Category: science kits

07:40 – I’m going to have to have a talk with the management at Brian Center. Barbara and Frances are very upset because the clothes they take over there for their dad keep disappearing and he ends up wearing donated clothes from their common supply. I know what’s going on. Dutch needs to be changed frequently, so they put on whatever they have available and send the dirty clothes to their own industrial laundry. If some of Dutch’s clothes are in the batch, they end up mixed in with all the others and instead of being returned to Dutch they end up in the common pile and distributed to other patients in the facility. But I understand why Barbara and Frances are upset; they keep buying new clothes for their dad, and those clothes keep disappearing. So I’m going to tell management that, although we appreciate them providing additional clothes for Dutch as needed, we really want them to put all the dirty clothes in plastic bags that we provide and leaving them for us to collect and launder.

Our stock of biology kits is getting perilously low. Barbara labeled a bunch of containers yesterday, so today I’ll work on filling those. Once I finish that, I’ll start making up subassemblies for 90 more biology kits.

09:41 – Barbara’s mom seems to be doing pretty well. Last night was the first she’d spent alone since she got out of the hospital. Barbara and Frances are arranging to have someone come in for a couple hours three or four times a week to help her with laundry, cleaning, and so on. But they’ve made it completely clear to Sankie that she’s going to have to make it on her own. No more having someone with her 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, Dutch isn’t doing well at all. I cringe every time the phone rings.

We’re hoping that today will be a relatively ordinary day. Barbara is out cutting the grass right now, and I’m doing laundry. She’s going to go over to visit her dad this afternoon. I’ll go with her if she wants me to. Visiting Dutch isn’t easy for me and of course is even harder for Barbara. The last two or three days when I visited, he just sat there unresponsive most of the time. When he did speak, I couldn’t understand most of what he said and I got no sense that he understood anything I said. Frances and Sankie visited Dutch last night. Barbara talked later to Frances, who said that Dutch was so deeply asleep when they arrived that they couldn’t wake him. When they did, he was talking nonsense for a while, but he did eventually start talking and acting normally for a while at least. I told Barbara that that reminded me of my father toward the end. He was generally non-responsive, but when my brother drove over from Raleigh to visit, my dad would intentionally try to act and speak normally and would tell my brother that he was fine. As soon as my brother left, my dad would immediately drop back into his non-responsive state. Dutch is behaving the same way, telling people that he’s not ill and that he’s going to get his strength back and return to live with Sankie at Creekside. Obviously, that’s not going to happen, but I think Dutch actually believes it will.

13:50 – Barbara is out running errands and visiting her dad. I’m finishing up the laundry, printing container labels, and putting together purchase orders.

We’re down to about 4,000 bottles in stock. With about 1,800, we’re in good shape on the 30 mL wide-mouth pharma packers, because we don’t use them in large numbers. Depending on the mix of kits, 1,800 is enough for something in the range of 350 to 600 kits. We also have 1,000 or so of the 30 mL amber glass bottles on hand, which again we use in relative small numbers. But we have only 1,100 of the 15 mL PE bottles, which we use in very large numbers, and we’re completely out of the 30 mL PE bottles, which we use in numbers about half as large as the 15 mL ones. So I’m cutting a PO for 4,400 more of the 15 mL and 3,000 of the 30 mL, along with caps for them.

It’s time to stop screwing around with making up only enough for 30 or 60 sets of chemicals or small parts bags. Other than chemicals with relatively short expiration dates (such as the Kastle-Meyer reagent in the forensics kits), we’re going to start making up stuff in batches sufficient for 90 to 180 kits at a crack.

That also means I’m using some different suppliers. For example, until now, I’ve been buying multiple bottles of methylene blue stain from one of our regular suppliers. That vendor carries only 10 g bottles, which is sufficient to make up one liter per bottle of stain powder. So this time I’m going with a vendor that carries methylene blue stain in 100 g bottles. That’s sufficient for 10 liters, or 667 kits’ worth. I may make up only four liters at a time, but at least I won’t have to keep track of how many small bottles of the stain I have on hand.

