Ever hear anyone exclaim, “Oh, fudge!” when they’ve screwed something up? Like the Slinky, the Post-It note, potato chips, and penicillin, the dense candy-like treat known as fudge is believed to have been a mistake. …
Father’s Day is observed annually on the third Sunday in June. This day is set aside to honor and celebrate fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. Many countries celebrate it …
June 14 is set aside to observe National Pop Goes the Weasel Day. On this day people dig back into their memories to the nursery rhymes they learned as children and celebrate the day singing …
National Flag Day is celebrated annually in the United States on June 14. This day commemorates the adoption of the United States flag on June 14, 1777. On National Flag Day, Americans show respect for …
Most all these comments are way too close for comfort! It has been said that “no one escapes childhood unscathed.” But sayings like these can have an especially significant meaning for a person who has …
I hope I’m not jinxing myself but today I am thankful that I haven’t had any migraines for a while.
It’s not “just” not having migraines, but the fact that, should I get one, there’s nothing I can do about them anymore.
I used to get migraines quite often, a hormone thing probably. I spent lots of hours in a completely dark room, blocking out sound, trying to keep my head from pounding.
There was a long period of time that I had a migraine 6 days out of the week for several weeks. By accident, a friend asked me on a Monday if I had one that day and that started me thinking – why do I have them every day except Mondays? I figured out that it wasn’t a migraine at all but an allergy headache – I was allergic to the bath oil I was using Monday-Saturday. I gave that to my Mom and those headaches went away.
I still often get allergy headaches. Since my Cushing’s transsphenoidal pituitary surgery, I can’t smell things and I often don’t know if there’s a scent that is going to trigger an allergic reaction. In church and elsewhere, my Mom was my “Royal Sniffer” and if someone was wearing perfume or something scented, shed let me know and we would move to a new location.
There’s a double whammy here – since my kidney cancer surgery, my doctor won’t let me take NSAIDs, aspirin or any of the meds that might help a headache go away. If I absolutely MUST take something, it has to be a small amount of Tylenol only. My only hope would be that coffee from Day Eleven. And that’s definitely not usually enough to get rid of one of these monsters.
So, I am very thankful that, for the moment, I am headache/migraine free!
Today, and every day, I am thankful for coffee. Without it, I would have a daily headache and I’d have even less energy than I have now.
I first started drinking coffee when I had my first job as a waitress at a Hayes-Bickford in Boston, MA. This was a summer job. A bunch of my college friends had gotten an apartment near Fenway Park in Boston and most of us were waitresses in various places.
Hayes-Bickford was marginally better than a dive.
I was fortunate that I was the youngest waitress at that Hayes-Bickford, so I got the best tips.
This was a l-o-n-g time ago – I’d get out of work sometime after midnight, take the Boston subway alone to our apartment, with an apron full of my tips, mostly in jangly change. That could never happen anymore!
Even without the money, I still wouldn’t wander around the Boston Common area of Boston alone after midnight.
We were right around the corner from the “Combat Zone”.
According to Wikipedia “The Combat Zone was the name given in the 1960s to the adult entertainment district in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Centered on Washington Street between Boylston Street and Kneeland Street, the area was once the site of many strip clubs, peep shows, X-rated movie theaters, and adult bookstores. It also had a reputation for crime, including prostitution.
I’m sure my parents would have had a fit if they’d known where I was working!
The food at HB wasn’t so great. Sometimes, a patron would order some type of meat and the chef would say we were out of it, to put gravy on whatever-we-had and tell the diner that it was what he had ordered. We were usually out of a lot of things.
But the coffee was good and I learned to drink it, lots of it, and black, something I still do today. If I could do the IV thing, I would!
This is going to sound really stupid but today I am thankful for my dropbox.
I have files all over the place and I work on them on different computers (PC and Mac), at home or at work, on my iPhone, iPad and other places. If I’m away from home without any files (rarely happens!) I can still access my stuff online and do with it whatever I want.
