This time last year, we had no idea things would be the way they are. So what happened, that I didn't want to talk about a few months back? What's kept me from blogging this year?
I'll make a long story as short as I can.
Last year, on the week before Halloween, Quentin got sick. Originally, he was diagnosed with severe gastroenteritis (stomach flu is what most folks call it). It wasn't. A week later, he was barely eating anything, had lost seven pounds, and looked like a walking cadaver. He's skinny enough anyhow that he doesn't have much body fat, so losing that weight made his eyes sink into his head.
At his week after checkup, his BP was only 80/60. The doctor that day, on Halloween, the day after his birthday, said we needed to shove him across the street to the ER. He didn't want to go. The doctor looked at him and said something I will never forget, "Dude, you're septic."
Three little words that told me my husband was dying in front of my eyes. So off we went to the ER, and his records had been shot over there already. Two bags of IV fluid and three different antibiotics through the IV were going inside of five minutes. TWO nurses. That alone told me this was bad.
He was in such awful shape, they brought the portable x-ray to his ER bay, because they didn't think he could stand up for a chest x-ray. Sometime later, the ER doctor was talking possibly shipping him to Branson for an infectious disease specialist there to handle things. He decided against it, but put hubby in the hospital for an overnight. The idea was to see if they could get things under some control that could be handled at home. If it didn't work, there would be surgery. Thankfully, it worked.
Diagnosis: right lower lung pneumonia, and abscesses in both lower lungs. All were about 1 inch across. He was on sick leave for six weeks, with two antibiotics totaling 1300mg a DAY for the whole time. Then he got back to work, and got accused of something he didn't do from well before he got sick, and got fired.
In July, he was able to hire back to the plant. In the meantime, we nearly lost the house and land, and are still struggling to get back to our feet on everything. The doctor bills are going to collections, and we really don't care. I'm sending people snarky letters and trying to put them off until at least mid-January, when we'll be more sturdy on our feet, financially. Things are slowly but surely ticking along to get where we wanted to be a year ago. We saved the land and cabin, but it's been rough, and as I said, we are still struggling. We survived last winter with just the kero heater in the cabin and it not fully insulated, while he was home sick the whole time.
Thanks to how the plant fired him, he couldn't find steady work, which didn't help with the whole situation, and led to nearly losing it all as well. So you can understand why I haven't wanted to write. It was all just too painful, especially when you add in that the stress caused my BP to go sky-high, I ended up with three trips to the ER from work (two in an ambulance as it was so high I was on the verge of stroking out or having a heart attack), and me on two BP meds now. Just so much fun.
Maybe by spring, we will finally be caught up on everything, and paying off all the bills, and a small loan a friend gave us early this year to help us get through it all. I was so grateful to get the land guy and cabin people somewhat off our backs with that. It was still a huge struggle and continues to be, but we are slowly making it.
Altogether, there's about $9300 in hospital bills to be figured out how to pay them. It's going to be a long haul.
But we are also making a point of slowly but surely putting a little each week to fixing things up how we want. No more "We'll get to it eventually." Last year scared us both, and we are making a point of putting a bit out each week to piece by inch our way to getting things done. One piece of paneling, one tree, one piece of stovepipe, or one whatever a week, it's getting done.
So the project last weekend (we didn't schedule any for this weekend, we were just too pooped from the work week) was a shower bucket for us instead of constantly using shower bags, which wear out in a few months. I got the idea a while back from another homesteading blog I read where they did similar. So I'm going to spend the rest of this post telling you about our shower bucket!
The stuff all laid out. We changed the one pulley for a double pulley later on.
Drilling the hole in the side of the bucket to screw the end of the pipe into for the drain.
Putting pieces into the hole.
The end of the pipe screwed into the side of the bucket.
Outside of the drain.
Checking for leaks on the porch.
On the top left, you can see the drain from the Aquatainer we brought out to fill the bucket. It made that so much easier. We used a couple of gallons to make sure there would be no leaks under pressure.
The rope and pulley on the handle, and the full pipe is done. The little bit of blue at the end of the pipe you can see is a spigot so we can control the flow.
Adding the hot water!!
Watching for leaks. Nope, not a drop. Unlike the shower bag.
The double pulley and 2x4 he put in to hold it. There's a big hook there for the pulley, so we can just take it all down when done and keep the cats from playing with the pulley. The pipe is part of the frame from the Ozark Trails shower cabana we use for the "bathroom."
Adding some cold water, the hot water was HOT! The hose is from the pipe to the handheld shower head. We had to take that off in the long run as it wouldn't let us control the flow properly. It was sure nice when we got it right though, even if it was a stream and not a sprinkle, since I could just stand under it and not have to hold a hose!
The finished setup of the pipe with the 45 degree elbow to point the water flow onto us. Works awesome!
When we tried it with the hose, we had to put the showerhead in the bucket for hoisting, because it pulled down too much. Here, the bucket is starting to go up in the air. The pulleys made it easy.
The finished shower bucket on the shower shelf that had previously been used for the shower bag. Push the shower cabana back in place in front of it, and the pipe goes right through the back window into the cabana and the water flows onto us. It was AWESOME. (Did I mention that already? Heehee.)
Next project after finishing tires on the truck as they are trying to have babies, is to start on the wood stove!
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