Hungry Like the Wolf

It has been 5 days since my Endometrial Ablation and although I'm doing fine, I'm noticing some side effects. I have been experiencing some bleeding and have been feeling quasi depressed.  Not too bad, but just sort of like "down on the dumps" and not very excited about anything.  It feels like I'm in a hormonal state.  I've also noticed for the past day or so that I've been hungry as hell!  It was really bad today.  I've been wanting to crunch on something all day long!  I ended up eating a big bowl of Kix as finger food today at work, which satisfied the need to crunch for a while, but didn't completely vanquish it.  This hunger state needs to stop!  It reminds me of a song by Duran Duran from back in the 80s:

Yes, "Hungry Like the Wolf" has been my theme song today!  However, the song will need to change tomorrow as I don't plan on gaining any weight!

The surgery has been on my mind a lot, so I looked up more about it on the internet and found that it was featured on the show "The Doctors".  Here is a video of a woman getting the procedure:

I'm still annoyed and disappointed with my doctor for not having somebody call me the next day and for the overall "cattle call" way that they did things.  I looked on Aetna Navigator today and was not surprised to see that her office was very efficient in getting the surgery billed, to the tune of $3,545.00!  I'm just betting that this doesn't include the anesthesiologist's fee either, which will likely arrive promptly in the mail before week's end.  Aetna is paying her their rate of $1,958.16, which is better but still exorbitantly expensive!

The medical field is becoming a racket.  This makes me sad as this is what I have to look forward to as I age.  I pray that I can keep my health intact for a long time so that I won't have to deal too much with a growing community of uncaring blood suckers!

Cattle Call

I underwent a Novasure Endometrial Ablation this past Thursday to mitigate some female problems that I've been plagued with every month for the last six months. This procedure destroys the uterine lining by "burning" it out with radio frequency energy.  I was supposed to have the procedure at 10:00 am, but my gynecologist is also an obstetrician and had to do an emergency delivery, so I got booted to the last appointment for the day.  This sucked because I had to fast from after midnight the previous evening up until the procedure!

The procedure was done in outpatient status at my doctor's office, where an operating room team comes to the office and transforms several examining rooms into makeshift operating rooms.  My doctor made it sound like it would be just an in-and-out deal, but it was far from that!  I asked her how many people would have to be in the room and she told me that it would be her, a nurse and an anesthesiologist.  It ended up that there were 5 people in the room:  the doctor, two operating room techs, a nurse, and the anesthesiologist.  I know that these folks look at women's bare crotches every day, but this made me very uncomfortable!  What made it worse was that the anesthesiologist was a man, and I specifically pick female doctors for my gynecological needs as I'm not comfortable with men being in the room when I'm in this unclothed state!

The anesthesiologist put me under with Propofol, which is the drug that Michael Jackson used to go to sleep and which eventually killed him.  To be honest, the Propofol was the worst part of the procedure!  It didn't hurt when the anesthesiologist administered it through the IV as he put Lidocaine through the IV before the Propofol.  I was out within a few seconds after he put it into the IV.   The worst part was waking up from the Propofol.  It felt like I was looking through a pair of broken goggles and I just felt so drugged out and weird!  It took several hours for me to feel normal again.

After going through this procedure, I will have to say in my honest opinion that it should have been done in a hospital. Even though the Propofol was administered by an anesthesiologist, it's a heavy duty drug and a lot can go wrong with it.  I don't even know if those people had a crash cart available for emergencies.  I certainly didn't see one.

Another thing that really bothered me was the "cattle call" feel to the whole thing.  I ended up having to wait about 45 minutes in a examining room right next to one of the makeshift operating rooms and I heard them waking up the poor woman that had the procedure right before me.  The woman was having a really hard time waking up, which I can fully understand after being put under with Propofol and they ended up getting kind of mean to her when she couldn't open her eyes.  Before they wake you (the patient) up, they put your underwear and pants on up to your knees so that they can just yank your pants up and get you out the door.  There was no recovery room with a nurse or anything like that. Once you wake up, they yank up your pants,  plop you into a wheel chair and take you out to your car.

