Sweet Stuff

I had no idea an orange would be so attractive to a cardinal but seeing is believing. This guy  smushed his face in so much that I have shots which don't show an eye.  I suspect there may be more "orange" blips in the future.

Busy, hot day.  It started with my annual appointment with the cardiologist.  Before he came in, the nurse told me she was going to do an EKG.  I went through all of that mistaken TIA stuff in January and knew I didn't need one.  I told them I thought automatically doing these things  was a rip off of Medicare and my Blue Cross.  Doctors order too many unnecessary tests.

I headed towards Mom's doctor next.  I knew if I brought her to a 2 pm appt. that I would never make a 3:30 with my kidney doctor.  I tried to get that rescheduled and am still waiting to hear from them.  I told them having her wait until October was unacceptable. I think more people need to be better advocates for their health and the health of their loved ones.

Later, as I was being guided to the nephrologist's  exam room, she walked by and asked if I had seen that my numbers went up?  She followed that with a big, "Hot dog!"  Next steps: having two sets of labs before seeing her again in a month, then reducing Dracula to once a month. While a filtration rate of 22 is better than 15, it means I'm still in Stage 4 (of 5).  She added two antibiotics as drugs I should now report as drug allergies: Cipro and Kelflex.  

In the middle of all of that I stopped at Mom's, originally to take her out to lunch or at least to get her to eat something. All of that running around, especially in the hot car, was pretty brutal.  The midday high was 103°/39°, the humidity 6%.  It wasn't until I got home that I found out that the air quality (mostly ozone) was in the dangerous range...explaining why I felt the need to use my inhaler twice.