I love luv fungi hunts dislike tests

In pursuit of cool Fungi in September. 

Coral Fungi.

In my dreams the fungi hunts look more like this:

If only they were so easy to find! Plus they don't look like that. 

Generally they are less enticing than those 'dream' works.

No, I do not know what these are. I suspected Shrimp of the Woods perhaps? But they really didn't seem like them.

Close up of the odd little fungi.

It smelled like a mushroom, and felt like one too. They grew away from the dead tree on where the roots had been close to the surface of the earth.

They looked nothing like the Shrimp of the Woods that Olive and I found.

The ones below were on a what appeared to be a stump. I have no idea what they were and they dried up fairly quickly with the dry weather we are having.

Are these honey mushrooms in a couple of different stages? Or are they something completely different?

I don't know, however I really enjoyed finding them and searching the woods.

We found tiny puff balls resting on damp wood.

And Wolf's Milk hiding in little crevices of other damp pieces of wood.

That's about it. I have no symptoms. And the test has come back negative two days in a row.

I figure now that my headache and stomach upset yesterday was A. From worrying or B. From the Booster.

I dodged it one more time.

Let's say yah to outdoor friendships and travelling with the windows down!

We both will mask next time we are in a car together.

I do dislike those tests, but the home one wasn't so bad!

[created this in Wombo AI art program just for

this blog. I guess there is a use

for it!]

Have a good weekend.

I know we will!

Testing testing

I guess I should not have looked a the email that came in after my 'bone density scan'. You know, you get some results and instantly a person is curious.

I was reading the numbers and the 'scores'. Hmmmm. 
There were a lot of numbers with a negative sign in them. Lumbar 1 to Lumbar 4.
Then the right hip and the left hip. I expected some sort results regarding my left hip as it seems to be always a bit ... well, a bit of an irritant to me. 

Most mornings I get up and feel a bit like a truck has run over my low back. Usually I can walk around and it gets much better.

I want a good grade, you know? Like an A+ or something. I don't think I got that. 
One should not try and look up test/scan results on their own. 

I decided that I was just fine thank you very much. I would wait for my doctor to call me about that D- it feels like I got.

In other good news. My supervisor, Charlie loves riding the 4 wheeler with me. I had to put out a 50 lb salt block and didn't feel like hauling it out by foot. I put it in the cart and fired up the 4 wheeler.

The Mighty Little Dog came bounding out and took a leap then climbed up my leg to sit in front of me. He stood on the machine and supervised as long as the machine was running.

Just for fun, we took a long tour around the winter pasture to glance at fences and look for some fungi close to the house. Here is a shaggy mane mushroom as it grows and one after it spores out.

While watering the mules in another pasture, I found these by the roots of the stump of an old Ash tree.

Sir Charles also supervised my work when I cleaned out the gutters and tossed wet yucky leaves into my flower garden where they can make nice soil.

Tuesday looks nice and overcast with a hint of rain. I think it will be a good day for a nice long hike. I hopefully will explore a new trail or just do a road walk.

I have one more doctor test to do and I put it off.

The Fasting Lab. I don't dislike the poke or anything. It is the NO morning coffee that gets me cranky. All of my other labs came back just perfect. Let's hope I don't get results in an email that make me go Uh-Oh Again!

And...

I loved driving the hot rod Subaru...Even parked, it looks speedy.

Life and death and decisions...

Frightful weather!

Overnight it snowed again. More snow/drizzle stuff. I spent about an hour last night cleaning out certain areas with a shovel. I had everything exactly how I wanted it and then...
it snowed again...and drizzled.

I saw an electric snow shovel on another blog I follow and thought that was the cat's meow until I realized that I'd have to keep it plugged in and a cordless one would operate for 25 to 30 minutes.
I almost considered a snow blower but only for about 30 seconds when I saw all the instructions and gas mixing stuff.
Ok, not a choice for me.

I'm still thinking of a little plowing machine type 4 wheeler job. It would get all the flat areas I needed cleared and a tiny bit of shovel work would do the trick. IF there was a blizzard and a few feet of snow, well that is different sort of story.

The weather this morning is not good so I'm not going into town until it settles down. There is supposed to be an icy mix of 'stuff' moving through.

I spent the day at the hospital with my MIL again yesterday.
I discovered that I actually do have a heart in my body. I've been accused of being too unemotional in the past and I admit it. I usually don't let emotions get in the way of pragmatic thinking.
I put 'the job' in front of me first and don't get all emotional and upset as that doesn't help the thought process.
But yesterday I sat and watched the nurses and lab lady pull blood as MIL cried out and kept crying. I wondered exactly how on earth was modern medicine helping?

Congestive Heart Failure along with Kidney Disease progresses to organ malfunction, fluids in the lungs, and a rather long list of probable outcomes. Death is the last outcome and it is unavoidable.

MIL struggled hard for air and she literally sounded as if she were gurgling.

