The "We're Back in the Midwest! Well in Illinois!", edition.

Good morning!  Whew!  Yesterday was a long day. And despite the time change, I am up at 5:30 AM. Except it's Central time instead of Pacific time. Go figure. Well, yesterday was travel day.  We went to Champaign, Illinois with all of my dialysis equipment. Heh. The NxStage Home dialysis system is touted as being kind of easy to travel with.  Well. I'm not sure I'd call it easy. But, with planning, it wasn't so bad. Remember I was kinda fretting over the logistics. Well. We made it here with everything. 

Let's start with packing the cycler. The cycler weighs about 75 pounds. The padded metal case weighs 24 pounds. Just under 100 pounds. Dad had one of his hired hands to come and  help pack the thing. When he and Brian tried to put it in the case, they realized that a few parts had to be unscrewed. *Sigh*. They unscrewed the parts and the cycler fit into the case. And now we need an extra bag to put these parts in. And a set of tools.  Good thing Shawn has a tool set. We got her one who she moved to Illinois 2 years ago. Yes, she asked for it. Smart lady!  Anyway. They packed the cycler and put it in the car. 

Our day started at 3:30 AM Las Vegas time. Our flight was at 6:25.  We figured we needed to get there early because of the heavy package. We ended up with six pieces of luggage. 1 suitcase for each of us, his and hers, the cycler, the dolly/cart to push the cycler, a suitcase with the extra cycler parts, and a suitcase that had more parts for the cycler, parts that were attachments we knew about. We arrived at the United check in area around 4:30. The skycap got the cycler out of the car. Yes we tipped him. We got directed to a manned counter. Steve helped us. Because the cycler and 2 bags were medical equipment we had no problem checking it in. As a matter of fact, United was very helpful!  And when we landed, they brought the cycler out and left it near the carousel.  

Once we landed in Chicago, we gathered our luggage.  A young man helped us take the luggage to the Thrifty car rental bus stop. He got a tip. The Thrifty car rental bus driver and Brian lifted the cycler up on the bus and helped unload  it. The bus driver got a tip. Once we got the car, a small SUV, because cycler, I asked a parking attendant to help load the cycler in the car. He got a tip. And then we drove 2.5 hours to Champaign. Brian had me drive us out of Chicago. He then drove us to the hotel. 

We arrived at the hotel, all my packages were waiting for me!  NxStage delivered enough dialysate for three treatments. This is 18 bags of fluid. And my nurse shipped 3 bags of saline!  Yay for them all. Shawn brought 4 friends to help unpack. Four PhD students. Lol. And move everything. The front desk guy at the Wingate by Wydhan hotel was so nice and accommodating. I must say, Brian and I were concerned about this trip, but we made it with very few hiccups. We had to purchase a few supplies....thermometer, sharps container, paper towel, scale, antibacterial soap and purel, but that's ok. We'll do treatment this evening. The cycler is set up and plugged in on my side of the bed and we're ready to go. And oh yeah. I called the local Davita clinic and they will discard the sharps container for us.  

Finally, I did carryon all of my medical supplies, needles, syringes, etc. and TSA left us a card inside the cycler. Lol. Someone got into the case. But it's all good. We're happy to be here. And oh yeah, we documented (filmed) everything on the GoPro camera as we went along. That should be fun viewing.  Lol. 

Well that clearly was an adventure in dialysis. I was told by previous travelers to make sure I had a lot of tip cash and they were right, but it was worth it. And everyone was so nice and helpful along the way. More to come on the trip. Let me say that we were extremely tired by the end of the day, but quite content. And just happy to see and be with Shawn. I love my baby!!  

Have a great day. And we're trying to adjust to humidity!  Lol lol. 

The "It's Memorial Day", edition.

