Friday, July 28, 2017

Internist still working my case.


One test was redone for an infection that is causing a higher leukocytes count and so it was suggested that the nephrologist should look at it, okay... and it came back still abnormal, nothing to do with my stage three renal failure that is definitely diagnosed, but this has to do with the possibility of that infection. And the internist believes that it is caused by my chronic problem from the Multiple Sclerosis.
All communication is through the medical patient portal where I also have access to test results and to message the doctor as well.
And Dr. Nord, internist, does seem to want to help.
Flummoxed once more.

Moving on...

Tonight we did something we hadn't done in quite some time we had a pizza for dinner.
We ordered from a different pizzeria that we hadn't for quite awhile.
The name of the pizza place... are you ready....? Best Pizza!
We ordered a large thin crust plain, normally $12.99 and a small antipasto, but they have a discount for carry-out that was a nice surprise, which Hubby does anyway i.e. carry-out, and that large pie was only $5.99, total bill $11.99 including the small antipasto! And they were good.

I heat up my own toppings that I just like and Hubby doesn't want, and they were mushrooms, onions, spinach, and one breakfast turkey sausage link cut up small, all mentioned goes on half the pie, but I ate only two slices of mine, and Hubby ate all four of his, the whole other half, plus some antipasto. I had just a little antipasto, no meat, just a few veggies.
Most of what I heated up for the pie was vegetables for my side anyway.

I Googled the diet restrictions for CKD, chronic kidney disease, and it seems that less dairy, and lesser amounts of meat proteins, more veggies and fruits/ berries. I can live with that, but still need more specifics.

Today, Hubby and I combined that pineapple with the mango both grown in our own backyard; we  peeled and cut them up into small pieces and put all into a container with water and froze in our freezer, duh, and once partially frozen I then put them into our blender with more ice, vanilla and honey and pulsed them until they were the consistency of a slushy and put them back into the container into the freezer to access when I so desire as a healthy dessert sherbet!
I did sample a little bit and it did taste very good!

Below is our very first indoor experimental pineapple tree, wish us luck!
The top is from the one we cut up today like we have done previously with all our outdoor ones, but never before indoors.

I had suggested to a friend that moved out of state and who also enjoyed growing his own pineapples when living in Florida, but now lives in Colorado to try to see if they could grow them indoors? Well, I have no idea if he has, but I decided to try just because anyway. Hubby could always take it outside if it all goes terribly awry, and looks like it is going to not survive. Its amazing how many plants that do not do well in our very dry inside due to air-conditioning running all of the time, and you take the needy for humidity plant outdoors and wow it is revived!
So this a test, a harmless test. I could mist it, but unless natural too much or too little cannot help, rots with too much or gets moldy, and too little it will still keel over... notice I do not like to use the word, "dies" for any living thing, squeamish I suppose, nah I guess I just have that issue with plants, how odd. On this latest interesting idea, allow me to be the very first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share all those overages with you know whom and we will too!
 
And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Thursday, July 27, 2017

On the brighter side...

Our lawn filled in very nicely in this our rainy season.
Hubby gave one of our many Pinkie (All oddly enough named "Pinkie".) Flamingoes a refresh; one of the two metal ones, this time with Krylon spray paint. So pretty when in the pink! Sadly the last painting was just this past April, meaning the exterior paintings seemingly not to last as long as one would hope. As you can see he is a standing sentinel over our canal dock. The other metal one we determined color's stays brighter longer due to its location in the shaded garden. Strong sun here even in the rainy season!
 
Moving on...
 
