Sick Boy

Benjamin has been sick since Monday. He was extra fussy overnight Sunday to Monday and when we got up Monday I told DH that he might have a fever. Sure enough,  his temperature was about 102. This post could easily turn into a recount of what his temperature was at various times, and I don't want that. Lets just say the fever has stuck around. High measurement on Monday of 104, yesterday 106, today 104. Tuesday night was spent in the urgent care - blood work, urine testing. This morning I took him to the pediatrician - flu testing. He is on Tamiflu, antibiotics, and then of course Tylenol and Ibprofun as needed for the fever. The tamilfu is causing some vomiting (one time so far). He has spent most the days (except for his doctor appts) with my parents. I am super fortunate they have been available. His fever did not seem to get as high today as it has (the 104 measurement was at 5am), so maybe we are on the down slope? A girl can dream.

His illness has highlighted two things for me.
(1) A sick baby dominates life. I believe this is the sickest he has been. He had a sore throat ear thing back in August that was no fun, but it never seemed dangerous like this has when his fever has spiked. I am exhausted. There is the physical exhaustion of course - having him not sleep as well, getting up in the middle of the night for temp checks and medication, the extra driving to take him to my parents instead of daycare, him wanting to be carried around when I am with him. But worse than that, or more intense than that is the psychological exhaustion. All my energy has been focused on him, I have struggled to concentrate at work, I don't get much of a break in the evenings because his poor sleep or being at the doctor etc, and most of all worry worry worry. Everything else has sort of fallen to the wayside - the house is a disaster, the pets feel neglected, laundry is everywhere (dirty and clean), I have not packed my lunches I bought to pack, the fridge wreaks (we were supposed to clean it out Monday), I have not been reading for my book club that is up and coming, the car did not get taken for its oil change like we had planned... if its not sick baby related, it probably is not done. I really hope we are nearing the end of this for so many reasons.

(2) The more I deal with the medical system, the less I trust doctors. I trust medicine - the science, technology, drugs, etc. I just don't really trust those that are supposed to decide how to use them. I have NO idea why urgent care would not have ran a flu screening and strep test. I am glad they wanted to rule out more serious things like meningitis etc, but the flu test seems so basic and easy in comparison I am not sure why it got skipped. I feel like I should have gone in there with a list of tests I wanted done, but I just did not have the time or energy to research that. Even now they are just shooting in the dark with the tamiflu. I am really tempted to stop it because even if this is flu, which we won't know for sure until Monday probably (after the tamiflu is done), the tamiflu was started so late it is unlikely to have an effect. (Everything says Tamiflu should be started within 48 hrs of symptoms onset to have an effect, Benjamin got it at more like 60). And with all the testing they did, still no one did a strep screening, which could come up positive in 5 minutes possibly. WHY? I don't know. If I had stuff like this happen (doctors missing things, not knowing things I know, not using common sense, etc) once or twice I would think I just had a bad doctor, but I have seen it happen WAY to many times to attribute it to specific people. The fact is, doctors are not experts in my health. Where am I headed with this rant? I am not sure. I guess what I really am getting at is you HAVE to be your own advocate big time... and I need to remember that.

Wish us luck that Benjamin continues to improve.

Weight

My weight history:

In high school I weighed around 145lbs and considered it a healthy, athletic weight.
I went off to college and gained some Freshman weight, oscillated between 150-155 lbs. If I put any effort into losing it whatsoever (like giving up soda for lent), I would drop it off easily.
I went to Europe in Spring 2005 and gained a ton because of yummy food, got up to 160-165, but I lost it rapidly when I got home and went back to oscillating between 150-155.
At the end of 2005 I got engaged and made a New Years Resolution to work out, took a step class (loved it!), cut back on soda and snacking, and dropped weight, gained muscle, it was awesome. I got down to my goal weight of 145 lbs, which I still considered my healthy weight, and then kept dropping weight as the wedding day approached. On my wedding day I weighed an amazingly light, sleek, sexy, slender 142 lbs.
Of course that weight did not stay off and was happy to stay around 150. I went to grad school and used the gym regularly but not hardcore. Then I slacked off for a while and gained weight, got up to 155, maybe 160. I made an attempt to lose this weight again, but it wouldn't come off even with some better attempts on diet and gym.
In 2009 I was diagnosed with hypothyroid, which explains the sudden inability to lose weight. I was hovering around 160 pretty much no matter what I did.
I gradually crept up to 165-168 range because I was trying to get pregnant and did not want to exercise too hard or limit calories too much. I finally got pregnant and had said that this range (165-168) is my pre-pregnancy weight. At 5'8", this is the cusp of overweight w/a BMI of 25.5.
Through the first trimester I gained almost no weight, maybe a couple of pounds. I had moderate weight gain in the second trimester, and then put on a ton in the third trimester. DH and I watched in suspense as my weight crept towards 200lbs. When I hit that, we watched for it to reach 203, so I would weigh the same as football player Barry Sanders at the peak of his career (he was also 5'8"). I did hit 203. I even had one weigh in at 206, but I would say my end pregnancy weight was 203-204 lbs. In other words, I gained a total of around 40 lbs.

So what is this post really about? It was spurred by finally having a chance today to get a post-partum weight. I had no idea what to expect. I feel relatively slender all considered. My belly is down to "pooch" size, and I don't see exactly where weight needs to come off. Today my friends came to visit and I had them bring a scale, as ours has been out of commission for quite awhile. The results? 172 lbs. Holy Crap. I never imagined it would be so low!! I mean, it could be off by a few pounds, but any number in that ballpark is amazing! I guess it really was the "right kind" of pregnancy weight (all baby and water etc).

That means that I only have 5-10 lbs to lose to be at my pre-pregnancy weight. And my "pooch" is still shrinking on its own. AND, according to my husband, all my weight gain is currently in my boobs. LOL. Granted, in an ideal world I will keep losing beyond 165 lbs  and get back down to 155 at least... but, its nice having such a great starting point.

He's Here! - Birth Story

Benjamin Robert was born on January 5th at 1:55AM!!! Labor went really well, I was very fortunate and could not be happier with my birth experience.

