Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Power outage!

Standing at the kitchen sink, washing up a few dishes, when suddenly - Pow! Squeal! Bonk! Off goes our power. The "squeal" is the alarm and the "bonk" is Hubby's concentrator as it shuts off. Noises of my nightmares.

I wait. Last night it went off for 30 seconds. I'm hoping it's one of those "quickies".
Nope - not this time.

Hubby is downstairs, doing his rehab exercises, hooked up to a concentrator that is no longer working. Fortunately, he always has the portable oxygen cylinder along too - both cannulas stuffed up his nose.

Fortunately (once again) I was home. I shudder to think what would happen if I'd just stepped out to the grocery store.

Raced downstairs, and hooked him up to the humongous long-lasting cylinder - the one for emergency power-failures.
We waited. Looks like this will last a while.
Hubby is purse-lip breathing, trying to get his sats back up. After about 5 or 10 minutes, he was o.k, so we slowly walked up the stairs.

Back in the kitchen we sat down to eat lunch. Part-way through our meal we heard: Squeal, Bonk, Pow! our power had come back on.
No idea why we had this sudden power failure. No ice storm, snow storm, rain storm, wind storm. Middle of the day and the sun is shining.

Gives one the heebeejeebies.
I feel like I'm walking a fragile tightrope at times.

9 comments:

JeanMac said...

A stress neither of you needs!

Cheryl said...

Now that is one awful moment, what a nightmare for you both. Glad all turned out well, and thank goodness you were at home.

Rick Frea said...

That's probably the scariest part of being oxygen dependent. Or am I wrong?

denverdoc said...

Hadn't even thought of that one, but not O2 dependent here...yet. Walking on eggshells, fragile indeed.

Changes in the wind said...

Hi there, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment and you fit right in.....wierd:)

Beverly said...

Wow. I would be scared to death.

Chatty Crone said...

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy your time. My mom had COPD too. I understand.
Love,
Chatty

30 years from Darling said...

Drunk driver hit a transformer last night. BANG and out went the concentrator.
(along with my computer screen)

I wondered as I picked up my cell phone ...how many people have the power company's phone number in their cell phone's phone directory?

Surely, this is an odd thing to have.

They'd noted it ... it'd already flagged because of Don's status.

45 minutes later, we were back on.

Their system works great in situations like this! In the ice storm last winter, we went a week without power ... oxygen tanks aren't the same as a Bipap machine to sleep (he spends 12 to 14 hours a day on the bipap)

He got pneumonia just from not having had the machine.

Everytime our lights flash ... my heart sinks.

Wendy said...

Wow - that's tough. Pneumonia from a power failure. Good thing they are on to you now and will get over to you as soon as possible.
Yes, I shudder when the lights blink too. Some fun, ay?