recovery and observation

I vaguely remember them removing those big patches they put on me but I don't remember if it was in the ablation lab or the recovery room but I woke up uncomfortable with headache, nausea, and sore throat intact with orders to stay flat on my back and not bend the leg whose vein they had gone through. They had given me meds for the nausea and I asked for something for the headache both of which stubbornly refused to go away. Marc and my sister Pam came back after I woke, Pam had to leave because she had out of town guests but daughter Sarah arrived and she and Marc stayed with me in the recovery/prep cubical til they were ready to move me to my room. At one point I had to pee so Sarah went and got the nurse assigned to me, would I prefer a female nurse he asked? No, not necessary, so he got the small shallow plastic bedpan and slipped it under my butt and exited the room. Have you ever tried to pee in a bedpan laying flat on your back? I finally coaxed my body to release and by the time I was done my entire butt was wet. Another nurse, a woman came in when I was done because my guy wasn't in sight and got me on my side, took away the bedpan and dried me off. I'm just glad I didn't have to poop.

Marc had gone to get me a banana during the bedpan incident because I thought maybe I could get that down but the first little bite convinced me otherwise. Once in the room the nurse brought me some saltines which I thought I could possibly nibble on and get down but gave up after half a cracker and not because of the nausea but because it was terrible, tasted like cardboard. I remember when saltines were good. I remember when store bought cookies were good, so many things our food industry and greed have ruined.

I had a very nice private room, all the rooms in the Heart and Vascular Institute at Memorial Hermann Southwest are private rooms, but I had to laugh at the bed which had a large heavy duty puppy pad on top of the bottom sheet that covered the bed by about 3/4ths and a smaller puppy pad on top of that one under my butt (which by end of day Wednesday I had pushed to the foot of the bed because, for one I wasn't going to wet the bed and for two every time I got up I had to smooth it out before I got back in because I've got the whole princess and the pea thing going and even the smallest wrinkle feels like a stone and for three one thing to smooth out was enough).

Anyway, shortly after I was in my room Marc left. He had been up since 4 AM and had to go retrieve the dog from my sister's house and let the cat out that had been housebound all day but Sarah stayed and when the nausea and headache finally went away I was feeling pretty good, in a good mood, yukking it up with my daughter. I wasn't supposed to sit up til 5:30 according to the instructions from the recovery nurse. I waited til 5:45 to sit up. At 6 my day nurse came in to help with the sitting up, saw me sitting up...aaand she's sitting up, she said in an admonishing tone. Yep, I'm still me.

Apparently I was feeling entirely too cocky and about 6:30 PM I started having an afib episode during my dinner and I guess the heart monitor went nuts because the day nurse came in and fussed at me and told me to finish my dinner and lay back and relax. When it was still going on at 8 the night nurse started me on the new drug an hour early and it stopped about an hour later.

Wednesday all was well, I'd sort of figured out the menu and tried to order things I thought they couldn't ruin and the doctor came by noonish, the ablation was successful and I could probably go home the next day. And then at 3:30 I had another afib episode. The nurse came in with the EKG machine at 4, you're in afib she says so we're going to do another EKG. Yes, I said, it started at 3:30. You could tell, she asked? Yes, I can always tell, I know when they start and when they stop the medical professionals always seem surprised about that. Any chest pain, she asked, no, never have pain but I can feel it happening. So they did the test and called the doctor and he increased my dose of the sotalol but the EKG showed flutter as well, the thing the supposed successful ablation was supposed to stop.

previous: the test and the procedure

next: Thursday

the test and the procedure

Wednesday night and I'm still in the hospital as I write, post test, post procedure. (that's when I wrote this, I'm home now, got home about 5 PM Friday afternoon)

I was told to be at the hospital at 7:30 AM for the TEE, transesophageal echocardiogram, no food or water past midnight, where they were going to have me swallow a thin tube with an ultrasound camera on the end to look at my heart from the inside, looking for blood clots before they did the ablation. My throat is still sore.

