The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Only Child Diaries Podcast
The Brochure on Gratitude As A Daily Decision
What do you hold onto when the week unravels—when a hospital discharge turns into a maze of home care, a storm flattens your Halloween decorations, and the cat needs an ER visit at 1 a.m.? I walk through a stretch of days where everything asked for attention at once and explain how I kept moving by choosing a glass half-full approach.
We start with my husband’s recovery plan: two bulging discs, a broken rib, and a team effort that includes a visiting nurse, physical therapy, a wound specialist, and a weekly aide. A standout moment arrives when our PT coaxes a first walk—20 or so steady steps that feel like a miracle. From there, the scene shifts to the front yard, where rain and wind test my Halloween display. An eight-foot headless horseman topples. Inflatables deflate. Lights go dark. I share the hacks that brought it back to life—tarps, patience, and an unglamorous amount of duct tape.
Mid-chaos, my own chest cold demands a slowdown, and then our diabetic cat crashes—vomiting, lethargic, glucose running high—pushing us into the overnight vet grind. IV fluids, anti-nausea meds, a dawn drive home, and a long nap later, he’s eating again and the house relaxes. These aren’t tidy plot lines; they’re the lived lessons of caregiving, pet health, and home logistics. Through it all, I keep returning to gratitude as a daily decision: a way to find small wins, protect energy, and set priorities that actually fit inside a human day. Recent losses in our circle underline the point—time is not guaranteed, and attention is our most powerful tool.
If this resonates—if you’ve juggled caregiving, recovery, or just a week that wouldn’t quit—tune in, ride along, and borrow what helps. Follow the show, leave a review so others can find it, and share this episode with someone who could use a reminder that small wins count.
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Welcome to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life? That you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulthood. Doing so. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries Podcast. Today I'm gonna tell you about my philosophy on the glasses half full. That's right, I'm a glasses half full kind of person, kind of gal. But sometimes it does get to be challenging. Now, this has been a week where it's been challenging. If you're a regular listener and you listened to last week's episode, you know that my husband was in the hospital and he came home and he's home and he's he's recuperating. I guess that's the word that I would use. Um he's got kind of a longer road ahead of him. He has two bulging discs in his back and a broken rib. And we have the visiting nurse coming and also a physical therapist coming to the house during the week. We're also going to have a nursing assistant come once a week uh to help clean him up. And I mean, that's not that's something that I could do for sure. But since it is available as a service that the home health agency provides, I say why not? Because it's one thing that I don't have to do. And I'm grateful for the help. And then we're also gonna have a wound care person coming at some point. I'm not sure when that's gonna be, but um, because he does have a wound, and although it's looking better, uh, we you know it doesn't hurt to have that extra help. So there's that. We also had some well, I can't say severe, not severe, but for us we had uh pretty good rainstorm this week, and there was some wind with it. And now uh I shared the uh a short video on social media with my Halloween decorations, our Halloween decorations. My husband did help me in the beginning of the process before he got injured, and so our front yard, we love to decorate for Halloween. I love to decorate for Halloween, and I just it's so much fun, and we get to interact with the neighbors and the kids love it when they come trick-or-treating. And so the rain is when you have inflatables and you have like decorations and lights and animatronic figures. Rain, especially, is bad, it's just it's stressful because you buy these things and you try to protect them as best you can, at least I do. But nature has its own ideas, and so we have the eight and a half foot headless horseman figure out there, and I had gone out with a plastic tarp and I covered him with that because he has some very sensitive internal electrical parts and with the ribcage, and I mean they're not they're not encased, they're exposed. So I covered him the best I could with the tarp, but then it got very windy, and I had to go back and keep adjusting the tarp. And then it rained, and I thought, okay, well, at least he's he should be okay. And the inflatables, it was so windy that I had to deflate the inflatables. Uh, and one of them, the old dinosaur, the oldest thing that we've had for four years, I came home and he was already flailing. I had gone out to do some errands or something, go to the market, and he was already flailing around. And so there was that um issue. Uh so I deflated the inflatables so they wouldn't get hurt anymore. Then everything got soaked. It was it was terrible. So yeah, the rain really drenched the yard, and it it ended up soaking everything. The lights didn't come on. I mean, the lights are outdoor lights, but if the circuits get wet, if the plugs get wet, they have to dry out first. And so it was pretty dark out there. Uh the first the first dry night, everything had to dry in the sun. And but the the night, the morning after this storm, I woke up and I looked outside and I was horrified, absolutely horrified to look out and see that the horseman, this eight and a half foot statue basically that has a base, had actually turned on its side. It had it had been knocked over by the wind, I guess. I didn't think it was that windy. So and it was all wet, and so everything wasn't covered by the tarp anymore. So, anyway, mostly things are back up. It it took a lot of work. The big dinosaur had a big hole in him, so I temporarily fixed it with duct tape, and I'm gonna have to go back and maybe fix it with a um inflatable repair kit, because they do have those, but I just for now I just he's his hole is off to the side where no one can see it. So I covered it with duct tape. It's gonna be a sticky mess. Anyway, and as if that's not enough. So imagine I'm here taking care of my husband who is in