I’m so glad we have medical insurance.

Yes, it’s expensive, but holy crap. I picked up a prescription for advair today. 2 months cost me 70.00. Care to guess what it would have cost if I paid out of pocket? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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$575.00 Yes.

I had surgery 2 wks ago today- this is what I wrote but never posted here-

I’ve been told the dilation was a success although I did not actually get to see Dr M, aside from being very groggy in recovery. I was told I saw him but don’t remember. I find it frustrating to say the least. Yes, I understand he’s a busy man, but I think his patients deserve a little bit of time with him. Heck, Dr N (the AI guy) came to see me TWICE and he’s just consulting. Love that guy. I did see Dr B (the vocal chord guy) before going into the OR. I don’t know if he actually went in- when I saw him he said he was going to be in another OR just down the hall and would be available if needed.

I met a few of the residents this morning and one of them had me blow on his hand and he said the breath felt great. Dr. N was really impressed when he listened to my breathing thru the stethoscope because this time when he listened I didn’t have the wheeze. He’s such a nice man.

The worst I have to report is a fat upper lip from Dr M’s giant hands vs my teeny mouth. And I got epinephrine nebuliser treatments every 4 hours. It was like this aerobic workout withotu exercising. It made my heart go crazy. C my nurse said that it was likely caused because I don’t have much body fat and the med had no where else to go. The smell of those epi treatments gagged me and it was so hard to breathe that stuff in, but I knew it had to be done. I don’t want to smell that stuff for a long, long time.

Dr N told Ray that he felt that the advair will be extremely helpful and I more than likely won’t need another dilation for some time. I’m anxious to hear exactly what Dr M has to say as well. I need to call for a follow up appt but will wait until after the 4th to do that. I’m exhausted right now and want to go to bed.

Apparently I missed some of the ladies from the email list support group I started years ago. I think they may have been up to my floor before I arrived (I got there around noon) and my nurse wouldn’t give Christi any informaiton because C didn’t have my last name and the stupid Hippa rules prevent the staff from releasign anything. I understand the rules are in place for a reason, but I’m irked nevertheless. I was hoping to see them, even for a short time.

For nurses I had L, C (she was a doll!) L overnight and J this morning. Jwas a hoot. He just got back from a cruise to Bermuda with his family and was on his first day back and was having trouble getting into the swing of things.

I got released around 11 0 this morning. We were really anxious to get out of there because Storrow drive was being shut down at noon and that’s the easy way out of the city for us. Otherwise we’d have to go up 93 and around and although we could have done it, it’s not a mindless trip like Storrow drive has become to Ray.

My throat hurts a wee little bit now and I’m feeling a little phlemgy. I’m now seriously wondering if I’m sensitive to dairy, as I was free of phlegm all day yesterday and this morning I had yogurt and started feeling phlegmy a little while later. I don’t know how I could possibly eliminate dairy!

This morning while I was waiting to go back to my floor after a chest xray I was looking at my charts. All of the numbers on my blood tests were normal, except for platelets, which was high. What would this mean? (Aside from the fact that I’d be a good platelet donor) It wasn’t obnoxiously high, but at 455, and the range of “high normal” on the chart was 401

M had a great time at my friends and wound up staying 2 nights. DH was really bummed out that she wanted to stay a 2nd night there, but it really worked out for the better doing it that way. She’d have gone stir crazy waiting for me to be released. It was a slow process this morning.

I guess I have may have an autoimmune disease after all…

10 years ago I was diagnosed and treated for idio pathic trac heal stenosis, basically there was scar tissue on the inside of my trachea and it was closing in on itself. I had 6cm of it removed (called a resection), but the scarring was so severe the surgeon could not take it all without damaging my larynx. I like to talk, so he made a good decision.

Over the past 6 months or so I’ve noticed the same wheeziness and shortness of breath that I had way back then. I went in March for tests and the stenosis is back. The new surgeon (my original dr was killed in a car accident last October) is performing a dilation surgery on me a week from today as there is no way I could have the resection again because there’s really nothing left.

One of the tests I had was a blood test checking the antibodies level, to help determine if an autoimmune disease called Wegener’s Granulomatosis may be contributing to the recurrance of the scarring. I never heard anything after that test, so I assumed I was in the clear.

Today my surgeons secretary calls and tells me that my doc wants me to see a rheumatologist specialising in wegener’s to see me on Thursday.

I’m going tomorrow to Boston already for pre-surgery testing, I was really hoping I’d be able to be squeezed in tomorrow instead of having to make 2 trips to the city this week.

I’m so frustrated because this test was done in March and I’m certain it didn’t take 2 1/2 months for the results to come back. I think the doc never actually looked at my file for those results until today when he was going over the schedule for tomorrow and saw my elevated ANA.

