Author: Dave

  • First full day of moving

    My friend Mike Pankion came over and we loaded a small trailer and his SUV with the contents and the first load of the cabinets from my shop. I had built these cabinets with french cleats for hanging. Makes them easy to remove and relocate. We managed to to get 11 of the 17 cabinets […]

  • Got the keys

    Yesterday morning, Sunday, we got the keys to the house. Walked through the emptiness before church. It looks a lot bigger without all the massive furniture the previous owner had stuffed in every corner. Also every flaw and defect shows its ugly head. Now we are debating how much we want to do before we […]

  • Our New Home

    Have you ever tried to Blog? It ain’t easy. I don’t know how people that record every detail of there lives in words and pictures do it. I get so involved in what I’m doing I forget to take pictures and by the end of the day I forget or don’t have the energy to […]

  • Return to home ownership

    I haven’t posted here in a while. So I thought this new wrinkle in our life my be worth documenting for those that are really bored and need some senseless drivel to read.  A new adventure is beginning in our life. We are looking to buy another home in the very near future. Our daughter […]

  • 19 Days Post OP

    I guess I got blogged out as I have nothing very dramatic to share. Nevertheless I’m not back to normal yet. To wear out an old phrase, “It is what it is.” We just have to learn how to live with it and try to smile while doing so. Smiling is the really hard part. […]

  • Home Again!

    There’s no place like home! My last entry was Tuesday 10/21/2014. We had made the momentous decision to wait a while longer for the bleed to stop and not institute more invasive procedures. It was the right decision. By 10:00 PM Tuesday my urine was running clear. Needless to say by 6:00 AM Wednesday I’m ready […]

  • It ain’t over till its over

    I went home Thursday afternoon in good spirits and apparent good health. I relaxed and recovered all day Friday with normal urinary and bowl functions returning. I eat and enjoy solid food and think I’m moving a little slow but this is not so bad. I’ll be good as new in a week or two. Saturday I […]

  • Home

    My last post was Tuesday. Here it is Thursday already and I’m sure most of you have been wondering what’s going on with Kratzer. So here is the story with more detail than anybody needs to know. Wednesday was a day of waiting for that gas to pass, punching the Morphine button and flirting with the […]

  • Post OP

    Here it is Tuesday evening 7:00 PM. I woke up about noon yesterday but haven’t been up to computing till now. Seven holes and 3 hours is all it took to remove gall bladder (1 hour) and the growth on my right kidney (2 hours). No biopsy results yet so don’t know for sure if it […]

  • Almost There.

    So I went to bed last night thinking I was coming down with a cold and that the surgery would probably be postponed. My head was stuffed up and getting worse. I want to get this over with and not have to do another round of pre-op appointments. Besides the longer we wait the more […]

  • Kidney Stone Gone, Houston, we a go for surgery

    I’ve had a follow-up X-ray and the blasted stone is no where in sight. Strained pee only revealed a few fine grains of sand. Don’t know where the rest of it went but the doc says all is well and we are a go for dual surgery on Oct 13. I had a pre-op appointment […]

  • Round one over

    In at 10:00 AM out at 12:30 PM. 3/8 inch stone in left kidney blasted to bits. Now I need to strain pee for a week to catch pieces for analysis. A bit groggy from anesthetic and a little sore on left side. Follow-up X-ray and appointment in one week. If all is as it […]

  • Medicare

    So I did a little research on what this little adventure might cost. Did you ever try to read a government document? Anyway what I glean from the 300 page tome “Annual Notice of Changes” from AARP Medicare Complete is that my maximum out of pocket expense can’t exceed $6700. That’s encouraging. Not as bad […]

  • A Week Out From Diagnosis

    So here it is a week & a day since I left the hospital. Exit instructions were explicit about making appointments with my primary care doctor (PCP) and the two surgeons to get all things approve and scheduled. Last Tuesday I saw my PCP and brought him up to speed. A $50 copay to tell […]

  • Who Cares?

    Then I think “Who cares?” I can spend a lot of time writing about my minor medical issue when there are thousands out there, including some very close friends, with issues that make my bit of kidney and gall bladder malfunction look like a hangnail. Then I get an email from a friend with this […]

  • To Blog or not to blog?

    I began an unexpected medical journey on Sunday 9-7-14. I initially thought if I blog about this then my friends can go to one place and keep up to speed. Then I thought that would be a lot of work to keep the blog up to date. Then I thought I’ll put it on Face […]

  • Working with a friend

    Here I sit trying to help a friend get a new web site working. He knows nothing about web sites and I know a little bit more. Just enough to be dangerous.

  • Time to go public

    Two weeks later I now have 12 galleries containing over 400 photos with captions and a bit of dialog describing each gallery. I think these galleries give a pretty good picture of the high points of what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years. I still have a lot I’d like to do […]

  • Seek and ye shall find

    My frustration with rotated photos now has a solution. A plugin called Image Rotation Fixer has been installed and now my pictures upload as I have them saved. I now have 12 galleries of my work on line. I still need to add captions to many of the photos but my viewers can at least […]

  • A bit of progress

    Thanksgiving weekend we are in Huntsville AL eating and loafing with Hannah’s brother and sister-in-law. Have some time to tinker on the web site. I found a free plugin from bestwebsoft.com for creating picture galleries. So far I have created two galleries but have yet to figure out how to rotate images. I have them saved […]