I need advice… and an update.

Living On Oxygen for Life

I’m alive!!! I know… It’s been since November 2018 that I’ve written on my blog. There’s huge reason for that. We all know that the holidays are difficult being that it’s stressful and cold, not to mention, it’s also flu season. So, I stayed indoors a lot. K got me a PUPPY! I love her but she is super energetic and wore me out for the first month. Who am I kidding… she still wears me out but it’s not as bad as it was when we brought her home. FYI: She gets car sick. UGH! For those of you who follow me on Facebook or Instagram know most of this. In fact, if you don’t follow (which is totally ok!), I have a section down on the bottom of the right column of my blog that shows my Facebook and Instagram feed! Yay how convenient, right? No need to have the app!

I also ended up in the hospital in January due to severe shortness of breath and inflammation of my lungs and the doctors couldn’t figure out what caused it. That is so frustrating, am I right? I’m sure you can see me rolling my eyes. haha! When I got home from the hospital, I felt good but a week later, I started feeling worse than when I went into the hospital. You can imagine how nervous and scared I became. Don’t worry though. I put my thinking cap on as well as had a CT Scan with Contrast and a Echocardiogram that showed NO PULMONARY EMBOLISM (Yay!) but it did show that my Left Ventricle Ejection Fraction (LVEF) was 35%. Normal is 55% – 70%. That means my left ventricle (bottom left chamber of my heart) is have a hard time pumping out oxygenated blood to my body. YIKES!

I noticed with my SOB, since my doctor increased my Thyroid medicine, Syntroid, back in November, my breathing became much worse over the course of 2 months time. So, without telling my doctor after I started getting worse again in February, I split the pill in half. I do NOT recommend doing medicine adjustments without discussing it with your doctor. I plan on telling him. Within a weeks time, I started breathing better. K and I started becoming optimistic about my future again. My cardiologist started my on Entresto. He sent my home with samples and asked me to ask my Pulmonary Hypertension doctor to check into any possible interactions it might have with Tracleer/bosentan because he’s not super familiar with Tracleer. It took my PH doctor nearly a week but she gave me the green light to start taking it. I’ve been on it for a week and a half and I think it is causing a moderately annoying side affect of itching on my head, face, shoulders and the back of my neck. So, now I need to call my cardiologist about that. *sigh*

But all of this is NOT what I need advice on. Sorry! I’m getting to it. *grin*

Last Tuesday, I received a phone call from my DME company, Lincare, who services my LIQUID OXYGEN. They told me, as of April 1, 2019, they are stopping all liquid oxygen service. I freaked, even though I was warned by one of my wonderful blog readers, Cindy. Thank you so much Cindy! Lincare gave me the names of 4 companies in my area who still service Liquid Oxygen. One of which I’ve used before years ago and one of them is a Nationwide company called Apria.

What I need help with is: Can any of my readers, who have had experience with Apria, tell me your thoughts of this company. If you have an opinion, please don’t just say that you like them or don’t like them… Please tell me why in the comment section. This could potentially help so many people who use Lincare for their liquid oxygen and have high flow oxygen use that won’t typically benefit well from switching to e-tanks for portability purposes.

To go on vacations, we loved Lincare because they also are a Nationwide company who arranged refilling my liquid oxygen reservoirs at our vacation destinations as long as they had a shop there. Selecting a local company for my future liquid service would definitely make it difficult for any future road trips which is crushing to K. Ok, me too but K REALLY loves the beach!

So, if you can help me with your opinion of Apria, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you so much! *HUGS*

Make, contain and freeze meals… our new adventure!

Living On Oxygen for Life

Hello everyone! Breathing easy, I hope! On this blog, I have written so much about so many things that it’s actually hard for me to remember not to repeat myself! I’m assuming you are like me and want to read about new things from your favorite author. Am I right? Did I just call myself your favorite author? Hmm.. do I even qualify as being an “author?” Well, I do write this blog but I’ll let you decide on if I’m your favorite. HAHA!

On Monday, K and I dove into a new adventure. Before I start anything new, I research the heck out of it. Pinterest is one of my favorite places to go for information. Then, I move on to Google search! Though, SIRI (on my phone) could find me the information I need faster, I’m the type to do the work myself. I think I learn more that way.

K and I decided, after months of me suggesting we should try this, to prepare a bunch of meals to throw in the freezers for the days where neither one of us are up to cooking. I do most of the cooking in our house and sometimes.. ok, a lot of times, I just don’t have the energy to make a great meal. Since I switched from using an inhaler to using a nebulizer recently, I’ve rediscovered some lost energy. I’m slowly starting to get more done around the house.

Word of warning: Don’t try this until you have one full day of time to cook and make sure you have everything you need before you start. I made a simple list of the order of cooking I wanted to accomplish and stuck it where it would always be right in front of me (on the face of the microwave!) We started with a half empty freezer out in our garage. Yes, we have a separate upright freezer. K bought me an upright freezer because he knew it would be difficult for me to bend over and search through a horizontal freezer. I also did an inventory of what can goods we had for the recipes that I chose to make to fill the freezer. By doing this, I could make a grocery list to make sure that we had all the food we needed. We only wanted to use fresh ground beef and fresh chicken because you shouldn’t thaw meat to cook and then refreeze it. You only want to freeze it once for quality sake.

I knew I had to save K some running around because he spent the day before at his mom’s house helping her with her yard work and her pond. I ordered all the food through Walmart’s Grocery pickup service. All K had to do was pick it up on Monday morning before we started cooking. I had already ordered and received from Amazon.com the foil pans that come with foiled cardboard lids (5 lb containers) and the Reditainer Extreme Freeze Deli Food Containers (with Lids, 16-Ounce, 36-Pack) to store our prepared food. We were ready to rock!

The beginning of our meal prep adventure!

