Almost

a whole week since I last posted. Its been a long week. Every week has been a long week lately. We are as busy as I ever remember it here. We can barely keep up. I wish I could say it was from an improving economy, but it is really just from a near doubling of our market share it seems.

I'm not complaining mind you. The O.T. is nice and in today's economy, I'm just glad to have a job.

On the home front, Tigger is doing "ok". His behaviour, strangely, has changed since he began taking insulin shots.

His blood sugar was originally 380. After being on 3 units, twice a day, his blood sugar was 480! It's not a good trend to be sure. The doctor raised his insulin to 5 units twice a day. She says that there are a few other options fro treatment yet, but if they are unsuccessful, we need to look for an under lying cause for this(Such as cancer). We also informed the doctor that we had to increase his food because he seemed to be disappearing before our eyes. Hopefully we will have better news when he goes back on Monday for more blood work.

Getting back to his behaviour though, Tigger is a "strange dog" to begin with. And I use that word loosely because many people consider me strange....lol.
But Tigger usually only has 2 speeds. On or Off. There wasn't much in the middle. Also when you would let him outside he would do his business and then sit at the door waiting to come in. He is a people dog! He likes people, mostly me...lol If he could crawl inside of me and be absorbed by me, he would be HAPPY! He also didn't bark much.

Now Tigger will stay outside longer and explore more. He seems to have found 50% and 60%. He also barks much more. Not obsessively like my other dogs whoo bark at nothing because nothing is something too, but just more than he used to.

One thing that hasn't changed is that he will eat everything in sight, and then some just for good measure. He is not drinking as much but he is, sadly, still having accidents and he is still sleeping in them so I'm not sure if he just doesn't realize he is doing it or what.....

Our pets are like family in this house. We are worried about Tigger. We know that he is 11 years old now, which is not old for a dog his size, but his breeding was also vwery questionable. We will let you know how it goes.....

Who knew...

Well Health Alliance Plan will not pay for Karen to go to a Primary Care Doctor out here. They will pay for an Urgent Care Doctor if Karen waits until she is sick enough to need urgent care.
The last trip to urgent care she was admited to the hospital for surgical lancing of two masses that she had from an infection. HAP approved this adminssion and the surgeries.
When she was discharged the hospital told here that she needed to follow up everyday for the next 7 days with the wound care clinic next to the hospital to re pack the open wounds, change the dressings and what not at $165 minimum per day. Thats $1,200 of follow up care for surgeries that HAP approved. HAP will not pay for the follow up care to the surgery stating "we do not cover out of network out patient care". So now Karen is flying back to Michigan for 7-10 days so that HAP will cover the follow up surgery that they approved in Las Vegas!

Karen is out

of the hospital and doing well. Ironically, she feels worse than she did when she went in but that is mostly becasue she has two incisions now. She is doing good though and hopefully this will cure what has been ailing her since we moved to Vegas.

8 Weeks and Counting

So far we have been in Vegas 8 weeks. It almost seems like we have lived here for years now, except that I still get lost very easily. In those 8 weeks Karen has been to urgent care 3 times for various types of infections/strep throat and dehydration. This last time the urgent care doctor had her admited to the hospital and she is now spending a few days at University of Nevada Medical Hospital(UNLV) to get some very strong IV anti-biotics that they wouldn't prescribe for her at home. She has had about two weeks here in Vegas where she wasn't sick. Hopefully this will do the trick.

It is kind of strange the way they work it here too. The urgent care doctor asked us how we would like to do it. He said there were two methods:
1. Go to the UNLV Emergency Room- wait however long it takes for them to see us. Get processed by admitting. And then wait for a room to be assigned to us.
or
2. The doctor can call the hospital and request a room for us and they will call us when it is ready.

Now I'm not a genius, but my mother didn't raise a total idiot either. We opted for option #2.
So the urgent care center sent us on our way and said go get something to eat. About 45 mins later while we were eating the urgent care center called us and said your room is 517 Bed 2. Just go right to your room and a nurse will get with you there.

Sooooo we walked into the hospital and walked right to her room. We were not sure about it so we did stop at the nursing station just to make sure we were doing it right. And we were! They didn't know her name but they knew a "direct admit" as they called it was coming in. So we gave the station nurse our paperwork and 5 mins later Karen was resting in her room.

No one likse to go to the hospital, thats for sure, but if you got to go thats the way to do it. A lot of hospitals could learn from that!

Its been quite a week....

One of the hardest things I've found about this job is going to the Budwiser Distribution Center. I've been there a lot this week and it is always about 108F when I get there. I'm not a big drinker, but I can only resist for so long. After my tool shopping spree today, I had to stop and buy a 12-pack! I couldn't resist any longer. All in all, I like my new job very much.

In other news, either I am getting very cheap or young people just don't realize the value of money. When buying the beer today there was a young kid who, on his way out, dropped a dime on the floor. He heard it bounce, looked at it and just walked away. I will not even do that with a penny, let alone a dime. Must be nice to be rich...hahaha.

Karen is again VERY sick with a strep/ear infection and had to visit the urgent care. We tried going to the CVS minuet clinic to save some money. We do have insurance, but out here when you say you have HAP(Health Alliance Plan) people get this strange look on their faces and inevitably ask "Whats that?" Karen was seen by a physicians assistant who was moving the next day back to Michigan. Upon learning that we had just moved here she quipped that "Well I won't tell you any of the bad stuff then." Well there is bad stuff every where, not just Vegas. Here is a list of some bad things:

1. Brutal weather
2. Brutal Crime
3. Brutal Traffic

Funny, that could be anywhere. Vegas, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, New York. Its all the same really.

The tools I bought today, at none other than Harbor Freight, are not "good" tools. I just hope that they are "good enough" tools to get me by until I can buy some real tools. The hydraulic wrench set I got today looks like it was ground out of flat stock with a bench grinder. Two weeks to go until I get my first paycheck in Vegas! Everything has been conspiring to take my money that's for sure. Being house rich and cash poor is no fun!

I'm also learning my way around town a bit. Not a lot, I'd still get lost without my Nuvi, but increasingly I find myself not using it as much. I'm also getting much better at knowing when it is lying to me which it does on a fairly regular basis. Part of that I think is because there is so much building going on here that my software is already outdated.

I guess thats it for now. Hopefully I will get my camera out again soon.