General

Cataract Surgery Was A Success!

The weather the day before surgery was beautiful–the flowers and trees are starting to bloom here in in southwest Alabama, so I was hoping it would be a good day for driving to Birmingham the next day. But, that was not to be. We got up at 4:00 a.m. to the sound of a ferocious thunder storm. Luckily, it was heading east ahead of us, so we didn’t actually have to drive in it, but the roads were wet and the sky overcast:

We arrived at the VA Medical Center in Birmingham at 7:00 a.m., a little early for our appointment. They took FabGrandpa in and got him into his hospital gown and prepped for the surgery. They didn’t take him up to the OR until about 9:00. It didn’t take long for the operation at all. He was out of surgery and back in the recovery area by noon. They called me and asked me to come down to where he was, and when I arrived he was sitting there eating a sandwich, smiling really big and joking with the nurses.

After he got dressed, we had to go over to the Eye Clinic for the to check his eye before we left to come home. When we were ready to leave, they gave him an OH! So sexy pair of shades to wear home:

We were back on the road home by 2:00 p.m. He has to go back in a week for his post op check-up. This morning, he was already telling me how much better he can see out of that eye. And he was really surprised at how much this whole process did NOT hurt, and how easy it has been.

By the time we got on the road home, the weather had cleared up and the day was gorgeous:

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This And That And Then Some More…

Karen · 9 Comments

I feel like I have been neglecting my duties as a blogger all winter. Yes, I have been doing lots of things behind the scenes here, but I haven’t been as chatty or as informative as I usually am. Like, last winter I posted lots of pics of places we went and told all about things we did and who we saw and met and stuff like that. I did the weekly budget thing and posted menus and recipes and all that kind of stuff.

But this winter, we really haven’t gone anywhere or done anything exciting. It seems like all we have done is go to doctor appointments, either for me or for FabGrandpa, and I really don’t think those kinds of trips are real interesting or exciting–more like boring and bleh! And though I haven’t really been sick, I have not been feeling well. It could be because of all the rain and the very cold weather, but my joints and bones have been hurting a lot. So, yesterday I went to the doctor for the second time in ten years.

But the trip to the doctor for me yesterday got me thinking, and the thinking kept me awake half the night, and so now I have to write out all that stuff I thought about.

I know I told you about that little catfish restaurant down the road, which has become our favorite spot–we eat there about four times a week, and have come to know the people who work there really well. One of the waitresses there, Anne, told us about her husband. He had a heart attack and then he had to have stents put in, and because he has had a kidney transplant, the hospital in Tuscaloosa refused to do the stent surgery. I had never heard of a hospital refusing care, but that is another story.(He did get the stints done, in Birmingham)

In the course of talking about Anne’s husband, I asked her how old he was. I was thinking he was maybe in his 70’s or older, because of all the problems he was having, so when she told me he was 62 I was really surprised. I asked her how he had come to need a kidney transplant, and that was the biggest surprise of all! She said they used to live in Indiana. One day, her husband was working underneath the house, and when he came out from under the house, his leg was itching. He went inside and dropped his pants, and found that he had been bitten 11 times by what they later learned were brown recluse spiders!!!

He spent something like three months in the hospital, and nearly lost both legs, but eventually he recovered. But, the venom from those spider bites killed his kidneys, and damaged his heart. He was written up in the local newspapers in Indiana because it was unheard of for anyone to survive being bitten so many times by those spiders.

And, the reason I was thinking about that, is because one day when I was about 12 years old, I was playing on the side of a lake in the woods with some of my friends, and I stepped on a yellow jacket’s nest in the ground. I was stung about sixty times on my legs. I ran home as fast as I could, and my mother took me to the emergency room, where I got shots–probably of benadryl or epenephrine. I went home and slept for two days. I remember my legs being swollen to two times their size and being so sick from those stings.

And I am now wondering if being stung that many times all at once could possibly be the cause of me having auto-immune disorders like celiac disease, type II diabetes, and now, maybe rheumatoid arthritis. This line of thinking started after my visit to the doctor yesterday, when he told me he is testing me for rheumatoid arthritis (among other things he talked about). Since they don’t really know what triggers something like that, isn’t it possible that that yellow jacket incident all those years ago could have something to do with it?

One of the questions the doctor asked me yesterday was “How long has this been going on?” Well, that is hard to answer. The big pain, the reason I was there yesterday, has been going on “this time” for a couple of months. I am to the point where if I try to lift a bowl up to put it away after washing the dishes, I have excruiating pain in my arm from my elbow to my wrist. If I try to open the door of the truck to get in or out, I have excruiating pain in my elbow. If I try to turn from one position to another when lying in bed, I have excruiating pain in my hips. It takes a bit to get up and get moving. And for me to actually go to a doctor, when I have to pay every penny out of my own pocket because I have no insurance, well, that right there might be an indication that I am really really in pain. Because I am stingy with my money, you know.

