CanadianCindyB

I posted that in early 2016 I was reducing hours at my job in order to increase self-employment. It's time to do that again.  I've put in notice that I would like to decrease my hours from 20 hours/week to 14 hours a week at job 1.  I've also stopped working at Job 2 during the months of March and April which means I'm working slightly less there as well on average. There have been hourly pay increases at both jobs over time as well. My updated chart is below. For 2017 my self-employment was FORTY percent of my income. I'm super excited about reducing my employment hours once again, and being able to have more time to do more self-employment of Personal Income Taxes and Payroll Services. Primary job: (25 hours/week) 2012: 79% of income  2013: 75% of income  2014: 80% of income  2015: 70% of income 2016: 55% of income (decrease to 20 hours/week) 2017: 51% of income   Secondary job: (average of 5 hours/week) 2012: 12% of income ...

Looking back to 2012, one of my goals was to increase my self-employment income to be more than 15% of my income for the year.  Three years later, I've surpassed this goal!  Although we aren't at the end of 2015 yet, I can estimate my numbers quite well.  There is a possibility that my self-employment income will be more than I have forecasted. Primary job: (25 hours/week) 2012: 79% of income  2013: 75% of income  2014: 80% of income  2015: 70% of income  Secondary job: (average of 5 hours/week) 2012: 12% of income  2013: 13% of income  2014: 10% of income  2015: 10% of income Self -Employment: 2012: 5% of income 2013: 11% of income 2014: 10% of income 2015: 20% of income Other Income: 2012: 4% of income (Maternity Employment Insurance during January) WOOT!! This year my NET self-employment income will be 20% of my total income.  I've grown business slowly, quite purposefully.  I havn't advertised d...

As a follow up to my post in July on my 2013 Contest Winnings at that point , I thought I should post the winnings for the rest of the year. In July, I had won a total of $940 worth of prizes. 2013 Winnings (2nd Half of Year) Google Nexus 7 Tablet x 2 (both my husband & I won one)  Kitkat Contest  Value $450 Google Play Codes from Kitkat Contest Value $30 $100 VISA Giftcard from Royal Bank Small Biz Twitter chat  Value $100 $100 Giftcard to Glamagirls from Tweenhood  Value $100 2 Books Muse & Secret Shared from @BookaliciousCA Value $30 $10 iTunes Giftcard from @PTPA  Value $10 2nd Half of Year Total: $710 Total for 2013: $1650

Last week we travelled to the Washington DC area from Southern Ontario, Canada.  We crossed the border in Buffalo, NY.  Here are my tips and tricks: 1) Take the scenic highways.   We took scenic highways on the way down, and some of the interstate highways on the way home.  The scenic highways, particularly those in Pennsylvania were absolutely gorgeous.  Travelling through the mountains is a must!  However, I wouldn't advise this trip for winter, as the slopes on some of the roads were crazy steep, and very well could be treacherous for inexperienced drivers in the winter.  2) Stay outside of DC.   Accomodation within DC is extremely expensive, and still not cheap on the outskirts.  We stayed in Silver Springs one night, and in Bethesda for three nights.  Both are on the metro (subway) line, which makes downtown DC easily accessible.  We used Hotwire to book our hotels. 3) Take the Metro (Subway).   Don't attempt driving...

Note: i will add in some pictures later. My phone hasn't done a Google back up of the pictures I've taken yet. Friday, November 8th would be our son Kyles second birthday. While being aggressively treated for Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency (OTC Deficiency), a urea cycle disorder, with the hopes of having him obtaining a liver transplant, he acquired an E Coli infection at the hospital. The infection was not caught in time, and in doing the treatment for the OTC, dialysis was performed, which in turn spread the infection throughout the entire body. Last year at this time, we had a follow up appointment at the hospital. I'm hopeful that in my participating, new things will be learned that will help future generations. This year, at this same time, I am at the National Institute of Health (NIH), in the United States, participating as a research subject in a study called MINI. It stands for Metabolism, Infection and Immunity in Inborn Errors of Metabolism. They had s...