The Birth Story (this is not horribly graphic but still may be TMI for some peeps)
I was in labor all day Wednesday, but not very painful at all, and contractions were somewhat irregular so I was not sure it was the real thing. When I got home aound 3:45pm they got slightly worse and regular (7 minutes apart), and then stayed that way until DH got home around 6pm. We sat for a bit, he walked the dogs, and then I went up for a shower. After the shower the contractions worsened significantly. I ended up getting sick/vomiting. DH came upstairs to clean it up and I sat down in a camping chair in front of our computer. A few minutes later my water broke... and boy there is a lot of it! DH and I could not believe how much there was! It was actually fortunate where I was sitting and all because its a cheap chair and it is water resistant material, so the water pooled instead of going all over the floor.  DH immediately started rushing around - put the dogs up, got me clean clothes and such, packed the hospital bag, loaded the car. I got dressed and gathered myself and we headed down to the car, and off to the hospital. I got "checked in" around 8:20pm and was 5cm dilated with contractions about 3 minutes apart. I refused the epidural when I got there and did not have to refuse again, and hardly even thought of it. I think that once I got to the hospital I probably spent 80% of the time with my eyes closed. The time line gets really iffy at this point for me. It went so fast though. I had a lot of back labor. After a while on the yoga ball and then in a rocking chair I really needed to use the restroom, but I know this can be a "trick" your body plays so I asked my nurse and they checked me out, I was up to 7 cm. I went to try and use the bathroom and this posture worsened the sped up the contractions significantly. We moved back to the bed and it seems like only 2-3 contractions later they were setting me up to push. Those were the worst though - the contractions when I wanted to push but they said I was not ready. Once we started pushing it was much easier. Painful but pain that I knew was productive and had more control over. I pushed for awhile, but neither DH or I really know how long. It was longer than they expected, they kept saying how close to done I was but it just kept going, turns out the baby was sort of stuck crowning and did not want to come the last inch. When he did come it was so sudden, I thought I would be pushing forever and then he was there and they put him on my chest. It was weird, even before they said anything or I could see anything I just knew it was a boy. It is an amazing experience and I am really proud of myself for doing it the way I intended and so happy it all went to smoothly.

Here is the beautiful results:

Childbirth Class

If you are sick of me only blogging about pregnancy, then you probably should not bother reading this post. I can't help it, it of course dominates my life. I feel like I am a very boring person right now as most of my energy and thoughts are pregnancy related, whether it be what I need to eat, how tired I am, or something I need to ask at my next appointment. Despite my efforts not to always be talking pregnancy, it comes up more than I intend, sometimes simply because I feel like I have absolutely nothing going on. This does not bother me too much for the most part because I am happy to be pregnant, but it occasionally worries me that other people are annoyed. Oh well!

So DH and I spent all day on Saturday at a Child Birth class at the hospital where we plan to deliver. It just happens to be the same hospital where the popular Lifetime series, One Born Every Minute, is filmed. Anyways, it was 9am-5pm, plus a hospital tour. Unsurprisingly, it was a bit overwhelming. The morning was spent discussing the anatomy/physiology of childbirth, how baby's position affects it, how mothers positions before and during labor effect it, positions to use during labor, and relaxation techniques for labor. In the afternoon we looked at medical procedures and options that might come into play - both what possibilities were and when they might be used. We also talked about post-postpartum recovery and the hospital experience. I liked the class because it seemed to start out with the assumption you would not be having pain medication.

I am not really one of those people who is afraid of labor or childbirth. I guess I fall in the "woman have been doing it for a million years" camp. In fact, most of my fears are more related to the people and society surrounding me than to the process of childbirth itself. I am not afraid of labor pain, I am afraid of doctors and nurses "forcing" medical procedures on me I don't agree with.(I know they can't literally force me). This ranges from trying to get me to induce when I don't want to, to trying to get me to use pain meds I don't want, to moving to a C-Section before it is actually medical necessary, either because they are being over cautious or because it is convenient for them. Riverside is a great hospital. We chose it because it is level 3 both for adult and neonatal care. That means that if something goes wrong, if either I or the baby need surgery, emergency treatment, etc etc, we will be right there able to get it and not have to deal with being transferred anywhere else. However, it is also a hospital where 85-90% of mothers get epidurals. When I told one of my friends I was delivering at the hospital where One Born Every Minute is filmed she was horrified. She tried to play it down, but it was pretty clear her opinion on the matter. She related to me an episode where a mother wants to have a natural birth and the nurses are making fun of her in the nursing lounge. It does not exactly inspire confidence.

Perhaps you are reading in between the lines here and thinking or asking "is she saying she wants to go for a natural birth?". I guess the answer is yes. The more I learn about picotin, epidurals, and other interventions, the less I want them. But I am not some crazy hippie "natural is best" chick. I don't want a water birth, the idea of home birth terrifies me, and I don't have an elaborate birth plan with meditation and breathing routines planned to make it some "holistic emotional experience".  Its more like I land on the option of going "natural" when I consider all of the evidence. I guess it is also a continuation of the "woman have been doing this for millions of years" theory as well. Really I guess it started with my general dislike of the entire concept of an epidural. I am by no means criticizing woman who want one - as with all medical procedures, its a cost benefit analysis and for me the costs out weigh the benefits. They are sticking a needle into your spine and numbing nerves that give you motor control in your legs. That sounds like a procedure I will avoid if at all possible. It probably helps make the decision easier considering I have read the medical records of 1 or 2 women who have had long term effects of epidural. I just don't want to mess with my neurological system if I can at all help it. The statistics about slower labor and increased c-section rates, plus unknown ultimate impact on the newborn are just icing on that cake. So once I decide no epidural, it does not take much to conclude that most interventions are bad for me. For example, Picotin, the drug most commonly used to induce labor or to speed slow labor, causes contractions to be much stronger than natural and thereby increases the need/desire for epidurals. I guess when I look at everything combined it is not any one intervention that bothers me, its the fact that once you start with one you get wrapped up in these cycles of possibly needing so many others, and ultimately significantly increase your risk of requiring major surgery (caesarean). I don't want any of it, its not for me. In an ideal world, I would be able to deliver in a hospital, but not even have an IV. I know this is not an ideal world though (as evidenced by my desire to be in a hospital!). I know that a lot of times you end up with little choice. Your baby is breech, or in distress, or your labor just stalls out, etc etc etc. But I will do what I can on my end to make this happen "the old fashioned way". I just really hope that I only end up fighting mother nature and my own weaknesses on this and not my doctors and nurses as well.

