We’re enjoying our leisure time here in Kings Point. Not that we have had a lot of leisure. John’s been going to doctors since he arrived which is helping him have a better understanding of his health condition.

October 26th he had an appointment with his primary care physician who basically said that he’s doing as good as he can expect. He’ll see John again in March or April.

November 2nd, he went to a new pulmonologist at the University of South Florida. He assessed John’s situation and put him on another medicine which is intended to keep his lungs from deteriorating. It may have side effects so we’re holding our breaths.

Wednesday of this week, on the 9th, went to Brandon to meet with his cardiologist. The best part of the past month medically was that he was told that he probably no longer suffers from congestive heart failure so he is now off a couple of his medications. One was lowering his blood pressure to dangerous levels, so he will probably feel more secure when standing up and walking. The low blood pressure was causing him dizziness.

Wednesday he also went to University of South Florida in Tampa for a chest CT scan.

Since June, John had been trying to get a portable oxygen concentrator from his oxygen provider (Lincare). I can’t begin to tell you how much time we spent calling Lincare, evaluating different units on line, and talking with sales people on the phone.

A couple weeks ago Lincare finally delivered a portable concentrator but it was heavy and bulky. After all that waiting, he returned it. That unit wouldn’t work for him. It wasn’t sensitive enough. If he breathed through his mouth, no oxygen was generated.

He had been checking on a unit made by Inogen. He ended up buying one (with our money). It was an expensive purchase but has a 30-day return policy with a “rental” provision. We’ll probably rent it for a month and return it so he can get most of his $$ back. Hopefully he’ll eventually get a similar unit from Lincare (same low weight and other provisions under a different model name. (If Lincare supplies it, Medicare will pay for it.)

The portable concentrator frees him to do a lot more than he can do when hauling heavy, bulky tanks. The concentrator does require batteries that last only about 2 1/2 hours each but he has three of them so he could get by on them for 7 1/2 hours. (With the car battery charger, he can charge while driving.)

The oxygen generator wasn’t the only big item we needed to spend money on this month. When we got down here our golf cart wouldn’t charge. We finally worked with the cart repair places and got it charging but we could see that the batteries weren’t really up-to-snuff, so we shopped for another golf cart. We ended up buying a custom Club Car with a large (fast) engine, a rear seat, fancy side curtains, and all the bells and whistles we felt we’d like.

We took delivery Tuesday. There are a few items that still need to be finished or replaced: side curtains aren’t done (so they put a temporary top with sides on it), seats are the wrong style (we ordered shaped seats, and got regular bench seats) and the pin-stripe/decorating guy hasn’t done the fancy stuff yet to make it even prettier. It has a red body with black trim, black with gray and red strip seats and the side curtains will also be black with gray and red stripes. The top is black. On the cherry red, the black and gold pin stripes, will look great when it all comes together.

On Monday, before we got the new cart, we were driving our old one to town and a lady in her golf cart turned into us. We were totally innocent so she paid for all damages. Since our tie-rod was broken, the cart had to be hauled to the place where we were getting our new one. The old one had $300 damage. I’m sure it’s been fixed and someone is enjoying it. Thank heavens the new one was on order so we could get it quickly.

Let’s see, what fun stuff has happened since we’ve been down here?

We attended the Michigan Club Welcome Back Party and a Baby Boomers Halloween Party. We went to an Oldies but Goodies Dance with a great band, Lattitude. November 4th, I went with about 20 girlfriends to a 75th birthday luncheon for friend, Judy Reintsema.

Three times, we’ve attended country couples hour on Thursdays before Rockin Rendezvous at the clubhouse.

So that’s a review of our past 27 days here in paradise.