So now I’m waiting to hear from this other docs office. I’ll update on Thursday, but believe me, I’m going to be grilling the doc I see tomorrow about why the delay in deciding I needed to see this other specialist.

The upside of all of this is one of the other docs who will be in surgery on Monday is partnered with the guy who treated Steve Tyler of Aerosmith and Julie Andrews. I figure if that office is good enough for them I’m willing to settle. He’s a vocal chord specialist and will work to preserve my voice, which I still want to keep.

Sometimes ebay powersellers really suck

Why oh why do sellers on ebay post items for sale when they don’t have said item in stock? Granted this is a seller with like 19000+ transactions so they’re bound to make mistakes, but argh!

The backstory is this- BIL and his fiancee are getting married in something like 10 days. They asked DD to be the flower girl in February. The brides only request for the dress was that it the dress be pink. (she’s super laid back, love her!) I found a beautiful dress in March, the last one of its style at the store. It was a size too big for DD, which I was ok with because I could alter it if needed, and when we first got it it was too big.

A few days ago I had her try on the dress and it’s too small!! On the upside, the dress still has tags intact with receipt attached to the tags. Hopefully they won’t give me a hard time about returning it.

So, I found an almost identical dress on ebay on Sunday and used the buy it now option. The seller contacted me today and said they don’t have that dress in stock and won’t have it for another week. We don’t have a week so I asked for a refund, hopefully that will show up in my paypal acct soon.

I know that I could just try going to Macy’s or hitting a local bridal shop, but I’m not confident I’d find anything suitable without paying a small fortune, which we don’t have right now. We don’t really have much around here by way of bridal shops either, and I don’t want to go to Boston. I really feel we lucked out in the spring with the onslaught of Easter dresses available.

So tomorrow I’m heading to one of the best fabric stores in the NE (thankfully only 40 minutes away!) and am going to make it. I found a pattern at Walmart tonight that is a really simple empire waisted dress, similarly styled to the original purchased dress. I made my own wedding gown so I’m not at all daunted by the project, just at the timing because there is pressure to have it done within a week. I have very high expectations of my work and am going to drive everyone nuts this week while I work on it.

another year down

Last day of school today. Yesterday was my last day of working. It’s amazing, one half of me is so sad, but the other is yippee! The preschool was a tough class and next year’s kindergarten group will be pretty much the same kids, so my hat goes off to the kindy teacher. He’ll have a combined K/1 class and his work cut out for him for sure. But he’s like magic with the kids so I’m confident that it will be a good year for them.

Hard to believe DD will be in 3rd grade! She didn’t miss a single day of school this year which baffles me, given how many times she was out with strep last year. Hey, no complaints from me at all. We’re going to see the Mouse again in January and she’s going to miss over a week of school for that, but her teacher already knows and isn’t worried. Thank goodness for cool schools like ours. The reason we’re not going over the Christmas break is because DH is going to run in the half-marathon and it’s scheduled differently than the last time we went.

We adopted another kitty officially last week. I had her spayed on Thursday and she came home on Friday. She’s determined in her mind that she is queen of the house and isn’t afraid to let the other animals know it. And all they want is to be her friend. I hope she’s not so afraid of them and understands they don’t want to hurt her. She is pretty though!

And how nicely she fit in her first night with us:

It turns out she’s a under-the-covers sleeper. I think she’s pretty cool.

Not much else going on. The garden needs so much work, but what is there looks so pretty. The irises are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen them and the pansies look so happy. I love pansies.

Do any of your kids have the webkinz? OMG, I hate buying stuffed animals, but their website has me totally sucked in. I love playing the games.

Oh! I designed the coolest felted lunchbox. I failed to take a picture of it though, but will try to do it tomorrow. It’s going into the auction for school . It’s really, really cool. I love it so much I might just bid on it so I can have it back. Yeah, I know I could make one, but I failed to write down how I put it together. :rolleyes

I’m really here

I’ve taking down almost all of my archives- sorry. I’ve saved them on my harddrive but because of the stupid bots or whatever they are they suck up bandwith big time.

Life is good in these parts for the most part. A week of school and we’re done for the year. A new kitty has adopted us- she showed up almost 2 weeks ago and over the weekend befriended us. She’s living in our greenhouse/empty chickencoop now and I’m bringing her to be spayed tomorrow. DH is enamoured with her, she’s a sweetie for sure. Amazingly after all the no more cats he’s spouted, he’s decided because he likes her so much she can come live with us. Needless to say the spaying and combo testing for FEL amongst rabies and distemper is an unexpected expense I really didn’t want, but I don’t want to not do anything, KWIM?

Not doing much by way of knitting- I did design a really cool felted/fulled lunchsack for the auction at school- will have a hard time parting with that, but I think I can duplicate it.

Guess that’s it- need to get ready for work now.
later