Good morning!  Today is Memorial Day. Today we remember the people who died serving the United States in the armed forces. When I was younger, my mom and grandmother and I would go to Elmwood cemetery to place flowers at the grave of my mom's first husband. This continued until we stayed a little too long at Elmwood cemetery and got locked in. Lol. We're waving our arms through the fence calling for help. A car passed by, slowed down, looked at us then sped off!  We think he thought he'd seen ghosts!  Finally some kids came by. Mom gave them our phone number. They called our house and grandpa called the fire department who got us out. Grandpa pondered whether or not he should call McFall Brothers Funeral Home . He said if they can get you in the cemetery, surely they can get you out!   Lol.

As a kid, we'd spend the Memorial Day holiday  at our cottage at Shay Lake. It was the official start of summer. It seems to me that most of the Memorial Day weekends were cool and quite a few were rainy.  Mom would grill. She'd dash outside in a coat or rainwear to check on the meat and run inside. The food was always good anyway. 

I planned our Memorial dinner, patterned sort of after those Shay Lake dinners.  The menu I initially planned was ribs, chicken, baked beans, crushed red potatoes and slaw.  That didn't seem like enough choices and the menu changed. The potatoes went away and I added the cucumber salad and rolls. Brian added grilled beef brisket. Watching to much Pit Masters!  Lol. I wasn't grilling. Kinda difficult in the condo. I mean there is a grill, but it would require us to gather everything together, go down the elevator and walk across the yard to cook. Dad said he and Mom had to do many trips to cook and decided it wasn't worth it. I wasn't willing to do that this weekend. 

I'd never made bake beans from scratch.  So I had to do a test run. I used Great Northern Beans. I soaked them overnight.  The next day, I  made the sauce and cooked the beans in the crockpot. It was a disaster. The beans never got soft. Brian suggested that we probably needed to cook the beans before we attempted the slow cooker. I decided not to go that route. The next time I got cans of pinto beans. Cooked bacon. Sautéed an onion and green pepper. Made a sauce with brown sugar, molasses, dijon, catsup, tomato paste and vegetable broth. Mixed everything together. It tasted just ok. Then I baked it for 1.5 hours. It's like magic happened in the oven!  The beans tasted great!  

We got the meat from John Mull's Meats - Road Kill Grill. Yeah, I found out about it watching Guy Fieri's Drive-ins, Diners and Dives. I gotta say, the meat is good. I ordered 2 slabs of ribs and 2 chickens, cooked. Brian wanted beef brisket, so I ordered that also. Heh. We had more than enough with the ribs and chicken.  And the brisket cost just as much, if not more than the ribs and chicken combined. But it's what my sweetie wanted! <3. Needless to say, even after sending our guests home with leftovers, we have quite a bit of brisket left over. Anyway. The meat was just great. Smoky with a poke of heat on the backside and tender fall of the bone meat for the chicken and ribs.  And the brisket was moist and tasty!   And that's with out sauce!  

Our guests enjoyed themselves. Dad, Brian and I really enjoy hosting these dinners. Next up is the Fourth of July. Potato salad time!  Need some ideas for a menu. 

On the dialysis front. Nothing. That's good, eh?  We changed my off day from Saturday to Sunday because we were serving dinner Sunday. Good idea because we were tired after the dinner on Sunday. It works out. Brian and I cooked, served and out the food away. Dad served the champaign to his friends, put ice and water in the dinner glassss and cleaned up the kitchen afterwards. Oh yeah. My labs are still good, except for the darn hemoglobin. I just can't eat more protein!  How many hamburgers, steak, chicken, turkey, shrimp and fish can a woman eat!  Seven servings a day?  Ridiculous! 

Finally.. What are our plans for today?  Well. We'll go swimming, fool around in the hot tub, start packing. We're heading to Illinois on Wednesday. I'll go over our logistics and see how it worked in the next blog. A whole lot of planning so I can continue my hemodialysis while traveling without visiting dialysis centers. I'll tell you this. Since I started sticking myself. I'm not trusting anyone else sticking a needle in me!  

Have a great Memorial Day!  

The "Have I Had a Heart Attack?", edition.