Once K unloaded the food, he proceeded to tell me that he was going to take a shower, which he did, and then he took a 30 minute nap. I was like, what? Wait a minute! I kinda panicked but he reassured me that when I truly needed help, he’d be there. I knew he was tired. It’s the beginning of the holiday season and he really needed the sleep. So, I got started with cooking the meat. I bought 15 lbs of ground beef and 2 packages of 6 large chicken breasts. I think my brain didn’t register how much ground beef could actually fit in my largest frying pan because I had to cook it in 3 separate batches. I had to cook the chicken in two batches. For the chicken, I just boiled them with 2 chicken bouillon cubes, salt & pepper. I used the broth from the first batch of chicken (added a little more water) to cook the second batch of chicken. I also reserved the broth for use in a few of the recipes we were making. Don’t let it go to waste. We ended up freezing the remaining 2 cups of broth! You could use it in chicken enchiladas!

Cooking the meat!

Half of the cooked beef!

By the time I was done cooking the first wave of chicken and beef, I woke K up from his nap in the family room recliner. He’s my heavy lifter and chopping guru. He use to be a Sous Chef in his former career. So, he’s fast with a knife. Really fast. So fast that I’m kinda jealous. I’m too accident prone with sharp things to even attempt to compete with his skills. He was in charge of chopping the onion and all the chicken. Thankfully, I kept the empty milk jug gallon I just finished and used that to funnel all the ground beef grease into. NEVER pour that stuff down the drain.

Beef grease!

By the time the second batch of ground hamburger was finish, I was started to get tired. Unfortunately, as I dumped the cooked beef in my jumbo mixing bowl, I dumped some of it on the kitchen floor. Guess who got to clean up that mess? Yep, my dog.. Rocco to the rescue. Ugh! It’s ok, I had plenty of beef to share. K decided to make the leftover cooked hamburger (about 2 pounds) into taco meat to freeze into 2 separate quart sized ziplock bags. Once we had all the meat cooked and the onions diced and sautéed in a little of the beef grease (K’s idea!), it was time to start preparing the marinara (in my largest fry pan that I used to cook the beef in) and the chili (in the crockpot). It was 2 hours later when K went to stir and taste test the chili, that he told me what I forgot to add… yep, the chili powder. Oops! Where was my brain at THAT moment? I’m not sure how good the chili will taste but I’m hoping by the time we thaw and eat it, I can tweak it to taste better. haha! I may just stick tater tots & a ton of cheese on the top of it and bake it in the oven on the days we thaw some out. Chili is so versatile, isn’t it? *wink*

Marinara for the Lasagna!

Packaging up the lasagna in 4 foil pans! SIDE NOTE: Yes I crocheted those pot pads!

BONUS NOTE: Make sure you pre-cook enough lasagna noodles for the pans you’re preparing! I cook mine to where they are just pliable because I’m freezing the pans of lasagna. I don’t want the noodles to be mushy when they thaw. I don’t prebake the lasagna before freezing either. I definitely misjudged how many noodles I needed. So, it took two batches. Overall, I think we did pretty good. We worked well as a team without killing each other. K let me be leader in this adventure which was nice. I really wanted this to work. By the time we were done, I was super exhausted. My legs & lower back hurt. We started at 10:30am and finished around 3:30pm. I think I shocked K. I don’t think he thought I would be able to pull this off. I showed him, huh? *wink* And then, I realized I had to get up at 8:30am the next morning for a doctor appointment. UGH! haha!

I was in charge of making space in our freezer. I was able to free up 2 shelves because the freezer was already half empty (or half full!). K was in charge of carrying all the prepared food to the garage and loading the freezer. He only sent me out there because we had to squeeze in one more larger pan of Impossible broccoli pie. I love that stuff. So, I made sure to fit it in the freezer without blocking the vents in the freezer. You have to have enough room the freezer for the cold air to circulate to maintain proper freezer temperature. Overall, we spent $135 on food for this project. We already had about half of the canned goods we needed. The meat alone was about $65. Then the containers cost about $33. The plastic containers are reusuable. Here’s our freezer now:

Lots of meals in our freezer!

The list of meals we made on Monday is as followed:

Impossible Broccoli Pie – 1 big pan made
Broccoli, Chicken & Rice Casseroles – 4 9×5 pans made
Lasagna – 4 9×5 pans made
Taco Soup – saved in 16oz bowls (didn’t count)
Chili – saved in 16oz bowls (didn’t count)
Burrito Pie – 3 9×5 pans
Taco meat – 2 1-quart ziplock bags
The remaining diced cooked chicken breasts in several quart-sized ziplock bags to make chimichangas or chicken quesadillas.

Overall, this adventure was a success and it proved to me that I can do something this major as long as I have some help. Yes I was very drained and I had to sit down a couple of times while I spooning food into containers or writing labels. Would I do this again with help? Yes I think so. I may try a few different recipes though. I don’t think I would try to make so many recipes at once again but K thinks we could do just as much next time. There are somethings I would PRE-MAKE ahead of time the next time we do this. Like, precook and then refrigerate the beef and chicken the day or night before. That would save a lot of time if I could get at least half of the meat cooked ahead of time. I’ll try to get some recipes that I used on my blog later this week.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of This is Christine’s Life! lol! Stay warm everyone. It’s getting cold down here in Texas.

When I have a surprise burst of energy…

Living On Oxygen for Life

Happy November everyone! I’ve been busy the past week. For the last 3 days I’ve had a burst of energy. I took advantage of it and did some cooking everyday. I started the first day with my trusty crockpot and cooked 2 whole chickens at once! The peeling & chopping of carrots, garlic cloves, & celery took a while but it was the chicken pickin time that took the longest and wore me out. I saved the broth and cut up the rest of my carrots and celery and put those in the fridge for later.

The next day, I decided to make a Canadian Bacon and Swiss quiche that my older sister had made for us when K had his eye surgery and she came down to help me. She told me she used the Betty Crocker recipe for Quiche Lorraine but used Canadian Bacon instead. I tweaked that recipe by using 5 eggs and only 1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream. Plus I used dehydrated onion flakes. My stomach handles the dehydrated onions better than the fresh onions sautéed. Don’t use pre-shredded Swiss cheese. Get an 8 oz block of Swiss and shred nearly half of it. Prepackaged shredded cheese has an additive in it to keep the cheese from sticking together. The quiche was awesome. I believe the secret ingredient is the 1/8 tsp of cayenne pepper.

