A Much Overdue Update

Sorry about the long time between posts.  I don't even really have a very good excuse.  Not too much has changed on the medical front.  I had a little adrenal crisis scare over the 4th and ended up in the ER.  I guess this isn't uncommon for patients like me but it still was very very UNFUN.  BP was about 63/42 when I first arrived down there.  The good news is that at that time I was temporarily taken off all my Blood Pressure medications (3) and then after a visit with the cardiologist about a week and a half ago I was able to come off all of them for good (we hope!)

I've been dropping some weight, both from having no appetite (normal) and the nausea (also normal but not fun.)  I'm pretty stable right now and hope to stay that way for the next few weeks as I am not going to make any adjustments to my medication until after I get back from the Club Scrap Retreat in mid-August.  I don't think I can handle a 15 hours driving trip (each way) if I was feeling cruddy like I was a few weeks ago.

In the meantime...Barry Manilow has been helping me price some jobs for work.

He's not really super helpful.  I think he may need glasses, he has to get right up to the drawings to see them.

I've been doing a little cooking but it's tough.  I cook nice things like this...

and this...

 

But then I don't feel much like eating them.

We had a great time at the annual Pirkle Christmas in July party hosted by Leslie's brother and wonderful sister-in-law.

It's been way too long since Leslie spent quality time with his brothers.

I guess that about wraps it up.  I'm missing my garden but as wet as it has been I think it would have been a complete disaster and I also know deep down that I could not have physically handled it.  I hope everyone is having a great summer and maybe we can get some dry weather down here for a few weeks!!

Saving a "Bundle"

Howdy Blog Hoppers-are you worn out from all your hopping so far?  Can I offer you a margarita? 

 Welcome to my post for the "Hopes" Blog Hop--

Hopefully most of you made it here from Debby's Blog or from the Club Scrap Creates Blog.  If you just happened upon my post I encourage you to go back and check out some of the highly creative work posted on the other blogs (that is so way better than my stuff-really!)

So I have a bit of a hard time with these blog hops because I have a secret...I'm a bundle-er.  I'm not even sure of the correct spelling of that word but in detail-I bundle my Club Scrap kits each month to save on shipping so I don't get the bulk of my items until AFTER the Blog Hop date has passed.  This is a wonderful option for people who might be cheapskates a little on the thrifty side.  It just means that to keep from cutting up my Senior kit papers I have to improvise a little for the Hop.  With that in mind here's what I came up with...

I have been LOVING the card cutting formulas in some of the Raps lately and this month's was a great use of 12 ea 8 1/2 x 11 papers to make 12 cards.  You can find the directions here (on pages 16 and 17.)  

So without my Hopes Stamp kit papers I decided to go back through my enormous stash of stuff and find a similar pack of paper to work with.  The Written Word Stamp paper seemed to fit the bill perfectly.  I find it easier if you pick paper with a similar composition as the paper in the directions.  For example this pack had one very dark color, one thin or text weight type paper etc.  

Since the directions mentioned that the text weight paper was a print I went ahead and made my own "prints" with the Written Word Vellum and the Hopes UM stamps.

The next step is to follow the directions and cut out all your papers.  I find it easiest to make a quick note listing which papers I used to substitute for the papers listed on the directions.  This just keeps me from getting confused and accidentally cutting the wrong paper the wrong way (because this has never happened to you right?)  So after cutting, scoring and folding you end up with all your pieces.

Next I like to lay out my pieces in the "cards" they are going to create.  This helps me visualize my finished product, make sure I use all my pieces and make sure I'm not left with a card and a matte that happen to be the same color as each other.  It helps to have someone look over your work...like AJ.

Once you have everything lined up you can get to stamping.  I think total time spent on all 12 cards was around 2 hours from paper selection to finished product.  Speaking of the finished product...

Notice how the carpet (freshly vacuumed by dbf) matches the cards so well!  Here is a close-up of a couple of the cards!

Written Word is one of my mom's favorite all time kits and she has already hinted at how much she LOVES the cards ;)  I love them too!  So grab some paper out of that stash and make up 12 cards of your own!

Thanks for stopping by-to see an entire list of bloggers participating this month please stop back by Club Scrap Creates.  Until next time...when we might discuss metal chickens, drug induced dreams or fresh vegetables...See ya!

Knock Knock-Barry Manilow calling

So I promised a great post about my new chicken rooster-and the week almost slipped away from me!  I'd like you all to meet...Barry Manilow the Rooster.

See it all started when someone forwarded me a link to this post in a blog.   (I'll warn you this blog contains some pretty ripe language.)  So for the last over year and a half I have been on the lookout for a giant metal chicken of my own.  Surprisingly they are expensive.  The larger ones are around $250+.  While my dream of chicken ownership was huge I just felt like that was too much money for a lawn/garden ornament.
Fast Forward to last Friday evening when my buddy Liz sent me this picture from HomeGoods...

