Another rough day

I woke up several times this morning before finally waking up for good a little after eight. One problem Marty and I have to figure out is that he needs to fall asleep with the TV on (he puts it on the timer so that it will shut off automatically), and if he wakes up in the middle of the night he will switch it on again, which wakes me up. Sometimes I'm sure that he's sleeping and I switch it off, which is enough to wake him up enough so that he turns it back on. So last night I took my pillows and blanket and went to sleep on the daybed in the office. I saw it as solving a problem, not a hostile act on my part, but he didn't like it. I think he got up for awhile, but I'm not sure, because I fell asleep till about six, and then went back to the bedroom, and he was asleep there. I would like to get one of those gadgets with the wireless headphones, but Marty says my TV doesn't seem to have the needed input jack for it. It's probably worth buying a new TV as relatively small, old-style TVs (as opposed to flat screens) don't cost very much, so he can use the headphones.

When I woke up for good I was feeling extremely congested. There was a lot of mucus in my chest that wasn't moving at all. I was coughing a lot but getting up very little, and feeling really lousy. Somehow, in all the confusion of feeling awful, and the tension with Marty, we both completely forgot that Monday is acupuncture day (I don't think I would have felt up to going in any case). At one point, I was coughing so hard that I managed to wet the bed before making it to the bathroom, so when Ann arrived at eleven she had to strip the bed again and wash all the sheets. I never seem to have one of the disposable pads on the bed when I need it, because they're uncomfortable and bunch up under me, but I'll probably use one for the next few days, anyway. I have this problem only from time to time.

Kathy came to check me out and said I should discontinue the Levsin, and just use the cough medicine, along with a lot of fluids, to try to loosen the congestion, so that's what I've been doing. A little while later Julie came down and offered to help me with the bills, which I had put in order the other day but had never gotten around to writing the checks. First she had to find the pile (which had gotten moved), and then we started going through them. She wanted to pay some on line, and others by check. There was one bill that related to a minor accident I had almost two years ago, which has to get paid by my car insurance company, and I told Julie that at one point I had the claim number, but it was probably in the big pile of papers she cleared off my desk a few weeks ago, and asked her if she would call to track it down. Then we had a disagreement about some papers which she wanted to throw away and I wanted to save, at which point she got totally exasperated and said I was being impossible.

I was, of course, really upset. I called Florence, who wasn't home, and then called Marty, who was done with some of his errands, and asked him to come home, and when he got here he tried to calm me down. I know that I can be hard to be around when I'm feeling lousy, but I also try, as much as I can, to thank people (like Julie, Marty, Florence, and Ann) when they do things for me, and tell them that it's hard to be so helpless.

Eventually I did reach Florence, who helped me to calm down. So I'm slowly feeling better, and, typically, now that it's getting into the evening, better physically as well. I guess I will try to sit down and pay some bills, as it looks like I'm better off doing it myself.