Ch-ch-ch-Changes

 Allow me to get caught up.

After completing some mild/moderate renovations on my house, my youngest son & his girlfriend moved in. Then my youngest daughter & her husband moved in. My daughter was about 7-8 months pregnant at the time. There were a few bumps and my son & his girlfriend moved out. My daughter had her baby-my first granddaughter! I started going to a pain management clinic and my health began to decline rapidly. I believe most of that decline was due to some of the procedures I had. I became unable to continue working in any capacity.

I went to visit my oldest son, DIL & grandsons in Texas a couple times. I decided my leg LOVES Texas! The decision to move to Texas was made. We started looking into land & manufactured homes. My son in law was in a car accident that altered our timeline quite a bit. Then, my oldest son got orders for Greece and after some discussion, we decided to rent his house so we could acclimate there & he would have familiar faces taking care of his house.

The quest to transfer my medical care was a bit daunting. I thought I had found a wonderful Primary Care Provider (PCP). She was friendly, appeared to be attentive and the location was easy to access. Things did not go as a anticipated. Many diagnoses were incorrectly coded, scheduling was a nightmare and it was very clear by the incorrect diagnoses, she did not in fact listen. 

I did end up finding a very amazing PCP! While not an M.D. or D.O., he has his doctorate in nursing. As a nurse myself, I know the levels to which nurses assess and plan care. Knowing he has the HIGHEST nursing education one can get gives my great confidence in his skills & knowledge base. He DOES listen. He forms a plan of care with ME & MY GOALS in mind! 

I was then hooked up with most of the specialists I needed. Most went well. Some did not. Texas is a vast state with a LOT of nothing between cities & towns. The city we live in is considered a big city by population. But just to give you an idea of the rural feel: the entire county’s population is only 30,000 higher than the city. Specialists are not easy to come by. The next big city is 2.5 hours away, in Dallas, so you kind of work with what you have-until you can’t.

While we continue to unpack & discover more about or new city, random health issues pop up here & there. Oh, and there was “The Great Texas Freeze”. 

“The Freeze” happened in February 2021. Temperatures dropped to record levels & our power grids went down. (Wikipedia has more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis) We ended up having to stay at a hotel as the temperature in the house dropped to around 40°. After 2.5 days, the power was restored & we returned home. Only to find there was a water line that had ruptured. We shut the house water off & were able to find the leak. Luckily it was the line to the refrigerator so we could shut that off, no harm no foul. Until 10 days later when the kitchen ceiling collapsed from the water build up! We rigged a temporary solution until contractors were able to permanently repair everything. 

The big new health issue that came up actually started the end of September 2020 but I didn’t know it. Well, I knew it was something, just not what. (I had a “spot” open up and start bleeding on my right breast) I saw a dermatologist outside our city who determined it was “a skin tag” (basically nothing) but I had a feeling he was wrong. (He was also kind of a jerk but that’s a whole different tale) After being pretty much blown off about it, I decided to ignore it. Found my amazing PCP & decided to take another look. Found a dermatologist in town and made an appointment. Doc prescribed a cream and we made a follow up appointment for a few weeks later. The cream didn’t help, so he took a biopsy (not fun). The biopsy came back as actinic keratosis.

Actinic keratosis is skin damage from sun &/or tanning bed exposure. Since it was on my breast, it most likely was from the year I spent going to a tanning salon. Actinic keratosis (AK) is a form of pre-cancer. While it only turns into cancer about 10% of the time, almost all squamous cell cancers start as AK. So we removed it. It took quite a while for it to heal & I now have a lovely scar.             

                 (PSA:ALWAYS USE SUNSCREEN)

I think that brings us to the next big new health issue, which is where this new journey begins.

Let’s turn the page here

Power With Purpose

 

There have been a few changes. (I mean, it HAS been 4 years!)

Let’s start with the BIG things. 

          I sold my house!

          I moved to Texas!

          My daughter got married & had a daughter!

          

Throughout all those amazing changes, I’ve been challenged health-wise. Moving forward, I have decided to change the course of this blog. My other blog, I Walk (which can be found here: http://iwalkon.blogspot.com/?m=1 ) will also see some new posts relating to the previous topic, CRPS and will mirror this blog. Most of both blogs have been written via memory. With this “re-start”, it will be more live-action (I.e. written closer to the actual day/date things happen)…as soon as I get things caught up that is.

I thought about changing the title – something more…motivational…inspiring…”catchy”…I got stuck & figured I would just leave things as they are. Especially since there are so many other things going on. With that in mind – If YOU can come up with a different name, let’s talk about it! 

For now, that’s the update. Another post bringing things current will follow.

Let’s turn the page here…

Powder Room
1/4 Bath
Toilet & Sink
Potty Palace

Whatever you call it, mine was a mess. 

Dark. Gross pedestal sink. Even grosser toilet. The little powder room, only bathroom on the 1st floor was dank, dismal, dark green - ewww.

See what I mean?

I wanted something similar to the linens I used in my powder room in TN. But I wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go - BLUE or TEAL or something with my new fascination with GREY. I decided to forego the 'paint test' and just match up to my new towel set:

Granted, not a huge fan of the flowery, but I really like the colors.  So I ended up with Shale Grey:

I'm also not a fan of pedestal sinks. Where are you supposed to put things??? The Big Orange had a great price on a cabinet sink so I couldn't pass it up. There was also a light cover issue. The existing ones were gross.  I don't have a photo of the original light covers. I do have one of my new covers but...they're light covers and not very exciting.


On the other hand...Here's the DONE!

Freezer Meals

          Some time ago I started pinning freezer meals. My daughter who lives out of state was going to pre-make/freeze them and send them to me so she would be able to help me in my current physical place. We never could figure out how to ship them though.

           So when my youngest decided she was moving back to TN, we thought all my pins might come in handy.

           I perused through all the pinned meals and came up with ones I would actually eat and came up with these:

Five Cheese Veggie Lasagna (Stouffer's copy)         Broccoli Cheddar Chicken Pasta    
Pot Roast                                                                    Cheesy Garlic Chicken  
Hearty Beef Stew                                                       Garlic Ranch Chicken  
Chili                                                                            Parmesan Chicken  
Pulled Pork                                                                 Loaded Potato Soup
Steak Fajitas                                                               Cauliflower Tots (Side dish)
Twice Baked Potatoes                                                Potato Skins


I waited for a good meat sale as that tends to be the most expensive ingredient. I also picked up a large box of gallon and quart size freezer bags, as well as some multi-use aluminum foil pans.

The night before we were set to cook, I went through all the recipes to determine what needed to be done to what vegetable/meat. In the morning, we put all the ingredients for each recipe into a foil pan & labeled it with the meal name.
                                          

Since my physical ability is limited, my mom came to help my daughter with the prep/cooking. I labeled all the bags. On each bag I wrote:
                                            The Date
                                            The Meal Name
                                             Cooking Instructions

Some of the meals are specifically crock pot meals that serve 4. For those meals, I chose to pre-cook and split them into single (approximately) serve sizes.

All in all, it was about 5 hours of prep/cooking/packaging, excluding the crock pot meal cooking times (we are actually going to finish those up over the next couple days).

All the recipes and a shopping list can be downloaded here:
http://paigeengle.blogspot.com/p/freezer-meal-recipes.html

ENJOY!!!