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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!

Out of this world gift idea

September 27, 2008 by Tricia

I’m sure by now you’ve heard that you can have new stars named after you or a loved one, even those discovering new species sometimes offer up the chance to have the new species named after yourself (ie Stephen Colbert now has a spider named after him!), but did you know that you can buy the moon too? Well .. a piece of it, I mean.

Uh huh .. I probably should have left this story for my husband Chris to write about on Odd Planet since it is weird news – in my books any way.

A company called Lunar International is allowing people to order a personalized Lunar land claim for real moon property.

Here’s the description:

Millions of people have purchased their very own property on the moon, and now you can too. Lunar International, Earth’s recognized leader in lunar real estate, has designed an innovative plan to return mankind to the moon. Through our program, anybody who wishes to own land on the moon can do so by purchasing an officially authorized lunar land claim from our organization. Whether it be a gift for a loved one, a reward for a valued employee or simply a treat for yourself, property on the moon makes a unique and affordable gift that anyone can enjoy.

It would certainly make a great gift for the person who has everything!

I’d rather stay in a vacation rental than a hotel

September 2, 2008 by Tricia

When I was a kid my parents would always take two or more weeks off in the summer and we’d go on road trip vacations. I got to see a lot of Canada and much of the Us in this manner. Of course as a kid I didn’t really like being stuck in the car as we traveled from one destination to another, but the memories of all the places I’ve been and the sights I’ve seen are still fresh in my mind and I’m thankful that my parents chose to vacation in that manner.

We rarely stayed in hotels or motels when we took our road trip vacations. My parents would plan our trips ahead of time and we’d stay in cabins or vacations homes that they’d rented from the owners.

Now that I think about it I don’t know how they were able to plan our vacations and where’d we’d stay so efficiently. It must have been a lot harder than it is to now that we have the internet.

These days you can just get on the computer and go to sites like VacationHomeRentals.com and look for vacation rentals pretty much anywhere in the world.

In fact I was thinking of looking for vacation rentals by owner for Chris’ vacation time. We haven’t been on a real vacation in ages! I’d thought of renting a vacation home or cabin in cottage country for a week or so, but when our dog went into heat and a few other things happened we just decided to stay home for his holiday time.

There’s a blogging convention in Florida next weekend and while I’m not going this time, if I were I think I would have looked at some Florida rentals rather than staying in a hotel if I’d been going. I mean, since these vacation rentals are usually homes or cottages you have access to a full kitchen, a laundry room and all the amenities of home. Plus, if you are short on cash you can always share your rental with another couple. We might have done that had we been going to the blogging convention – shared a space I mean.

VacationHomeRentals.com is an easy site to use. Just type your destination area in the search bar or click on the map of the US or Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, Hawaii or the world and start narrowing down your search by clicking on city or area links. Just as an example, if I were going to Orlando next weekend for the convention there are plenty of beautiful vacation rentals in the area. I found a few for as low as $70 a night – beautiful condos and homes. That’s cheaper than most decent hotels and motels! If I go to the blogging convention next year I’ll be looking onto vacation home rentals. That’s for sure!

Have you staying in vacation rentals when you’ve been on holiday? How was your experience?

A new way to network and promote your sites

August 1, 2008 by Tricia

Yesterday I read a blog post about keeping your Twitter and Plurk accounts functional and it caused me to revisit a site that I’d been to in the past, but dismissed as not being what I needed at the time.

The site that I visited and subsequently signed up for was Ping.Fm. Perhaps you’ve heard of this site?

Ping.Fm allows you to update your social networks quickly and virtually from anywhere. Best of all, you can update all of your social networks at once!

In my last post I talked about how I think Twitter might be a waste of time for people because some of the bloggers I follow seem to always be sending out Tweets. Now add other social networks like Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Facebook, Friendfeed and a multitude of other social network sites and you could literally spend your whole day posting messages on these sites just to network and keep in touch with your friends. There are so many social networks popping out of the woodwork these days that it’s becoming overwhelming! So you can see why the idea of being able to post one message to one site and then have that message delivered to all of your social networks at once might be beneficial.

I think I originally dismissed Ping.Fm when I first came across it because I wasn’t yet a member of Twitter or Plurk or some of the other sites that Ping.Fm interacted with at the time. However now that I’m a member of at least half of the sites that work with Ping.Fm I can really see the advantage!

Ping.Fm is very easy to use. Just sign up and activate your social service. You can post your Ping.Fm messages directly to Blogger and WordPress.com blogs, Social sites such as Bebo, Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, kwippy, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. You can also use Ping.Fm to post message to the following services – AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk (GTalk), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, iGoogle Gadget, Facebook, iPhone Web App, and Mobile App (WAP).

BTW all the links in the paragraph above are to my social network profile pages if you’d like to visit them and add me as a friend.

Imagine how much time you’ll save by being able to post message to your friends and contacts on several of those sites all at once?

Now, if you happen to have a WordPress blog on it’s own domain there’s a WP Plugin called PingPressFm that will allow you to notify your social network sites about a new blog post. The WP plugin only works with WP 2.5 and higher so if you are a Ping.Fm member and want to use the plugin on your blog make sure your installation is at least WP 2.5 or higher.

Unlike some I don’t post a lot of messages to my social networks, but I do like the idea of being able to notify all of these services of new blog posts. Up until now I’d only been using Twitterfox to post blog post updates to Twitter. If the PingPressFm plugin works well I’ll use that instead.

Ping.Fm is in Beta right now and you need an invite before you can become a member. So consider this your invitation. The invite code is currently pingscompany. Oh and speaking of invites if anyone has an invite for Jaiku I’d love to get one so I can explore that site.

If you know of any other handy services that make it easier to network I’d love to hear about them.

Quality custom labels for your small business needs

July 23, 2008 by Tricia

I know that a number of my regular readers are also small business owners. Some of you own small stores, others make a variety of products that you sell from your home based businesses.

More than likely some of your businesses require labels for your products. I was a small business owner myself several years ago, however the business I was in didn’t require labels for my products. I was a jeweller.

I can think of lots of small businesses that might use custom made Labels like those that can be found at Frontier Label. Small companies that make handmade soaps, candles, potpourri, marinades, sauces or other bottled goods, beers, wines, herbs, teas or coffees might all need custom labels for their products.

What I like about Frontier Labels is that you can provide your own design, perhaps your company logo in the form of a high quality image and they will create custom Labels for you.

Not only that – say you need a variety of labels, you can combine multiple stickers or labels (as long as they are the same size and material) on one order and get the combined volume pricing. Frontier Labels sell in bulk in quantities of 250 up to 2000 labels at a time depending upon the size and style. So the ability to combine your order to get the volume pricing is an added bonus.

If you’re interested in having quality labels made for your company take a look at Frontier Labels sample Labels. After that you talk via Live Chat with one of the company representatives if you have any questions that aren’t answered on the site.

More doctors, new meds and Thyroid nodules

Out of this world gift idea

I’d rather stay in a vacation rental than a hotel

Quality custom labels for your small business needs

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