CanadianCindyB

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...