All I want for Hanukkah is a portable oxygen tank and a cannula.

SATURDAY, 5/19/2018, 4:16 A.M. Yes, friends, I’ve been watching the royal wedding on NBC since 3:30 this morning! I’m such a sucker for anything that involves Britain’s royal family … weddings, babies, all those screwy hoo-hah celebrations for the Queen — her birthday, the anniversary of her coronation, the day she bought her first box of royal tampons, and so on — and today’s big event is no exception. At the moment I’m watching members of the royal family arrive at Windsor Castle for Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Oy, what a bunch of well-dressed yahoos with fabulous hats!

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So let me tell you what’s going on around here today. I just called my Baylor HouseCalls weekend answering service to request a portable oxygen tank with a cannula. They said a nurse would return my call … and that’s fine, because I want her to contact a home health agency IMMEDIATELY to arrange for everything. After I get the oxygen tank and cannula we’ll try to figure out what the fuck is actually causing this, but I’m almost positive it’s because I haven’t been taking enough Lasix. About two weeks ago we cut back my daily dose from 40mg to 20mg, and 20mg clearly isn’t enough to keep my lungs from filling up. THIS SUCKS, PEOPLE.

A frumpy sample senior citizen with portable oxygen and a cannula.

A SPEEDY HOUSECALLS UPDATE. A HouseCalls weekend nurse practitioner just called me back. Wow ... ten-minute service! Apparently my health insurance (and/or Medicare) won’t cover portable oxygen (and a cannula) unless I submit to a chest x-ray and an overnight sleep study to see how low my oxygen level gets. I said sure. She also increased my dose of Lasix back to 40mg (it had just been lowered to 20mg) because she suspects 20mg isn’t enough to keep my lungs clear of fluid. I’m a mess right now! Stay tuned ...

Know what? I haven’t seen Sandi and Bob yet today! They were supposed to come over this morning when they finished breakfast (it’s free at their hotel), but Sandi called at 8:30 a.m. instead and wanted to know “if 11:30 would work” for me. She said they’d go to Town East Mall here in Mesquite to kill the extra time. WTF? I’m so confused ... I guess big boring malls are more interesting than I am!

I’m not really angry, of course, but does any of this make sense to you?

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NEWS FLASH: My Baylor HouseCalls radiology technician just left. He got two very good chest x-rays and said he’d send both of them to the weekend on-call nurse practitioner. No kidding, this is the best health care I’ve ever received. I don’t have to lift a goddamn finger!

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Thank you for reading this. You’re on your own if you want to remember the Alamo, because I sure as hell don’t!