Have you ever watched a movie that really affected you? I don't know if affected is the right word....just a movie that you watched and you just can't get it out of your head. It makes you think.....

I watched The English Patient last week and I just keep thinking about it. I quite thoroughly enjoyed it. I know that the main love story in the movie was an affair, which really goes against what I feel about marriage. But I could feel their love, their passion, or maybe it was just lust.....but he did walk for three days through the dessert to get help for her. I didn't cry, but I did feel quite bad for Lazlo at the end. I still feel sort of sad, maybe that's what I keep thinking about it, why I can't get it out of my head. I may need to watch it again, maybe buy it.

I think the first few times I saw Titanic I sort of felt the same. The first time all the tears I cried were for Rose who had lost her true love. However the second time I saw it I cried more for all the needless death that occurred because of the stupid class system (ie. not enough life boats, not letting the lower class people on the boats, etc). All the dead people floating in the ocean....yeah it affected me. Made me feel sad too.

Hot Flashes

I had my specialist appointment yesterday. Dr. Sharma was very nice and thorough, however I was quite frustrated after having to wait nearly three hours before I could have my five to ten minute appointment. He confirmed that I do indeed have hyperthyroidism, but he said it is caused by graves disease. I do not fully understand graves disease. From what I have read, graves disease is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism, but not all hyperthyroidism is caused by graves disease. He explained that they prefer to avoid doing the radioactive iodine treatment if they can help it in women who are within the childbearing years. So he gave me a prescription for an anti-thryroid medication. I will be on it for approximately two years. From what I have read, often a permenant remission can be achieved by doing that.

I could handle getting rid of these crazy symptoms. Lately I have been so hot. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be going through menopause and having hot flashes. So hot! I wasn't so jittery today, but yesterday, but the time I saw Dr. Sharma, I was getting hungry so my jitters were quite bad. He also put me on a beta blocker medication for a couple of months until the thyroid medication kicks in. Here's hoping within a few weeks that I feel back to normal......

The thyroid medication I am taking, the dose is one and a half pills three times a day. That's a lot of pills. And the beta blocker is two pills per day. Going from one pill, and two vitamins, to seven and a half pills and two vitamins is pretty crazy. I need to learn to be good at remembering to take pills.

Craving a Chick Flick

This weekend I was in the mood to watch something very romantic and funny and well, a chick flick. I always feel bad subjecting Jason to these things, so I watched by myself. I watched Bridget Jones' Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. I have to say that I quite enjoyed both. I was telling Jason before that I must have been in the mood for them because at the particularly romantic parts I got butterflies in my stomach and felt sort of giddy. Hehe.

I don't really care much for Renee Zellweger, however she was quite good in those movies. I remember all the hype about her putting on 20lbs for the role. I really didn't think she looked all that chubby, maybe healthy. But I suppose compared to the Hollywood standard she was a fat cow in that movie. Also, I do not really find Hugh Grant very nice to look at. His face looks droopy to me. I think it's just his eyes. Not sure that I have ever found him to be that great of an actor. I do however enjoy Colin Firth as an actor and he's not bad to look at and was glad he didn't play the bad guy in the movies.

I found them to be quite vulgar, but I did enjoy the love story. They are British movies, and I wonder, after having watched them, and a few other British movies that throw F-bombs out there quite readily, I wonder if that word is not quite as vulgar there as it is here? Not sure, but I do know that wanker is pretty vulgar over in Britain, but here, not so much. I also learned from these movies that a jumper is a sweater in Britain. A jumper here is more of a dress....anywho...

I would recommend them if you are not easily offended by a few f-bombs and are looking for a good chick flick :)

"Tis better to remain silent and be thought an idiot....

Than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."


If you read my previous post you will know that I had the wonderful experience of seeing Dr. Bodenstab on Wednesday. Well, he called me this morning. He said that my test results are back and that I do in fact have an overactive thyroid. He asked me what I was up to today, I said I will be at work. He asked for a cell phone number and asked me to keep it on me and turned on all day because he might be able to get me an appointment with a specialist today. I had a few thoughts...

- Why do I need to see a specialist? I thought hyperthyroidism was a common condition that could be treated with medication.
- How in the world do you think that you are going to get me an appointment with a specialist on the same day you call? I am guessing he would send me to an endocrinologist, and I have heard they are few and far between in Saskatoon.
- I work as a massage therapist. I have a busy day, and my appointments are nearly back to back. Do you really expect me to leave in the middle of a treatment for an doctor's appointment?
- I made an appointment with Dr. Bodenstab for next Friday to get my test results back....do I still have to back to see him?