The next day I made homemade chicken noodle soup with the chicken stock from my crockpot. I skimmed off the solid fat from the top of the jellied stock and used about 2 T of it to sauté the carrots and celery that I had already chopped up. I then heated back up the stock to a liquid state in the microwave to strain through a fine mesh strainer. I used the stock plus a 32 oz carton of Swanson’s chicken stock and one can of Swanson’s chicken broth. No water added! It really turned out excellent with egg noodles (thrown in during the last 10 minutes of boiling), salt, pepper, cumin, & thyme.

Today I was hoping to make something easy I have a recipe from a friend that uses a carrot cake mix and one can of pure pumpkin to make muffins. Sounds yummy! But I feel extra tired today. Boo… I’ve been on such a roll!

I’m freezing half the chicken noodle soup in 2 separate serving sized containers and I already froze the crockpot chicken in 2- 10.3 ounce packages for later when I feel the urge to cook.

I’m starting to think of cooking as what can I make for tonight’s dinner that I can make extra to freeze for the days I’m not up to cooking. Meatloaf is handy, chicken enchiladas or just the meat mixture prepared and froze that can be used for tacos or burritos. Beef tips and gravy freezes well too (see below) and K loves it with rice that we make the night we eat it. On the days that I know we have leftovers to eat for dinner, I’ll sometimes prep a meatloaf to freeze before baking and that way it saves me time and energy when I just don’t have a lot of on bad breathing days.

So, maybe later I’ll get up from my nap and make those muffins which will be baked in my mini muffin pan OR I’ll make Rice Krispie treats. Either way… yum!

Remember… November is PULMONARY HYPERTENSION AWARENESS MONTH. So, Be Aware for those of us who have PH that we are RARE! For more information about Pulmonary Hypertension go to Pulmonary Hypertension Association Organization

When you least expect it…

Living On Oxygen for Life

Sometimes life throws us a curve ball and how we react to that can really show us how much of a team we are. We’re not just married and love each other; we are all-in through thick and thin with all the rollercoasters and good times that make up our life.

Throughout this year, K has been telling me that he really, really needs a vacation on a beach. He’s experienced an emergency visit to an ER clinic for himself at which time I had to bail on him because I developed a MASSIVE migraine while waiting in the patient room with him. Thank goodness his sister came to our rescue so that I could go home leaving him there alone until she got there. (I felt so guilty!) He’s had to deal with working in 100+ degrees heat over the summer. There’s also been my up and down health with the fact that I could no longer do the chores around the house that I used to do, which meant that K had to do them. That’s not all of it but you get the gist, right? So, yeah, he really needed a beach vacation.

I told K that, with the way our budget looked, we were going to have to get creative about being able to afford going on vacation. I knew he really needed it but I was concerned, not only for the financial aspect, but also I wasn’t sure if I could make the 10-hour drive this year. I didn’t want to say no. He works so hard and does so much for me. Thus, came his idea. Out of the blue he said that he wants my help in selling all his McFarlane action figures on eBay and that’s what we did.

We got incredible lucky with a German buyer who bought 5 really large boxes filled with K’s action figures, earning enough money to pay for the hotel in South Padre Island. We actually earned quite a bit of money! So, everything was looking good for our vacation plans. That is until K mentioned a little problem a week and a half before we were to leave.

K had noticed some floaters in his GOOD eye and he knew that he was suppose to call the Optometrist right away. They got him in the next morning. A few hours later, I got a phone call from K while he was in the doctor’s office, asking me if I had already taken my diuretic. *cue the drama music* Luckily, I was still in bed because it was only 10am. (Hey… I sleep in! Don’t hate me because I can! *wink*) He wanted me to get up *UGH*, get dressed and he was on the way home to pick me up because he needed eye surgery within a few hours. *Wait..what????*

I was freaking out. I was worried about K having to go through surgery again, having enough energy to be in the waiting room, having to run all the prescription pickups, taking care of K after surgery and then of course paying the copay bill of the surgery, the doctor and the anesthesiologist. What worried us the most was the amount of time K was going to have to take off work. Sick leave and vacation pay only covered most of it but it’s the few days that was unpaid that worried us.

We are NOT rich but we just sold a huge amount of K’s action figures and we had that money but that means we had to cancel our anniversary/my birthday vacation that I just reserved. That hurt… In fact, I cried.

But looking back at this whole situation, this whole thing felt like everything aligned just for this moment. Somebody up there was looking out for us. We’re not out of the woods yet but this shows us how well and how much of a team we are.

Not only K and I are a team but also K’s sister and my sisters too. My older sister came down and cooked 2 quiches and a huge pan of lasagna so that I didn’t have to cook. My sisters and mother kept texting me encouraging support to me, which helped a lot. I’ll try to blog more often. You can catch me on my Living on O2 for Life Facebook page or ChristineLovesDaisies Instagram if you have those apps.

So, this is why I’ve been mostly quiet. I don’t like posting things that seem negative or stressful but I wanted to let you know that we’re ok and alive. =o) Lots of love to you all! *hugs* FYI: if you start seeing a lot of floaters in your eyes, that could be from tears in or a detached retina. Get it checked out ASAP (within a few days!)

It’s blazin’ hot here…

Living On O2 for Life

For the past two weeks or so it’s in the upper 90s and in a few days the forecast is 105 degrees. What that means for me is: Stay indoors with the a/c cranked. Well, that’s what I would usually do but life has a way of creating drama. You know, the kind of drama like your “Check Engine Soon” light coming on when I least expected it. Then there’s the strawberry plants that stopped producing! What? I know… I was nearly devastated. haha! There’s more drama that happened but I don’t want to bore you. I want to tell you about the fun stuff!

K and I were fortunate enough to be able to visit with one of my cousins and her family while they were here with their church. There was a choir event that we went to and wow were the kid who sang good! We had a great time catching up. I hadn’t seen them in over 18 years.

You know from the last post that I’m slowly increasing my experience in yeast bread. Well… I experimented with making Honey Oatmeal Wheat rolls. Unfortunately, K doesn’t like wheat or oatmeal in his bread. Lesson learned! So, I shared them with his mother. See picture in the right column under Instagram. If you scroll down you’ll see them. It was a lot of fun! We also ate our first two ears of corn that K grew. Our experiment with growing corn has been successful thus far. We have 7 more ears left growing from a separate, later planted seeds. Whew.. they were delicious and I hope we plant more next year. I’m making quite the farmer out of my man. I’m SO proud!

