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More doctors, new meds and Thyroid nodules

April 1, 2009 by Tricia

What an exhausting day!

I had an appointment with a new doctor this afternoon. An Internist. My family doc had suggested I see him over a year ago but delayed referring me until recently. Uh huh … she’s become a dud in the last year or so.

Anyway, I went to see the new doctor, the Internal medicine guy, just to get another set of eyeballs on my Crohn’s case. Nothing has been helping ease my pain and symptoms in the last four years, so as long as I don’t end up having to go through all the tests like yet another colonoscopy, gastroscopy and other tests I’m fine with seeing if this new doctor can help me.

After discussing my medical history and recent symptoms he decided to try me on a different Crohn’s drug. I’m to try it for two weeks and see if I feel any better on the new meds. Of course I probably won’t be able to fill the prescription until the weekend as we go to Costco to fill our scripts these days- it’s cheaper!

I hope this works.

I’m tired though … it’s exhausting seeing a new doc when you have Chronic health problems.

Plus … last week I thought my throat looked a little puffy so when I went to see my pain doctor I had her take a look at my neck and she sent me for an ultrasound. Just as I thought, the right side of my thyroid (the only part of the thyroid I have left since I had the left side removed 19 years ago when I had a tumor with pre-cancerous cells in it!) has lots of solid thyroid nodules in it.

I just got that news yesterday so that’s been worrying me too. I mean, since the last thyroid growths I had had precancerous cells and resulted in surgery I have a feeling that these ones will be precancerous or perhaps even have developed into cancer since my family doc hasn’t been keeping an eye on my thyroid function over the last several years – so I’ll probably end up having surgery to have the rest of my thyroid removed soon too. Biopsies first though …

So now I’m waiting for my family doctor to call me. My pain doctors office, the one who sent me for the thyroid ultrasound, called me yesterday with the results (solid nodules, one more dominant than the others) and said they were faxing the info to my family doctor that day … so why haven’t I heard from my family doctor today? I know she works everyday, but Monday … Grrr … I just want to get started, as in get a referral to an Endocrinologist, and find out how serious these new growths are. Not to mention that I shouldn’t have had new growths since I’ve been on Thyroid replacement therapy for almost 20 years!

The only good news that happened so far today (well other than trying a new medication) is that there was a message on my phone saying that we won a free hotel stay. LOL I’ll have to see if that’s for real or not, but a little good news is nice.

I hope that you had a better and healthier day than I did!

Grilling in my kitchen

February 27, 2009 by Tricia

Earlier this evening, when Chris came home from work, I suggested to Chris that we get a Foreman Grill. I’d got a notice from a department store in our area that the G 2 EZ Broil grill was on sale.

We’ve been eating a lot of boneless Skinless chicken breasts lately and I’ve been getting kind of tired of baking them in the oven so I thought the grill might be a great addition to our kitchen appliances and I was fairly certain that I’d use it just about every day.

So when Chris got home from work I told him about the grill. I’d also looked up some reviews on that particular model to see how others liked it and it had good reviews, so we went out to the store to get one. We also stopped by a grocery store to pick up some salad making supplies and some hamburgers.

After getting the new grill out of the box and setting it up we grilled two hamburgers on it. man is that thing fast! Only five minutes and our burgers were done. Yummy!

Along with our hamburgers in Pita buns we had steamed veggies (carrots, broccoli and cauliflower) and I made a salad with baby mixed greens, grape tomatoes (none of the regular sized tomatoes were ripe enough in the store), cucumber, green pepper and a little feta cheese. We haven’t actually had a salad with our meals for quite a while so it was a very nice addition. Plus I made us each a big salad so it was filling too.

I already have some thawed chicken breasts in the fridge, so tomorrow we’ll have grilled chicken. Sunday perhaps we’ll have some of the Sole Fillets I bought last weekend. Hopefully everything cooks nicely on the grill!

Now if only I’d remembered to look for compact flash cards while we were in the store earlier I’d be set. I need a new one for my camera. Oh well … we still have the rest of the weekend.

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

February 22, 2009 by Tricia

I’m starting to get sick and tired of our bedroom being freezing cold when I go to bed. Our master bedroom is the coldest room in the house in the winter. Changing into my PJ’s each night is quite the experience as I end up covered in goose-pimples! LOL

We live in an older house. It was build in 1927 and as a result it’s probably not quite as warm as newer homes. Our bedroom is upstairs at the end of a long hallway so that likely makes it harder for the cold air that builds up in the room to escape. Remember cold air goes down (as in down a staircase) and warm air goes upward.

When we moved in we had some duct work done including adding a cold air vent in the master bedroom. I’m sure this has helped to make the room warmer than it would have been without the cold air return vent, but it’s still pretty darn cold in the dead of winter.

We did have an electric heater that we’d use in the bedroom for the first hour or so after we went to bed, but it stopped working in early December and we haven’t replaced it yet. After suffering through a very cold January (February has been warmer here, but it will get colder soon) I think it’s time to buy a new heater.

I’m going to watch for an electric heater to go on sale and hope that I can get one for a good price soon.

Our last electric heater was a tall standing one that oscillated to move the warm air around the room, but I’ve been look at this Honeywell Cool Touch heater and it looks like it might fit the bill. The description says it will heat a large living space so it might be too powerful for our small master bedroom.

