Anti SPAM policy

I have nothing against canned meat products, however, I do have a problem with people that go into the back pages of my blog and post comments that contain links to advertising websites.

I have removed, and will continue to remove, posts by "superclosetnerd" (Blogger profile #30159579) for spamming my website with posts about a "fireplace utensils" website that is nothing more than an advertising links page.

I gave this user the benefit of the doubt the first time, even visiting their profile and the blogs linked from it. Those four blogs were non-content blogs with either no content or a single spost with something like "test" in it.

I commented on one of the person's blogs, the most recent, and thanked the person for having visited my blog. I also posted a note here, at the comment that they had posted to my site, suggesting they add more articles to their site. It was an effort both to encourage what was, possibly, a new site owner in improving, but also a warning to my readership that the site was not worth visiting unless they actually were shopping for fireplace utensils.

The person that made the links post has now made their profile inaccessible and posted more posts with the exact same text and links. The comment they leave in blog back posts is:

superclosetnerd said...
I can't believe this. I set out to get some ideas on my new site.. you know themes, color, layout, etc.... and I can't believe how much stuff I've found looking around. I'm liking some of the stuff I see here... some good ideas at least. I'm not sure if I want to go with normal blue underlined links or if I want an entire theme of colors for all of the text and the links too. Anyway, nice page, it gave me something to chew on. If anyone actually sees this and feels like it, you can check out my site. fireplace utensils

(Links do not work - I used color to identify link points)

I am reporting the user to Blogger and encourage other bloggers to remove any such links from their back posts if the links exist. If this person legitimately operates a new website and would like to dispute my complaint they are welcome to discuss it with me, however, based on their actions I can only conclude they are seeking to drive traffic to their advertisement site.

Vitamins & Suppliments at N101

You know I'm always keeping an eye on things that have any pertinence to health care or staying healthy, so there should be no surprise that when I came across N101 Nutrition I took a closer look. N101 sells vitamins, herbs, sport nutrition products, etc... They advertise everyday low prices and the products that I compared to what I buy locally (Ginko Biloba, One-A-Day, calcium), are of lower price than I have bought from local stores.

"N101 offers a Rewards Program for all customers, so you can earn points on each purchase and redeem for discounts and free merchandise."

I was pleased with the information I found on the items at their site as well, such as ingredient lists, suggested use, and a link to the manufacturer's website. (Item checked: Ginko Biloba 50:1 by Jarrow)

No clue what breathlessness was about

I haven't had any more obvious episodes of the shortness of breath. A few points where I had my breath seem to seizure and make me cough a few times, no clue what that's about, but nothing like what had happened. Don't know what it was. I know, I know, I should go see a doctor and I plan to... just as soon as I can pay off the emergency visits I made back in January and can afford to see a regular doctor for a checkup.

Is a 4th episode bad?

Okay, around 9 or so, about the time I was helping mom make dinner, I felt the faint tightening in my chest and coughed a few times as my breath seemed to get difficult. Mom and I were discussing it and have come to the theory that maybe it's the weight I've lost so quickly causing it? I've dropped roughly 20 pounds recently (not too fast, 11 pounds immediately then a fairly slow loss of the remainder). Not sure but going to keep an eye on it. When I checked my heart rate on watch it was actually lower than normal - about 53 rather than 60.

And short of breath #3

Around 3am I got out of a nice long hot bath (wasn't as warm as I like it normally, but seeing the vapors on the water in a 74 degree F room I checked and water was 105 degreef F - I like hot baths)... anyway... I got out of the bath and was still nice and relaxed and deciding what PJs to don when I had another shortness of breath attack. As it was happening I thoughts "can you develop asthma?" because that was all I could assosciate it with. I took my heart rate with my little heart rate watch thing for excercizing and it came up as 102 - my normal resting heart rate is 60.

Went and got dad's blood pressure machine and checked with it, took about two minutes to get and set up, - BP 143/88 pulse 90. Retook with watch - HR 110.

Told mom what happened and about past events I had experienced. At about 3:20 am I took my HR with watch and it was 90something. Used BP machine and got BP 130/84 and pulse 85.

