Just need to talk to my friends (204)
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Ranunculous do not attract bees.
The flower fields last from March until early May, then the roots with bulbs are dug up and dried and then shipped all across the US and around the world for gardens.
Iris
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JeriLynn, I love barn swallows. They ate so cute. They used to build nests on our front porch so we got to watch them from building nests to the time the babies fledged. We came home one day and there was a snake at a nest over the sunroom door. I don't know if there were eggs or babies in the nest. The snake had climbed about seven feet up the wall to the nest. The swallows quit building nests on the porch but each spring I still see where they have put a strip or two of mud to start a nest but never finish. One time all the bsbies.except one had fledged and the mother kept coming back trying to get the baby to fly. It finally did but she worked hard b get it to. Enjoy them for me. Judith, are you getting rain or storms? We will get that about noon. Three to five inches of rain predicted the next few
. Stay safe.
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Something is screwy with things. The post I wrote earlier disappeared, then reappeared. Sometimes there is.not room to post and names of posters do not always appear.
The heavy rain Is about 30 minutes away so will stop and go on the mailbox. Been doing laundry this morning. Last load is in the dryer.
Funny his morning Darwin said he was tired. Said he had herded cattle all night on acres and acres of grassland and lots of cattle. This dream came, I imagine from him telling me he thinks my cows are across the road from him.
Back later, if permitted.
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Lorita— That's exactly what happened earlier this week to me. Weird. I can't post on the thread using the "reply" button either. And it's the same on both my laptop running Edge and my phone running IOS.
HB0 -
I have a video appointment with my neurosurgeon Wednesday and hope that all the clearance on risk factor has been put in the system. I'm so tired of all this and Lou's date of death coming up next month, I haven't hardly been out if the house in weeks. Mental health is changing my depression medicine, they have one that helps with pain as well as the depression.
Everyone has just about talked me in to moving. I will probably stay with my son while I look fir a small cabin to put on their land. Ive never had to downsize before, but everytime I come up with a excuse not to move, someone has a solution. They do have a VA facility in springfield, but I don't know if it's a fully equipped hospital or a satellite. Of course there is always care in the community that the VA will send you to if the hospital is to far. If I do move, it will probably be by the end of summer, before football season.
Ron
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Ron…thank goodness you are checking out medical care! If it is a VA hospital in Springfield be certain you are eligible and have documentation needed. My husband was not eligible. This is something your son can figure out for you.
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Ron, that is good to hear about your medicine adjustment, hopefully that will help with both pain and depression. I can't believe it's going to be a year since Lou's passing; I know you must miss her terribly but you know she would not want you to be alone and sad. You are blessed to have your son and family that want you to be close to them; some people have no one. I think it will be good for you to be around people that care about you and you will enjoy being around your grands and great grands. They want to take care of you, let them!
Judith, how long since you lost your DH? I hope you don't mind me asking.
It's been a rough day for me today, no particular reason, the tears just flow. I wish I could burn a calorie for every tear I shed.
xo
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Iris, the flower fields are amazing! Here in Iowa, the sunflower fields bloom in July-September and many people have pictures taken by them.
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caro-lynne….Dick died 91/2 years ago. While my life is interesting I find I miss him perhaps more deeply now. He was 12 years older than I and maybe the missing is caused by my age….I do see and feel things differently now that I did when younger.
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HB, I'll look up some info for you on osteoporosis. With the Fosamax GERD - it's contraindicated. However, Reclast is the same class of drug and is given IV - once a year I think, and no reflux. There are other injectables as well. I watch YouTube and have found exercises and dietary guidelines for osteoporosis. I also am on Facebook groups: Strong Bones Challenge, Osteoporosis Natural Remedies and Osteoporosis Education and Support. Basically what I did (and do) is impact exercises (heel drops) and jumping; resistance training (lift weights - not heavy - one 10 lb weight in each hand) with overhead lifts, squats and farmer's carry. Also get enough protein - some say 80 grams/day; some say more; I don't get that much but maybe 60 grams. Also Vitamin D, dosage titrated to lab value, and calcium 800-1000 mg/day - mainly from food but supplement if cannot get it all from food in a day. The exercises I do would probably not be feasible for a frail person like your mom - anyway, I will link some references later. I hope your DEXA is good. Sorry about your wrist. I have a history of carpal tunnel and cortisone injections helped a great deal.
