It's finally Fall! If only it would cool off...

Gosh, it's September already!  I am now 10 weeks out.  Feeling good and loving life :-)  Football season has started and maybe I can get out to a bar in a few weeks and watch a game... we'll see...

On Tuesday, my doc said my potassium is high.  It was 5.8 and normal is like 3.0-5.0.  So I am supposed to lower my potassium so I don't have a heart attack and die.  Lovely.  I guess scary death range starts at 6.0 or something.  Ack!  I evaluate every twinge in my chest and wonder if I am gonna keel over.  Seriously.  Do you know what foods are high in potassium?  Almost everything!  Yup- all you PH people trying to eat high potassium stuff b/c of your diuretics... listen up!  Dairy, potatoes, brussel sprouts, artichokes, refried beans, black beans, all melons, most fruit including avocados and tomatoes, grains, dried fruit, nuts, salt-free broths, chocolate (wtf? chocolate?) and there is much, much more.  That list is pretty much my diet.  Trying to cut back on that stuff is pretty damn hard.  I think I am just gonna drink more water and try to flush my system faster.  Word.  Oh, and most of the things I am supposed to eat to raise my magnesium level are on the high potassium list that I am supposed to avoid.  It's frustrating, to say the least.  I also added Citrical-D so my bones don't fall apart. I consume so much dairy that I don't think it's an issue, but chewing a tablet every day is easy.  Yum, yum.  Oh wait, I am supposed to lower my consumption of dairy... guess I'm glad I'm taking a supplement now :-P

I started doing my at-home spirometer also.  It checks my lung capacity, basically.  For a 5'5" woman the normal percent is about 82%.  I have been blowing about 94%.  So I am really happy about that.  But I am totally not satisfied with being less than 100%, so I am working on my technique and trying to expand my lungs more.  It is pretty aggressive to blow into the machine.  I mean, you just exhale forcefully, but I am sore from it!  My chest feels tight again because I am really expanding and working my lungs now.  This whole healing process is mighty interesting...

Sigh... I have also maxed out my pulmonary rehab.  After only 3 weeks.  I am at the max repetitions and I am at a 3.0 speed with a 1.5 incline on the treadmill (which feels fantastic, btw).  I can add weights (which I am ready for) but I think they are gonna cut me loose soon.  I think I was supposed to have 8 weeks of rehab.  Ha ha!  I am an overachiever there too!  But I am so ready to go to a gym and get my workout on at my pace, so being cut loose will be good for me.  I am gonna wait til 12 weeks before I get all crazy and go to the gym, though.  

And I am going to have a small rant about hospital staff and perfume.  I know they aren't supposed to wear it.  My sense of smell got crazy sensitive with PH and I am still very sensitive to scents (obviously now I get migraines... so freakin' lovely...).  The cleaning lady would come in doused in some vile scent, then the lady who took my vitals would have another equally strong odor.  If I was lucky, my nurse wasn't doused in fragrance also, but most of the time she was.  I kind of wanted to scream "I am a freakin' lung transplant patient!  I do NOT want to smell your aroma of some trendy new sweet nasty crap perfume!!!!  It makes me cough!!"  I am using italics b/c writing a whole sentence in all caps is very yucky to read.  I am not screaming at you, my lovely reader!  In hindsight I should have screamed at the staff.  But I got a few lovely "customer comment" cards in the mail from my ER visits, so I plan to address the perfume thing there.

I hate getting into an elevator with someone doused in perfume.  Now I am seriously scared that I won't smell it until I get in and the doors close and it will trigger a migraine.  I like perfume.  Just check out the rack hanging on our closet door full of the stuff!  I like it a lot.  But I wouldn't wear it around people in the hospital!  Seriously!!!!!  Argh!!!  Okay, rant over :-)

So bliss is dropping Jeff off at a bar downtown so he can watch football with some friends (I wanted to go but too many germs and people!  Eek!), drinking a homemade iced coffee with mexican chocolate non-dairy creamer (I love Vons sometimes), browsing a Nordstrom magazine (and realizing that I just bought an "on trend" sweater after seeing a similar one in the magazine... woo hoo!) and being completely alone in the house with the 2 cats sprawled around the living room napping.  Life is fantastic.

Oh, in case you wanna know what the sweater is...

linkie to fab sweater

I went to give you the link to the Nordie sweater in the catalog and found that Nordies sells the Pendleton sweater!  Damn... I could have gotten the points from Nordies!  I bought mine on Amazon so I got free shipping.  Pendelton was charging almost $14!  I called Pendleton and asked how it runs sizewise and they said it runs a little large.  Just FYI.

Sorry for the trip down fashion lane for my male readers... uh... Go Football!  Gotta watch the Auburn/ Clemson game (and everyone should cheer for Auburn)!

So overall things are still going really well.  I started weaving again and I am really excited about the possibilities.  I have debated buying a big floor loom, but it would have to go in the garage... and I probably shouldn't be weaving in a garage full of icky things to breathe in.  Oh, and somehow a single piece of yarn got snagged and broken in my "shawl from hell" (a knitting project I started last November but didn't work on for about 6 months).  I spent 2 hours weaving in a new piece of yarn to repair where the other piece was broken and yanked out (can't find the long end of yarn anywhere... a cat must have eaten it?  Who the hell knows.  Pissed me off).  Thank God for crochet hooks.  If I ever finish this damn shawl I might just believe in miracles.  The yarn I use is pretty damn strong.  I have no idea how it broke in the middle of a row in the middle of the shawl and where the rest of the yarn went!!  Some mysteries I really want to solve- this is one of them.  The other mystery is which Post Office person stole my Murano glass vase from Italy.  That's a long story for another time.  Still annoyed about that too.

Okay, I am gonna finish looking through my Nordie mag and enjoy my quiet afternoon :-)