5C's Que Pasa

No photos today, just a big rant.

You have likely read about my rolling/twisting my ankle on September the 18th. I tripped on a hard dog bone laying under a dog blanket. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was stepping. It hurt then but did not bruise, I used ice and did the best I could to keep doing the right things.  By the time we got to Edmonton it felt a tiny bit better.  I saw my chiropractor on the 24th and after he did my general adjustment he looked at my foot and said that a certain ligament was affected. He did a minor adjustment with the activator.  I felt good. I did one loop of the small dog park on Saturday when the triplets visited but mostly sat. By Sunday my foot was becoming increasingly painful.

So I spent my day off on Monday either online looking for a walk in clinic or waiting to see a doctor at one.  Then I finally got my foot x-rayed. I was told that the results would be in within 24 hours. However the x-ray tech said more like 48 hours. I was hoping for the 24 hours so the chiropractor could see it. That did not happen.

We came home and my foot remains as swollen as day one and the pain is there 90% of the time.  I can be sitting with my foot up doing nothing and it throbs. So I was desperate to get the x- ray results. We left Valemount early Thursday morning delaying our departure to talk to the Edmonton MD who had seen me. The staff refused to give me the x-ray results and insisted I had to come back to Edmonton to see the doctor. Well we were halfway home and close to 300 miles away so that was not going to happen. I insisted on talking to the doctor. She never called so we started driving and she finally called just as we were getting out of cell phone range. I heard nothing and she did not leave a message. When we finally got close to home I started the phone calls back and forth again. I asked if they could send the report to my family doctor here in Kelowna.  Yes, but they needed a request. That request was faxed three times before the X-rays result was sent. Over 25 phones were made to get the result. I actually did not get the result until 2:40PM this past Friday. My doctor had the day off and a locum MD called with the result. Nothing was broken, other than some arthritis here and there I was fine.

I was not fine, I can’t walk. Every step is painful. The locum suggested rest, ice, elevation, etc which I had been doing for 13 days. The situation was getting worse. He said that I might want to go see a physiotherapist. So I called and the earliest that I can into see someone here in Lake Country is October 15th 😯 Seriously! I am on the waiting list. I really am not sure that I can drive to Vernon or Kelowna as the pain is very distracting.  So I will see if I can find someone  to see in the week ahead and I guess take pain meds to drive.

The week ahead is going to be crazy because of many many things happening including  possibly Colin’s third job in the last eleven months. Covid has hit us hard in terms of employment. We have rented a site to put the RV on for 24 hours and have two different people to come do some work on it. Plus hopefully our carpenter will show up. I can normally handle all of this easily but the pain has made me grumpy and brain dead. Those are only half of the que pasas in the week ahead.

So if you have read my rant this far, thank you. Sorry I have no photos for you tonight.  I do have a statistic. Between the cost of the RV diesel fuel to Edmonton and back, $766.45 and the RV park costs, $369.50, it only cost us $142.00 per night. Still much cheaper than flying and staying in a hotel.

I have been told that I have a high pain threshold but I think I have reached my limit. I really can’t take this much more and don’t know what to do. Today is day 16. I even tried a tensor bandage for most of the day, even though that is to be stopped 48 hours after the injury. I promise that my next post will be more upbeat.

….wind, rain, a slow leak in an RV tire due to a broken valve stem ( done by Fountain Tire ), RV jacks that would not descend  ( fortunately we knew how to overpower the system – well this time ), a full power outage during the night at the RV park, much more wind, an issue with a windshield wiper blade and the fact that Carlie refused to pee from 8AM to 4PM ( despite two special stops ), we did get home about 3:30PM yesterday, Thursday the 30th.

It was a wet drive but the gold colours still stood out.

I managed a glimpse of the newly fallen snow. It would have been wonderful to see more but the clouds were very low.

Somewhere in this mess of blankets are the twins. It was on the coolish side.

Several hydro trucks here and further along restoring services to the Monte Creek area. Travelling south we saw much more fire damage.

We had to pull over not too far north of Vernon as one of the windshield wiper blades was loose and almost hitting the other.  Colin did a repair job but did not have the tools to do a permanent repair but thankfully it got us home. Carlie is laying on her side pawing the window trying to get out.