Hospital Bills and Health Care Issues

I know that lately this blog has become just a list of what I do each day, I apologize if it is boring you. I think it has been like that for a few reasons. First, it is what some of my blog readers are looking for I think, the people like my parents who I don't talk to all that often but want to know what is going on in my life more. I may put something here that they did not know about in our phone and text conversations. Second, its easy. Its much easier to post about the random things that happened over the weekend than to delve into various thoughts and questions, some of which are controversial. Third, it is just how I have been feeling. I have not had time or energy to mull over anything really interesting lately, I spend a lot of energy just making sure I am doing what I can to be healthy for baby and to not feel like crap.

So, how about a ranting post for a change? 

We got our bill from the hospital. Looking at the itemized list is ridiculous. There is something seriously wrong w/out hospital's charge people. I am not saying we got charged too much either, I am just saying that the itemized list is all wrong. I mean, the point of an itemized list is to explain why your bill is what it is, not to list random prices the hospital has assigned to things. This is how you end up getting charged $56 for a dose of Tylenol that, as they bill even stated, I administered to myself. What is costing money is not the tylenol, but rather the record keeping, and the nurses care and the doctors expertise, and the well equipped hospital that was ready to deal with me if things got worse. So why doesn't my bill even mention these things? Instead it has all of these physical items, like "IV Therapy, $2780.80". Really? The IV cost $2780? I don't think so. I would much rather see "IV equipment use 24 hrs $1000, Nurses IV monitoring $1780.80" than this, or however they actually explain the expense when they come up with these prices. I know its a matter of semantics, but I am just saying whats the point of an itemized bill if it does not really tell you how the costs are incurred?

Of course we are among the lucky who have health insurance and we will be paying much less out of pocket than this itemized list totals, which is another can of worms I am not going to get into involving just what is broken about our healthcare system in America. I have to say seeing this bill gives me a little more sympathy for the plethora of claimants I have every week that say things like "I can't afford to go to the doctor every time my condition acts up because I don't have insurance" or  those who beg us to expedite their case because of the medical bills they are facing. The fact is that not getting medical care can affect your ability to get disability, because if you don't have your own treatment then all we have to go on is a one-time exam. This one time exam will be pretty good for things like back problems, chronic lung disease, etc, but it will not give us any real perspective if you have severe seizures or migraines or asthma attacks or anything like that. Or lets say, if you have cancer that you have not been able to get treatment for because you don't have insurance. There are some really sad things that happen to people in this country that do not have insurance. Back when we were in training we worked on a practice case (using a real person from a long time ago), who was diagnosed with cancer and told to report for tx. She did not see anyone for six months because of money problems/lack on insurance. When she went back to the doctor 6 months later they told her there was nothing they could do for her as the cancer was to advanced. Of course she got disability at this point, and then died shortly after. Yet we are supposedly the "best" country in the world (or thats how many American's view it!).

I recognize there is no perfect healthcare system, and I also recognize that there is not enough resources in the world to give everyone perfect healthcare, but there has to be something that makes more sense than what we are doing now.

My First Hospitalization (in my memory at least...)

If you read this blog regularly you are probably either waiting for me to post about my trip to the East Coast, or depending on how you know me, you may be waiting to hear more about my recent hospitalization and how I am feeling. Let me get the bad out of the way before the good, and also talk about what is more immediately relevant to how I am doing at the moment. Don't worry, the story is not that bad, just sucky. gross too probably, TMI, but its what happened.

On Friday we were in Philadelphia. In the morning after waking up normal and a normal  breakfast we walked from our hotel by City Hall down to the Independence Hall area. I did fine with that walk, we got tickets for Independence Hall and began to walk over there, and while we were waiting for that I began to feel week and tired. We went ahead with the tour, swung by the Liberty Bell, and then took the subway back to the hotel to get out of town since I was not feeling well. We thought it was just normal pregnancy fatigue. We drove to Baltimore, stopping at Cracker Barrel along the way where I forced some food down, but it did not help like it normally does. We got to our friends house in Baltimore and I was still feeling gross, but I thought it was still just pregnancy nausea and tried to hide/downplay it, made plans to grill dinner, hung out, but then when dinner was set in front of me (a burger), I could only eat a tiny portion of it. I felt gross all night, went to bed early, got up and vomited the burger and juice/soda I had eaten back up at 6am. Got up feeling horrible. I thought by now it might be something more than just pregnancy nausea, but still nothing so extreme that I was sure. I sipped some juice but couldn't eat any breakfast. I did not want to wreck our plans so we went down to the inner harbor in Baltimore and walked around. I was very fatigued and the smells of food were killing me. We walked up and down and saw everything without touring anything, then went to a food court for lunch. I got a mango smoothy and sipped at it, and ate 1 or 2 of the fries. After lunch we dropped our fried off, packed up, and headed out of town. I slept some on the way home, but was really miserable, feeling nausea and muscle soreness and general miserableness. I kept trying to sip juice and water because I knew I must be dehydrated. When we stopped around 4:30, everything I had eaten/drank all day came up again. I continued to try to sip water and we got home around 9:30pm, I pretty much went straight into bed and laid/slept, sipped water a tiny bit, took a Tylenol for the severe muscle pain and eventually fell asleep, until I woke up with diarrhea at 3am, then for diarrhea and vomiting at 5am, 6am I just stayed up and kept getting sick. I was SO THIRSTY, my mouth was so dry, and I just felt miserable. I tried to sip water, and it just came back up, I tried to suck ice and it just came back up. I was so thirsty I did not care it was going to come back up, so I tried a caffeine free Pepsi because it sounded good and used it to take my thyroid meds. I very slowly drank like maybe 1/3 of the can and it seemed to be staying down. By this time DH was up and asked if he could do anything/get me anything. I told  him I was going to call the OBGYN as by this time 36 hrs since I had kept any solids down and hardly any liquids in the same time. So I called and they told be to head to labor and delivery at Riverside assessment for dehydration, so we headed straight there. When we got there I was off the charts for keytones in my urine and dehydration (a positive sample ends up as making the strip dark purple, mine was instantly dark purple and ended up turning black). I also had elevated BP (which is the opposite of how my BP has been trending during this pregnancy). They hooked up a monitor to my belly and found the baby right away, the baby had super active throughout the entire illness or I would have been to a doc sooner. Anyways, the baby was doing great, so they took those monitors off and hooked me up to an I.V. and gave me Zofran, then after I had two full bags of IV fluids they asked me to try and drink a half can of pop over the course of an hour and eat a saltine. I didn't make it and managed to throw up the pop they gave me, the pepsi, and loads of other fluid that I had no idea where it came from. At this point they gave me something stronger for the nausea and omitted me. The new med knocked me out for awhile. When I woke up my mouth was SO DRY, I asked and received ice chips and very slowly had some of those. I laid there all day eating an ice chip at a time and watching football with DH, pretty miserable, later in the afternoon I asked for more and was given a Popsicle, which went OK, then cranberry juice. Around the time DH went home to walk the dogs my fever suddenly spiked (it had been very mild). They gave me tylenol, but it still had not broken after an hour. It got up to 101.4F, and then suddenly dropped. I was still physically miserable and had a rough night with diarrhea, chills, hot flashes, but I did not throw up. They came and drew more blood at 5:30am. I woke up with a really bad sinus type headache a bit later and turned the TV on. They came in and said my labs were OK and my temp was fine, so if I could keep down a solid breakfast they would release me. I managed to eat oatmeal, bacon, and orange juice and while it was not super appetizing to me, it did not come back up, so after checking the baby again (still doing great, kicking the monitor, etc), they released me home. They said that there has been a GI bug going around that the OBGYN warned them about and it was probably just this as my other labs came back normal (no infections or anything).