But how long has it been going on? That was another thing that kept me awake last night. I can remember in the 1980’s, when I was in my thirties, if I spent an afternoon working in my flower garden, my hands would hurt for days afterwards. Aching liking a toothache, and nothing I did would stop the pain. But, I loved gardening so much I was willing to do the trade off. In my forties, I had to wear those carpal tunnel splints on both hands at night if I did much typing at work during the day. I can remember driving home from work, on I-285, using the sides of my arms to steer the car, because griping the steering wheel of the car hurt my hands too much. It was unbearable at times, but you know how it is, a woman has to work to feed her family, and if you told people that you were in such pain they looked at you like you were an idiot because, well, you were young and all. So, is all that related to what I am experiencing now? And last year, the famous palpable mass incident, which improved when I was prescribed the anti-inflamatories and pain relievers, maybe the exercises that doctor didn’t do anything. Maybe it was the medicine that stopped the pain after all.

And I wonder, if I get pain like this all over my body now just from living day to day, what is my life going to be like in the future? How am I going to cope with this? I don’t want to be drugged all the time. Because yesterday, I got two shots, one in each hip. A steroid in one hip, and a pain med in the other. And I felt good yesterday and still feel good today. I have a prescription for an anti-inflamation drug in my purse that we are going to get filled today. But I can’t go around drugged like I was yesterday all the time! That is just insane. So, I guess, what was really keeping me awake last night is this: what is in store for me now?

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A New Sewing Area, And A Give Away!

Karen · 46 Comments

Ok, so not so much a new area, but a new table! I have been searching for a new sewing table for over a year. The one I had was a folding plastic table that was waaaaay to big for the space I have. I had to keep the legs folded up on one side, and prop that side on the dresser. Whenever I had to get into my drawer to get socks or underwear, it was a problem. But I put up with it because the only other solution would have been to completely put my sewing machine and other paraphenalia away every night. And THAT would have been a big pain in the butt.

I don’t have many pictures of the old set-up, because it was not such a pretty site. And you should have heard FabGrandpa fussing about it all the time! He really didn’t like it. That table was too wide, it stuck out into the room too far, in addition to taking up most of the dresser. AND, whenever I pressed the foot pedal on the sewing machine, it made the whole table jump up and down, so that it was difficult to sew a straight seam. (Now I am sure you all don’t believe that since I have been making so many pretty things, but trust me, it was a circus.)

Finding a new table was difficult because it had to fit a very small space. The opening is 43″ long X 20″ deep, but there is a folding curtain about 6″ from the sink cabinet. We can’t take the curtain out because if we have company, we have to be able to close off the bathroom area from our bedroom area, unless of course we are VERY cozy with the visitors. So, the search was on. But I found the (almost) perfect table last Saturday at Wal-Mart, and for only $34! It is 36″ wide, so it fits in the space with room to spare. And at 19″ deep, it doesn’t stick out too far into the room. The only thing that would have made it a perfect table would have to have been if it had a couple of drawers. It DOES have shelves, so that can be remedied. I can now be on the search for some baskets or containers that fit the shelves. I’m thinking shoeboxes that I can cover with fabric.

I’ve been so happy with the table that I have been sewing every day since I got it. And, it is solid as a rock, no jumping up and down while I sew, no battle with the machine to keep it from walking off of the table. It is SOOO much more relaxing to just sew and not have to work so much at it. I made that bag in a couple of hours. It is the same pattern I used to make the ones for my daughters for Christmas, but I played around with it some to make it look a little different. I love the fabric, called Naturology. I’m putting this one in my shop for sale–it will be up there tomorrow.

After I finished the tote bag–I made up some of the zipper bags to match it, they are cute, cute, cute!

And then I made some of the business card wallets, too. Someone I know wanted one of those in purple, so I made those, too.

To celebrate my new sewing area, and also to celebrate the opening of MY SHOP, I am giving away these matching little bags–one zipper pouch and one business card wallet in the Naturology green, brown and cream colors. If you want to own it, here is how to win:

1. Look at my little shop, then come back and leave a comment telling me what you like there.

2. For a second entry, tweet about this give away on Twitter, and leave a comment telling me you did.

3. For a third entry, follow my RSS feed, and comment to let me know you did.

I’ll pick a winner at random on March 30. It would be sooner but I am going on vacation for a week–going to see all my grandchildren, and can’t wait!

Check out more handmade items at the I Made It Blog Party

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Scenic Sunday

Karen · 9 Comments

On the way to Bryce Canyon National Park from Kanab, Utah in July 2008.