Unfortunately, one of our pond goldfish kicked the bucket. He was floating belly up one day and we still don’t know why or what caused it. Rest in peace little man… But, we still have 7 left… so… HOORAY Goldfish! haha! My newest Need a Hug afghan is coming along nicely. I already have the recipient in mind to ship it to. I’m hoping to get it finished within a month. *fingers crossed*

This past week has been terribly hot and humid. It’s been trying to rain but in our area it’s only coming down in the lightest sprinkle occasionally which is making it HARD for me to breathe and tired a lot. I want to try to get that yummy Cinnamon Swirl Bread made today. K said, “Double to the cinnamon swirl!” So, if I’m not too tired, I’ll make it today and increase the swirl! haha! I’m going to share half of it with K’s mom. She really liked my first loaf. YAY!

Be well and be careful with this heat. *hugs*

My adventure today…

Living On Oxygen for Life

This was my adventure today. I made cinnamon swirl bread because K asked me to try to make it. It came out a little muffin-topped but when it cooled down a bit I cut a slice off and ate it warm with butter. It’s delicious even though I forgot to add salt. Oops! I read that it makes great French toast. Uh, who doesn’t like French toast???

From start to finish, this bread took me 3 hours to make. While I waited for the rise time to finish, I rinsed the dishes I used and ran a load of laundry through the washing machine. I’m still getting use to our new high-efficiency washing machine that looks like it barely uses enough water to dampen the clothes and has no real clothes agitator. Is it just me or do you wonder how or if the clothing even gets clean? It boggles my mind.

It’s definitely quiet time now at 5:30 pm and I’m ready for a power nap. So, I’m going to strap on my bipap machine with my oxygen and lie down to recharge enough to make dinner in about an hour or so. It feels like it’s been a long day.

I hope everyone has had a good day so far!

My Rookie Experience in Trying a New Thing and How to keep life interesting.

Living On Oxygen for Life

The past few months, I have lost a lot of interest in doing a lot of things that I normally would enjoy. Part of it is from depression and the other part is a decline in health. I’ve slowed down quite a bit. I still “garden” but K waters the garden for me. I still crochet but it takes me longer to complete an afghan. I don’t leave the house on my own as much because it drains me a lot. But I still do it because I need to feel like my old self as much as possible. I get out of the house more WITH K than alone.

I try to find different things to experiment with to keep my interest and find the happiness I need to keep me getting out of bed while K is working. So, I look to Pinterest a lot. Recently, I’ve challenged myself into conquering Yeast Rolls. Since I don’t have a KitchenAid stand mixer or a bread machine, I thought mixing and kneading the dough by hand would wear me out. When I finally found a recipe the creates only 4 rolls, I thought… “What the heck! Even I can do THAT!” Right? So, my foray into baking with yeast begins. My first time I produce the 4 rolls but the crust was too hard and they were dense. The third time I tried, I found the perfect recipe! This recipe calls for more milk than water and 2 eggs. Wow! Who knew that these changes would produce awesome dinner rolls?

There are some people on my FaceBook Page (Living On O2 for Life) have seen my posts about my experience with baking yeast rolls and want the recipe of the rolls I made this week. So, here it is… I hope you understand my method of explanation:

Buttery Soft Top Yeast Rolls

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
4 cups flour + a couple of tablespoons if needed (I used all-purpose flour)
2 1/4 tsp of instant yeast (1 package or 1 pkg of active yeast)

I used instant yeast this time but you can use active yeast because I do the same process of proofing the yeast for either kind.

TIP #1: I use glass and tupperware bowls to make the dough.
TIP #2: When measuring flour, ALWAYS spoon it into your measuring cup without packing it in or shaking the flour down. Level off with a straight edge.

Combine milk, 2 tsp of the sugar (the rest goes in the big bowl) & water. Warm in the microwave about 30 seconds on high, stir and then microwave another 30 seconds and stir again. Test with a thermometer and make sure the liquid reaches approximately 110 degrees. NO HOTTER or you could kill off your yeast. (make sure you have the sugar in there for the yeast to eat!) Once your Milk/Water/Sugar is warm, add yeast and stir softly and set aside to froth & foam for 10 minutes. (it smells so good!)

Melt butter in the microwave in a small bowl and let it cool.

While using a blender (I used my hand mixer) to combine 1 cup of flour & 2 (room temperature) eggs and then add in the butter once it’s cooled but still liquid.

Add the frothy yeast/milk/water/sugar to the Flour/eggs/butter that you just combine with the mixer and use the blender while adding another cup of flour. By this time, unless you have a stand mixer, you’ll need to change over to using a rubber spatula to add the rest of your flour. I had to do this last part with a rubber spatula because I don’t have a kitchenaid stand mixer. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard or tiresome.

The dough will seem a little sticky after you incorporate the four cups of flour but it shouldn’t stick to the bowl. If you need a little flour, add it by the tablespoon. I only needed about 2 tablespoons of extra flour. It will be sticky but it shouldn’t stick to your fingers.

Let the dough rest a few minutes in the bowl (I needed a little few minutes of a break) and then knead the dough. I kneaded my dough in the bowl instead of on a countertop for about 5 to 10 minutes (closer to about 10). It saved me from getting my countertop dirty. I eyeballed how much kneading was needed by testing its stretchiness (something about a window of dough)!

After kneading, I just left the dough in the bowl and covered it with a Turkey Roasting oven bag since I had a box of them from when I thought I would try roasting a turkey one year. That didn’t happen. *rolling my eyes* The roasting bag fits nicely over the big, gigantic bowl I use to make the dough. I set the covered bowl in my warm garage (it’s in the 90s here now) and then the waiting started for the dough to rise to twice its original size. About an hour, maybe more, maybe less.