We pulled into Holiday Park to rain and wind strewing golden leaves everywhere. A lovely fall welcome home.

We worked solid for 3 1/2 hours once we got the RV parked. That also involves moving my car and the golf cart somewhere ( an empty spot at a neighbours ) and finding a place to park the Jeep. Unloading as well as loading take time and effort. Meanwhile the rain stopped and the sun came out. Lovely light reflections from the setting sun. Looks like the lake has risen. Colin took this photo for the blog as I am not too mobile.

By 8PM last night I was much too tired to work on this post. Fortunately I had made a fish chowder before we left so only had to unthaw that for dinner. The girls were so happy to be home, they just ran and ran around the yard and made sure to have a little tussle in every room of the house. It was a good 8 nights away, a nice break. And we got to see most everyone we wanted to. The 1,168 mile drive was interesting in both directions. The girls continue to be good travellers and we all enjoyed our time in the RV.

We were rushing home as a carpenter we had hired 15 months ago to prepare our home for the winter ( last winter ) with extra insulation, etc. finally agreed to come tomorrow October 2nd.  He called this afternoon to cancel, because he needed to drive to Vancouver to get a part for one of his tools that he uses. Covid strikes again – no parts. Shipping is up charged to $200.00. He cancelled a few weeks ago because he hurt his ankle and could not work. So that dictated the timing for this trip.  Had we known that he would cancel for this weekend we would have stayed longer or gone to visit the twins mom in Taber, Alberta and friends in Grand Forks. Dang 🙁

For those asking, yes my foot is still overly sore and throbbing. More on that in the next post.

We took a few hours off this morning. It was fun sitting in the sun in the RV and relaxing. There was no need to rush to leave as we were only driving six hours. Ciela has a new place to roast in the sun, between the window and the sofa back. She is small enough to fit in there. Meanwhile Carlie would not leave my side and was tucked in under my arm. Certainly not easy typing.

😉

Lots of gold as we travelled. Not so many red leaves in this area.

For the first time one of the girls, Ciela, slept in the bed between us. Then Carlie joined her for just a few moments. A big first and we hope that they do this more often.

Saw this homemade bus conversion with a Saskatchewan license plate at a rest area that we stopped at to let the girls do their business and to have their lunch.

A bit of energetic activity before they fell asleep for the next few hours.

Our first glimpse of the mountains west of Hinton.

Closer to Jasper we got to see all the newly fallen icing sugar – well snow I guess. It was rather overcast and we had the occasional wee rain shower, often merely ten drops of liquid or so every now and then,

We only saw the one elk at a time, male or female. These two are nibbling the green fence at the Jasper cemetery.

It was a six hour drive including a fuel stop. Diesel has gone up six cents per litre in the past week. The rain never started until 9:30PM tonight as I write this post. One we got here at the RV park in Valemount we filled our propane tank. Expensive at $1.00 per litre but convenient. We drove 289.6 miles today, a week ago when we left home we drove 289.7 miles to get to this same RV park 😉

Today we put collars on the girls for the first time and they wore them with no problem. We want to use only harnesses but sometimes when you are travelling it is much easier to just quickly attach a leash to a collar.

It was very cold here in Valemount when we arrived so we put on their new waterproof puff jackets which don’t have a harness hole to attach the leash. They were okay with the coats but walking on a leash with a collar for the first as well as having the coats on was a challenge but they did very well.  They will do better in the future. They were very very warm in their coats. Because they are long dogs the coat does not totally cover their backs. Their new winter coats will cover the full length of their body.

Overall a good day. But I must be getting old, six hours is too long for me these days.

A lovely sunset on Tuesday evening, our last night in Edmonton.

It wasn’t Easter Sunday but it was this past Sunday that this large jack rabbit came to visit. Carlie just sat and watched it.

It was large and also very pretty. Over the next few days we saw a few prance past.

Colin ended up speaking with our neighbour whose dogs kept crying the day and night prior.  The fellow was friendly and mentioned that he was in town to attend a baby shower. He also mentioned that his wife had cancer and was recovering back home in Medicine Hat. No mention of his leaving his dogs to bark for eleven hours.