They didn't provide any kind of written post-op instructions and the doctor didn't even bother to speak with my husband, who was waiting to take me home.  I couldn't believe this as I was pretty out of it from the Propofol and couldn't remember much of what anybody said to me right before we left.  However, the absolute worst of all it was the fact that the doctor's office didn't even bother to call me the next day to find out how I was doing!  I have had dentists call me the next day after a dental surgery to see how I was doing and they didn't even put me under with anesthesia!

Frankly, I just found the whole experience to have been rather cold and uncaring.  My doctor is very competent, but not the greatest in the "bedside" manner department.  It's okay to have a doctor like this for just a yearly exam, but not for when you have problems and have to see them more often.  Hopefully, my female problems have been vanquished by this procedure that I had on Thursday.  If not, I will need to find another doctor, preferably one who is just a gynecologist so that they won't be getting called off at the last minute to deliver babies.  Overall, I would prefer somebody a bit warmer that this doctor.

Graduation Day

We drove to Austin this past weekend to attend a family member's High School Graduation ceremony.  We left Friday evening around 4:00 PM and ended up running into a bunch of traffic going through downtown Dallas.  It was stop and go for about 1-1/2 hours and we ended up getting to Round Rock around 8:00 PM.  We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn there.  There is a Saltgrass Restaurant right in front of the hotel, so we ate Dinner there.  The food was marginal at best.  I had the tenderloin K-Bob which in better days used to be all tenderloin, but now they are mixing chicken into it so that they can charge more money and give the customer less.  Having chicken in it was probably for the best as the tenderloin was tough and didn't taste very good.  Adeline was fascinated with the longhorn, deer and bison heads that are hanging all over the restaurant.  Here is a picture of Adeline and I at the table:

Adeline and Mae at the Saltgrass Restaurant in Round Rock, TX

The graduation ceremony was at 9:00 in the morning on Saturday, so we got up, ate some breakfast and then headed there. Here is a picture of Adeline making a goofy face at breakfast while eating her yogurt. The ceremony was very nice and I was quite surprised that both the Salutatorian and Valedictorian talked about their relationship with Jesus Christ during their speeches, especially since they were graduating from a public school!  My bet is that this doesn't happen in public schools in states other than Texas.  It was nice to see that such young people were unafraid to talk about their faith when most kids their age are more concerned about maintaining a cool image.

 

Adeline Making Goofy Faces Over Breakfast

After the ceremony we went back to the hotel and took a long nap and then Adeline's maternal grandmother picked her up and took her to spend the night at her house in Georgetown.


After Adeline left, we went over to a party at Hernan's brother Luis' house.  Luis' daughter Christina was the one who graduated from High School.  They had a delicious spread of food there and plenty of beer!  We had a very nice visit with Hernan's brothers.  Here is a picture of Christina and me at the party:

Christina and Mae at the Graduation Party

We left the party around 10:00 PM and went back to the hotel to sleep.  We got up the next day and I jumped into the shower and soaped myself up, only to have the hotel fire alarm go off!  We thought that maybe the steam from the shower might have set off the alarm in our room, so I got out of the shower dripping soap and water and called the Front Desk.  The woman told me that they were testing the alarm and not to worry about it.  Testing the fire alarm at 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning!  And to makes things worse, they didn't even tell anybody that they were doing the testing!  I'm sure there were a lot of people who were running around naked there on Sunday!  Fortunately, I stayed in our room!  I'm going to write them up for it on the survey of our stay there.  I do have to say that other than the alarm incident, everybody there treated us very nicely as always.

After we ate breakfast we picked up Adeline in Georgetown and then headed back to Dallas.  We made a pit stop in Italy, Texas and look at what we saw on the side of I-35 there:

The Starship Pegasus Along I-35 in Italy, TX

Apparently, the Starship Enterprise's sister ship landed on the side of I-35 in Italy.  She is named the Starship Pegasus.  I had to stop and get out and take a picture of her!

