While I was in the kitchen cutting up veg for tomorrow, I took the sad leftover CSA veg from the fridge and scraps from the freezer and started a batch of stock, so my house smells yum now.

Yay stock!

Mmmm, took a flier on winging a kind of Portobello mushroom and leak stew over harvest grains (TJ's mix of quinoa, lentils etc.). Came out really dark (lots of brandy and butter in the mix) and peppery and rich and just right for autumn.

Well, the hot pastry crust didn't work: it was too dry and fell apart when I rolled it out. Back to the Best Recipe. Ah, well.

And the dog peed in the front bedroom again. She apparently never learned to tell anyone she needs to go out, and I failed to pay sufficient attention to her. Oy. Housebreaking an adult dog is rather wearing.

I'm hanging out in the ER. Fucking lungs. I'm 9n my second neb treatment here and have the albuterol shakes.

Ugh Suzi, that is no way to spend your holiday. I'm hoping you find relief soon. And rest if possible.

Ugh, Suzi. I hope you get to go home, and then out to dinner.

I'm sorry we're sisters in hospitalness, Suzi. I hope you get relief soon.

Tonight's nurse and tech are turning me into the bitch in room 358. Since I got here, the pulse ox things have had trouble reading my fingers. They don't show anything or sometimes flash ?s and random ridiculous numbers. It’s sad when electronic devices think you’re dead. I have taken to warning new people at the beginning, which I did tonight. Most people doing the readings try several fingers or once my toe and up to 3 different machines until they get a reading, which is almost always what it was all day -- 100%. Tonight's duo decided I needed oxygen, which I haven't been on since the first day showed I didn't need it. I dutifully inhaled the oxygen while being given a series of patronizing and increasingly bizarre lectures on why one’s O2 levels might drop in the hospital. The nurse said she’d come back with another machine in half an hour, which lasted 3 hours, and got 100%. The tech came in 15 minutes later, while the nurse was still standing there, used the machine that didn’t work before. It flashed something like ??60??45??85 and she wanted to enter 85 as the reading. Nurse says nothing.

I tell nurse that I’m only supposed to drink Gatorade. There is no Gatorade. “Sometimes the doctor says ‘only this amount of Gatorade.’” I assure her that I am doomed to unlimited amounts of Gatorade. After the 3-hour half hour she comes to give me pills and says, “You don’t have anything to drink?” Yes, honey, that is as true as it was 3 hours ago. She did scare up a can of Gatorade.

Now we’re waiting for security to lock my purse back up after I extracted a credit card. When I came in, the nurse filled out the inventory form wrong and security had to redo it. Security did credit cards on a different form. Nurse swears there’s no such thing. If nurse ever comes back, I’ll get to watch security redo the form again.

Okay, I did just hear her explaining clearly to security that I had asked for the purse back to get something out of it and was now returning it. This concept was apparently quantum theory to security guy. The course of her explanation required her to spell my entire name to the guy.

Ou, Ginger. That is crazy making.

I'm home from the ER, two neb treatments and some Prednisone. My pulse was around 106 and my BP was 180/106 when the discharged me. Hello shakiness. I'm gonna sleep downstairs. Climbing up a flight of stairs just seems to daunting.

I know that feeling that the flight of stairs is Mt Everest.

Now the security guy is just messing with me. He keeps finding odd pennies and dimes and each time seemed to find some glee in changing the total. It is 1:30 in the fucking morning. Keep the damn change. Then he decides the wallet is maroon, not black. He seems to be down to inventorying the lint in the purse.

He keeps trying to inventory the whole room, while I keep telling him that was done on a separate form already on file. He leaps happily on "glasses, bedside." Now he tells me I wasn't supposed to be able to get anything back and now I can't take anything back from security until I leave. The security person doing the inventory when I came in was adamant about my not leaving anything of value in my room. How was I supposed to know what I might need for 6 days at 1:30 am after coming in in ambulance? Also, no one involved in this process has said or even implied that was the case.

I'm so tired and the incredible disappearing nurse has disappeared again.