Kidney Links

I have discovered Pinterest. I have also discovered how Pinterest doesn't work. I wanted a place to bookmark sites under categories so I can find them anytime no matter which computer I am on. However, I cannot pin a site that doesn't have a picture or video - so information-only sites cannot be pinned. Bummer.

Therefore, I thought I would start pinning my info-only kidney sites here and then I can find them all the time.

Low Phosphorus and Low Potassium Diet - http://www.unckidneycenter.org/nutrition_phospot.html


And maybe I'll add a picture so I can at least pin this post.

The dialysis machine that was used when I started dialysis. We are still using these machines, but I have been told we will be getting new ones.

Making Wands

Usually my husband, Bruce, does the schooling of our kids. However, now that I am done my law school finals and have de-stressed (a little) this week I have been helping him with ideas for our daughter. She is very artsy and enjoys making things. We have done baking and sewing but there is just so much of that a person can do before looking for some variety. So yesterday I signed up for Pinterest to pin the instructions for fixing my daughter's doll's hair and look for ideas for her to do.  Bruce pointed out that he had pinned instructions for making wands. We had planned to make them for school today. However, the kids were excited to start them, and we were unsure if we could get the wands finished today because of other plans; therefore, we decided to start working on them last night and finish them today. Once we got started on them, we were having so much fun we also finished them last night. We are all really happy with our wands and want to share them with you.

We started with chopsticks, small beads, hot glue and acrylic paint.I think if we do this again, we should have smaller beads and preferably ones that don't have holes in them. The chopsticks had a plastic wrap at the handle, which I took off before we started. The paint was mixed to make different colours for the wands - we used burnt sienna, black and yellow. Make sure you have a lot of glue sticks. We used quite a bit of glue.

 To begin, we used the glue to make our handles. We used some of the beads to make bumps and give it some texture. We also used just the glue to shape the way the handles look as well as to give the wands a rough stick-like feel to them. It was a learning process to know how long to wait before trying to mold the glue since if you try to mold it too early, it burns you and comes off the wood and sticks to your hand. But if you wait too long it is hard and not moldable.

Bruce used a lot of glue trying to figure out how to make his handle the way he wanted. About one glue stick's worth ended up in the garbage. He wanted to mold the glue to make it smooth. In the end he said he figured out that what he needed to do was put a really thick layer of glue on the stick and let the outer part of it cool until it was hard, then mold the glue on the inside which was still soft. I used the glue to make my wand look like a bumpy stick.

 After we had our glue and beads the way we wanted, we started to paint. However, there were still some modifications made with glue even after the paint was going on. Some of us decided that after our wands were painted, they didn't look quite the way we wanted them to. For example, my daughter wanted to put more glue between her beads because they stuck out quite a bit and still looked like beads. So she filled in some gaps with glue.

And my son didn't like the holes in the beads, so he took the time to (painstakingly) put little dots of glue in each bead hole. Personally I think his patience paid off because I didn't want to put glue in each of the holes of my beads, but I think his wand handle looks much better than mine.

Bruce painted his wand three different colours - one for the handle, one for the "stick", and one for the spikes - which are toothpicks he broke in half and glued onto the wand.

 As we were working on our wands, there were times we would poke them into a piece of styrofoam so that we didn't have to lay them down on the paper. Here you can see our wands in two different stages - mine is the unpainted one, and my daughter has hers painted. I used a risk piece at the end of my wand because it happened to be in with the beads and I thought it would be cool to use it since it was there.

The paint didn't take a long time to dry, but if you start handling the wand too soon after painting, you end up with fingerprints in the paint. And, as you can see, the colour of the beads doesn't matter because once you paint the wand, you can't see any other colour.

Our daughter works quite quickly on crafts (on most anything, actually), and since we had some toothpicks on the table she took the initiative to make a mini wand. It is the perfect size for her dolls - although she tells us that none of her dolls does magic. It may end up as a gift to one of her friends who likes Harry Potter.

These are the finished handles. The picture doesn't show as well the differences in the colours.

From left to right the owners are me, my daughter, my husband, and my son. We all really like our wands and, as you can see, they are each as individual as we are. 

While we had teased our kids that they needed to go find unicorn hairs  and phoenix feathers for the cores of their wands, we are still all a family of muggles with no real magical ability. We can continue being geeky, though. It was a lot of fun making the wands, and my daughter is already planning what she is going to do for her next one.

Homeschooling - we can do school after supper and have fun doing it!

Fast forward one year:

I am doing well on dialysis. I go three times a week. It has become a part of my life, which I am okay with overall, but sometimes it is frustrating because there are many things I have not been able to do or go to because of the time it takes. It is not all bad, though. I was complaining one time about how I have so much less family time because of dialysis, and my son said, “But we have family time Tuesdays and Thursdays!” My husband and kids come on those two days and we often play a game or two. They have become evenings my kids look forward to - so long as they can agree on the game we will play!

We have discovered there are quite a few different games we can play at dialysis. The nurses are really nice and allow me to have an extra table for my schoolwork or for my family. A lot of the people at dialysis watch TV, but I rarely ever do. I am usually on the computer, reading, or playing games with my family. One of the nurses commented that she had never seen a family with as many interesting games as we have. We are kind of geeky that way. Some of the games we currently have in our bag to bring to dialysis: Monopoly Deal, Munchkin, Bohnanza (although we have to get creative with the space), Ablaze!, Vizia, Flux, and Zombie Dice. We have also played Yahtzee, Settlers of Catan (the board barely fits on the table, so we only did it once or twice), Talisman (which we only did once. We had to put 3 tables together for that one, so didn’t do it again), and Savage Worlds (we each had our own little box for our dice and tokens, etc.). I imagine we could also play games like Trouble or Parcheesi, but haven’t tried those ones yet.

I am glad that my family has adjusted so well to the time I have to spend at dialysis. Because it takes so much time, there is the possibility that I will qualify for a disability benefit. Last year I received a form for income tax; however, the doctor marked off that my treatments take less than 14 hours per week. That is not true. I actually calculate on average I am spending about 15 hours per week at the clinic. While I am hooked up to the dialysis machine for 4 hours at a time (12 hours per week), it takes time to get me set up on the machine and then it also takes time after to take me off and stop the bleeding. Some people are lucky and stop bleeding fairly quickly. I am not one of those people. I hold my sites for at least 15 minutes afterward  because my bottom site has a tendency to leak if I don’t.  My understanding is that it is because I have an upper arm A/V Fistula which has more pressure.  This year I talked with the social worker and now have my form showing that my treatments take more the 14 hours per week.

School takes up most of the rest of my time. I am a 2L now. I have managed to pass all my semesters and maintain my passing average. I commented to one of my profs that every semester I wonder how I am going to get everything done, but every semester I manage to get through and pass. I have also been working on my Mary Kay business, so I will leave you with a dialysis picture of my reading Applause - the Mary Kay magazine for consultants.