Since getting home I have been trying to eat every couple hours and making myself drink even though I still don't feel great. I have had really bad headache/sinus symptoms but I think they are resolving now. I feel so crazy weak and fatigued, and I feel like its improving so slowly (along with my willingness to eat), that it is going to take me weeks to feel normal again. I hope I am wrong. I am just glad baby has been OK through all of this and I am doing my best to not end up at L&D again. I know I won't feel like going back to work tomorrow, but I am going to try and at least go in for awhile because our sick policies put up a bunch of paperwork/bureaucratic crap if you stay out three days in a row straight. I can always come home if I feel weak or can't keep up with hydrating etc while there. I have plenty of sick time. The only good thing that came out of this? We know our way into Riverside now, so DH will know exactly where to go if there is another emergency or hopefully when its time to deliver!!

What a sucky dramatic ending to a great week... a great week I will hopefully tell you about it soon.

2nd Trimester!!!

I am officially declaring myself in the 2nd Trimester!! I actually have been here technically speaking for over a week, but I did not feel that way emotionally because I had not had a Drs appt in a month and did not know for sure that everything was going well, but today we heard the heartbeat and everything is measuring right on track!! Also, I am starting to show - at least to people who know me. I have never really had a belly before. When I gain weight/fat (which I certainly have plenty of!) it goes on in my back/hips, not my belly. Now I have a belly! And it will just get bigger and bigger... and if I am super lucky, only a few weeks until I feel movement (though I know that can vary a ton). This pregnancy, as predicted, is rushing by, as is the summer.

So, as of tomorrow, six months until my due date! I promised you guys renewed resolutions back when I first found out I was pregnant. 6 months is a lot of time, and no time at all. My first thing was I was going to re-do some reading goals. I went through my "to read" list on Good Reads and narrowed it down a bit. Here is the list I made:

Classics: War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, Atlas Shrugged, Brideshead Revisited, Dune, The Trial
Books where I want to see the movie: The Lovely Bones, Do Android's Dream of Electric Sleep? Interview with a Vampire.
Books I think will help me/Interested in philosophy/informational: Man's Search for Meaning, (another book by Milan Kundera), Getting Things Done, Exercise Endocrinology
Series to Finish: Wolves of Mercy Falls, Alvin Maker
Project Book: The Book Lover's Cookbook

The thing is... There is no way in heck I can read all of this. I mean, I certainly have the time, but my concentration is already decreased and I hear it will just get worse!! We will see what happens :-) Basically, I will try to get some of this list read, and I am not going to linger on books that I try to read and can't focus on, I am going to move on to the books that do catch my interest so I can get through as many of these as possible. I am going to start with the next book of the Alvin Maker series.

If you are reading this, you should know by now that I am knocked up!! I know some people hate that phrase, but I find it amusing. 8 weeks, 4 days. It is still really early, but we are excited and hopeful. There are other good things going on as well for us, but I believe that should stay under the radar for a few days.

I expected to get morning sickness (or "morning" sickness), but I was not expecting the fatigue, dizziness, and shortness of breath. Its all for a good cause though, eh? The nausea is so weird. I can simultaneously be cooking/want to eat something and feel like I am going to throw up. The thought of food can make me feel ill, but the smell of food is almost always good (except perhaps Chinese food). Things that shouldn't smell bad at all make me sick (like the smell of wet paper towel?? Not dirty, just wet). I have some other symptoms as well, but they are not entirely blog appropriate. LOL.

Yesterday I came home from work early. It was not a particular symptom that had me down, just a general sense that I needed to lie down. If I am feeling sick to my stomach, or have a headache, or a sore muscles, I can just get myself to work through it - but a general sense of unwellness and desire to lay down? Don't know what to do with that, so I came home.

Stupid Ankles and other Rambles

You know that ankle I twisted last week? Well, its still bothering me. Partially because I am an idiot and partially because my ankles suck. I am an idiot because I assumed it was not a big deal despite feeling that twinge of sprain and did not elevate, ice, or rest it. My ankles suck because... well, they just do. We have weak ankles in my family. My sisters and I have all had multiple sprained ankles. It was an annual occurence in soccer for me to sprain one, if not both ankles. My first sprain was in 8th grade and I got it walking across a tennis court. Notice: walking, on a flat surface. Talent. The joke has always been that I tripped on one of the lines. Anyways, the point is, my ankle still hurts and I need to start treating it better, you know, like I sprained it.


