316) Good Fosrenol & Phoslo News

January 15, 2009

Thursday

El Milagro: I arrive here at 3:30 today and am a hero... and my chair is ready early too... and both Rosie the Tech and Celeste the Nurse seem delighted. I just drove in from doing a training in Pasadena this morning, shooting outa there at noon and making excellent time on the freeways of our land. I returned the rental car and didn't want to go by the office, so I came over here, hoping to get in early. Sometimes everything goes like clockwork. Jo the nurse comes by, says "Hi" and conducts my nursing evaluation.

As she is preparing my arm for my sticking, Rosie and I converse about Pasadena and I mention going over the big bridge over the Houston Ship Channel and how cool that is... and she discloses her fear of those high bridges and I ask about every bridge in Austin I can think of to assess this phobia. She reports having to close her eyes when driving over the flyway at IH 35 and Ben White and says too that the last time she had to drive over the ship channel, she had to stop the car and let someone else drive so she could hide her eyes and hold her breath. I tell her this sounds like a phobia and I can help her with it in about 20 minutes (using the NLP Fast Phobia Cure). She thinks that would be great cause it is an inconvenience to have this fear of bridges all the time. The only problem will be finding 20 minutes when I can facilitate this strategy with her. She is happy just considering not having her reaction, and after she hooks me up and adjusts my machine, she moves off whistling a brighter tune.

I turn on ATC on NPR and again have to borrow Rosie's earphones, since mine are still separated from my DaVita bag... (I let Liz use them to listen to a movie the other day). The big news item is the US Air Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River... described by one observer as "coming in slow and level and touching down gently in the river", and later adding that it was a "surreal" sight. No deaths... all passengers waiting patiently on the wings to be picked up by various boats.

Jordy the Dietician comes up to discuss the results of my recent 'big' labs: my hemoglobin is down more, but still not serious and my phosphorous is up to 6 again and what was I eating over the weekend. At first I couldn't remember anything about the weekend, but after spending a few minutes running about in my brain of brains, I found a compartment of memories of Stuart's celebration party last Saturday night... where I ate all kinds of bad stuff.... humus (which Jordy says she thinks is okay!), Texas chilie which we agree might be the culprit, and some guacamole and corn chips. She discusses my taking my binders; suggesting the idea of taking them throughout the meal, rather than just afterwards. I let her know that I hate the Fosrenol cause they seem to make me nauscious and she says, "Well, don't take them then. Take more of the Phoslo." This is good news to me. She says that I can substitute 2-3 Phoslo for 1/2 of a Fosrenol, which I will try immediatly. Also, even though it seems cumbersome to spread the Phoslo out throughout the meal, I'll try that too.
I thank Jordy for the good news.

She leaves and I settle back to listening to NPR and snoozing. It's been a long day. I wake up around 7 enough to listen to Bush's goodbye speech and then wake up later to watch part of a James Bond movie before getting cut loose and driving home in the dark cold night. So it goes.

Notes: In at 78.2 and out at 75.2 kgs.
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Friday Note: Upon arriving at my office on Friday morning I found a phone message from Ms. Blanket at Social Security saying that she has worked my Medicare deal out the way I want it: "We can enroll you in Part B Medicare and reinstate you starting in September..." as soon as you pay the premium of $578.40. Hooray for Ms. Blanket!