For more Scenic Sunday photos, click here.

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Moving Is Such Hard Work!

Karen · 12 Comments

When my children were growing up, we moved 17 times in 5 years. I was a divorced mother of three trying to make ends meet. A lot of the time, that meant moving to a cheaper place, or moving in with friends for a while. We learned to pack up quickly and how to load the car (No, I didn’t have a truck) so that we could make the least number of trips possible to get the job done. Sometimes I did all myself, and sometimes I had help. It was always easier with help.

Moving my blog from Blogspot to a hosted website has been a HUGE job. And don’t think I have done it all myself. I don’t know enough to do it all by myself. To start off, Gayla from MomGadget has given me great encouragement. We “met” through the internet a couple of years ago. She was one of six women who were blogging on a group site called “Seven Babes A Blogging”, which is now defunct. They had one guest blogger each month, hence the Seven in the name. I was the guest blogger over there for the month of December, 2007. Just the fact that they let me blog with them was a huge encouragement to me, as I felt like I was playing with the big girls by doing that.

Then in November of 2009, I ran into her again, (online, of course) when she was looking for writers at MomGadget. I signed up and, and that sort of opened the door for me to ask her some questions, and before you know it, we were getting FabGrandma.com built. Gayla gave me advice on how to go about purchasing a domain name and how to get it hosted (I had no idea where to start). She installed my blog and Studio Press Lifestyle Theme you see here (the theme is the how the blog looks to you, purty, huh?). And she did it all in about two days. I was soooo impressed with her service. Thank you so much, Gayla.

After Gayla got through with the initial software installation and configuration for me, FabGrandma.com was all ready for me to move in. So, I got here, and I couldn’t believe how much room I have over here! At the old site, I only had one “room”, much like living in my travel trailer. There was only so much I could do over there. Not that I need a mansion, you know, I just wanted more room to move around, more places to store my ideas. And boy do I have that here! Just look at all those pages and linky things! But, it still had some “decorating” and remodeling to do. And I had no clue what to do or where to start!

It’s not that I didn’t know what I wanted. Oh, no! I have been thinking about and planning my new website for a couple of years. I knew EXACTLY what I wanted it to look like and what I wanted it to do. I just didn’t know how to do it. So, the next step was to just start. I worked on it for almost a week, many hours a day (good thing I am unemployed right now.) And I got it looking more and more like I wanted it to. All that work involved teaching myself some basic html, from HTML Basic. It’s like trying to learn German a phrase at a time.

At the end of the week, I was at a place where I had gone as far as I could go, but it still didn’t look like I wanted it to look. As I was sitting here wondering what the heck I was going to do about it, I remember a young man I had “met” online a couple of years ago. Brandon lives with his lovely wife in North Carolina. He has been reading my blog for a while, and has corresponded with me on several occasions because he is interested in the fulltime RV’er lifestyle. I emailed him and offered to pay him to do some work for me on here, with a list of what I needed done, and asked him how much he would charge me to do the work. I knew from reading his blog that he was looking for a way to earn some extra money, and I wanted to help.

Imagine my surprise when he emailed me back, and said that someone had done him a kind deed recently, and he would do this thing for me as a “pay it forward” kind of thing. What a nice guy! And thank you, Brandon, because the work you did was exactly what I needed done. You should go into the web design business.

So, here it is, brand spanking new! I think the majority of the work is done. I am just giddy with excitement. Take the grand tour and let me know what you think!

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Fog On Payne Lake

Karen · 10 Comments

I was awake most of the night last night, listening to the thunder roll through the forest. The rain poured down and the lightening flickered on and off. I have to admit I am a scaredy cat when it comes to weather. Being in Alabama doesn’t help that fear much. And then I heard a tree fall out there in the woods! Yikes!

But, after the storm left the area, today was quite beautiful for mid January. And then, at sunset, I looked out the window:

I love fog, when I don’t have to drive in it. It has such a surreal look to it. I remember the first time can remember seeing fog, I was just a little girl, maybe four years old. I was afraid of it, as it seemed to slink into our back yard from the river.

I walked down to the edge of the lake. These photos aren’t really blurry, it’s just the fog.

You can almost hear the Headless Horseman riding through the woods!

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Oral Cancer Revisited

Karen · 1 Comment

You know, when we have our children, we as parents always have dreams for them, that they would accomplish great things, that they would be successful, and that they would follow in our footsteps. Today, I would give anything if my youngest daughter, Emily, was not following in mine. You see, her husband, my Fab Son-in-law, was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx last week.