 
OH Dear! Interesting afternoon: Spoke with my chronic care nurse Debbie, and she gave me the name of a local nephrologist with a very good background check and only a mile from my house. So I called and they still insisted they needed the doctor's referral even with me on a PPO not an HMO. So I called Debbie back and she said that she would contact Dr. Nord to send the referral...Next I get a call from Dr. Nord telling me that I have had stage three kidney failure since last August and that she had told me, but since I have everything under control that I was stable so nothing needed to be done! I said I did not recall her telling me, and if so I would still like a second opinion and maybe I can also help myself to reverse the problem with early intervention and diet! I definitely did not recall her telling me until yesterday and that something like that I would absolutely remember. She said all the nephrologist is going to do is have me come back every three months to check on me and since I am stable it is a waste of time, not those words verbatim, but the sentiments implied. I said most specialists have you coming back every six months now. I should know I see enough of them, and no I did not say that to her. In the interim I looked into my medical portal that holds all my test results since I have been seeing her. My January tests did show that the same blood work indicated that the stage three renal failure existed then, but when I went to look for last summer's actually July not August, all that was there was January, February and March of 2016 the rest of the year was gone! Odd since all tests for more than five years that I have been seeing here were all still there, hmm? I happened  to come across my pre-op September blood work from Dr. Chabli, the bariatric surgeon and those two tests were within the normal range as of last September!
I smell a BIG problem. I also read about the proper diet for chronic kidney disease is a low protein one and other lower things like potassium and phosphorus, but the protein caught my eyes, since after and prior to Bariatric Surgery you are placed on a HIGH PROTEIN DIET!  So in reality if I was diagnosed with stage three kidney disease in August of 2016, which I was not but she said that I was then my surgery that required that special diet of mega doses of protein literally could have killed me, at the very least have me in end stage 5 kidney disease!
In a way getting my rash and needing to go on IV Steroids again may have saved me, the protein drinks were causing vomiting the whole thing was a BIG mistake!
As near as I can see is that since January I have had this and that is about the same time all my other problems got worse, my bulging discs, stenosis, rashes, and then exacerbation of the Multiple Sclerosis, changing my eating habits to not exactly what I had been told by the bariatric doctor, higher protein that I could not tolerate!
 So far the nephrologists office has not called back, but originally I was told it might take until Monday, so I will wait. Meanwhile, many have told me it is time to move on from my internist, and I suppose I will. This reminds me before I went to see my pulmonologist, my asthma was thought at first to be emphysema that she was not concerned about either. Not only did I need daily medication that stopped my many respiratory infections; I received an emergency inhaler too! Thankfully no emphysema, allergic asthma, now under control! Due to me not her, squeaky wheel and self advocate, and this kidney issue is the same thing... Any-who, I am not a victim and I will always want to do whatever it takes to be as healthy as I can be in spite of all my ailments! Ta DA!

On this note of trying to keep on keep on...going... allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to share those blessings and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear! 

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

In spite of...

What my doctor says I AM NOT A DIABETIC!
Now she is also intimating that I have third stage renal failure due to the type two diabetes that I do not have!
My A1c is 5.7 and that is barely a pre-diabetic!
Maybe it is time for a new doctor.
Oh, get this a stage three renal failure is not really bad at all, according to her it is the best, lowest, huh?
Not what I just read, it is very, very bad!

I need to see a nephrologist!

http://www.nationalkidneycenter.org/chronic-kidney-disease/stages/stages-3-to-4/

Not good at all!

Scared.

TTYL
Good night.
 

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Mini outing consisting of getting my hair coiffed and a tiny wild shopping spree!

 Boy, what an exaggeration!
Okay, here is what actually transpired, if I must come clean...
I had a 10:30 A.M. appointment to get my hair cut at Fantastic Sam's for seniors haircut pricing they went up two bucks during the week, Oy Vey, from twelve to now fourteen, still a bargain, hmm?
Any-who, my appointment was with Bonney, yep that is how she spells it, who did my hair last time in May on the twentieth.
Oh now we all know my memory isn't that great I had found the receipt in my purse.
Honesty here.
Anyway, my bangs were for the second time in the last month getting into my eyes, so that is why I decided to go today.
I did trim my bangs once, but not so easy these days with my right hand hurting so much, and me being a righty.
There was a time where I used to cut all the boys hair that is Hubby's and our sons, but these days I wouldn't trust me with the electric hair trimmers!
Too shaky.
So, I had my haircut and even with the tip still under twenty bucks, two under, and I looked human once again and NOT depressed! Last thing you want to look when you have a doctor's appointment looming.
So many of us with chronic ills need to pamper ourselves as often as we can to feel better about ourselves, look good feel good, hmm? Even without illness, feeling good is right for all of us.

From there we went over to Tuesday Morning in the same Promenade's Mall, and that's where just looking took a turn for Geez they have some stuff I need and a few items that we just wanted?
That's my story and I am sticking to it!
I have in my recent past been somewhat of a collector of old Florida iconic styling... translation Flamingoes, and we do have a small collection to date of nine, we had ten, but one either blew away or was stolen.
And so when I saw that the new renewed symbol of this fine water seabird had been turned into an attractive and useful piece of pool accessory and I saw it had gone down in price by twenty bucks Hubby and I decided to add it into our collection as its centerpiece, although only two are displayed daily the other seven sleep in the shed and come out only for special occasions!
Here she is the mother of all waterfowls, PRINCESS PINKIE!
Quite impressive and rather magnificent I should say!

