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Feeling better today! And yes, since you ask, it does suck to take two days to recover from a couple of lunch dates. Ah well, that’s just how it is when you have PAH.

This morning I went to Fremont to get an echocardiogram done and stopped for a few things at Trader Joe’s while I was there. When I got home I finished sewing two more tank tops, then played WoW for a couple hours.

I think I forgot to mention that my 4 terabyte USB hard drive full of TV and movies died right after I got home from Henry’s. Could read from it but not write to it. Thank GOODNESS I use a backup service! (https://www.backblaze.com/) They shipped me a drive with all my files on it, and I copied them over to a new drive. I reformatted the old drive, tested to make sure it worked (though of course it’s not 100% trustworthy), and copied everything over to it, too, so I’d have a local backup next time things go funny. And now I am thanking Past Kara so much for doing that, because when I finally got around to plugging the new drive into my Raspberry Pi (an ultra-mini computer with media-playing software on it that connects the USB hard drive to my TV and lets me watch stuff), I discovered that the Pi wouldn’t see the new drive. Not at all.

Did the Pi die? Plugged in the old drive — all good.

Did the new drive go bad already? Did I goof something up? Did I forget a step somewhere? And then I thought of the file system. I compared the two drives: old readable drive was in MacOS Extended (Journaled). New drive was in whatever my laptop chose to format it with: APFS. Hmmmmm, I thought. Well, there’s a difference.

So I reformatted the new drive to match the old drive. Copied a few files over from Old to New, tested — all good! So, now I wait all night for everything to copy over and then it should all work again.

If I hadn’t thought to make the old drive into a local backup, I would have had to request ANOTHER drive from Backblaze and wait ANOTHER week or more for it to be prepped and shipped. Good call, Past Kara! Oh, and thanks for reading all those audiobooks so Future Kara could listen to them. :D

Slept better last night but still tired from my busy weekend. Now that my brain is healed (shocking how long it took), and I’m fully vaccinated againt Covid-19 (the rona, the round boi) I’ve been feeling like I can probably tolerate a little bit of human company. Not a lot — I still prefer to be alone most of the time — but i thought it might be fun to put my online dating profile back up again.

I didn’t really expect that anyone would be interested in a woman with my physical challenges, but my therapist says I’m a catch so i figured what the heck? Turns out I’m very interesting lol. The men are lining up. So yeah I went on two lunch dates over the weekend! And one the previous weekend! How brave am I? Haven’t met The One yet but having fun looking :D

But yeah. Conversation is EXHAUSTING for ultra-introverts. Need to find a man who is happy just to sit next to me and read or watch silly YouTube videos. If no such creature exists, it’s cool. I’m quite content on my own. But if you know one, send him my way :D

Tired day.

I ate so many strawberries today. The Farmers’ Market cherries and apricots were an expensive disappointment but the strawberries made up for it!

Just discovered “In Treatment” on HBO. Why didn’t anyone tell me there was a drama about getting therapy??? It’s sooooo good. The main therapist guy has a funny accent i couldn’t figure it out until I heard some Irish bleeding though — decided he was an Irish actor attempting an American accent and coming up with sort of Spanish/Israeli. Googled, and I nailed it. Lol. It’s not irritating though. Just funny :)

I boldly went to the farmers’ market today! Google said they start at 9 so i got there at 8:30 to try to get a good parking spot. Got my spot and noticed they were already open! My spiffy walker made it easy. The compartment holds my oxygen so I don’t need to carry it, and I hung my bags of fruit and veggies from the handles. Got green beans, cherries, strawberries, apricots, cauliflower, bok choi, and Asian eggplants. Sooooo expensive. But fresh and good!

Because of my Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension I need extra oxygen, so I use an oxygen concentrator. These miraculous machines take room air, filter out the nitrogen, and feed me the remaining oxygen. My insurance company provides a stationary machine for me to use at home, and I have an Inogen One G3 for when I’m out and about (this is what I took with me to Portland). The at-home machine provided to me by my insurance company is huge, hot, power-hungry, and extremely noisy,  so it lives outdoors in a little cage with the cables fed through my  window.   My old machine only went up to 5 lpm,  which was good for many years but  last year I started to need a higher flow rate, so they sent me a bigger, hotter, louder, noisier machine that goes up to 10 lpm.  Looks like this, though I think my machine was a much older model because the oxygen supply company (CHME) that contracts with my poor-person state health insurance is just awful: Invacare 10. Ugh.