Meanwhile, I cleaned up my mess and read a book on my Kindle app while occasionally glancing at the TV. Yeah, I’m that good! haha! When the dough is twice its original size, I brought it back into the kitchen and pressed/punched it down. I used my cutting board and a 8-inch sharp knife to cut the dough in equal portions. You should be able to get 15 pieces that you can form into approximately 2 – 2.5 inch balls. Don’t over manipulate the dough. Just gently fold the edges under and pinch the bottom seam together.

Rolls after rising to twice their size.

Place dough balls, seam side down, into a Pam sprayed 9 X 13 inch pan. I put my pan with the rolls back into the Roasting Bag and moved them back out into the garage to rise again to twice the size. By the time they have risen, they’ll spread to fill the pan. Take them out of the bag, preheat oven to 375 degrees and used melted butter to brush on top of each roll. Add a pan or baking dish of water on the bottom rake in the over under the place the rolls will go. It helps to bake them with this water to make the tops softer. Bake for 13 – 16 minutes depending on your altitude where you live. They should be nicely golden brown on the top. When they are done, butter the tops again and sprinkle with sea salt (I used Mediterranean Pink Sea Salt). Then eat one! Or two or three! YUM.

Let me know if I made any mistakes or if you have any helpful tips in the comment section.

Life: full of fun!

Living On Oxygen for Life

Happy Day After April Fools Day! I’ve never been into the whole “April Fools” thing since the time my little sister wrapped a raw egg in foil and put it in my bed while I slept. Yep, I rolled over onto it and the egg broke, leaked egg guts and made a mess in my bed. Yuck! So, April Fools? No thank you! haha!

K and I have been BUSY lately. My garden is growing like crazy! We have little tiny cherry tomatoes growing (3 of them…wow!) and my potato plants are getting huge. I even ate my first strawberry from the garden and it was DELICIOUS! So sweet! Yes, I shared it with K. I didn’t really want to because it was so good but there was only one berry and it would have been rude of me not to share. Right?

I’ve started crocheting again. I had stopped in October since K was having trouble with his eyes. Things got hectic with his Glaucoma and Detached retina problems. And I thought taking care of my own problems was hard. Add helping K with his medical stuff (no lifting heavy things for 2 weeks for each eye surgery), it was a little crazy around here. Here’s what I’m working on right now:

I’ve been a little inventive in the kitchen lately. I created a protein shake that can rival Starbucks’ mocha, caramel frappuccino. It is delicious and I want to try making a peanut butter, chocolate protein shake (without the bananas). Here’s the ingredients that I used:

Rivals Starbucks Frappuccino!

I told you I’ve been busy lately. In fact, K made one of my dreams come true. Yay K! My older sister dug up a pond liner (hard shell) from their yard when they moved into their house and gave it to us. Of course, K said no we can’t have a pond. So, many, many years I have been working on him about having a pond. Yes, we kept it THAT long. Out of the blue, he asked me a couple of weeks ago, what I thought about having a pond. Of course I was overjoyed, ecstatic even. Naturally I said YES! Picture me jumping up and and down cheering and then bending over out of breath saying… “Whew, I’m tired now. But, let’s do this!”

I have to let you know. I AM A PLANNER. I like researching things I want to do so I know what I’m doing once I start a project. K is the opposite. Kind of. So, it took us a couple of tries to stack the flagstone to make it look almost the way we want it. Let me tell you… those are so heavy! K did all the hard labor but I still wanted to help with some of the physical stuff. I tried moving the flagstone and after four stones, I was done. K told me to go sit down. I like being involved in our house projects. The way I was involved was helping pick out the type of stone, fish, and planning how the pond will look. K wanted to name the goldfish with Beatles names. Ugh! Really? I named one of the goldfish, Thunder! K named one of them White (not Whitey, he says)… So, I call him White Ghost because he’s an all white fish. Clever, I know! We have a total of 8 fish. 5 small goldfish and 3 medium goldfish. It was hard to get K to wait until the water was ready for fish.

Bamboos just added my dream pond.

I also have 9 flowers on my lemon tree! NINE!!!
Please don’t fall off… Please don’t fall off!
I even caught a sale at the grocery store for fresh green beans! Late last night, I washed and blanched them so that I could freeze them. They are so much better than green beans from a can. Blech! I only wish that I had bought 2 bags of them instead of one. Darn it!

Yes, life is good. I have things to look forward to every day. Feed my fish, check my garden, and pray for lemons to produce on my Meyer lemon tree. Hooray! All these things help keep me happy which distract me from bad breathing days which is awesome. I hope life is going well for all of you.

Life is amazing!

Living On Oxygen for Life

For most of us who have respiratory problems, the Winter months can be tough to get through. I try to stay home as much as possible so that I’m not exposed to people who are sick. I know… I wish they would stay home too. Because I stay home, I get cabin fever. Seeing it overcast outside and cold, really makes me feel blue.

By the time January rolls around, I’m getting excited because I know the next month I’ll be planting my garden beds. Hooray! So, I get out the graph paper and plot out where and in which bed I want my seeds. We also decide what our newest “experiment” crop (K likes to call them crops now. He’s slowing getting into being a farmer. *wink*) will be. This year I let K decide. He chose something that I have wanted to try since last year. Corn!! How exciting, right?!?

Now we don’t have a lot of “farming” space for corn. So we are only planting one row of 6 or 7 plants in the actual ground (not a raised bed). We also decided we need more strawberries and more of a variety of tomatoes. K got pretty handy and found our old window planter boxes for the strawberries and I had an idea to mount them on the side of the garden beds. Nifty!

2018 Spring Garden

I love getting creative! We have hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes too. Hopefully they will be successful. I don’t have a lot of energy to take care of all of this but K has really taken the lead on the watering the garden so that I can enjoy watching all the vegetables grow. There’s just something rewarding about watching & caring for the things you plant to grow into the vegetables you later eat. This excitement helps motivate me. The joy and motivation I get from my garden is the main reason K is onboard with helping me with it. He does what he can to keep me moving and exercising my lungs. Not to mention all the yummy vegetables we’ll get to eat!

So are you ready for some warm weather??? Lots of love to you all!!

With the new year… it brings changes.

Living On Oxygen for Life

And now for something new… drama! I realized this past weekend that I had a letter on my refrigerator which I’d slapped under a magnet back in October 2017. Of course, you all know me by now to think… “oh dear, that can’t be good!” If you’re anything like me, you stick important things on the fridge, right? You know, things you DO NOT want to forget. Especially if it’s from the health insurance company.

