Where My Health Stands Today

Besides the "best" efforts of my previous PCP(aka Primary Care Physican)to do me in, here is where my health stands today.

My Right Heart Catheterization Procedure showed normal pressure levels in my heart, which is excellent news.
The cardiologist took me off of the oxygen 24/7.  He still wants me for now to be on oxygen support while sleeping, but instead of 3 litres, I am on 1 litre, the lowest you can go.
I got my BiPAP(bi-level Positive Air Pressure)Machine 2 weeks ago this coming Monday and have been using it nightly during sleep.  I meant to show y'all my new toy but it's upstairs and I kept forgetting to take the camera up at night to snap a photo.  It's black, sleek and yes sexy, since it helps me get the rest I need, so I can get better. ;-)

I've been taken off some meds, gone on others, but overall the amount has decreased.

The weight has plateaued....sigh....partly due to changed meds and they took me off of the one that was helping me lose weight.  I haven't been able to get the exercise program going yet, which I need to do to get the metabolism kicked up a notch.  It's hard to exercise beyond a slow pace when your lungs don't allow you to get enough oxygen saturation.
I had a lung function test a couple of weeks ago and it shows decreased functioning and I have some permanent lung issues.  I'm breathing better but not up to snuff.

The cardiologist wants me to consider bariatric surgery.  He feels that is the only way I am going to get enough weight off in the time frame I need to have it gone.  He says I am lucky that the heart cath shows normal heart function because if it had come back abnormal, along with my breathing problems, that no surgeon would have considered doing general anesthesia surgery on me.

The PCP is of both minds on this bariatric surgery subject....mostly due to it's extreme nature.  I have so many other problems that surgery and the changes this surgery will entail will be difficult to balance with all the other meds and conditions.
Of course, if I have the surgery and get the weight off, some of these conditions will go away or lessen to a great extent.
I went down this bariatric surgery road once before in 2006 or so.  I got to the psychological evaluation process after 6 months of appts. with this surgeon's nutritionist/caseworker(which insurance did NOT pay a penny for)when this doctor decided to stop performing bariatric procedures totally.  He decided that it was NOT a permanent solution for weight reduction, as all his patients were regaining the weight 5 years out or so.  So instead of committing to do surgery on the patients still in the process, he just walked away without even a "Sorry folks".....
So basically I was left paying OOP a goodly sum and was at the end of the line.  I would have had to start from the beginning again with a new doctor which we could have done financially but psychologically and emotionally I was not prepared to do.

Hubs and I are mulling over whether to go down this road again.  I know techniques have improved so I am not as reticent due to the possibility of a botched procedure that could affect my life for whatever is left of it.  Maybe the lap band procedure(which is not as extreme and fully reversible)may be my compromise.  I just don't know what to do at this point.

I am currently having all those routine female tests done and they want me to schedule the big "You are over 50 now, let's dig around in your colon" Test. 
The Nurse Practitioner ordered the test because she did a sample and it came back positive for blood.  I think it was due to my hemorrhoids but better to be safe than sorry.
Yes, Sluggy has hemorrhoids.
TMI for sure..... ;-)

My blood pressure is good.
My blood sugars are good.
My cholesterol is a little high.
My sleep apnea is MUCH improved.

So I am still here and kicking and look to be here for the foreseeable future.
I am going with the program and taking the tests and pills as ordered, sticking to my low sodium diet and trying though it seems lately in vain, to get some weight off.
And this is all in my spare time.....LOLOL
Not really, it pretty much has taken over and has become my life.

So I should be around to bother the crap out of everyone for a long time still.
Aren't you glad? 8-)

Sluggy



 

Another Reason Not to Shop at Walmart

Well, you should stay out of my local Walmart.....

 

Sluggy

Organizing Work...Boring but Necessary

Nothing much exciting to talk about today.

I took a ride out to visit "Joshua" at the cemetery in St. Johns PA yesterday.
Actually, I went to snap some photos of headstones, both photo requests on F.A.G. and just random stones to put up memorials for on F.A.G.
And Joshua snubbed me....humph!  He must have been up late partying the night before.

I found at least 9 headstones for requests(I may have found more but I need to go through and edit my photos first).  I also found some relatives of the requests who didn't have memorials up on F.A.G. yet, which may make the people who requested photos happier still, as they be long lost relations.

A few of the headstones were very worn and all the details aren't readily readable.  I found this video of a guy who uses flour to bring out the etching in old unreadable headstones....