A couple of weeks ago, I received a phone call from the principal of another school in our area, wondering if our daughter might be interested in attending there next year.  She met the criteria for the gifted program, and she has a choice of staying within her own school and having a slightly adapted program, or switching schools into the gifted program. The fact that she met the criteria was not a surprise to us.  Every teacher she has had over the years has commented that she probably fits into the "gifted" category.  My husband was in gifted as a kid, and I was always one point away from meeting the criteria, but instead, I skipped two grades (grade 1 and grade 8). The gifted program in our city is very small.  It is currently one classroom of students ranging from grade 5 to grade 8.  They are sometimes broken up into grade level (5/6 vs 7/8), and for that reason there are 1.5 teachers designated towards this class.  We went on a tour earlier thi...

October 15th is National Pregnancy Loss and Remembrance Day. We are coming up on October 24th, which is what would have/could have been the 1st birthday of our son Kyle.  He died at Toronto Sick Kids last November from an E. Coli infection while waiting for a liver transplant, which was to be the treatment for a genetic metabolic disorder called Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency aka OTC Deficiency. It's an extremely difficult genetic situation to manage with drugs until the point of transplant. But the doctors were hopeful. They were willing to try everything   possible for us. It was the very first time that Sick Kids was dealing with a case where it was known before birth that a liver transplant would be needed.  In order to have him on the transplant list immediately after birth and to help search for a living liver donor, we found out his blood type before being born, through the extra sample of amniotic fluid during the pregnancy.  There were high risk ...

This past Saturday, the Globe and Mail newspaper had an article regarding PGD - pre implantation genetic diagnosis.  I plan on writing more about that topic in the future, but in the meantime, one of the statistics that was in the article was that approximately 1% of the live births in Canada were conceived via IVF - in vitro fertilization.  The 1% quote is pretty close.  In 2009, there were 380 863 births in Canada , and 3160 of these were via IVF based on the statistics stated below.  This is an overall rate of  0.83% of births were via IVF, which can easily be rounded up to state approximately 1%. I know a number of people who have used IVF in order to get pregnant, but I had never considered the overall percentage before.  I'd share one of cute pictures of friends children who have been conceived by IVF, but even for those who are open about the conception, it feels a little too public to request permission to use a picture. One in one hundr...

We have been very open and public about our journey through our pregnancy with our son Kyle (Oct 24 - Nov 8, 2011).  His life has not only affected us as a family, but our extended family, friends, acquaintances, doctors, hospital staff, and many people who I have never even met.  Not only did it affect these people, but his life created a lot of conversation right from the very beginning.  Some people didn't understand why I didn't abort immediately after finding out he was affected.  Others were incredibly hopeful for the medical treatment of a liver transplant that was available this time, that wasn't a possibility eight years ago when we went through this before.  After his death, many have struggled with the "How could this happen," either from a medical or theological perspective, or both.  Awareness about urea cycle disorders and awareness about organ donation have occurred.  A new study on hepatocyte transplant (injection of healthy liver cel...

In memory of our baby Kyle: Oct 24, 2011 - Nov 8, 2011.  We had 15 days with him.  This is a summary of the last few days. If you havn't read my recap of Week One , or the recap of Week Two , read them first. We spent the day at Sick Kids on Sunday, including our daughter.  The nurse that day was the same nurse who was there the very first day Kyle was born and brought over from Mount Sinai.  She arranged to have Natasha be able to be let in to see Kyle since she wasn't officially allowed to on the PICU floor since she was under 12.  I'm very thankful she did this. This was the last day that he was responsive at all...he would still grip your finger if you put it into his hand. They did neurological tests on Monday and Tuesday.  MRI, ECG, and a special type of ECG where they put goggles on and flash lights, do hearing testing as well as physical testing and all of them showed absolutely no response to stimuli of any form.  We made the decis...