Welcome, David! If you feel so inclined, tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm Beth from Iowa and I came to this site when caring for my mom with dementia. She passed away in 2017 and I stayed, primarily on this thread. I love gardening and traveling and have a son, daughter and 8 grands.
Great photo, JeriLynn! You live in a beautiful place!
Iris, the flowers in the fields are gorgeous! Here in Iowa, the sunflowers bloom in July-September. Many have their photos taken in the sunflower fields and post them on Facebook.
Ron, best wishes with your mental health and your physical pain. I think it would do you good to be close to your son and grandkids.
4 grands (15, 11, 11, and 10) stayed all night last night. We baked muffins and cookies which they enjoyed doing. I made them oatmeal and eggs for breakfast. One of the twins (the girl) loves flowers. We took her with us to a garden center and bought a lot of things! A lot! (But I'm not done yet!) Then she came home with us and helped me plant my pots. Below, this is the look I'm going for in two of my pots. Hugs, Beth
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Ron, there is no VA hospital in Springfield MO. It is a satellite, built a couple of years ago to replace the satellite in Mt. Vernon MO. For a VA hospital you will have to go to Fayetteville AR or to Kansas City MO, either of which is at least three hours by car (and longer by air if you include time spent at the airports). There are two good hospitals in Springfield, but they aren't VA. Mercy is operated by the Sisters of Mercy (Catholic) and Cox is a private nonprofit.
Springfield has three colleges that field football and basketball teams, and a AAA baseball team. Come on up! I'll buy you a ticket and a bag of peanuts.
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Sorry, Caro-Lynne. I've had some smoke in my eyes lately too.
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I bought a packet of sunflower seeds this year, maybe I'll actually get them planted. They are easy to grow. My SIL threw out some stale birdseed and had sunflowers the next year, which I call easy.
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I hope everyone is having a good Saturday. We're at 64 degrees and full sun - very pleasant out. This will be our last sunny day for awhile, and then we're back to being overcast. I'm enjoying the sun while it's here.
Carl - I'm glad you're getting more rest and that your stress level is decreasing.
I saw your post about the Sisters of Mercy hospital, and immediately thought of the Sisters of Mercy, the goth band. I hope I'm not being disrespectful, it's just where my mind goes first. Here's Marian, one of my favorites by The Sisters. He's a pretentious one, but we love him anyway.
jfkoc - I love that Ansel Adams photo. And yeah, I love O'Keeffe's expression - I see a mischief maker.
And the Ghost Ranch - in New Mexico? If it's the same place, I got to go there once because of my interest in paleontology/fossils. There are a lot of Triassic formations there that contain many, many fossils - including Coelophysis, which is what drew me there.
And the Fyre Festival - it's exactly as @Caro_Lynne describes. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. He's out of jail now, and trying to do Fyre Festival 2.0. I can't imagine who would give him money for this. Here's the wikipedia page if you're interested. It's a years long train wreck.
JeriLynn - It's so pretty in your neck of the woods. I love your photo of the pond with geese.
Iris - gorgeous photos! I love sunflowers, although I'll admit, I sometimes find them a little disturbing.
HB - I hear you on the DEXA. I hope it all comes out well. I have one scheduled for a few months from now. Fingers crossed - at 5 feet, I can't afford to lose many inches!
For what it's worth, I have no plans to get a Real ID. I have a passport. For me, I'm more concerned about the privacy issues than anything else. I'm not so sure I trust DMVs to safeguard birth certificate data and other personal information. I don't know how secure everything is at a DMV, but I know that data breaches occur daily, so usually it's just a matter of time before bad security practices/carelessness catch up with you. Not that DMVs are either of those things, I just don't know that they aren't.
