A new post

I just noticed it’s been over three months since my last post. I really seem to go in dribs and drabs at the best of times.

Life carries on at the Lorikeet household.

I am working more hours these days. The man I am a carer for got lots more funding this year and my two hour shift doubled to four. Plus I have taken over for the other carer on several occasions, and the pay is quite a bit more for weekend days and even more on holidays. Anyway, I’ll be adding an extra eight hours over two more days in a couple of weeks to cover for the other carer who is unable to continue with that work load at the moment. This is to continue until November although there is always a chance I will keep some of those hours. It’s not quite as many hours as I’d like but it’s still so much more than the measly two I’ve been doing.

Also, I did stints at two campuses of counting people in rooms for a utilisation survey in March/April. Each last a week of fours hours daily. The first week was quite easy, thanks to my much fitter body. The second week was pretty exhausting since it covered a lot more ground. I think I was walking something like 10 kms a day for that job.

I am still doing pretty well with my exercise regime. I did fall off the wagon on doing more strength training but I am getting cardio workouts several times a week right now. My biggest challenge has been eating habits. Around Easter I started going heavy on carbs and I could tell a difference with overload. I have settled back down from that but still find I’m eating too much junk so need to work that little bit more on improving eating habits.

We recently started a new term at tai chi and the Scientist and I starting to learn tai chi sword. We’ve already learned two styles of fan and the regular tai chi set. I was a bit hesitant on this one for concerns over the weight of the sword but decided to give it a try. I’m having to do it right-handed because it’s tricky for the teacher to teach a lefty…I’m sure she would try if it’s impossible for me…so far I’m okay but the movements have only just shifted to using my right hand so it’s early days. Also the advanced group is learning Beijing 24 which is a competitive type of tai chi that has been standardised between various styles. It’s different so far but kind of neat to be learning something pretty different.

Health-wise, I have been mostly okay but have a couple of issues. Some body hair loss was noticed recently and it’s quite obvious in one area so it seemed worth checking out. I don’t think the hair on my head is falling out more than usual although I could be wrong. Since it’s long, it always seems like I’m losing lots of hair. I had a whole bunch of blood tests run just over a week ago and a few came up abnormal although most weren’t terribly so. The worst affected is my iron levels. I don’t think I’ve had a normal transferrin sat level in nearly three years and the ferritin is also often below normal. The actual iron is more normal although right now it’s on the lowest possible normal it could be. Anyway, I’ve been offered an iron infusion to help that along (hopefully) and that’s scheduled on Friday and should take about an hour including the doctor visit. Hopefully this might get me back on track for the first time in a long while. The doctor I’m seeing suspects this might be the problem with the hair loss so it will be interesting to see if this helps things along in that area too.

The other tests that are in question are my vitamin D level (too low) and my parathyroid level (too high). Apparently the parathyroid level can be properly understood without a calcium test so I had that done today. The gp I’ve been seeing told me to take vitamin D tablets but I understand that it’s important to find out the reason for my parathyroid first…This doctor is young so I guess she has little experience in this area. I’m holding off on this until I know that my calcium isn’t high. My father has issues with his parathyroid and he has problems with his calcium being too high which poses lots of problems in treatment due to other medications he takes. I honestly have not heard much about parathyroid issues over the years, except for when my father had his. He has a tumor on his parathyroid that can’t be removed due to closeness to some major artery or something like that.

Which reminds me that a few weeks ago, I also had a blocked tear duct which got rather swollen all of a sudden and sent me off to see the doctor on a Saturday morning. That’s cleared up but it’s interesting because it’s a common issue in Sjögren’s syndrome and this is my first time experiencing it. Since that started, my eyes have been particularly dry so I am so glad to have artificial tears available.

I’ve been doing a lot more reading of actual books lately, mostly on my Kindle. I must admit I find physical books less appealing lately, especially at night when I need some light to read. I resisted the Kindle for a long time because I hate that it’s a proprietary format. But after trying other e-readers, I find it works better than others I’ve tried and, of course, it’s got a very established database of books. I find I am downloading lots of the free books and some of them are quite good. One of my latest books I finished was a light novel I found amongst a bunch of manga titles. I can’t recall if it was free or very low price…but it was a pretty long book and I really liked it.

Well that’s quite a long read and it’s kind of late so I will quit for now and hopefully remember other things I want to write about later on.