Friday, September 28, 2012
Am I joining a new club?
Might be! My FMS has been pretty interesting lately. I finally gave in and went to the pain clinic. Was put on an med regimen that seems to help in the pain sphere. A side effect has been loosing more weight. I am down to 148 at last doc visit. One not so fun thing has been a complete lack of appetite. I have never been a large eater but now I actually have to remind myself to eat or I can go the whole day without a bite and not notice. It has however made me notice more when I am having sensitivities to food. My most recent flare began after eating my favorite meal. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and brown gravy. Within hours I was in the bathroom with stomach cramps that were excruciating. I proceeded to be sick through the night. I was so weak and sick through the next day that I stayed on the couch all day. Then the next day I woke with a horror of a migraine. I think our presidential candidates tried to have a boxing match in my skull and caused my brain to swell. It was awful. I luckily already had an appointment at my clinic scheduled. I am loving them. I was very against going due to my past history with drugs and the horror stories but they are a whole body wellness kind of place. I have done physical therapy there and message therapy. Been great. Anyway my doc had some big concerns. Due to my sensitive stomach she suspects Celiac's or at least some significant food allergy issues. Hence the new club. So I need to find a good GI and get checked out. She also wants me to find a new primary doc. They handle a lot of my needs but some needs need a PCP and mine just hasn't done some things I guess she should be. My hematologist who monitors the lymphocyte issue said as much when I saw him in April but to have another of my team make the same recommend must mean its true. She feels I need more blood monitoring due to being a chronic illness patient. She also thinks I need someone who does more than write a prescription. Which I agree with. I guess I just figured she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. So wish me luck. I am trying to take my health in hand but the road is a long one, longer than I ever dreamed. I had really hoped that a diagnosis would mean fix but at this point I will take what I can get. Much love to all!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Bee drama or HOLY PSYCHO BEES, BATMAN!
^^Two phrases I never imagined myself saying^^
We picked up our two new hives last week and took them out to the ranch with the other hive we have out there. (I REALLY need to come up with names for these hives, it's getting confusing) We left them alone for a couple of days to settle in and then went out to check on them. We opened the hive and realized they were doing quite poorly. Brood patterns were really bad and they were just overall weak hives with little honey stored. We checked the original hive and went home. We ordered new queens for all three ranch hives because two of those queens were two and a half years old and none of the three were doing well.
The queens arrived on the 13th and we happily went out to install our new girls. The purchased hives were pretty easy to deal with. We found the queens, picked them out of the hive and I stepped on them. The queens were all pipping at each other and that was really cool. I had heard that on youtube, but never in person. Amazing.
We got to the original hive and realized something was different. We could NOT find the queen. We searched and searched and still never saw her. We saw some queen cells though and that was worrisome. I did not dare leave the new queen in case the hive went on the war path and killed her. I went back home and did some research. The queen cells we saw were emergency cells. Uh oh. That means we lost our queen at some point. I looked up the age of the larvae we had seen in the cells and determined that the hive had been queenless for about a week. Pretty much since the last time we were there. Uh oh. We must have either squished her by accident, or lost her somehow when we left the new hives. Good thing we already had a queen to install. I went out the next day and put her in her new home. The bees were surprisingly mellow. This had always been a fairly aggressive hive but I didn't even light my smoker.
Fast forward three days and we go out to check the queens and turn them loose into the hive. We also got our new beesuits and were quite excited to try them out. I put mine on and then taped the one spot where a bee could get through, right on the neck. Hubby told me I was paranoid and a pansy. I told him I didn't care, I would rather not get stung, thank you very much. We started with the queenless hive and HOLY PSYCHO BEES, BATMAN!!! These bees went into attack mode right from the moment we walked up to the hive. They would not give you a friendly headbutt warning, they went straight for the jugular. Luckily the neck on MY suit was taped up. But my non paranoid, non pansy husband ended up with half a dozen bees inside his suit. One went up his nose while another sunk her stinger right into his adams apple.
He sucked it up long enough to release the queen and we watched her disappear down into the hive like she was supposed to. We battled the workers long enough to make sure they didn't attack the attendant bees that came with the queen. There was a lot of butt wiggling and threats, but no one seemed overly pissed at them, just at us. We put the inner and outer covers back on the hive and retreated. They chased us quite a ways down the road and we finally got away from the determined little critters. We smoked our suits to mask the sting pheromones and braved the kamikaze insects one more time to fasten the straps around the hive. Whew, that was pretty intense.