So we headed out at 6:30 and ran into blinding rain almost immediately all the way through the gauntlet of the Fort Bend County road work, narrow lanes through canyons with no shoulders that changes configuration often and when we finally got out of the blinding rain we hit all the slow traffic heading into the city. But we did get there mostly on time and they checked me in and sent me upstairs to wait my turn, about half an hour or so before they called me back to prep me which involved stripping from the waist up and putting on a hospital gown, an IV, taking blood for tests, an automatic blood pressure cuff, oxygen in my nose, and about a dozen leads all over my body for an ongoing EKG. The anesthesiologist, the doctor performing the test, and the tech, all good looking younger men, all came in at various times to introduce themselves, explained what they were going to do, and ask if I had any questions. The anesthesiologist sprayed a numbing agent into mouth and told me to swallow oh nasty stuff that made my mouth water like a fiend and a really weird sensation and handed me the dental spit sucking tube til it calmed down and when they were ready to start they had a red mouthpiece for me to bite on and strap around my head which would keep my mouth open during the test.

I started laughing.

I already felt like Frankenstein's monster all wired up but when the tech pulled out the mouthpiece that scene from Pulp Fiction flashed in my head of Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames all trussed up for rape which is of course not very funny at all but there ya go. The anesthesiologist wanted to know what was so funny. I couldn't see telling him why I was really laughing so I told him I just imagined what I must look like. Anyway they got started, the anesthesiologist started the drug saying breathe through your nose, breathe through your nose, breathe through your nose...and that's the last thing I remember til I woke up. I wasn't awake two minutes before a nurse came in. The whole thing had taken about 7 minutes. No blood clots, I was good to go. Oh and no food or drink for another two hours and nothing hot. Which wasn't really a problem because my throat really hurt. I managed to get down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a scrambled egg, and oatmeal, not all at the same time, and went to bed early because I was to be back the next day at 6 AM for the ablation.

We planned to leave at 5 AM so I got up at 4:30 thinking that was plenty of time to do my yoga routine, take a shower and scrub with antibacterial soap as instructed, and get dressed. It actually took me 40 minutes so we got off 10 minutes late in the dark through more rain but not blinding. After about 10 minutes I asked Marc if he wanted me to drive. No, I'm fine he says. About 5 minutes later I asked him again. Why, he says, am I driving erratically. No, sez me, but you're going 60 in a 75. Relax he tells me, they can't start till you get there. So I meditated the rest of the way and we did get there mostly on time. The same lady checked me in, how are you today she asked? I had been deprived of coffee for two days, I had a small headache and my throat hurt. Not as chipper as yesterday, I told her.

Once again I was sent upstairs to be prepped for the ablation where they were going to send a zapper through a vein in my groin into the right atrial chamber of my heart, induce the atrial flutter, and then zap the spot/s dead that were sending out the rogue signal which would put an end to the flutter. In theory and practice. Usually.

Whereas before I just had to get naked from the waist up and a hospital gown on, this time I had to get naked under the hospital gown but they did give me some socks. So new IV, this time in my wrist instead of higher up and the minute she stuck me blood just gushed out all over my hand and the towel underneath but she got me cleaned up and the rig all taped down, more EKG tabs, an automatic blood pressure cuff, shaved my pube halfway and then washed. Once I was prepped they let Marc and my sister Pam back to sit with me while we waited for the doctor to arrive and when he did I was trundled into the room where the procedure would take place by Terry, the male nurse who would help with the rest of the prep and whose job it would be to stay by my head and respond to anything I needed or felt during the procedure because I was going to be awake!

He wheeled me into the room which was so full of machines and equipment that there was barely enough room to maneuver the bed in to switch me over to the platform for the ablation. 

