LG Ally

As a getting out of the hospital gift to ourselves, girl and I got new cell phones.  I really didn’t need one as I loved my old cell phone.  It was a Palm Centro, a smart  phone.  It did everything I thought I needed in a phone.  But when we were at the Verizon store they told me that I was eligible for an upgrade and that they had a buy one get on free special going on.  So to humor the salesman I checked out his little phone he was offering.  It was an LG Ally and boy was it was sharp.  I fell in love.  Before I knew it, we were both walking out of the phone with a new LG phone.

So far we have had it for just over 2 weeks and I love it.  If you’re a fan of Star Trek you’ll appreciate this analogy: For all intents and purposes, it’s a tricorder.  While I’m sure there’s some things it can’t do, I’ve yet to find them.  I have spent 3 hours going through the free apps and I still haven’t found the end of the list.  Of course a lot of them I’ll never even consider downloading, but I have found about a dozen that now take up space on my phone.  And with 32 gb of SD card to fill up, I have plenty of room to do anything I want.  My only complaint is that with all the apps that this thing can run in the background, the battery doesn’t last nearly as long as it did in my Palm.  On the Palm I had about 8 days of standby, 5 days if I talked on the phone for about 20 minutes a day.  With the LG the battery lasts about 2.5 days.  Of course there are things I can do/set to make the battery last longer, and I use them, but that limits some of the functions of the phone. 

Long story short, if you’re looking for a new phone, check out the LG Ally.  It really is a nice phone.  And the slide out keyboard is a perfect companion to the large touch screen.  I do have one thing I would change—I would make it, if possible, set so the ringer on the calendar events would sound until some sort of input was entered by the person to shut them off.  As it is the ringer sounds once and then leaves a notification on the screen.  Minor, I know, but annoying.  However, with that in mind, I still love the phone. 

HOSPITAL

OK, here’s the deal.  I had been feeling pretty crummy for the last couple of weeks.  I was getting more and more nauseous for seemingly no good reason.  I didn’t understand what was going on.  But everything came to head last Tuesday (10 days ago) when I started puking my guts up.  It was not cool.  After about an hour or two of that I decided it was time to go the ER.  By then it was 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.  So we packed our bags because I knew they were going to keep me.  I was right.  First thing they wanted to do (because of my history) was do a CT scan with contrast.  So they loaded me up onto the machine and did a pre-scan and then the fun began.  With the pre-scan complete they turned to do the actual exam.  The CT machine injects a contrast dye into the IV with a lot of pressure.  It turns out that it was too much pressure.  The injector blew my vein.  So they tried to start a new IV.  No luck.  In fact, 3 needles were bent just trying to pierce my skin to start the IV.  They were amazed.  It gave a whole new meaning to ‘man of steel”. 

Well  eventually, 7 sticks later, they were able to get an IV started and it seemed good until they injected the contrast when it blew.  They got permission to do the test without contrast and everything went well after that.  It was still another 6 hours before they put me in my room—my home for the next 7 days.

Now IV trouble didn’t stop just because I was given a room.  During my stay in the hospital no IV lasted more than 22 hours and no IV was started on the first try.  Finally after 3 days of poking and prodding they decided to put in a picc line.  It was smooth sailing from that point on.  They could administer drugs and draw blood without having to poke m any more.  But that only happened after I had been stuck 25 times.  Bummer.

Even with all this to consider, my hospital stay was very helpful.  The hospital staff, especially the nurses, were phenomenal in the care and consideration they provided.  They actually gave the genuine impression that they were concerned with my comfort and well being.  I could not have asked for a better staff to care for me.  Actually, some of them almost seemed disappointed that I had done some tasks without their assistance.  They wanted to be there for me. 

But all good things come to an end…as well as bad things.  Once they were able to administer drugs without worrying about blowing my veins, things went much better and I improved quickly.  And though they were sad to see me go, I was thrilled that I was able to eat solid food and was on my way out the door.  I want to do something, anything, even it’s just writing a letter of praise to their supervisor, to show my appreciation for how easy they made this hospital stay. 

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately.  I hope all of you got your August off to a better start than me.