Right now, they are trying to be very optimistic, hoping for the best, while preparing for the worst. The only thing is, we don’t know exactly what the worst can be. I do know that FabGrandpa and I will be able to guide them to some extent, to show them the road, to help them along the way. As I told her, “unfortunately” they have someone who has gone before them, to give them advice and to listen to their fears. While FabGrandpa and I had each other, and an online support group, Emily and her husband will have us, and I hope we will be able to help them in whatever way we can.

Fab S-I-L is a surgery scheduler at a hospital in Atlanta. Right before Christmas, he lost his voice, so he went to the doctor to have it checked out. That doctor said he had a polyp in his throat, and scheduled surgery to remove it. When he got in there, he discovered that the mass was not what he thought it was, and just did a biopsy instead. He was referred to a specialist at Emory University Hospital, who did a thorough exam, including a CAT scan. He is going to do another biopsy next week. We are hoping for good news.

So, I am here to nudge you all, again, to get an exam for oral cancer at the very next opportunity–it is painless, doesn’t take much time, and can save your life. Please, just do it!

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Had My Decade-ly Physical Exam Today

Karen · 10 Comments

FabGrandpa and I have not had health insurance since 2001 when I was laid off from a job in the telecommunications industry (the second time). At that job, my health insurance went into effect on January 1 so we both had scheduled appointments on the same day. Our last insurance benefits had expired in 1996, so we figured it was about time to get a check up. On January 10, 2001, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, and I was diagnosed with type II diabetes. It was a memoral day.

My job lasted until April 30th, and my health insurance benefits that went along with it expired on May 31st, one day after his last radiation treatment. That coverage kept us out of the poor house and bankruptcy court, and I was so thankful that we had it.

In 2007, FabGrandpa signed up for his health care benefits through the Veterans Administration, one of his benefits from having served in the Navy back in the early 70’s. But that still left me with no health care insurance. I dealt with this lack of coverage by getting my prescription drugs from Mexico, where you don’t need a prescription, and only going to the doctor when absolutely necessary. Like when I had that palpable mass and pain in my arm, and that kidney stone last summer. All of that was paid for out of pocket, but there have been times during those years when I had to make a decision not to go to the doctor because I simply couldn’t afford it.

Among my many goals for 2010 was to establish a relationship with a doctor, and to get my health care taken care of on a more regular basis. I asked people around here who they would go to, and Dr. Lee was the name that came up most often. Today was the day for my appointment with Dr. Lee. He is a general practioner in a small town in Alabama. He is one of those guys who does all the labs, x-rays, and EKG’s right there in his office. He was knowledgeable about Celiac disease, and that made me happy. And he didn’t holler at me too much about my lackadasiycal attitude about my health care over the past decade.

The exam went quite well. I peed in the cup, they took blood for an hbA1c, kidney function, and blood chemistry; did a chest X-ray; and EKG; and took my blood pressure. We talked for a while about Celiac disease: He asked me why I thought I had it, how long I have not been eating wheat, did I feel better not eating gluten, did I want to be tested? He said he wished more people would listen to their bodies and believe that the foods they eat could be more of a factor in their diseases. He told me that there were tests he could to determine if I have Celiac, but they are expensive, and I would have to eat gluten again for a while for them to be accurate, and if I was feeling better not eating gluten then I probably do have Celiac and he wouldn’t recommend the testing.

We are waiting for the blood test results before he writes any prescriptions for me, but he said he would probably continue me on metformin 500 mg per day, as my blood sugar this morning was 110. He will probably add a low dosage blood pressure medication because my blood pressure was 143/91, and he was afraid that combined with my type II diabetes could cause some kidney damage. They are scheduling me for the dreaded mammogram, and will wait the results of the stool sample to decide if I really need a colonoscopy. All the things Dr. Lee did today came to a total of $186 plus whatever the lab charges for the blood tests he sent to them. If this had been in the Atlanta area, it would have cost about $350. But believe me when I tell you there have been lots of times in the last ten years when I didn’t have that much money in my pocket.

And, while he DID reprimand me somewhat for my long wait between physical exams, he commended me for taking control of my healthcare issues. I have taken my medications, even if obtaining them from Mexico was somewhat risky. I did get an hbA1c every 3-4 months, even if I did buy them over the counter from Wal-Mart most of the time. I found out I could be gluten intolerant and deleted gluten from my life. So, even though I haven’t been faithful to the medical professionals, I have been getting healthcare in ways I could afford.

UPDATE: the doctor’s office called this morning. My hbA1c was 6.1, where they want it be less than 7. Kidney function was fine, all blood chemistry was normal, not even high cholesterol! The NP who called said she was very impressed with the numbers, and again commended me for taking good care of myself, and AGAIN said she was sure that not eating gluten was helping to keep my numbers normal. I will be taking blood pressure meds, but I expected that.

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