He was very chatty, really they all were, telling me about the equipment, what it did, what the doctor and assistants were going to do while they covered my entire torso with these huge 5" diameter ice cold sensors front and back, more oxygen in my nose. They had 12 monitors in here he said so that they could see every detail of my heart.

Then they tied my arms down.

I'm laying there breathing through my broken nose which constricts my nasal passages some thinking I forgot to clean my nose when I showered this morning and maybe I should have remembered to do that. They covered me up to my chin with a protective layer with a hole at my groin. When the doctor came in Terry started the sedative and said the doctor would stick me with an anesthetic, it would feel like a bee sting but would stop hurting immediately. In reality I barely felt the prick. And that was the last thing I remember until I rose to consciousness to complain that my shoulder was aching and again to say that the ache had spread to my collarbone. And again to tell him I felt nauseous so he had me turn my head to the side and held that dental spit sucking device to my mouth but the urge passed until it came again and again until I did throw up some gastric juice which he sucked away immediately. The nausea was an effect of the afib, he said. I had gone into afib during the procedure. Somewhere in there I remember hearing them talk about seeing the flutter circuit and again when they had established a nice sinus rhythm and that's it til I woke up back in the prep area, headache, nausea, and sore throat intact. Instead of the 4 hours I had read it would take it took less than two. Once I woke up they let Marc and my sister and my daughter Sarah who got there after they had wheeled me away for the procedure back into the prep/recovery room to wait with me until they were ready to take me upstairs to my room.

next: recovery and observation

preparing the mind, MAGA, and a finished piece

I had sent off my barrage of questions Friday a week ago via the patient portal. Monday I got a reply that the doctor was out of the office that day, would be doing procedures all day Tuesday so it would be Wednesday before they had any answers for me. Actually it was Thursday mid morning but I didn't see it til after 4 PM that day. Too many questions with too many parts and the doctor thought it would be better to answer in person so if I could come in on Friday he would make time to see me. Far too late in the day for me to reply and, I figured, for them to set up a time for me. And the last thing I wanted to do was drive into the city through the gauntlet of Fort Bend County construction and deal with the horror of the Medical Center since I would have to see him in his office there instead of the nearer hospital center where I had seen him previously and where the procedures will take place.

In the meantime I had seen some terrible reviews of this doctor...get yourself a different doctor!...mostly concerning his bedside manner or not taking time to explain things as well as far more great reviews...he saved my life!...with praise that he took time to explain and answer questions, exactly the opposite. Thursday evening I was feeling anxious about the whole impending thing, didn't want to submit without my questions being answered, didn't want to spend a whole day going into the city at the drop of a hat, thinking maybe I would just postpone the procedure and subsequent change of medication until I had a chance to talk with him especially since several of my questions were about the new medication but Friday morning I called the doctor's office, explained the situation, and the person on the phone told me he would see me at noon. OK, I'll be there. The drive turned out to be not so bad as the maps app routed me around the city with a straight shot to the medical building and parking was easy and with the return trip home just 3 1/2 hours out of my day.

When I got there the waiting room was empty, about noon they put me in a room and about 12:30 Dr. Cheng came in. He shook my hand and explained why he wanted me to come in so he could answer them in person, he had a print out of my questions but when I pulled mine out he deferred to me and answered everything to my satisfaction. I'm a little anxious about all this, I told him. Understandable he says.

One of the things I asked was which was the worse ailment, the flutter or the afib. The flutter he said which surprised me. But it makes sense since that is the one he wants to treat with ablation and address the afib with medication. When I asked why not just increase the medication I was on for afib instead of starting me on one with such heinous possible side effects that he wants to observe me in the hospital for a few days he said that the meds I am on don't really address afib. After the ablation he'll take me off those.

When I left, the waiting room was packed. So this has set my mind at ease, I'm impressed that he made time for me during his lunch hour on a day when he obviously had a full schedule and didn't rush me or seem impatient to be done so I'm ready to go through with the procedures as scheduled on Monday and Tuesday. Maybe even looking forward to not having these episodes anymore since my anxiety has had the flutter going full bore the past two days.

