Thanksgiving Turkey Fried or Roasted

This past Thursday was Thanksgiving and we had Thanksgiving at our house. We decided to have dinner later in the day rather than having a mid-day meal. This would allow our daughter K and her boyfriend to go to his family for a mid-day meal and still be by us later in the day.

Last Christmas I received a Turkey Fryer which we have used a number of time this past year and decided to use it this past Thursday to fry the turkey. When Thursday came, it was cooler then we hoped for. However, the boys and I decided we would be able to fry the turkey as long as the wind didn’t start blowing. A slight breeze would be OK but a stronger breeze makes it difficult to heat the oil to the correct temperature and hold that temperature while frying the turkey.

Thursday early afternoon we began to have doubts that we would be able to fry the turkey because the breeze was turning into a wind. When we checked the local weather we discovered that we could expect 9 – 12 mile per hour winds. The boys set up the fryer, filled it with oil and started the burner. The breeze/wind seem to become stronger as we watched the oil try to heat up. At one point a gust of wind blew out the fire in the burner. That was when the decision was made to not fry the turkey.

Now we had to come up with a plan to somehow cook the turkey in time for dinner. The first decision we made, or maybe we realized, was that our Thanksgiving dinner would be at least one hour later then we originally planned. The second decision we made was to remove the thighs, legs and wings from the turkey. We hoped this would allow us to cook the turkey in a shorter amount of time. We started to preheat the oven while we prepared the turkey. However when we placed both roasting pans in the oven we discovered that we couldn’t close the oven door.

As P and the boys were discussing this unexpected turn of events, I mentioned that our neighbor had told me they would not be home for Thanksgiving. They had gone to spend Thanksgiving with her parents at her brothers. So they placed the roasting pan with the turkey breast in our oven and the other roasting pan in our neighbors oven. Because the thighs, legs and wings don’t take as long to cook as the turkey breast, we used the neighbor’s oven to cook the vegetables.

While we didn’t have the fried turkey as we hoped, and we didn’t have dinner at the time we originally hoped for, we had a great afternoon spending the extra time visiting. It was a great Thanksgiving. In fact I spent so much time visiting with everyone, I am still recovering two days later.

I must admit I am surprised at how tired having Thanksgiving made me. This is making me wonder how I will be after we travel to our son, daughter in-law and grandson for Christmas.

Working Ventilator At Last?

The representatives from the company who supplies me with the ventilator and the ventilator manufacture were just here. They came as a result of letters I wrote about issues I had with a number of their ventilators.

I must admit that I was extremely nervous about this meeting. After all I had written a number of strongly worded letters of complaint. However, the meeting was very cordial. While the respiratory therapist was setting up the replacement ventilator I talked to the other two people. They asked me to show them how, being ventilator dependent, I managed to stay home alone. I showed them the emergency bag hanging on the back of my wheelchair containing my Ambu bag, spare ventilator circuit connectors and exhalation values. The emergency bag also contains a page with ventilator settings and a list of all my medications.

I also showed how I came up with a method of using a funnel and part of a circuit to refill the humidifier bottle without having to remove it from the ventilator. This method means I am able to fill the bottle without having to disconnect the entire circuit, something that I would not be able to do on my own. They were impressed with how I have my wheelchair set up allowing me the access I need to my ventilator. And how I have small pieces of Velcro on the three vent control buttons I must use by feel when sitting in the wheelchair. I showed them how when we had this house built we changed the layout of the kitchen of the kitchen allowing me to position my wheelchair between the refrigerator and the end of the counter. This allows me to open either the freezer or the refrigerator, remove items and place them safely on the counter. I also demonstrated how the counter by the sink and the counter by the stove are also close enough to each other allowing me to safely transfer hot dishes of pots between the counters and from the last counter to the table. They both said how amazed they were at my independence.

I guess because P and I have always thought about ways I could do things that would allow me to safely stay at home, that we are always surprised when people tell us how amazed they are at how self sufficient I am. When I mentioned this, they both said that in their experience most ventilator patients don’t enjoy the level of freedom I enjoy.

I said we will switch the ventilators this evening when P gets home from work. I didn’t want to switch ventilators when no one would be home in case this vent fails, however, I did try the replacement ventilator before everyone left and I feel that at long last I have two working ventilators with built in humidification.

Then when we switched vents last night, the new vent gave "Humidifier Error" after only 30 seconds of use. This did and did not surprise me because this was the same vent that I had in the first week of September and at that time it worked for 3 hours before giving the "Humidifier Error" message. After a number of phone calls last night we were told they would continue to work at getting me a working ventilator.

It Pays to Write

Earlier this year my doctor put me on 24-hour humidification. So I had to have ventilators with the additional humidification circuitry. I have two ventilators incase something happens to one of them I always have a backup. Every month I swap out the active vent with the backup so I am certain both ventilators are in working condition.

At the end of August I had to have one of my ventilator replaced because it failed. So at the beginning of September the company brought out a replacement ventilator. They have yet to bring a working one. Some of the vents they brought worked for a short time (hours) others haven't worked at all. So finally I decided the time had come to start writing letters. I wrote a letter to the company who supplies me with the ventilator, to the ventilator manufacture, to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JACHO), and on the advice of my son and my sister to the FDA.

I waited and after a number of weeks with no response and a couple more failed ventilators, I wrote everyone another letter. This time I received personalized not form letters. I even received phone calls from the ventilator manufacture and the company who provides me with the ventilators, who it turns out, repairs the ventilators.

Then yesterday the regional manager of the company who supplies my ventilators called and asked if it would be ok if she, the local branch manager, my respiratory therapist and a representative of the vent manufacture, come next Monday afternoon with a working ventilator in order to resolve this issue. It turns out she has to write a report and send it to JACHO in response to my complaint to that organization.

So as I stated in the subject line, "It pays to write".