Ron - anniversaries like this are so very hard. Thinking of you. I'm glad you're getting your medications adjusted, it should help.
Beth - Every time I see photos of your garden or your flowers, I think that your neck of the woods must be a very serene place.
In sad news, my former next-door-neighbor is going down the dementia path. We checked in on him when we were in the Bay Area over Easter, and he was having a good day when we were there. Yesterday I got a call from his partner who asked me if I'd noticed any changes in V's behavior. I hadn't (and I was looking). But D told me that earlier the other day V had a couple of outbursts and was then really iffy about where/who his dentist is v. where his PCP is. The scary thing is that D and V live in separate places even though they've been together for almost 60 years. None of us are sure that V should be living on his own in San Francisco anymore, but I think that's an in-person discussion to have with D - and while being very careful not to overstep. So …. contemplating a trip to Palm Springs, where D lives. sigh
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Carl, where they live is Elkland and both son and daughter in law work in Springfield. Granddaughter lives and works in Springfield and grandson goes to high school in Buffalo, he has lettered in both junior football and baseball.
Jfkoc, i am rated 100% disabled vietnam veteran, so would not have a problem. Also, the VA started a care in the community a few years ago and if you lived far from a VA hospital they would coordinate care for you through the local community. Also, if you did have to drive to a VA hospital the VA would pay for a hotel room.
Power went off this afternoon for emergency gried service and only stayed on for a hour before going off again. I hope it's back on before I go to bed, guess I better be glad the 100 degree weather is not here yet. That would be one advantage of moving to Missouri, you can always put extra blankets on, but here you can't take off enough clothes.
Yahhhh, the power just came back on.
Ron
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We had another inch of rain today, makes 5.5 this week. Zetta, I have watched two good westerns today and watching The Horse Soldiers now.
Good night, everyone. Sleep tight
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good morning
It is only 34 this morning, but the sun is shining so I’m hoping it’ll be a pretty day.
HB thank you for those kind thoughts. Hope something like UPS or whatever works for him happens. It’ll be a great blessing. That’s one nice thing about my mom being placed is it helps with the boredom factor for sure.
Ron, I’m glad that you’re working on moving to where you have family. That will be a lot better for you I think and for them. I know not easy for a lot of people to do, but I hope that it will help you. My brother-in-law is a retired vet from the army. His experience in our area of Ohio has been that in certain areas such as his heart care, it’s been a lot better if he just sticks with the community care. When you start trying to get all that stuff coordinated, it brought up delayed care sometimes. And from working at the hospital and in my particular field, for some reason, the social workers didn’t take care of things we had to. I found dealing with the VA kind of slow getting things to happen. I did see though in my work with the sleep patients that it seemed like they gave very good care in that area. I don’t know how the process when at first though if it was slow or not though, because the sleep lab would’ve taken care of that issue not us. In my BIL’s case with this heart care, a lot of things needed immediate attention. Immediate attention had to occur in the community setting. Seem like coordination between community and VA setting for the rest of heart care became quite confused and difficult to manage. So he just totally switched to community for that but does still use VA for other things. After all the visits he had to the emergency room, Cath Lab, etc. VA did pick up on that and for a while, not sure if it’s still happening or not, a visiting nurse from the VA came to his home frequently, which was nice and interesting. So just work through all that in your area and go with what works the best for you.
coral I like growing sunflowers. They are beautiful and they also attract the birds. fairly easy to grow other than you like to eat the leaves.
