babeofbryan

I'm working today. yay me! I work in an office where I am the oldest person here. I like everyone here. They love to pop in my to my office to ask me how to do things. Sometimes, what to do about this patient or that one. But let lunchtime roll around and crickets. They go get something to eat daily. How do they afford it?

It's so hot here today. Like 100 with the heat index. Just glad the rain has stopped. My two furbabies are so different. Saint was taken in my the hubs because he was abandoned at his job. He could care less about a storm. He will lay on the bed or couch ad snore. Lady was adopted from a rescue. She is terrified of storms. i called out of work last week. I was in bed reading. Lady as sweating, pacing, whining. She climbed all over me. I finally got her settled down.

Well lunch is over. Back to work.

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: work

I think I have written about my back. But anyway, Jan 2025 I started having balance issues. I kept leaning to the left. So I had a quad cane donated to me at work. Worked well for me for a couple of months. Had x-rays done. Dr. said I had severe arthritis in lower spine. Right knee full of arthritis. Sucks getting old. Can't take Nsaids. They will kill my new kidney. Also causes stomach issues. The doc told me we would get MRIs and take Extra Strength Tylenol.

The next couple of weeks, I started falling 4 times on concrete. One time I slipped on our tile floor in the bathroom. My right leg was bent backwards toward my right hip. I couldn't stand up. Woke Bryan from sleep and he pulled me up. We went to the ER in Birmingham 70 miles away. Thats where I had my transplant, so they had my records. I was sure I broke my hip. X-rays were all clear. ER Doc said I was deconditioned as most older people get. Start on multivitamins and supplements.

Got results of my MRIs. Arthritis and Discs degeneration. Have to see Neurosurgeon. By now I'm on a walker. Cane doesn't keep me from falling. Gets harder and harder to get up. The neurosurgeon went over my x-rays and said you need surgery but I don't want to do it. Your kidney is too new. I'm sending you to UAB since that's where you had transplant. They can coordinate. I'll send an emergency consult. Well two weeks later I se3 a NP. she explained my problems and sent me for MRI of neck after examination. So I have severe cervical stenosis. I have one herniated disc in my neck. That's why I am falling, and my hands don't work. I have three herniated discs in my thoracic spine. My tailbone is fractured on both sides. Plus, severe arthritis in Lumbar spine.

Next step I see another neurosurgeon at UAB next Friday to discuss surgery. I want to get all this over with soon. I reduced to a rolling walker now to get around. So thats me.

Current Location: home
Current Music: some star trekkie thing on iv

Haven't worked all week because United Healthcare reps used my computer and office to check their charts. They wanted us to pull and mail them. Ummm no! 205 charts. No way!
I worked from home a couple hours but that's it.

Made a new appointment with another neurosurgeon about my back. I hope they can do something. In pain and on a walker is no fun. y 92 yr. old Dad doesn't want me to have any more surgery. But the bad disc can keep slipping and I could be paralyzed. so i'll do whatever they tell me to do.

Current Location: home

So I haven't posted in a year. Gosh its been a year too! To start with after my transplant I ended up back in the hospital for a week with a UTI and was on antibiotics. It was resistant to all but one antibiotic thus the hospital stay. I got a picc line (Iv in my chest). I had the picc line another week and toted an IV with me everywhere. I left the Sunday after they took it out to head to the beach. I stayed in the condo for the most part. Since I have no immune system anymore and meds can cause Melanoma with sun exposure. I went to the beach one day. Covered in 100 SPF lotion. LOL Didn't swim at all. Ate good food. All was well.

Went back to work when we got home. Worked two jobs until recently. I left one because of the drama. Now I work on M,W,F. It keeps my mind busy.

About December, started having falls. I have bad ankles, arthritic knee and now my back has slipped herniated discs in 3 places. I fell 3 times on concrete. Probably 6-7 times at home. Went to ER. They never x-rayed my back because my complaint was hip pain. They said nothing broken.

