Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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A perfect Spring weekend

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It’s going to be a beautiful weekend here in Toronto. Already it’s 19 Celsius (66 F) outside, and tomorrow the temperature is supposed to reach 26 Celsius (79 F) or more!

Other than Chris going to the Nuance progressive rock concert on Sunday at the Black Swan (he wrote about it on his blog if you’re in the area and want to learn more) we don’t have any specific plans for the weekend, but I think we’ll probably be spending quite a bit of time outside enjoying the nice weather. Perhaps we’ll have a barbecue tonight.

I have some bulbs that I want to plant (Crocosmia) and a few other things that I need to do in the garden such as prune some of the roses. Tomorrow will be the perfect day for doing that kind of work. maybe we’ll even have some time to take our dog, Midnight to Cherry beach or to Taylor Creek park for a run off leash. She’d love it.

Is the weather going to be nice in your area this weekend? Any plans? A trip to the cottage or maybe the Outer Banks or perhaps just staying in the city and doing some yard work like we plan to do?





So much for feeling better

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Ok … so much for that new drug I was trying for my Crohn’s disease.

I started the Sulfasalazine on Saturday – only one pill, four on Sunday and by Sunday evening my face and upper body were red!

It looked like I had either had too much sun or like I was blushing. By Monday I had a strange rash – little red dots over pink to red skin starting on my left lower leg. I stopped taking the medication as soon as I noticed the rash (one pill Monday so six in total) and called the Internist who had prescribed the new anti-inflammatory medication.

By last night the rash on my leg had spread to both legs and my lower torso … ok maybe slightly on my arms as well.

Here’s what it looks like:

skin rash

The picture isn’t the best (that’s my shin), but if you can remember what your skin looks like after you’ve fallen and scraped your leg or some how got rug burn – well that’s what it looks like … not pleasant, but at least it’s not itching or bothering me in anyway other than it’s appearance.

I’m also really really really nauseated and have a headache. I guess that’s normal enough when starting a new medication, but considering I only had one pill yesterday – maybe 32 hours ago, you’d think that the rash, nausea and headache would be starting to die down. I guess it’s going to take a few more days before I feel more like myself again.

Obviously from the name of the drug- Sulfasalazine there’s sulfa drugs in it. We think that’s what I reacted to because the rest of the medication that makes up Sulfasalazine is similar to the Pentasa that I used to take (which only gave me a mild little tiny red dot barely noticeable rash). So I guess I’m allergic or hypersensitive to Sulfa drugs now. I’ve had them in the past – you know, for bladder infections without any problems, but I guess that’s changed.

In other news … I had to call my family doctor today- yet again! Remember I had an ultrasound on my neck two weeks ago that revealed that I have several solid thyroid nodules? I had precancerous tumors in my thyroid in the past so new growths are of great concern to me. Well I finally got my doctor to call me back and she was just going to sit on this and see what happened … duh! You don’t do that when one of the solid nodules is close to 2 cm and a previous history of suspicious growth. Plus my sister had regrowth on her thyroid (she’d had a partial thyroidectomy when she was 18) a few years ago and it was cancer.

I told her that I wanted to see an endocrinologist and supplied her with the name and number for the doctor of my choice. I’m pretty sure he’ll want to at least do a fine needle biopsy of the a few of the growths (any solid nodule over 1 cm should have FNB). Then we can decide from there whether we should just watch the lumps in my throat and see if they grow more (already have swallowing difficulty) or do surgery to remove the rest of my thyroid. Geez I hope that my family doctor doesn’t have any patients with Mesothelioma cancer, she probably just let them sit and wait before sending them to a specialist too!

Yeah, I’m more than a little angry at my family doctors poor care … she’s only done one physical on me in the last five years and has only tested my thyroid levels twice in that time too – not to mention never doing a thyroglobulin which might have picked up on suspicious growths.

Anyway … now I’m going to wait and see when I might have an appointment with the Endocrinologist. Plus I’m going to wait a day or two before I started taking the Pentasa again – i want that rash to mostly disappear before I start putting another drug into my body.

Have you had strange reactions to medications too? I seem to have reactions to about every second new drug I try.

I think someone called the police on me!

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Oops, I think I scared my neighbors!

Just before midnight I went outside with our dog to let her do her final business of the evening. She took her time playing in the odd April snow that we had on Monday and then we headed back to the house.

When I got to the screen door and tried to enter it wouldn’t open! Was it locked? Had my coat sleeve accidentally hit the tiny latch on the screen door handle on the way out?

So there I was standing outside in the cold wondering how I was going to get back into the house. Chris had gone to bed earlier and surely he was asleep. How was I going to get his attention? I mean, it’s not like I could access the inner door … I was standing outside our enclosed front porch so there was three doors between me and the warmth of the house.

Oh boy.

So I started rattling the screen door in it’s frame and calling out Chris’ name. Considering the time I didn’t want to yell too loud, but I had to call out Chris’ name in the hope that he’d hear me, didn’t I?