What we’d normally do with our old electric heater would be to turn it on when we’d come upstairs to use the washroom and wash up before bed so that it would take a bit of the chill out of the room before we’d have to go in there to get changed. It also had a timer on it so we could set it to run for only an hour or so. That would ensure that the room was warm as we were trying to fall asleep, but we usually didn’t need it to run all night. Not once the bed was warmed up anyway.

Do you find the the upstairs of your house is a lot cooler in the winter than the rest of your home? Do you use a heater in your bedroom or do you just suffer the cold?

Trying to eat healthier meals

February 13, 2009 by Tricia

I’ve always tried to cook healthy meals for Chris and I, but over the last few months and especially the last two weeks since Chris got out of the hospital I’ve really stepped it up.

We’d occasionally have a pre-made frozen dinner such as Loblaws Blue Menu grilled vegetable lasagna, but after re-reading the ingredients list and cholesterol listings on the package we’ve even cut that out of our “occasional easy food menu”. Chris has really high bad and good cholesterol levels as well as very low triglycerides. He’s on medication now to control his cholesterol and given the way we normally eat we don’t think our diet has much to do with his high cholesterol levels even the docs say it’s probably genetic, but it sure can’t hurt either him or I to eat even better.

Lately we’ve been eating a lot of skinless boneless chicken breasts. I bake them in the oven in a casserole dish and they are very tender and moist. I also steam up to three different veggies in the microwave – usually carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Last night we had Teriyaki chicken and tonight we’re going to have chicken breasts marinated in a honey Dijon marinade. Yummy.

Sometime in the future when we have a little extra cash I’d love to get a fruit and vegetable juice extractor. We used to have a juicer but we found that we didn’t use it as much as we should have and gave it to Chris’ aunt. Of course now that it’s gone, and now that we are really trying to eat healthy, I’d love to have a fruit and veggie juicer again. Store bought juices contain far too many sugars and well, buying veggie juices in a health food store is pretty expensive. I don’t see why I can’t make our own carrot juice and other juices right at home.

Each year we grow strawberries, raspberries, carrots and tomatoes in our “flower” garden so I could even save money by using the fruit and veggies that we grow to make juice too.

As I said we don’t have any extra money right now so I’ll have to wait until we have some spare cash and wait for a juicer to go on sale before we get one, but I think that’s definitely on our want list. In the mean time we’ll just eat as many fruit and veggies as we can – they certainly help fill you up and they’re healthy.

Do you read the ingredient labels on the items you buy in the grocery store? Have you been trying to eat healthier lately too?

Sore from playing with my new Wii

January 23, 2009 by Tricia

Well … I guess it’s about time I update you on that Wii Fit that I bought on eBay almost two weeks ago now.

First off … yes I only bought the Wii Fit. None of the descriptions of the Wii Fit and balance board on ebay stated that you needed the console with it. In fact the offer that I bid on and won said that it came with all the cables and every thing needed to play … obviously the guy never used a Wii Fit balance board because there are NO cables! LOL But I didn’t know that at the time.

Shortly after I won my bid on the Wii Fit I discovered that I needed the console as well. Bummer – now I’d have to shell out even more money if I wanted to use the Wii Fit that I bought or I’d have to cancel my order/payment. In the end I decided to get the console and I found one for sale – brand new that came with Wii Sports as well as the Wii Play game an extra remote and nunchuk. All for about $50 more than I’d pay for it in the store if any stores actually had them in stock.

Once the Wii Fit and Wii Console arrived I had 14 games to play – not including every thing that’s on the Wii fit disk, and the ability for two people to play considering we’d have two remotes and two nunchuks.

The Wii fit arrived last Friday, but I has to wait until Monday for the Wii console to arrive. Other than playing a few games on Monday night after we got it set up I didn’t really get started with the Wii Fit until Tuesday.

I’ve used the Wii Fit and played Wii games all week (only an hour or so each day – not all day!) – three days in a row excluding today because my muscles are SORE! I’m aching all over! Yes, I’m that out of shape! Being sick for three years and now having muscles that are weak because of Vitamin D deficiency is likely making it a little harder for me as far as playing the games and using the Wii Fit board. My balance totally sucks! LOL

Anyway … given that I’m already feeling the exercises and extra activities that I’ve been doing there’s no way I’ll ever need weight loss pills to lose the few extra pounds that I’ve gained while I’ve been sick. I just have to stick to doing my Wii Fit daily and as I get stronger adding more outdoor activities.

When I first wrote about buying the Wii Fit a few people commented that they were surprised I hadn’t bought anything on eBay before … well I’ve got another first for you. Early Thursday morning (like 2 a.m.) I was checking out the Wii games on Amazon Canada and I decided to buy three that I’d been reading about over the last two weeks. I’d never made an Amazon purchase before – but now I have.

I bought We Ski, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party and Big Beach Sports. The first two can be used with the Wii Balance board for some of the games. I chose those games because they had pretty good reviews, some can be used with the balance board and all are active games. I definitely need to get more active and I figure this can’t hurt.

Have any of you used or purchased any of the last three games I mentioned? How do you like them?

The games arrived today! Talk about fast service – that’s only one day after I ordered them! As I said earlier, my muscles are so sore today that I didn’t even take the cellophane of the packages until this evening and neither Chris nor I have played the games this evening. I have a feeling we’ll both be playing a lot of Wii this weekend though!

Oh and we also connected the Wii to the internet this evening as well. We have a router so it was really easy. Now we can updates on the console and some of the games if there are any.

More doctors, new meds and Thyroid nodules

Grilling in my kitchen

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

Trying to eat healthier meals

Sore from playing with my new Wii

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