Saturday, September 12, 2009

Yay chickens



To get this picture I had to eat larabars for breakfast this morning because I was short one green egg and when I went out there Kitty was busy sitting on her egg and I didn't want to bother her. So we had eggs for lunch instead.

This morning we went to the Seattle Tilth Harvest festival where we saw a one year old Speckled Sussex chicken-- the same kind Roxie is, and were a little stunned by how big she is going to get. We are hoping the other chickens don't all get that big or else their house is going to be too small!

This morning we found out Marc's dad could be in the hospital in LA for quite a while longer, so we may be planning a weekend trip to LA soon. It frustrates me because I hear third-hand generalizations about his diagnosis in lay terms, when if I knew the medical diagnosis I could understand what that means a lot better than my family does. I wish he were here where we could go visit him and advocate for him-- I got a little emotional the other day when I watched a patient consultation at Madigan with a man who had had a heart attack and was in the hospital. Even though his situation was different than my father in law's, it reminded me of him and made me sad. I keep demanding Marc ask him about his diet and if they are giving him supplemental nutrition (like Ensure which is absolute crap but he needs protein to heal and that's what hospitals have). He said he's eating but the portions are tiny and he's still hungry. My guess is they are giving him the cardiac diet which is probably designed for people who need to lose weight-- he needs to gain it and he needs enough calories to heal from his wounds. I wish I could read his chart and see what they are doing for him.

This is my first weekend home where I only get two days. It's already near 2pm and I have to get started on my mountain of homework. If I want to have any hope of exercising and getting enough sleep during the week I need to get my homework done now.

Bastyr friends-- I am missing you....

3 comments:

Stevie said...

The eggs are beauties!

I'm really sorry to hear about Marc's dad. I've been keeping him in my thoughts.

It's unfortunate that hospitals can only provide such general care for a specific diagnosis. While I'm sure the majority of heart attack patients ARE overweight and eat a high fat/cholesterol diet and are generally unhealthy and sedentary, not all heart attack victims are in that category and yet still receive the same type of care. I'm glad that you are advocating for him as much as you can from here, and hopefully your knowledge will somehow be communicated.

I'm curious about your Ensure comment? I don't know much about it and I'm sure hospitals use it because it's cheap? I know it has lots of protein, but is it also full of sugar and other non-necessary garbage?

Laura said...

I miss you too, hope things get better soon. If all else fails, you can bring slim fast...

Misha Henshaw said...

I will keep your father-in-law in my prayers.

take good care