Colin took the girls to the off leash dog park where they saw an obese black and tan doxie. The owner told Colin that there was a place in St. Albert ( Alberta ) that was called Wienerland where they had events and activities for dachshunds. So far I have not been able to find much about it. Perhaps some of you who live in St Albert ( Sharon ) might find more information about the place for me.

I am beginning to think that it might only be a one day festival. However as it cost us almost $600.00 one way in fuel I can’t see us coming here just for that.

We went to visit friends in Stony Plain at their large acreage for happy hour. Colin did not drink because he was driving but he enjoyed the snacks. The top left half of the photo is their garden area.

Just adding this photo even though my eyes are closed so you can see the fall colours.

Towards the end of our visit the girls both started to vomit. It was mostly undigested carrots that they had for happy hour. They were fine on the way home and did sleep as per normal. Once we got got back to the RV they kept vomiting and vomiting. Carlie vomited if she even just drank water.

Another Edmonton special sunset.

Once the girls stopped vomiting ( Carlie more that Ciela ) they both conked out. Carlie could not move at all. At this point we just thought that they had eaten too many dead flowers and a bit of this and that as puppies do. Later in the evening I remembered that our friends had shown us their large garden area before we left. I had commented on an extremely strong cannabis smell. Turns out that they had let one of their friends use space in their garden for the legal allotment of plants. Colin recalled seeing fallen buds on the ground.  I recalled seeing the girls up in the garden area. Did they eat some of the fallen flower buds. We now think so. Colin was able to pee Ciela at bedtime but Carlie was almost comatose. She could not stand up and was not moving. So we put them to bed with us ( they normally sleep in the crate ) so that we could monitor them throughout the night.

Neither of us slept well, at best we dosed off and on. According to a link that I had been sent, the Northern lights were supposed to put on a large show. So I kept looking out the window to check on that. It wasn’t until about 3AM that Carlie curled into a ball and later she stretched out. So we knew that she was going to be alright. It really wasn’t until  Monday morning that we put it together with the ingestion of the cannabis buds and the reactions. We now know that they could have both died. They were watched constantly as they roamed our friends yard and were repeatedly called back to us. But it only takes an instant to ingest something. It was no ones fault. It just happened. It took about 30 hours before they regained their normal personalities and activities ( wrestling ). Meanwhile I am dejected to say the the northern lights went further north instead of putting on a show in Edmonton. The girls have fully recovered. Early  Monday morning Carlie woke up on her own and hovered over me kissing my face repeatedly. I wonder what she remembers of what happened. Please do not tell us what we should and should not have done. We did what was right at the time.

For the most part Monday was a laid back day.

Not so for me.  My twisted/rolled ankle has been getting progressively worse. It took me 2.5 hours Monday morning to find a walk in clinic to see a doctor who would give me an X-ray requisition. Most of the walk in clinics have been suspended due to COVID. One was able to give me an appointment in about 6 weeks 😯 I did find a clinic and I was there about 2.5 hours. I got the requisition and next went to a walk in X-ray clinic. It was supposed to be a 24 hour turn around. Not true 🙁

Friends Paul and Jan came by to visit for a very short period of time Monday evening ( so glad that was stretched longer than a short period of time ) This was a pleasant surprise as they previously had been unable to see us this visit. Ciela loves Paul and was into wet dog face kisses.

Special sunset yesterday,

Carlie cautiously got in on the action. We were so happy to see Paul laugh out loud.

I love how our family all prefer to ease into the day. Colin had set up this special elevated bed area for them this morning.

Notice how Carlie is twisted over her sister.

Today I saw my wonderful chiropractor who did my regular touch up. He also worked on that nasty left ankle which he had worked on on Friday. That is not his usual job but he had figured out the problem.  It seems that my problem is worse than normal and he did it all again today. He mentioned that the muscles in my shoulders were all seized up – likely due to stress.  No kidding 🙄 I do love using heating pads.  Well that was well over five hours ago and I still have not had time to use the heating pad. Still no news about my X-ray results.