Well!  A couple months ago we doubled one of my hideous medications.  It took a long long time for me to notice any effects, but after I was vaccinated and when I realized I might feel well enough to visit Henry I did some experimenting and discovered that I’d be ok on 5 lpm again, which meant I could get along with just my portable for a couple of weeks.

So, as it seems I’m going to live a bit longer than expected (knock on wood), I decided to buy my own very expensive, very slick, small, quiet, energy efficient, at-home oxygen concentrator, also made by Inogen:  the Inogen At Home machine. (A million thanks to my mom for paying for it!!)

My new machine arrived yesterday and I set it up right away.  I was SHOCKED by how small and quiet it is.  It’s quiet enough to live in my room — I’m accustomed to certain level of medical machine background noise, and it’s well within tolerance. It doesn’t generate much heat.  And it’s so little!

Dreadful old machine: 18.4 x 14.4 x 26.4 and 53 lbs.

Glorious new machine: 7 x 13 x 16.5 in and 18 lbs!!!

Today when I wanted to keep Em company in the living room it was easy for me to scoot my machine closer to the door so my oxygen tubing would reach.

AND it seems to be much better at its job than the dreadful old machine.  I slept comfortably last night on 4 lpm, and in the daytime I’m ok on 2-3 (2 in the morning, 3 when I got tired in the afternoon)

While researching, I learned that one can chain oxygen concentrators together for higher flow needs, so my plan is to buy another Inogen At Home when I need more than 5 lpm, but because I can set it lower it will be longer until I need to do that.

I bought the lifetime warranty for my portable, and thank goodness I did because they’ve needed to replace it four times in six years. So of course I bought the lifetime warranty for my tiny new “big” machine too. I suggest you do likewise, if you’re in the market for oxygen concentrators. There is serious peace of mind when you know that if anything goes wrong, they’ll send a replacement machine almost instantly.

Oh! And one more awesome thing about it is that it’s user-serviceable, just like my portable. It has a little air filter that’s easy to wash once a week, and the columns that strain out the nitrogen are user-replaceable! It will warn me when they start to get full, and I just order a new set from Inogen and slot them in. $150, but well worth never needing to call surly, obnoxious, cigarette-smoking “did you try turning it off and then on again” techs from CHME (it’s hard to express how horrible my experiences with CHME have been. They seriously suck. You get zero stars, CHME.)

I sewed today! I used some red cotton knit and made myself a new Kirei Camisole. I thought I’d need to trace off a fresh copy of the pattern but when i dug through my pattern binder i found size M all ready to go. I wanted a little extra ease so I sewed 3/8“ side seams instead of 1/2“. All finished except for the hem and that can wait. Listened to a few episodes if the excellent Shedunnit Podcast while I sewed.

And then I read and read and read. Em joined me for a while which was so cozy and nice!

Also received and set up my fancy new oxygen concentrator! More about that tomorrow, if I remember…

It was a Tired Day, but that’s ok, my mood is fine. I just did a lot of nothing. Read my book, played on my phone, watched a show (The Flight Attendant), texted friends, made mac n cheese (Trader Joe’s brand).

You know, I think it took a full year for me to recover from my brain surgery. I’ve noticed feeling more like myself lately, in some indefinable way, and on April 1st it had been exactly one year. (It’s easy to remember getting emergency brain surgery on April Fools‘ Day!)

Today I had to run some errands but Em went with me, which made it much more fun. First we went to the UPS place to ship Lulu‘s little summer nightie. Em had brought one of her millions of My Little Pony toys,Twilight Sparkle, and she told me all about her recent breakup while we waited in line :D I love it that her female ponies all date each other.

Then we went to Target for Aspercreme, popsicles (I’m newly hooked on Outshine fruit bars), gold and silver paint, and a new popsicle thing, you know where you pour juice in and freeze it. Got the Aspercreme and paint, but they were sold out of popsicle makers and they don’t carry the Outshine flavors that I like (lemon, lime, and pineapple). So then we went to the dreaded Walmart. Ugh. I had never been there before and it was as ghastly as I’d imagined. No popsicle makers, but they did have lime and pineapple Outshine bars. Why doesn’t either store stock the lemon flavored ones? They both stock watermelon flavor — ewwwwww.

Then we came home and I played WoW for hours. Now I’m all tired out so I’ll watch some UK tv till bedtime. I think there’s a new episode of Bake Off: The Professionals, which isn’t anywhere near as much fun as real Bake Off but it’s pleasant enough.