07

Jul

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday! It has been a slow news week here at KBM HQ.  In my case no news is good news so I am not complaining!  Canada Day, the 4th of July and the last day of school have all passed and that means that summer is officially here!  Congratulations to the young and old alike!  We made it y'all! Contrary to many of the song lyrics that have been written on the subject I have not always found the livin' to be so easy in summer's past.  I plan to take full advantage of all

2017

04

Jul

Hey Everybody! I hope that you all had a great holiday weekend!  My holiday spirit carries on as I celebrate my American roots on this most American of days. Happy 4th of July y'all!!!!  It's my day off from dialysis too!  YAY!!! As I mentioned in my last post Canada turned 150 years old 3 days ago and I feel privileged to have lived in this country for the last 11 years. Under the useless trivia category another way to say 150th is sesquicentennial anniversary.  You're welcome!  I think

2017

30

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!!! Happy Birthday Eve Canada! Everyone is gearing up for Canada Day tomorrow and I thought I'd put in my 2 cents towards the celebration.  So here goes. Dear Canada, My name is Charles Cook.  I am an American citizen with permanent resident status in Canada.  I immigrated to Canada from the state of Georgia exactly 11 years and 1 week ago today.  You might remember me from that day.  I was the tall dark unique looking fellow at the border looking around for signs

2017

28

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek!  As a PSA there are only 2 more shopping days until Canda's big 150th birthday bash!  You may not have heard too much talk about the occasion if for instance you've been living under a rock without a data plan.  For the rest of us it's been wall to wall red and white 150 and the Maple Leaf for months.  I'll have more to say in my next post from my American point of view.  That's called a teaser y'all.  Come on back and check it out.    When I went to bed last

2017

26

Jun

Hey Everybody! Welcome back!  I hope that you all had a good weekend.  Here we go again for another week y'all!  Is everybody ready?  My brain hasn't gone into gear yet and I am feeling rather sluggish above the neck this morning.  It'll be interesting to see if this post actually ends up making any sense by the time that I'm done.  Remember because this is stream of consciousness writing I'm seeing these words for the first time too!  LOL!   Before I layout the upcoming week I'd like to go

2017

23

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!  It's the first Friday of summer y'all!  We made it!  Congratulations! My schedule is a little out of whack today.  I am coming to you live from my chair in the waiting room of a Lifelabs office.  It is 12:18 pm and I am waiting for my name to be called for my 12:20 glucose test.  What do you know they’re running on time today and they just called my name!  YAY!!!  I’ll be right back.   It is now 12:37 pm and I’m back in my chair in the waiting room.  While I was

2017

21

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek!  Happy Summer! I just found a new source of excitement here at KBM HQ!  I had to deal with a Water Deficiency alarm this morning.  I think that I've explained before that Dolly needs water in order to do her thing.  In other words no water no dialysis.  This is how the system works.  There is a water monitor attached to the wall which has a sensor that lies in the bottom of the tray in which a water softener sits.  The monitor is also attached to the Reverse

2017

19

Jun

Hey Everybody! Welcome back!  I hope that you all had a good weekend.  I did!  Here we go again for another week! It's 9:18 am on Monday morning and I'm picking up right where I left off.  I just got rolling on my dialysis session.  2:42 to go!  Monica just stopped by to give me the rundown on her latest trip to Grand River for what I am hoping will be her last run as a courier of my blood.  She was happy to report she accomplished her mission.  My blood sample was delivered safely and on time

2017

16

Jun

Hey Everybody! HAPPY FRIDAY!!! I mean that deeply this week y'all!  I have managed to make it through what has been a challenging week thus far.  But hey I'm still here to write about it!  I count that as a win!  Congratulations to us all! I woke up in a surprisingly chipper mood even for me this morning.  Although Otto's screen told me that my body had its worst night of rest in awhile my mind felt clear and sharp.  For those of you scoring at home my sleep number was 5.6.  I hadn't been

2017

14

Jun

Hey Everybody! I'm back.  This time I'm coming to you live from my chair in the Grand River Home Hemo unit.  My blood cultures have been taken and sent off to the lab for testing.  It was decided that I should get a loading dose of vanco right away.  So here I sit hooked up to my first IV of the week.  Keith the pharmacist stopped by to let me know that I'll be coming into the hospital each morning in order to get my vanco level checked until my blood culture results come back.  Positive