In memory of our baby Kyle: Oct 24, 2011 - Nov 8, 2011.  We had 15 days with him.  This is a summary of week 2. If you havn't read my recap of Week One , read it first. Mike and our daughter left on Sunday night to go home, while I stayed in Toronto.  I already had a hotel room booked at the Delta Chelsea for this week, since originally I was supposed to have baby on Nov 1st by planned induction and I had booked it as a place for Mike to be able to sleep for the first couple days before I would be discharged, and then for me to join him.  The hospital and the hotel are only a block apart from each other which is really helpful. The weekend had been hard, as I described in the previous post, with dialysis lines inserted, dialysis started and stopped, and ammonia levels spiking high. They had also attached Kyle up to a fancy EEG machine over the Sunday and Monday for 48 hours to monitor for the potential of both convulsive and non-convulsive seizure activity from...

In memory of our baby Kyle: Oct 24, 2011 - Nov 8, 2011.  We had 15 days with him.  This is a summary of the first 7 days. As many people reading this know, I was pregnant with a baby boy affected with a severe mutation of Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency, which means that he can't metabolize protein properly.  Protein gets changed into ammonia, but it doesn't get past that point in affected children.  The ammonia builds up, causing potential brain damage, and eventually causing the organs to shut down. We were going to do medical treatment to be followed by a liver transplant.  We weren't convinced we would get to the point of transplant, because the treatment would be difficult to manage.  But we were willing to try.  We were doing it day by day.  We were going to try, and if he made it, we would go buy everything that was needed. I was due Nov 14, or Nov 11 based on ultrasound.  I've had two previous full term pregnancies.  My...

I have some important news to share.  All blood types can now apply to be a living liver donor towards our baby.  Previously only B or O could apply, and they are now opening it up to A and AB donors.  Positive/negative blood type does not matter. This is called "ABO incompatible matching", and is not typically done.  Toronto has done it with adults, but never with children.  When we met with the transplant team a couple of weeks ago, they had mentioned that they were going to add in the possibility of using ABO incompatible livers from cadavers if they came in to bring up the odds of finding a liver.  This is only done in rare cases.  Our next question to them automatically became, "If you are willing to do that, what about incompatible blood type living donors?"  They mentioned that they had not done this at Sick Kids before, but would talk it over with the living donor co-ordinators at Toronto General as well as the main surgeon (who was in s...

 Some random facts about liver transplant: There are typically between 20 and 30 children on the waiting list for a liver at a time just at Toronto Sick Kids hospital. Toronto and London are the two transplant centres in Ontario. No cadaver livers came into Sick Kids hospital during July or August this year, but two became available this past weekend resulting in transplants (including the other OTC case I wrote about earlier). The waiting period for a cadaver liver is very random. The first living donor transplant in Toronto was performed in 1996. Toronto is the largest, most experienced living donor transplant centre in North America. The list for people needing transplants in Ontario is maintained by the Trillium Gift of Life program.  They maintain a publicly accessible list that tells you how many people in Ontario are on the waiting list for organs at a time.  At time of writing this, there are 235 people in Ontario waiting for a liver transplant ...

We've been waiting prenatally to see what baby's blood type is in order to be able to plan a bit ahead for the needed liver transplant. Baby's blood type is B!!  You might ask why I'm excited to hear this.  We knew that the blood type would be either O or B, based on the blood types of myself and my husband.  It was a 50/50 chance either way.  Here are the statistics on why this is good news. (The +/- factor has no influence on liver donations, and the lab report didn't specify +/- anyway.) In Canada, 46% of the population have an O blood type (39% O+, 7% O-). In Canada, 9% of the population have a B blood type (7.6% B+, 1.4% B-). Being B, he can receive a liver from someone who is either O, or B blood types.  It slightly raises the number of potential people that he can receive a liver from than if he was O, since O can only receive a liver from another O. From the opposite perpective, someone who is a B blood type, can only give to someone who is B o...

