Temporary Header and doc stuff

Some of you may notice that I have a new header. It's temporary although I may go with a new variation in June when this one comes down. I wanted to go ahead and mention that the reason for my header is in one week Skin Cancer and Melanoma Awareness month begins. If you look under the header on the right, I have put up links to the American Dermatology Association site for the Awareness month and to a mole map you can print out as an aid in self skin checks. That site also has links to where people in the U.S. can get free skin cancer screening in May. Some places aren't on their list because I know that many universities and YMCA and other groups have free skin cancer screening in May so you might want to look out for that.
In googling I noticed that there are similar program in Europe and other parts of the world. Belgian has programs for melanoma monday (that's always the first Monday in May). I will be talking more about awareness in May which is appropriate in my part of the world because it falls right before and when so many people are thinking about getting a summer tan or going to the beach. I wanted to give anyone who reads my blog a heads up so they can be on the lookout for events in their area during May. I am a stage III melanoma patient which means that my melanoma spread to a regional site, in my case a lymph node. So far, I've been lucky. I go to regular oncology and dermatology check ups but it's been over three years without my having a recurrence. Whooohoo.
I got a call a day or so ago from the nurse who works with my rheumatologist. Turns out my vitamin D is in the low normal range based on my latest blood work so he's having me take another spiked dose of vitamin D and it will be checked again in 4 more weeks. Vitamin D is important but there are other ways besides sunning to get it. As a matter of fact my doctor said he's had patients who are out in the sun all the time that have a vitamin D deficiency. My D levels have been brought up with supplements from when it was below normal. Even when I try to get a little unprotected direct sun (15 minutes a day), it doesn't seem to help with the effort to bring up my D. Therefore, at this point I'm leaving it to the monitored supplements.
I was disappointed when the nurse called about the vitamin D that she didn't volunteer any information about the bone density scan. I gave her a chance to bring it up before mentioning that I picked up a copy of the results at their office when I went for the D and calcium blood work. When she didn't mention it, I told her I picked up the copy and noticed that I have osteopenia and that the report suggested I take medications which I'm not taking yet. She seemed baffled. After pulling the report she said, does Dr. ____ have your on medications for osteopenia? I said, no, this is my first bone density scan. The only thing he has me on are the D supplements.She said she'd talk to the doctor and call me back. I'm still waiting for that call. It's not a big deal. I'm already on vitamin D supplements which is important in regulating calcium levels. I started taking more calcium after reading the report saying I should have optimal calcium supplements (whatever that means). I am not eager to take the other medication that was suggested on the report. The report was written by the same doctor whose nurse didn't know if he wanted me to do anything new, based on the osteopenia. The point is it's not a matter of him not having his nurse call because he doesn't agree with the report, he wrote the report. Oh well, I guess I'll give them more time but it's been close to two months since I had that scan. The photographs in this post are all from my garden and were taken over the past few weeks. I guess that's it for this jumbled post.

Rainbows and Earth Day

Around sunset on Sunday, I had my curtains closed for the night and a thunder storm was winding down. I could still hear the thunder in the distance and the rain was still falling. I walked into my kitchen and the curtains had a bright gold glow showing through from outside. It was very eerie. I was afraid that the lightening had hit a tree and started a fire. It was that bright.I cautiously open the curtains and couldn't believe it when I saw the rainbow and the golden glow outside. I had to take the photographs from my kitchen doorway because it was still raining and there was too much risk to my camera if I went outside. It was so wild. Almost like the pot of gold from the end of the rainbow had been tossed to the sky and colored the world.
Today is Earth Day and I was pleased to notice in my local paper that the art museum as well as other community sites and organization had learning programs this weekend for children, related to the environment. The Nature Conservancy has some good programs and suggestions related to Earth Day which I liked. So do a lot of other organizations but I liked some of those in particular.
As it turns out there is more than one Earth Day. One Earth Day is celebrated each year on the March equinox. That Earth Day was introduced in 1969 by John McConnel at an UNESCO conference on the environment. Starting in 1972 the UN Earth Day celebration started on the March Equinox and has continued each year. The other Global Earth Day was started on April 22, 1970 by Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach in and has been celebrated each year on that date since then as Earth Day. I didn't realize until I started researching this that there were two different dates called Earth Day.
In a way the more observances for the earth the better. I heard something on a radio program about Earth Hour at the end of March that made sense to me. They were talking about how in order for big changes to be made, politicians will need to see that people are concerned about the environment and will consider the environment when voting. The point was that the more people who become involved in these events, the more political leaders will realize that the voting public does factor in the environmental record of politicians when they vote. I am not expressing this well but it made sense.Earthday Network had an interesting suggestion on their site. According to their site they were founded by the organizers of the First Earth Day. They suggest calling your political leaders to let them know you want climate change legislation. They have a number to call in the U.S. for your Representatives and Senators and they also have a numbers for people in other parts of the world to call the leaders from their country. I can't vouch for the numbers or the organization except to say that the number they give for the U.S. is for the U.S. Capitol Switchboard and hopefully that line will be buzzing with calls for climate change legislation.

