Adding 3 New Born Crochet Beanie Hats with Daisy Flowers today.

These are so adorable and the big daisy is on a ribbon covered alligator pinch clip.

The daisy is removable and can be worn without beanie hat.

The headband is crochet and has a beautiful pink daisy with a pink and white

butterfly also set on a ribbon covered alligator pinch clip.

These can be found in my Etsy Store:

judithskloset.etsy.com

NEW SPRING TIME KORKER BOWS WITH HEADBANDS

Here they are first in a new line of hairbows for my customers. These have been fun to make. Took some time and a steady hand but the finished product was worth.

You will find them on ebay by judiths_closet. A link to ebay on the right hand side of my blog.

These precious bows sell for only $5.49 each with 2.50 shipping.

PICTURES OF DIALYSIS SUPPLIES

I thought I had a big pretty bedroom. The room is about 16X22. A large queen bed and a antique dresser and chest with room for 2 old trunks in the room. One wall of book shelves for pictures and special things. You would think that would be enough room for dialysis supplies but it isn't. Supplies are in other rooms also. The old trunks are gone and Gary has a hospital bed right under all those shelves. I don't think you can see it in the pictures. His small supplies are stored on the shelves. Tons of them, mask, gloves, alcohol pads, iodine prep pads, 4X4s, sponges, 4 boxes syringes, antibacterial soaps and jels, paper towels for our hands, can't use towels because of germs. Just lots of stuff all over the house. The problem is our floors. In our bedroom alone here in this picture are 80 boxes that weigh 25 pounds each. That is 2000 lbs witch equals a ton on my wood floors. They were against a inside wall till I became worried about the bracing under the house. So I waited till the end of the month when his supplies are at the lowest and moved all of them against a outside wall. We are going to have to repair the bracing under the house now. We had a man come out yesterday to look and sure enough he thinks we have problems underneath. He will be back this week to see what it will take to brace the floors up and repair what has been done. When you live on Social Security these kind of things scare you to death.

Some people are able to store supplies in a garage that has heating and cooling. For myself I am not strong enough to bring those boxes into the house they are heavy, don't have a heated garage anyway.lol

So just a picture or two of some of the supplies you have on PD dialysis.

Everyone have a great day, Judy

HOME PD DIALYSIS: NOT ALWAYS EASY

I'm making embroidered hair bows today. A stressful day around here. Most of the time home dialysis goes OK. I start hooking bags to the machine around 7:PM every evening. Lots of things to do right before such as injections and weighing and filling out charts. I choose the solutions by his weight. If his weight is to high we use a stronger solution. We have 1.5, 2.5 and 4.25. Giving too much can make him take off too much and make him ill. We usually use the 2.5 and it works fine. We never want to go through a overload again. He had one in Oct. of last year and he nearly died. When a dialysis patient has too much fluid it fills up the lungs and damages the heart. It makes the heart weaker and larger every time it happens and a trip to the hospital on life flight.
After getting his dialysis machine ready it would not work. After calling tech support I was told to re thread the machine. We have 4 bags of fluid on the machine each about 12 pounds so its a little bit of work and time. It took me 1-1/2 hours to get him on last night. You would think that was enough bad luck till he woke up this morning. I was having a wonderful time having my coffee at 6 AM this morning all by myself emailing a Friend in the UK when I had to do his stats and unhook him. When he told me he was weak and could not stand up very well I took his blood pressure and his heart rate was very high. I about fell apart, and here I thought I was doing so good. I made the calls to his nurses and found that I probably had taken too much fluid off. Although just to fair to me that was not our fault. You really never know when that might happen. We go by dry weight. His dry weight is 106 KG and anything over that is extra fluid that needs to be taken off as well as the poisons.

It is such a sobering responsibility to take care of someone that has renal failure.
If a renal patient is on Hemo or PD they still have the same problems.

1. Albumin (protein) needs to be between 3.8 to 4.5 so he drinks protein drinks to keep it up.

2. Potassium needs to be 3.5 to 5.5. Too much K can stop your heart and kill you just that quick.

3. Phosphorus needs to be 3.5-5.5 it can weaken your bones and cause hardening of your arteries and body tissues.

4. Calcium needs to be 8-9.5. You must take your phosphorus binders before each meal.

The list goes on.

If you are a diabetic you can avoid these things by keeping your sugar under control.

I receive lots of email from people with a family member on dialysis. I appreciate each and everyone of them.

My friend in the UK is a living Kidney Donner. Her kidney will go to a anonymous receiver. How wonderful is that.

Stocking up my shop on etsy.com Judy

Satin Ribbon Roses

I finished my satin roses and posted them today on ebay. It's been a labor of love for sure.

The roses are hand stitched and are 2 to 2-1/4 inches wide.

These beauties are wonderful for appliques. Pillows, shoes, scarves, hairbows, bedspreads, hats, brooches. Anything your mind can imagine.

