Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Grandpa at hospital and desire to go home

Just 3 days ahead for my grandparent’s to return to their home, as per their plan to shift to their newly built home after staying more than 3 month with us following grandpa’s hospitalization and ill being, he was once again at hospital from last night. Mygrandfather experienced chest pain late at night Sunday and continue to whiz and find difficult to breath forced us to admit him in hospital without delay. It was post 11 pm and we are yet to sleep after watching my favorite talk show (Neeya Naana) in TV, grandpa waked up granny complaining chest pain and we gave him Gelusil, thinking it may be heartburn. But he continues to sweat and whiz, so we thought it could be perhaps cardiac arrest and doesn’t want to risk waiting and watching. Glad he was able to stand and walk, so instead calling ambulance we took him in the car to the hospital, suggested by the doctor on the call, and he was admitted to ICU. His condition seems to get little worse on admission and was put on oxygen mask to breathe ease. Doctors said there’s ‘fluid in the lungs’ and that’s why he had trouble breathing and whizzing heavily.

First they said he had no cardiac arrest or any trace like that in the ECG, but later in morning confess he had a mild attack following an echo-cardiogram test. For the last 24 hours he has been in ICU and doctors had decided to keep him there for two more days to monitor his condition and he still breathes on oxygen mask as his breathing ability continue to be inadequate, he’s also on medicine to remove fluid in the lungs. Only if his lungs become empty, it is believe he could breathe normal and during this time his heartbeat also touched the lowest which makes us all worry. He has been feeling chest pain more than a week, but he hadn’t told anyone of us and we also haven’t noticed any symptoms about us as he continues to act normal until hitting the bed that night. Being a Parkinson’s patient he could not talk much and also experience unsteady mindset sometime to forgetfulness. He seemed cheerful for the last two days as they anticipated going back to their home and he even conveyed his adieu very early to me thinking of going home. Hope he gets well soon and go back to his desirable home – the comfort zone and familiar in environment, perhaps! 

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Annoy with Meow!

Who don’t like cats and their cute purr? Long time back we had cats as our pet and it used to be fun watching them playing around. But that’s a different story for another day. For last few weeks we were experience quite annoy because of the cat’s purr – Meow! The cats are cutest animal and their purr is of course somehow pleasant, but the matter is when they cross the limit and hangs around frequently on the wall and make noise in a way disturbing, not us, but our pet dog, Maya.  Generally it is believed and witnessed by many that cats and dogs don’t go together and ours is no more different.

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The cat in the image is the main culprit interrupts the peaceful slumber of our pet dog often by its curse. Purr! Actually she/he isn’t grown enough to become a cat, because I saw her/him as a kitten less than a month back, perhaps he/she should be in her pretty teen now to be naughtier. : D It all began from the day my grandma fed the cat with fish heads, after cutting off the heads and cleaning fishes before progress with cooking. Generally we don’t encourage cats and after owning a dog we stopped petting any other and not only because our dog hate cats, it’s also not easy to detach once become friendly. It is an experience we leant through many occasions of losing pet dogs and cats, to keep us away.

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This black and white kitty is so daring animal and doesn’t seem to fear about our barking dog and come around bravely with meow, how many times we shoo away! Other day, the cat quietly came under our couch while we eating fish curry and mom was shook for a moment seeing the cat there, which was a look strange for her rather the usual sight of our fluffy white dog. It came in, when our dog was sleeping inside and didn’t move out easily until we put forceful shoo. Apart this there are two more cats – one with black and white with orange and other was a tabby cat, but they aren’t annoying like this BW though they come around our home often. Even while writing this post it’s making purr from the compound wall to let our dog bark.

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You might know the boldness of this cat from the photos above, which was shot from closer distance through the back door and in one of it; it was giving pose for us, looking at the mobile camera.

Linking this post with SATURDAY CRITTERS - for the firs time.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Little gates and letter/milk boxes

Few weeks’ back I was at KK Nagar and come across few streets where I find couple of gates of houses adjoining one another. What interest me to capture these little gates were the letter and milk boxes hanging from each other.

Twofold gate and milk/letter boxes

Both were ground plus first floor and the house above was painted in bright orange and light green combo. The houses on this street where built in a row and this house has a twofold gate with three boxes – one red letter box and two blue milk boxes.

