Happy Birthday

Today is my brother's birthday. He's the big five-o.

Happy birthday Brother! I hope you have a fine one.

Random Entertainment Of The Week 5/30

Your Sister's here!!!....

My sister arrived today via USPS. Actually, she arrived at my brother's house and he called to tell me that he was driving around with her in the backseat because the mail lady didn't leave the package and he had to chase her down.

He and I are the only ones that seem to think this is hilarious. It's so like her to show up when it's inconvenient and make us run around town to get her and do her bidding! I loved my sister but that's just how she was. And Brother and I had a good laugh joking that she's being forced to ride around Podunkvile, in his pick up truck.

Lisa hated Michigan, even though we grew up in Detroit, it was too small-ville, too Midwest, too not New York City. My other sister stayed in suburban Detroit, I moved to Podunk and my brother moved to the even smaller town of Podunkville. Needless to say those of us left in Michigan used to roll our eyes every time she started talking about how great "The City" was and how backwards the rest of us were. As if everyone here wears flannel and ear flaps year round. :)

So, she's here and we're going to actually make Beer Butt Chicken this time. I'm planning on cracking open a can of beer and setting it on her box while we eat and if Mr. Digs the Grave at the cemetery lets me I"m going to throw a can in the hole for her. A fitting final goodbye if you ask me, complete with what ailed her...

I have nothing to say

Really, I don't. I have not a thing to blog about diabetes wise because since starting Januvia six weeks ago I'm feeling rather non-diabetic.

I guess thats the whole point. Have islet transplant, avoid insulin, avoid lows, have good blood sugars. Congrats to me! Really though, it makes for boring writing.

So for awhile, until something else comes up, i'm going to be bird and otherwisely focused on, well. other things.

It's confusing feeling so non diabetic.

I need new focus.

School starts in two weeks.

I can't wait...

Saturday In The Park

The bird and I went for a walk today. We saw geese galore, and kids with Frisbees and Green Bean's very first encounter with a dog. I think he was more afraid of the giant goose then he was of the lab. I can't blame him, the goose's head was bigger then Green Bean and I think it was looking for a hand out, so it was interested in us. The lab on the other hand didn't seem to notice the little pile of green fuzz in my hand at all.

I got my exercise in. We walked about a mile and Bird went right to his sleeping spot for a nap when he got home. I'm telling you it's just rough being little and green...

Random Entertainment Of The Week. 5/23

I recently bought a Nokia phone. The ring tone has been driving me nuts. I finally figured out why. Can you hear it?

Francisco Tárrega - Gran Vals

Makes me wonder if composers roll over in their graves every time a cell phone rings...

10 weird things Meme

I have a friend, real, live, and in person,, that is obsessed with MeMe's. She doesn't blog so she emails them to me. I swear to god once a week. I usually reply back to her and don't bother sending them on. This one I decided to post here. If you want to play consider yourself tagged. It's the whole list 10 weird things about yourself meme that's been floating around for awhile.

here goes.

1. probably the wierdest thing about me is that my insides are backwards. I have situs inversus, more specifically situs ambiguous because my abdominal organs are backwards but my lungs/heart are normal.
2. My favorite smell is that fuzzy warm spot on the back of my birds neck.
3. I collect tail feathers when my birds molt. I have hundreds of them and I can tell you which bird each one of them is from.
4. I don't have a favorite food, but if you ask, I'll say celery to get you off my back.
5. I was in my 20's before I realized that the song Amazing Grace wasn't about a person. (I'm not sure that's weird. but it sure is moronic)
6. I'm ambidextrous and in college I took notes with both hands until it freaked out a classmate and made me uber self conscious.
7. I'm afraid of podiatrists.
8. At restaurants I have to unwrap my silverware and set my place properly and it bothers me I don't have the minimum, knife, fork, spoon for my setting.
9. If I have blood work done or an IV put in, I always watch.
10. I can't remember the last time I turned on a TV.

your turn!

islets: the saga continues

or not so much. ;)

My A1c a month ago was 6.8. Dr. Endo put me on Januvia which has worked quite well along with a newly procured obsession with low carbing it and my A1c this month is down to 6.4. Yay.

They did metabolic testing. IV glucose tolerance testing and glucagon stimulation tests to see how my islets are function and I don't yet have those results. I go bac in about 8 weeks for more tests and we'll see where we are then.

Dr. Thyroid said all is well. I need one more set of thyroid function tests done to ensure that all of my thyroid tissue is indeed gone and I can say I'm cancer free. woot! woot! After that it's yearly labs for me. I can go back to my usual Endo for those.

And that's it. There is nothing exciting so write about, which is good. I feel so euglycemic and normal and all.

It makes me want to run out and eat ice cream!

yayislets!

A couple of months ago I posted an entry about my male Budgie. The title had "sexy" in it. I also have a link to R.A.I.N.N. (see links on the right). Because the link has the word "rape" in it and my bird post had the word "sexy" in it apparently yahoo has indexed my blog for ratbastards searching for photos of rape victims.

Here's one for you, you sick motherfuckers.

Now get the hell off my blog!

For Lisa

My sister died today. She was 44. She drank a lot and had hepatitis in her 20s. Neither of which are good for the liver. She got cirrhosis, and then diabetes and pulmonary hypertension and an infection in her blood and spine. She was sick for a long long time. We knew it was coming, but it doesn't make it any easier.

Last year she saw a recipe somewhere someplace for what I and my other siblings called Beer Butt Chicken. I don't know what the original recipe was called but here it is. So, Lisa, where ever you are on your travels, this one is for you....

Beer Butt Chicken

1 whole chicken
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt
pepper
whatever freeking herbs you like, dried
12 pack of cheep beer in a can

-clean the chicken
-massage on olive oil
-salt
-pepper
-give it a rub down with some freeking herbs
-open a can of beer, drink 1/3rd of the can, shove the can up the chickens butt
-cook over medium type indirect heat with the grill cover on until its done.
-drink other 11 beers
-order pizza instead.

enjoy

I love you.

Random Entertainment Of The Week...

I really like this song. Fine lyrics and all. Check out her other songs while you're at it. Tis goodly.

Thyroid Cancer

After my last post I got to thinking (something I try not to do), and I said to my self, "Self, you didn't tell these people about your oh so exciting cancer diagnosis yet, how are they going to cope with the news you just suddenly sprang on them?". So heres my "how they discovered I have papillary carcinoma" story.

When I had my islet transplant I had a hematoma on my liver. It hurt like a sonofacrackwhore to put it nicely, and after two months it still hurt but not so much until I fell on my face or as Dr. Transplant put it. I fell on my liver.

I have this portable dvd player. I love it. It's cool, I often take it to Chicago with me but like many rechargeable battery powered electronic devices it needs to be plugged in occasionally to be, well, charged. So, I had it plugged in in the hallway because at the time I was living in an apartment designed by morons and there were hardly any electrical outlets in the living room but plenty in the hallway. go figure.

Anyway, I was walking down said hallway and the wire of my DVD player some how found itself wrapped around my ankle and I tripped trying to avoid damaging it and fell flat on my face. You'll be happy to know that my DVD player was fine, I however was not. My hemoglobin level two days later was 6, so they admitted me gave me some blood and did a ct scan. I was pissed! I had baseball tickets! I missed Thirsty Thursday, the best day of the week at minor league baseball, where beer and diet Pepsi are only 2 dollars drink! but I digress... ;)

The ct scan was supposed to be of my abdomen, but they did chest/abdomen accidentally and in doing so went up too high and caught my thyroid gland. I'm thinking Dr. Transplant is going to tell me all is well, go home, which he did eventually but then Dr. Endo calls me and says I need to have a needle biopsy of my thyroid and can I return to Chicago for that soon? Okay.

Short story long, the needle biopsy was inconclusive so they removed my thyroid gland and I had thyroid cancer. Now they keep doing blood work and ultrasounds to make sure its really gone.

That's my not so exciting cancer story. After my last set of labs / ultrasounds Dr ENT wants to see me. I'm not sure why really, from what I've read papillary carcinoma is about the easiest cancer to cure. Remove thyroid and you're good. soo the fact that Dr ENT wants to see me a year after surgery makes me curious, but not exactly nervous if you know what I mean.

Moral of my story is, even if my islets fail and I'm back on insulin with no hope of functional cure being functional any longer, I still have my cancer cure to be thankful for.

yayislets!

Yeah, I do.

I think it's disgusting too.


And on another note, I head to Chicago again tomorrow so islet updates after this set of appointments. The islets didn't behave so well for blood work the last time around. My A1c was 6.8, up from 6.2 so they want me back sooner then usual and I also get to see Dr. Thyroid because papillary carcinoma should be easy but noo, my labs had to come back in that weird place where they won't say I'm cancer free but they won't say I'm not either. *sigh*

Can I have a full body transplant next time? Just put my head on someone hot, thanks... ;)