In other news... um. Maybe I don't have other news. This week is nice. I get tomorrow off. I am going to Trivia tonight. I am getting a lot of reading done. I am reading good books. I had a book club last night that was a lot of fun. I am looking for another book club. I am always looking for more book clubs. We might start one at work. I am already thinking about next years new years resolutions. I have not given up on getting organized, but I need to make it more concrete if it is going to happen. Did I mention I have tomorrow off? And I don't intend to spend it organizing. I do intent to spend it reading. Maybe we will go make a chore chart. DH is taking it off as well, just for kicks.

Um.. I think thats all? Bis spaeter!

OH! And two more books came into the library for me:
Linger by Maggie Steifvater, and
The Scarlett Pimpernel (another book for a book club).

Sick, Broken, Busy

We had a lot of plans this weekend. Monday night we went to the preview of an online estate sale with our friend T, then out to dinner. Tuesday night we went to an election party. Wednesday night we were supposed to go to trivia. Today we needed to pick some little thing sup that we won at that auction.

Unfortunately, this was all complicated by (1) me having a cold and (2) the Buick deciding it was it's turn to have battery issues. My cold was not horrible, but it was bad enough to make me not want to work. I ended up cutting all of my overtime for the week and coming home early both yesterday and today. I have been spending the time reading and watching stuff on Netflix. Streaming netflix is pretty much the best thing ever, did I mention that?

Somethings I have watched:
Donnie Darko - weird but really good
Mansfield Park -Jane Austen is always nice
Wristcutters - a dark dramady about what may happen after suicide
I also have watched episodes of Doctor Who, Primeval, Law & Order SVU, and am currently watching Alice in Wondeland (Yes, the new one w/Johnny Depp that I have been craving to see again).

11 Hour Work Marathon

Today, I have the great pleasure of working 11 hrs. That would be 7:15 AM to 6:45 PM with a half hour lunch. That is a LONG day. And why am I putting myself through this? For the love of a sister. Tonight my little sister is flying into town and staying for 12 days. I am super excited, but unfortunatley I have to work the whole time because I do not have vacation days yet. In order to make up for this a bit, I have flexed my schedule to get some time off. I figured the best way to flex it this first week would be to work as long a day as possible today when she is not here so I can take time off later in this week when she is hear. My 11 hr day today (along with some other adjustments), will make it possible to only work 2 hrs on Friday morning (7:30 - 9:30 AM) and basically have the whole day to do something. It will be a long, tough day though, and it does not help that I got a migraine overnight.

I used to get migraines ALL OF THE TIME (of varying severity). However I have not had big problems with them for quite sometime and they had even become somewhat predictable, with only the rare migraine coming "out of the blue" so to speak, so I am not amused by this headache. When I woke up at 3:45 AM with pain I figured there must surely be a big weather change or something, but today looks exactly the same as yesterday, and the weather map does not show any sort of system moving in. So, I guess I just have the pleasure of a random headache. Its not too bad right now. I treated it this morning with a hot compress in the form of a cup of hot water from Starbucks. (normally I would just use my Latte from Starbucks, but I figured if they would give me the extra cup of hot water for free, why let my tasty drink cool off?). A starbucks cup is pretty much the perfect hot water compress available. It holds heat decently, they seal it with those little green sticks so it does not spill when I tip it, and its easy to hold and the right shape to press into my eye ball and nose. Best of all, its refillable if there is hot water available. Granted my coworkers may think I am a bit odd when I walk around (OK, actually just sit at my desk), with a Starbucks cup pressed to my head, but I do what I gotta do. The only thing better than a starbucks cup is pressing my face into DH's neck. That would be even more awkward to do at work though, eh? Someone needs to invent an eye patch heating pad. Now THAT would be heaven on earth during a migraine for me!!

So, this post was actually going to be about the weekend. Maybe I should get to that. The weekend passed REALLY quickly. Friday night we took the Dogs to swim at Alum Creek dog park. When we got there, there was one other lady there with 6 black labs! Quite the pack. They were pretty well behaved and our dogs fit right in with them, though River's coloring stuck out quite a bit!! They both clearly enjoyed the water. After that we rented The Informant w/Matt Daemon. It was pretty good, made most interesting by the fact its a true story. Pretty crazy!

Saturday morning I headed to the farmers market with M and J, nice and early, so we could make an early start for Burton, OH, where my sister was hosting a family BBQ. We got up there around 1:30pm. Other people came around 4:30PM. It was a lot of fun, pretty much everyone came. We ate well, had good conversation, I found out about this grill my uncle has that used to be my Grandpa's, its pretty neat. Despite having tried to plan it so we could stay nice and late, we ended up being some of the first people to leave. Always the case. We need to host something at our house so they call can see it and so that we are not the first to leave!!

Sunday I slept in a bit (it had been a long night, we did not get home until very late due to traffic and then River was hyper from being crated all day). In the early afternoon I went to see Inception with M and W. This movie, if you have not heard, is growing rapidly in popularity and pretty much everyone I talk to on a regular basis here in Columbus either has seen it and recommends it or wants to see it. After seeing it, I can understand why. It is a very good movie, and very original. That said, while I did enjoy it, and I do recommend it, it did not quite live up to the expectations I had set for it, which were admittedly quite high. My biggest demand on fiction, especially sci fi or fantasy, is internal consistency. So you say dogs can fly? Great! I believe it! Just make sure its consistent about which dogs can fly and how high!! This movie lacked a tiny bit of that, and it was enough to fail my expectations, but its still a good movie, really creative and quite beautiful to watch.

Unfortunately when I came out of the movie I did not feel well and started my decline into migraine-ness. I did not get anything done I had planned that afternoon, and as a result, I hope my little sister can tolerate a bit of a mess!!

