Referrals Came Out While We Were Away...

Here's the latest happenings while we were away enjoying ourselves in Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton National Park. I'll post about our trip later after we've settled in, done laundry, gone grocery shopping and uploaded photos.

Looks like the CCAA placed children from February 1 - 9, 2006. Getting ever closer, but not quite close enough... Only 155 days worth of LIDs to go...

Love Without Boundaries

This month's donation from my CafePress stores went to Love Without Boundaries - a wonderful charity that helps the lives of thousands of Chinese children in orpahnages through foster care, medical, education, and nutrition programs.

I also learned another valuable tip - if you enter Amazon.com through the Love Without Boundaries website, they receive 4% of the sale! If only I had known about that earlier...

Happy Birthday Robert!

I cannot tell a lie - it's Robert's birthday today. He spent the morning with his mom going to a scale model fly-in airshow and then the three of us went out for burgers for lunch. Here's a nice photo of my sweetie with one of the planes he takes his flying lessons on.

Milwaukee Zoo outing

This past Thursday I went into Milwaukee for the day to see my sister, brother-in-law and my 2 nephews who were in town from Minneapolis to visit my parents (grandma and grandpa). Highlights for me were seeing Tommy and Billy (of course!) and watching Tommy overcome his fear of animals to actually take a pony ride at the Milwaukee Zoo - and he had a great time!! Look how proud he looks on the pony. He is such a love!!


Here's the whole gang - minus me, of course, the photographer.

Sun Prairie Corn Festival

Well, I'm a bit behind these days on my posting, so I'm going to try to play a game of catch-up now. Last weekend we had our friends Eric, Susan and future son-in-law Evan in town to go to the Sun Prairie Corn Festival. They've been wanting to come up and see it for years and now finally were able to. We had a great time with them and ate LOTS of corn. You pay $6 for all the corn you can pile into the tote. Afterwards, we bought some corn to take home. Here's a few pix from the day.

Happy 19th Birthday!

Well, "Highness" (as we like to call her) turns the grand 19 years old today. She rules this house with a strict paw. We are merely here to serve her kitty needs - which includes treats, pets, brushes and lazing about on our back deck soaking up the afternoon sun. Being half Siamese, she is a very vocal little kitty and is always very clear as to what she wants and will continue to meow or stare us down until we give her what she wants. And we, being the softies that we are, give in!

She has started to show the signs of aging and has slowed down a lot in the past year. We just enjoy every minute of every day that we have with her. She is such a sweet and loving kitty (at least to us).

Hyperparathyroidism Diagnosis

Please forgive this very long post. I just hope that if this can help one person, then I'm glad.

A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around this and learning all I can about this under-diagnosed condition. It was found by one of my doctors when I had a high calcium level in my blood. Further blood work found that I also had high parathyroid hormone levels, meaning that I have primary hyperparathyroidism. I will be having surgery on September 15th to have the offending parathyroid gland removed and regain my life again.

Now, for a little lesson: We all have 4 parathyroid glands (no, they are NOT the same as a thyroid gland. In the picture at left, they are the small yellow objects over the thyroid and have 2 on each side of the trachea.). The ONLY purpose of the parathyroid glands is to regulate the calcium level in our body so that the nervous and muscular systems can function properly. This is all they do. They measure the amount of calcium in the blood every minute of every day... and if the calcium levels go down a little bit, the parathyroid glands recognize it and make parathyroid hormone (PTH) which goes to the bones and takes some calcium out and puts it into the blood. When the calcium in the blood is high enough, then the parathyroids shut down and stop making PTH.

The most common cause of hyperparathyroidism is the development of a benign tumor in one of the parathyroid glands. This enlargement of one parathyroid gland is called a parathyroid adenoma which accounts for about 94% of all patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (this is what I have). This “naughty” parathyroid gland is slowly causing damage to my body because it puts out an abnormally high level of calcium in the blood which can slowly destroy a number of tissues. Parathyroid adenomas can range in size from an olive to a walnut. The normal parathyroid gland is about the size of a grain of rice... but one cell inside this normal parathyroid gland went out of control and started reproducing itself until a large tumor developed (naughty thing!). This tumor will almost always continue to grow until it is removed (which is why I have scheduled my surgery to remove it on Sept 15th). As it grows, it makes more hormone and will make you feel worse. This tumor is constantly making parathyroid hormone which is what takes the calcium out of your bones and makes the calcium in your blood too high. This is exactly what I don’t want!

Some Symptoms of Parathyroid Disease

• Loss of energy. Don't feel like doing much. Tired all the time.
• Just don't feel well; don't quite feel normal. Hard to explain but just feel kind of bad.
• Feel old. Don't have the interest in things that you used to.
• Can't concentrate, or can't keep your concentration like in the past.
• Depression.
• Osteoporosis and Osteopenia.
• Bones hurt; typically it's bones in the legs and arms but can be most bones.
• Don't sleep like you used to. Wake up in middle of night. Trouble getting to sleep.
• Tired during the day and frequently feel like you want a nap.
• Spouse claims you are more irritable and harder to get along with (cranky, bitchy).
• Forget simple things that you used to remember very easily.
• Gastric acid reflux; heartburn; GERD.
• Decrease in sex drive.
• Thinning hair (predominately in older females).
• Kidney Stones.
• High Blood Pressure (sometimes mild, sometimes quite severe; up and down a lot).
• Recurrent Headaches (usually patients under the age of 40).
• Heart Palpitations (arrhythmias). Typically atrial arrhythmias.

Most people with hyperparathyroidism will have 4 - 6 of these symptoms. Thankfully, I have very few of them. In general, the longer you have hyperparathyroidism, the more symptoms you will develop.

Side note: this diagnosis also carries with it one nasty little secret – an 85% miscarriage rate, of which I’ve had 7 of them.

August Referrals are in...

Here's the official post from the CCAA.

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before January 31, 2007.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before January 31, 2006.

What I don't understand is that some of these dates are included in those of the Chinese New Year and why didn't they go through February 5th to include the rest of the Chinese New Year dates? The CCAA office was closed during those days and no dossiers were logged in at that time, so I'm just so confused?! So much for the psychological boost of a large referral month!

So, they referred 6 days worth of LIDs and now we have 164 days worth of referrals to go... 2010 is still looking like a reality... bummer!

Beijing Olympics 8-8-08

Well, this evening I was mesmerized by the amazing opening ceremony for the start of the Olympics. It truly was beautiful to watch. I was just amazed that 2008 people could stay in sinc for the whole performance - whether it was the cool drummers or tai chi masters. WOW!! If you missed it, it's definitely worth a peek at the video stream of it.

I also love the slogan "One World One Dream", but I'd like to modify it a bit to say "In My World, My Dream is to Have My Daughter Home with Me NOW"

Let the games begin...

National Mustard Day 2008

On Saturday, Robert and I headed off to Mt. Horeb - Troll capital of the world and home of the Mustard Museum (where they have the world'd largest selection of mustards to see and buy) - to celebrate National Mustard Day. We only live about 15 minutes from there. It was a beautiful day here in Madison with temps in the mid-80s and sunny. They had free Oscar Meyer hot dogs (only free if you slathered them with mustard, of course!), the Oscar Meyer weiner-mobile (you could get your free weiner-mobile whistles and get to see inside the vehicle), music and lots of games for the kids. It was a lot of fun.


Note: I am holding a "poisonous" hot dog. I actually put some ketchup (along with some mustard) on mine. All of the ketchup bottles had "poison" stickers on them. You gotta love a warped sense of humor.