Category: sick

Sunday Afternoon Ramblings

If I’m neglecting my writing, it can usually be attributed to feeling like crap. I’ve felt like crap for a few weeks thanks to hellacious allergies. I am very possibly open to living in one of those bubble suits. Doc says take two different allergy meds each day for the next few weeks, and that slows the snotfest, but it gives me epic headaches. Damned if ya do, damned if ya don’t. Feeling better this weekend, so let’s ramble, shall we?

I’m off the dating site. Disabled my account because the flood of lewd messages was relentless, and I was also receiving tons of hostile messages about how women have ruined marriage, ruined family, ruined love. Whoa, please don’t get any of your crazy on me, thanks. The harmless “hi, how are you” types of messages were few and far between.

But.

I did wrangle one pretty terrific date and phone number out of the site before I disabled my account. It might jinx things to say he’s super promising as our second date fast approaches, but I had fun on our sushi date, and the conversation and laughter were easy. “Ease” is underrated in the dating world. I prefer ease. I don’t want to “make” anything work, force something; the magic is either there or it’s not. Ease. Magic. Yes.

Crafting my ass off in cameo land. It brings me joy to create them from dust, from nothing.

Promotion is a done deal at work, and my work schedule is changing, hallelujah. My only gripe about work was the schedule, so I’m thrilled to be moving into a schedule that is a better fit. The challenge right now is to train on my new role while still doing my old role; things feel a little overwhelming, but I am grateful for the opportunity. Once the dust settles, things will be awesome.

I could use a vacation. Send money 😉

Alive

I’ve been sick for weeks now. Bronchitis, sinusitis, ear infection. Two rounds of antibiotics back to back…but my ear still hurts. Makes it hard to think, hard to concentrate for long.
So I’m not gone, just sleeping a lot. I’ll be back soon.

seriously?!?

I woke up Monday with ANOTHER cold. OMG. Seriously? I’ve Lysol’ed the world and yet another cold. I am the queen of hansan (that’s “hand sanitizer” for those of you not cool enough to use it by the buckets and give it a snazzy name). BLAHHHHHHHHHHH!

this holiday week

I started my week at Urgent Care.  Fever.  Antibiotics.  Cough drops. Wheezing.

Mended well enough to pull a muscle in my lower back so severely I couldn’t stand without assistance for two days.

Clenching my jaw in back pain agony, I cracked a filling loose and have a (painful) hole in my tooth until the dentist can hopefully work me in next week.

Yep.

So I didn’t get Christmas cards written.  I didn’t finish my Christmas shopping.  I didn’t get to bake sausage balls or pumpkin bread.  Somehow Christmas happened without me.  People made merry and carried on as usual.

The only thing I wish was different was that my time off was spent doing happy things instead of coughing, limping and howling like a banshee.

still alive, kinda kickin

sick for the second time in a month, or maybe i was never fully well?

urgent care. fever.  bed.

i’m a little down.  i’ve tried building bridges this year that were promptly burnt to the ground.  i’ve tried to take new paths, bring in new people, only to learn that the big bad wolf wears many disguises.  i just plain hate the hurt.  i hate it.

i am momentarily discouraged.  this is a hard time of year for anyone who has no significant other.  i miss the house full of kids.  i miss planning, wrapping, traveling to see distant family.  there’s just no substitute for making xmas breakfast with your other while the kids and pets run wild with holiday joy.  there’s a big empty hurt place that i thought was okay until i pulled out the decorations, and i think the big empty hurt place is bigger, darker than it was last year.

dammit, i’ve tried to fix it all. i’ve tried to mend it. i’ve tried to mend myself.  i have tried so fucking hard.  i know there is good stuff out there for me somewhere, and i’m open to allowing, receiving the good stuff.

if you have a partner, a family, count your blessings.  you are so lucky.  you are so fortunate to have another adult to come home to that cares about you.  yes, i have friends, and damn fine ones at that, but it’s not the same as having your lover and your private jokes and stolen blankets and hugs and adventures.  it’s just not the same.

too sick for cookies?!

caught a cold last week, and clearly have been working too many hours, ignoring self care, because today i feel worse than i did a week ago!

here’s how sick i feel tonight: i thought warm cookies might be a nice idea. baked them and put on flannel pjs. smell of chocolate chip cookies filled the house. out of the oven…and there they sit. i am coughing too much to even want a cookie. call 911.

Stupid Ankle Update

My injured ankle has now become “my stupid ankle,” because I am frustrated and over it.  I was excited a month ago that the physical therapist determined my talus bone was out of place, wedged under another bone, and freeing it would put me back on my feet in no time.  I endured a super painful manual effort to free the bone that was supposed to be supported by the exercises I was doing to move the talus back where it belonged.