Thats all that I have got going on. Oh, and my recent addiction to Lego Harry Potter for Nintendo DS (thanks again ILs for supporting my DS dreams). Mmm. Harry Potter.

To cough, or not to cough?

I came home from work yesterday around 9:15am (after an hour and a half) due to my cough and basic inability to breathe. The weird part is how little the ammount of coughing this week has had to do with how I feel. Monday I was coughing every few minutes, but they were productive coughs and did not disrupt my day. Yesterday I was not coughing nearly that often, but when I did cough it was an uncontrollable, horrible sound fit that made me feel like crap. Today we are back to the more frequent, more productive coughs thankfully, and I am back at work accordingly.

Hopefully it continues to improve.

Poor Pitiful Me

I had huge ambitions for productivity this weekend. I planned to at a minimum, get my vegatable garden and flowers out front planted. I also had hoped to do some organization concerning our CD/DVD collection. Unfortunately all of these plans were thwarted by getting sick on Friday. During the day Friday I started to have sneezing and a runny nose. It got progressively worse, hit rock bottom on Sunday morning, when I did not even want to get out of bed, and then rapidly improved until I am now stuck somewhere in a vaguely runny nose and occasional cough.



So, what DID I get done? Saturday morning I was feeling halfway decent, so I still met my friend for coffee and we went to the farmer's market. It is not yet nice enough for them to have many fresh veggies, but I did buy jalapeno plants, a serano plant, and chocolate tomato plants (those are the purple cherry-size tomatos, delicoius). After that, as scheduled I headed out to test drive some cars with DH. Have I blogged about this? I think so. My car is on its way out, so we are looking to replace it with a car for DH and then I will drive our old Buick. I am not looking forward to driving the Buick, but it makes the most sense and then I can get a new (to us) car in a couple of years. Anyways, the big debate has been practicality vs desire (want vs need so to speak). For years DH has been coveting the Chrysler 300C:

The 300C has a V8, and luxury interior. It is slightly more expensive than what we were originally planning on spending. Anyways, so we went and test drove one of these on Saturday (a 2005). I felt very out of place at the Mercedes dealership that was selling it. As we waited to drive it I looked at another full size sedan that had 368 HP, cost 90K, and required the payment of a $1000 gas guzzler tax. Anyways, after we test drove the 300C we went to find a Hyundai Sonata V6 to test drive. This did not go as planned. FIRST we went to the wrong side of town (E Broad St instead of W Broad St), then when we got there, they could not find the keys for the car we wanted to drive. The car also happened to wreak of cigarettes, so I don't mind skipping the test drive. So we headed up to Car Max in Dublin and test drove a Sonata 07 V4 and an Altima 04 V4. We then went home, took the dogs for their walk, then went back out to find a V6 Sonata.

There was actually one relatively close by at one of the tiny little dealerships on High Street. The dealership is called Buyer's Choice (http://www.buyerschoicecars.com/). I am bothering to post the name because I want to offer them some free advertising. While its highly unlikely we will buy the car we test drove there, the man we dealt with was very nice and the kind of person I would want to buy a car from. He seemed very eager to make sure we have everything we needed and that the car was "ready" for us so to speak. He told us everything that he knew was wrong with the car and what they were doing to recitfy those things before they would sell it. I wish that they had the car we wanted as I would be happy to purchase from them. Anyways, the conclusions from test driving for the day - while I don't personally need more than a V4, it is clear that there is a substantial difference between a V4 and a bigger engine. So, if DH wants a V6 or V8 I understand. Ultimately it looks like we are headed for the Chrylser 300C. I understand why DH wants it, and we can afford it, so why not. Being practical is important, but occasionally you have to live in the moment and do what you want while you have the chance. We will be shopping for a 300C from here on out, hopefully we find one relatively quickly because the sounds my car is making are getting stranger and stranger.

The Saturday run-around totally wiped me out. I went to bed around 11pm and slept in until 10:40AM on Sunday, woke up feeling horrible (as previously mentioned). I spent most of the day watching bad lifetime movies, which is out of character for me, but I what can I say, I was sick. I watched four of them actually. The funniest part is that DH watched much of them with me, including all of the "Pregnancy Pact" movie that was on 7-10pm that I was not even planning to watch until he stated he was interested in it.

So there went the weekend. No plants planted, no weeds cleared, no DVDs or CDs organized, no Grandma visited (did not want to get her sick). I guess I will try to get these tasks done over the next few days instead now that I am feeling better.

Just Breathe

I have not posted much because not much has happened. My main activities: get up, cough a lot, go to work, come home, relax or maybe do something social, then spend the night trying to breathe.

Last night wasn't so bad. I could breathe a bit better at night, and I slept better, less coughing, so thats good. Also, last night DH and I finally went to see Alice in Wonderland 3D. It was quite good. I was expecting to like it and to have DH hate it, but he actually liked it OK. It has much more of a plot than the original (for those of you unaware, it is a sequel, an adult Alice ends up back in a changed Wonderland). I have to say that Johnny Depp was brilliant, but then again, when isn't he?

Other things this week - Classics and Cocktails book club, which was nice. Season premiere of Deadliest Catch, which totally hooked me (pardon the pun, lol), fun at Trivia, and that about sums it up.

Bad Movies, Good Friends

Still sick, but getting better? Maybe?
Friday night we watched baseball, I watched a bad movie called Tran-Siberian. I thought it was highly acclaimed. If I am right about that, the people who reviewed it and acclaimed it need to be fired. It was an unrealistic, poorly acted, improbable story that slowly devolved into a torture flick, not something I particularly enjoy.

Saturday I alternately laid around and worked on getting the house clean. Tylenol Severe Cold syrup is my friend. I did not really feel that bad, just tired and like I couldn't breath, same old story, isn't it? In the evening I had Girl's Night. We ate delicious food, grilled kebobs, chatted a lot, played some rockband, and then sat around a fire and made smores. The weather was perfect for it and I could not have asked for a more relaxing night, except perhaps being able to breath.