Good morning. Have I had a heart attack?  I don't know.  When I went to my initial visit with my new primary care physician, I had an EKG. Apparently the readings were...questionable. The tech and physicians assistant asked if I'd had a heart attack.  Well no, not to my knowledge. So that prompted a  referral to a cardiologist. But get this. I saw the doctor in early March. The cardiologist called me in March and scheduled me for May 15. :-/  Glad my heart has cooperated. I think my kidney team was a bit put off that it took so long for me to see the cardiologist.  Sigh. The life of an HMO. This could prompt a rant about Rick Snyder, and the emergency manager, but I might really have a heart attack. I digress.  

I found a sort of real farmers market yesterday's with good looking produce. It was pricey.  The vendors were from California and I suppose the drought will affect the produce and the prices, but it sure was good to get fresh peaches, cherries and tomatoes. There was also a vendor who sold chocolate and Carmel covered pretzels. OMG. Sooo good. So glad we purchased only 2!  Lol. Anyway. The farmers market was in downtown Henderson. That's a little distance away from where we live, but it was a nice exploration. 

Events in Las Vegas this weekend are Rock in Rio.  This has taken up an empty space on the south end of the strip.  It has continuous concertsLl weekend, Friday through Sunday. Last weekend was the rock weekend. This weekend is the pop weekend. Artists this weekend include Bruno Mars, John Legend, Taylor Swift, Joss Stone and Jesse J. No we're not going.  But we watched the empty lot transform into an entertInment Mecca!  Downtown there is something called Helldorado days. Parades, rodeo and carnivals. Will we go?  Maybe.  

The dialysis angle?  Well we know that dialysis is really, REALLY rough on the heart. Home hemodialysis is much gentler, but who knows what, if any and how much damage had been done to my heart while I was doing incenter hemodialysis. I'll find out today. We find out new things about home hemodialysis every now and then. Like last night Brian accidentally unplugged the machine.  This happened after I inserted the needles, but before I was hooked up. Of course the machine beeped its ass off and displayed an error. Red 40. Brian looked it up in the manual.  Yes he has plenty o' manuals including one just for errors.  The manual explains the probable cause for the error and steps to fix it.  The fix for Red 40 was to call tech support!  Uh oh.  Well, before you groan about tech support, the tech support response is immediate and the techs walk you through the problem and stay on the phone until the problem is solved. Best tech support ever, but then again it can be a matter of life and death, so.....    The solution to Red error 40 was to plug the machine back up and push the start button. Brian did it and all was well. And that led to a regular treatment session. :)

That's it for today. It's going to be cool this weekend....by Vegas standard anyway. High today is only 68. Brrrrr. Lol.  I'm not complaining. It'll rolling out triple digits soon enough.  ;-(   have a great weekend!!  

The "Just Living my Life", edition.

Good morning. I took a break from blogging because readership dropped dramatically. However, I realized that I'm not really writing for anyone but myself. I have created a record of my life after I was diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease.  I can see where I was and when I am. I really started a new life after the diagnosis. Of course it's not the life I imagined, but it's a life. I am not dead. 

Mother's Day was very nice. Brian and Dad wanted me to select a place for our Sunday brunch. I settled on Boulder Stafion because they had Bananas Foster on the menu. Heh. I actually skipped any semblance of breakfast and went straight for the prime rib and shrimp.  Lol. My protein numbers dipped. Again, I can only eat so much protein. However I clearly gave it a great try on Sunday!  Brian got me some beautiful red roses and a gift card to Jared.  Later on on the day, we hung out at the swimming pool and had the obligatory dip in the hot tub. My kind of day!  

I had treatment later on on the evening. I watched the season finale of Once Upon a Time. There was a scene at the end where evil was unleashed. It tried to enter 2 people and finally settled inside someone. While watching the scene, I told Brian the the depiction of evil was exactly I saw evil on my death dream when I was in ICU....you know..when I was rushed to the hospital when I was in the final throes of kidney failure..  The black sludge was evil  on the show and was death in my dream. Except in my dream, I escaped it. When I awoke from my dream, I felt better....relieved. As if I knew I was going to be ok. 