Started walking with a borrowed walker because a cane didn't help. Had MRI done on both lumbar and thoracic spine. My doctor ordered an epidural. It helped for a week. I saw a neurosurgeon two weeks ago. He said I need surgery in two places. Zhe didn't want to do it because my transplant was so new. So he ordered an emergency consult with the hospital I had transplant done. Yet to hear from them. I see my transplant team tomorrow. I plan to ask them to intervene. Still working albeit on a walker. Not the best situation.

Anyway hope to post more regularly. Hope all is well!

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: home
Current Music: The Librarian on tv

I used to post fairly regularly in LJ but just haven't here. I'm going to try to change that. I'm growing weary of FB and IG. I guess it's a sign of my age.
So since the last two entries this year, 1. I have not one but two part time jobs. I dont want to work 8 hrs in one place I need flexibility with all my Dr appts. I have to see my kidney transplant team once a month, Labs every two weeks, this just changed. It was weekly, I have a dentist early next month. Dermatologist (because I can develop melanoma due to the immunosuppressants I'm on. I get my mammogram and bone density scans next week. So I need to be flexible.
I work for two very diverse practices. One job is a Primary Care and Weight Loss Clinic. Four Providers seeing about 500 patients a week. I'm doing Credentialing for the doctors. You have to Credential a doctor with all their documentation so you can participate in each insurance company. You have to update them regularly. Its challenging but I am paid well. They love me. I also take care of all records coming and going from the practice. It's a 6 inch stack every morning and afternoon.
Second job is with two family practice doctors. They are married. Beg me to go full time. I'm not the last bit interested. I like to come and go at will. I only do billing for them. He has hospital call every three weeks. He gives me about 100 charges the patients plus his daily charges. I love it though. Im on the 7th floor of a building close to the hospital. The roof is above me and he and I run to my window to watch the Helicopters come and go with Life Flight. I always think they will run into my window but they land with a little dust. :)'
Well this got long but Im going to try to update regularly.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: home
Current Music: Sister Act on tv

Mother's day was a great day! I spent time with my family. Went to the cemetery and left flowers for my Mom.
Got home and got a call at 9pm that a kidney was available for me I headed to the transplant clinic aand now I am the proud owner of a new functioning kidney. I feel so happy and blessed.

I just looked and I haven't posted anything in two years. Lets see. I applied for my Social Security and got my first check Woot! My boss abruptly retired Dec 22nd and I have been looking for jobs. No one wants to pay anything and no one wants an old woman. Ill be 64 in July. I have excellent recommendations and a pretty strong work history 45 yrs of experience. But it is what it is. My boss is paying me to tie up loose ends in our office. I am sending records out like crazy for patients. Im also fielding their scared calls that they wont find another doctor like him and "Oh Yeah, where are you going?" I want to go there. Um I wish I knew. I have never been without a job since age 14. It scares the crap out of me. No my SS payment doesn't cover the bills. So I need to work to pay off all my damn cards. They are the death of me.

My health is steady. Still on the transplant list. Type O+ with no antibodies. But its hard for a kidney to get to an older person. I feel okay. Lately some UTI and back pain but nothing unmanageable. Last week I got a call from UAB the transplant hospital three times. Each time was about insurance and appts. I just knew they were calling to say "We have a kidney" but no not yet. This waiting is hard. I feel like I might not even get one and will need dialysis. Hope I'm wrong because that would truly be the end of any employment for me. I like to work. Its all I know. Plus I worry about my Dad who is 91. What happens to him when I'm in transplant land. I feed him twice a day and do his laundry and housework. I have a sister and brother but they are useless. They may have to step it up if I get that call.

Oh well, Back to printing medical records. Ya'll have a good day now!

Im at work for the last day this year. i know that sounds childish but I am ready for it to go on out. 2023 has to be a better year.
We had a good Christmas. I got Bryan a rifle he liked and an air purifier for home and an outdoor security camera. He is convinced someone has been in our house and Jimmied the door to get in, Why I am not sure. My two big dogs would eat them alive! Plus why? He also thinks they have torn the gasket off our fridge. Um no its 20 yrs old. Its time. Then he thinks they have loosened the knobs on our kitchen cabinets. Again why? Im beginning to think he is having delusion like Alzheimers. I sure hope not.
I got a mew laptop and new cell phone for Christmas. My boss is more thrilled than me. He said you needed a new phone so bad. So yeah I got one.

