Judy update

Looking good

 

         Judy is still able to do most of the things she wants to do.  She plays old-time music with a dulcimer group at Vista House in the Columbia Gorge, jams with her ukulele buddies and then joins them for lunch, schedules places to meet her friend Fuey, and spends hours in long thought at coffee houses. However, the events have to be spaced out. She now takes a day to rest between activities.   She still hopes to do two things on the same day, but finds that she cannot. On Monday she had her weekly 2-hour breakfast with her friend Donna, and she hoped to go to the Sisters in Crime dinner and program that evening. By afternoon she was too tired to go out.

     Fatigue is one of the main features of pulmonary fibrosis. Sometimes Judy feels wiped out in spite of  the accommodations she makes in  her schedule.  On those days she sleeps a lot.  She tries to figure out why she is so tired: Has the weather changed? Has she lacked sleep at  night lately?  It helps to attribute the fatigue to some circumstance. It is hard to see the dismay and occasional discouragement on Judy's

What next?

face when she has a low day.

Enjoying life

   Judy uses oxygen almost all of the time with activity. Moving from one point to another requires some strategy. Judy has learned to sit in the car for a few minutes after leaving a restaurant, for instance, and let her breathing settle down before she starts to drive home. The walk from the car to the house or from the recliner to the bed can set off vicious coughing fits, so Judy must make sure she is ready before she starts off.
    The doctor prescribed some good cough-taming medicine, but it has to be used judiciously.  Judy takes a dose before she gets up in the morning, and then  lies patiently in bed for an hour or two  before starting her day.  Fortunately, word games and animal videos amuse her. She has more wind for speaking in those morning hours in bed than she often does later in the day.  The other morning she was able to sing most of "Happy Birthday" on the phone to our daughter-in-law Courtney.

Backyard view

    Judy belongs to an online discussion group  called "Inspire,"sponsored by the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.  With the people on the list, she feels like she is not alone.  She can ask any question, and she gets total support.  She learned from threads  on Inspire that people with her disease often look very healthy, almost to the end.  Judy is looking good for the shape she's in.

Mutt Leigh on patrol

     Thanks to our gardening friend Lisa, we now have a fantastic backyard view. Judy spends a lot of time with that view. It is fun to watch the squirrels tease Miss Mutt Leigh as she patrols her territory.