 

If you read the lengthy list of comments on that video you'll see the flour method has pros and cons and it's use is not widely recommended.  I may have to get a blacklight or laser flashlight to keep in the car as those doesn't seem to harm the headstones and can aid in reading the markers.  It doesn't help that my eyes are old and getting weaker too.

Anyway, today I'm editing photos and uploading them to F.A.G.

I also found an interesting real estate property on the road to the cemetery that is for sale.
Check it out HERE.  It needs gutting basically but it's a nice piece of property in a low tax area and it's right across the road from a creek and it's going for pennies.....mostly because it needs a whole house redo.
But we could buy it for cash and work on it at our leisure.  Of course that would mean retiring up here in the snowbelt but then there is always RV living out-of-state for the winter months.
It's a moot point unless I can get an agent to SHOW us the house!....which no one seems to want to do.  You would think with the housing/real estate market depressed as it is, agents would be returning my calls without haste to get me inside this house, huh?
Not so.
I guess the commission on a $40K property just isn't worth their effort.....

I also cleaned out my Yahoo mailbox earlier this week.  1500+ emails gone!
I unsubbed from many email firms there and dumped a bunch of spam and unwanted mails.
Then I set up some new folders and moved about 300 emails worth keeping.
I am left with 10 emails to deal with in the old inbox.
Go me! lol

I don't access my Yahoo mail much anymore.  I don't remember what led me over there to my inbox but I'm glad I went because I found out something interesting.

Yah see, when I got this new computer with Windows 8(STILL hate W8!), the Hubs couldn't sent up my email server into the Windows program so that my incoming mail goes into my inbox.  He had to sent up a folder in the email program for my server addy and all my incoming mail from my server comes into that folder, not my inbox. (We have a "pop" email account and W8 doesn't support that any longer?)  It's too confusing for me to explain better or even to understand.....I just know that it "ain't right".

Over the last couple of months, since being on this new machine, I've sent out emails to folks.  Now there is still a feature on this machine, through Windows 8, that hooks to my yahoo email account.  I just discovered, by going into my yahoo inbox, I have replies to emails I sent out that I never got responses to in my reg. email server account I use...which is where I thought I had sent these emails from.  Somehow, it seems, when I sent emails on this machine to these persons, the computer used my yahoo email account, thus the replied to the yahoo email.

One such person I never got a response from was Tanner....well she DID respond but I never saw the response as it went to my Yahoo inbox.
Evidently, I hit something on my computer and instead of sending some emails out through my regular server it brought up a blank email form through the yahoo account.
So I apologize if I never responded to your response to me, especially to Tanner.
I'll be emailing you later Tanner about what we were corresponding about....I haven't forgotten you! ;-)

It truly sucks being a technology halfwit and have I told y'all how much I detest Windows 8 yet?? 8-))

Speaking of Yahoo, some day I'll have to tell y'all the story about my Siamese twin Asian email sister on Yahoo.
It's a hoot of a story.

Oh!!!
One more thing to say.......
I got my testing kit yesterday in the mail.

 

I'll be brushing the inside of my cheeks today and sending off my dna to be analyzed tomorrow.
I'm so excited to see what comes up as far as matches(if any)and what it says about my ancestry.
Knowing my luck, it will tell me I am descended from Nordic ancestors and Monkeys, none of which is correct......that I know of.......!

Has anyone else out there taken the first step into the Wide World of Genetic Testing for Ancestry?

Sluggy

The "Good" Doctor

In the continuing saga of my ex-primary doctor.......

Well the week of April 29th-May 3rd was a great week for my ex-doctor.
He was such the popular fellow that there was an article in the local newspaper about him and his tale of woe every day that week.
Impressive!

The Times Leader site won't let me pull up the article from April 29th but here are the others from the competing newspaper.....

APRIL 30th
MAY 1st
MAY 2nd
MAY 3rd

Plus I found this tidbits on the Times Leader online site....

The state Board of Osteopathic Medicine reports that:
• Mark Gonsky, of Luzerne County, was ordered to attend a course in prescribing controlled substances in 2012, institute contracts for the management of any chronic pain patients and engage a professional office management company to review his documentation practices and then re-evaluate the documentation practices six months later because he failed to maintain complete records for his patient.

Things have been kind of low key in the news media for him lately.  THIS is the latest article I could find on him this morning.

I do feel some compassion for the man but I am still very very angry.....

