Today was the first of four days off for me but it was a day for rest and relaxation.
It began with a drive to Nashville for a follow-up appointment with our bariatric surgeon, Dr. Houston. It was my 5 month check up and Paula's 6 month. We both got on the scale and doing very well on our weight loss progress. We spent a couple of minutes with Dr. Houston and the appointment was over.
Perhaps the most significant thing about the entire doctor visit was that we had to park on the 2nd floor of the hospital parking lot and walk to the office. This was a relatively easy walk that was very difficult just 5 months earlier.
After we left Dr. Houston's office we drove through Nashville to a store called "Trader Joes". Paula discovered this store on her last trip to Nashville with her sister. Its a grocery store but it has a lot of unusual food items and imported stuff. We found a very low carb bread, some low carb tortilla chips, and some other things that we can eat and stay within our dietary limits.
Upon our return home it was time to get ready for the 2 ventriloquist shows I had scheduled for the day. The first was a performance at the local library. I was being asked to perform as part of the kick off to the winter reading program. I used the back drop of the Christmas holiday to help my puppets, Lanoline the Lamb, Cecil the turtle and Ruben Nathaniel Young to show the kids how reading is a gift with unlimited possibilities.
This was a pretty good performance if I must say so myself. I practiced more than I ever have for any other show. My level of comfort while performing was very similar to the day care experience I had a few weeks ago. (see November 15 Post). A picture of me and Lanoline the elf is at the top of this post.
Later that evening I went to our church to perform at our annual "Dinner with Santa" event. This is perhaps the ultimate event for entertaining kids during the year. Because my time was limited I only used Lanoline and Cecil in this performance.
I didn't do as well this time mainly because I was tired from the long day I'd had up to that point. The children were very responsive and seemed to enjoy the performance but it wasn't my best.
With the conclusion of the event at church I headed back home to relax for the rest of the evening. About midnight I was in my bedroom getting ready to retire for the evening when my wife saw a spider webbing down from the ceiling light over our bed. She hollered for me to get it before it got to the mattress. My immediate reaction to her plea was to grab the web string and carry it across the hall to the bathroom and dispose of the arachnid.
Well the spider had a different idea. It made it's way back up the web, which was now wrapped around the fingers of my right hand. I closed my hand with the spider inside. That's when I felt it bite me on the inside of my ring finger. I reacted to the bite and dropped the spider losing it in the carpet.
I'd never been bitten by a spider before. In the south spider bites are quite common. Some can cause some serious problems especially if the spider is a recluse or a black widow. Neither of us got a good enough look at the spider to tell what it looked like or what kind it was. It was light colored so it wasn't a black widow but it could have been a recluse. We weren't sure.
The bite quickly became swollen and started to hurt. As quickly as my body reacted to the bite we both became concerned about what kind of spider had just bitten me. We decided to go to the emergency room at the local hospital and get it checked out. I was feeling okay overall it was just that my finger was swollen and hurting with a burning sensation.
By the time we got to the ER the swelling in the bite had gone down and only a small mark remained as evidence of the incident. Nevertheless I checked into the ER just in case I needed a shot of Benedryl to counter any possible allergic reaction.
When we got to the ER it was fairly quite. We sat down in the waiting room to wait for someone to see me. As we sat there more emergency cases came in. I could tell by looking at the patients that their cases were a lot more urgent than mine.
Knowing that ER cases are seen by degree of need and not on a first come first serve basis I realized that my wait was going to be longer and longer. With my finger feeling perfectly fine and both of us very tired from a long day at little after 1 AM I decided that I didn't want or need to wait around to be seen. I didn't need to take up the time of a doctor who could be helping someone else who really needed it. So we left.
On the way home we stopped by an all night drug store and got some liquid Benedryl. I took some before I went to bed just in case I had any kind of further reaction. I had none and slept very well till the next morning.
Finally, nearly 2 hours after we initially planned to be in bed, at a little after 2AM we finally got to the end of this very busy December day.
