Good news, as well as scary stuff upcoming. Sales and shares very much needed right now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

It's good to come home and see where you've been, and it's all golden light.

Actually, it's just good to come home, period. Today was our first trip out of town, if memory serves, where we came home to the house instead of the RV. It's amazing.

The trip was a success; Wings had his long-rescheduled echo today, and aside from a few small things most likely mostly related to the natural aging process, his heart's still in good shape. What this means is that his hypertension is not due to any underlying heart problem, which is wonderful news. But we still have to get his medication protocol adjusted properly, and that appointment is coming up fast. The cardiologist at NMHI said that, barring any changes, he only needs to see him a year from now for a standard check-up, so if my body would permit it, I'd be dancing right now. [The cardiologist also thought I was a nurse practitioner, LOL. If only. I told him no, I'd just absorbed a lot having had to be caregiver for multiple elders.]

Now, of course, we're both wiped out; the trip is a lot harder on us than it used to be. I couldn't have risked making it had we not had the portable oxygen concentrator, and sure enough, I needed it on the way home. I'm wearing the cannula now, too. Thank you once again to everyone who made it possible, because today was an object lesson in just how essential it is for me now.

I'll be scarce the rest of the week, since between us we have appointments tomorrow, Friday, and Sunday, and likely a couple more next week. I'm up first thing tomorrow, and this one scares me. The practitioner has told me that severe pain is involved (if it turns out to be what they're going to try to treat). Expect mostly just the minimum from me the rest of this week and into next week, all the more so because of my pain levels right now; this chest pain is something else. And as I said last night, I have to find a way to deal with this level of pain and fatigue and, yes, fear, while everyone else effs around with no sense of urgency whatsoever, and I haven't figured out those pieces of this yet. I've got more work to do tonight, so the rest is cut-and-paste. And I really do need to get to the time to try to resolve this platform issue, because I really, really need to start getting these medical bills paid. The stress is killing me.

I'm setting two separate goals, as outlined below, because they're both dunning me steadily now. The overall goal is my $25K+ in emergency medical bills. I've been trying to raise an initial $1,700 to take care of two specific bills: the local ambulance and one hospitalist's fee. We're $145 of the way toward it. Those are now covered (thank you, thank you again). The next goal is two-fold: One is the cost of the ambulance when they transferred me down to Albuquerque, which is $2K; the other is one of the Lovelace doctors, which is $1,500. That's $3,500 total, and the next phase of all this with regard to the new platform. Then I can turn my attention to the really big ones, which are the hospital bills themselves (Lovelace in particular is going to be bad, because, well, cardiac cath). A caveat: I have a lot of kinks to get worked out yet, but PayPal is now theoretically linked to the progress meter on the site. I say "theoretically," because I've just discovered that I apparently have to set up at least one other page to make the subscription "purchase" possible. Eventually, if you subscribe via PayPal (it's a monthly thing like Patreon), it will show, although for now the only way to do it is to hit the PayPal "Subscribe" button. I'm hoping to get that figured out and fixed tomorrow. I also need to figure out how to pin it to the main page, so for now, the only way to access it is here. Please share this link around on social media and elsewhere. I still need to raise the $3,500 as fast as possible, because there are thousands' worth of hospital bills stacked up behind it. It also means that we need sales and I need to get my subscription platform up and running (and you can still subscribe via PayPal even now). So here are the links: 

• Tonight's post elsewhere (It's not as impossible as it feels sometimes);
• A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to She-Wolf's & my medical bills, and now Wings's too);
• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of supplies for She-Wolf and food for the half-feral pack;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. There are some things left on both registries that I thought by now I might be able just to buy outright, but medical bills (mine and She-Wolf's both) have to come first.

Please check out the new platform, share the links, get your friends to participate. I've got a long road ahead of me, just in terms of diagnosis and, I hope, eventually treatment. Being able to pay off the medical bills will go a long way toward keeping me as healthy as possible in the meantime. Thanks, everybody, from both of us.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.