Today I had two goals: do the dishes from last night and relax. I accomplished the latter, though not enough for my taste, and have yet to do the former. Right now, as I blog, DH and I are watching another atrocious movie - Law Abiding Citizen. In the adds for this movie, it was hard to tell whether it was a detective/lawyer movie or a vigilante movie. Well, turns out there is a reason for that - even an hour and forty minutes in I am not sure if we are cheering for the lawyer or the guy in jail. Its not that I approve of what the guy in jail is doing, but the lawyer is so incredibly unlikeable, and I have no emotional attachments to anyone except the guy in prison who is killing people left and right. And, instead of getting more clever as it goes on, the movie becomes less probable until ultimately it is ridiculous.

I did get four other movies this weekend, from the library, which I pln to watch over the coming days. Hopefully they don't suck this much. Maybe I will now put on Shrek the Third and wash those dishes... if I can stay on my feet that long. LOL.

A Different Kind of Sick

I spent yesterday home, sick. But it was a different kind of sick than normal. I had been tired for the past several days, but I thought it was either just general stress or maybe a side effect of a medication I was one. Anyways, on Wednesday I was just getting more and more tired with every passing moment. I went over to a friends house to bead (I really should post the results, it is fabulous IMO), and I hardly could stay awake, it was a bit ridiculous. By the time I got home it was all I could do to let the Dog out to pee and get changed and into bed (DH was at Trivia). Thursday morning I woke up and had a temperature. I got up and took a shower anyways to gage how I was doing, because I did not have any obvious symptoms besides being tired - a bit of a sore throat, but no cough or plugged nose. When I was showering I just felt SO tired and sometimes a bit wheezy, but as I said, no cough. I decided to stay home and I slept an extra 7 hrs through out the day, and then went to bed again at 9:30 PM (2 hrs earlier than normal). This morning I had a very slight fever, and again, virtually no symptoms except an occasional sense of wheeziness/SOB. I went to work early as I had a Drs appt to get to at lunch time, and I could not believe how tired I felt at work. Especially talking. Being on the phone with clmts I could just feel how weak my voice was and how much I did not want to speak another word.

It is strange being this kind of sick... no snot or cough, just fatigue and occasional wheezes, shortness of breath, fever. I am feeling loads better than yesterday, but I still am thinking I will go home and crash. We were supposed to finally go see Alice in Wonderland 3D, which I am so looking forward to, but alas, its not meant to be as this will be like the 12th time we have cancelled it.

On an unrelated note, during my few waking hours yesterday I finished Wuthering Heights. What a horrendous book! I have never read a book with so much spite and hate and terrible and weak characters. If there is one ounce of truth about human nature in that book we mine as well all go live in a hut in the woods and never speak to anyone again. I do not understand how anyone could think that book is remotely romantic.

As I was saying...

Little updates on things I am sure you want to know about:

River continues to be an escape artist. Yesterday, despite being crated when I left with the latch properly locked, she greeted me at the door. I went upstairs with some trepidation to find out exactly how she got out. Turns out she just flat out pushed out the front door, snapping part of the plastic that holds the door on. I spent the hour and forty-five minutes that I was home first walking her, then cleaning up the mess she had made (some poop of course, and every shoe in the house had been dragged to the middle of the room, one sandal destroyed), and then devising a way to fix the cage. I did not have the tools or abilities necessary to find a real solution to the broken cage, so I ended up putting the new, solid crate inside of the larger, wire crate. So, the puppy is now double-crated. It has worked twice so far, we will see how long it takes her to figure out an escape route.

My finger is healing. It still is UGLY, looks like there is a centimete cut across the pad of the right middle finger, but it does not hurt anymore, and is actually just a seem of dead skin that has yet to detach itself. It finally stopped tingling, which was a problem for the last week or so, and last night I caught it on something and it did not even hurt!!

Book club last night for Sense and Sensability. It was fun. We talked about the book a little, which is always nice, but I found I had the most to say about it of anyone, which does not make for much of a conversation. I do have fun at book club, but something has got to give if I want to simplify my schedule, and one or both book clubs might be it.

I do not have big weekend plans, we are having people over to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (extended version) on Saturday night, and I am visiting Grandma's, as I won't be able to for the next two weeks. Other than that, its puppy time (I hope we can go to Alum Creek Resevoir, I am Lake-Sick... that is similar to home sickness), reading time, and perhaps a movie or two. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Only Tuesday?

Yesterday evening turned out to be crazy. We had nothing planned but DH called me at work and said his coworkers were going out to dinner and we should join them, and it sounded like fun. I was supposed to meet them at the bar. I got the dogs walked and played with River some, crated her up, and headed out. When I backed out of the garage my garage door opener would not work. This has been happening intermittently for no apparent reason. So, I got out of the car and went to close is manually. There is no handle on the outside of the door of course, and in trying to close it I managed to get my finger stuck between two of the slats as it came down and crush my finger. It hurt like crazy and a glance revealed that I had basically managed to remove my finger print - peel back the top few layers of skin on the pad of my right middle finger. I did not think it was bad enough for the urgent care, but I was also unsure if I could clean it (the skin was folded under and there was dirt in it), without some sort of pain relief. I called DH and he came home, though by the time he got there it was mostly for moral support as I had decided to try and deal with it at home. (Also, thanks Mom for the moral support!! Whenever I get hurt I call my parents since my Mom is a nurse and Dad is a sports physiology professor). I managed to get it cleaned out, then we headed back to the bar to see DH’s coworkers. I have only met them once or twice. It was fun, though some of the spouses that were their were a bit too vocal and offensive for my liking. The vast majority were fun to hang out with.

We got the second surprise and part of the craziness when we got home. Remember when I said I left River in the crate? Well, when we got home River was running free and there was various chewed up items piled in the center of each room, as if she had gone searching for little things in the corners. And of course she pooped in the house as well. Luckily nothing she got was too valuable, she seems to have similar cheap tastes as Grim when it comes to chewing things up. We went upstairs expecting to find the crate door popped open somehow. We got up there and the crate was upside-down several feet from where I left it, with the door still seemingly closed. Upon closer inspection, the door was actually only half latched, the top latch having not snapped into place. As far as we can guess, River figured out the top half was not latched and in her attempts to push through it flipped the crate, then somehow squirmed through the still mostly-closed door, and had her way with the house. She is quite the little Houdini, and we will be using the locking feature from now on.