All in all, the weekend was very nice, but way too short!  It was very hard rolling out of bed this morning, but the day didn't go too badly and now Monday is over.

Standing on Shaky Ground

I've been experiencing a  very uneasy feeling for the past few weeks.  It feels kind of like the floor is shaking and the foundation of my life is threatening to give out beneath my feet.  I've been waking up in the middle of the night worried about my marriage, my job, and my children. 

My marriage has always been a very good one, but lately it seems that it is being tested.  In December 2010, my husband's granddaughter Adeline came to live with us due to some rather unfortunate circumstances.  She was 2 years old at the time and then turned 3 in January.  She wasn't potty trained at the time and was under serious emotional duress.  Both my husband's children and mine are grown and it has been a major life change taking her into our custody.  It has changed our lives drastically and has taken somewhat of a toll on our relationship because we don't get to spend as much time together as we did before.

Since my husband and I met, I have been on a computer most of the time working on classes,  looking for good airline fares and trips, doing ancestral research and just being the information junkie that I am. Not long after Adeline came to live with us, I got onto Facebook to talk with family and some friends. I'm not on Facebook to look for hook-ups or anything like that!  I like Facebook for the fact that it enables me to keep up with my children, cousins, and people that I knew in school.  I've made a few friends there, but they are just friends.  My husband hates the fact that I'm on Facebook and we ended up having another huge argument over it last weekend.

This really makes me feel like I am a 15 year old girl again, living at home with my parents and my father is riding my ass because I'm doing something that he doesn't like!  I just can't stand it!  I guess he feels like he's not my 1st priority anymore, which is untrue.  I work all day long and then come home and help to take care of Adeline and the household.  I don't go anywhere else!  I've worked hard to get where I am now in life and I really don't want people telling me what I can and can't do, especially in my own home!

Another dark cloud on the horizon is my job.  I'm not sure how much longer the project that I'm on will have work for me.  I'm hoping to get onto another project, but it doesn't look like this will happen until later on in the year.  There's also what could be snag on this new project.  I just found out that a person that I had a run-in with back in 2006 has taken a position on this project and is working directly for the Project Manager.  I've interacted with this person since the run-in and things have been okay, but there's this nagging worry in the back of my mind that they might try to keep me from getting onto this project by telling the Project Manager their side of the "run-in" story.  It's not like the run-in was anything terrible, but people can be funny.  The economy is not good and there is not an abundance of work out there.  I don't want to have to take a job in another state and move everybody again, but it might come down to that if I don't get onto this new project.  I'm quite worried about this!

And last, but not least, I'm worried about my children.  They live in a different state far from us and I'm not there locally to see them on a frequent basis or help them first hand, if needed.  My daughter just got married last year and she and her husband moved into their own apartment.  They are really struggling to make ends meet.  This makes me feel very bad!  Although they do need to learn how to live on a tight budget, I feel that I could help them more if I lived closer.

Then there's my son, who I anguish about constantly.  He's been living off of monies for the past few years from a settlement he received due to a near fatal car accident that he was in back in 2007.  He's not a very motivated person and doesn't take the best care of himself.  He's on anti-seizure medications as a result of the car accident, and when he doesn't take his medicine or get enough rest and hydration, he ends up throwing Grand Mal seizures. Fortunately, he lives in the same townhouse complex as my daughter and her husband, who look in on him on a frequent basis.  Unfortunately, my daughter witnessed his last episode with seizures and was very unnerved by what she saw.  Again, I feel bad that I don't live closer so that I could help him some more.  I'm so afraid that I'm going to get a call one day with news that he is dead.  He's 21 years old, so all I can do right now is pray that he'll be okay.  This is not a good feeling!

The bottom line is, all I can do is my absolute best and keep praying that all will work out okay.  I hope that time will stabilize this shaky ground that I'm standing on right now.