Sluggy

I'm A Cheap Dinner Date

Here's what I did with the leftover Fajita filling I had.
I took a page out of Alex M.'s playbook.
I whipped up a pie crust dough and made quasi Tex/Mex Empanadas.
The weather was rainy and cool enough to consider running the oven today.

Circle of dough, put filling on half, sprinkle some cheddar cheeses on top, fold over and seal/crimp with a fork.
Then I placed on a spray oil coated foiled cookie sheet and sprayed more oil on top of each.  Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

The burnt stuff is filling that leaked out and stayed on the foil.  the fajita filling was juicy enough that it didn't need a sauce put inside these.

Each was really too big for one meal, so I cut mine in half and the other piece will be lunch or dinner tomorrow.

some leftover corn and a big dollop of sour cream finished off my plate.

Hubs preferred his with hot sauce and a can of chili.....

Of course he dumped all the chili on it before realizing he couldn't eat the whole thing in one sitting.
Well, he could of eaten the whole thing in one sitting but he thought that wouldn't be wise....lol

The costs of this leftover meal?
.33¢ for the box of Jif pie crust mix and $1.00 for the can of chili(both bought ahead on sale) and pennies(let's say 5¢) for my dollop of sour cream.
$1.38 plus we have enough left for another meal.

I spent $61.95 at the grocery store yesterday and it really wasn't a lot of food.  $19.49 of that was for #2 Son's requested foods that I won't be eating, so $42.46 for fruit, juice, meat, lettuce, tomato sauce, onion rolls.  $92.74 worth of food all totaled.
I still need to get more fruit, salad greens, milk and half & half tomorrow and I am done spending this week.
If the weather cooperates tomorrow, I'll bake off 2 quiches(1 for the freezer)and make spaghetti sauce and the bulk of cooking for week will be complete.

Sluggy

 

The Past Weekend and Coming Attractions....Boring of Course!

I was all productive last weekend.....well, productive for me! 8-)

Hubs was in the midst of getting the pool ready for the season and had some patching to do on the liner.  The bear of the job though was repairing the rusted holes in the steel skin, the outer metal part of the pool.  Fixing these areas required him to remove the top supports/the edges on the pool and peel back the plastic liner to get behind the skin.
Everything was good until it came time to attach the liner back into the channeled rigid rimmy parts(technical term)so the liner didn't fall off the metal enclosure which is your pool.
So Sluggy, the mechanical, logical genius to the rescue to reconstruct how he had taken the whole shebang apart and put it back together again.....much like all the King's horse and men attempted to do with Humpty Dumpty after his plummet off a wall.
But unlike Humpty's friends, I was successful. ;-)
Oh and Hubs helped too......lol

We got the garden bed planted and I got the salad green gutters done earlier in the week.  I just hope the gutters are more successful this year, since all I grew last year was a crop of bumpkiss!  I also planted some old seeds I had here in the oak barrels in the backyard.  I didn't buy any new seeds this year and just used up what I had leftover from the previous years.  I won't be surprised if nothing actually comes up. lol

We got the front bed mulched.....ignore that square brick sitting in front.  It was there as a boundary marker for the mulch.  We still need to put some kind of a border up.

I got my little garden bed "doo-dads" put in as well.  Little snail items(I AM Slugmama after all....hello!  lol)
The snail stepping stone didn't come off very well in the shot....

 

This week, since #2 Son is finished with school until August and has time to help out around here, we'll be working on the back/side flower bed.
It needs serious work!!!  We don't call that area the jungle for nothing. ;-)

On a sad note, we discovered my little lemon magnolia tree died.  This was the tree Hubs bought me for Mother's Day 3 years ago(?).   Last year it took a turn for the worse after we experienced some rather wacky weather patterns and this past winter must have been too rough for it and it gave up the tree ghost.  We went to prune it back to try to save it this weekend and the trunk nearly snapped right off at the base.  It's that little stump in the upper center of the yard.....

This gives credence to the legend that I can't keep anything alive.....
R.I.P. little tree.
I'll have #2 Son dig up the stump this week and we can level and sow some grass seed there.

I also did a slew of baking/cooking this past weekend.....I made a coffee cake, a dozen muffins, a pan of brownies and a big bowl of macaroni salad.  If I was running the oven, why not get a lot of things cooked, right?
Sorry, I forgot to take pictures and most of it is gone thanks to #2 Son.
I did some of this in prep for a visit from Udy with a "J".  She was suppose to drop by on her way to family(either on the way or coming back from)sometime during the weekend.  I also had some adult beverages chilled waiting for her arrival, but alas, she never arrived.
Sluggy makes a sad face......