I am really lazy and it’s so nice to have my files synced everywhere. I don’t have to try to find a cable, zip drive or SD card. Sometimes I’ll find an image or a program I want to install on a different computer and I just stash it in my dropbox. When I’m done, I delete it or move it to its permanent home to save space on the dropbox.
I had the free version for many years and was always monitoring how much space is available. I finally upgraded to a paid version when I had a lot of files for work – and a friend’s entire website backed up.
This really makes my life a little easier and, for that, I’m very thankful today!
TiVo. I love that I can fast forward through commercials and have all my favorite shows waiting for me when I lie down on the sofa (and fall asleep!)
I probably wouldn’t have gotten one of these when we did but our son got us one for Christmas many years ago. He had it all set up and ready to go on Christmas morning.
At that time, I had no idea of its capabilities but now, I don’t think I could live without it!
Today, I am thankful for Saturdays. It’ the one day of the week I don’t have to be anywhere, do anything. I can do webwork, if I want, but I don’t have any deadlines.
I never have doctor appointments on Saturdays, no medical testing.
No piano students. I don’t even talk to prospective students on Saturdays.
It’s a day for maybe brunch, a trip to the farm, maybe a little TV, maybe (most assuredly!) a nap.
Saturdays are family days, even though our family is smaller than it was.
We’ve been fortunate to be able to travel to several interesting places.
Some, like Iceland, we just lucked in to. We’d wanted to go to Ireland but the travel agent couldn’t get us in at any time over that summer. She did get us a deal where, if we flew Iceland Air, they’d give us a free week in a hotel in Iceland before flying us to London. Duh! Wonderful trip.
A couple years ago we were in Costa Rica and took a day trip to Nicaragua where we stood at the rim of Masaya, a live volcano.
Our bus driver was a very good driver who told us all about the history of Skagway and the surrounding areas. Our first stop was Liarsville (http://www.klondiketours.com/goldcampshow.html), a tent village for gold miners. It was called Liarsville because many newspaper reporters were there publishing tales of how “easy” it was to find gold and become rich. No Way! The locals did a show for us and let us pan for gold. Of course, most everyone found some little gold flakes. A very hard way to make a living!
We made our way up the White Pass on the Klondike Highway to a 3,000 ft waterfall, Dead Horse Gulch (a lot of pack horses couldn’t make it the whole way), the Moore Bridge, Yukon Suspension Bridge at Tutshi Canyon and up over the West White Pass into Fraser British Columbia Canda, the same way that the miners had to walk or go with pack animal and 2,000 pounds of supplies. Much easier by heated bus! It was very scenic and we took lots of pictures.
At the summit of that, in Fraser, British Columbia, we got on the White Pass & Yukon Route (WP&YR) Railroad train.
The WP&YR was originally built to help those miners who were hauling the ton of supplies up the pass but they finished building the railroad a year after the gold rush had ended. There’s more info about this railroad at www.wpyr.com We went over trestle bridges, through tunnels, over glaciers. Definitely a worthwhile trip.
Today I am thankful for naps, even longer than those on the chart above. Ever since my Cushing’s days in the early 1980’s, I’ve needed long daily naps – like 3 hours each – to get through the day.
My endo says I’d have more energy if I took more Cortef, but when I do, I gain more weight. Of course, I *might” have more energy to work off the weight.
<sigh>
So, I nap and I’m very thankful that I can arrange my life to accommodate my long naps.
I am so thankful for all my doctors but today I am thankful for Dr. Amir Al-Juburi who saved my life by removing my kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma).
In 2006 I picked up my husband for a biopsy and took him to an outpatient surgical center. While I was there waiting for the biopsy to be completed, I started noticing blood in my urine and major abdominal cramps. I left messages for several of my doctors on what I should do. I finally decided to see my PCP after I got my husband home.
When Tom was done with his testing, his doctor took one look at me and asked if I wanted an ambulance. I said no, that I thought I could make it to the emergency room ok – Tom couldn’t drive because of the anesthetic they had given him. I barely made it to the ER and left the car with Tom to park. Tom’s doctor followed us to the ER and became my new doctor.
