Quick kidney-related update

I saw my primary care doctor this week, we addressed getting me on a cholesterol medication. I started on Crestor, for which I have to have bloodwork every 4-6 weeks. All cholesterol meds carry a very very small chance of liver and/ or muscle tissue damage, so they will be monitoring that.

I see my hematologist next week; he is the doctor treating my anemia. There has been ALOT of confusion with their office, and stupid Quest Diagnostics labs. I haven't had a Procrit injection for the anemia in a couple of months, and I am not feeling as bad as I used to. The severity of the anemia may have been aggravated by being pregnant, so I am going for more bloodwork on Monday to see where me hemoglobin level is at, and we will take it from there.

I'm in the process of trying to find a new neprologist. There's been a number of things that have happened since January that have made both Rick & I uncomfortable with the one I see currently. She is a super nice lady, and has been so good to me, but we have really felt uneasy with some of the decisions and info we have been given. For example, when I was still in the hospital in January, she told me that I would not be able to have any more children after my kidney transplant. I cried & cried for 3 days. But since then, we have found through our own research that that is NOT true anymore. The rejection medications have changed so much over the years and now post-transplant women have babies all the time. All of the surgeons & doctors at Mayo have said Yes, you will be able to have children.
There's been a number of other things, so we just feel it's not a good fit for us.

So, I called my coordinator Rhonda at Mayo, and she said she wanted to get me in as a patient of one of their in-house nephrologists. I would love this, and it would make the whole process alot easier. No more "Chinese telephone" with all of my labs, records, etc. Unfortunately, there are currently only 2 nephrologists on staff at Mayo, and Rhonda said they are not taking new patients right now. But she is going to try and get me in as soon as they have an opening.


On a different note...

College football season is upon us! The Gators kick off their season tomorrow @ noon against the Rainbow Warriors.... Hawaii. It should be a shut-out! We have some friends coming over to watch the game with us on our awesome 42" plasma TV in high-definition.
My Uncle John (dad's brother) and Aunt Ruth Ann are going to the game in Gainseville at The Swamp, and then will be heading to my Mom & Dad's for dinner. I am looking forward to seeing them!
Here is a song to brighten your day.

(sung to the tune of the Oscar Meyer bologna song)

My head coach has a first name, it's U-R-B-A-N
My head coach has a last name, it's M-E-Y-E-R
I love to watch the Gators play,
and if you ask you'll hear me saaaaaay...
That Urban Meyer has a way
with F-L-O-R-I-D-A


Go Gators!

Finally getting around to uploading vacation pix...

We had a fantastic time on our vacation. We visited my maternal grandmother & my aunts & uncles in Pittsburgh, PA.
We spent one day while we were thee at Kennywood, an amusement park in Pittsburgh. We got there when then opened just after 10am & pretty much shut the place down! We left just before 10:30. It was awesome!!! We almost had to cut the day short- we got almost 3 hours of on & off rain- COLD rain- but we toughed it out. We walked through some fun houses & played in the arcade & eventually the rain let up. We rode all the roller coasters 2-3 times and did as many rides as possible. Well except for the ones that SPIN. I will ride any roller coaster, no matter how scary looking. I will even to the sky coaster, where you free-fall from a tower that's 250 ft high. But spinning? Not for me! It makes me sick, bleh. I can't even ride the teacups at Disney World.

We spent alot of time with family, relaxing or hanging out. We have a great time with my aunts & uncles up there & we both wish we could see them more often.

I was especially excited that I got to bring home some of my great grandfather's artwork. I brought home a beautiful pencil sketch, and a watercolor painting he did of a WW I battle scene. He was a veteran of that war so it meant alot to me to be able to have it. I will take photos of them soon. There is a landscape painting that will be coming home with us eventually, when someone can drive up there. It's too large to put in a suitcase and it makes me really nervous to have it shipped. Sure, they can insure the package, but if they lose it, money can't replace it.

We also did a little touristy driving around town, and visited the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The have a really awesome hall of dinosaurs, and a great Egyptian exhibit. If you enjoy museums and are ever in or near Pittsburgh, make sure you pay this museum a visit!

Oh and Rick got to see one of the cute groundhogs that have taken up residence in my grandma's backyard, and also one of the bunnies that like to eat the clover growing in the driveway.

It was so hard leaving though, because I knew it would probably be the last time I would be at my grandma's house.

All in all it was a great trip. It was nice to get away from stress, work, doctors, sickness, and sadness.

Here are some highlights! I will post the rest to my photobucket tomorrow.

Passiflora Caerulea

We have all kinds of strange weed-y vines growing in parts of our yard. There's one area on the side of the house that has some tall bushes, and vines have grown up through them. Rick initially thought it was Virginia Creeper. Well a couple months ago one of the vines started blooming and Rick commented, I didn't think Virginina Creeper bloomed... When I first noticed it had flowers, I saw one through our bedroom window I couldn't tell it was a flower from a distance. It looked like some kind of weird bug! Which is not uncommon in Florida, so I went to check it out & I was surpised to see it was a flower.
They were very bizarre! Almost exotic & tropical.But things have been hectic & busy so we haven't paid much more attention to it.
Yesterday evening we were walking the yard to survey any storm damage and I got to looking at the blooms on the vine again, and I said to Rick, You know.. these flowers really are pretty! I wonder what they are?

I took a couple really pretty pictures of the flower which I will upload at a later date. Since I am house-bound today because of the storm, curiosity got the better of me & I decided to find out what the heck was growing in my yard.

I did a Google image search for "purple & white flower". And sure enough, not very far into the search results, I was able to find a web page with a picture of our funky flower. It is...