This important document I have stuck on my refrigerator informs me of a change for the new year. Don’t worry… I was thinking the same thing.. “but these people never give THAT much of an advanced warning.” Am I wrong? Of course not! So I put it on my refrigerator so I wouldn’t forget.

Well, I forgot all about it because my brain just doesn’t retain all the things that have happened since October. Life was happenin’ around K and me. How was I supposed to remember that my Specialty medicine for my Pulmonary Hypertension was going to be dispensed through a different pharmacy? This is the medicine that I have to get labs done every month to even get a refill of this stuff.

I can only say that it’s truly inconvenient and very stressful for a patient, who must take this life-sustaining medication, to have to make this transition at all. It hasn’t been a smooth transition to the new pharmacy because I never have an available refill of this medicine due to needing lab work done every month prior to calling…then wait as I listen to at least 5 minutes of elevator/on hold music, for a refill.

Now I’m stuck within the slow grinding process of the new paperwork and out of medicine. They are supposed to call me when the pharmacy is finished “processing” my account to set up a delivery date. Meanwhile, I’m at home with no one other than myself to blame and feeling like I am slowly suffocating. I’m very short of breath and it’s a constant reminder to never let this happen again.

It’s pretty hard to juggle everything that has been going on in mine and K’s life lately and to have this slip from my memory makes everything seem like a crisis to handle right now. So, when my husband asks me to handle something for him, I start feeling a little buried right now.

For sanity’s sake, I made myself step back to calm down. I’m making a list to prioritize what “crisis” I should handle first because when I start feeling buried, everything feels like a crisis. From there, all of this mess will start to look clearer. I hope! haha!

The Weekend with Company

Living On Oxygen for Life

I had my older sister and her family in town for a visit this last weekend and had a great time. However, I could tell almost right away that my health has drastically changed since the last time they visited. It was a real eye-opener for me and quite discouraging too.

Thankfully, I was already in the habit of preparing in advance a meal or two to be able to pull out of the fridge or freezer and heat up. Mostly, these were for dinner. I have found this to be extremely time and energy efficient for me. Well, really, for everyone. My sister now knows that I can’t help her much in the kitchen and still have energy to talk with her. I get pretty short of breath. So, after dinner, she would have me go sit down and she would take over to clean the whole kitchen.

One thing I’ve learned about both of my sisters is that when they do something at my house for me, it’s because they want to. Mainly because they don’t want me to wear myself out just because they are there to visit and because they actually WANT to do it.

It’s just like my older sister to bring me her special Christmas cookies as part of my Christmas gift from her. Before I was even able to get one, everyone started eating them. I was like… Heeeyyyy… *pout* They are that good. I was willing to share but gee wiz. So, she went to the store to buy all the ingredients that I didn’t already have to make another batch for me. Yay!!! As she’s whipping up another batch of sugar cookie dough, I was amazed at how easy it was for her and she wasn’t even tired! I had to go sit down after a little bit of watching, help with cleaning, and holding the cookie pans so that my niece and sister could place the cookies on each pan. I helped Frost some too but my niece did all of the Sprinkles artwork!

Christmas cookies

After they left for home, I was so tired but I had stuff to do Monday and we ended up having to take Rocco to the vet on Tuesday because he tweaked his back and we wanted to make sure he hadn’t damaged anything. He’s going to be ok. No jumping for a while.

So, today is recovery day. I’m resting all of today. I already told K not to even ask me to do anything or go anywhere because I just needed one whole day of quiet rest. I’m going to post the recipe of one of the dinners I premade for my sister’s visit in case you want to try it. It will be under the In the Kitchen link of my blog’s menu. Beef Tips is what I made and my sister asked for the recipe. I’ll try to get my enchiladas recipe on here too but I’ll do that in a few days. Take care everyone.

The Beast Within… (repost)

Living On Oxygen for Life – a repost from 2016 because this is so important to read if you are dealing with anxiety and control issues.

Over the past 10 years or so, this beast inside me has grown and mirrored the decline of my health. It all started with what I thought was constant worrying. You know… when you have to time how much your oxygen will last? Well, that can make you worry about checking your oxygen tank a LOT when you are out having fun. Then I would worry about how long my energy will last while I was out having fun. Can I walk that far in the mall or in the hospital for doctor appointments? Will K get upset if I need to stop to sit down for a few minutes. I know the last one is kind of an irrational worry. Of course K wouldn’t get upset but he did try to push me to walk a little further before stopping which only made me feel like he wasn’t taking my need to stop seriously. My health wasn’t as progressed as it is now. So, pushing me a little bit further was a good thing that K was doing. It’s just when I was tired and felt like I needed a break, no knows how I felt except me.

I turned all this worrying about so many things in my life into trying to control everything around me. I felt like I needed to manage everything so that I had enough energy for things that I had to do around the house and the things that I wanted to do with K. I wanted to know where we were going when we were out of the house, what route we were going, and even how K drove. I needed advanced warning when K wanted us to go out to have fun so that I can be sure to rest up during the day. But all that wasn’t working. Trying to control everything turned into Anxiety because there is no way that I could control everything, be happy and not irritate those around me.

It’s taking a long time to learn to let go of the control issues. K reminds me by saying that he “Gets it.” and “I will always take care of you. I always have your best interest as my priority.” It has helped me a lot with him saying this to me. I have to remind myself of what he said over and over because my memory doesn’t retain information as well as it use to. So, when I get into my vehicle with K, I will remind myself that he has my six. *wink* Giving up the control and learning to trust is a very hard thing to do for me because I feel as if I’m losing more of my independence. However, as long as we have fun in our lives, all will be ok.

The Hair Dryer’s other danger…

Living On Oxygen for Life

I had a thought the other day about hair dryers. You know the ones that are handheld. Not the one’s that my mom use to sit under with curlers in her hair. I can still see her in my head sitting there with her rollers in waiting for her hair to dry. Wow.. She was a patient woman for beauty. She would while her time away painting her nails. She was skilled at that. Me? Not so much. *shrug*

My thought that I had was about a danger that I hadn’t thought of before. Mostly people know about the danger of not using or leaving a plugged in hair dryer near or in a bathtub of water. Yikes! Electric shock would ruin anyone’s day (or should I say life?). No, I was thinking about people who use oxygen while trying to dry their hair with that handheld hair dryer. It has a danger to it. Did you know?

