Love is the most excellent way

Going on vacation (holiday)

Helen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:18:58 +0000

Tomorrow we’re flying to England. We’ll be in Bamburgh, Northumberland for a week with my husband’s parents, then a week in Llanfairfechan, North Wales with my parents and my brothers and their families (that will be a group of 16). I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and being back in England. We haven’t been back for three years - we’ve seen our families more recently than that but in other places.

I’m not sure whether we’ll have wi-fi while we’re there. If we do I might post a vacation update or two. Or maybe I’ll just wait until we get back.

July 4 Fireworks

Helen — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:41:24 +0000

On July 4th we walked over to the Oak Park fireworks display on the high school grounds as we’ve done for a number of years now.

This year Ben took his camera and a tripod and took photos of the fireworks. The best ones are in the slideshow below. I took a short video of the finale with my camera which is under his slideshow.

Fireworks

Steve, Ben and Esther

Helen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:45:55 +0000

I took these just before the piano recital in June

Adding Imuran

Helen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:55:33 +0000

I saw my doctor yesterday to discuss how the Remicade is going.

Her opinion was that the Remicade is somewhat helpful but not helpful enough by itself. Her recommendation was to add another medication which acts differently from Remicade until my symptoms are under control, then go back to just one medication for maintenance. She thought that would work better than increasing the Remicade dose or switching from Remicade to Humira which works the same way as Remicade.

She gave me the choice of adding methotrexate (weekly injections) or Imuran aka azathioprine (pills). Given my previous comments about injections you might be able to guess I chose Imuran. It takes 1-3 months before seeing effects from Imuran so it will be while before I know whether it’s helping.

Webcast of Steve moderating at the CAS Spring Meeting

Helen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:38:47 +0000

Steve moderated a general session at the Casualty Actuarial Society’s Spring Meeting in Quebec earlier this month.

There’s a webcast of the session he moderated at the bottom of this page.