bed. The the physical therapist that came, the PT guy that came, is absolutely wonderful. I mean, you can almost see a halo and angel wings on him because he's so good, he's so smart, and he's so kind, and we're very lucky to have him. Anyway, second day that he came, he actually got my husband up out of bed and walking, and so grateful that Bill didn't have any pain, and I'm not sure exactly why that is, but not complaining, but I'm not trained or strong enough to get him up by myself, so he remains in bed um for now, and he's got exercises to do so that he can maintain some strength, and um, you know, it's gonna be a little slower going. Oh, and here's the other thing. Here's the other part. I got sick. I'm not sure why did I talk about that last week, but I did get sick. Uh, I think I did, because I don't know if I picked it up in the hospital or what happened, or if it was just because I was exhausted from going to the hospital every day, but I did end up with a scratchy throat and nasal congestion. And then it for me, it always goes down into my chest, my bronchial. I have like bronchitis or something. So I just tried to will it to not get too bad. And I started taking cough medicine at night so I could sleep. And for the most part, I think I'm pretty good. I think I've mostly recovered. I still have I'll get like a wild ass tickle in my throat and I'll have to cough, but for the most part, I'm much better, even though I do sound kind of congested right now. So the other night, Friday night, um we're getting ready for bed, and I was trying to get everything in order, and there's a lot to, you know, there's a big punch list of things to get in order to get everybody situated for bed, right? And uh Bubby, our cat, threw up. And that's not an uncommon occurrence, he does throw up occasionally, but something was clearly wrong. Um he looked miserable, he wasn't feeling good, he wasn't interested in eating, which you'll say, well, okay, he threw up. But usually when when Bubs throws up, he is interested in eating again because eating is one of his main hobbies. And so he looked, he just looked miserable. And about this time, it's time for his insulin shot. And I knew that he had been sleeping, he had been napping, and he hadn't eaten, and he hadn't used his litter box, and I started to get worried that he was dehydrated. He, since he wasn't eating, I could I I didn't feel good about giving him this big insulin shot because that could send him into a low blood sugar, and that would be upsetting. And oh, I'm gonna go to sleep, not gonna go to sleep. So I packed him up in his carrier, which is usually a very difficult thing. Usually I need Bill to help me get him in the carrier, and basically he went right in. Uh, we got to the emergency vet hospital, and usually when he goes there, he will meow constantly in the waiting room. Um, he meowed a couple times and then he was just quiet. So I was very concerned. I will say that we got there at 1 a.m. And they had some critical cases. I mean, Bubby wasn't critical, he wasn't injured, and he was alert, so we were kind of moved down the chain, but they did some diagnostics on him and everything checked out, but his glucose was high. So I I don't know. I mean, my bubs is a is a strong cat. He's a he's got a big personality, but you know, he has got he's got diabetes, he's got asthma, he'd been having a lot of asthma episodes recently. He also has um a very sensitive stomach, like his dad, and so I don't know what it was, but he uh he uh got some IV fluids and he got a shot for nausea, and uh we came home and it was we left at 5 30 in the morning, and you know, I used to stay up late, that wasn't a problem. I mean late, late, but um I've been so tired lately and I've been so overwhelmed with life that staying anywhere till 5 30 in the morning was was a lot to ask. So by the time I got him home and settled and I had to do things for Bill because I just rushed right out of the house, I got to sleep around 6.30 in the morning, and then I woke up and I I woke up at 10.30, I think, and I wanted to check on him, and he was eating, so he was good. I went back to sleep till 12:30. So needless to say, that next day was I was pretty out of it. Uh and I'm I'm not as young as I used to be. I hate to say it that way, but it's true. But, you know, all things considered, I just try to focus on the positives that my Halloween decorations are up. I try not to think about the fact that I'm gonna have to take them down soon and pack them back in the garage. It's gonna be a lot of work for one person. Uh and uh, you know, I'm feeling mostly good, and the weather is mostly good, and my cat is I love my cat so much. I love my dog too, but I love my cat. And my husband is slowly on the road to recovery. So uh I am still very grateful for every day. I I still believe that every day is a gift. I know that it would be easy to be depressed about everything that happens to me. Uh, but I also know that well, I'll I'll just say it that there's several people that I know of that have been maybe they're not close personal friends, but they're people that uh I've known, maybe they're um relatives of people that I've known pretty well, or people that I worked with that I haven't seen in a while, or um maybe there maybe is that one degree of separation or a half degree of separation? People that I've known, people that I've talked to, or maybe it's been a while since I've talked to them. Three people in the last what is it, three months, two months, that have died in their sleep. The youngest one was 54, which is pretty young, uh, younger than me. Uh I'm very grateful, even though Bill is is really having a tough time of it. I'm really grateful when I look at somebody like Ace Freley from the band KISS, who died, he fell in the I guess in a recording studio. He fell, hit his head, ended up with a brain bleed, and they took him off life support. And all because of a fall. So uh I still choose, I still make an active choice almost every day to look on the bright side and to look at the glass, have full side, and to be grateful for what I have because I know that it could always be so much worse. Always. I will leave you with that. Next week, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on. And consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, Only Child Diaries, or Facebook, Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallis, and these are the Only Child Diaries.