Have you ever seen a hair dryer spark when you turn it on? I have. That in itself is dangerous because most people don’t clean the lint out of the vent of the hair dryer until it’s coated in the stuff. Now, we also need to remember about the heating element of the hair dryer. It glows red when you have the dryer on warm or hot, right?

Imagine yourself and how you use your hair dryer. Is it close to your face as you dry the underneath parts of your hair? Are you wearing your oxygen while drying your hair? I have to use my oxygen all the time. The thing is… I don’t dry my hair using a hair dryer but once in a blue moon (mostly in the Winter when I don’t want wet hair if I have to go outside). So, naturally, I didn’t really think of the danger that could happen if you mix a spark from a hair dryer and the oxygen that I or you use. In fact, at the website: Consumer Product Safety Commission, near the bottom of the page, it says not to operate a hair dryer where oxygen is being administered.

As for me, I air dry my hair. Using a hair dryer to dry my thick, long hair takes forever and makes me tired. Plus, I don’t like how it treats my hair. I end up looking like a fluff ball most of the time. Now that I have had this thought about the danger of using hair dryers with oxygen in use, I’m very cautious. I’ll admit that I still use one on RARE occasion but I know I shouldn’t. I hold the dryer as far from my hair as possible just to add an element of a buffer zone. I clean out the lint too. I make sure it’s in good working condition. I certainly don’t want a fire on my head!

Now, I’m not saying that you should use a hair dryer but if you still want to, I can’t stop you. Do it with extreme caution. Keep your hair dryer in peak condition and away from your oxygen. If it sparks, you’re gonna have problems.

2017 A Year’s Review…

Living On O2 for Life

Life during 2017 sure has been interesting. K and I have found ourselves confronted with many challenges that mostly were unexpected, which usually is the case for us. However, there were a LOT of good, fun, adventurous times throughout the year for us too. Thank goodness… because we really needed them.

January 2017 started with a visit from BOTH of my sisters at the same time! It was shockingly fabulous because it’s difficult for the both of them to have the same time off with their work schedule and then they’d have to drive down to see me now. I don’t travel well anymore and they are starting to understand that a little better now. It’s one thing for them to know their sister’s health is declining but it’s another thing to actually see it first hand. January brought the gift that I’d been waiting for… Christmas cookies made by my older sister and frosted by me and my sister and decorated (little kid style) by my very adorable niece.

February 2017 brought all kinds of exciting fun planning of my vegetable garden. We tried growing new things this year, like broccoli, squash, and tomatoes. I tried to keep up with the garden but with my health and the Texas heat, it started to get me way too tired just trying to keep it watered. A couple of times, K would tell me to just go inside because he would see me struggling with my breathing. So, he took over the garden for me. He’s my hero!

If you haven’t ever grown your own vegetables, it’s a sight to see and it’s actually very therapeutic. No, really… I swear! In March, the potatoes and our two tomato plants were growing like crazy due to amount of rain we’d keep having! Yay!!

In March, K and I were shopping in Home Depot and my liquid oxygen tank flew out of the cart and landed on the cement. What a scene that was! K was so worried about me but I handled it amazingly well after I realized it still put out oxygen. Whew, right? By the end of March, I was harvesting my first strawberries! Yummy! In fact, K was so interested in my strawberries that he filled two hanging baskets with strawberry plants to grow some of his own. Wow. I’m slowly turning him into a farmer! haha!

In April, K’s Aunts and Uncles came down to visit but stayed with his mom and his aunt here in town. By May, I had a lot of tomatoes I didn’t know what to do with them. I mean, we could only eat so many slices of tomatoes on sandwiches and for salads. So, I looked up on Pinterest how to make homemade tomato sauce. The process was tedious and it felt like it took forever but it sure was a success. I even had to call my mom for advice.

I didn’t get to go to my niece’s recital or birthday party because I can’t drive myself that far alone anymore. It just wears me out being the driver for that long. In between the missed trip to my sister, to the time I got to go see them later in the year, K and I went to 2 concerts. We saw U2 and then we saw Roger Waters (think Pink Floyd). Those concerts were a gift from me to K for his birthday and Christmas of last year. We used my wheelchair and I a bought a cup holder that I could attach to the arm of my wheelchair from Amazon. It was SO handy.. so convenient and affordable! Yay.. we all love affordable, right? Going to the concerts with K reminded me of the old days of dating K. We had a good time dancing, singing and acting goofy back then as we did for these two concerts.

In August, my older sister road the train to my city and drove me in my van to her house. I stayed with her for 10 days and then she drove me home and caught the train home. How sweet was that??? I know, right? I have to admit that I missed K something fierce. After I got home and rested up, K and I went on an adventure to South Padre Island for our 25th anniversary. We hit every art gallery and tried various restaurants and did all kinds of fun things. It was a great 10 days but on the way home, the front grill of my van flew off and went over the top of the van. I’m just thankful that it wasn’t me driving because it sure was scary. We didn’t see where it landed and thankfully no one was behind us. I knew we should have taken Klondike, my rubber chicken (road trip mascot). We got an estimate to replace the grill but it was an outrageous price. K and I had an idea but we didn’t realize that we were both thinking the same thing until we started talking about Plan B. We’d the grill replacement part on Amazon, order it, and K thought he could put it on the van himself. So that’s what we did for so much less! I’m so impressed with K’s skills! Though, he’s not much of a car guy but he can fix simple things. My MacGyver, he was! *wink*

From October up to now has been rough, K has had a lot of trouble with his eyes that scared the ever-lovin’ bejeebers out of us. He’s had to have 2 surgeries and I needed to take care of him while he recovered. It reminded me of just how much he actually does for me with my health needs and all done willingly and without complaint. I’m so lucky. I have to mention that he’s got some great ophthalmologists. One of them has the most awesome waiting room filled with jigsaw puzzles that anyone can work on and even a blanket rack that has CROCHETED afghans! *shock* Wow! K said his doctor wanted to meet me. Apparently, K had been telling him about me and the doctor has a daughter with scoliosis like me. So, without giving names, I’d like to give a shoutout to her! “HEY! If you are reading this, here’s a big hello to you and hoping that you are doing well.” *hugs*

Christmas was great! I got to help K decorate the house with new creative ideas this year. We try to add new ideas every year to the decorations! This year we added 5 wreaths we decorated together, 3 hung in our family room windows and one for two large mirrors we have. I had to go at a really slow pace hanging Christmas bulbs, wrapping ribbon around trees, and creating my 3 wreath masterpieces but we got it all done in about 5 days. Hooray! And now it’s January 2018. We’re ready for a better year. *fingers crossed* We’re already planning some exciting things to look forward to which is how we stay optimistic during the tough times.

