My family

Family Stories Vlog

NO CHANGE

2 August 2016

It was another busy morning, finishing up a pocket letter "All About Me"

The deadline had snuck up on me and I realized last night that it had to be mailed today so I settled down and got the whole thing finished in a couple of hours.

In the middle of working, i got a call from the Radiology Department at Kaiser.  My doctor had written to let me know she had made a referral for my mother for a CT scan and I could make an appointment by following the link she gave me, only the link did not give me the option of making an appointment at Radiology, so I guess her nurse called to ask them to call me to schedule an appointment.

They could see her at 2:45, which I figured was a safe time.  And it was.  She was sitting outside the dining room when I arrived at Atria and was not too happy about hearing she had to go to the doctor again, but when I explained that we were worried that she might be having small strokes and didn't want her to have a big stroke, she didn't argue.

I allowed plenty of time to allow for slow walking to the building and having difficulty finding the Radiology Department (I'm not really familiar with this particular facility), but you almost walk right into Radiology when you come in the front door, so we arrived an hour early and they took her an hour late, so we had two hours in the waiting room during which time I had to tell her at least 50 times why we were there and what was going to happen.

After waiting two hours, the scan took 5 minutes and tonight I got a note from her doctor which said "no change," which is odd since she has never had a CT scan before, but I assume this means there is no abnormality, which is reassuring.  My doctor is not long on words.

It's amazing how doing nothing particularly strenuous can really wear you out.  I guess it's answering the same questions a bazillion tmes and agreeing that yes, every single tree was passed was beautiful.  She didn't seem nervous about my leaving her off and not walking her to her apartment this time, which was nice.

I was thinking about dinner and decided I just did ot feel like cooking, so I stopped at our local Chinese place and bought a few things for dinner, putting them in my Wonderbag when I got home to keep hot.

Sure enough, three hours later when I opened the bag, everything was as hot as it had been when I picked it up.  I was glad to be reminded of the usefulness of the Wonderbag because I have to take a hot dish to San Francisco next week and I was wondering how I could cook it here and deliver it there and have it still be hot.  Now I know.

I bought the Wonderbag a couple of years ago when I first read about it.  It was designed by a woman in South Africa to help women cook foods without spending all day over an open fire, risking injury to herself or her children, and constantly filling the house with toxic fumes from the fire.  It's a non-electric portable cooker which continues to cook food after it has been brought to a boil by conventional methods and will continue to slow cook for up to 8 hours. with electricity or fuel.  It's big and bulky, but it works.  It's also great for keeping pizza hot or for keeping things very cold

(This is the story of how the bag came to be created...and is fascinating).  I bought the bag because I was curious but mostly because when I bought it, for every bag purchased they donated a bag to a woman in Africa and it was nice to think I was helping another mother.

After dinner, I wrote my first letter to Alone.  With the email writing system allowing you to send many photos with your letter (up to 3 pages), I sent him a letter and then two pages of family photos, which I ran through Photoshop first so I could add the identification of each person on the photo itself.