On the medical front, I saw my Nephrologist last month. Labs staying stable. Told me no more meat or cheese. That both were bad for me. Sigh Also set me up for Jan with an Infectious disease doc because I had Hepatitis B back in 1980. Back then I was a messenger in the hospital. Had just had a baby. Went back to work and was sick in a week. We toted blood bags and specimens and test tubes of all kinds of body fluids. No gloves. We didnt need them they said. No protective bags for them. This was 1980. No one knew about infectious diseases then. All I did was bed rest for 6 weeks and no meds. I got over it. But the Neph Dr feels I need to be checked again for it to make sure nothing is wrong with me prior to kidney transplant or dialysis whichever comes first. Meanwhile I am feeling great except for my crap feet that hurt all the time. I am going to see a Podiatrist after the ID doc because I need something done to them. Im 62 and falling apart dammit. So anyway a smidge of my life. Hope yours is great!

Current Mood: working

No one wants to hear how bad your health is but its life I guess. I go for regular blood work and paps and mammos, etc. Never thought anything of it. Fast forward to June 2022. I ate lunch with a drug rep and my boss. Dr. I. He liked how the drug sounded and said why don't you take it Margaret? So all excited because yes I am the test pt in our office, we checked my labs. My kidneys are not working! So I go for more labs and some sonograms, ad nauseum. Then I am sent to a Nephrologist. So apparently my kidneys are supposed to be 9-12 centimeters and they are 6. The words the Neph. Dr used are "This is bad, very bad". She sends me to a cardiologist who I have worked for before. He found my heart was strong. The neph. dr told me I had 6 months before either a kidney transplant or home dialysis. If I go into dialysis I cant have my dogs in the bedroom and I have to have a spotless house. I am the first to tell you it is not spotless. But it is reasonably clean. So now I am decluttering etc. Trying to figure out how to tell my big girl Lady she cant sleep on my feet anymore. Geez. So anyway, transplant clinic sees me way faster than I imagined Did all kinds of tests, 19 vials of blood, ct scan, chest xray, ekg, saw the surgeon, her Nurse Practioner and another Nephrologist. They say I am a viable good candidate. I have living donors who have volunteered. Which blew me away. Two are former employees.
Fast forward to yesterday, see the Nephrologist again here in my city. She said your numbers have improved. I think you may have two years before we do anything. Then the Transplant clinic called and said I was discussed with the transplant team and I am on transplant team inactive so guess I can live it up eh? Nope, I will continue to live better, eat better and no more alcohol, sodas and such. So there is my life in a nutshell. Nutty huh??

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: work

jumping in here to Drewa Width and I have no clue what im doing. I love lj and im in mourning. actually i have been for awhile. i used to spend my lunch hour reading about my friends. Now no one really posts except mayeb 3 of you. I miss the days when I had that reading time to learn more about my friends. to cry and to laugh with you all. Maybe someday it will go back to that although Im not sure how.

Ive spent the better part of this morning working but managed to snag some graduation party goodies for my granddaughters High School graduation. lord I shouldnt be this old! i had fun gettting a few things together.

Also relaxing somewhat this week. Our church is doing a community breakfast this weekend for the neighborhood. Im helping cook. Should be a lot of fun. Last week I was in church almost nightly for Holy Week activities.

Well back to the grind.

Current Mood: working
Current Location: the office
Current Music: tv news

So, after nearly a decade at this site, LJ finally does something that makes me actually rage. No popcorn and laughing as the masses storm to news posts complaining, this time I'm actually worried.

A while back I was invited to help out with BETA testing new LJ services (I got this invite via

lj_releases).

They have just announced BETA testing of a new friendslist.

