IT'S JUNE ALREADY..

Sorry it has been awhile since my last update...
                                                 

                                                

June started a little crazy for us here. Doctor's visits, hospital tests and changes in every day living. Sister's condition went from simple to very complicated after many tests and consultations. Seems her immune system is compromised and now has to be reset with powerful drugs. I questioned the diagnosis, but with 4 doctor's opinions, and they are specialists, I agreed with their findings. Every day is a challenge, new side effects popping up. I have a watchful eye on her. This will go on for months so it keeps us busy with mapping out appointments on the calendar. I had a flash back yesterday to when I had to keep track of my mother's schedule with her dialysis, how hectic that was and how similar this illness seems to be. I find myself back in caregiver mode again, something I never thought would happen. I am glad at least I have the experience to deal with such an illness..
                                           

The weather warmed up and that was a blessing. It was time to put in the AC and stay cool. I purchased a very small one for just one room. Getting it up 14 stairs was no easy task, but one by one I did it. Securing it was another problem though. Old house and old windows..everything had to be re-enforced to make sure it did not fall out into our driveway. What in the world did they do in the OLD OLD days to keep cool without a fan I have no idea? They were tougher than me that's for sure.   This summer has been a cooler one than last year, easier to do chores and outside work is okay by me.

My tablet was not working, after three months using it, it decided it wanted to type words for me all the time and not charge when it said it was charging. I guess it had a mind of it's own. I called the company and paid the shipping to have them send me a new one. I got a call one afternoon ,after I sent it back, from OKLAHOMA...they apologized that they did not have the same model and would I like to try a larger size. YES, yes I would!! So they sent me a 10 inch size. Has been wonderful...comes in handy while sitting waiting for Sis in so many places. I still use the laptop every day, but boy I do love the new technology so much.  Hard to believe only 5 years ago when I had only a large desktop and monitor and no way to leave the room with it.  Love the freedom. 
Speaking of freedom..in case I don't get back here hope you all have a 

it will be here before you know it. 

NOT SO MERRY MAY...

Most who follow this blog and have been aware of all the life happenings in the past will be interested in hearing this.  The family member I mentioned before, who was ill, was my younger sister and she will be following up with a KIDNEY specialist soon for KIDNEY problems. She recently put on excessive weight that water pills would not handle. Having parents who died of kidney failure scares me a lot. I sure hope it is not going to come to us next.  Seems everything here is in LIMBO right now, we are in urgent mode and planning and testing takes time. Hurry up and wait I guess is how it will be. 

  May has always been a birthday month for us..Mother and Father's birthday was only days apart. Here are mom and dad when they were young.. taken in Tennessee. It was right after they were married, before they moved to Michigan. They left their families to go north where there was factory work. More money, better lives.
It ended up that we lived in Michigan and had no relatives here at all. We traveled to Tennessee to the farm every summer to visit them though. It was a beautiful place but not so beautiful to me. I have horrible allergies and when I would go there the chickens and hay and cornfields made my asthma really bad. I did enjoy our trips to the Smoky Mountains and the big cities of Nashville, Chattanooga etc.That was always fun. Sister and brother loved the farm, and brother went coon hunting and helped milk cows and chased the chickens. Life on the farm was sure different from city living.   

Mother's Day coming soon, hope all of you have a wonderful day. 

WHO IS IT???--HAPPY EASTER

In January I had that horrible spell and went to the ER and stayed overnight in the hospital. I knew full well it was going to cost a fortune. In my mind I knew I would deal with it later. So it's later..I am going through bills and getting more bills in the mail. One notice came and I thought it strange. I called the company and told DONNA I got a notice but for the life of me could not FIND a bill anywhere. She took some information and I was to call her back. I searched high and low for a bill. So I called Donna back and she and I started to work out a payment plan. In a few minutes of talking to each other she stopped mid sentence and said "Do you live in Lansing?" I said NO, she said "No wonder I can't find you..this is NOT YOUR BILL! Seems another person in another city was in the ER on the same day, same time and with my same full name. 
We discussed what to do and how to resolve the problem. I just hope I don't start getting bills from this other person's visit to the ER. How weird is that?? She can have all my bills though..all she wants. I gladly give them up to her. Ha!
                                              

My yard is raked and the piles were waiting to be picked up. Down comes the snow again. This time it was not so bad, I won't have to shovel it. The cold came with it, and after 70 the day before I am searching for my heavy coat again. You just can't mess with mother nature this year, she is fiercely hanging on until May sometime. I really liked the warm day we had, at least we got a preview of Spring to come. Sad to say the crocus that was trying to poke it's head got covered though.

