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Time to finish up our home renovation projects

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Now that the weather is getting nicer I guess it’s about time we get back to work on our home renovations.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time cleaning out our basement over the last few weeks. In a week, on April 13th, we’re going to have our oil tank replaced. What a pain in the butt cleaning out a basement that’s been used mainly for storage is! There are so many things we stored away thinking we’d use them once the rest of the house was renovated that have been sitting down there since we moved in, in 2001! I guess if we haven’t found a way to use some of those items in the past 8 years we probably won’t even when our reno is done.

My goal, for now, is just to make the basement usable. We have a sectional couch downstairs and if we can clear the clutter enough to make a decent sized usable space we could set up the couch so it could be used. It has a pull out bed as well – which would be great if we have a lot of house guests. The basement is so nice and cool in the summer that it would be nice to be able to spend some time down there. We’d probably save some money on air-conditioning too if we spent more time in the basement during the hot days of summer!

The next real reno I want us to work on is the kitchen! I hate the cupboards in our tiny kitchen. The previous owners obviously did a kitchen makeover a while before they sold the house but they did it cheaply. The cupboards are melamine and I think they’re ugly. I want to replace the cupboards and arrange them differently … well actually I want to arrange the whole kitchen differently as right now the only place to put our fridge is on the empty wall between the back door and the basement door and it blocks both doors! I also want to look for some cool door hardware online, something interesting that will personalize the look of our cupboards etc.

First we need to finish the living room/ dining room renovations! We still need to put up the tin ceiling tiles that we bought oh … 7 years ago! Then all we need to do is replace the baseboard moldings and quarter round trim and the job will finally be done. At least we have most of the materials for that … yes they are stored in our over-crowded basement!

Are you planning any home renovations this Spring? If so what rooms are you planning to redo?





A new doctor for my Crohn’s disease

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I saw a new doctor about my Crohn’s disease the other day. He’s an internist rather than a gastrointernologist like I usually see. I haven’t decided yet whether I’m happy with the new doctor or not.

He wants me to go back and start from the beginning on my meds. This weekend I’ll start trying a new Crohn’s drug – well not a new drug, but new to me. It’s worth a try … I just hope that I can afford it! My gastrointernologist had taken me off most of my Crohn’s meds a while ago because he was convinced they weren’t working … duh! No matter how much I told him they were helping … hey I was still working! When I got taken off the other meds I got so sick I had to stop working and I’ve been on medical leave ever since (4 years!).

So if the new meds work, maybe in a few months I can go back to work in the ER. I hope so! I’d actually started to give up hope of ever returning to work again.

He also wants me to try taking Metamucil again. I’ve tried it in the past but didn’t have much good to say about it as it seems to bind me up too much rather than help … odd since my problem is the opposite reason most people take Metamucil! Anyway, I’ve started using it once a day but only using a teaspoon full instead of a heaping tablespoon as the directions state. Maybe that will help.

It’s weird. Ever since I saw the new doctor earlier this week I keep seeing ads for Bowtrol review. Very strange. A colon cleanse is the last thing I need! LOL

Anyway .. don’t you hate it when you have to see a new doctor? Whether it’s a new family doctor or a specialist? I do. I hate going over my medical history and all the meds I’m on or that I’ve tried in the past for my Crohn’s.

In-laws on Easter Weekend?

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Earlier today we got a call from Chris’ brother saying that he’s going to fly from his home in Chicago to Toronto April 10th to visit with us over Easter Weekend.

Now this is a guy who’s so afraid of flying that at least 99% of the time that he’s made visits to the area in the oh … 20 years that I’ve known him he’s driven the 10 to 12 hours from Chicago to Toronto rather than take an hour or two plane ride.

I guess it’s cheaper to drive if he’s bringing his family with him – well depending upon gas prices … but still .. you’d think he would have flown a few more times over the years if it weren’t for his terrible fear of flying!

So I guess we’ll have a house guest at least that Thursday night or perhaps for the whole weekend. I don’t know if he’s going to rent a car so that he can drive out of town to visit his parents and other family members or not … God … If he stays the whole weekend I might end up with a house full of in-laws! OMG! That would be terrible! Hmmm maybe it’s time to take a serious look at that Wilmington NC real estate I’m always hearing about and get FAR far away from the in-laws!

