Tricia's Musings

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



You are here: Home / Archives for Health Fitness and Beauty / Inflammatory bowel disease

Time to stop letting life pass me by

by

My poor poor blog. I’ve been neglecting it lately! I’ve been neglecting my regular readers as well.

It just seems that I got so busy over the last month or so that I haven’t managed to do much writing in any of my many blogs. Life got in the way, you might say!

IMG_5901 For some reason my garden has kept me busier this year than the last few! Maybe it’s just that I feel more like working in it? Anyway … over the last two weeks or so my husband and I managed to add about 30 big bags of mulch to the garden beds (after weeding of course)! No wonder my back has constantly been aching lately!

We’ve also taken our dog to the beach for a swim in Lake Ontario a few times, plus we’ve attended a few events that have been going on in Toronto. Namely – the first annual Beach Ribfest and the Toronto Ribfest, the Mississauga Waterfront festival where we saw Bruce Cockburn play, Woofstock in early June and I think a few more things.

IMG_5811 copy

Even though my Crohn’s is still flaring and makes me feel awful a good portion of the time I’ve decided to stop letting life pass me by. Toronto is a great city, with lots to do, especially in the summer. There’s something going on just about every weekend!

So, a few weeks ago I said to my husband lets try to attend one Toronto event every weekend. Provided the event is of interested to the two of us of course. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Hmmm maybe this weekend we’ll try to view the Molson Indy (we don’t have tickets). There’s also the Toronto Fringe Festival and the Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. Summerlicious is on too (gourmet meals for a deal of a price) – maybe we’ll eat out as well!

If you live in Toronto or within driving distance and you’re looking for interesting inexpensive things to do check out the Toronto Festivals and Events Calendar. I’m sure you’ll find something that suites your tastes.

We didn’t do anything special this past weekend, but last Wednesday was Canada day and we had a friend over. Actually it’s a guy that Chris works with at the hospital. So I was entertained by two talented guitar players (Chris and our friend) as they played guitar in our backyard for a few hours.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing garbage and city workers strike here in Toronto Canada Day festivities were canceled. So no fireworks … but it seemed that many of our neighbors bought their own Fireworks and set them off on the street or the park just down the road from us, so we could see fireworks all around our house!

Odd that all the rest of the big Toronto events (Gay Pride parade, Molson Indy etc) can all go on with the garbage strike and city worker strike, but national festivities for Canada Day were canceled? Unfair!

It’s Chris’ birthday on Wednesday. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but I think Chris’ parents are planning on coming into town for a visit sometime on the weekend. When Chris was talking to his mom the other day she said they wanted to take us out to dinner, so i guess along with the other multitude of interesting activities that we might do this weekend, going out to dinner to celebrate my husbands birthday will be on the list.

Anyway … if Chris and I stick to the plan we’ll be doing something new and interesting every weekend so even though I might be a little busier than I have been in the recent past I’ll try to blog more often and I should have some interesting tales to tell about the things we’ve been up to – photo’s too!

Do you find that life gets busier in the summer? Do you try to attend various events or festivals going on in your city during the summer?

BTW A belated Happy Canada Day and 4th of July to my Canadian and American visitors!





I’m trying to use my Wii daily to get fit and active

by

I’ve started using my Wii on a regular basis again. You might remember my posts when I purchased the Wii Fit and then the Wii Console (that I didn’t know I needed for Wii Fit) on Ebay? Well I used the Wii through January, but then my Crohn’s got worse and I just couldn’t use the game for a while.

I use the Wii mostly for exercising or playing games that get me moving. I haven’t used the Wii Fit all that much, but I’ve been trying out My Fitness Coach and the brand new EA Sports Active and I really like both programs. I like how they vary the exercise routines and I can use the Wii Fit board with some of the EA Sports Active workouts too.

Game wise I’ve been using Wii Sports to play tennis, boxing and bowling and I also have Wii Ski and a few other games that get you up off the couch and moving.

Last week I bought Mario kart as I thought it looked fun. My husband and I both played a few games one evening, but I didn’t really like it all that much. Maybe I should have rented it and tried it out first? Uh huh.

I’m glad I bought the Wii because with Crohn’s – when it’s bad, I can go through long periods where I’m not all that active due to the pain and other symptoms that I have so I’m trying to use it when I can just to up my activity level a little bit. Of course when I’m feeling semi-ok I also try to get outside and go for walks, work in my gardening (I have gardening marathons where I’m in the garden for 8 hours at a time) and do other things … but the Wii fits in when I’m not well enough to do a lot of outdoor activities.

I was wondering if any of you are also using PS3 players? And if you are, do you also have a Wii or have you tried playing any Wii games? I was wondering how the two game systems compare. Obviously my main goal with the Wii is to get a little more active and to use some of the great fitness programs that are available. However I was wondering – game wise – how do the two systems compare? It seems like there are a lot more true action games in PS3 so if you are a true gamer it might be more suitable to use PS3 over the Wii system.