Two members of the family had been asking if they should come. One is further away and would require a flight.
They didn't ask me though as my reply would have been 'I am at a loss as to why you haven't already come before?'

So I struggled with being the only relative there and I was the daughter in law.

I fetched a warmed blanket after the gals had gone, a CNA said she could put it on MIL.
I said, "No! I'll do it. This way she can feel me tuck her in and put my arms around her. I'm family, it is much nicer to have a family member tuck you in than a stranger."
The CNA smiled and handed me the blanket.

And as I tucked my MIL in and she groaned with delight, I felt my heart fall to pieces.

I was grateful that there was no one else in the room to see my tears or feel my heartache. Me, the ever stoic person.

And I felt anger at the daughter who had said that she didn't want to see her mom until after she had passed because it was too stressful for her.
I thought of the opportunities that the family members had passed up in the last 8 months of seeing MIL happy, clean, well fed, and chipper at the nursing home. I thought of the funny things that MIL and I have been sharing. And I was very angry and then very sad.
And then I felt grateful that I had taken the time to be with her. That I had visited.

And then I thought how much I would miss her too.

I sat back to watch her fall into a much more comfortable sleep.

And before I left for the day I wondered this awful thing.
How we as a human race will let our pets pass on when they are so ill and in so much pain.
But we won't/can't let our chronically ill people go ...or just keep looking for treatments to prolong suffering?

I'm really not a cruel person. I just can't see going through momentous efforts that cause pain and only have the same result in the end.

I am so very glad that Rich and I put together Advanced Directives and Living Wills in place. I know my son will make sure that they are carried out if I am not able to implement them.

That slippage Dementia thing....

I'm learning a lot these days about the word Dementia.

Well you know I call it 'Slippage', it is a kinder word. I wish the doctors would just call it something nicer like what it is.

Brain Disease. Perhaps instead of Dementia or Alzhiemers, or Vascular Dementia, Lewey Bodies...it could be called simply Brain Malfunction. Okay not that think of how the doctors like to use initials. BM sure wouldn't work well for Brain Malfunction.

Some days the neurons and memory pathways work perfectly for my MIL. She has very bright days which are less than her dim days. Those days she tells me of things that make no real sense to me, but make perfect sense to her.
She tells me that they moved her room again. I ask if it is 210 and she says yes of course it is. But they move it often, her name and number stay the same but sometimes they put it in different places.

I think about it later and this is a perfect explanation. It makes sense. If she is having trouble finding her way back to her room, it must have been moved. In her mind that is the only logical reason.
I'm beginning to understand how her mind will grasp something and she makes sense out of it with this type of reasoning. I applaud her line of thinking, it is imaginative.
It shows that she still is thinking and that is a good thing.

So the next time she told me that, instead of correcting her we went on an adventure to go find her room. We were both pleased as punch to find it and I congratulate her on being so clever.

"Not clever," she laughs. I leave her for the afternoon and go back home. In a way it feels hard to leave her sitting in her room like that. But now I know she will get her 'lift' chair from her apartment in her room. This should make her daytime naps easier and more comfortable than sitting in her wheelchair nodding off.


Dementia tests. There are a variety of them and though I understand the need for them to mark a baseline and watch the 'progression' of the slippage, I disagree with people visiting and trying to tell MIL to remember this or that. Endless questions instead of casual conversations.
Leave the prognosis to the doctors, but be there with your parent or spouse.

Yesterday Rich had a physical.
The nurse gave him a short 'dementia' memory test. A SLUMS test. He actually did very well and if the nurse took into account that he has aphasia, she would have scored it higher. I noted that to her... but... oh well.

His COPD is a bit worse, but I knew that because he has been avoiding going to Pulmonary Therapy. He figures that his summer work is done and he doesn't need to do more? Not sure.
Each time we get ready to go to Fresh Start he finds a reason he can't go.
"My tummy hurts"
"I'm too tired"
"I feel dizzy"

His room 02 sats are falling so I tried to show him that IF he doesn't work at it, he will get connected to the dreaded cord all the time again.
This resistance is understandable and frustrating at the same time.

I have been engaging him in opinions. "Show me how to put this cordless drill together!" He does. "If I build the stall and put some plywood in the spots where Fred would put his head through the rails would that help?"
We discuss zip ties and plywood.
A short but satisfying talk in which he tells me that I had a good idea.

He still there but fades most of the day into watching the trees and the mules out in the pasture or a TV show.
No longer is the boss guy around. The guy who would shudder to know his wife can drive his skid steer and drill a hole in plywood...or even rebuild a stall.

His is not so much 'slippage'. His memory is spotty about things from a year ago. But his issue is apathy. Stroke related apathy.
He listens to the doctors and nods, he listens to me and agrees to 'try' to do more.

And then.
He returns to watching out the window or getting tired. Self motivation seems to have disappeared completely.

Winter is coming and I feel like it could be a long one.