After my appointment on Wednesday, I was starting to think that maybe he wasn't as big of a fruitcake as I used to think. I guess he opened his mouth and removed all doubt...

Medical Adventures

I am generally a pretty healthy person. I usually go to the doctor once a year for my physical, and on occasion once more if I have a bad cough or cold. I went to the doctor this morning.

On Monday evening we had supper with my parents. Usually when I am over there, when I use the bathroom, I weigh myself. We do not have a bathroom scale and I don't weigh myself too often. Usually just when I am at someone's house who has a scale. When I weighed myself I was about 7-8lbs lighter than I have been for quite a while. I assumed that mom and dad's scale was out of whack. I asked mom and she figured it was accurate. Just to be sure the next morning I got out the Wii Fit and weighed myself with it. I hadn't used it for about 6 weeks and according to it I have lost 8.6lbs.

Losing 8-9lbs in 6 weeks is not unreasonable, if you are trying to. However when you eat half a pizza here, and 5 donughts there, and still lose weight, yeah, I started to feel a little concerned. I looked up 'unintentional weight loss' on google and came up with a list of a few illnesses. I came across hyperthyroidism and thought I might have a match. Looking down the list of symptoms I probably had at least 3 or 4 of them.

About a month or so ago at work I started noticing when I am treating that I get quite sweaty. When I first started massage school and I would give a treatment I would sweat like a pig. However that is because I was out of shape and overweight. I haven't sweated like that since my first year of massage school. I was curious about the recurrence of it, but didn't give it an awful lot of thought. Though, apparently, excessive sweating, and heat sensitivity are symptoms. I have also had an increased appetite, weight loss, shaky hands and most recently an enlarged thyroid gland.

Last night when I was brushing my teeth before bed I noticed a lump on my neck. I swallowed and found that it was much more noticable when I swallowed. I realized that it was my thyroid gland. I have a goiter. Now mine is not that severe. I made the mistake of looking up goiter on google images and it came up with a bunch of people who had goiters the size of cantaloupes! Mine is just a little enlarged and you probably wouldn't see it if you weren't looking for it.

When I noticed the thyroid I decided I should go to the walk in clinic. I called to make an appointment with my doc yesterday and she is on holidays for 3 weeks. I decided this waranted going to the walk in clinic. As I drove there, my only thought was "please don't let it be Dr. Bodenstab". I got in quite shortly after I got there, and guess who I saw.......that's right Dr. Bodenstab. He is the one who treated Jason like he was mentally slow when he went in there. I don't have a lot of respect for him, but he did look after me today. He checked me over listened to my symptoms then took me into his office and showed me a picture of a thyroid. He called a couple of places and managed to get me in today for a thyroid ultrasound. He also sent me for blood tests. I go back to see him next Friday to get the results.

If it is hyperthyroidism, it is treatable with medication, so I am not too worried. Though I had a client once who had thyroid cancer and had to have her entire thyroid removed. I am not too concerned about that. I hope that my goiter does not get any bigger in the next week and a half. I will try to be patient for the test results, but I sure could go for NOT sweating during my treatments, and not feeling hungry all the time. I am not complaining about the weight loss, but if it is due to disease, that's not healthy. I hope that once I am on medication, that those things will stop, but I also hope that I will not gain too much weight back.

5 year plan

Wouldn't it be nice to know what will be going on for the next five years of your life? I have been thinking about my future a lot lately. It has been almost five years since I graduated from my massage therapy course. I can't believe it has been almost five years!! I have been thinking that massage is not something I can do forever. I don't mind it, but I definitely don't have the passion for it that I used to. I am finding that it can be quite repetitive and boring. However I do have a good number of clients who I really appreciate and enjoy working on. I like working with people, and I like when someone gets off the table and says "Wow, I feel so much better." I definitely like aspects of massage, but massage is just massage and when you get too old or sore to do massage there are not too many other opportunities out there to stop treating but still make money.