A little gate
(both images captured on mobile and can be enlarged click on it)
Like the red letter box, the blue milk box is also slowing becoming my favorite thing and I find more gates with milk boxes these days than the red letter boxes. Apart the blue milk box, in the gate above, I also liked the simple design of the gate which seems patterned in fishes! 

Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Seven Spotted Cockroach

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First I spotted this kind of bug in the Theosophical Society in the neighborhood (Adyar), around a muddy terrain and fallen leaves. About half a decade later, I was surprise to see this bug inside our compound wall and again around the fallen (dry) leaves of Neam and an unknown tree of the neighbor. I spotted the bug few months back and days after showering, the bug was wandering around the dry leaves for its prey.  And last week it decided to stick to the compound wall sometime for me to shoot.

P.S. Thanks DI (Destination Infinity) for letting me know the real name of the bug in comment, which I referred early as white spotted black bug.

Sunday, September 06, 2015

My New Powered Wheelchair – Disappointments and Comforts!

I was looking forward for a new wheelchair from the time I started to experience back pain (from the beginning of this year) and that’s mainly because of the pelvic misalignment and mild scoliosis in spine that we find through a diagnosis in April. Without delay we approached a leading wheelchair manufacturer in Chennai to get a comfort wheelchair that perhaps decreases my back pain and prevent further spinal curvature. You might get more detail about the alignment and discomfort from my earlier post here. 

We placed an order on May 20 after discussing with him (the wheelchair manufacturer) at home; who came on our invite and as we know him already and being the manufacturer of my old power wheelchair, I thought he perhaps know my condition well and do his best to provide me the comfort I seek. Following his websites and the models he posted there, I thought of picking one from that that suits my need. But only listening to him at home reveals that those are models just to give an idea about the wheelchairs they manufacture to those unknown and he manufacture a wheelchair only on order.

New Wheelchair

He sent me a quotation listing down the facilities on the powered wheelchair including the specs I requested, with a notification on delivery within 45- 60 days. Though I was quite disappoint with the days his delivery marks, I console later that my normal powered/electric wheelchair took 30 days to deliver about 8 years back, the deluxe perhaps take that much. But what really happened was I got the wheelchair only after 100 days. We started inquiring about the wheelchair from the minimum days to delivery, in hope he deliver as soon as possible since my condition wasn’t comforting. But he keeps extending his delivery period from week to week on a constant basis of our inquiry.

He delivered the wheelchair on the day 101! To say the truth I was frustrated at the look of the wheelchair, which stood like a robot with big boot and being taller than expected I was somehow taken aback. I had no idea how he going to design my wheelchair. Because he hadn’t showed me exactly how the wheelchair would come up and also I hadn’t thought to ask him about the wheelchair height (from the ground to seat) as I didn’t find great difference in height when checking the wheelchair models in his website. Though the seat height is just about 4” more than the old wheelchair there’s great difference when putting me to seat. Perhaps it could become normal as we used to but right moment it matters lot!

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I have nothing to complain much about seating in this new wheelchair, which has a bucket seat to sooth my back and very comfortable sitting to relax with reclining backrest and elevating footrest and handling! The wheelchair is much powerful than the previous one, where I used to drive in 3 of the total speed of 5. But in this I get the speed of riding on 3 in 1 apart the top speed of about 10-12 km/hr in 5 speeds. Though I feel comfort and increase in my level of confidence with the power of the new wheelchair, I somehow dislike on the look. The base and bottom of the wheelchair look disdain and the color of green isn’t likable and rather being thematic it outshines oddly.

I am a person don’t want to be noticed unnecessarily in public and the same goes to my wheelchair and I want it to look decent and though it wasn’t appealing much, I wish it was grayish instead being green. This wheelchair doesn’t come out exactly what I anticipated but it need to be rectify a lot to be more comfort and we have also stressed him to reduce the height of seat as main cause. I don’t feel any discomfort with the height but my parents do find hard to put me on seat. I took the wheelchair to road couple of times to check its ability and to see how comfortable it was on the long run. And few days back I took it to the doctor clinic, across the main road (LB road, Adyar) to check for my cold. The wheelchair is said to run 15 km per charge, but I guess it should be giving less than 10 km. Hope to test it more after the rectifying process, where the wheelchair will be brought back to the company.