2017

14

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek.  When I wrote Monday's post I thought that things would be settling down this afternoon relative to my very busy start to the week.  I thought wrong y'all!   I'm coming to you live from my dialysis chair.  It's 12:22 pm and I've got 2 hours to go on my abbreviated 2.5 hour run for today.  Why is my run abbreviated you may be wondering.  Well let me splain it to you.  It has been a day full of moving pieces to put it mildly.  The original plan for the way that

2017

12

Jun

Hey Everybody! Welcome back from what I hope was a good weekend for you all.  I took the day off from dialysis yesterday so Monica and I were able to spend a dialysis free day together on our anniversary.  YAY!!!  That was then and this is now.  I am back at it in a major way!  It's not even noon yet and I've already been to Grand River and back.  I completed my now bi-weekly blood work and I received the results shortly after I returned home while I was getting Dolly set up for my run.  I had

2017

10

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Saturday! I will not keep y'all long.  Thank you for joining me in celebration of the second year anniversary of my first blog post and the start of all things KEEP BANGIN! related.  WOW!!!  2 years and still bangin!  Thank each and every one of you members of what I call Banger Nation and the KEEP BANGIN MOVEMENT or KBM for short for all of the love and support that you have shown me and more importantly that you have shown each other especially over the past 12 months.

2017

09

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!  We made it!  Congratulations!  Another week is in the books and now we can look to the weekend.  This weekend will be extra special here at the old KBM HQ.  By the time we get together next week this website will have turned 2 years old and Monica and I will have celebrated our 3rd anniversary together!  Where does the time go?  Did the past year fly by as fast for y'all as it did for me?  Tune in tomorrow for a special Saturday post in celebration of KB!'s second

2017

08

Jun

Hey Everybody! I'm picking up right where we left off in yesterday's post.  I let a ball drop y'all!  So the afternoon ended with a whimper instead of a bang.  See what had happened was I was so locked in on juggling everything to make it to the dentist on time that I completely blanked on the extra moving piece that goes with my dental visits.  Since I proved to be prone to infections with LVAD I the Heart Function Team and my dentist have agreed that I need to take an antibiotic before every

2017

07

Jun

Hey Everybody! Good Wednesday morning to you all!  Happy Midweek!  Keep the faith because we're halfway there. I'm coming to you live from my dialysis chair at KBM HQ.  It is 10:56 am and I am just past the halfway point on my dialysis run for today.  It's another one of them days y'all jam packed with no time to relax.  Cue the circus music!  It's time for the juggling clown to come out.  Oh wait! Today I'm the clown!  Hey I just remembered that Ringling Brothers is done.  I guess that if I

2017

05

Jun

Hey Everybody! I hope that you all had a good weekend.  Here we go again for another week.  The good news is that day one is done.  Congratulations!  I'm a little off schedule today because they did something in the building that required the water to be shut off for several hours.  No water means no dialysis because Dolly can't run without a water supply.  I didn't want to take the chance that the estimated time for the repairs would not match up with the actual time that it took to do the

2017

02

Jun

Hey Everybody! Happy June! Happy Friday!!!  We did it again y'all!  Congratulations!  We have made it through another week!  YAY!!! Before I get into the details from my check up with Dr. Rosenstein I am pleased to report that I just renewed my subscription for this website for another year.  It was a bittersweet moment this year.  On the one hand I thought wow it's been another year already how time flies.  On the other hand I thought man it's already been another year and I'm still writing

2017

31

May

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek!  We are halfway through another week.  YAY!!!  Riddle me this.  When is weekly routine blood work not so routine?  Answer: When your potassium levels come back so high they tell you to go home and dialyze even though it's your day off!  Did that ever happen to you? Well it happened to me. Yesterday at Grand River Hospital I had a morning of major blood work plus I got my monthly dose of iron through an IV.  We wanted to get everything done yesterday so that Dr.

2017

29

May

Hey Everybody! Welcome Back!  I hope that you all had a great weekend.  South of the border the weekend continues because today is Memorial Day. Technically  Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember those who have fallen in service to their country during any war that America has taken part in.  There are a lot of wars to choose from even one big one where we just fought amongst ourselves.  Y'all know the one I'm talking about.  The history books call it the Civil War even though war by it's

2017

26

May

Hey Everybody! Live from my dialysis chair it's the Friday edition of the blog!  Happy Friday!!!  If you can't tell from that intro I'm in a pretty good mood today.  I am usually in a good mood on Fridays.  I think it's because we've been conditioned to think that Friday is a good day.  As I have said before my dialysis schedule doesn't give me weekends off but as George Thorogood's landlady said "That don't confront me none."  I'm in weekend mode anyway. Over the past week I have had a lot of

2017