At 4:14am I was on bed writing and took HR with watch - HR 61. Dad's BP machine: 127/80 pulse 72

2nd short of breath eppisode

Around 8 or 9 pm I had another episode of shortness of breath. It lasted at least a minute, not over that I don't think. I almost asked V what an asthma attack felt like and wondered if a person could develop asthma or if I was alergic to something. The coffee stuff I was drinking (a deal you add to milk to make iced coffee) immidiately came under suspiscion.

backdated to show events of breathlessness

(post backdated, but think it was the 24th)

Around 3pm maybe I had my first shortness of breath episode. Chest felt tight and was difficult to get air - coughs were automatic as my body tried to get air to move in and out of my chest. It lasted maybe 30 seconds, minute max, and was passed off as a "Well, that was weird" experience.

Compared it at the time to what I figured an asthma attack would be like.

Gold as an investment

Investing in your future is important for family caregivers. Monex, America's leader in precious metals investments for over 30 years, can help you buy gold bullion or other precious metals for immediate personal delivery, or will arrange for convenient and safe storage at an independent bank or depository.

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Advertising - what have I been paid and what do I do with it?

I was asked how much I have been paid by PayPerPost since I began using their blog marketing service on some of my blogs. I'm very excited about that in fact, since this morning I noticed that I have been paid $600.66. I know that's not a lot to some of you, but for me, that is a LOT of money. I know that you all know I've been posting ads on my blogs for a few months now, little bits here and there that I feel would be of interest to the people that read my blogs. I try to avoid things that would not be interesting to my readership and if things have slipped through that I thought someone might like and no one had any interest I apologize for that. I'm working my way toward two goals with my earnings - as I said, I have been paid $600, I'm also set to receive another $148.25 and have so far sent $17.50 to charity (American Red Cross and sponsoring a Walk For Cure participant in a three day walk with the money donated to cancer research).

What about the money I am keeping? Well, I've used part of it to help pay for heating fuel, I used a little over $20 to buy a emergency cell phone that costs me $1 a month to have a phone so I can keep in touch with my parents when I am not home (being the only one that knows anything about dad's medications that is vital), I am currently searching for a hemi walker (walker that can be used with only one arm) for my dad, and am putting away a percentage of it all to help me and mom buy my dad the powered wheelchair that his doctor says he needs.

I know that there are a lot of people that say what I do is bad, that I should not allow any posts in my blog that I have received money for, but I also know that I have striven to provide information that my readers can benefit from. Does it really matter if I too have benefited from some of it? If my father benefits from it?

Being a caregiver is the highest stress unpaid job in the world, writing - sponsored or not - is the only escape I have from my day to day stress and a lot of the time I can't even escape into writing (as you can tell when my writing sucks). When I learned about PayPerPost (I think it was this past June) I was writing on a site called WritingUp in an effort to earn a little income from my writing. PayPerPost allows me to focus on the blogs I care about and still have a chance to earn a little money by selecting sponsors that want to pay for posts on subjects I want to write about.

It's been a while, I've been busy

It's been a while since I have had anything that was worthy of being posted here, and I still don't. I want to change that, intend to start looking into things on medical news sites and such and talk about more than just my day to day activities since they don't change a lot.

How many times can a person blog about waking up, filling pills for the day, giving pills, making food, helping care recipient down the hall to.....

You get the idea and anyone that is caring for a partially handicapped person knows the drill - the rest of you I'm sure can fill in the details enough.

So I'm going to stop posting just when I have something worth posting about from my life, that never changes anyway, and instead go wandering around to find things (Should have done that anyway and have to a large extent but I'm going to make a more concerted effort of it now).

Local caregiver support groups on the internet

Being a family caregiver is a lonely activity. Sometimes you can wonder if anyone else even knows what you are going through. This is where support groups come into play. If you are involved in a support group, or are planning to start one, then you are likely considering finding caregivers in your area through an advertising campaign, but have you considered advertising on-line?

Over the past few years businesses have begun to realize the power of the internet in attracting local business and the same can be true for groups. The dream of local businesses is to get their websites listed in the top page of search results on sites such as Google. This is attained through Search Engine Optimization of your website. When you optimize your site for keywords such as caregiver, family, and other words that pertain to family caregivers as well as keywords that pertain to your location, you can attract people searching on-line for family caregiver support groups in your area.

How long does it take for Geneva Wood to ask Medicare about a powered wheel chair?