In other news that pathetic and despicable man occupying the White House wants us to believe he called off his thoughtless impulsive order to bomb Iran for shooting down our spy plane over their territory (Iran supplied coordinates to support their claim and they also declined to shoot down the manned plane accompanying the drone while the US has provided zero proof that they were not in Iranian airspace) because he really cares about the 150 probable deaths of Iranians instead of finally being convinced that it would look bad for his re-election campaign and there would be a ton of bad press which is the only reason he would call it off especially considering he doesn't give a shit about the lives of all the would be immigrants being held in concentration camps on our border in unsanitary overcrowded conditions with disease rampant, insufficient food, sexual and physical abuse dished out by their captors, no clean clothing or laundry facilities or even diapers for the babies, children taking care of toddlers they aren't even related to. Our government thinks it's all fine that they are sleeping on concrete under a piece of foil, that they don't need soap or toothbrushes and or actual real meals instead of frozen uncooked/unheated dinners and those kids who are so sick they are unresponsive, why, they're  just sleeping. So yeah, sure, Trump called off the bomb raid on Iran to spare the lives of Iranians and now he wants to be praised for not killing them. MAGA!

The latest piece is out of the kiln and washed but no finish work done yet. This is the third of the four large Drowned Feather pieces, actually #4 in the series but cast out of sequence. Yes, that's a dried up fern frond, the whimsy part of the set. 

10” x 10” x 1/2”

the summer yard part 2 – the critter version

The frogs and toads are quite noisy with their singing at night since all this rain.

Saturday I looked up, or down as the case may be, to see this pretty green ribbon snake...in the house. It seemed to have trouble getting traction on the vinyl floor and I can't imagine how it got all the way across the room from the door without me being aware of it but it did. I got my back scratcher, the nearest long handled thing, and gently herded it back out the door. It was about 18” long and not even as big around as my pinky finger.

I've seen some swallowtail butterflies in the yard and some little brown skippers and this tiny little hairstreak. It's true color is grayer than this.

I watched while this young squirrel sniffed around and then dug up a pecan and started eating it.

Big Mama hanging out.

Spider webs are everywhere. In this part of the yard I quit counting at 12.

A young banana spider with her mate,

these little green spiders with their neon orange spots,

and shield back spiders which I couldn't get an in focus picture of.

Not sure what this is but I thought it was a cool picture even if it is out of focus. Maybe a shield back spider with it's egg case seen from underneath.

I'm not sure what kind of egg case this is, my best guess from searching images is a jumping spider egg case.

Wasps tending their nest under the eave. Since wasps are only aggressive when they feel threatened I generally leave these pollinators alone unless they want to build their nest somewhere inconvenient for me and then I just wait til no one is home and knock it down.

Marc called me out to see this wasp and a wolf spider battling it out. By the time I got out there the wolf spider was dead and the wasp was dragging it across the yard.

summer picks and pics from the yard part 1

I did finally finish filling the mold I had been working on and it's currently in the kiln. And I finally got a night blooming cereus cutting wrapped up and sent off to a friend. And I finally cut back three pecan trees that had sprouted snug up under three established plants so there was no way to dig them out and treated the stubs with brush killer (no spraying, just a few drops from a pipet). And I finally made tomato sauce as well as skinned and cut up those that were left and froze all that from the tomatoes that have been piling up in the refrigerator and on the windowsill which is now already full of more ripening tomatoes. And I finally went to the feed store and got some insecticidal soap for the stink bugs. And I am finally resigned to going through with all the scheduled procedures and now I just want it to be over with and working.

The summer yard is hot and wet (another 1 1/2” of rain Sunday night accompanied by a freaky little dog wanting lay on my head and pant in my face) and full of mosquitoes (which had just started to diminish after the 11” we got week before last) and the weeds from the seeds deposited when the yard flooded from that 11” of rain have all sprouted and some of the plants I bought during the last trip to the nursery for summer blooms have either died or aren't blooming and I desperately need to trim the little backyard but damn it's hot and humid and the mosquitoes are fierce!