Now on to the new hives. These girls wanted new queens! They had almost eaten all of the candy in the queen cage and eagerly accepted the queens into the colony. They escorted her right down into the hive and never really even flew out of the hives. They were gentle enough that we could have removed our gloves and touched them. What a relief after dealing with those other attack bees!
We are going to wait a week and then go back out and check on the hives to make sure the queens are ok and laying eggs. If that crazy hive has killed their queen, they are toast. I am tired of dealing with them and their attitudes. I will split them up and distribute the frames between the hives I bought to boost them and will start over with a new package of bees next year.
We picked up our two new hives last week and took them out to the ranch with the other hive we have out there. (I REALLY need to come up with names for these hives, it's getting confusing) We left them alone for a couple of days to settle in and then went out to check on them. We opened the hive and realized they were doing quite poorly. Brood patterns were really bad and they were just overall weak hives with little honey stored. We checked the original hive and went home. We ordered new queens for all three ranch hives because two of those queens were two and a half years old and none of the three were doing well.
The queens arrived on the 13th and we happily went out to install our new girls. The purchased hives were pretty easy to deal with. We found the queens, picked them out of the hive and I stepped on them. The queens were all pipping at each other and that was really cool. I had heard that on youtube, but never in person. Amazing.
We got to the original hive and realized something was different. We could NOT find the queen. We searched and searched and still never saw her. We saw some queen cells though and that was worrisome. I did not dare leave the new queen in case the hive went on the war path and killed her. I went back home and did some research. The queen cells we saw were emergency cells. Uh oh. That means we lost our queen at some point. I looked up the age of the larvae we had seen in the cells and determined that the hive had been queenless for about a week. Pretty much since the last time we were there. Uh oh. We must have either squished her by accident, or lost her somehow when we left the new hives. Good thing we already had a queen to install. I went out the next day and put her in her new home. The bees were surprisingly mellow. This had always been a fairly aggressive hive but I didn't even light my smoker.
Fast forward three days and we go out to check the queens and turn them loose into the hive. We also got our new beesuits and were quite excited to try them out. I put mine on and then taped the one spot where a bee could get through, right on the neck. Hubby told me I was paranoid and a pansy. I told him I didn't care, I would rather not get stung, thank you very much. We started with the queenless hive and HOLY PSYCHO BEES, BATMAN!!! These bees went into attack mode right from the moment we walked up to the hive. They would not give you a friendly headbutt warning, they went straight for the jugular. Luckily the neck on MY suit was taped up. But my non paranoid, non pansy husband ended up with half a dozen bees inside his suit. One went up his nose while another sunk her stinger right into his adams apple.
He sucked it up long enough to release the queen and we watched her disappear down into the hive like she was supposed to. We battled the workers long enough to make sure they didn't attack the attendant bees that came with the queen. There was a lot of butt wiggling and threats, but no one seemed overly pissed at them, just at us. We put the inner and outer covers back on the hive and retreated. They chased us quite a ways down the road and we finally got away from the determined little critters. We smoked our suits to mask the sting pheromones and braved the kamikaze insects one more time to fasten the straps around the hive. Whew, that was pretty intense.
Now on to the new hives. These girls wanted new queens! They had almost eaten all of the candy in the queen cage and eagerly accepted the queens into the colony. They escorted her right down into the hive and never really even flew out of the hives. They were gentle enough that we could have removed our gloves and touched them. What a relief after dealing with those other attack bees!
We are going to wait a week and then go back out and check on the hives to make sure the queens are ok and laying eggs. If that crazy hive has killed their queen, they are toast. I am tired of dealing with them and their attitudes. I will split them up and distribute the frames between the hives I bought to boost them and will start over with a new package of bees next year.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Come to the Dark Angel side!
