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Chris is home from the hospital – what a week!

February 8, 2009 by Tricia

Wow … I can’t believe I haven’t written in this blog for more than a week! That must be a record!

Well, if you are a reader of my other blog, Tricia’s Musings, you’ll already know that my husband spent some time in the hospital last week. That’s one of the main reasons I haven’t been writing in any of my blogs this week.

Last Friday, while at work (in the hospital) Chris started to get some chest pain or rather a strong pressure in the left side of his chest. He also felt dizzy and disoriented. This has happened before. Back in 2004 Chris was getting the same kind of symptoms and by the time he made it to the ER triage desk he passed out right at the nurse’s feet! At that time they admitted him and did several tests to see if he had a rare heart arrhythmia called Brugada.

The symtoms and his ECG that he had in 2004 and has had occasionally since that time – including last Friday, all point to the heart arrhythmia, but the doctors couldn’t induce a heart arrhythmia when they did a special test called EP studies.

So back to last Friday … Chris had heart related symptoms and made his way to the ER. He was admitted after seeing one of our best cardiologists. As it turns out his cholesterol was high – both the good and bad cholesterol and his triglycerides were extremely low. So they decided to do an Angiogram on Monday to check to see if he had any blocked coronary arteries. So even though Chris was pretty much symptom free after the one incident on Friday afternoon he had to stay in the hospital until the angiogram was done.

As it turned out his coronary arteries were perfectly clear and the test showed no heart abnormalities. So we’re back to square one – he still has these weird episodes, but we don’t know for sure if it’s his heart that’s causing them … even though he has permanent electrocardiogram changes.

Luckily the hospital is close by as I spent Friday through Monday walking back and forth from home to hospital to visit with him. I also brought him one of our nice pillows from home (it’s a dense foam and it’s really heavy), all the things he might need (toiletries, undershirts, underwear, socks and reading materials) and my LAPTOP! Ahhh! Man I missed that thing. I live on my laptop, but even though Chris couldn’t get on the internet at the hospital he could at least watch the DVDs that I brought him and play some games etc.

I exhausted myself by carrying all that stuff back and forth and of course all that walking back and forth. Given that I’m not all that healthy myself what with my Crohn’s, vitamin D deficiency and worsening back pain, it took me most of the rest of the week, once he was home, to recover and kind of feel up to writing in my blogs again.

We did score a few things from the hospital. When I brought him a pillow from our bed he decided to take the cover off and use the hospital pillow covers. Since the pillow was too big he had to use two pillow covers to cover it. I was too tired when Chris was discharged from the hospital on Monday evening to remove the covers so we have them at home. (We’ll return them of course, Chris will be back to work on Tuesday and he can bring them in then.)

We also managed to get some promotional pens from the hospital. That was actually a catch, since there’s never a pen around at the hospital when you need one. As you might know I’m an ER nurse (on medical leave) and I had to have a stock of pens to bring with me to work and I had to guard them with my life as they would be “stolen” if I left one on a counter … so to actually get “hospital pens” is a rarity! LOL

So … that’s my long story as to why I haven’t been blogging this week. Chris is dong fine. He’s currently vacuuming for me! Baring any new symptoms he should be ready to go back to work on Tuesday. His groin is healed from where they did the angiogram and he’s on Cholesterol lowering medication (Crestor). I’m doing better too. Man is is ever stressful having your husband in the hospital – especially when you don’t feel all that well yourself!

I hope that you’re week has been better than mine and if you are in the North East that you are able to enjoy this slightly warm spell that we’ve been having. Our snow is all melting away and I expect by the end of the week, if the above freezing temps keep up, that our snow will pretty much be gone. Probably just in time for a new snow storm to sweep in! LOL

BTW there will be no Green Thumb Sunday post this week. I’m just getting back on track, so I’ll leave Green Thumb until next week.

Tired of unwanted email

January 28, 2009 by Tricia

I wish there was a decent way to ensure that you wouldn’t get unwanted email … I mean I can’t even stop my friends and relatives from sending chain letters and joke mail. LOL Why do I hope to get email advertisers to stop sending me junk?

I did discover something that helps me “quarantine” the unwanted email. I now run all my email through gmail and then have it forwarded to my main email accounts from there. Google is pretty good at picking out spam so a huge portion of my unwanted email stays in my spam folder at gmail now. Seriously it’s cut out about 80% of the email that I used to have to sort though daily. No more ads for get rich schemes, IT job search or strange health products! I just check my gmail spam box every few days to make sure no real mail is getting stuck there and then delete all the spam.

I still get too much mail though! Probably because I have so many websites – between approving comments and getting direct email through my contact forms … and that unwanted email from relatives I have enough email to keep me busy for at least two hours each day! Speaking of “spammy relatives” my husbands cousins have time to send at least four chain letters or joke emails each day, but no time to send an email to tell us that his uncle has been in the hospital since Saturday? Now that’s bad.

Do you get too much email too? Too much spam or stuff that you just don’t care about?

Oh my aching muscles

January 23, 2009 by Tricia

Did you make any New Years resolutions this year? I didn’t – I never do, but I think I’m starting to work on an unofficial resolution.

You see, last week I bought a Wii console and Wii Fit. Read my last post to learn what a dummy I was buying the Wii Fit first not knowing I needed the Wii console to run it! LOL Now that’s a newbie mistake if there ever was one!