So, my song for today's post is a cool, funky tune that I used to listen to back when I was a kid:

There ain't nothing like some funky music to make living on the edge more bearable!

Journey to the Panama Canal

We go on a trip for the Christmas holidays every year.  We spent last Christmas in Hawaii.  I just booked this year's holiday and we're going on a 10 day Panama Canal Cruise with Princess Cruiseline.  We'll be sailing on a ship named the Island Princess..  This is pretty exciting as we've been wanting to cruise to the Panama Canal for a while now.  Here is the itinerary:

Day	Port of Call	Arrival Time	Departure Time
1	Fort Lauderdale		4:00 PM
2	At Sea
3	At Sea
4	Aruba	7:00 AM	12:30 PM
5	Cartagena Colombia	9:00 AM	3:00 PM
6	Cruising Panama Canal	5:00 AM	3:30 PM
6	Colon	5:00 PM	8:00 PM
7	Limon	7:00 AM	6:00 PM
8	At Sea
9	Grand Cayman	7:00 AM	5:00 PM
10	At Sea
11	Fort Lauderdale	7:00 AM

Here are descriptions of the ports of call:

Fort Lauderdale
This vast array of wonderful beaches offers you opportunities to swim with the dolphins in a tropical lagoon and come face-to-face with alligators during an Everglades airboat tour. Or stroll through a tropical rainforest while hundreds of butterflies flutter above you.

Aruba
Balmy weather, silky sand, aquamarine waters and invigorating trade winds beckon over half a million tourists each year to this small, secluded paradise. Casinos, tennis clubs and resorts have their place here, but cactus jungles, wild parakeets and Carnival dancers are the main attractions.

Cartagena Colombia
A beautiful, quaint fishing town on the Atlantic coast of Colombia, Cartagena is full of pastel-painted buildings, Spanish colonial architecture and magnificent cathedrals. Walls and fortresses, once constructed to protect the city from British soldiers and pirates, still stand.

Cruising Panama Canal
This $387 million dollar, 51-mile-long canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Completed by the U.S. from 1904-1914 under teddy Roosevelt, it is considered one of the greatest engineering marvels of all time.

Colon
The world’s second-largest duty-free port is also the second largest city in Panama. The city was founded in 1850 by Americans working on the trans-Panama railroad and was named Aspinwall until 1890. It serves as the portal to the massive Gatun Locks.

Limon
Located on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, Limon is noted as the landing spot for Christopher Columbus’ fourth and final voyage. Serving as a gateway to the capital city of San Jose, the city is known as the "Little Switzerland of Central America” for its kaleidoscope of scenery.

Grand Cayman
The largest of the three Cayman Islands features British infused charm and Caribbean mystique. Dive and snorkel in Stingray City, walk the breathtaking shores of Seven Mile Beach, and dance in Club Inferno - located in a small city called Hell.

We booked a Penthouse Suite, which will look somewhat like this:

Princess Cruises

Cabin Type	Group Name	Cabin Name
PS - Suite with Balcony	Suite	PS

The Suite with Balcony features two twin beds (that are convertible to a queen-size bed), a sofa bed, sitting area and private balcony.

Penthouse Suite with Balcony

The suite that we booked is actually named "Maldives" and is on the 10th Deck, called the Dolphin Deck.

We are really looking forward to going on this cruise!  It is so exciting going to exotic places!  December, here we come!

Don't Go Away!

I met a good friend (I'll call her "Angie" to protect her privacy) on Facebook a while back as a direct result of a nasty encounter that I had on one of another Facebook friend's threads. This other friend's posts are often very controversial and usually result in some big-time cat fighting in threads that go on for days! I usually find these threads more entertaining than anything on television. However, there are times when they have truly gotten out of hand. A good number of folks have actually run away from these threads cut and bleeding, never to be heard from again! I regret to say that my friend Angie may have joined the ranks of the cut and bleeding in exile.