I have recently had the privilege to become great online friends with Hot Sauce, the female half of Dark Angel Medical. She and her awesome guy have taken a pretty awesome idea and made something that I think all of us in the survival and/or prepper (whatever you want to call yourself, hehe) community can really benefit from. They make emergency trauma kits. But that honestly is a simplified statement. I am not an expert at all. I am just a major fan. This is directly taken from their about us page:
The thing that I really love is the facebook linked to their website. On it Doc runs trauma scenarios and then leads the discussion in how to handle those issues. For those of us with only basic training it helps and has inspired me to want to renew my training. My last cert was when Bug was little. She is now 11. Add that to the fact I want to get my RO cert and renewing my CPR and basic trauma certs would be a darn good thing. I know that once I build a good bag for my truck a DARK is going in it. So check them and their product out!! You won't regret it!
We are a veteran-owned business with a combined total of over 20 years of medical training and work in both the military and civilian healthcare fields, Pre-hospital care, flight medicine and intra-hospital work with concentration in emergency and critical care medicine as well as competitive shooting.
We are very proud to offer the D.A.R.K. (Direct Action Response Kit), what we believe is, a superior product to the standard IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit)a.k.a. BOK (Blowout Kit). The components have been carefully chosen based on personal, hands-on experience and the feedback from “boots on the ground” in our current theaters of operation.
We want to give every person who deploys these kits the ability to survive a life-threatening situation.
The thing that I really love is the facebook linked to their website. On it Doc runs trauma scenarios and then leads the discussion in how to handle those issues. For those of us with only basic training it helps and has inspired me to want to renew my training. My last cert was when Bug was little. She is now 11. Add that to the fact I want to get my RO cert and renewing my CPR and basic trauma certs would be a darn good thing. I know that once I build a good bag for my truck a DARK is going in it. So check them and their product out!! You won't regret it!
Thursday, September 6, 2012
surprising twist.
The boy that was hit by the pick up truck yesterday is ok! The reason life flight left without transporting anyone is because there were NO INJURIES!!
After seeing the scene I saw yesterday, I am in awe that no one died. I am soooo relieved he was not seriously hurt.
Hopefully it will cause that boy to be much more careful in the future and the driver to slow down and be much more cautious.
My boys were much better behaved at the bus stop this morning and even though we were the last ones there, I also noticed that all of the other kids were lined up nicely behind the boundry we had given them.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Trajedy
I saw something today that I will never be able to erase from my mind. I saw a mother lying in the dirt cradling the head of her son who had just been hit by a truck.
I was coming home from town with DH, following my son's bus down the road, just talking about nothing in particular. As we rounded a corner near my house we saw red and blue lights. Uh, oh. that is never a good sign. We saw a red F250 sitting mangled in a ditch and could tell that it had rolled. Then we saw the boy. He was close to the same age and size as my oldest son. I KNEW my son was in the bus, but for just a moment, I saw him in the dirt there. His mother was lying in the dirt next to him with her face close to his, with her arms wrapped around his head. I burst into tears because for a moment, I put myself in her shoes. I was horrified, I was furious, I was devastated. I was her, and her son was mine.
The truck had been going way too fast and hit the boy before rolling. The kids on the school bus he had just gotten off of saw the whole thing. I have no idea if the boy survived, but I know the helicopter came and left without him. I don't think that is a good sign. I have been trying to find out all day if he made it.
Suddenly, none of my problems matter. Nothing I am going through even comes close to what his family is feeling tonight. My kids are all home and safe. My family is whole. I am blessed. I am thankful.
I was coming home from town with DH, following my son's bus down the road, just talking about nothing in particular. As we rounded a corner near my house we saw red and blue lights. Uh, oh. that is never a good sign. We saw a red F250 sitting mangled in a ditch and could tell that it had rolled. Then we saw the boy. He was close to the same age and size as my oldest son. I KNEW my son was in the bus, but for just a moment, I saw him in the dirt there. His mother was lying in the dirt next to him with her face close to his, with her arms wrapped around his head. I burst into tears because for a moment, I put myself in her shoes. I was horrified, I was furious, I was devastated. I was her, and her son was mine.
The truck had been going way too fast and hit the boy before rolling. The kids on the school bus he had just gotten off of saw the whole thing. I have no idea if the boy survived, but I know the helicopter came and left without him. I don't think that is a good sign. I have been trying to find out all day if he made it.
Suddenly, none of my problems matter. Nothing I am going through even comes close to what his family is feeling tonight. My kids are all home and safe. My family is whole. I am blessed. I am thankful.
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