Weekend Snapshot: Number 33

Bill and I went to the Raleigh NC State Farmer's Market on Saturday. It was very crowded and not conducive to photography but I gave it a shot.
This Farmer's Market is quite extensive. There are many covered buildings and booths spill outside into the parking area too. The first building has annuals, perennials, herbs, vegetable plants and fresh produce.
As tempting as some of the flowers were, I had decided to buy a few tomato plants and nothing else. We mostly went to the Market to browse and have lunch and I was proud of my restraint because I've rarely seen a plant I didn't want to buy.
As you transition out of the section with plants for sale, you are presented with people at booths offering you strawberries and other tasty treats to sample, before you decide what you want to buy.
One building over from the plants and fresh produce they advertise cheese and NC wines but when you walk in the first temptation is homemade ice cream and fudge.
They also have jams, preserves, wine, cheese, all sorts of baked goods like pies, bread, and cakes. A separate building has crafts and handmade candles but we didn't get that far in our exploring.The Farmer's Market fresh seafood restaurant has excellent food so we had lunch there which was pleasant.
I hope everyone had a great weekend and will have a good week ahead. On Monday you can find other participants in the comment section at the home of Weekend Snapshot. If any others post early like me, I think they will show up at technorati, here, Weekend Snapshot

Note - Weekend Snapshot is a Monday photo meme. I usually post mine on Sunday because I often get busy with work on Monday. However, Monday is when you can start browsing other WS participant links at the home of Weekend Snapshot each week.

Photohunt: Thirteen

When I saw that the photohunt theme was thirteen, I'll admit that I didn't have a clue what to do. At a loss, I decided to demonstrate that I could count to thirteen so for my first shot, I took a photo of thirteen shoes in my bathroom.
Not wanting to leave you in the bathroom, I decided to put together one more photogroup for thirteen. Below are thirteen animals. After I put together the collage below, I realized that I had actually demonstrated that I couldn't count to thirteen because I spotted an extra bird in a branch above another. No problem. I put the red box over the extra bird and included the thirteen caption. The dogs in the photograph often bark out a request for me to take their picture when I walk by. When I stop and whip out my camera, they invariably stop barking and pose for me.
I hope everyone has a great weekend.

PH participants post here on Saturday - PhotoHunt

or show up on technorati anytime here - photohunt

Bazillion photos and medical stuff

All afternoon yesterday my desktop weather alert was flashing to make sure I knew there would be a frost warning in effect last night. My response, take a break and go outside to shoot another bazillion photographs. Covering the garden is not an option at this point. It was a relief to awaken this morning and see that it was 1 degree above freezing and everything looked fine. Tonight we have another frost warning but I'm betting it will once again stay a tad above freezing. If I'm wrong, I can immerse myself in my gazillion photos to remember what it was like before the last blast of winter wrecked havoc on the vulnerable blooms .It's a good thing I'm trying to get into better shape. If I gain much more weight, I won't be able to slide into the narrow space between my wall of flowers and the gate which is how I enter my garden from the driveway. I can also enter via my deck but I often go in through the gate. I prefer it when I only have a narrow space between the open gate and the overgrown azalea. I think it creates a better, you're entering the secret garden, feel than if I cut back a wider entrance. Or maybe I'm too lazy to prune the bushes. I'll let you guess about which is the case. Perhaps a little bit of both.
My rose covered storage building seems to think it's about June. Even as early as everything was last year coming into bloom, this year has been faster still. I don't worry so much about my garden as I do about the farmers. Last year the NC orchards were hit very hard by a late April freeze and that is dominating the local news this week as they are trying to predict whether there will be a repeat of last year. Hopefully not. If we make it past tonight I think we'll be warming up to the point where the risk will be low.
I went to get my vitamin D tested this week at my rheumatologist's office and while I was there I asked for a copy of my bone density scan which was done the first week in March. I assumed that there weren't any problems because they hadn't called me about the scan but I've gotten in the habit of asking for copies of reports, so while I was there I asked for it. Turns out I have osteopenia which isn't so bad. Much better than osteoporosis. Still you would have thought they would have let me know since my doctor wrote and signed the report on March 4 and had recommendations which I haven't been told about. It's not a big deal but surprised me not to have heard back about it.It mentioned there was a moderate risk for fracture in a couple of places in the lumbar spine and in my hips. That wasn't particularly surprising because MRIs of the spine and pelvic region as well as PET scans and bone scans have shown issues in the same spots. However, since they weren't suggestive of cancer, the oncologist wasn't interested. The pain doc had tried some nerve blocks after he did the MRI of the lumbar but that was of limited use and not followed up further.
I'm probably going to wait and see if my rheumatologist's nurse mentions the bone density scan results when she calls about the vitamin D. I don't see the doctor again until July and he is a very thorough doctor whom I like and respect. I know the nurse will call about the vitamin D results to let me know what supplemental regime to go on for the next 6 to 8 weeks until I'm tested again. I guess I want to give them a chance to tell me about the osteopenia before I say, so why haven't you let me know about this. Before I was a melanoma patient it never would have occurred to me to ask for reports. I didn't even come up with that myself. At my first oncology appointment at UNC after a PET/CT scan, they walked in with a copy of the scan report and handed it to me. After my sentinel node biopsy post op appointment, the surgical oncologist walked in with a copy of the biopsy report and handed it to me.
I've had a lot of scans and and a few surgeries at UNC since those early ones, and the NP or surgical oncologist who follow me always give me copies of reports at the office visits. I've learned that although my other doctors and hospital cancer center don't automatically give me reports, I can request them directly without involving playing telephone tag with doctors or nurses. Sometimes I wish I didn't do this but to an extent there is no turning back. In some ways it's better that I went ahead and got the bone density report and have had time to get over being annoyed they didn't call and let me know sooner.
I have barely scratched the surface of what's blooming in my secret garden but I'm sure I'll feel gabby again soon and will sprinkle some more of my meandering posts with photos of my meandering garden.