I've ordered the meat for our Memorial Day dinner. Grilling is possible here in the condo, but it requires us moving stuff from inside to a grill near the pool. It becomes a logistics dilemma, so I decided to order the meat. I went to John Mulls Meats, Road Kill Grill. Don't let the name put you off. Lol. I discovered the place by watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  I purchased 3 dinners for me, Brian and Dad for Labor Day last year. The place was constantly busy. When we went this past Monday, the lunch crowd line was impressive. And trust me. This place is no looker. You order your food inside and if you want to eat on the premises you have to eat outside. Oh yeah, you can order and buy almost any type of meat you like, including offal.  I'll let you look that up. Anyway, I ordered ribs, chicken and Dad and Brian wanted beef brisket. And yes, our guests will be our same guests. I have them over every month for dinner. :-)

My cousin is in art school. During a break, she asked if anyone wanted her to draw something. I asked if she could do a drawing of my very much loved, very much missed dog. She agreed and priced it out for me. I sent her a photo of Jade and she asked questions. The final product is just magnificent. I love it. LOVE it!  And my cousin is soooo talented. I am very proud of her.  I got the drawing enlarged and put on photo quality paper. I'll be framing it this week. Photo included. 

Finally, dialysis is pretty uneventful. I mentioned earlier that I need to increase my protein intake. Not sure how to increase more. I can eat only so much eggs, hamburgers, fish, chicken, steaks, etc.  We're finalizing travel plans. We purchased a portable cart/dolly for the machine. Dad has gotten In touch with some people to help move it to the car...remember the entire set up weighs 99 pounds. The supply company will be sending the supplies to the hotel in Illinois. I've contacted the hotel to let them know a shipment will be arriving. I need to make sure I have enough supplies. I have my "papers" to explain why I am carrying needles and syringes with me on the plane. I considered packing them, but I don't want the airlines to lose my stuff.  It is medical equipment, after all. 

Well that's it for today. The weather is nice. There were a few days where michigan was warmer than Nevada.  Lol. And will probably happen again this week. Looking for a high of 62 on Friday. :-/  Have a wonderful day. 

The "I Can't Stop Being a Project Manager", edition.

Good morning!  How was the weekend?  Ours was pretty nice, actually. Yes, I was a project manager when I worked. I actually managed project managers. The City spent a lot of money training me on project management.  I ended up applying project management principles to my life. Project management is just common sense planning. How does this work?  Well let's take my upcoming trip. I started creating a plan. I defined a scope and had a loose work breakdown structure (wbs)....a timeline of when tasks needed to be done. Like getting documentation from the doctor for travel. I've done risk management,  time management and of course cost management. Determine my budget while understanding I needed to purchase tickets, rent a car and stay at the hotel. Plus how much money I should take. I've done project communications, risk assessment and procurement. We need to purchase a portable cart/dolly to move my kidney.  

Now I don't plan everything.  I can be and am usually spontaneous, but some things require planning. Like there was little to no planning to go see The Avengers Saturday afternoon. I've come to the Marvel world late, but better late than never. Brian has been patient about answering my questions. Or the swimming. We just say, let's go swimming!  I did plan to get an additional swimming suit. I'm in the  water almost seven days a week now. I can see the swimming suits falling apart. 

On the dialysis front I have some interesting news. I belong to a home hemodialysis group on Facebook. We were having a discussion about travel. The moderator contacted me and asked if I would record our upcoming trip to visit Shawn. The footage would be edited and used by the Medical Education Institue (MEI) to show that travel is quite possible while on dialysis, specifically home hemodialysis.  I asked Brian and he agreed. We are 1 of 3 dialysis patients recording our travels.  I know one patient is recording traveling via RV. The MEI is providing us with a GoPro camera, with a data card and a chest harness. We will record our trip and return the unedited data card and we get to keep the camera!  Heh. A GoPro camera wasn't on our list, but well, here we go. 