When I was diagnosed in the ER with kidney cancer, Tom’s doctor said that he could do the surgery but that he would recommend someone even more experienced, Dr. Amir Al-Juburi.
Dr. Amir Al-Juburi has been so kind to me, almost like a kindly grandfather might be, and he got rid of all 10 pounds of my kidney and cancer.
I owe him, the original doctor, and my Cushing’s doctors (who will be featured later!), my life.
Today, since it’s a “teaching day”, I’m thankful for my piano studio, my students, and my piano 🙂
When I was growing up, my dad was a minister, meaning we lived in whatever parsonage the church chose to let us live in. The one we had in Pawcatuck, CT had an upright piano that someone had put out in the sunroom. Not the best place for a piano, but I digress.
Since we had the piano already, someone – probably my mom – decided that I would take lessons. We had the organist from the Baptist church just across the river in Westerly, RI
Apparently, Clara Pashley was fondly remembered at the church (now Central Baptist Church) since she was mentioned in an article from 2010.
Miss Pashley walked to our house each week and taught me (and my mom who was always listening in) piano for the grand sum of 25 cents.
I started with Ada Richter’s classic Teaching Little Fingers to Play, which has now been morphed into the John Thompson library.
From there, it was the Michael Aaron series, and some sheet music.
There was no music store in our town, so I have no idea where any of this music came from – but I still have it all.
My parents did very well for their quarter a week investment, especially since my mom paid good attention and was able to beef up lessons she’d had as a child. Later on, she played well enough that she was church organist for a local Roman Catholic Church.
But I digress…
In those days, kids couldn’t do a whole lot of activities, so in 6th grade, I decided I wanted to be a Girl Scout. Bye, bye Clara.
Girl Scouts didn’t last long but I did play piano in a talent show. I remember, I carefully cut Burgmüller’s Ballade out of my Michael Aaron book and made a nice construction paper cover. (I still have this, too)
I doubt that I played this well but here’s what it was supposed to sound like:
A few years intervened and we moved to Springfield, MA. The parsonage piano there was in terrible shape and in the dark, never-used basement. But I decided to make it mine and cleared up the area around it and started “practicing”.
My Junior or Senior year of High School I decided I wanted to major in music in college. I decided to learn, on my own, a piano arrangement of Aragonnaise by Jules Massenet. I have no idea why or where that sheet music came from but I started working furiously on this piece.
Hopefully, at some point, it should have sounded like this:
I started pedaling (no pun intended!) my music to the Universities of Connecticut and Massachusetts and ended up at UMass Amherst since we were state residents.
Early morning gym classes (usually swimming), then wet hair traipsing across campus to music theory in winter 5 days a week. AARRGGH!
But I stuck it out.
My wonderful piano teacher, Howard Lebow, was killed in a car accident my sophomore year and I was devastated. There was about him in a post on January 26, 2018 over on https://oconnormusicstudio.com
I took yet another break from piano lessons – but I kept playing.
After DH graduated, we moved to Milwaukee, WI for his graduate school. Besides working 2 jobs, I found time to commandeer the practice rooms at the University of Wisconsin. I also found a teacher at the Schaum School of Music. She was amazed that I had no piano at home to practice on.
When we later moved to Alexandria, VA my DH gave me a choice of new car or piano. So, I found a used piano. The owner had acquired it in a divorce and wanted it gone. Yesterday. She even paid to move it out of her apartment.
The new-to-me piano took up half our living room. When my parents came to visit, their feet were under my piano as they slept on cots.
I found yet another new piano teacher and she is still my best friend to this day.
That piano moved to several locations before I bought a brand new Yamaha grand piano. The movers accidentally brought in the wrong one and I made them return it. The people who lived in an apartment were probably unhappy when they had to return my piano and take their own new baby grand back.
I started teaching as a traveling piano teacher in Silver Spring, Maryland. I continued that in Wilmington, DE.
When we got to Fairfax, VA I decided no more traveling. Students would come to me. And so they have since 1973.