I’m not sure how long I was out there calling Chris’ name and rattling the screen door, but I don’t think it was any longer than five minutes. Finally Chris appeared at the front door in only his underwear. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t in the house. I had to rattle the screen door again to show him I couldn’t get into the front porch. He reluctantly came forward and opened the door – he didn’t want to get cold!

I asked him if the door had been locked and he said it wasn’t. I guess the condensation inside the porch must have frozen on the screen doors latch and it quickly froze shut when it closed behind me when I took the dog outside. Funny … that never happened when it was really cold during the winter or, for that matter, ever before!

Once I was inside I started to calm down. I guess I got a little rattled at the thought of being locked (or frozen) out of the house at that time of night.

Once I’d put our Lab Midnight to bed in her crate I happened to notice some car lights outside as I passed the front window. I seemed like the car was parked or idling on the corner, so I parted the curtains and guess what?

It was a police car!

Oops!

I went upstairs to change for bed and told Chris that a police car was in front of our house across the street. As I told him the police car moved forward, did a U-turn and headed back towards the hospital where we both work. There’s almost always police in the Emergency Department so one of them must have taken the call that was so close. Good response time if they were coming for the “disturbance” I was creating.

I’ll bet that one of my neighbors heard me yelling for Chris or rattling the door and called the police. The neighbors in the house adjoining ours might have heard the door rattles and thought someone was trying to break into their home, perhaps. Or maybe someone thought my calls of Chris’ name were really cries for help?

Either way, I’m pretty sure someone close by must have called the cops. Sorry! My bad! < blush >

I think I might just slip the cellphone in my pocket from now on when I go out late at night – just in case something like that happens again!

Strange, isn’t it that the door seemed to freeze closed – I mean, it’s cold out, but not all that bad.

Have you ever been locked out of your house? Or frozen out as in my case?

Yard work and a bad back do not mix

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Chris and I took advantage of the beautiful day here in Toronto and went outside for several hours to tidy up the garden.

My mind was into the work, but my body wasn’t! I’m certainly not made of Ferrari parts – not anymore anyway! LOL Nope! I just found out I have a slipped disk in my back which explains the back pain I’ve been having for over a year now. Naturally, twisting, bending and standing and sitting in odd positions while cleaning out the garden beds did absolutely nothing for my back except cause more pain!

So now I’m lying on the couch watching TV with a heating pad on my back. Oh yes, I’m also full of Advil and Tylenol. None of it seems to be helping at the moment … maybe a good rest will relax my back … maybe!

The backyard does look beautiful now though! All the dead leaves, dead foliage and most of the dead branches on the rose bushes are gone. I didn’t “technically” prune the roses – just cut off the obviously dead branches. It’s still too early to do a real pruning …. or is it?

I mean .. I was totally surprised at how many plants were coming up when we uncovered them! Not just the usually suspects like crocus, daffodils, tulips and hyacinth no … my Hollyhocks, Phlox, honeysuckle vines, and many of my clematis have leaf buds on them. I swear my garden is at least two weeks ahead of it’s self if not a full month ahead!

Now that the back garden is all cleaned up and the sun can get at the tender shoots poking their heads out of the ground I’m sure that everything will really start to shoot up! In just few days (if the weather holds) I’m sure there will be a lot more green in my garden!

The grass is already starting to green up too. On Monday evening we raked the front and back yards as well as started cleaning up the garden beds and the grass was dead looking – not a hint of green. But just 6 days of above freezing temps and a tiny bit of rain later and it now has quite a bit of green.

Now if only my back could make such a quick turn around as our awakening garden is!

Oh BTW did you participate in Earth Hour? We had a candle light dinner after expending all that energy outdoors! What did you do during earth hour?

One of the things I hate about Spring

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One of the things that I hate about Spring is all the garbage that suddenly appears on our lawn, sidewalk and blows around on the street once the snow melts.

Toronto overall is a very clean city, but there are still people who toss tissues or other garbage on the ground once they are done with them. There’s certainly enough public garbage and recycling bins in the city that no one walking down a city street would have to walk very far before they’d find one to dispose of their garbage … but some are too lazy to do that. I mean there’s three garbage and recycling bins each within a two to three minute walk from my house alone, yet my lawn has junk on it.

So now .. with the rain and wind blowing, every time I go outside I discover used tissues stuck in my bare rose bushes, crumpled fast food wrappers, paper cups, newspapers, flyers, plastic bags, cigarette buts and other garbage that I have to clean up.

This year seems worse than others. Either the city hasn’t been cleaning the streets as much as they used to or people are getting lazier about properly getting rid of their trash.

Even in the winter when there was snow on the ground I found garbage in the snow bank that wouldn’t normally be there like plastic pieces of broken car tail lights and something that I think was some kind of industrial knobs. Strange stuff … maybe some of it fell off a truck or something.

Like I said earlier Toronto is a very clean city compared to many large cities. So I really don’t have much to complain about … but still, there just seems to be more leftover winter garbage around this year than there usually is.

Do you hate cleaning other peoples garbage off your property once Spring arrives and the snow melts to reveal all the extra junk you have to pick up?

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