They are $8.50 plus 2.20 shipping.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, New Year is next, Judy

Learning To Make Satin Ribbon Roses

I'm learning to make ribbon roses. I just love to work with ribbon. Anything ribbon will work. These are about 2-1/2 inches wide. Perfect for appliques, hairbows, scarves, pillowcases,shoes, brooch pins.
There are so many styles of roses to learn. I found the most amazing book written by Candace Kling , The Artful Ribbon. I have never seen so many beautiful ribbon flowers. Something very special in making flowers. Keeping beautiful things alive. I will be offering roses made of satin, organza and grosgrain ribbons. They will be posted on ebay within a few days and on my website www.angelbowboutique.com
I will still make my hairbows just plan to expand. No way is there enough time to do everything you want to. I would love to sew and make handbags and totes. I just can't fit everything in. I choose the roses because I can sit in the living room at night with my husband and make the roses while we watch a little TV. He is very sick and I don't like to stay in my bow room all the time and leave him alone so much. This is a perfect solution for that problem.

This is Christmas Eve and I'm missing my family so much. My Brother, Sister and my Mom. Missing the old days when we all lived near each other and spent holidays together when our children were small.

I received a boutique of beautiful flowers yesterday from someone I'm not really sure who it was but they brightened my Christmas more than they know. One the card there was a bible verse. I pulled out my bible and looked it up.

Psalms 55:22 Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

I had no idea that this would be so sad and depressing this Christmas. The first Christmas that my husband and I spent together since he went on dialysis. Everything is different now. The medical company brought equipment yesterday for him. Wheelchair and a hospital bed. A cold reality check for me. Some things you just have no control over. Have to make the best of it, don't want to become depressed.

Everyone please be thankful and have a wonderful Christmas, Judy

HOME PD DIALYSIS: BETTER WATCH FOR:

While the reason for this blog is discussing ribbon, hair bows and showing pictures of my work other things go on in our lives that take all of our attention and I want to share problems as well as solutions that we have discovered. We are fairly new to PD at home dialysis so we have had more problems than solutions.

I enjoy the emails that I receive from others that are interested in kidney failure and from those who are on dialysis. I learn from every email that I receive from others.

I think we made a bad mistake yesterday by going to a family Christmas party. Although its one that we go to every year and its the highlight of our lives. This is the fun part of being with our Children and Grandchildren, (notice that I capped those words without even thinking about it) but that's how we feel about getting together with the kids.

Our youngest daughter live 75 miles south of us, they picked us up and we went to Glenpool, Oklahoma about another 85 miles so a pretty long trip for them. All the kids were there. One Son and all his family, wife and 6 children and a boyfriend of their oldest. Four Daughters and their family's, husbands and between them 8 Grandchildren, one Granddaughter and her 2 children, my Great-Grand-Children. The house was busting full with little ones running around. Lots of good food and fun. Santa Clause came in the front door with a bag of gifts, the kids were so excited. Even some of the grown-ups sat on Santa's lap for their presents. Of course we made fun of them.

My husband is on home dialysis the PD type so he does dialysis every night. He has been very ill with a recent heart attack and his lungs filling with fluid. He is on the mend but still weak. He didn't want to miss all this so we went. He is a diabetic and although he is not eating much anymore because of nausea he felt like eating some things that he really liked. In the car on the way up there he also had a pop and that really was not a good idea.

A problem with PD dialysis for some is that the solution they have to use is dextrose witch can make a patients sugar count go up and he has been having that problem. Our routine is to check his sugar at night and if its high witch it always is I give him 10 units of lantus. His sugar when we went to bed last was 316 so I gave him a shot. When I got up this morning he was still hooked up to dialysis and had one more fill and a drain left. He was so thirsty that he had been setting here drinking water. At some point dialysis patients stop being able to urinate and he has. So all that fluid is staying in his body. The dialysis machine takes that fulid off. Since he was at the end of the dialysis treatment it didn't have time to do that. When it came time to unhook his weight was up so high that is scares me to death. The more the weight is the more fluid is on him. This is what causes the lungs to fill up and is life threatening. I will put him on dialysis early tonight to get it off as fast as I can. I will need to call the on call PD nurse today and hope they don't send him to the hospital. He was so thirsty so I checked his sugar and its over 500, another reason we should go straight to the hospital. He won't he is so tired of being in the hospital.

A PD home dialysis can have more fluids than a Hemo dialysis patient can but still need to be careful.
A PD home dialyses still has to watch their diet also.
Albumin witch is protein, you must eat protein, his is low.
Potassium
Phosphorus, a bad one, so many things he can't have.
Calcium,. we don't want that one
Other things that he takes meds for also.

Just about the time I think I'm getting this, one bad day can mess it up. Every time the lungs fill with fluid the heart becomes larger and weakens.

While he is sleeping today with a sugar count of over 500 I'll need to watch him and make sure he does not go into a coma. In the meantime I need to make sure a couple of bags are packed and I have all the information on his meds because if he begins to have trouble breathing we are on our way to the Hospital again no matter what he says.

So its worth it to pay more attention to fluids and diets. A person needs to be so careful.
Home dialysis is easy and we like it but take things for granted and get lax sometimes, now I'm so sorry we were not more careful.

We will be more careful in the future, you just can't get lax with home dialysis. In other words I'll have to nag at him more. Sometimes I feel like a drill Sargent.

PD is easier than Hemo because you are taking fluids and poison off every night. But you still have to do your part, one bad day can cause a real problem. Judy