I was goign to go to work and watch the inauguration from there but I was getting a late start so Nicole decided we should watch from home. About half way through Obama’s speech Nicole pointed out that there was no traffic noise and indeed she was correct. When the speech ended Nicole took me to work and the streets were more empty than I had ever witnessed on a week day morning, but not quite as empty as Christmas morning or the night of the election. Downtown there was only one car parked outside my building and it’s still very quiet outside.
Jan 212009
I won a few glass x-mas trees full of pink star and green tree marshmallows at the company holiday party. Yesterday I made rice krispee treats out of them so I wouldn’t just throw them all away. I thought the green ones would scare too many people so I chose the pink stars. I figured if I mixed both then I would probably end up with some kind of gray goo.
Being that this was my first time making the krispee treats I got the recipe from the rice krispee website. I melted the butter and dumped in the marshmallows to do their thing and after a few minutes they weren’t doing much. So I started stiring with a spatula and scraping the bottom because some of the marshmallows had caramelized. After a few more minutes I got it into a soupy pink mix that looked like something more akin to a horror movie special effect. I removed it from the heat and dumped in the 6 cups of rice puffs and quickly discovered that I should have used a bigger pot. The first few stirs dumped cereal on the counter but I was careful with the rest and managed to mix it up and get everything coated. Nothing mentioned how stiff it was going to get and  getting it into the pan was a challenge, but I did it.
So then it went to work. Nicole didn’t want it around the house and I am not a fan of marshmallow so I wasn’t going to eat it. At work it sat for the first half of the day. The glance it got from people told them it was a dish of beans or something like that and they weren’t going to touch it. It wasn’t until someone cut out the first square that people realized it for what it was. Maybe I should have gone for green. Anyway, once people realized that they were a yummy treat they enjoyed them.
Jan 102009
I started at the anti-coagulation clinic yesterday so I’m not going to have to get a blood draw every few days to check my clotting levels, not I can have a finger-prick test and a little device tells me in 30 seconds. No more waiting at the blood draw center! Also with that I have to not take the multi-vitamin or the calcium supplement I was taking because they both contain a lot of vitamin K. I have to only have very small quantities of green leafy vegetables and broccoli and a few other foods. Other vegetables I can eat but still in less quantity than I was consuming before all this started (about 2 pounds a day).
The doctor said that when I started at the Coumadin clinic I could be more active and even though my levels don’t seem to be stabilized yet both the clinic and the doctor said it was good to be active as long as I wasn’t in danger of falling or bumping into things. So no scooter or bike riding for a few months, but exercise and running are fine. Any activity is fine as long as I avoid cuts and bruises. So with that yesterday I returned to the office, yay! I was glad to be able to discuss problems directly with co-workers instead of just in e-mail or IM. I’m keeping my leg elevated and straight when I feel like it even though the doctor said it wasn’t necessary. It just feels good to empty my leg after I’ve been up and about for awhile.
So what next? Now I keep getting my levels adjusted and around the end of March I’ll have another ultrasound to see if the clot is gone. If it isn’t then I’ll find out what the next step is then. If it is then I might be on Coumadin a little while longer until they are sure nothing is recurring. If it turns out I’m a hyper-clotter then I’ll probably be on some form of blood thinner from here on out.
Jan 012009
My 2008 didn’t end very well health wise which didn’t do wonders for my spirits. I enjoyed my visits with everyone and wished I could visit more but stuck I am on a couch most of the time now. A few days ago I was feeling pretty down and it wasn’t that physically I wasn’t feeling that well, but mentally. After wallowing in that feeling for awhile I finally recognized it as I was falling asleep as a feeling I had previously encountered.
When I had my hernia surgery about 10 years ago I was similarly frustrated at being immobilized and the recovery time, but really the downer to my mental state was the feeling of mortality, or maybe it’s the feeling of a blow to the normal state of “everything is fine” which plays into the natural state of immortality. Normally you don’t think about that, it’s just the normal state. There is an implicit expectation that things will continue as they have and when they don’t the continuum has been spoiled and the awareness of mortality sets in. Well as of this morning I feel really good! Like this isn’t going to dominate my life from here on out. Like it’s going to heal quickly and I’m going to be back being active shortly and begin making myself better than I was.
I hope everyone has a happy new year!