Right after Easter weekend- on Easter Monday in fact we’re having our oil tank replaced. I don’t even know if we’ll have a spare bedroom that weekend because we might need to move some stuff from the basement to the spare rooms so that the workers will be able to move around in the basement and get that tank replaced.

It’s not like I don’t like my brother in law or anything (well as long as I don’t disagree with him when he’s drunk he’s fine), I just don’t like a bunch of people descending on my house for days at a time without really even asking if it’s ok.

How do you feel about drop in guests or weekend guests?

My back is screaming!

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It was such a nice day here in Toronto that my husband and I decided to take the dog outside in the backyard and do some yard work.

We had actually started raking the lawn and tidying up the yard a little bit early last Monday evening, but now I can say that the backyard garden is cleaned of old dead leaves and foliage and looks great. Now we just have to clean up our very tiny front yard and our planted boulevard and the Spring cleaning will be done. At least outside …

I feel good having spent several hours working outside today, but my back HATES me right now!

I’ve had an aching back for over a year. I finally got one of my doctors to send me for an xray two weeks ago and just as I thought I’ve got a slipped disk. I’ve been doing back exercises to ease my pain and sleeping with two pillows under my legs at night … and it’s helped, but my back is still pretty bad. Gardening for over 4 hours today will not help at all.

I almost wish that we had a sleep number bed so I could play around with it and maybe find a bed hardness or softness that my back likes. Our mattress is very hard, but maybe it’s too hard. If I don’t sleep with those pillows under my legs I can barely get out of bed in the morning.

Once I came inside this evening I took some Advil and a Tylenol and put a heating pad on my back. I also took some Advil before I went out to work in the garden … but still .. my back is really hurting. I have a feeling that it will be worse tomorrow. Plus I’ll likely have some stiff muscles from all the bending, twisting and odd positions I was in as I tried to clean out my garden beds.

I’ll bet that most people don’t think that gardening is much of a workout, but try doing it for four hours – bending, stretching, lifting things … oh yeah, it’s exercise.

Do you have any aches and pains from doing Spring related activities?

One health crisis after another

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This has been a busy week for me. I’ve had two doctors appointments, one medical test and a ton of computer work to do! I’m glad the week is almost over.

I guess it doesn’t help that I’m not feeling well. (As usual). My Crohn’s is just in a constant flare and my back … well that’s another story … it had been feeling a lot better over the last few weeks, but I must have done something to it yesterday morning before walking to one of my doctors appointments and the next thing I know my lower back is spasming and aching. It’s still acting up, but not as bad as yesterday.

For some reason my pain doctor weighs me every time I see her (usually once a month). I hate it, but for the first time in a while I got some god news when she did her weigh in – I’d lost 8 pounds since my last visit! Yeah! Maybe I’ll be back in fighting form by early summer. Yeah! I even ran into a nurse that I worked with in the ER and she asked me if I’d found a diet pill that works. LOL Nope – just eating healthy (as per normal) and trying to be a little more active. It’s probably the slight increase in activity that helped.

Of course I could be losing weight due to the Crohn’s disease. I once lost something like 35 pounds in one month and it was at a time when I didn’t need to lose an ounce! I could have also lost a few pounds because of my thyroid … I only have half my thyroid due to a precancerous tumor that I had removed – oh … 20 years ago, but the other day I noticed that the right side of my neck, where the remaining half of my thyroid is seems to be slightly swollen so when I went to see the doctor yesterday I asked her to take a look at my neck. She thought it was a little puffy too and sent me for an ultrasound.

The talkative ultrasound tech let me know that my remaining thyroid tissue has several nodules in it and that’s a kick in the ass ’cause I take synthetic thyroid replacement medicine and that’s supposed to help keep a tumor or nodules from reoccurring. So .. I’ve got new nodules in there … so now i might be looking at more precancerous or cancer growths and I might end up having to have surgery to have the rest of my thyroid removed. Fantastic. NOT.

It just seems that it’s once thing after another with my health this year- the constant Crohn’s flares, a slipped disc in my back and now growths in my thyroid that might mean I’ll have to have surgery. What else might happen?

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