Birthday Balloons

We just got home yesterday evening after being away 4 days visiting Elaine's parents and other family at the farm.   We had a great time there and a good trip home.   Yesterday was my birthday but we were mostly just traveling and had already celebrated my birthday early.   While traveling I started having problems with my trach tube.  It has an inflatable cuff (the light blue balloon that is down inside my trachea) that I deflate during the day and inflate at night to connect to the ventilator.   As shown in the pictures below there is a tube with filler valve (dark blue) that sticks out that I use to inflate and deflate the balloon cuff using a syringe. 

While traveling I would take air out of the cuff with a syringe and a few minutes later the air would leak back in restricting my breathing.  At night when I inflated the cuff to connect to the ventilator it would not stay inflated, the equivalent of a flat tire in my trachea.  I was not able to use the ventilator to assist my breathing for the night and got very little sleep.  So first thing in the morning I phoned the respiratory therapist (RT) to arrange a  trach tube change.  Usually I have trach changes at ambulatory care (out patient rooms)  at the hospital every 6 weeks.  Rather than arrange this at the hospital on short notice, the RT phoned back and said he will be right over to my house to do the trach change.   He was at my house in 20 minutes with new trach tubes and all his supplies and had the procedure done in short order.  Now that is real health care service.

   

Heading Home

Maryanne and Chris are heading home this morning.   They stopped at our house this morning  for about an hour before heading out on the road.  I has been great to have them here almost all summer and we will miss them now.  

My Daily Bread

Due to some problems with acid reflux I have been trying to be careful about what I eat to avoid problems.  However I was a little too careful and lost some weight which I cannot afford to do.  I have been discouraged trying to eat enough to try to gain some weight.  Janice showed me the Live Strong website that she has been using for over a month to track what she eats each day.   This website has a section called MyPlate  that you can enter the foods you eat each day and it will total the daily calories, fat, protein, carbohydrate, fibre, etc.  There is a huge database of every kind of food including different brand names of prepared and packaged foods that you can select from in entering what you ate each day.   You can select target daily calories based on if you want to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight.

I have now been using the Live Strong MyPlate website for a week to track what I eat and see if I am meeting the calorie requirements to gain weight.  Initially the website just has an estimate based on height and weight with 500 calories per day added to gain approximately 1 pound per week.  This is just an estimate because different people have varying metabolism and  activity levels.  But the calorie target can be adjusted with experience.   An example for one day is shown below.  Basically you select the item you ate or the closest to it in their database and the portion size.  Once you get used to the database it does not take much time each day to do the entries. 

So far I am up about 2 pounds but the real test is to see if I can sustain it.  In the past if I was up 2 pounds the next week I would be back down again.  My hope is that using the Live Strong website to track what I eat each day I can be more consistent in eating the required daily calories.  In addition I am learning more about how I am doing in terms of target amounts of daily protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre, etc.  So it is not just the amount I eat but a healthy balance of foods that meet the overall needs of my body.   

   

The Family 10 Years Later

On Wednesday we had family pictures taken at Kiwanis Park.  There are a lot of places and backgrounds for outdoor pictures there on rocks, in the trees, on a bridge, etc.  We had 90 pictures taken so we have a lot to go through and pick out the best ones  and do some cropping and/or lighting adjustments.   We had family pictures taken in that park 10 years ago in October 2001.  I was looking back to compare the pictures we had taken then.

August 2011

October 2001

Summer Days

We have been glad to be able to visit quite a bit with Maryanne and Chris this summer.  They are staying at Chris's parents' house but are over at our house quite a few days.  A week ago on Sunday evening we had Mike and Nicole here as well and the family gave me my early birthday gifts (but I will tell more about those another time.)   Maryanne and Chris are here one more week before they head home.  One thing Elaine wanted to do while they are still here is go on a bike ride with Chris and it work out to go on Saturday evening.  I went along to drive them to the start of the bike trail and then met them at different places along the path, which is what I usually do when Elaine goes for a bike ride.   

I took them up to the start of the bike trail in NW Regina.   

Here they are on the trail near Dewdney Ave. just east of the RCMP depot.

One place I went to meet them was at Kiwanis Park on Regina Ave. 

 Here they are near Kiwanis Park heading for Wascana Park

The end of the bike ride was at Pine Island.  It was after sunset by then so we packed up to head home.