Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Katie - the cocka-poo has a good prognosis!

Katie had her battery of tests yesterday and its now proven that she has a single liver shunt external to her liver so it will be easy to fix. The blood tests they did confirm that she was deteriorating rapidly from the same tests done in October. Many of her key factors were now seriously out of the normal range due to the failure of her liver and kidneys to function properly.

We have been assured that one the shunt is fixed she will stop having seizures because they are being caused by the abnormal buildup of ammonia in her bloodstream.

They gave us (well, we actually had to pay for them) 3 meds to start her on to prepare her for the surgery in two weeks. If all goes properly, she should have no more seizures nor have bladder control problems which has plagued us off and on.

My daughter, Carol, came over today to help me finish up translating my life to the 65 and older crowd. So much to do to get social security setup correctly and make the transition to a retirement pension from my company. Lots of T's and I's to be done correctly and still, they got my name wrong on the medicare card. Guess where they have been trying to save money has been on training of SS processors.

.. But I won't go there! Just suffice it to say that after 4 months of working on all of this, we are 2/3 of the way to completion.

I will say that one thing that caught me by surprise was when I found out that my $83,000 life insurance coverage from my company gets reduced to just $5,000 when I turn 65. That blindsided me, completely. Sure, they have a rollover program so I can pick the difference back up without having to take a medical exam but it will cost me $384 per month just to keep my life insurance. I have to explore other options... maybe AARP. I have heard that they have a fairly good program.

Merrily is out with the girls tonight to see a chick flick at the $1.50 theater over by the NCSU campus. I am very glad to go with her anytime she really wants to see something but our tastes in certain areas don't line up perfectly and its great that she is ok with not inviting me to certain events but goes with friends.

I, on the other hand, get leftover chinese sweet and sour shrimp (or something) for dinner. Yummo!

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