Centennial Park 2003

You may wonder why I would post these pictures from so long ago. There are several reasons. First, they are really good. Beca has grown so much since these picturese. She is now 5'5" tall. She's now a little girl in a young woman's body. Another reason is I am saddened by how much my body has failed since these pictures. I was obviously able then to follow her around and take pictures. N0w, there's no way I could do that because of back pain and pain in my feet. But, these are good memories and I'm glad I was able to be active with the grandkids for a short time.

Follow me Grandpa!!!

I don't know of anyone else Wayne would climb up the slide for unless it was one of the other grandkids:D

Grandpa loves Rhebeca and Rhebeca loves Grandpa!! A picture that is priceless...to me at least.

I still have this real deep line on my skin where the shingles were. I looked at it yesterday because as any vain person (like me) I don't like the looks of what's left of the shingles. Well, when I looked at it I noticed all these little pimple looking bumps. It looked like the beginning of shingles again but smaller. It took me a while to process it but I think it's a new outbreak of shingles. I haven't felt well this week and have slept a lot during the day and maybe I'm fighting the shingles virus again. I called the doctor's office and they put me on my 2nd round of an anti-viral medicine.

It has taken me a while to understand medicare. When I was accepted as getting disability I was automatically on medicare. I have an insurance policy with Humana that covers most of what medicare doesn't cover. There are lots of insurance companies to choose from but Humana fit my needs the best. Well, I have learned that medicare has a very strange coverage of the medication. The first $2700 is like any insurance plan and we pay a copay with the Tier system. Generic is cheapest and regular meds w/o a generic the most costly. Then from $2700.00 to $4350.00 we pay 100% . We started with this insurance company February 1st and reached the " donut hole" (medicare terms) on March 14th. Maybe we're record makers:D

The Treat Drawer

When I was little I can remember my grandparents having a special cupboard with toys inside. I wanted to do something similar that our grandkids would remember and get excited when they came so I came up with the treat drawer. It is a BIG deal, believe me. It's the first place they run when they come here and the last thing they check out when they leave. They always have to have a sack to put their finds into so they don't lose anything. This picture below is L to R...Isabella, Kael and Kaleb. Isabella loves the fruit roll-ups and this is the first time she's let me take the paper off the roll-up before she ate it. Otherwise I'd find little spit out papers all over.

I had a tooth pulled today. Tuesday I spent 3 hours in the dentist's chair and he tried to pull one of my teeth last thing. Well, the tooth was so painful that even with many many shots of novacaine it wouldn't get numb enough to pull. So, thank goodness he listened to me when I told him it hurt too bad to pull today. When I got home I thought it might be best to be put under to get this tooth out. I called the oral surgeon and he had an opening this morning at 7:45. I took it! The doctor about scared me to death. He was a little afraid to put me under because of the amount of medications that I'm on...especially the pain pump. He showed me the x-ray of the tooth that showed the tooth was really close to the nerve. He said since that's so close I could end up with facial numbness that didn't go away and I could lose my taste for food, etc., etc. If that wasn't bad enough they had me read and I had to put my initials that I acknowledged it might happen to me. Well, right after I talked to the doctor and filled out that paper they took my blood pressure. I don't think I've ever seen it so high. I was filled with so much anxiety that it pushed my blood pressure to 224/125. If that doctor wasn't scared before I'm sure he was then. He had the nurse put some oxygen on me to bring down my blood pressure and I prayed and prayed for the anxiety to go away. Both things helped because the next reading was 186/99 which is still high but nothing like the first reading.

He must be an excellent oral surgeon because I have had very little bleeding and virtually no pain! Yippee!!!!