HB I have osteoporosis and have been able to improve my situation also. I’ve gone a different route than Beth, they both have seemed to work, you have options. Another issue with the medication‘s for they can cause when you especially have to have a dental procedure is my understanding. I talked with my dentist about this in case I got approached about needing to go on medicine and his advice was to go orally if you can at all as there are less issues with the John necrosis on oral ones as compared to the IV ones. He was very happy that I was aware of the problem. He told me that many people who have came to him had no clue about this problem being associated with their medication that they were on. That’s one of the things that frustrates me with medicine is the lack of honesty about the good and the bad. Sometimes there’s no choice. You have to take your chances, but sometimes there are choices. I try to get 1200 mg of calcium a day. I do not take it by a supplement because in reading on supplements I don’t feel that that’s a wise choice. You could do that research for yourself. I see you’re very good at it from what I read here. What I do is I use milk I get it naturally. I use skim milk. Also incorporate quite a bit of lettuce and kale into my diet for vitamin K. I use a machine called marodyne. It is a low intensity vibration plate. If you go into YouTube and you search for it, you should be able to find quite a few articles regarding it. I learned about it through Sara Meeks, who is physical therapist, world expert in osteoporosis is my understanding. The plate is an investment, believe with cost tax and shipping. It was approximately $3200 I think. I use it every day and a lot of days I use it twice. I would like to use it twice every day but my days run out of hours. I also do some of Meeks . Those can be found on Bob and Brad on YouTube.
hope each one is blessed with a peaceful day
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Mint, Major changes has happened in the VA for veterans like myself that has multiple cronic health issues. I qualified for Care Coordination Integrated Case Management (CCIM). Under this program I have a nurse assigned to me that coordinate all my care. She calls weekly to remind me of appointments and I have her direct number if I need anything. I'm also on a home health monitor that I check oxygen and blood pressure and the machine sends the results directly to the VA. A nurse in that program is also assigned to me and if she sees anything suspicious she calls me, I also have her direct number.
I also need to make sure those programs are also available in Missouri.
Ron
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One of my favorite YouTube channels re osteoporosis: The Dr. Doug Show | Bones, Hormones, Healthspan
This channel is focused on Bones, Hormones, and Healthspan to help midlife women and beyond aim for optimal, not average, and reignite their spark! The videos on this channel will be focused around helping women navigate healthspan and longevity through the lens of osteoporosis, perimenopause, and menopause. When it comes to osteoporosis and menopause providers and educators often get tunnel vision and your symptoms might get better, but if you don't keep longevity in mind, symptom improvement may come at the expense of heart and brain health.Dr. Doug Lucas is a former orthopedic surgeon who now specializes in bone health and health span. He has many videos that you could find valuable. One thing I like about him is that he looks at clinical research studies and cites them; he's not just giving his opinion on matters.
Some recent video titles you might fine interesting: How to Reverse Bone Loss Without Guesswork or Outdated Advice , We Can Now Predict Osteoporosis BEFORE It Starts [,
There are many, many more valuable videos. You can peruse them yourself if you like.
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Morning, cloudy and cool here.
I worked in a VA Hospital for.over 33 years. At that time care of the veteran was the main objective for every employee and the Department. I have been retired for over 30 years with no.contact about the care provided since I.lost Charles over ten years ago. I know there are many new programs within the VA that were not available when I worked there. I do know Charles was given the best care he could have gotten anywhere. But things do change and looks like more changes are on the way.
I'm still in bed watching the morning news shows, even had breakfast in bed. Need to get up and feed the.birds and Rusty. It's too wet to do anything outside today so should concentrate on paperwork today.
I had osteopenia from the Dexa scan years ago. I took calcium religiously and it improved but I'm not too good about remembering to take it now. I should watch those videos.
Hope everyone is well today. Back.later.
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GG…the same Ghost ranch
I have a Dexa schedules. Weight lifting? Does being overweight count? Why would vibration help your bones?
Ron…sounds like a move will have you surrounded with love and activities…what a win/win.
Ex-son in law is almost out of the flip house. This has been a long pull!
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Judith, are you going to have him plant the Caladiums before he leaves? I wondered about weight lifting, too.
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grandson will plant
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I saw this article about how the Mediterranean diet and exercise can protect bone health in older adults.
Curious what you all think.
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Weight loss caused by starving oneself will cause loss of muscle and bone faster than it will cause loss of fat. The idea is to be strong and healthy, and that requires exercise and a healthy diet such as the Mediterranean diet. If you are losing more than two pounds a week, you are losing muscle with the fat.