Nevertheless there are some bright spots. One of the yellow angel trumpets bloomed (but still not the pink which has never bloomed) and the plumerias are starting to bloom, the native Texas star hibiscus,

and the datura which I never remember to go out and look at at night when they open

the pink crinum lilies are done but the reds are just starting up

the day lilies are nearly done, nile lilies are still blooming, zinnias too even though many of them are laying on the ground from the heavy wind and rain, the orange cosmos are starting up, and the rangoon creeper is in full bloom.

A huge limb from the native pecan at the back of the property that straddles the property line (mostly on her side) has fallen but not broken off completely because, I think, it fell on top of my neighbor's container. 

I imagine we will get it taken care of since no one seems to maintain that property anymore after she called the sheriff on us for 'stealing her stuff' last February or maybe I'll just trim off the branches hanging on our side or let the whole thing hang there til she shows up again and let her deal with it. I've got bigger fish to fry right now and other expenses to take care of.

Next: the summer yard part 2 – the critter version

one more and then on to other topics

I'm trying to keep up with everyone's blogs but I'm rather preoccupied as I'm sure everyone can imagine, still spending hours researching, sent off another barrage of questions via the patient portal. I've had a comment from one twin granddaughter on FB and a face time call from the other and been chastened by my daughter for not telling her/them about the results of my doctor's visit before I published it on my blog. That's not the way for her to find out, she tells me. Oops. My only excuse is that writing about it helps me assimilate what's going on. But, yes, I should have called her first.

Here's some other things I learned...atrial flutter is a right atrial disease, afib is a left atrial disease. In typical cases of flutter, the atrial (the upper chambers of the heart) are contracting at a rate of 150-300 bpm (beats per minute). The atrial rate of bpm is not the same as the pulse rate (ah, so this is why). The pulse rate originates in the ventricles (the lower chambers of the heart) which beat at some ratio of the atrial bpm.

So, the ablation is scheduled for the 25^th with a TEE scheduled on the 24^th. The TEE or Trans-Esophageal Echo is an echocardiogram from the inside where they can get pictures of my heart without having to look through the rib cage and lungs like a regular ultrasound echocardiogram from the outside, which is what I thought I was going to have after I told him btw, the cardiologist 2 years ago told me I had a leaky valve. I'll have an IV and they will sedate me but not put me under then numb my throat and ask me to swallow a tube with a camera on the end! Not sure I can do that especially with my throat issues. And how do you swallow a tube!? 

This whole thing just gets better and better and by that I mean worse and worse.

I had resigned myself to the outpatient ablation which turned into an inpatient procedure and drug administration and now this! This is way more than I'm prepared for. One of the questions I previously asked through the patient portal was if the sotalol manages flutter as well as afib why not just try the sotalol first to which they replied that it doesn't manage the flutter as effectively as it does the afib and flutter can induce afib so eliminating the flutter first makes it easier to control the afib. Basically. That and that as I age the condition will worsen and possibly become constant. Treating it now is more desirable than treating it once it becomes worse. Well, I have a whole week to decide whether or not I'm going to go through with it or get a second opinion (or rather third if you count the RNP as the first) or decide on trying just the medication first.

I'm in total overload. No more thinking about it til Monday. I have a mold to finish filling, I have a dog to walk, and a yard to water. Eleven inches of rain week before last and the ground is already so dry it's cracking.

not one but two

The past week's worth of days have been so busy what with working on the mold (of which all forward progress came to a screeching halt last Sunday morning and has yet to resume) and the visit from Kathy and the appointment with the electrophysiologist and a surprise visit from grandgirl Autumn just a bit ago that here it is late afternoon or early evening depending on where you live and how you measure such things and still so many chores to take care of, a big one of which is to start putting up some of the three bags of tomatoes I have in the refrigerator but it's too late in the day to start something like that. I should have finished that mold on Tuesday after Kathy headed home but I didn't, instead being lazy all day. Wednesday was all about the doctor's appointment and today was all about absorbing that.