2 feet of metal chicken goodness for only $39.99!!  I couldn't resist.  In fact I have since called 7 HomeGoods locations looking for one to give as a gift and they are all out.  It was chicken fate.  Luckily Liz was able to purchase this last remaining one and bring it by last weekend.

Knock Knock...

Since I'm not a huge Beyonce fan and I decided this was a boy chicken I decided to name him Barry Manilow.  Also since I don't have a garden for him to watch over this year I decided he belonged in my office, on my work table.  Everyone needs a metal chicken named Barry Manilow on their work table right?  I thought so.  You are all just jealous!

P.S. If the blog link above doesn't work you can check out my chicken inspiration here... http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/

One Month Update

No fancy title or hilarious start here but I just stopped and looked at the calendar and realized it was the 3rd of June.  Over one month since my surgery on May 1st.  (And May was a long month so we are actually looking at almost 5 weeks.)  I thought I would do a quick update (aka boring medical blog) so that later this week you would be ready for my awesomely amazing blog about my new metal rooster named Barry Manilow (see I have you intrigued don't I?)

Overall I am doing ok.  Not great but not awful.  As far as actual surgery recovery I think I have progressed nicely and I am looking forward to being able to be active again (and swim in the lake-which was slightly postponed by an infected spider bite-it's always something isn't it?)  So as far as the drug stuff goes...

I have good days and bad days as far as overall how I feel.  The biggest problem seems to be nausea and fatigue.  I just can't do everything I want to do without being completely wiped out.  I also have almost no appetite which for someone who loves to cook, menu plan, grocery shop--it's quite an adjustment.  I need to re-train myself to cook less food, my fridge is overflowing with leftovers right now.  I do a few bites at breakfast and then the same for lunch and dinner.

I was very discouraged a week or so ago when I hadn't lost any of this Cushing's weight after hardly eating for a month but then I was pointed back to a blog by another person with the same condition and surgery and she said she didn't lose anything for a month.  Well finally last week it started to drop off, I'm hoping this continues.  It's so much more encouraging in my recovery to be losing this weight but I have heard the steroids make it difficult.

I stepped down on my medication this past Saturday which means for the next few days I'll be a little extra tired, maybe a little dizzy and extra pukey.  I have blood work tomorrow and results on Thursday to see if the right sleeping adrenal gland is waking up yet.  I think for this stage I'm probably really doing as well as can be expected.  Leslie was on vacation last week and I'm SURE glad to have him back.  I can function at my job but was quickly shown that trying to do two people's jobs just wasn't working out.

So there's my boring update for now...be sure to stay tuned for upcoming pictures of the rooster...it will be way more interesting than this!

Grab Bagging Into Cape Cod

Welcome Blog Hoppers (and my normal blog visitors who may feel like they just clicked into the twilight zone!!)  I hope most of you have made it over from Debby's Blog (I promise I tried to embed this like the others!)  (http://www.masculineinspirationsinpapercrafts.blogspot.com/) to join me in the Club Scrap Cape Cod Blog Hop...(say that five times fast.)

I know my artistic talent is FAR surpassed by many of my fellow Hoppers and I guarantee you that they did not pick me to be last in the Hop because of my amazing creative ability or that they were saving the best for last. 

I was just the last person to sign up. (Shrugs)

I just hope I can make up for my crafty shortcomings with my slick, witty humor.

Today's focus is on the fabulous and already hoarded Cape Cod kit.  Now everyone raise their hands if they love the kit (right I see you all.)  Now raise both hands if you are saying there is no way I can cut into my wonderful Cape Cod papers to make cards (I see you guys too.)  So how about you pull out all those great Unmounted Stamps and make some cards with some Grab Bag papers.  What?  You don't have any Grab Bag papers?  Well I'm glad you asked because you can get your very own here (12x12), here (8 1/2 x 11), and I also like these (8 1/2 x 11 seconds).  When you amass a large collection of these papers you will end up with something like this...

Look at all that great card making potential!  So here's what I did, I pulled out some papers (Games Navy, Workbench Red and a Culinary White print (backside) and my Cape Cods stamps and I whipped out this little beauty.  The base card is just an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper cut in half and then scored in half again with mattes cut to fit.  No special formula this time.

 I was on a roll so I grabbed a couple more pieces from the box...

(Isn't it way better to have a cruddy picture with a cat in the way than a great blogworthy picture?)  This is some Architecture Grey, Workbench Silver, Down to Earth Green and another piece of the Culinary White print (turned over)-and one of my cats-A.J.  So I did the same thing with the papers (only the grey wasn't a full sheet so I ended up with this.)

A couple more stamps and I ended up with this...(I really need to use my real camera next time I do this instead of my iphone.)

Ok so I actually ended up with two cards like the one above and one card with the dark grey and silver but I hated the way I stamped on it and it's my blog so I decided not to post it!  Ha!  Finally I grabbed some Gratitude print, some Autumn Splendor light brown (and a Refresh text UM Stamp) and some more of the white and ended up with these...

So a whole bunch of cards with some fabulous stamps using some great papers that I got for a great deal-I've always been a bargain shopper!  (Note that I have been buying grab bags for a long time so your papers will be from more recent kits and will vary.)