Remember when astronauts come down from zero gravity conditions? Those people have to be wheeled off the landing zone, because their muscles have atrophied from disuse. Same with Covid patients who were on ventilators for weeks or months. They left hospital in wheelchairs, not because they couldn't breathe but because they were weak as babies from lying in bed.
I feel best when I walk every day, lift weights three times a week, and eat a balanced diet three times a day. A balanced diet, per my doctor, consists of one protein, one carbohydrate, and two veggies. Skip the added fats and sugars.
Some people need osteoporosis meds. One of my mother's coworkers broke her arm from the strain of opening the door of the restroom, but that's an extreme case. Doctors prescribe the meds for a lot of people because it is easy to persuade patients to take meds and hard to persuade patients to make lifestyle changes.
Muscles that aren't used lose muscle tissue, which is replace with fat, marbled like a feedlot steer. Bones that aren't used lose density and weaken. You see a lot of people who appear slim, but their body fat percentage may be high because they are sedentary. They will appear slim so long as they don't eat much, but they aren't as healthy as they look.
So, I recommend daily exercise and a healthy diet. Your stronger muscles and leaner physique will help prevent falls, and your stronger bones will make injury less likely if you do fall. While you are at it, get some sleep, do your homework, clean up your room, save your money . . . 😊
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DW seems to be doing a little better today, less anxious and no sign of pain. While I was there, I encountered a woman with whom I used to work. Her mother is in the same NH. I told her about the better one to which I am moving DW tomorrow and she is looking into it. Her husband was with her, moving pretty stiffly. He was run over by a drunk driver a couple of years ago while fitness walking. So I guess while we do those daily walks I recommended above we should look both ways before getting into the street.
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Well said, Carl. I need to practice what you preach. We have a recumbent bicycle so need to use that. I know I felt better and was stronger when I was feeding cattle, but was also younger.
I feel.better this afternoon. Just took down trash and the barrel is overflowing. Water is running across the road so hope the truck will run.
Time for The Americas, if they stop showing golf.
I will say goodnight now. Sleep tight.
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It is important to avoid hurting yourself when you lift weights. Keep your back vertical and lift with your arms and legs, not your back muscles. Lift smoothly. I know two men who tore their biceps from the bone by jerking the weights to lift more than they could lift smoothly. Lift a dumbbell like you would lift a baby - don't jerk it.
When I took a weightlifting class long ago, I was told to test the weights to find the heaviest one I could lift and then exercise with one a little lighter. Do two sets of ten repetitions, three times a week, giving the muscles time to repair and rest and grow a little on the days you don't lift. Exhale as you lift, inhale as you let the weight down. When the weight becomes too easy to lift, as it will after a few weeks of exercise, go to a heavier weight. After a few months, the weights you started with will feel like saltshakers to you.
I don't want to exercise. But I sure feel better when I do it.
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Lorita - Ha! Golf. When I'm at the gym on the treadmill the TV is often on - I see three things on a regular basis that I'd never see at home - Fox News, The Kelly & Mark talk show (funny, because I remember them from All My Children), and, yes, golf. So much golf. So much so that I started to know who was who, like the two guys named Justin. And wondering why I have golf stats in my brain. 😄
Carl - Homework. Is this going to be on the final?
But in all seriousness, I try to do the same things as you. I go to the gym four days a week, and lift weights (free weights and machines) and even do boxing and kickboxing, which I love. But - I don't walk 6 days a week for 45 minutes. I try to do a mile each day that I'm in the gym, but that's less than 20 min per mile.
I eat reasonably well, but I'm a chocolate addict. Always have been. I switched to dark chocolate years ago, and I don't think I over do it, but I can't say I really know how much is too much.
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The sun is shining and it is 67 degrees. I think I'll take my own advice, get off the porch and go for a walk. Talk to you later.
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Commonly Used Abbreviations
DH = Dear Husband
DW= Dear Wife, Darling Wife
LO = Loved One
ES = Early Stage
EO = Early Onset
FTD = Frontotemporal Dementia
VD = Vascular Dementia
MC = Memory Care
AL = Assisted Living
POA = Power of Attorney
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