I find it very sad that in all of 2022 I wrote exactly seven posts

I won't give you the standard 'I want to make 2023 better in terms of this blog'. You know the spiel. What I'm going to do instead is write. I am 55 years old. Mature, middle-aged even, but not really old. But I felt old this week due to finally making the decision to buy a cane. I have very bad knees (I have since high school, actually) and need a knee replacement but have about 50 more pounds to lose before they'll do it (I've lost 50 already since November 2021). But more importantly, my balance is really off. I've fallen three times in the past year, two on ice, so maybe they don't count, and once off a Lextran bus servicing the University of Kentucky. But a lot of the time I'll be standing on a completely solid, even surface, and if I turn my head at all or move a bit, or just stand completely still, I will start to fall over. Put me on an elevator and it's worse. So...I ordered a quad cane from Amazon using my flexible spending account. It's not aluminium, it's steel, all of two pounds, which several reviewers complained was too heavy (it took me a couple of days to get used to it, but I get that an older or less strong--and while I'm pathetic in terms of strength, I'm better than some). It can handle someone who's 500 lbs, which I'm not, of course, but I did need one above the standard ones that bear up to 200 or 250 lbs, as I'm about 30 lbs over. So I wanted to make sure it was sturdy enough.

Behold!



I've used it for a couple of days now. The first thing I did the night it came was to watch YouTube videos on adjusting, walking, and dealing with stairs while using a cane. The next day, I went to work with it and definitely made sure I took it to our physical therapy department to make sure all was well. I'd changed the height that morning, and gotten it right (it was a little too short). The cane should come up to your wrist. On a quad cane, there are four legs on the end, not one, and usually (as in mine) the inner ones are aligned narrower than the outer ones, so that shows the orientation that should be used, and if it has a curved section, it should face curving to the front, not towards you. You use it by the opposite leg from your weak one. My left knee is worse, for example, so I use it on my right, but bring it forward when I step forward with the left for greater stability. Lastly, you go upstairs with the good foot and downstairs with the bad one, and the PT secretary actually helped me remember this by saying, 'I always think of heaven and hell', so the good ones go up, the bad ones go down, and that mnemonic has done more for me than anything else.

What I have discovered is that it slows me down somewhat (I can walk smoothly with it, or at least did after I did a little experimenting), but that's good because I need to slow down due to my loss of balance, as I usually fall when I'm rushed.
One thing I discovered years ago when I broke my ankle after being hit by a car while crossing a busy street in a crosswalk (and with the light!) is that adaptive device like walkers, canes, and wheelchairs are a boon because they help maintain or increase mobility.  I initially felt bad about being on a walker and in a wheelchair then, but it helped so much.
This seems to be much the same thing.

Anyway, I'm going to try to embrace this and remind myself that people of all ages use canes, crutches, walkers, etc
This is a step up from my hiking poles, I guess.

But it will help me a lot in the long run.  I still feel a bit decrepit though, and I hate that feeling, but this will help me by preventing dangerous falls, I'm sure.

It also means that the bus drivers tend to remember to kneel the bus (the bus incident involved me coming down from a greater height on the step off the bus because the driver had not lowered that side of the bus, which they call kneeling), as they recognise I'm having some difficulty.
This, along with getting ADA [i.e., handicapped] parking this summer, including a general placard and a university hangtag, has really helped, along with riding the Lextran buses at UK, which kneel and are easier to navigate than the UK-run buses [almost all of which have stairs at the entry; the Lextran buses only have stairs if you go all the way to the back of the bus].

Also, the Lextran bus route takes me right across the street from the medical centre I work in, rather than being dropped off at the UK hospital employee entrance by the emergency department and walking all around the ambulance bays and the hospital itself, which is difficult for me. So it's a win. I park in the Blue 'K' lot near the stadium, and it takes me about 5-7 minutes to get from there to work once the bus comes.
The Orange buses that UK runs at the healthcare lot run more often, but they took about 10 minutes to do their route to my stop and then I took 7-10 more minutes to walk around the hospital slowly and get to my workplace.