I guess warning her about the nasty dirty house was just too much for her delicate constitution.
Either that or she thought I'd hand her a broom and some cleaning products and put her to work.... ;-)

So I did some work in the garage in my free time this past weekend too.  Hubs inflated an air mattress we had out there(a leaving from the Daughter)to see if it would stay inflated.  It did so it's gotten a big dose of Lysol and will be deflated and stored in it's case and we can pick out the expensive air mattress with the built in electric inflator that we paid good money for put never held air enough to get a body through the night without pitching them on the floor at 3 am.
One more thing I can say goodbye too in this house....yay me!

Then I cleaned out the old freezer to get it ready for being picked up by the recycling company which is coming next week.  That will be another big item out of the garage and my life......go me again!!

This week I need to get all these boxes of cans/bottles/etc. of food I can't eat out of the living room to freecycle.  I was keeping them around to see if Judy wanted some of it when she came but I just have to get it gone now.
It's blocking my mental energy, ya know?

I am off in a little while for another dr. appointment.  This one is with my new primary doctor, my FIRST appointment with him.  He has officially been my primary for over 2 Months now and I have yet to see him, though I've had appts. with just about every other dr. in the area during this time. 8-P

So what's up with you in the next few days?
Did you do anything exciting over the weekend??


Sluggy

 

You Know You Are Getting Old....

.....When more and more the hit Musicals on Broadway are shows that you remember being brand new on the stage when you were young.

Sunday night's Tony Winner for Revival of a Musical is one such example for me.

PIPPIN

It debuted on Broadway in October of 1972 and ran until June of 1977, meaning it ran the entirety of my teenage years and closed the month I graduated high school.
I bought the album sometime in 1973 when I was 14 years old.

Though I was never in a production of it, I bought the original cast album(remember those....albums?)the day it hit the record store shelves and I about wore it out singing along and memorizing numbers to use as audition pieces.

On Sunday, Pippin also received 3 individual awards for acting to Patina Miller(the Leading Player role) and Andrea Martin(Grandma Bertha)and the Direction of a Musical statuette went to Diane Paulus.
Bravo ladies.....

I so wish I had seen the Great  Irene Ryan in the Berthe role(Irene Ryan =Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies).
Here's a clip of one of Granny's replacements in the video production done in 1981.   A Classic comedienne of the 1940's, Martha Raye took her turn at the role.
She's ok but I picture Granny as better.
It's kind of long this clip so I don't blame you if you don't watch it all.....




Here's the incomparable Ben Vereen as the Leading Player(he was the originator of the role) from that film made of the show in 1981. 
I content that when he was at the top of his game, few interpreted Bob Fosse's dance vision better.
Take a look.   The dance number begins at 3:58....



Now watch this clip from Letterman's show of part of that dance number with the current cast members(it's at the beginning of the clip).  They go on to do another number, but watch the first number of the original Fosse moves.



I know that with Revivals of shows it's a balancing act between recreating the original numbers and the "look" of the show, with a new, fresh interpretation. 
With a revival coming so many years after the original production(40 years!), more people seeing it will have little if any recollection of the original production(unless they are OLD enough to remember the original version). 

For the record, I don't care for this production as much as the original version.
Some of it is more appropriate in a production of "Carnival" than "Pippin".
Yes, it's a slicker more polished version(with modern cirque du soleil type circus acts, instead of a blend of medieval morality plays and commedia dell'arte type moves and characters)of the show.
And you have to agree film technology has certainly come a long way since the early '80's!
Granted the revivals clips aren't filmed on the regular stage the show is presented on, but still....
I guess it's a no brainer to model it on a Cirque show......they sell out and run forever everywhere they play.  They sell tickets and put butts in the seats so why not steal that formula for the Pippin revival.

But it's lost it's dark, seedy and sinister foreboding undertones that the original production had for the sake of keeping audiences....current younger theater goers with shorter attention spans who need flashy and sparkle and can't focus on something for any amount of time without checking their smartphones or something.
The revival has got too much Shinola and not enough shit as it were. ;-)


And here's the opening number from the 1981 film with Ben Vereen.  Near the end of it notice the actress in the mask who says a very sarcastic, "Fantastic".  That's the legend Chita Rivera.





And from the new production,  a clip from Sunday night's Tony Awards show, a montage of numbers from Pippin.





Sluggy