08:09 – Barbara just left for work. She’s staying with her mom tonight, so Colin and I are on our own. She and Frances have emphasized to their mom that she absolutely, positively has to be able to get along on her own at the apartment, because they can’t continue keeping her company 24×7. Tonight is Barbara’s last night over there. Frances may or may not stay with Sankie tomorrow night. But, one way or another, Sankie has to be able to deal with living on her own, or the only alternative will be to transfer her to an assisted-living facility.

Barbara’s dad is not doing well. We stopped over to see him late yesterday afternoon to take him some more clothes. He was asleep when we got there, and Barbara wasn’t able to wake him, despite touching him and speaking loudly to him. Dutch had been to visit the doctor earlier that day, and the doctor told them it was time to have him transferred to Hospice. The problem is, Dutch doesn’t believe he’s ill. To add to the congestive heart failure and kidney failure, he now has a UTI.

Meanwhile, kit sales are booming. We shipped six kits yesterday, and are averaging just over three kits per day for the last week. Our stock of finished kits is dwindling. We’re down to under a hundred kits of all types in stock, so it’s time for me to start issuing purchase orders for more components. If I have time this afternoon, I’ll start filling more bottles and making up some chemicals.

09:33 – Barbara’s mom is being discharged from the hospital today. She and Frances are going to get her back to the apartment at Creekside, but Sankie really isn’t ready to be on her own yet. Frances will stay with Sankie overnight tonight, and not leave tomorrow morning until the person they’ve hired to sit with Sankie during the day arrives. Barbara will head over there after work to relieve that person and stay with her mom Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, until someone arrives to relieve her. Then Frances will take Wednesday night, and so on, until Barbara and Frances are satisfied that Sankie will be okay on her own. It’s a question of physical rather than mental issues. Sankie is doing fine mentally, and wants to be back at home in the apartment, but she’s still extremely weak and terrified of falling. Barbara and Frances are taking her by the medical supply place on the way home to get her a walker, which should help a lot. I also encouraged Barbara to look into lift chairs while they were there. A lift chair is an immense help to someone in Sankie’s condition.

Meanwhile, with Barbara and Frances both fully occupied taking care of their mom, I’ll be visiting their dad in the Brian Center nursing home. Barbara visited him yesterday and said that he pretty much completely ignored her. He wouldn’t speak to her. This is nothing new. Dutch for the last couple of weeks has been very short with Barbara and Frances. I suspect he blames them for being in the hospital and then the nursing home, rather than back at the apartment where he really wants to be. Unfortunately, I think that’s very unlikely to happen. It’ll surprise me if Dutch ever recovers enough to move downstairs to the assisted-living floor at Brian Center, let alone moving back to the apartment. And Sankie really doesn’t want Dutch at the apartment. She can’t take care of him and she knows that, and she’s terrified that he’ll drop dead before her eyes.

Science kits continue to sell well. We’ve already shipped three today, and sales for this month are on track to be three to four times sales in May 2012. Until now, we’ve been building kits in batches of 30, but I think we’ll ramp that up to batches of 60.

09:13 – We’re in reasonably good shape with regard to finished-goods inventory on our current science kits, with 70 or 80 assorted ones in stock. Over the next couple days, I’ll make up 30 sets of chemical bags and small parts bags for the LK01 Life Science kits. This weekend we’ll build the shipping boxes and assemble 30 LK01 kits to be ready to start shipping them Monday.

With both parents still in the hospital, Barbara and Frances are still waiting to find out when they’ll be discharged, and where they’ll be discharged to. It’s pretty clear that Dutch will have to be discharged to a nursing home, but there’s no way to know which one because it all depends on which nursing homes have a bed available at the time he’s discharged. We’re hoping that Sankie will be well enough to return to their apartment at Creekside, but we won’t know that for sure until she’s ready to be discharged.