Over the last few years, I have contemplated nursing as a career path. I believe that I have what it takes to be a nurse. I have a number of friends who are nurses, and I have read stories and comments on a nursing forum numerous times. I think I have a fairly good grasp on what a career in nursing might be like. A few weeks ago I went to SIAST to talk to an academic advisor there about the requirements to apply to the Nursing Education Program of Saskatchewan (NEPS). I found out some disappointing things. Basically, I screwed myself over by doing so poorly in my third year of university many many years ago. What I was told is that there are a certain number of seats reserved in the program for people coming out of high school, and a certain number for those with some post secondary education. The required average, 76%, is the same for both groups and has been increasing by a percent or two each year. So, I would need to have at least a 76% average in my most recent 18 credit units of university classes to even be considered for the NEPS. My average isn't anywhere near that because I did so poorly in my 3rd year. My option is to take 18 credits of additional classes then apply to the NEPS if my average is high enough. I am leaning toward trying that option.

Today I registered with Athabasca University. For those of you who don't know, it is an almost entirely correspondance university. I am planning to take 18 credits of classes (one 6 credit and four 3 credit) courses over the next year and a half, then see if I can even think about applying for nursing. If not, I guess I will try to find a different direction. I am hoping to keep working while I do these courses. The way I have it figured out is that I would only do two classes at a time starting July 1 of this year and ending by the end of December of next year. I think it's doable.

One thing that frustrates me is that the admission to the NEPS is based solely on grades. I think that there should be more to it than that. I think that my massage education and working on people for the last five years would be an advantage in pursing a career in nursing. I knew that my massage courses would not transfer to university credit, but I thought that it might at least be taken into consideration. I wonder if someone who graduated high school almost 11 years ago, who did not go to university, who had an average of 85% in high school would do any better in the NEPS than someone who had been doing massage therapy for the last almost 7 years. I realize that they have to have a measure of who they can accept and who they can't. I also realize that an interview process would be time consuming and expensive. It just sucks for me! If they could overlook my university grades I would get in, no problem, my high school average was always well over 80%. Oh well, I am going to give Athabasca a try and if that doesn't work I will keep my mind open to other opportunities.

Toast

Last week when I went to Safeway (the same trip when I bought the gross yogurt) we had run out of bread so I got some Safeway bakery bread. It is not my favorite bread, and I know that Jason doesn't like it. When I saw it there, I had to buy it because for all the years I can remember that is the bread that my grandparents bought. Most mornings when we stayed at grandma and grandpa's house it was toast for breakfast (unless grandma had bought us some Quaker Harvest Crunch cereal, YUM! or sometimes she would make us soft boiled eggs). Safeway bread is quite thin and makes very crunchy toast. I had some this morning and thought that it would be perfect if I had a little of grandma's rhubarb jam, or perhaps some crabapple jelly. I was so glad to get to visit grandpa a couple of weeks ago in Calgary, but there sure are times when I miss going to their house and being greeted by grandma "Hello my darling" with a hug and a smile. It is nice to have little memories, even if it is just a piece of toast with jam.

Yogurt

My absolute favorite yogurt is raspberry Activia. I am not sold on the whole 'probiotic' thing. I think all yogurts have bacteria in them that can help aid digestion. Anyway, I find Activia to be very creamy and smooth and tasty, even the fat free is very creamy and tasty.

I went to Safeway on Monday to get a couple of groceries and saw that yogurt was on sale, two for six dollars. Activia is usually about three fifty to four dollars for a container. I looked and all they had was vanilla and apple, muslix and nut. The apple one said it was a source of fibre, and I had never tried it, so I bought some. YUCK! I have eaten most of it, because I hate to let things go to waste. But it's apple flavored yogurt with bits of nuts, raisins, and granola maybe. I do enjoy mixing yogurt with granola, but I enjoy it when it's fresh, not when it was packaged a long time ago and the nuts and other stuff are soggy :P

You have been warned! Try the raspberry, stay away from the apple. Pear was pretty bad too. Vanilla, raspberry and strawberry, those are the kinds to try!

Hey buddy did you get a load of the nerd?

In February I was looking at getting Jason and I symphony tickets as a valentine's gift to ourselves. When I was looking at the ticketmaster website I stumbled across an event called Video Games Live. I checked out their website and thought it would be right up Jason's alley. I was going to surprise him with tickets, but I figured that I had better check with him, just to make sure he would like it. He thought it sounded great, so I bought tickets.