So, yes, I finally had my appointment with the electrophysiologist, the cardiac specialist that specializes in heart rhythms. My appointment was at 11:15, I finally got in sometime shortly after noon. The cardiac RNP had sent my file over previously so basically all they did was take my blood pressure and do another EKG, since I was having an episode while I was there, before the doctor came in. So it turns out I have two different heart rhythm abnormalities, atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation. You can have one without the other but if you start with flutter you generally develop afib and the older you are, the more likely you are to develop it. He wants to do a catheter ablation  now for the flutter and then try and treat the afib with drugs before considering the ablation for afib as that is a more invasive and difficult procedure so since the drugs I've been on aren't doing the job he wants to try a different one, sotalol, that requires keeping me in the hospital for a few days while he monitors its effect on the afib and for any of the side effects that apparently can be bad. So they are contacting my insurance company and checking doctor and hospital schedules and will call me with the appointment.

Of course as soon as I got home I'm trying to explain to Marc what he said and I'm all over the internet reading about this med and the procedure and flutter vs afib and I'm even more confused. So I called the doctor's office with a long list of questions this morning.

Atrial flutter is rapid, but even, heartbeat defined as having 150 and up beats per minute. The highest mine has been is 125, that I'm aware of, and that was before any medication. Atrial fibrillation is irregular heartbeat with or without it speeding up. So how do they know I have flutter when the rapid beating part could be caused by afib especially since my heart rate has never been that high? When both conditions are present they interfere with each other so the typical bpm no longer applies but atrial flutter also has a very distinct 'sawtooth' pattern that shows up on the EKG and it's all over my tests.

Do I have to be having an episode to have the ablation? No. I actually asked the doctor this and when I asked how then does he know where to zap my heart he sort of chuckled and said it was his secret power, and then he answered my question. The process involves a way through tests conducted during the procedure in the heart to pinpoint the rogue spot that is sending out the signals.

If both conditions are caused by faulty electrical impulses why is ablation for afib considered more invasive? With flutter, there are only one or a few spots in the muscle tissue of the heart in the upper chambers and they can be pinpointed and eliminated. 

Ablation for afib involves all 4 of the pulmonary veins (the veins that bring oxygen rich blood from your lungs to your heart) and as they can't pinpoint the exact spots, it involves a process called pulmonary vein isolation which causes scar tissue around the veins near where they connect to your heart because that's where the chaotic signals originate for afib.

So then I got a call to pick a date, the three soonest dates were June 21, 24, 28. I picked Monday the 24^th so I'll have an echocardiogram on the 24^th and then go back the next day for the ablation and a couple more days while he tries the different medication so I'll be at or in the hospital most of that week. Oh joy. I barely accepted the possibility of the ablation as outpatient procedure and now I'm going to be in the hospital, the place I avoid at all costs and haven't been in a hospital as a 'patient' since 1979 when my son was born.

I am not looking forward to this.

when friends meet for the first time

I have known Kathy Barnard's work, we have known each other's work, for decades, I have admired hers, been a bit envious, loved her aesthetic and style and skill, looked closely to see if some of it would rub off on me but we never met since she worked out of Kansas City MO and I worked out of Houston.

We started communicating a little bit a few years ago via FB (her page) and earlier in the year we discussed getting together when she would be in San Antonio for the Stained Glass Association's annual conference in June. How far are you from San Antonio, she asked.

So it turns out, we are friends who just hadn't met face to face yet. I had offered her to stay with us but also gave her the contact info for a nearby motel because you never know how these things will go but when she drove up Sunday afternoon I walked out to greet her at her car and she opened the door and there was my friend who I hadn't seen in years. It was like that, lots of hugs. We talked etched glass and work and life stories and stayed up late and just hung out. Kathy spent two nights and got on the road back home Tuesday morning with us promising to get together again in the future.

