AlCan Minivan

Happy Belated Dad's Day!!
INR is a powerful little thing, a tiny little bullseye of a test result you must target when you're taking Coumadin. When mine is tested the pharmacist rattles off the mandatory questions about bleeding, falling, bruising, changes in diet, and missed doses, while the kids climb the walls in the tiny little 'coumadin clinic' room. LittleK chooses which finger of mine gets jabbed and then we wait while the machine calculates my INR, magically pulling the tiny drop of blood into a three-pronged red line leading somewhere inside the plastic box. I have to repeat this test every week if it's below 2.0 or above 3.0. Today I hit the bullseye so I won't have to drag the kids to the coumadin clinic for another three weeks!
Coumadin changes you. You say goodbye to your normal amounts of olive oil, broccoli, salad, parsley, asparagus, green tea, anything soy-based, and lots of other things which contain vitamin K. Can't have alcohol either. The whole point of taking Coumadin is making blood 'thinner', so there's less of a chance of developing deadly blood clots. Dr. Voelkel in Denver put me on this stuff since PH makes a person's blood vessels in the lungs constricted. I really hate it but I understand it and accept it.
I actually did try the whole bus ride-across-town-with-the-kids thing. It was a very sunny, very windy day a few weeks ago. LittleK could hardly contain her excitement when she saw the bus coming towards our stop by the library. We spent some time at the mall and headed home on another bus with a short side-trip to the grocery store... by the time we were on that second bus she was singin' another tune, "We SHOULD've just taken the CAR!" We ended up being picked up by Gramma after missing our last connection by a minute or two. Crazy.
We're into the second week of Preschool Summer Camp. This was the best idea I've had in a loooong time. It's only two hours a day, four days a week, but it's nice for all of us, especially LittleK. Today they went swimming. Last week they had field trips to the fire station and to a park for a picnic. Last week's obstacle course was a blast I guess, my kid "beat all the boys!!"
Grampy's busy with his garden and flying and fishing, Gramma is in Hawaii this week having returned from Nome and Golovin last week. The big family reunion in Golovin is in two weeks, but I can't go. We're not exactly rolling in piles of cash, and K & T should be just pulling into the driveway after setting the record for Fastest Time Up the AlCan in a Minivan.
I focused some of my obsessiveness on doing some Wasilla house-hunting lately. We can probably get about 1100 square feet of a house, on about an acre. It's beautiful out there but rough around the edges. Just the way we like it.
I could go into some boring self-analysis but it's better just to keep that in my head, and go to bed.

cannula schmannula

Hey, we're pretty thrilled around here - I'm well enough to be off of the oxygen. I can just be normal old me again!
The tests I went through showed my lung disease is stable. There wasn't any decrease in inflammation on the CT scan, but there wasn't any increase either. The significant test, the echocardiogram, showed a drop in my pulmonary arterial pressure from 80 three months ago to between 70 & 75 now. That's still about double a normal PAP but it's great that it's decreasing. SO, the doctors are not referring me to the specialist in Seattle, and my meds will all stay as they are for another three months, then we'll repeat this whole process. A week after I saw the doctors I had a six-minute walk test (without oxygen) and an ABG... I walked farther than I did a week earlier, and had o2 sats no lower than 95, which proved that I really don't need supplemental oxygen. Sea level is the place to be.

Thank you to GrandmaR for the care and help in Laramie recently. And of course to everyone who helps us, wow, we need it and appreciate it.
Other stuff-

• my 2007 veggie seedlings are yet more proof that I should stay away from plants
• T's last day of school is tomorrow! Goodbye second grade!
• I signed the girls up for summer day camps, K in June, T in July
• R's way better at telling us what he needs except for his word "ssss" which has about 10 possible meanings. juice? cheese? please? brush?
• "beepy"=Grampy, "mom"=Gramma, "mama"=mama, "whatwhat"=LittleK
• K is packing and cleaning the Laramie house... poor guy
• my dad visited over the weekend and we saw Nanny at her place
• Gramma & Grampy are power landscapers

I've come to realize lately that some of the things I've grown to value in life are meaningless. I finally understand that I can't hope to influence anyone about anything, except for my kids. I especially hope they understand what their choices are, how important it is to think for themselves, to be loving, and to never stop learning.

They may even learn how to grow vegetables.