FINALLY! Feeling so much better today. Only three small episodes so far today – way down from the 15 I had yesterday and the 30 or more I was averaging. Maybe there is hope for me yet.
I had some unsweetened applesauce for breakfast. I think the natural sugar from the apples gave me a bit of an energy boost. Had chicken noodle soup for lunch. I am still full and my tummy is starting to make lots of noise for the first time in several weeks. I have been able to drink water today and not have it be a problem. Not sure I am ready for Thanksgiving dinner but real food tastes good. I have mainly been fasting for almost a week now.
Jim went to town to get some baby chicken feed. I think I confused him as it took several texts for him to feel comfortable that he got the right stuff. He also picked up my drugs and got me a few groceries to get me through while he is in Stillwater this week. What would I do without him?
The lady from SOS came and picked up the two twin beds and one night stand I needed to go away. It is nice to have more room in the furnace room again. She may come back and get the other set of mattresses another day. What we gave her filled her truck. Jim was kind enough to load them and then cover them with a tarp as it started raining while she was here. I’m glad they found a good home.
The chicks are growing and starting to enter the ugly duckling stage. They go from cute to ugly to grown up. Guess humans do that too – chickens just compress the time table. They are three weeks old now. Another three or four weeks and I can treat them like grownups.
Took the sheets and mattress cover off my bed this morning and washed it all with bleach. Need to get my bed remade this afternoon. Trying to kill off the C Diff bug. I may repeat that several more times over the next few days. Jim has to sleep in the guest room down the hall as we are not to touch each other for another 10 days or so.
I had a really hard day yesterday. I was in tears most of the day. I think my filters were gone and I was letting everything going on in the world in. I was tired of going to the bathroom and feeling crummy and was beginning to think that was going to be my life. I had felt so good after getting fluids Sunday and felt a long ways away from that yesterday. Jim and I are not to touch each other in hopes of not spreading it to him. All he could do is sit and watch me cry. It was hard on him too. Sometimes I go kicking and screaming into acceptance and yesterday I was kicking and crying. I got a good nights sleep and things feel much brighter for me today.
I laid down for a nap this afternoon but didn’t sleep. I’m still a bit weak and have to pace myself a bit to get through the day. I am hoping once I can eat a bit more my strength will return rather quickly.
Someone from the State Dept of Health called me today to do a contact tracing since I had Salmonella. She was relieved to hear we had not eaten at a restaurant since March. She thanked me for not being around many people over the last month. She agreed it was probably the baby chickens although it could have been a bag a lettuce as I guess they have been having issues with that. Jim ate the lettuce too though and he didn’t get sick. She said some people are more susceptible to it then others and my case sounded like a mild case although with the C Diff at the same time it would be hard to know which one caused what. I now wear a pair of muck boots down to the chickens and take them off before I come into the house when I come back up. Hopefully that will help prevent a repeat case.
I think Jim is going to Stillwater tomorrow and staying for a week to ten days. It will be safer for him to be there and I am feeling well enough now to be alone. I can’t cook for him here so he may as well be in Stillwater and get some of his projects there done.
He got my chicken ramp up for me yesterday. The ramp that came with the chicken house four years ago was poorly designed and has given me trouble from day one. He built a nice solid one that will last a long time. It is nice to be able to cross that project off my wish list of things to fix around here. I will enjoy watching the chickens come down it in another week or so when I let them outside for the first time.
He also built a platform for my bales of straw to sit on. I had been putting them on the ground and over time they rot. He put a layer of gravel down on the floor of the lean-to where I keep the straw and put the platform on the gravel. The bales are now nicely stacked and will last much longer. It looks so nice and neat now. Two big projects completed this week. I’m glad one of us has been productive – it certainly hasn’t been me.
Still working on making more masks. I have 70 completed so far and hundreds more to make. I work on them in bits and pieces and slowly but surely they get made up.
Grateful I am feeling better at last, grateful the chicken ramp is up, and grateful the mattresses and box springs are gone.