You can see the pictures I take if you look in the right column of this blog under the Instagram heading. You don’t need to have an account to see my pictures. I just didn’t add them to this post because it’s already so long.

A Long Awaited Update! September/October 2017

Living On Oxygen for Life

Let’s be honest… I’ve missed blogging and I know it’s been since before my birthday (last month) that I’ve posted anything on my blog for you to read. In my defense, the last two months have been incredibly… what’s the word I’m looking for?… trying?…no. Hectic? You could say that. Let’s throw in challenging with a bit of a MacGyver twist and super stressful at times. If you wrap all that up and include my two road trips that I took (one to Oklahoma to see my family & one to South Padre Island for my birthday/25th anniversary), I have to admit, it’s been a pretty awesome adventure.

It all started with my birthday/anniversary vacation that we try to take every year. We both took turns driving down to South Padre Island which took us about 9 hours even while having to stop nearing every two hours (when K was driving) to get out and stretch our legs and walk the dog. Rocco loved sniffing new territory but I hated having to use convenient store or McDonald’s bathrooms. Not just because I never knew what to expect going into one of those things but also because getting in and out of the car and walking to the bathroom now wears me out and makes me short of breath in the worst way. That’s something new.

We made it to Padre and it was overcast but that’s ok because we knew Hurricane Harvey just past by and almost everything was up and running again on the island. Yay for us! Two days after we arrived, a boat washed up on the beach which drew everyone, including the Padre Beach police, to check the boat out. We should have set up a beach chair next to it and charged people for us to take their picture! It took nearly a week for the boat to wash up this far on the beach.

K and I normally go for a nice steak dinner for our anniversary celebration. But who knew that there wasn’t a restaurant on the island, nor close by on the mainland, that sells a good steak? Instead, we had a small party of two at our condo with a gigantic birthday/anniversary cake that K intended to share with the waitstaff had we gone to a restaurant. Thankfully we brought our big ice chest and I had some square foil pans to save the leftover cake to freeze and take home. You better believe that I ate it all once I got home (K had the last piece..darn him!). I LOVE birthday cake!

We really had a lot of fun and took a few goofy pictures. I was even a pirate! Argh! After ten days in Padre, it was time to go home and on the way home, the craziness began. We were north of Austin, Texas when it happened. I was reading and K was driving… thankfully. Our grill from the front of our van broke loose and flew over the hood and smacked our windshield and then continued over the top of the van. It scared us so bad. Thankfully, no one was behind us and we looked but didn’t see it land on the highway. We get home ok and called our mechanic to see what it would cost to get it replaced. $600! Are you kidding me? The thing was made mostly of plastic. K and I had the same idea… look on eBay for the part. K said he could fix it himself and I was, like, “You go Rambo…you get into that MacGyver mode!” Sure enough, it cost us a total of $200 and K attached it with no problems! YAY K!

What K didn’t tell me was that on the way home from Padre was that he was starting to see floaters in his right eye. Then when he went to work, he called his optometrist and they told him to come in RIGHT NOW. He had a detached retina. I was so worried because now he had to have surgery and this was his eyesight!. The first time I went with K to his optometrist, K told me that he had been telling the doctor about me because he has a daughter who has some similar health conditions. Let me tell you that I have no problem that K talked about me. I mean, I blog… so of course I don’t mind. I was really excited about meeting this doctor to learn more if he wanted to talk about it. Naturally, I knew this appointment was about K but I did bring a printed copy of an x-ray showing my scoliosis. This doctor was really neat and very personable. K and I really like him. But what excited me the most was his waiting room. Holy cow… the moment I walked into the building, I was thinking that EVERY waiting room should be like this one. There were crocheted afghans on a blanket rack next to the door and in each waiting area there was a card table with a puzzle to be put together. I immediately zoned in on the puzzle. K knows. I love puzzles and there was an older man sitting there working on the one I noticed. I just blurted out … “Oh yay a puzzle!!!” (I know you’re visualizing that.. aren’t you? haha!) The man heard me and started to get up saying that I could work on it. I told him to please stay and I can work on it with you. I told him that I love puzzles and this reminds me of when I worked on puzzles with my dad. Awww! I know, right? I was so engrossed that I didn’t even hear K’s name called by the nurse. What’s so awesome was that there was ANOTHER puzzle in the waiting room in the back! I was in waiting-room heaven!

K’s surgery went well but I wore myself out having to drive him to appointments and waking up to check to see if he wasn’t sleeping on his back for the first week after surgery. That was stressful but after the first week, he could sleep on his side but NOT on his back. You would think that it wouldn’t be a big deal but people move around while they sleep and K is accustomed to sleeping on his back. So, I had a lot of waking up to do to check on him. With everything that was going on with K, I truly had an eye opening experience about how much he does for me without complaining. He drives me to doctor appointments that are an hour away, he pushes me in a wheelchair when I need it, he takes care of everything in the background when I have migraines, not to mention doing most of the chores and all of the grocery shopping now…and most of this is done without me having to ask. I got a taste of what he does for me when I needed to take care of him for a change. I was definitely humbled and I gained a new appreciation for what he does for me. Not that I never appreciated it but my health is changing faster now, requiring K to do more and I don’t always see what he does for me.

Lots of love to you all! Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog to follow along! Leave a comment too! Have a great day!!!