Who would have thought atherosclerosis could be a good thing?

The appointment with the vascular surgeon was yesterday.  It was with much trepidation we made the trip to Kansas to see him.

I saw the nurse and gave her the CD of the CT scan.  Many minutes later the surgeon came into the examination room carrying an ipad.  He showed us a close up picture of one of the aneurysms.  "You see that circle of white" he asks.  "That is calcification"

I was thinking OMG, it must be really bad.

BUT, it is a good thing it seems.  He said that with the calcification the likelihood of a rupture was negligible.

Wow! where we relieved?

So asked a lot of questions about whether heavy lifting or stress would be detrimental or should I change my diet at all and he said "No, just go out and live your life, no need to change anything"

We left his building very happy.

Bring on Christmas!

An update on the Christmas cards, early snow, a new kettle and some health issues.

It's been a pretty strange month. I have been getting on with the Christmas cards and finally got them all done yesterday.  I am very happy with how they turned out.

I recycle cards received from previous years.  I used to keep cards for years then eventually throw them out.  Last year when I decided to make cards I thought it would be nice to recycle cards we had received, that way they get another go around. I cut out pictures and messages and also stamp out the 'Merry Christmases' from the old cards.  The stamping out is very time consuming but I like to use them on my cards.

I also use Christmas fabric, I cut out the shapes and use them.

So here are this year's.......

Here a couple of insides

And a back.  I decided to put a logo on them, Fernwood Springs being the name of our property

I think I missed a few of them, but you get the gist.

One of the weird things is that we have had snow, it is still on the ground but thawing.  It has been very, very cold, that is unusual here for the time of the year.

We have had two electric kettles go belly up on us these past few months, both were stainless steel and came with good reviews but proved to be pretty useless.  So, I decided to try a glass one this time and was delightfully surprised when I switched it one and it has blue lights all around the bottom when it is on.

Sometimes simple things really amuse me.

And finally to the health issues.  I started peeing blood nearly two weeks ago. It got pretty bad and I came over all weird-like so my husband took me to the ER.  They were very good and efficient and did a CT scan.  Seems nothing unusual to see, no kidney stones or masses, which was a huge relief but it did show an incidental finding of two aneurysms on my splenic artery which they advised I saw my Dr. about pronto.

I went to see my doctor, turns out the bleeding was a woman thing, heck I am 70 years old for goodness sake!!!  She sent me right up to see a gynecologist, I told him I must be going through puberty again, he replied, 'Nope, ain't happening"  Anyway, a biopsy was done and again, thankfully, no masses but benign things that will need attending to.

Meanwhile my doctor has also referred me to a vascular surgeon about the aneurysms because she was concerned about their positioning. Just waiting on a call from them about an appointment.  Worst case scenario is a rupture before I get seen to, once I have seen the doctor though it could be the removal of the spleen, or best case, but not likely because of their position, is a repair of the artery.  Time will tell on that.