19

Jul

The following post is the product of an over dialyzed mind.  Please proceed with caution! Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek!  We are halfway through another week y'all!  This one has been a bit of a challenge thus far.  Hang in there and just KEEP BANGIN! Sometime during the initial conversation that usually starts up after I meet someone who is not a fellow patient I'll get asked "What do you do?" My standard short answer is "I do dialysis and I write about it."    I have found that that answer

2017

17

Jul

Hey Everybody! Welcome Back!  I hope that you all had a good weekend and I hope that this week has started off on the right foot.  I will be taking some time off next week.  I'll give more details about that in upcoming posts. Today I want to share some philosophizing that I stumbled into after I left you on Friday.  After I finished my dialysis run for the day I took a little rest on the couch.  When I felt that I had regained enough energy I went into the kitchen to knock out the dishes.  I

2017

14

Jul

Hey Everybody! Happy Friday!!!!   We have put another week in the books y'all!  Congratulations!  I'm guessing that once you read the title one of two thoughts probably crossed your mind.  You either thought Oh my!  He's so bilingual! or simply WTF!  I'll accept either answer!  LOL!   It's Friday y'all and I've had to be somewhat serious all week with the interview and the rheumatologist.  Well enough of that mess!  One of my main coping mechanisms for keeping my PMA (Positive Mental

2017

12

Jul

Hey Everybody! Happy Midweek! It's 10:50 am.  I'm coming to you live from the shared waiting room of the Orthopaedic and Rheumatology divisions of Toronto Western Hospital. So far things have been going pretty smoothly.  I left K-W at 8:15 and I parked in the parking garage across the street from TGH at 10:15.  I don't really like parking there in the first place and today I wound up parking on the first level under the ramp.  It was so dark back there that I had to turn on my cabin light in

2017

10

Jul

Hey Everybody! Welcome Back!  I hope that you all had a good weekend.  I did.  The baby backs won the comparison test over the spares based on their meatiness.  I'm sure that y'all will sleep better tonight with that knowledge.  You're welcome!  I found it a little strange that the baby backs which were from the U.S. turned out to have more meat on them than the spare ribs which were cut from Ontario pork.  Spares are typically the meatier cut between the two.  Perhaps Ontario pigs are on a

2017

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