Truss Bridge Top Truss
As I had mentioned in previous blog entries, although adding the truss plates and bolt detail made a significant difference in bridge detail, this morning I worked on the top truss to add even more detail. More detail is always better!
Oh yeah... and yesterday, I managed to mix more paint and repaint the entire bridge. Well... I still need to paint the wood I added for the top truss but I have the rest of the bridge painted in the new color.
This color is difficult to see indoors but it is a medium to dark charcoal with a slight green tint. Under indoor light, this color appears rather bluish but it does appear green under sunlight.
So now the bridge is in only three major parts... each side truss and the top truss placed down on top of the two side trusses. This means that each part is flat which makes storage much easier. I don't plan to leave this bridge outdoors. I only set it up in place when I plan to run some trains. I still need to decide how I'm going to handle the few buildings I am going to make for this little railroad... leave them outside or design them so they are easy to store indoors.
After I paint the new bare wood on this top truss, then I can start weathering... again. I'm going to go exceptionally light on the weathering this time. I think the only places I'm going to add some rust primarily is on the new brass truss plates. All the edges of the bridge will be dry brushed with a lighter shade approaching white giving it the appearance of metal. Highlighting edges is always effective at making other materials (plastic, wood) to appear as though they are metal.
The end is in sight!
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EDIT - Later in the afternoon: When I went outside to put the table saw back in the shed after cutting all the wood for this top truss of the truss bridge, I started to get light-headed. I knew this far too familiar feeling was bad news and, by the time I stumbled inside the house (a bit too literally), my vision was narrowing with sparkles in my eyes and I was very weak, hot, nauseated, and shaky. I needed my epinephrine as quickly as possible because these are signs of impending doom... anaphylaxis.
After administering epinephrine three times, I noticed my heartrate increasing... my vision was ever so slowly improving... and, fortunately, my blood pressure moved up to a safe range. My O2 saturation was good at around 97% so that was good. These anaphylaxic episodes are brutal though and take a lot out of me.
I was feeling pretty good yesterday, overall, but I was still experiencing far too many breathing issues especially while in bed in the middle of the night. I should have realized that my mast cell burden was slowly increasing but, of course, I did not. Well, I did notice but, unfortunately, I never did anything about it to counter my slowly cascading health. I think that I think "this will pass" and "it will resolve itself" but it never does. Or, maybe because my everyday health is so poor that the poor health has become my new normal... if things are "normal" then I subconsciously feel I shouldn't need extra medications nor emergency medications.
Another problem that may have triggered this morning's life-threatening episode is that I didn't sleep at all last night... not a single bit. I was freezing and, unfortunately, the three heat zones on my side of the bed were not working due to dead batteries in the controller so I could not fall asleep. I was exhausted but I was too cold and too uncomfortable to fall asleep. This, too, puts stress on my health and mast cells. Also, I didn't eat enough breakfast so, by the time my health cascaded into anaphylaxis, I was starving and this is too much of a stressor for my health. This happens so often that perhaps I should call hunger a trigger.
For some reason, my worst breathing tends to be in the 3-4am range no matter where I sleep and this happened again last night even though I never did fall asleep. Even if we are away at a hotel, I still have this same problem during this 3-4am hour. This cyclic breathing problem was worsening this past week even though I had been throwing more Albuterol at the problem each day. This is a weird steady cycle of breathing issues. (For those thinking this sounds like an allergy, we also had switched to hypo-allergenic laundry detergent for washing the sheets but that made no difference so it is not an allergy. Plus, this same thing happens when we are staying overnight in a hotel... different hotels, different homes... yet the 3-4am breathing problems still exist.) This particular cyclic problem started during my first bout of COVID in 2020 and it has not resolved itself.
After all the epinephrine today, I then took my lunchtime dose of medications as well as some emergency medications. Well, I took a lot of emergency medications and I also increased some of my normal doses. Within a few minutes (a half hour or so?), I was feeling a bit more stable. I still feel miserable but I feel fairly stable... for now. I suspect I'm going to need more emergency medications.
As I said, I still feel like crap.
Uggg... and I just remembered that we need to head up to the hospital tomorrow morning for some additional tests that my insurance company finally agreed to allow. We discussed this new testing during my last oncology visit on August 2nd and it was just approved by my insurance company last week... after an initial disapproval which prompted an appeal by my oncologist. The healthcare system really is screwed up in this country... so much so that it is my only source of frustration in life. I should have been in the hospital for this testing way back in August but, instead, we had to fight for this testing for two months. This frustration caused by the US healthcare system has a significant negative impact on my overall health.
Hopefully I'll feel considerably better in the morning for our drive up to Burlington and the testing...
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