I just wish I'd figured this out three years before when I struggled with those staired buses for all that time.

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.

Please send good thoughts

So the sensor to my glucose meter is expiring in a little over an hour, but I can't replace it, even though I do have others, because Tuesday morning I have an MRI and I can't wear it (it has metal in it), and I don't want to waste a ten-day sensor for just a little over a day's time. So it's back to pricking my finger for about 36 hours. Not bad, really, in terms of the timing.

I am nervous about the MRI for a few reasons. One, I'm claustrophobic. They've given me hydroxyzine to take a little while before to take the edge off. Second, it looks like I'll have to lie flat for about 45-60 minutes. I sleep with a CPAP. I'm a little iffy on breathing while flat for that length of time. I may ask if they can put the fan on. Third, it's an MRI/elastography of the abdomen to measure the pliability, of lack thereof,  of my liver. Back on the summer, I had an ultrasound/elastography and I had to spend some amount of the time exhaling all my breath out (in a mask) and then holding without breathing over and over, so my abdomen would be still. It made me light-headed. I'm thinking this might be the same, and that's why she didn't want to sedate me. (An open MRI was not an option, as the images would not have been clear enough). Lastly, this is to see just how damaged my liver is. I know it's enlarged. The ultrasound indicated cirrhosis due to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If that's the case, it's very serious. It could mean liver tumours, advanced liver disease, paracenteses (drawing fluid off the abdomen that had built up with a long needle), encephalopathy from a build up of toxins (think loopy as someone dealing with dementia--my mom once put a lighter in the microwave, and my stepfather caught it before she turned it on...she'd thought she was making soup), even an eventual wait for a transplant. If it isn't full-blown cirrhosis, but a milder stage, that's great, and there are things I can do to reverse our stabilise it. I've already lost 25 lbs., although that was mostly from being put on another diuretic. That's one thing I can do, along with lifestyle changes and exercise. So it's good to know exactly what we're dealing with. But I'm nervous and a little scared. My mom died of this, and it was terrible. If you wouldn't mind, send some positive thoughts my way Thanks!

Argh!!!

 I'm pretty technically-savvy.  I may not be able to do much with the smaller components on a laptop or build a whole computer, but I can change out periphery device cards and upgrade memory.  I know a lot of Windows and Android tricks, and I'm proficient with both.  I used to program in three older computer languages, so I know the basics of coding. And I've always been able to troubleshoot things to do with my computer or phone, eventually.

Enter the Amazon Fire.  This tablet (the latest generation of the Fire 10, which is the 11th generation) is so good in so many ways, and I'm actually able to use it as a min-computer because I have software compatible with Office and a keyboard.  I did the game notes entirely on it yesterday because my roommate was using my laptop (as a kind of desktop, as all sorts of things are plugged into that). But one trouble I have had is the headphone jack.  Right after I got my Fire this summer, the headphones I'd bought specifically for it that were wired, didn't work when I tried them.  I tried another pair, with nothing. I tried all the things I'd found on Google, including a factory reset, to no avail. I contacted Amazon and they couldn't help.  It hadn't even been a month, so they replaced it.

I usually use wireless Bluetooth headphones anyway, but sometimes I don't want to use up the battery, such as on Sunday mornings, when the wireless ones are better for my chores.  So I tried wired ones again, and lo, on the replacement tablet, it was the same.  The headphones didn't work. I tried everything short of a factory reset to no avail. As a last ditch effort, I tried a pair of headphones that I'd never used before, one that came with my last phone, the Samsung S7 (I'd preferred the ones from the S5, until they'd finally died, and the S20 has a USB-C jack instead of the 3.5 mm one).  I plugged in those, so frustrated with how my morning was going...and they worked, unlike two other headphones.  I checked the one set for any kittly nibbling and didn't find any.  I guess they were just somehow incompatible, even though they work on other devices.  So sending the other back didn't need to happen.

So everything works now. Now to determine why my Bluetooth earbuds are not pairing with each other (i.e. only the right one works).  But that is for another day.