 Less in volume but attractive to say the least is our new tissue box, the old one was white wicker and about forty years old, it had fallen into pieces! I like this new one, it prevents the matchy, matchy look I seem to on occasion fall into. Although, the white bathroom does have a seashell theme and this addition maintains that!
Well second to last is Gus's second Monkey toy, actually his third, but the first is ripped to shreds and hidden I believe in the garage knowing Hubby, he, Gus, loves Monkeys! And he has been a bit of a gloomy Gus these days and so we got him a toy to cheer him up and he does love it!


   Below are four of the six new washcloths I also went wild in purchasing! As you can see they are the perfect size to harbor the soft ice/heat packs that Shared Solutions  from TEVA who makes my Copaxone sends to me as often as I ask for them! I use four lately one on each thigh, yep righty got jealous I think and now is twisting torqueing burning too, one behind the neck for headaches and keeping me cool even inside with the air on and the paddle fan above me, and the fourth for my right hand once I stop typing here. The lower picture is the ice packs closed into the washcloths, my previous ones were not uniform in size that some were too big and some were too small or holey needing to be tossed! Now these are just right, six for $4.99.( I washed them all before I used them.) same price as Monkey, and the tissue box was $6.99, and our biggest purchase, super Flamingo Princess Pinkie Gal was $29.99, all others priced her at $49.99, so she was on sale! She is a float with handles on either side of her neck, so as soon as I get the okay I will be trying her out! Otherwise, she is a nice decorative touch to our backyard display, okey dokey? After Tuesday Morning's we went over to Winn Dixie in the same shopping center and picked up some vitamins and pretzels, yup that was it, odd items but yeah that was all from there.

 
On this note allow me to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly share all those blessings and we will too!
 And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Monday, July 24, 2017

Chilling

All I accomplished today was to make a frittata for breakfast that Hubby loved and devoured after he already mowed our lawn, then I made homemade spilt pea soup with homemade croutons for lunch another of his favorites, a few bowls of that too for him... therefore leftovers were for dinner; this time ribs, two for me and three for he, Hubby that is, with still two more left, mashed potatoes and the last of the fresh asparagus.
I did experiment with making brownies from scratch with chocolate pudding and marshmallows and using cocoa, flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, an egg and a quarter stick of butter sliced into it with splashes of milk, but my not measuring method and missing something made it taste not quite right... I did not add sugar due to the pudding having it as well as the cocoa, and that could be it, so maybe it did need a bit more and that made the fail that I have nibbled at, but I have considered tossing; now looking probable. Sometimes I get lucky and it does work, i.e. my concoctions, from my forty plus years of cooking and eyeballing ingredients, ya know? And then sometimes...oh well!
We eat well even when at home though.

Many might think it odd to make soup in the heat, first of all we have central air-conditioning, secondly Hubby's Grandmother used to say eat hot in the heat and cold in the cold, well maybe not the cold in cold, but hot in the heat does seem to ring true.
Although, since we aren't really in the heat being indoors in nice cool air-conditioning we don't actually know for sure that it works, ya know?
The weather guy Vanilla Ice, nah, but his name is Robert Van Winkle was again saying the feel like temperature was in the triples digits, yep his name is the same as the rapper's real name as our meteorologist's, but not the same guy!
The rapper does also live in Florida, but on the east coast, in the Miami area and has a DIY TV show over there, flipping homes!

Moving on...

 This just in: Hubby brought it in from our backyard!
One of our pineapples, a mini one but ripe enough to come in, another homegrown product, yep from our backyard, to think that it all started years ago from the top of one bought at our local Sam's Club!
We now have about a dozen plants!
Just like my avocado tree from a pit and my mango tree also from a pit and Hubby's lemon tree from a seed too!

 Moving on again...

Even though I was a bit energetic with my cooking today I have been iced and medicated and paced myself accordingly.

Oddities happened today again to me on Copaxone shot day, been on this medication for seven years and the last two injections were beyond weird.
Today was the tummy location for the shot and as I do without feeling it I stare at it going in the right spot and the auto ject that I have been using all these years, with new ones sent periodically none have done this wicked trick, I stick the shot in and count down to ten or twenty while held in and then remove it and out shoots the medication again, that had not gone into me!
This time missing my eyes, but leaving the site bloody!
Weird, just plain weird.
So I have a nurse from Shared Solutions coming next week to figure out the problem, in the interim they did send me a new auto ject. 
This is what I have been talking about:
It comes apart and the shot goes into it, same as for the last seven years, only recently having this problem, strange.

Oh well, the nurse should be able to figure it out.

On that note allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and share those blessings and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!


 

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Hubby was very busy this morning and me on the other hand...