We are leaving here tomorrow so have been slowly packing up. The girls enjoyed their walk in the off leash park today but Colin has observed that they were happier when they had their sister Sequoia with them. They certainly motivated the entire park last Saturday, dog and human alike. Now that was action 😎

First Friday morning my mind screamed ” I need a heated toilet seat”! It had got down to 34.7F during the night. But it did get up to 72F during the day which made up for that rude awakening.

Besides running the furnace, using an electric heater and our Mr. Buddy we sat in the sun waiting for it to warm up inside. We only have single pane windows in the RV.

Always watching where we are.

The first task of the day was to get to our chiropractic appointments. Unlike last July we did not get lost. We even were early and they took us in right away. Amazingly I held most of my adjustment from July but needed some tweaking. Dr. Mckenna also looked at my twisted ankle and found the ligament that I had damaged. He treated it with the activator and told me that I was good to walk on it.

As we were finished earlier we ( I ) spontaneously decided to make a quick stop at Costco to check out their liquor store which we do not have in BC. I was surprised to see that most of the wines were the same as we see in the US. I purchased a few in the hopes of finding something new.  There was one Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand the was okay but like the others I would not purchase them again, unless we were enroute to Mexico. It is nice to have a large variety there but I prefer my BC wines which I can’t take with me re the export expenses into the states. There is a new Costco being built in Kelowna but it will not have the liquor store due to provincial regulations. However they will be building the huge fuel station as we saw at the Costco here. It is literally a zoo 🙁  so many pumps with lines blocking the entrance to the actual store and in our case the exit. People cutting others off and the blaring of horns. I was very quick with my shopping and we were headed back to the RV. I am pretty sure it was my navigating that got us lost. The plan was to get back to feed the girls lunch by 2:30, it was much later than that. Despite a paper map, the Jeeps GPS and Google maps on my iPhone we headed south towards who knows where and ended up going about 25kms/15miles in the wrong direction.  It took us a long while to get back. The problem is that there is so much new construction and street signs that do not match any of the maps 😥

After feeding our starving girls we bathed them so that they were able to dry off while the sun was on the dash nicely heating up that area. They also got their toes done. We could not find the plug for the tub so we improvised.

Another lovely Alberta sunset which takes hours to finally set. Excuse the window reflection.

Saturday had us meeting the sister, Sequoia, along with her mom and gramma.

There is an off leash dog park attached to this RV park. In fact there are two, one for small pups and one for the larger dogs.

It took awhile for the triplets to get reacquainted but once they did, they were a firm pack.

The lovely Pauline with Sequoia. Aren’t they both beautiful?

Sequoia and her sister Ciela.

Nose to nose with Carlie. It is obvious that the three are comfortable together.

We took off our girls harnesses so they could be freer to run. And run they did for close to two hours. Some barking was involved as well.

Lots of action.

Where one went so did the other two. I had over one hundred photos to choose from for this post.

Back to the RV for just a few moments. Sequoia not too sure about the pen.

On the way back from the restrooms it was a surprise to see the three of them in the window. Sequoia sees her mom and wants out.

My final kiss with Sequoia. It was sad not being able to hug Pauline goodbye.

We had a relaxing afternoon as the girls were worn out and simply slept.  Colin was able to play his guitar and I once again was trying to catch up to some of the emails in my inbox. All the while we kept hearing dogs yipping. It was the RV parked next to us. The fellow beside had gone out about 10AM and still was not back 7 hours later. We finally called the office to complain. His dogs were irritating us and upsetting our girls. As it became dark out we could see inside and that he had left a light on but the dogs were in distress, standing on the table and howling.  As in all RV parks there is a rule to not leave your dogs unattended. The office staff called the owners of this park who gave them permission to call the gentleman. By this time they had been inside for at least ten hours. Also no window had been left open and it did get hot during the day. I was at the point of calling the police and/or the SPCA. Turns out that his wife is here for cancer treatment. I feel very sorry for him but the dogs were extremely agitated. He did get back close to an hour later and he was very angry and swearing at us, we could hear him through our closed windows. Again I felt badly as to what had happened to him and his wife but still no excuse to leave his pets like that for 11 hours. I mentioned to the office staff that they could possibly suggest that he get a pet sitter or put his dogs in a kennel while he was away for such long hours. What else could we have done?