Perfect weekend for getting things done around the home

by

Chris was busy today while I lay like a lump on the couch. Yeah, my Crohn’s is up to no good again.

We have three screen doors on our house, two at the front and one at the back and all of the handles started not working properly earlier this year. The doors just didn’t latch closed when they shut. So Chris spent some time replacing two of the handles and then with my help he rehung the screen door at the back that had been rubbing in one corner at the base – which of course caused it to not close properly.

Now that we’re starting to get nicer weather and want to have the doors open more often to let air in, it’s important that the screen doors close securely. I mean, we live on a busy street and our dog could literally push the doors open if we didn’t make sure they closed properly.

Tomorrow, if it’s not raining and if I’m feeling a bit better I have a few more seeds to plant in the garden and then we might go out shopping at some electronics stores. Our Home Theater stopped working, oh … about two years ago and we’ve tried everything to get it working again, but it just won’t work.

Every time we turn on the Home Theater system we get an “overload” message. We’ve unplugged various addons from the back (DVD player, cd player etc) to see if that helped and it didn’t, we’ve also plugged the machine into a different outlet and that didn’t help either. Then, about two weeks ao, on the advice of a salesperson at an electronics store Chris took the Home Theater apart and checked to see if the heat sink was covered in dust (it wasn’t) and checked for fuses inside the machine. We did find about 5 fuses but none of them looked blown so I guess the system is just plain blown and we’ll have to replace it.

So … maybe tomorrow we’ll go out and see if we can find a new home theater system receiver (without speakers and subwoofer since we have those) that isn’t too expensive and see if that will work. I really miss having the home theater system. I mean, we can’t watch DVD’s easily anymore and I can’t listen to CD’s unless I put them on the computer. I know I’d listen to a lot more music if we could get the home theater system working again.

Anyway, I guess since it looks like it will continue to rain on and off all weekend we’re just going to get things done around the house – mostly inside stuff unless the weather really clears up.

What are you doing this weekend? Are you going out to do something interesting or just doing home maintenance stuff like we are?

If it would just stop raining …

by

Well I got my piercings done at the hospital on Thursday … needles in my neck that is! Three in total. So now all I have to do is wait for the results of my Thyroid biopsy. I see the surgeon in a week and a half so I guess unless the results are really bad I won’t find out until then.

My neck feels better now too. It was kind of tender on Thursday evening and Friday, but today it seems to be back to normal. I’m surprised it wasn’t more painful. The radiologist took his time wiggling those fine needles in my neck! At least he was nice looking so I had something to keep my mind off the needles as he was doing the procedure. LOL

I was able to start taking my Crohn’s medication, Pentasa on Thursday evening as well, and my abdomen is feeling slightly better than it did all week. Hopefully I’ll really be feeling better by the time the weekend is over. If not maybe I’ll take those people up on their offers of free Orlando vacations that keep calling me five times a day. NOT.

Obviously I didn’t go camping this weekend with my sister-in-law. It’s just as well as it rained on and off all day today. It would have been a miserable camping experience! Instead Chris and I went to a local garden center and bought some plants and annual flowers to plant in the planters around the house. We’ll get to work doing that tomorrow when it’s not raining. At least I hope it won’t rain!

What have you been doing this weekend? Gardening? Yardwork? Spring cleaning or just visiting with friends and family?

A little nervous about my thyroid biopsy tomorrow

by

Tomorrow I’m going to the hospital to have my Thyroid biopsy. I’m starting to get a little nervous. I know it’s not that bad, I’ve been through this before, in 1990 I think it was and while the biopsy (needles in the neck!) went ok and I didn’t really have any pain afterwords that I remember the results weren’t good.

It was only a few days after that first biopsy that I got a call from the doctor stating that she’d made an appointment with a surgeon for the next day and that I’d need to have part of my thyroid removed because the biopsy of the thyroid tumor showed that it was made up of pre-cancerous cells.

So …. having been through all that once before, including surgery to remove half my thyroid, I’m kind of thinking that the solid nodules that have grown in my remaining thyroid will end up having bad cells in them again now too. Which of course means more surgery.

I’m of mixed emotions tonight because of what I’ve explained above. Part of me would prefer to either not have the biopsy or at least delay it for another week, but then I’m also glad that it’s tomorrow, mostly because my Crohn’s is flaring really bad since I had to stop my Pentasa last week for the test, and once the biopsy is done I should be able to start taking my meds again and hopefully I’ll be feeling better again in a few days.

Speaking of the no meds Crohn’s flare I’m going through … it’s horrible. it’s as if I’ve taken a colon cleanser like Colonix and I’m experiencing the worst side effects like stomach cramps and frequent trips to the bathroom.

I haven’t even been able to eat properly the last couple of days. My stomach just hurts too much on regular food.

So yeah, I want the biopsy to be over so that my stomach pain can get better (ie start taking my meds again), but I’m worried that the results will mean I’ll be having surgery to remove the remaining portion of my thyroid soon, which sucks!

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday