Wifey Update

Well yesterday wifey got the radioactive iodine and other than the isolation she feels, she is doing well. She sits at the top of our steps and talks to us and gives orders. I borrowed a geiger counter from the fire dept. and it was quite interesting.
We appreciate all the emails, prayers, and help we have received.

I went on a field trip with Jessica today to a historic village/farm, and it totally set off my allergies. I am still sneezing and wiping my nose, so this post is shorter than I planned.

Update on Wifey's Treatment

WOW! Two posts in one week and it’s the busiest week of the monument year to boot. I am taking a break at McDonalds while the girls are at dance class. Wanted to fill everyone in on Wifey’s thyroid treatment.

To recap, last year (may 13) she had surgery on her right thyroid. They found a golf ball size mass in her neck which was removed. The golf ball mass was non-cancerous, but her right thyroid had two small specks of cancer. Thyroid cancer is very very treatable, does not spread, and is not terminal. It’s just a major pain in the butt like any other cancer or disease. Three weeks ago after a routine ultrasound they found a mass growing on her left thyroid. She does NOT want surgery again as it has been barely a year and her incision is very hard to see and for someone who didn’t know she had surgery would not be able to find it. So we are opting for radioactive iodine treatment. Even if we opted for surgery this time around she would still have to have the iodine treatment.

Your thyroid absorbs iodine. In fact it is the only thing in your body that does. So the idea behind I-131 treatment is to starve your body of iodine for two weeks, then ingesting I-131 in a pill form. Your thyroid sucks up the radioactive iodine (I-131) and dies. Sounds easy right?

Well to starve your body of iodine you need a special diet. It’s real simple, basically you can eat all the raw fruits and veggies you want. That’s about it. No dairy, bread, processed meats, anything with red dye #3. It’s a rough diet let me tell ya. I try to follow the diet with her to help her out, but I have been taking the kids out to eat a lot so she doesn’t have to watch.

The diet lasts two weeks. One week into the diet you begin to take meds to help prepare you for the I-131 treatment. On Saturday she will begin on Pilocarpine and Lithium. Yep, Lithium helps make the I-131 more potent. Since it also is used for manic depression, we are also guessing it will turn her into a walking human zombie. On Monday she will quit taking her Synthroid, which will enhance the zombie effect, since it will lower her thyroid levels as well.

Are you wondering what happens when you ingest a radioactive chemical? Yes, you do become radioactive. No she won’t be glowing (only heard that like 2000 times this week). For 11 days she and I cannot sleep together. To answer your next question…..sexual relations can resume after 48 hours. She can have no close contact with anyone for 48 hours for sure, limited contact for the remaining time. She needs to use a separate bathroom, if this is not possible, she needs to bleach wipe the toilet after each use as well as flushing 2-3 times to make sure no radioactive material remains. Following the treatment a body scan is done to ensure the thyroid has absorbed the I-131. It is possible that a second or third course of treatment will be necessary. The doctor says worst case scenario the chance of still having to have surgery after three treatments is 5%.

So there it is in a nutshell. We thought about waiting till after Memorial Day and the girls dance recital (June 4) but decided that there is never a good time to do this and if we needed a second or third course of treatment, we would ruin our chance of a family vacation later this summer.

So there you go.

Murphy's Law

Back to the oncologist to get the results and hopefully some solid answers to a course of treatment for wifey. Jessica was diagnosed with ADHD and an "unspecified behavioral disorder" this week as well. I am ready for a mental health day at the shooting range.

Busy Week Part 4

Ed got to play at halftime of the JV and Varsity games last night. I uploaded the portions where he got to handle the ball and attempt two shots which is a massive improvement over last year. Best part is toward the end when Bethany yells "You can do it Ed, you're a champ!"

Busy Week Part 3

Friday was the girls annual Family recital. It's more of a practice for the kids to get them used to performing on stage. Bethany is the third from the left.

Busy Week Part 2

Friday was the girls annual Family recital. It's more of a practice for the kids to get them used to performing on stage. Jessica is the tallest girl.

Busy Week Part 1

Ed-boy had his first band concert.

Thanksgiving

I wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. So just like at school when we were kids, here is my thankful list.

Might sound weird but this year in addition to the usual things (family, health, etc.) I am thankful for the internet:

For helping me keep in touch with friends I have had since grade school;

For helping me reunite with friends I haven't seen in years;

For allowing me to meet new friends that I would never have met without it.

Have a great weekend.

"The hotel detectives were outta sight"

Well if you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I am staying at a hotel tonight. While I was at our company Christmas Party my brother-in-law stopped at my house and while walking through our breezeway kicked over a gallon can of two-cycle gas. I am not sure how but he must not have noticed right away because the whole gallon spilled out. Had it been straight gas it prolly would have evaporated on its own, but with the oil mixed it made a smelly slippery mess, which proceeded to fill our whole house with gas fumes. BAD. After throwing everything from our breezeway outside and dumping about 20lbs of Floor-Dri over the spill, we still had the smell. If it were just me I would have stayed. We opened a few windows and off to Holiday Inn Express we went. So I am down enjoying a pretty good continental breakfast along with my BT tethered connection (wifi not free here, this is faster anyways).

Oh BTW any decent rock fan shold recognize the title to my post.

Fun

Well we moved into our house six years ago today. A tradition sprung up from that event. Our town's trick or treat is always the Sunday before Halloween which falls very close to Ed-boy's birthday. We started having his b-day party on trick or treat day. All his friends come over and go door to door with him and then come back for pizza. The other part of the tradition is that my brother comes and we stay at home and pass out candy while partaking of adult beverages. Needless to say a good time was had by all.
In my state last night I posted that I would try a BB device. The person who asked caught me in the "right moment" to ask, I guess. Either way, I will give it a go. Having started out with an ipaq and never moved from a win mo device of some sort, I should try something different.

broken finger

Ed-boy has a fracture of the fifth phalanx. We are supposed to go to a orthopod monday. They didn't show us the xray so I have no idea why a broken finger has to been seen by a specialist.

The slow buildup

I think I psyched myself out with this whole 400th post thing because my posting has slowed down to a crawl. Maybe I should just worry about the 500th.

Got 5 engravings done today and one more tomorrow to squeeze in between two meetings.

The parents came up for the Labor Day weekend and we worked our keisters off on the house. I think they are coming back this weekend to do more.

This is the last week for having the pool out and so I have been making extra sure to spend time in it this week.

First rollercoaster

Bethany is in the far left seat.

We made it!

We are staying at Castaway Bay in Sandusky for 4 days. This is the third different indoor waterpark resort we have stayed at. We have only been here a few hours and like this one the least. However we chose it because it included passes to Cedar Point. I haven't been there in 18 years. Regardless of how it compares to the others it is great to get away from Wakeman for a few days.

Where I've Been Part 1

Well this has been the longest absence from the blog I have had. The problem with that is there are too many things to go over with one post. I spread these out for ya.

May and June are past and now rank in the top busiest months I have ever had. Which is probably why I have begun taking Blood Pressure Medicine. Wifey has been on me to get checked out and of course they found a bunch of crap wrong with me. Doc told me to lose 20 pounds and watch what I eat. He wanted me to take Meridia but insurance won't approve that. Naturally my cholesterol is too high as well. The oddest thing was my testosterone level is low. Wifey was the most surprised about that (wink wink). I am supposed to get a shot for that but insurance denied that as well. I absolutely HATE excercise so unless I start watching what I eat, 20 pounds is going to be quite a feat to achieve.

One record we have broken is the number of Saturday services we have had this year. With more and more families choosing cremation and more familes too busy to have funerals during the week, Saturdays have been piling up. Busting arse all week only to have to work on Saturdayand Sunday has been very trying and led to a small mini-breakdown on my part. I went home to visit my parents to try to get away only to be called at 5 am one morning from their house and told to come back because too many people had died that night. I pretty much lost it that day. I am doing better now and I have secured the services of a stay-at-home mom/funeral director to take care of things while I am on vacation starting July 25. That will ensure that I will not be bothered while I am on vacation.

Surgery results

Well I have been up since 4 am but I am finally home. Wifey is also home. The mass was the size of a golf ball but it was benign. She is not allowed to drive for a week so I will be not be working much. I will probably do monuments only and let the former owner handle funerals. I wish I had the Redfly today instead of Tabby. I had to reboot twice and still could not get Outlook to work. Although BT PAN did work well.

Sunday post

Well we got eight engravings done yesterday, nine if you count the test we did before we started. The new sandblaster is saving me time and money. I have to do a little modding to my trailer to transport it. I also want to put pneumatic tires on it since we are always hauling it on uneven ground. Today it's raining here so wifey can rest assured I won't try to work today. Of course that means we will probably get a call today :)

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY

Headcase

This is the second day of migraines. Lots of stress this week.
The wife of the former owner of one of my funeral homes passed away on Sunday. I consider it an honor to handle the services for another funeral director or a member of their family. Set four monuments on Monday, worked a Senior Health Fair today and tomorrow is Pooky's First Communion. Ok back to house cleaning.

I'll take Pot Luck for 400 Alex

I haven't posted for a few days so here is a recap of stuff I have done.

Redfly: Still loving this device. The battery life is amazing. It sat for 6 days while I used the smt 5800 without being charged, and when I activated my i760 Thursday I used the Redfly all day with no probs. Something I didn't realize was when you update the cab file for the phone make sure the firmware on the Redfly is up to date or you will have problems. I haven't tested the new firmware with Sling but I will let you know.

Sch-i760: Thursday I received a backup 760, so I charged up all the batteries and threw them all in my laptop bag. Thank God. Saturday I went through two extended batteries and one standard battery between 6 am and 4 pm. What the heck!! I realized I had not received an email all day. Active Sync was perpetually synchronizing and not connecting with my 4smartphone exchange server. Hard reset to fix the issue but still have no idea what caused it. Just to be safe I updated my version of phone alarm.

Ed-boy: He is doing well. I got him a wheelchair from the funeral home to use at school. At least he isn't taking pain medicine anymore.

Funerals: We had a large funeral which made things a bit taxing for me with Ed's surgery. I think when wifey has her surgery I will just take the week off.

Back home

Ed wanted to be home so we stopped at Wendy's and then drove straight home.
He is a real trooper. The first words when we met him in the recovery room were "I wasn't scared even once".

I used the SMT5800 today and continue to be disappointed.
1. Only running Facade on it and had two lockups. Then the speakerphone turned on and I could not shut it off without a soft reset.
2. Could not keep the BT connection on when using my Freedom mini GPS
3. The menu keys on the face do not work when the slider is open.
4. you have to press fn>sym and then scroll down to get to the comma....BUT the equal sign = is on the keyboard. How stoooopid is that?
5. I see that when I sent the MMS of the picture of Ed-boy Verizon added the spam to it. That ticks me off. It does not do that with the i760.

Time for bed.