Passion vine! Passiflora Caerulea.
(These are not the pictures I took but our flowers look EXACTLY the same!)







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passiflora_caerulea

I wonder how it made it's way into our yard? But it is really neat looking! So we are going to let it stay. Apparently it will make little passion fruits that are edible, and the flowers can be used for tea.

Fay Update

We have been safe at home since about 4:30pm. There's been plenty of wind all night. It's steadily windy, and there are frequent gusts that really bend the trees. I'd say about 30-45 mph. It's been raining non-stop since about lunchtime, but there hasn't been much heavy downpour. More of a moderate but steady rain;p small misty drops as opposed to big heavy ones.

A couple hours ago JEA was reporting around 80,000 homes were without power. Most of the bridges were closed by the time we got home. We had to take an alternate route past downtown & across the Fuller Warren bridge.

We've just been enjoying the night @ home together; mostly we have vegged out & watched movies & taken occasional trips outside to take in the storm. The dogs & cats are very happy that we are home! All the mammals have been a little clingier than usual, they don't like storms and this one has alot of noisy wind so they are a bit unsettled. The cats keep staring intently at the windows- the sound of the wind is blowing their kitty minds.

Conditions are supposed to stay the same or possibly worsen throughout the night, but it seems like maybe Fay will be moving west of us by early morning.


On a non-weather related topic, my cousin Brenda called me the other day. She is fairly certain her blood type is O+, and she offered to be screened to be a living donor for me. How awesome is that?

Also, my aunt gave me a more than generous gift while I was visiting her. I can't tell you what it meant to me that she & my uncle were willing to do that for us.
While I was still in the hospital in January, Rick's 2 uncles & aunt also gave us amazing gifts. When the doctors put me on bedrest during the pregnancy, our income got cut down by over a third literally overnight. Without their help, we would not have made it through the 2 months I was out of work.

We really do have an amazing family!

I have a big family on both my mom's & dad's sides, and are spread out all over the country, from one coast to the other. But I have always been so proud that we are a family who, no matter how far apart we are, always comes together for one another.


Well I am off to finishing the movie we are watching; I hope all the Florida folks stay safe & dry tonight!

Vacation & Fay

Greetings from not-so sunny Florida. We are currently riding out Tropical Storm Fay. Initially it was a tropical let-down; the storm stalled out over east central FL for almost 3 days- our local schools were closed Tuesday & Wednesday but all we had was a few breezes & sprinkling rain. It has finally picked up today. Bridges are starting to close, mostly out at the Beaches, but I have a feeling the others will follow shortly. My boss just called & said she got word the Buckman Bridge is closed so we are going to have to find another way home. Also a sailboat crashed into the Buckman bridge. Who the hell had their sailboat out today???
Rick & I are still at work. My boss has given us clearance to live, but Rick is still waiting...

The wind is getting worse; there's reports of gusts between 30-40 mph all over town. It's supposed to get progressively worse over the course of the evening, so we shall see what the night brings.

We got back from our vacation on Monday, it was awesome!!! More on that later. Pray that we don't blow away!!!

Diovan & Chair Wars

Not much new on the Renal Front. I went to my nephrologist Dr. Kancha last week; she added Diovan to my meds, this is to reduce the amount of protein I am spilling in my urine. Which is apparently alot. She also added Lipitor, to help the cholesterol situation. She sent me for bloodwork, and I go back in a month.
I asked her at what point I will need to start dialysis, and she said that that will be when mykidney function drops to 15% or below. So we have a little time, but we can't be sure how much. It might go down slowly, or it might stay steady for awhile & then take a dive. Just another 'wait and see' situation.



On a lighter note, I thought I'd share some pictures of our 'kids'. Most of our family hasn't met all our pets. Many of you know that I have a small soft spot for animals. OK make that a large soft spot. It's a good thing my husband is the voice of reason or we would be living in a barn. I'm one of those people that has the invisible sign above my head- the one that only animals can read, that says "Sucker". Ask me some time about the long line of strays that have come in & out of our house. Hey, I figure- if nothing else, I am earning alot of good karma points.

We have 3 kitties- 2 older ladies and one little kitty, about 11 weeks old. We also have 2 large dogs. The male dog Max is a Shar Pei- Pit bull- Lab mutt. He is gentle as a lamb! Lexy is a German Pointer/ Lab mutt. She is very smart, but has the attention span of a gnat. A toddler gnat.

They are our 'kids' in every way, they are our family and I don't know what we would do without them.

So- now to the pictures. These were all taken tonight. The kitten- Bella- her new trick is drinking from the faucet. We call it the Magical Fountain... it mystifies her but she loves it. I saw her licking the water in the bottom of the bathtub and I thought, I wonder if I could get her to figure out the faucet.... It worked!

I am also posting a pictoral account of one of the many battles of the Chair Wars. There is a spare chair in the computer room, and apparently it's THE place to lay when Rick or I is on the computer because they always duke it out for the chair. Bella usually loses, but her advantage is that she doesn't know when to quit. That and no matter how bad of a beating she gets, she comes right back for more. Ah, kittens.


P.S. here is a link to our album on Photobucket. More pictures, if anyone is really bored.
http://s343.photobucket.com/albums/o464/thekistners/Our%20Creatures/
P.S.S. I didn't proofread this entry, and I don't feel like going back & fixing any typos. Take that, Grammar Police!





* * * * * * * * *

I like chair



I like camera



You're in my chair kid



Oh hell naw it's my chair



I'm alot bigger than you



Willow, the victor & still Master of the Chair