Kathy's shop is much like ours, or was when we were doing architectural etched glass except that we were working out of a jumped up garage and she works out of her huge studio building and she also does stained glass and small items, glassware and tableware and ornaments and panels. She had brought four small panels for the display area of the conference that were so sweet. 

           

    

She asked to buy one of my small pieces before she left but I wouldn't let her instead telling her to send me something of hers in exchange. So she's going to make me a piece with one of the little mice with wings.

at a snail's pace

I'm finally getting back to work but oh so slowly. Monday I cleared off the table and got set up to start filling a mold. 

Tuesday I did the volume measure and decided on all the colors and their combinations I wanted to use and got all the jars of frit and powder out.   Wednesday was all about the rain and no progress was made. Thursday late afternoon I finally sat down and started filling the mold and not long after I started it started raining again (another 2 1/2”) with lightning and thunder and a freaked out little dog at my feet pawing me constantly to be up in my lap. So this was as far as I got before giving up.

Friday afternoon I sat down to work on it some more and got this far before quitting to take the dog for her walk.

And Saturday was spent mostly cleaning house for an impending visit from Kathy Barnard, a woman who lives in Kansas City MO and does beautiful stained and etched glass work. I love her aesthetic and have admired her work for decades and we are finally going to meet. She was in San Antonio for the Stained Glass Association convention, drove to Padre Island for some beach time and a wedding and is on her way here before heading back to San Antonio and home. But I did get some time in on the mold.

Today I put in another hour or so before I finished the cleaning the house and made a peach cobbler.

Now I'm going to sit and relax til Kathy gets here and finish this after her visit.

shades of Harvey

I had to reschedule my appointment on Wednesday with the electrophysiologist til next week as I woke up to heavy rain about 3 AM, with the resultant panicked dog, which continued with intermittent bouts of moderate rain til a little after 10 AM when it finally stopped. 

7:45 AM

8:45 AM

The house was completely surrounded by water 2” - 8” deep, the low lying areas around the house finally meeting up with the ditch in front and the field in back, the flower beds seeming to be little islands but I'm pretty sure they were under water too. 

9:50 AM

The toilet in the little bathroom on the slab was gurgling when I got up and so we decided not to try and flush the toilets and we tried not to use the water too much because it drained very very slowly into the septic tanks that were buried in the ground and that ground was completely underwater. Water was just starting to creep into the garage when it stopped raining and I think some seeped in from the back door as it was wet under the mat. 

An hour and a half later the ditches were still overflowed and didn't look like they were draining so the dog and I waded out to the street and down to the corner to see that it was draining into the cornfield which was already flooded. 

11:30 AM

By 1:00 PM I still couldn't get to dry ground that was not under water unless I waded through ankle deep or higher water as we were still surrounded but the dog and I ventured out, walked to the other end of the street. At the far end it was all mostly underwater and it all would drain to my end and my end drains into the cornfield across the road which was, as above, already flooded. 

It was going down albeit very very very slowly. This has never happened before, just from rain, not in the whole 12 years we have owned this property Harvey aside though Harvey was a completely different situation. This was 7 hours of rain. The Lower Colorado River Authority says we got a little over 8”. My friend Debby about 8 miles to the east of us reported 9” and my friend Bobby 12 miles east of us in Boling reported 10”. By 3 PM the water had receded a goodly amount but we still had standing water on all four sides of the house, by 5 PM the front and the two sides of the house and the little backyard no longer had any standing water while there was still quite a bit in back and the field behind us was still flooded.

I didn't empty the rain gauge yesterday and I should have because this morning about 6:00 AM another storm came through and it rained like hell for another hour or so leaving a little bit of standing water on the west side and in back.