It all started out one day shortly after I commented on a thread about Rush Limbaugh. I got attacked by a particularly nasty person for using the term "GG" to refer to women who need to use contraceptives in order to prevent pregnancy. The term "GG" means "Genetic Girl" and I quickly found out that day that there are some trans-women who do not like the term because it "differentiates" them from cisgendered women. However, I have seen many trans-women using this very same term all of the time on Facebook and elsewhere and never saw it as being derogatory.

I am very much an ally of the Transgender Community and it really bothered me that somebody was making me out to be a hater. Needless to say, this person was particularly horrible and tried to bring others into the fray behind my back because she couldn't handle fighting with me one-on-one. To make a long story short, the next day, I saw "Angie" mention the term on a post and I asked her about it. This question led to what has been a very nice Facebook friendship!

Since that day, Angie and I have talked virtually every day about all kinds of subjects. We were even going to meet to have some lunch one day since we both live somewhat close to each other in Texas. Unfortunately, something happened on one of those "threads" that I talked about above and it resulted in some "unfriending" and some subsequent nasty comments that were "liked" by people that "Angie" thought were her friends.

The last time that we talked, which was a few days ago, "Angie" said that she needed some time away from Facebook and then she deactivated her account.  She gave me her telephone number a while back and I sent her a text to tell her that I miss talking with her, but she hasn't responded. I feel very bad about not being able to talk with her anymore! We have had just a really easy friendship where we can talk about everything and it has been so nice!  I don't want to lose this friendship! 

I'm going to dedicate a special song to my friend and I hope that she'll come back soon because I miss her!

Here's to the nice, easy friendship that I've enjoyed with you, "Angie"!

Don't go away!  Say what you say!  Say that you'll stay, as my friend!

05/23/12  Update

I tried to call the number that "Angie" gave me a while back, but got a recording that the number "was not in working order".  I guess she really is doing a disappearing act.  I hope that she is okay!

08/30/12 Update

"Angie" did come back after a few days and we've continued our friendship.  She an I have met several times in person, along with Kim, another good FB friend.  I consider her and Kim to be dear friends!

Cool Shades

Until just recently, I had a really cool pair of Juicy Couture sunglasses that I bought for an excellent price on sale at my Eye Doctor's office last year.  I took special care not to lose them and always kept them in their pretty pink case in my purse when I wasn't using them.  Well, one weekend not too long ago, we went shopping at SAM's Club and Adeline announced that she had to go to the potty.  I was pretty tired and the weather outside was crappy, so I was dragging.  I brought Adeline into the bathroom and set my sunglasses on the toilet paper holder while I helped her use the bathroom.  Unfortunately, in my tired state, I forgot to pick up my sunglasses and we walked out of the bathroom.  I remembered them about ten minutes later and ran back into the bathroom, but somebody had already taken them.  I have called SAM's for the past few weeks asking if anybody turned them into the Lost and Found, but fat chance!  There is no way whoever found them is going to let go of my sunglasses that they put into their purse and are now wearing.

This makes me so mad!  How could somebody be so dishonest!  Whoever took them knew that their owner would be looking for them!  In all honesty, I'm not really into buying designer items.  It just so happened that those sunglasses were really pretty and I got them for a steal of a price at my doctor's office.

Today I had my yearly eye exam and my doctor had just received a shipment of some beautiful sunglasses at her office. It is getting pretty hot and sunny here in Dallas now and I truly needed to get some shades.  A pair of Vera Wang Black Evon Sunglasses really caught my eye.  I tried them on and liked them immediately, so I bought them.  They were a bit pricey, but I don't go out buying expensive items very often.

Here is a picture of the sunglasses:

Vera Wang Black Evon Sunglasses

Here is a picture of me playing around with my new sunglasses later today:

Mae with her new shades

They have some really cool bling on the temples that sparkles whenever light hits it.  I love my new shades and one thing's for sure, I won't be setting these babies down in any SAM's Club Ladies Room or anywhere else!