Last night was the concert. It was quite neat. A very different symphony experience. I think we were overdressed for the occasion as it was mostly nerdy guys wearing t shirts and jeans. They encouraged cheering and shouting during the concert which is not allowed at a symphony concert. I did enjoy it, even though I did not recognize about 90% of the music played. I think that Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros were the only ones I knew. Of course I had heard of Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft before, but never played them or heard their music.

The concert was sold out! I expected only a few people, but last night, Saskatoon's nerd population came out to enjoy a little culture. I told Jason that after being there and seeing all the nerds, that I am never allowed to call him a nerd again.

One of the highlights of the show for me was Martin Leung. He has become quite famous after he posted a video on youtube of himself playing the Super Mario Bros theme on the piano, while blindfolded. He now tours with Video Games Live! He did that last night, but also took off his blindfold and played some other songs as well. He is a very talented young man!!

I am not a parent

I don't feel that I have the right to judge people's parenting styles because I have never been in their shoes.

Can I ask the other parents who read this blog a question....

If your child does not respond or care about your forms of punishment is it not time to try something different? The only forms of discipline I can think of for a younger child is a time out, spanking, taking toys away......yeah, I am feeling a little short on options here.

So if you tell the child it is time for a time out, and they whine and cry and won't sit still, what is the next option? In my mind, possibly a spanking. I know that not all parents agree with that, but I know that not all kids respond the same to different forms of discipline.

I have one friend who has a young child. I have seen her put her child into a time out numerous times and it is quite efficient for her. She puts a chair in the corner and makes the child sit on until she stops crying, then the time out lasts for thirty seconds or maybe a minute and the child has learned its lesson. I should mention that this child is between one and two years old.

So what do you do when the child is old enough to start talking back when you put them in a time out? Maybe if you tell them the time out doesn't start until they are quiet. I don't think it works to yell at the child. Or make empty threats.....

Again, let me say I am not a parent. But I think I have learned some helpful hints if I ever am one.

I would appreciate any advice anyone has to give.

Road Trip!!!!

This weekend I went on a road trip with two of my dearest friends. I have been friends with these girls FOREVER!! It was a good time! We left bright and early Friday morning and got to Calgary at about 3:30pm. We checked into our hotel, the Blackfoot Inn, and headed over to the Chinook Centre for some shopping and supper. We had supper at Joey Tomato's and it was good, though quite noisy in the lounge. Then we checked out Chinook and headed back to the hotel for night time.

Our hotel was quite nice. The beds were comfy, it was clean, and looked like it had been fairly newly renovated. The best part is that was only $104/night. Not too shabby!

Saturday we got up and went and checked out Ikea. I bought a couple of things there and then we had lunch there. Good meatballs and fries for a reasonable price! After lunch I dropped Karen off at the hotel for a nap, and Arleen off at Chinook for some shopping and I carried on to visit my grandpa. He moved into a nursing home last summer and I have not visited him there yet. It is a nice little place and we had a good chat for about an hour. I then went and got Arleen and we went back to the hotel to figure out where we wanted to go next.

We decided to go check out Sunridge Mall. I had never been there and it looked like they might have some fun stores. We went there and realized that they had an H&M store. I thought the only one in Calgary was at Market Mall. We checked it out and I got a new shirt. After we were done there we went to The Cheesecake Cafe for supper. Mmmmm cheesecake. After that it was back to the hotel to get ready for bed.

Sunday we got up and decided to go check out the Signal Hill box mall. I wanted to check The Shoe Company for some new casual shoes. We got there about 10:30am and stores didn't open until 11am so we went to Starbucks for a drink. I tried a vanilla rooibos latte and it was quite tasty! After that went to the shoe store and I got some shoes, Arleen got some shoes and Karen got an awesome new purse!! We had lunch at Montana's, then headed over to Market Mall. We browsed around there and I found a nice pair of knee length jean shorts at Jacob.

When we finished up at the mall I called my aunt and we went and had supper with her and one of her friends at a Vietnamese restaurant. When we were done supper we went to an African concert at her church. It was really neat!!

Yesterday we got up and checked out and had brunch at our hotel then drove home. It was nice to get home.

It was a lovely weekend! I have not spent that much time with Karen and Arleen for a LOOOONG time. I have never driven in Calgary and did a fair bit this weekend. It wasn't so bad. The big reason we did so well is that mom and dad lent us their GPS for the weekend and that thing is awesome! We missed a couple of turns or exits, and it would automatically show us an alternate route to get where we were going. I think I will be asking to borrow it again for our summer holidays!!!!