I love this song

Diabetes is no fun

I hate when my blood sugar goes south. If you've never had it happen, it's hard to explain. I get dizzy and unsteady, and I perspire but my hands and feet get cold and numb, and I just feel like my brain is mush and can barely function. Just now I had an episode where I was falling fast and got the special alarm that tells me on my monitor. It went down to 47, and after a banana, a pear, a frozen fruit pop, and glucose tablets, it's 78 and finally rising. Even once it levels off, I'll feel really hungover and unwell. It's so frustrating. I didn't take extra insulin, and I ate both breakfast and some lunch [and even skipped the short-acting insulin for lunch]. It happened yesterday at work, too, while I was at the sign-in desk, and I ate nearly an entire sleeve of glucose tablets to bring it up after 45 minutes. It should pop up in about 15 minutes. I'm going to dial back on my long-acting insulin some more. I think that will help.

Watch this

Cyndi Lauper - Sally's Pigeons Fly

I've taken the Back-to-School Reading Challenge to raise money for the Trevor Project

https://www.facebook.com/donate/402043688580684/

I'm taking on the 20 Minute Back To School Reading Challenge for The Trevor Project! Please support me as I raise funds by reading 20 minutes a day this September to help The Trevor Project achieve its amazing mission. Every donation, big or small, counts. Cheer me on in making a difference!

The Trevor Project is determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life-saving and life-affirming resources including our nationwide, 24/7 crisis intervention lifeline, digital community and advocacy/educational programs that create a safe, supportive and positive environment for everyone.

Please consider donating at the link above.  Thanks!

Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

So I missed January completely in terms of writing

I've been very busy at both work and at home.  My backup at work is leaving next week, so I'll have to do her work plus mine until they get someone else hired.  The good news is they got headquarters to help do the outpatient visit authorizations so I'll just have to worry about the surgeries and clinic treatment room procedures, as well a scheduling offsite imaging and authorising those.

The unfortunate thing about that is headquarters is taking on more and more things within our system from our local hospitals, so if they decide they can do it more efficiently, I could lose half my job when there's a replacement in her position and I go back to just mine.  That's a fear of mine. I've been laid off three times in my life (never fired), and twice have been here at work. I've always made it back because I'm flexible, but I am a little afraid of this.

We had a fairly mild ice/wintry mix event on Thursday and Friday. I was off work on Friday because I had an appointment with my liver specialist in person and a longish teleheath (getting everyone on the call plus the actual appointment was about an hour) with my weight loss doctor.  I changed the in-person appointment to next week as a teleheath, and we moved up my other appointment from the late afternoon to late morning because the doctor was stuck in Louisville and was going to try to get back to Lexington that afternoon, I think.

Anyway, as a result, I didn't get to talk to the liver specialist about my MRI, but I have gotten the report through the patient portal.  While I do have fatty liver, stage 2-3 (which is moderate, I think), there is no sign of cirrhosis.  That means diet can really help (and being a little more active).  Also, since November 1st I have lost 25-30 lbs (my weight fluctuates...the other day I was 8 lbs less than yesterday, but might be down tomorrow, who knows). I usually weigh weekly, but because I was seeing my physician, I went ahead and weighed.

We had a good appointment.  Since portion control is a problem for me, and I don't have much time to really do meal prepping, she suggested frozen meals, which aren't ideal, but may help, and that way when my roommate isn't able to cook, I still have something.  He hasn't been able to lately because we have a new puppy (11 weeks old now)  he's house training and he's just been exhausted with watching her so closely and getting up with her at night.  But she is so adorable.  I'm helping when I'm home so he can get some rest, but I've never been in a house with that small of a dog before.  She is just about the size of both cats now, but was smaller when she came to us, and only about 9 lbs at her first vet visit.  She's grown some already.  We're not sure what she is.  I'm thinking Labrador/Boxer.  The shelter had her as part pit bull, but the vet said her bone structure is far too delicate for that.  She has sort a of a little jowl thing going, so maybe she is part Boxer.  But she loves to be held.

So I went out yesterday and got some vegetarian Lean Cuisine/Healthy Choice meals, pluse some Boost to try, as she thought meal replacement might be good for breakfast or snacks.  I'm willing to try.  She said to keep it to Boost, Ensure, or Glucerna because she can prescribe them so they're much cheaper, like $10 for 24 instead of 6. I bought some chocolate and strawberry Boost packs to try that are the blood sugar control ones.

Okay, my friend wanted to sleep a bit more, but it's time to wake up. I have to go get medicine, puppy food, and pay a bill. I couldn't do them yesterday, even being off, because I 'lost' the method of payment, and actually backtracked to the bill place to see if I'd dropped it on the ground.  Turns out it was in the closet with the dog food on a shelf.  I'd taken a picture o the puppy's food so I'd know which one to get and left it there.  I'd been so stressed out with all that because it was a full book of cheques, and I was looking at almost $500 to stop payment on them, and I couldn't find them anywhere. I hadn't had my ADHD medicine in days as I'd misplaced that.  I have some today, but it's not the full dose but an earlier prescription.   Sigh. I make life so much harder than I should due to messed up brain chemistry.

Anyway, I should go now.  I'll try to write more.

Tired of seeing this misused

I was perusing the news this morning and found several opinion pieces regarding the removal of music catalogues from Spotify (one called Neil Young's actions 'righteous censorship' but also Spotify's removal of about 100 Joe Rogan podcast episodes. All referred to these as censorship.)

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the word censorship in this country.

Censorship is the action of the GOVERNMENT to remove information. An example is when elected officials such as those serving on a local school board vote to ban books at the public library, or a body of government votes into law a bill that does basically the same time.

Do you know what censorship is not? An artist's use of his control over his own product so that a platform whose actions he does not agree with does not profit from his work. Censorship is not when a business chooses to distance itself and remove content when it violates its terms of conditions. Censorship is not the removal by a private business of customers who violate those terms of conditions, such as Donald Trump being banned from Twitter. Censorship is not when subscribers or customers leave or boycott something to do with a business because they do not agree with some action or aspect of the business. For example, the CEO of Jimmy John's is within his right to go big game hunting. However, I do not want him to use even the small amount of money I might contribute to that activity for something I feel strongly is wrong (I have no trouble with hunting if it's for food, etc. But hunting endangered animals for sport is reprehensible, in my opinion. I just wouldn't hunt, say, deer myself.) So I don't go to Jimmy John's. Just like I don't go to Hobby Lobby or Chik-fil-A due to some of their practices regarding employee treatment, and in the case of Hobby Lobby, the purchase of illegally obtained artefacts. That's a matter of personal choice, but it's part of a free marketplace and supply and demand. Companies do not have a right to profit.. People spewing hate do not have a right to have a platform. Artists should have control over their work. Simple as that.