What is supposed to be our living room is filled with music books, electric keyboards, the grand piano, 2 organs, 2 violins, 2 clarinets, a hand-made (by me!) dulcimer and other musical “stuff”.
Piano playing has gotten me through the worst times of my life. Teaching has been a lifeline for me, as well.
I am so thankful for the students who have stayed with me over the years.
Although low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH) is currently recommended as the gold standard for anticoagulation in patients with hypercortisolism, our evidence suggests that low-dose antiplatelets such as aspirin 81 mg could outperform it.
Can someone please help me? Over the past few years I have gained over 40 lbs, suffer from extreme fatigue, muscle cramps, headaches, just to name a few. I also have a hump between my shoulders. I have gone to see my primary care physician and asked about Cushing’s syndrome and she said that there’s just […]
Adrenal insufficiency is still a preventable cause of death, and a diagnosis carries with it considerable implications for the patient, family and caregivers. Early diagnosis and prevention of acute crisis is key. This session will address less well known etiologies, diagnostic tests and novel treatments for prevention of patient morbidity and mortality.
I have to say, I am not surprised. It’s so upsetting to me how many doctors went to medical school, graduated, worked as residents somewhere and still no so little about endocrinology. It’s inexcusable and quite frankly it’s tiring to hear them always say, “exercise more, eat less” blah blah. Thank goodness for Alyssa her […]
Adrenal insufficiency is a condition where the adrenal glands don't produce enough of certain hormones, primarily cortisol and sometimes aldosterone. This disorder can be categorized into primary (Addison's disease) and secondary forms.
Cushie Calendar! Our Cushie Calendar has been updated with a new look and it's now embedded with the message board calendar. All items are color coded. There are iCal and RSS links at the lower right and there is a Printable View.
Irina Bancos, M.D., an endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Jamie J. Van Gompel, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Minnesota, discuss Mayo’s multidisciplinary approach to adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-secreting pituitary tumors.
Adrenal crisis is a life-threatening medical emergency, associated with a high mortality unless it is appropriately recognized and early treatment is rendered. Despite it being a treatable condition for almost 70 years, failure of adequate preventive measures or delayed treatment has often led to unnecessary deaths.
Once-daily evening osilodrostat improved cortisol rhythms, sleep, and quality of life in Cushing syndrome without compromising disease control or safety.
Today’s assignment is a very popular piece by Johann Pachelbel called Canon in D. A canon is a technique that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader, while the imitative melody, which is […]
What has dinosaur fossils, dinosaur updates, fun, magic, and life-sized dinosaurs? Dinoman Dinosaurs of course! Many dinosaur questions are answered using facts, magic, and audience participation. Life-size dinosaurs appear just in time to visit with and take photos!
Looking to work on fiber crafts with others? Members knit, crochet, do needlepoint and more! Bring your own project, work at your own pace and enjoy the company of fellow crafters. Weekly until June 25
For potty-trained three year olds through ninth graders. Embark on an exciting journey with Road Trip VBS, based on Joshua 1:9 – "The LORD your God is with you wherever you go." Discover God's presence everywhere as we explore new places, make new friends, and experience God's goodness together. Join us in a fun-filled adventure […]
Enjoy storytime all summer long. Read stories, sing songs, and use your imagination while building early literacy skills. The best way to grow a love of reading is to read together with your child and have fun doing it – at Family Storytime, we will model important skills in literacy development in a fun and […]
Discover a supportive space for new beginnings! Join us every Wednesday at 6:00 PM, in the serene ambiance of Pender UMC's Library. At 5:00 PM there will be a time of casual chat, known as the "meeting before the meeting". Engage in meaningful conversations and find camaraderie at our AA meetings, guided by the experienced […]
Join us for hand and machine sewing, crochet, and embroidery! Chat, make friends, and work on sewing projects with your community. Every Wednesday until August 13
Pictures of paint palettes showing some of our favorite colors are scattered among the children’s books. This scavenger hunt at the City of Fairfax branch is fun for all ages and runs during FCPL’s Summer Reading Adventure – June 11th through August 18th!