Easter is right around the corner. I have not made plans this year, just trying it day to day for awhile. Hope everyone else out there in Blogland has a wonderful day though.     

  

MOVING ON

Making baby steps to a new beginning takes time and work. Like two steps forward and 10 steps back. That is what it seems to be for me these days. I just am tired of all the confusion and unknown factors.  I am making an effort to move again and do all that packing and sorting that one does. I will be so glad to settle.. for me I want to get to a nice place and stay for a good long while.  Don't know when..so I wait..
                                         MEANWHILE.......
A family member is ill and I am trying to cope with that and find answers. The doctors seem to want to test everything and still not find the solution to the problem. Meanwhile the person gets sicker and sicker. Sad to say I have voiced my opinion to some of the said DOCTORS and have gotten those looks. YOU know what ones those are..." YOU know nothing...I KNOW IT ALL." Oh if they only WOULD listen.  We are on..let's see doctor number 4 now...hmmm maybe they all ought to get together for a consult.. Geez.. it's enough to make a person go crazy. 
                                         MEANWHILE.......
The weather is better so outside I can walk and work in the yard and try to forget all the stuff that is cluttering my mind. Easter is coming and usually I look forward to fixing a nice dinner and visiting with family. This year..not so much. We just want to keep ourselves going any way we can. HAPPY SPRING..the rains are here and the snow is GONE..except for those nasty big dirty piles in parking lots.. Hope that is the last of it til DECEMBER!!!      HAPPY SPRING FINALLY!!

HARD WEEK

It was a hard week for us as a family. Such hard news to hear that my niece had lost her baby that she had carried for 9 months. I won't go into details but we are still trying to deal with the loss and the shock. Our hearts are broken. 

The same day I received this tragic news I had come from the eye doctor shaken by the diagnosis of Glaucoma I hardly knew what to think. She said my prescription had changed very little and I could see well, EXCEPT for the Glaucoma. Somehow that sounded weird to me. 
How can I see well and not even know my eyes have this problem?? It's similar to blood pressure in a way. You can have a high number and not even know it. 

I had a ton of questions for the eye doctor. I am still mulling over the idea of a second opinion. These are my EYES..they are precious to me after all.. I sure don't want to make any mistakes or miss something that could hurt me in the future. So now I have to deal with this new illness and try to help it not progress further any faster than it is. There is a surgery, but it only relieves the water pressure build up in the eyes and will not stop the end result of eventual blindness. Scary thoughts creep in when thinking about being in a dark world, with no light. I just don't know what to think. So I end this week that brought us the first day of spring, warmer temps and melting snow, confused, and heartbroken.  

COMING TO THE END..

                                    

 

So I haven't been writing much here and there isn't much traffic either, so I will soon turn this place into a private blog. I just need to let go of some things that I cannot keep going. One blog is enough I guess. I will continue to keep my original Wordpress blog open.
You can find the link on the sidebar.  

THANKS FOR VISITING.....

ARE WE DEPRESSED??

On Valentine's day I went for my follow-up appointment for the "spell" I had. They said they opened at 8 AM. They did not. You stood in the cold, trying to keep your feet from freezing to the pavement, until they opened the doors. Many of us gathered complaining that this whole arrangement was crazy. I did mention I was GLAD it was not 20 below wind chill like the week before. I signed in and sat next to the heating vent hoping to stay away from anyone else that had ANYTHING I sure didn't want to catch. Dr. offices are the worst places to be when you are well. When I went back to the cubicle I was asked questions by the RN and all she could say was "Wow" and "Really"...while looking at my charts. I was in remarkable good health. Yay Me!!

 The young doctor, who was a volunteer there looked at my records, he asked me..so.."Are we depressed?".. Don't you just love that term.. "WE".. well  I didn't hesitate to answer him. YES, in less than 24 hours two weeks ago I went from not being depressed to really down and depressed. I told him that my little "SPELL" I had, cost me a fortune and it would be literally years before I would be able to catch up. AS they added on tests, my blood pressure continued to rise.Well I will now try to stay calm when the bills come because they will. Spring is coming, may new opportunities come with it. 


