A Month and week

since I posted last.
Since that time I was supposed to have had an appointment with my psychologist at the VA and unfortunately that didn't happen because the doc ended up having to cancel that day. I had to reschedule and the appointment isn't for another week or so.
I'm still having the dreams so I'll still have some stories to talk to her about...

I did meet my new primary doc at the VA, seems to be a good guy. Not entirely knowledgeable about TM but I expected that. He did know what it was and did know how it affects people, so he did get "it" when I told him about the pain issue and how the weather affects things. he asked me to tell him the "story" of how it happened so I went through that explanation again and I got the same thing from him as I have from so many other doctors and medical people...a shake of the head in amazement that I went from sleeping to being paralyzed from the waist down in a matter of a couple of hours, all the while feeling like my lower half was on fire. Anyway, not too much that doc can do for me so I'm on a 6 month visit schedule with him.

I had an appointment with my Primary Care doc last week, it was a follow up from 3 months ago, which was just kind of going over some of my issues with sleeping (or better, the lack of), the possibility of my thalassemia and Gilbert's Syndrome possibly being one of the keys that is setting off these so called "migraine episodes".
Well, I get to the docs office and there is a sign that the doc is leaving on the 29th of April.

I can't friggen believe it....Just in the last year, I have gone through, this being my fourth primary care doc, my first one we had been with since 1999 when we moved here to Ohio and then she changed insurance carriers and they didn't accept Tricare, so we found another doc nearby that we really liked, that we went to for four months and she ended up leaving and going to another office that didn't take Tricare, so we went to another doc in the same office she had been in and he was okay but then it turns out that he was having problems with his Tricare credentialing, so we went to the other doc in the same office and it turned out that we really liked her and now she is leaving to move closer to where she lives which is an hour away.

I've been fairly fortunate in that all of the docs have been fairly knowledgeable with TM but I have had to still educate them in some things.
So, now there is a new doc coming into this office that is going to be replacing my old doc. We're going to give this doc a chance and see how she is. Again, I'll probably have to educate her some on TM.

I'm just flabbergasted that I've had to switch docs this many times in one year....
At least the docs that I really need to be stable, my Neuro and my pain doc are still around.

I did see my pain doc today, same old song and dance. The only change is that he wants me to bump up my Topamax dosage to see if that helps my episodes. Reason being is because I had a real brutal one a couple of weeks ago. It was a 5 day one that had me on my back and diarrhea throughout the entire time. I felt like holy hell. That was the worst one I've had since I've been getting them.

Otherwise, Keep plugging away on the pain meds and pray that the weather gets better. I swear, I can predict a storm coming on better than the weather man. When the humidity goes up and the barometric pressure goes down, the legs ache bad. It's funny, the other day when I went to my primary care doc, my blood pressure was 110/60 which is really good and that is what it almost always was prior to TM. I mentioned to my wife yesterday, that I could tell that the weather had changed, I felt like someone had beat me with a bat. Today I went to the pain doc, my blood pressure was 138/86....Yep, I knew it. Pain goes up, the blood pressure goes up.

So with all that aside, I've been back into my carving again which has been nice. I met a guy on Facebook that is from Finland. He is a professional artist and photographer and he also teaches. He was reading through through my blog and also saw some of the pictures of my carvings and saw my canes. At first me mentioned that he would love to photograph the canes, he loved the canes. Then he asked me if I would make him a cane that he could have and he would use to photograph and I could have the pictures to use.
So, I've been making a cane for him and he is terribly excited. I am also, I'm going international....how cool is that..? Here is a pic of the cane handle....


I never did post a picture of the Cigar Box Guitar that I made either...
and I have plans to make another one....this one turned out pretty nice, but the action of the strings is too high to learn how to play the guitar with. I have some other plans for this guitar after I make another one...


Okay, I guess that's about it for now....I'm not too sure what else to post.
I'll finish with the music...
Something from a band called "Moonalice"....these guys are great....G.E. Smith, Pete Sears, Jack Casady...and others...
A little ditty called "Kick It Open"


Till Next Time......