...not so much.
Good that I got that sentence come out right since lately my words are screwing up in my head like busy for dizzy, surgical for cervical and so many more, some even appeared here, please forgive.
And also that forgetting in between words too. Just caught me short in the first sentence I wrote here, forgetting, I had forgotten to write, "come out".
Those bleeps or perhaps minuscule glitches in my brain waves can be due to many short circuits or lesions in my brain caused by the Multiple sclerosis as well as ischemia.
In actuality it is amazing that I can still put two sentences or is that two words together to write a cognitive thought or imagine a thought processes here for coherency, or maybe I don't and you are all too polite to say anything?

That busy/dizzy thingy happened when talking out loud, frightening!
But when you look it up, as we all do, or maybe many of us do it comes back as either the beginning of Alzheimer's or a stroke!
Both significantly in the family.
Believe me who needs more ills than what I already have.
I rather stick to what should could be the reasoning my existing problems.
Although...nah... I am not gonna go there tonight, I have a six month internist appointment this week, and I will mention it to her. Just these last two sentences I added an 'e' to the end of the word "mention", and left out the word "do" in the second sentence down in , "as we all do".
The leaving out words thing I have not heard if anyone else does that or what would cause that, except in my staccato brain burps?
Who knows?
Seriously, who knows, I would like to know, truly?
Considering that Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease which means having to do with the nerves, the sheath covering them inflaming and, better yet:

"Multiple sclerosis (MS) involves an immune-mediated process in which an abnormal response of the body’s immune system is directed against the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. The exact antigen — or target that the immune cells are sensitized to attack — remains unknown, which is why MS is considered by many experts to be "immune-mediated" rather than "autoimmune."
  • Within the CNS, the immune system attacks myelin — the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates the nerve fibers — as well as the nerve fibers themselves.
  • The damaged myelin forms scar tissue (sclerosis), which gives the disease its name.
  • When any part of the myelin sheath or nerve fiber is damaged or destroyed, nerve impulses traveling to and from the brain and spinal cord are distorted or interrupted, producing a wide variety of symptoms.
  • The disease is thought to be triggered in a genetically susceptible individual by a combination of one or more environmental factors.
  • People with MS typically experience one of four disease courses, which can be mild, moderate or severe.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

I had enough!

Staying in that is.
Sure being indoors for two whole days doesn't qualify a person to call it true cabin fever, or does it?
I heard from a second cousin by landline earlier today, consequently right after I sent him our landline number, amazing!
It turns out that he is the son of my uncle's daughter, my Dad's younger brother, so I think he is a legitimate second cousin since his mom was my first?
You see, he was closer in age to me than his Mom was he is only five years younger than me.
My father was forty-three when I was born and my Mom was thirty-nine.
So many of my first cousins from his siblings were twenty years older than me.
He is the father of the young woman graphic designer that contacted me on ancestry.com.
Any-who, we had a nice chat and I realized that I wasn't in too much pain since by then I already had two doses of the Gabapentin in me.
My next step was ask Hubby if he wanted to go pick up that new front light that the mud daubers destroyed and a new pole saw for trimming our palms; we also needed a new pool thermometer as well as ph up, and so off to the Home Depot we went!
Nice to get out to anywhere!
They had the Fiskars brand for the pole saw and Hubby grabbed the fourteen footer, long enough for our trees with his additional  nearly six foot height and longer reach, just about fifty bucks.
His old one that broke was over forty years old.
Then we looked at the outdoor lighting and considered going in a different direction, more nautical being on the water and all, but in the end we bought the same one we had bought nearly two decades ago, around twelve bucks.
I had remembered I had looked at brass and fancy ones and even bought one but it looked wrong it was way too big and so the one we had and the one we bought we know looks just right!
Hubby wanted to after check the prices at Lowes and so we did.
They had a very similar one in the pole saw that was ten bucks cheaper but neither one of us recognized the brand and so we decided we would keep the Fiskars from Home Depot.
Same with the light only a dollar more but ours was a brand we recognized Hampton Bay, theirs was not, and this time the dollar was in our favor.
Then on to Winn Dixie for hot food dinner choices, Hubby chose a chicken pot pie and we both chose their ribs and I picked up two sweet potatoes from their produce, we share one.
And asparagus we still had four portions at home and so we picked up a few more items we were out of and went home!
It was after five and so we prepared the sweet potato in the microwave for six minutes and then the asparagus went in for three all done, ready for dinner!

That is why this is later tonight.

Have a happy good night, share those blessings and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear!

Hope you found a way to beat the heat or rain storms and survive all those horrid fires, love to all, be safe and find fun!
 

  

Speaking My Mind: Interesting familiar diagnosis for one and horrifi...

Speaking My Mind: Interesting familiar diagnosis for one and horrifi... :   But these are MINE! Not Hubby's! What he has is not contagio...