a brand spanking new laptop.....my first laptop, while I was in the hospital.
So I came home to yet another challenge.....learning the ways of the laptop AND Windows 8.
Ugh!

So that's what I've been up to.
I've had my fill of excitement.....bring on boring for a change!
What's new with you?

An addendum to the story--
I just got a letter from our insurance company informing me that my healthcare provider is no longer participating with our HMO.
Really?!
Ya think?
8-P

Sluggy