Ok so I guess you’ve probably figured out what my unofficial resolution is? Yep .. to get fit in 2009.

So far so good. My Wii Fit arrived last Friday, but I had to wait until Monday for the console to arrive before I could get started. I also waited until Monday evening when my husband came home from work to set up the machine. It was easy to set up and I could have easily done it myself, but the problem was figuring out where to plug the darn thing in! We are using too many plugs already. So that’s why I waited for Chris to get home. So Monday evening we only played a few games before dinner and that was it.

I’ve been using the Wii Fit since Tuesday and playing a few of the more active Wii Sports games like boxing and tennis for the last three days. I haven’t used the Wii today because my muscles are ACHING! lol …. Yeah … if the way my body feels today is any indications I won’t be needing any weight loss supplements like Fenphedra to help me reach my goals. Working out and being more active should do the job.

The sad thing is that I bought three more Wii games that work with the balance board early Thursday morning on Amazon Canada and they arrived today … but I’m so sore that I haven’t even unwrapped them! They just look torturous to me right now. LOL

So I’ve got Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit and today Wii We Ski, Wii Rayman Raving Rabbids TV party and Big Beach Sports arrived. So I have lots of active games and exercises to whip me into shape.

Have you tried any of these games? Particularly the last three I mentioned? The reviews that I read on Amazon were positive and as I said I want to get active games to keep me moving … so are they any good?

If you have any more suggestions for me please let me know … oh and bare in mind that we have a puppy like Labrador Retriever so games with pads on the floor like Outdoor Challenge are probably out for now as I’m sure she’d eat or rip up the pad! LOL

Just waiting for a Wii related accident

January 23, 2009 by Tricia

I’ve been using my Wii for three days now and wow … I can see how easy it would be to either damage furniture or get hurt on it if you aren’t careful!

The other day I was using the Wii Fit balance board and my toes started to go numb. I don’t have a gel cover for it, but I think this weekend we’ll go out looking for one as I think that will help to make the board more comfortable to use.

I know they have lots of warning in their instructions on each game, but you have to wonder how many people have knocked over lamps or fallen into tables or even the TV as they’ve been playing Wii games in too small rooms. LOL I wonder if those Seattle injury lawyer that I see advertised on TV all the time are getting more business thanks to Wii?

So far my dog has been pretty good when we’ve been using the Wii. She’s really curious about what I’m doing and has tried to jump at the remote in my hand thinking I’m throwing something for her to catch … but for the most part she’ll go and lie down on her bed or the couch if I tell her too.

I’m glad she’s being pretty good about it because I don’t want to have to put her in the crate every time we use the Wii – particularly since I want to use it daily to get in shape. However I can see her jumping at me at the wrong time and causing one of those injuries that I was talking about earlier! Remember I’m a very klutzy person so it would be easy enough for her to jump at me and for me to get off balance or something and crash into the couch and possible knock down other pieces of furniture etc … (watch for a future post with the last topic in the near future!).

If you have a Wii have you had any strange accidents yet?

I’m a Wii Fit newbie

January 21, 2009 by Tricia

I don’t know if you read my other blog, Tricia’s Musings, but last week I finally made my very first purchase at eBay. I’ll bet that most of you reading this have purchased things on eBay before, but I never had … maybe because I live in Canada and every time I found something I liked the cost of shipping and possible duty taxes dissuaded me from making a bid.

I’d been wanting to get a Wii Fit for some time, but as you probably know most of the stores are sold out so I decided to check out eBay last Monday and I found a Wii Fit for sale in New Brunswick (an Eastern Province). The price was only a little higher than what I’d pay in a retail store so I took a chance, made a bid and with only a few minutes left in the auction I sat back to wait and see if someone else would bid or if I’d win. Guess what? I won!

Unfortunately since I’m a complete newbie to the whole Wii phenomena I didn’t realize that I needed the console in order to use Wii Fit. Duh! Well what do you expect when you’ve only ever seen displays in stores but haven’t even seen the boxes since they’re all sold out? LOL

Had I known I would have bought a combo pack, but as it was I discovered within an hour of my Wii Fit auction win that I needed the console so off I went back to eBay to look for a Wii console. I found one at a semi decent price that included an extra remote, extra nunchuck and the Wii Play game.

The Wii fit that I’d bought arrived last Friday but I had to wait until Monday afternoon before the Wii console arrived! (it was coming from Calgary) So I’ve only been playing with my new Wii and Wii Fit for two days now. So far so good, but I really have to work on my balance! I’ve been really sick for three years and I was just diagnosed with extremely low Vitamin D levels so that has caused my muscles to be extremely weak (the vit d deficiency I mean).

The Wii Fit will hopefully help me get my muscles back in shape, but I probably won’t be truly fit until my vitamin D levels get back up into the normal range (could take a year!).

I’d like to get another sensor so that I can use the Wii on the TV we have upstairs. We’ve been thinking of getting an LCD mount so that we can attach that TV to the wall. Once we do that we’ll have more room in the bedroom and that would make a good area to exercise or play games too.

Do you have a Wii? or a Wii Fit? How do you like it? I’ve only tried bowling, tennis and boxing in Wii Sports so far and of the 9 games on Wii Play I only like the Billiards. I’d eventually like to get some other games.

I’ve been looking at Wii Winter Sports and Wii Ski – does anyone have those? Are they worth getting?

What other “active” games do you like?

I’d love to hear your suggestions and of your experiences with Wii.