Busy Living Life: March 2009

Monday, March 30, 2009

Who does this?

The other day I was doing some baking. I went to pull out the baking powder -- you know, the one in the red can. Well, I pulled it out along with the baking soda -- the one in the yellow box -- and I noticed something strange. The red can was, you guessed it, baking soda! I had to run to the store to get the right thing. I was so mad at the packaging people at Trader Joe's for trying to trick me like this!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Spring flowers

Yesterday I went to the arboretum and took some pictures of the flowers. Thunderstorms are predicted for the weekend and I thought there was a good chance that it would be the last opportunity to take pictures of the magnolia blooms and the cherry blossoms.

The first there photos are of the Yunnan crabapple tree near the entrance

This next set is of various magnolia trees on the grounds: The Lilliputian saucer magnolia, the Galaxy magnolia, the Jon Jon Gresham hybrid magnolia and the yellow lantern yellow magnolia.

Finally, there was a new looking bird's nest near one of the walkways.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Fit to drive

Two weeks ago I picked up my Honda Fit. It's blue and it's beautiful and I like it a lot. We had a trailer hitch put on for the bike so that I can easily bring the bike to local events. The seats fold down absolutely flat so it will be good for hauling other things as well.
Hannah and Emma have tested out the back briefly. Hannah liked it fine but Emma is not a big fan of the automobile and she was a bit skeptical.

So far I've been getting 33-35 mpg for my regular driving which I would classify as in town -- to and from work, grocery getting, to and from the gym and so on.

The funny thing is that this is the first automatic that I've had since 1990. I having to relearn how to drive without a stick shift!

Oh, the first weekend that I had it, I took it on a round trip drive to Wilmington, NC for a 10k where I placed in my age group. Woo hoo! This was only one week after an 8k that I felt less than good about (in my defense, the 8k was on a Sunday and I rode 70 miles on my bike on Saturday). Anyway, the car was nice on the highway too!

Hannah's March 2009 progress report

Hannah has been doing well. She was due for blood work again this week and we have the results back. When I spoke with Hannah's primary care physician, Dr. S said that she had an "Optimistic report."

	Alkaline Phosphatase (5-131)	ALT (SGPT) (12-118)
June 3	2821	1901
June 4	3107	1932
June 18	2108	505
July 8	476	173
August 7	109	66
March 25	46	24

	BUN (6-25)	creatinine (0.5-1.6)
June 3	29	1.0
June	25	2.0
June 18	38	2.1
July 8	45	1.8
August 7	38	1.4
March 25	29	1.7

Hannah is continuing to take a lot of different medications and supplements. At this time, Dr. S feels that since Hannah is stable and doing well, we should continue doing the same thing as we have for the past six months. The only concern that Dr. S mentioned was that Hannah's red blood cell count continues to be on the low end -- 4.83 million where would want it 4.8 million or higher.

Hannah's adrenal values are also stable which is good news since we know that she has an adrenal tumor. Her stimulated cortisol value was 17.8 (the pre samle was 3.6). This is good news. The normal response is 5.5 t0 20.0 so 17.8 is not to shabby.

ImageChef Word Mosaic - ImageChef.com

Hannah's current medications: osteoarthritis (Tramadol 50 mg (3x daily), Zubrin 200mg), urinary tract infection (Amoxicillin 500mg), Denamarin 425 mg, Actigall 300mg, Famotidine (10mg, 3x daily); melatonin (3mg, 2x daily); half food prepared at home under the guidance of our veterinarian and the other half is purchased dog food