The camera arrived Friday. The thing is tiny!  Brian has already started learning it and has started using it.  I want to script out some of the steps we will need to do.  Think of it more a list, or like my project management work breakdown structure (wbs). Lol. Always a PM angle. Anyway recording things like us looking for the portable cart, getting the machine into its travel case, getting this 100 pound thing to the car and then having the car unloaded at the airport. Also packing supplies. And the of course the set up of the machine and doing the dialysis at the hotel. The whole thing is exciting and scary at the same time!!  And on a side note, I checked and found out that there is a HHD center in Champaign if I have issues. Nice to have backup!  

Finally, I am loosely planning 2 more trips for the summer. I will visit some friends in California. This will be a road trip. This involves a different travel case, a rolling case. And my friend insisted I stay with her. I told her I'd be bringing my kidney.  She said she expected no less. <3.  So the planning has started for this. And finally Shawn, Brian and I will be going to Seattle near the end of the summer. That planning will start a little later. See. Like at my job. I'm juggling multiple projects!   Lol. 

Well it's almost time to go swimming. We do deep water fitness at the rec center and do some of the routines at our pool, in addition to swimming laps. I am such a water baby!!! Have a great day.

The "Las Vegas Gets Consumed By Events", edition.

Good morning!  Yesterday morning, after our swim and hot tub..ahem.. I had a Dramatics-palooza!  It was time to get lost in voices of Brian Banks, LJ Reynolds and Lenny Mayes and the rest of the members and the marvelous harmonies. Swoon. And yes, we've started the hot tub routine again.  In addition to the hot tub, Brian and I do laps in the pool and are doing some of our deep water fitness routines in the pool. Getting some nice work outs.  

So. Las Vegas was consumed by a NASCAR race a few weeks ago. This weekend it is consumed by the Mayweatherther-Pacquaio fight. You wouldn't know that there is also a Komen Walk for the Cure on Saturday.  Kentucky Derby?  What's that?  The hype leading up to tomorrow is on the news. Constantly. The cost of the tickets, the price of the rooms. Just wow. Rooms going for up to $1,600 per night. Even Motel 6 got into the act with rates of $300 per night!  

During treatment, my chair faces east.  And I can see planes as they approach the airport. It was nonstop. Dad said he noticed an increase in the smaller jets arriving. I noticed that the planes usually taper off after midnight. Not so much right now. You can imagine we're not planning on going anywhere near the strip, especially the intersection of Tropicana and Las Vegas Blvd.  Thats the corner where the MGM is...where the fight will be. 

Yesterday evening, we were invited to dinner at The Tuscany. It's a nice resort casino on Flamingo just east of the strip. The joint was jumping!  A constant stream of people checking in and the place was just downright busy.  I do have sorority meeting Saturday morning, but I'm going away from the strip. I'm thinking getting back home should be interesting. I run into gawkers near downtown on a regular Saturday. I think it's going to be real impressive this Saturday.  And yeah. I pass the Pawn Stars pawn shop. Always a line to go inside. 

Anyway. Here's what I don't get. Only so many people can actually get into the fight venue.  And here's the kicker. The hotels that are allowed to show the pay per view fight are only the MGM properties. So if you're staying at Caesars..for $16k. You can't see the fight. WTH?  But I guess folks are coming for the atmosphere?  I dunno. 

Nothing new on the dialysis front. I think that's great because we had enough excitement last week.  We're getting closer to our trip to Illinois. We've got the travel case, and I've got my travel papers. The papers are documents signed by my doctor explaining that the dialysis machine is life sustaining equipment.  The airline should allow it to be loaded without additional fees.  And with the case, the weight comes in just under the 100 pound limit. Yeah. We need to figure out to transport the thing from  the apartment to the car. We have an idea. I'll go into that the closer we get to the trip. 

And finally I have a photo of my arm after its bandaged.  The bandage stays on overnight. Before the late night treatments, I left the bandage on about 6 hours. I want the scab to fully form to help protect against infection. Well. It's almost time to get to the hot tub!  It's going to be hot here..in the mid to high 90s  and it's already 75. Want to get in and out before the sun gets brutal. 

Have a wonderful weekend.  Photo on the side of MGM, photo of my bandaged arm. And a photo of a car that started bouncing.  I took that photo while waiting at a light. :-)