So I sure hope you enjoyed your Blog Hopping today.  At any point you can go back to Club Scrap Creates to start the blog over or see a list of all of the Bloggers from today.

By the way-should Blogger be capitalized? 

So Now What?

So this has been an up and down week so far (as it seems like they all have been since May 1st.)  

The good news is that blood work shows that the overall Cortisol level in my body is WAY down since surgery.  For example blood work from 03-26-2013 shows the level at 28 and then on 04-10-2013 it was around 30.  A normal person's should be between 6-19.  So, this was explaining the Cushing's symptoms etc.  Luckily the blood work from last Thursday showed the AM Cortisol level at 1.  Now this means that hopefully the adrenal tumor was the cause of the problem and it is now gone but it also shows I have basically zero normal adrenal function.  It means my other adrenal gland is still sleeping.  More like hibernation really.  Like a big black bear snoring on the right side of my body.  He's been enjoying his 2-3 year nap and doesn't seem to want to wake up anytime soon.

So in the meantime the Hydrocortisone I'm getting is what is keeping me functioning.   Sort of.  Between the surgery, the lack of adrenals and the medicine my body is a confusing mess.  Everyone is being so great and happy for the surgery recovery but so far it seems the medicine will be the devil of me for the next few months (at least.)  Any home remedies for waking a sleeping adrenal gland? 

I'm not too bad day to day until they start reducing the Hydrocortisone.  Then I start to slowly crash out.  Tired, abdominal pain, chills, nausea and just sort of this overall hazy feeling.  Like I'm not 100% present?  (Are you talkin to me?)  This appears to last 3-5 days but last time it got so bad I had to bump the medicine back up so I'm not exactly sure how long it takes before it evens itself out.  Then I feel better a few days and then it's time to lower the amount of medicine again.  Sort of a vicious circle.

All this is a little technical and TMI for most I am sure but again I wanted people out there who were searching for info on their condition to be able to read my experiences.

So there you have it.  I lowered meds yesterday in the hopes that by the weekend I would be feeling good enough for some Memorial Day company...we shall see!

Stay tuned for hopefully some crafting and cooking blogs coming up soon-all this medical mumbo jumbo is getting old...

That won't be me...

Symptoms of Cortisol Withdrawl:

Abdominal pain, Confusion or coma, Darkening of the skin, Dehydration, Dizziness or light-headedness, Fatigue, Flank pain, Headache, High fever, Joint pain, Loss of appetite, Loss of consciousness, Low blood pressure, Nausea, Profound weakness, Rapid heart rate, Rapid respiratory rate (see tachypnea), Shaking chills, Skin rash or lesions, Slow, sluggish movement, Unintentional weight loss, Unusual and excessive sweating on face or palms, Vomiting

So I read a bunch of stuff before my surgery about how the withdrawl of Coritsol from my body, both from the adrenal removal and (hopefully) the cure of the Cushing's would be a long road.  There were all these side effects.  I'd be really sick, yadda yadda yadda right?  But the whole time I was thinking...

"That won't be me."

"I'm never sick."

"I'm not THAT sick right now so I'm sure it won't be that bad."  

"Not nearly as bad as all these horror stories you read online right???"

It's bad.  It's almost every single one of the things listed above.  Yesterday something happened that I don't think has ever happened in my adult life.  I couldn't get out of the bed.  I just laid there.  For hours.  In the dark.  I didn't even watch tv.  Finally mid-afternoon I moved to the couch.  Now luckily this adrenal "crash" that I experienced pretty much from Friday through yesterday I think was a direct result of them lowering the dose of my Hydrocortisone too quickly on Thursday.  So after a call to the doctor yesterday morning and upping the dose I was taking I'm back to feeling only "medium crappy" instead of like I was going to die.  (By the way I think I'm going to come up with a list of "how I feel" choices to pick from when people call or write and ask how I am.  Answers to chose from will include things like "Well I didn't hurt anyone today" and "I only felt like I was going to puke for 4 hours today, not all day.")

I don't say all this stuff for anyone to feel bad for me or anything but mostly for people who are Googling like I was and stumble upon this to see what it's really like.  It's odd too, the physical stuff is pretty bad but I will admit the mental stuff is a little scary.  I'm sort of in this daze.  Hard to focus, hard to get things accomplished, don't feel like talking out loud.  All of these things are so 180% away from my normal personality.  I think that was part of the whole staying in bed thing yesterday, not only did I feel horrible but I just sort of wanted to stay under the covers and make it all go away?

Wow-that was all kind of heavy and stuff-sorry about that...good news is I'm at work this morning.  Time to catch up on some things.  Apparently the people waiting to be paid don't really care about all the stuff mentioned above?  Go figure?  Bills are still due, payroll needs to be done, the mail piles up.  

Looks like this is going to be a one day at a time kind of thing.  LVP told me yesterday I wasn't Wonder Woman.  I was a little insulted...of course I am?  But maybe just not right now...  

Back to work...