LJ is planning on redoing everyone's friendslists in the style of the new comment page and update page. They want to copy tumblr and make your friendslist into a dashboard-like system page (infinite scrolling and all). It's also been renamed to "feed" (this I don't mind too much, though). In fact the whole dashboard idea with infinite scrolling wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that everyone will be locked to one specific layout. The system style comment pages are bad enough, but now I'll have to strain my eyes reading my flist? That defeats the purpose of this entire site. The font, use of whitespace, oversized boxes and UI elements ... all contribute to making the page difficult to read, on a site where all you do is read. Aaaah. Even just the possibility of adjusting the font (style and size) would make this suggestion easier to swallow, but it's still not something I'd want for my journal. It would not improve my LJ experience in any way (in fact it would most likely make my daily LJ activities more time consuming).

Now, I wasn't able to make the BETA page display my own friendslist, so I apologise to the random users who are featured in the screenshot, but to give everyone an idea, the below image shows you what your friendslist probably will look like in a couple of months.

(Click for big)

I never switched over from Dystopia, so that adds to the weirdness. You're going to have to picture this with the standard LiveJournal drop down navigation + no blue sidebar to the left. Click the screenshots for bigger versions.

Top of page with links to journal, archive, profile

Example of text heavy post as displayed on friendslist

New buttons to the right replace the navigation strip. One tab for filters

One tab for Archive/Calendar, you can filter your feed to display posts from one specific date. These buttons follow along as you scroll down the page (infinite scrolling).

All friendslists will look the same.

Snippet from the locked post at

lj_releases:

The friends page has been redesigned as a system page for all users, and is now available for Beta testers. There is a link at the top of your friends page allowing you to switch between the new and old versions, and will later go into public beta testing. You can switch back and forth between both versions throughout beta testing.

PUBLIC POST AT lj_releases ABOUT THE NEW FRIENDSLIST: http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/79480.html.

You can also see the proposed changes for yourself by enabling the BETA on your own journal (instructions from

ruljautonews):

It's trivially easy to test beta features.
1) Go to lj_ru_beta and request to join.
2) Wait to get confirmation that you've been accepted into the community (this could take a few hours.)
3) Go to this page and choose Go To under Beta.
4) That's it, you're now testing the beta release. All site-scheme pages should now display a big "BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA" in yellow letters across the top.
5) You could make comments in the lj_ru_beta post, but if you do please keep this in mind: the majority of commenters there don't speak English and if they do it's not their primary language. Machine translation of Russian is lousy. "My hovercraft is full of eels" lousy. While you can engage in basic dialogue and get a feel for what the other person is saying, don't get too hung up on anyone's phrasing.

You can easily switch back to the old version.

Make sure you let LJ know what you think of these proposed changes, I can't be the only one who thinks this is a horrible idea.

ETA: It's nice to see that I'm not the only one worried about the proposed changes, but please direct your feedback through the proper channels. This is a private journal, I have no affiliation with LJ. Please also be respectful when addressing the LJ staff. They are just doing their jobs. Thanks!

ETA2: Russian news post about the BETA test: http://lj-ru-beta.livejournal.com/7013.html

ETA3: Added more screenshots.

ETA4: Additional info at

ruljautonews: http://ruljautonews.livejournal.com/27964.html

ETA5: An update on the new site scheme.

ETA6: Public beta has now been announced. Official announcement.

ETA7 (really?): RUSSIAN NEWS POSTS CONFIRM PAGINATION AND ABILITY TO CUSTOMIZE FONT AND BACKGROUND IN THE FUTURE, ruljautonews HAS MORE: http://ruljautonews.livejournal.com/28207.html

Current Mood: what
Current Location: Sverresgate, Oslo, Norway

I have no time for a real post. This week is zipping by me. The wedding is Saturday. Shower tomorrow night then rehearsal Friday and Sunday I will probably sleep all day.

Happy Birthday to my friend Beth aka

bethjovi Hope you have a rocktastic day today!

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Happy Birthday today to Laura aka Biscuits mom aka

lost_tater

Hope you have a great day today and you get lots of luvin from your sweet Biscuit. :)

Happy Birthday Glitter Graphics

Not much to post about. Im enjoying a glass of wine and some cheese with the doggies. They love cheese!

Went shopping with Kristy today. Got some clothes and some more things for the wedding. I swear every time we go we buy something for the wedding. So anyway im home relaxing. I cant find Tiger. He is usually wherever we are because he is an attention seeker. So I go into the kitchen while ago and found him...