The folks that have been trying to get my dad a powered wheel chair called this morning. You remember them, right? They've been "trying" throughout most of the year. Now they apparently need the paperwork from dad's doctor, *AGAIN*. So far she's filled out their 4 page form on why she thinks my dad needs a wheel chair three times, this'll be the fourth. They also need her to write him another prescription because the old one expired. This will make the third prescription that they have needed.

The last time they requested the form they demanded it be hand delivered back to their office, their fax machine apparently was not printing it out clearly. Today my mom complained about how long it has taken Medicare to say yes or no on the chair and the gal that she was talking to informed her that it's not Medicare, it's the folks at Geneva Wood that are taking all this time deciding if *they* will approve my dad for a powered wheel chair before they decide if they even talk to Medicare about it. ........(insert long unamused pause)........... Okay, so why does it take them eight months, three prescriptions and four multi-page forms to decide if a 77 year old retired veteran of three major wars with stroke-induced paralysis is worthy of five minutes of their time to ask Medicare if they will approve him for a powered wheel chair?

I mean, it won't cost Geneva Wood even one penny and they're yanking him around and not even bothering to *ask* Medicare about him? And he has Tri-Care which, for those who don't know what that is, picks up the cost of any prescribed things that Medicare don't pay for. So why is it taking them all this time and paperwork just to decide if they will or won't ask if he can get a chair that his doctor has said *repeatedly* that he needs?

I'm fed up with them. I dug back through the posts here and found the one I had posted for CouponChief for 1-800-wheelchairs¹ and printed a bunch of things out for my mom to look over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
¹You can find that post here

I'm home!

Okay, so I was actually home a few days ago, but I had to recover for a few days from the exhaustion brought on by spending the night in the Las Vegas airport when the morons at US Airways handed me a voucher for a hotel that ran their last shuttle two hours before I landed. A fellow for another bus even called the hotel for me and they said they had no plans to run another shuttle that night even *after* being told that there was someone there waiting on the shuttle. ::pounds head on desk:: So I wandered the Vegas airport all night. I suppose I could have slept, but there's something about a place that supplies two or three needle depository things in each ladies bathroom that just makes a country girl feel uneasy. And those certainly weren't diabetic needles in them things either.

So, I'm home now and slowly getting things back into a semblance of being caught up. Had great fun on vacation despite botched ending that effectively ruined the recovery part of the whole thing. Got to see Keith Urban in concert and even met some of his roadies (I'm weird, I like the roadies as much as I like the band), and even got to talk to a few of the band guys. Thought the gals around me were going to shove me under the bus and club me because I was able to be right beside Chris multiple times - sometimes shoved up against his chest by the crowd - and yet being new to the music of Keith Urban I may as well have been standing beside anyone off the street. I like Chris though, he's a very nice guy that seems like he'd be a great guy to hang out with.

Okay, lots to do and still just kind of working my way through a mental fog, so off to figure out what else needs to be done.

I'm home!

Okay, so I was actually home a few days ago, but I had to recover for a few days from the exhaustion brought on by spending the night in the Las Vegas airport when the morons at US Airways handed me a voucher for a hotel that ran their last shuttle two hours before I landed. A fellow for another bus even called the hotel for me and they said they had no plans to run another shuttle that night even *after* being told that there was someone there waiting on the shuttle. ::pounds head on desk:: So I wandered the Vegas airport all night. I suppose I could have slept, but there's something about a place that supplies two or three needle depository things in each ladies bathroom that just makes a country girl feel uneasy. And those certainly weren't diabetic needles in them things either.

So, I'm home now and slowly getting things back into a semblance of being caught up. Had great fun on vacation despite botched ending that effectively ruined the recovery part of the whole thing. Got to see Keith Urban in concert and even met some of his roadies (I'm weird, I like the roadies as much as I like the band), and even got to talk to a few of the band guys. Thought the gals around me were going to shove me under the bus and club me because I was able to be right beside Chris multiple times - sometimes shoved up against his chest by the crowd - and yet being new to the music of Keith Urban I may as well have been standing beside anyone off the street. I like Chris though, he's a very nice guy that seems like he'd be a great guy to hang out with.

Okay, lots to do and still just kind of working my way through a mental fog, so off to figure out what else needs to be done.