This time I went to Urgent Care for an urgent matter. I had blood in my urine. Lots of it. Every time. Lasting 24 hours without letting up. I would have gone in sooner, but it began at night and I was just hoping it was a one-time thing. We had new missionary training all morning, so I couldn't go to Urgent Care then.
Surprisingly, and thankfully, we had a whole free afternoon after training with nothing scheduled. That NEVER happens!!
They poked me a time or two and were able to get my INR number--which was 7.0. My blood is supposed to be between a 2.0 and 3.0 and so this meant my blood was WAAAAAY too thin. It went from 2.1 to 7.0 in just two weeks. That was very alarming and helped propel my thinking to making a quick change in my blood thinner medication as now a third doctor was highly recommending it.
The diagnosis was pretty much overly-thin blood and a possible urinary track infection. But they decided to do a CT scan to rule out any kidney stones or bladder cancer. Off I went in the wheelchair only to be brought back again because they needed a specific blood test run before I could get the scan.
It literally took HOURS to try and get blood out of my unwilling veins, wait for the blood results and then have the scan done. By the time I was done, they had dug at the vein in the crook of my left arm, midway down my arm and the top of my hand.
On the right side they tried the top of my hand and put in a hanging i.v. in the crook of my arm, That spot quit giving blood, but they kept it in to administer the dye for the scan. During the scan, something happened and the dye ran all down my arm. But, fortunately, enough dye had gone in me to still enable the test to show what it needed to show.
It turned out to be a lot of hassle and time for almost nothing. My urine culture results a couple of days later showed negative, so I was told to quit taking the antibiotic. The scan showed nothing, which was good news--no stones and no cancer!
Basically the only problem was my blood being way too thin and the remedy to that was to go off my blood thinner for a couple of days. That is what I was going to have to do to change blood thinner medication if/when I decided to make the change. So, this just propelled me to immediately decide it was time to change over to Eliquis.
Just glad I got my problem resolved before our first general authority visitor. Elder Weatherford Clayton and his wife Lisa came to stay with us. They were here for an area meeting and all the authorities were asked to visit various mission presidents in the area to see how we are doing.
I had figured out the entryway table would be a perfect perch for taking timed photos, and they consented to give it a try. This picture makes me laugh. I was trying to figure out how to get the timer to work. Obviously I didn't do it right the first time, but I'm pretty pleased with how well the second photo turned out.
We went to dinner at Claim Jumper and had a lovely visit there and continued to visit back at home before retiring to bed. They were up early the next morning and just requested a little dry breakfast cereal and some fruit to eat in the car. They were lovely and gave us some sound advice.
After they left, I noticed a small jar of jam and this thank you card from them.
The weekends are prime baptism times and we try to go to as many as we get invited to attend.
Our p-day is Monday. One day when Glen was waiting to get some deli meat, I had gotten some bananas and put them in the cart when I noticed the half-filled bottle of Dr. Pepper. It looked totally like MP had been imbibing on the caffeine-laden soft drink while I had been gone for a couple of minutes picking out bananas.
I don't know why we didn't notice that bottle when we grabbed our cart. What made me laugh so hard at this image was the text I had received from some elders a couple of days earlier.
We have such a lovely neighborhood to walk in as we do our morning exercise. We noticed this home for sale and are thinking of buying it. Just a mere $5 million.
These sister missionaries decided to make some Filipino food to share with the McClellans and the Christensens for lunch. It was one of the rare days we had an unrushed lunch hour and had planned to eat with the senior couples. We kind of crashed their party. But we didn't eat their food. We ate our regular sack lunch.
Elder Benjamin De Hoyos and his sweet wife Evelia came to spend a couple of days with us for a mission tour.
We enjoyed so much spending time with Elder and Sister De Hoyos. Thankfully they both knew enough English that I could communicate with them. I'm still very poor when it comes to Spanish.
They were trying to learn English and Glen came in handy as his translator. He spoke about half the time in English and half in Spanish.
One of our new missionaries helped translate for Sister De Hoyos.
We divided our missionaries up into two groups. This is the second group of missionaries.
The stake R.S. presidencies take turns feeding our missionaries. They always do such a great job.
The R.S. president to the left of me will soon be released because her husband is now the new stake president.
When Elder De Hoyos was finished with us, his next assignment was in Escondido. He and Elder Ruben Acosta had business there choosing a new stake president.
Glen and I were invited to that stake conference and were asked to speak in the Saturday evening session and also to share our testimonies in the Sunday conference.
At stake conference we had prime reserved parking. Although unnecessary, we did feel pretty special to have our own marked parking spot.
We needed a lot of extra time preparing for MLC this time, so we invited the assistants to our house for a popcorn treat to make the meeting more palatable.
Sunday still isn't Sunday for the MP without POPCORN!!!!