This morning my finger is still very tender, I am keeping a close watch on it, and it is slowing down my work - typing and using the mouse, etc.

Trivia update – I am going to trivia tonight and never had a chance to share my victories from last week! Pixel is a combination of picture element. The questions I got right last week were:

(1) Who played Romeo in the 1996 movie remake of the classic story?
(2) What video game features a main character named Snake?
(3) What type of bird has varieties named burrowing, little, and Eurasian Eagle?

Vaccines

There has been a lot of discussion lately on some of the internet sites I frequent concerning whether or not people should get the seasonal flu vaccine and the H1N1 vaccine. Apparently there are a lot of women out there who think its unsafe, or at least that not having it is safer than having it.

This boggles my mind. I just can't wrap my head around the reasoning going into this. Here are some arguments I have heard, sometimes directly, sometimes implied:

"The mercury in vaccines is dangerous." OK. I know mercury is not good for you, but kids used to PLAY with mercury on table tops. The amount is so tiny, and it has been tested every which way with no replicable evidence showing any harm done by the amount of mercury in vaccines. (It's all in the science! Read the studies... I think there is one floating around saying it causes all sorts of issues and a million saying there is no effect).

"The swine flu vaccine hurt a lot of people 40 years ago". First - the definition of "a lot" needs to be considered, the vast majority of shots still had no negative effect. Second, do you know how much medicine has improved since then? 40 years ago birth control caused all sorts of potential complications including instant death from blood clots... so do these same women not use birth control because at one time it was unsafe?

"All vaccines carry a risk of serious side effect." True. But the risk is tiny. I would like to see someone showing with widely accepted data that the rate of death from the vaccine is higher than that from flu, particularly in high risk groups. I seriously doubt the evidence is there.

"Vaccines do not actually work, you still can get sick". True, but again, incredibly unlikely. In general, vaccines are offered to the public because they reduce the chance of infection significantly for each individual who has one and work at preventing the spread of the disease as a whole through society.

What bothers me the most about all of these reasons is that they all seem to rely on an underlying assumption that naturalists have some secret information or knowledge that the scientific and medical communities lack as a whole, or that the medical community does not have peoples best interest at heart (which frankly implies some conspiracy). I have said this before and I will say it again. The reason that doctors and the medical community recommend people have the flu vaccine is because on average statistically speaking it is better for a person to have it than not have it, and the more people get it, the better off society as a whole will be. To those people who disagree, especially those scientists and doctors who disagree, I want to say prove it! The medical community is a scientific community. Do the study that shows you are right, and publish it in a peer reviewed journal. It WILL get attention, if its scientific. I feel like the fear mongering by those against the vaccine is as bad (if not worse) than fear mongering done by the media.

Glad to have that out of my system.

Headache Rating System

In case you had not noticed, I get a LOT of headaches, and they come in all kinds. I was going to post about the headache I had yesterday (and other of yesterday's events), and I realized I need some sort of system to explain just how my headache was, comparatively. (OK, I don't actually intend to use this system but I thought it would be interesting enough)

1 - minor headache, not even enough to change my behavior or require sunglasses, can also be the "after aura" of a full blown migraine

2 - medium headache, one step up from a minor headache, it is bothering me, my shoulder has some tightness and may make me use sunglasses but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I did not have them and I might mention it to friends or DH, but its not dominating my attention. There are also non-migraine style headaches that might fall into this category.

3 - underling (of a migraine), my head hurts a lot, but its not enough for me to change plans, I need sunglasses, I keep rubbing my shoulder without realizing it, and a lot of my energy is spent thinking about the headache. It would be obvious to someone who knew me I had a headache.

4 - migraine, I wish I could just sit home and deal with the headache, but its not serious enough to warrant it. Wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am pretty unhappy about doing it. I constantly rub my shoulder, cover my offending eye (whichever is on the same side as the migraine) and avoid light if possible. I have food aversions (seeing the wrong commercial on TV or someone bringing in the wrong kind of food makes my stomach turn over and/or my head pulse). The headache is the first thing on my mind.

5 - bad migraine, this headache is severe enough that I might cancel plans to stay home and nurse it, but I am still capable of some level of function if what I need to do is really important or cannot be rescheduled. It dominates nearly all of my attention. My shoulder is so stiff massaging it myself seems pointless. I fantasize about someone injecting the muscle with a relaxant or cutting off my arm. I wear sunglasses, maybe even at night or indoors, and I keep a hand over my offending eye if at all possible. I might also be caught holding a hot compress (often in the form of a coffee) up to my eye. It is clear to other people I am not well (though it might come off as tired). I get spells of being nauseous and cannot think about eating most things, I consider running to the bathroom at the low points of these spells. I may be dizzy or have blurred vision. If I am at home, I lie in bed or on the couch wishing it would stop, maybe watching TV (with my eyes open or closed depending on the moment).

6 - nightmare migraine, stop all activity, I am not getting out of bed with this one, I can't even have the TV on because even with my eyes closes/covered the moving light is too much. I also might start to be sound sensitive. I am constantly nauseous and might actually throw up. I toss and turn, unable to sleep, and wimper a lot without thinking about it. All I can think about is the headache, nothing else can distract me.

Yeah... so that is the reality of my headaches. Those ranking 5 or 6 are few and far between, but the other varieties are all too common.

Yesterday I a bad migraine. I went to my informational meeting for the Columbus Literacy Council anyways (partly because it was probably just a regular migraine before I left and partly because it would be a month before I could do this again), and spent the entire meeting miserable, making other people gawk as I wore sunglasses during the tour of the building and kept my hand over my right eye anytime we were sitting down. It got so bad at one point that I considered called DH and having him pick me up because I couldn't fathom driving home in the sunlight. Luckily by the time the meeting ended it had dissipated enough for me to get home. At home I used DH's neck as a hot compress (surprisingly effective), and waited it out on the couch in front of the television, considering the whole time hanging a blanket to block out more light. Around 2pm it started improving. By 3pm it had greatly improved so I could read and be on the computer, until by 4:30 it was nothing more than a level 1. I am very happy it was short lived.