I've had a few people ask me what the process is to be tested to be a donor for our baby's needed liver transplant due to his genetic condition of Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency.  I had posted a little bit about our meeting with the transplant team earlier, but not the actual application process. If you are interested in being a potential donor, you must be either O blood type, or possibly B blood type. Positive/negative doesn't matter.  We are currently waiting on results to find out whether baby's blood type is O or B.  If you are O, you can be a donor no matter what blood type the baby is.  If baby turns out to be B blood type, then B blood types can also be donors. For other info, see the same link as above... Meeting With The Transplant Team.   You will see that currently they would really only consider people under 150lbs.  However, if you are bigger than this, and are still interested, please keep the thought...  If baby grows well ...

After meeting with the transplant team a couple weeks ago, one of the big pieces of missing info was "What blood type is the baby?"  By knowing the blood type definitively, it helps the process along by knowing who can and who can't be a donor.  If we know ahead of time, they can put baby on the transplant list probably as soon as I'm in labor, or right at birth.  It also helps potential donors know if they would qualify or not. I knew they had taken extra amniotic fluid as a just in case measure when I had my amnio done back in June.  I mentioned this to the transplant team as a potential source of information for blood typing, and that I would have genetics look into whether blood typing could be done in this way. It took some research, but it can be done!  Sick Kids has found a lab somewhere in New York that will process the extra amniotic fluid to find out the blood type definitively.  I think this is pretty cool on a theoretical, scientific, resear...

Today we met with the liver transplant team at Sick Kids, and learned the following. 1) The surgeon has no conditions on minimum age or weight.  As soon as a liver is available, either cadaver liver or living donor liver, he will do the surgery.  This was probably the most surprising piece of information for us, since we assumed there would be a minimum age/weight or both.  He said if we had a living donor ready the day baby was born, he would perform the surgery that day. A living donor is someone (related or unrelated) who donates (via surgery) a part of their liver to be transplanted.  The donor's liver regenerates and grows back into a full liver...it's the only organ that will regenerate.  Pretty cool, eh? 2) Having a living donor for the day of the birth is nearly impossible because they do a maximum of a 15:1 weight ratio for donor to baby.  My previous two pregnancies have resulted in babies that were less than 6.5 lbs.  At 6.5 lbs for ba...

We had a long meeting this week with metabolic genetics. We were not originally sure if the hospital would be willing to treat baby's OTC (ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency) or not.  I wouldn't have been surprised if they had said "Sorry, but this is beyond the scope of our abilities." However, they are optimistic (much more so than we are) that they can treat baby.  It requires a LOT of work, and co-ordination between numerous departments of a number of different hospitals.  Since I know we have many people interested in how this will work, I will try to outline what we know so far.  We will know more specific details later, as we have not yet met with the transplant team, and they will answer many questions regarding transplant at that point. 1) Ideally the doctors would have me deliver by planned c-section, so that they will be ready and prepared for us and baby with a known time of arrival, but I have decided against this for a combination of reasons....

The fetal echo cardiogram on Tuesday at Sick Kids went fine.  No problems at all.  So that's good news.  The medical fellow who did the ultrasound was 16 weeks pregnant with twins...can you imagine how hard it would be for her to have to tell people that things aren't good with the heart while she's pregnant herself?  A tough spot to be in. So we're glad that went well, because if it hadn't, we're pretty sure that the possibility of using any treatment options/end results liver transplant would have been eliminated. On another note, I've been looking for blogs from anyone who has documented their time in treating a baby with OTC.  I havn't managed to find any.  I have found a few blogs that talk about treating their children with other urea cycle disorders (of which OTC - ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency is one of six urea cycle disorders, and the most common of the six).  Even though it's not exactly the same (but similar) I found Katie w...