It began with a drive to Nashville for a follow-up appointment with our bariatric surgeon, Dr. Houston. It was my 5 month check up and Paula's 6 month. We both got on the scale and doing very well on our weight loss progress. We spent a couple of minutes with Dr. Houston and the appointment was over.
Perhaps the most significant thing about the entire doctor visit was that we had to park on the 2nd floor of the hospital parking lot and walk to the office. This was a relatively easy walk that was very difficult just 5 months earlier.
After we left Dr. Houston's office we drove through Nashville to a store called "Trader Joes". Paula discovered this store on her last trip to Nashville with her sister. Its a grocery store but it has a lot of unusual food items and imported stuff. We found a very low carb bread, some low carb tortilla chips, and some other things that we can eat and stay within our dietary limits.
Upon our return home it was time to get ready for the 2 ventriloquist shows I had scheduled for the day. The first was a performance at the local library. I was being asked to perform as part of the kick off to the winter reading program. I used the back drop of the Christmas holiday to help my puppets, Lanoline the Lamb, Cecil the turtle and Ruben Nathaniel Young to show the kids how reading is a gift with unlimited possibilities.
This was a pretty good performance if I must say so myself. I practiced more than I ever have for any other show. My level of comfort while performing was very similar to the day care experience I had a few weeks ago. (see November 15 Post). A picture of me and Lanoline the elf is at the top of this post.
Later that evening I went to our church to perform at our annual "Dinner with Santa" event. This is perhaps the ultimate event for entertaining kids during the year. Because my time was limited I only used Lanoline and Cecil in this performance.
I didn't do as well this time mainly because I was tired from the long day I'd had up to that point. The children were very responsive and seemed to enjoy the performance but it wasn't my best.
With the conclusion of the event at church I headed back home to relax for the rest of the evening. About midnight I was in my bedroom getting ready to retire for the evening when my wife saw a spider webbing down from the ceiling light over our bed. She hollered for me to get it before it got to the mattress. My immediate reaction to her plea was to grab the web string and carry it across the hall to the bathroom and dispose of the arachnid.
Well the spider had a different idea. It made it's way back up the web, which was now wrapped around the fingers of my right hand. I closed my hand with the spider inside. That's when I felt it bite me on the inside of my ring finger. I reacted to the bite and dropped the spider losing it in the carpet.
I'd never been bitten by a spider before. In the south spider bites are quite common. Some can cause some serious problems especially if the spider is a recluse or a black widow. Neither of us got a good enough look at the spider to tell what it looked like or what kind it was. It was light colored so it wasn't a black widow but it could have been a recluse. We weren't sure.
The bite quickly became swollen and started to hurt. As quickly as my body reacted to the bite we both became concerned about what kind of spider had just bitten me. We decided to go to the emergency room at the local hospital and get it checked out. I was feeling okay overall it was just that my finger was swollen and hurting with a burning sensation.
By the time we got to the ER the swelling in the bite had gone down and only a small mark remained as evidence of the incident. Nevertheless I checked into the ER just in case I needed a shot of Benedryl to counter any possible allergic reaction.
When we got to the ER it was fairly quite. We sat down in the waiting room to wait for someone to see me. As we sat there more emergency cases came in. I could tell by looking at the patients that their cases were a lot more urgent than mine.
Knowing that ER cases are seen by degree of need and not on a first come first serve basis I realized that my wait was going to be longer and longer. With my finger feeling perfectly fine and both of us very tired from a long day at little after 1 AM I decided that I didn't want or need to wait around to be seen. I didn't need to take up the time of a doctor who could be helping someone else who really needed it. So we left.
On the way home we stopped by an all night drug store and got some liquid Benedryl. I took some before I went to bed just in case I had any kind of further reaction. I had none and slept very well till the next morning.
Finally, nearly 2 hours after we initially planned to be in bed, at a little after 2AM we finally got to the end of this very busy December day.
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