 Happy Valentine's day.. hmmm.. I got a nice surprise when I got back to the car. Sis had bought these delicious treats...from the bakery. It's been years since I had tasted one. They were freshly baked and were delicious. The line went outside the door with people waiting to purchase their Valentine goodies. I will long remember this holiday. 
Hope yours was wonderful too. 

MY WORLD WAS SPINNING..

Imagine yourself on a small boat drifting in a big ocean with no oars to row with. You see the skies darkening and you know something bad is coming but have no way to get away from there fast enough. The waters go from calm to violently rocking and swaying quickly.

It is hard to just stay in the boat and not fall out. 

This is sort of what happened to me this past week. I knew what was coming, but had no way to stop it. Try as I might, it kept getting worse. This feeling of loss of control as the room just went from a small rocking motion to really bad. I have had it before on several occasions. I  knew what to do, but this time I could not help myself like I wanted to. As the day went on the feeling got worse instead of better. I closed my eyes and that helped. I did not move and that helped. It just did not relieve the problem. It is worse than anything to lose control of ones balance and fight to try to get it back and lose the battle.

VERTIGO.. 

"Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is one of the most common causes of vertigo — the sudden sensation that you're spinning or that the inside of your head is spinning.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is characterized by brief episodes of mild to intense dizziness. Symptoms of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo are triggered by specific changes in the position of your head, such as tipping your head up or down, and by lying down, turning over or sitting up in bed. You may also feel out of balance when standing or walking."

My case was the room moving and when my eyes tried to focus they twitched and I felt even more out of it. You cannot drink or eat, the waves of nausea come over you so you wait for them to pass. If you have ever experienced it you will not ever want to again.  I was perfectly fine only minutes before this episode, so all of the sudden you feel like a truck has run over you. 

Why it got so bad, why it started..I didn't know. As it got worse several strange things happened. I stood up, which was hard enough to do, and then had a tingling sensation from the top of my head to my toes. THAT was new, I had never had that before. The doctors later said they had no idea why I had that, but they had to check it out. 

CHECK they did..I spent SEVEN HOURS in the ER, being prodded and poked by people talking to me whom I could not see. If I opened my eyes it was worse so I didn't. It gave me a whole new perspective and appreciation for the gift of sight. 

MORE TO COME....

A BRAND NEW YEAR!!

Something called a POLAR VORTEX came down and blasted its way over more than half the USA. Snow and ice all the way to Alabama. Never seen this much snow in ten years some were saying. The stores were packed and people were smart to stock up. Literally nothing was running in our area..... for 3 DAYS. Kids are off school because of the COLD not the snow. Plows ran 12 hours shifts and they got the roads cleared pretty fast considering how much snow we had. THE COLD is something else again. I ventured out onto the porch and right back inside. Way too cold for me to breathe in, 14 below zero and 25 below when the wind kicked up. NASTY..Colder than ALASKA..that polar vortex was nothing to fool with. I started wearing so many layers of clothes I feel like an Eskimo... Welcome to 2014?? It's starting out very weird.
                       

This was a shot of town with 6 inches of snow..where they put 14 more I have no idea.

 I have had this blog at blogger since 2010. I have tried to keep it separate from my Wordpress blog.  Blogging is a venue to express our feelings or talents to the world. 
Well it seems to be really dying out now. I will keep mine around, and write when I feel like it or when I have something to share. What's been happening in my world is something that I had been forbidden to discuss on a public blog. I know that sounds kind of weird but I it's the way it is. Some already know what's going on..others can take any kind of guess they would like. I am NOT in mortal danger or taking drugs etc. but I can say life is not a bed of roses right now. It has not been for some time. I make the best of each day and try to move on. I made some goals for 2014. We will see how well I do. I will update when I can, until then..here are some photos I managed to take while shoveling out this past week. My camera is on it's way out. It has a mind of its own and I have to re do almost every shot I take. Still it takes nice photos.

This poor bush almost broke under the heavy snow, the drift is almost as high as the fence is.

 The snow is as high as the top of the handle. Below you see the van covered up, that is not all drifted snow, it was really deep. 

This was taken before the storm also. We had about 6 inches on the ground.

Stay warm and well my friends...