At my evaluation yesterday, it was determined, nope, the bone is not yet free, and basically all my strength and balance exercises for the last 2 months mean nothing until the bone is free to move in my ankle again.  I sat through the excruciating process to try to push the bone out from its stuck spot and nearly barfed, ending with the physical therapist shaking her head and saying we’d have to get “more aggressive” in coming appointments.  MORE aggressive? I am already sweating and nauseous from the pain…maybe I’ll be just lose consciousness if it gets more aggressive.

I’ve been sleeping a whole lot more lately, and if someone else told me they were going through a few months of physical therapy and sleeping more, I’d tell them that they need to rest and heal.  Of course, I tell myself not that I need to rest and heal, but that I need to get out of bed and do something.  Sigh.  Stupid ankle.

Send healing thoughts; I need them.  I found something on the magical world wide web that I will mention to my therapist tomorrow, because I’m sure she’ll be delighted that I am trying to create my own treatment plan, right?  I found an option where a doctor numbs the area, puts it into traction like you would if you were setting a broken bone, and then exerts the necessary force to free the bone; if this is possible, while I’m sure the surrounding tissue will be inflamed and sore afterward, it would put an end to the slow painful efforts being made at PT.  It’s worth asking.

scary medical tests

My odometer rolled over to 40. The doctor of Mysterious Lady Parts said go for a mammogram…so I went.
Ladies, if you’ve had this done, you know they just grab your bits and smash them all around and they don’t kiss you or send flowers the next day. It’s so…clinical and cold and impersonal. Grab your flesh, smush it, take images, repeat.
I’m 40. This is a baseline test. No big deal.
Only, it was a big deal. Radiologist saw something and wanted me to come back for more images and an ultrasound, but they can’t get me in for both for a week. Oh my god. “Panic” is not the word for the blood running cold terror…knees quaking, hands shaking. I know the statistics and the odds; very slim that I could have cancer……….but not impossible.
I spent the next week in a nervous haze. I spent a Sunday afternoon curled up in my pjs with a good man who held my hand and told me everything would be okay, and even if it wasn’t okay, it would still be okay. I kept repeating “okay” to myself, trying to borrow from his unflinching reassurances.
I had the images done again, and I was hoping the imaging tech would say there was nothing there when she re-imaged me, just a shadow or too much tissue squished up…but she saw something and sent me to ultrasound.
In ultrasound, the technician found something and showed me…something small but something out of place. She said it could be as long as 5 days before a radiologist looked at all the results and called me.
Sitting in the car outside the imaging center—it sounds so dramatic to say it, but it’s true—I looked at beautiful trees ablaze with fall color and I wondered if this could be my last autumn? Dramatic, yes, but in a week full of health concerns, I became so aware of how there are no guarantees, no timelines, no calendars that say how long we get, no matter how healthy we are or aren’t.
I waited. When the call came through to say it’s a cyst, it will disappear on its own, I nearly collapsed with gratitude. I’d been carrying around such fear and stress for days. The relief was huge.
My takeaway from this whole thing is that I will be regular with my exams to find any problems early on. I will also live while I can. I’m pretty honest with those closest to me, but those who stayed close during this scare heard my truths, heard me open up big time, and I don’t regret it. I don’t regret being vulnerable and asking for love when I needed it, and I should do more of that even when I’m not scared out of my mind. Receiving love is something I struggle with, but I liked the feeling of being held in positive thoughts and total care when I let down my guard, so maybe this health scare came just in time to show me the right way to live.

I could wallpaper your house…

Because I am the queen of over-sharing on this blog o’ mine, you need to know that I have had the most heinous, horrible, painful, dreadful sinus infection EVER for the last several weeks…so bad that it laid me out flat on my back with dizziness on Sunday at my soccer game during halftime.  I’d already finished one round of antibiotics, and have now kicked up to some new frightening purple and turquoise pill.

 But what’s really cool is I’m now truly on the mend thanks to the crystal meth my doctor gave me.  Ok, he didn’t actually give me meth, but I’m convinced I could whip up a batch of something profitable from the prescription decongestants he gave me.  I took one yesterday and within an hour was pacing, grinding my teeth and ready to clean the gutters, rake the yard, wash the curtains and maybe even bathe the cats.

I couldn’t really sleep, but I can tell I am at last I’m really getting better, thank goodness…but the crazed edginess is not something that works well for me.  I want to jump up and down, wallpaper my house, maybe wallpaper your house, drive to the beach just to get an ice cream cone, drive back, organize my CDs chronologically, make a paper mache pinata, call up JimDiggity and talk reallyreallyreally fast and hang up mid-sentence, stop by Image 420 to hug Uncle Lane and remind Joey not to smoke, bake some muffins, wash my car, wash your car and jump and down some more. 

Obviously, I’m not jacked up enough.  I’m going out for a Red Bull.

Oy, I’ve been sooooooo sick

I had some flu-like something that kicked my ass for well over ten days and you didn’t even send flowers.  Thanks for the love.

I emerged briefly to go to the grocery store one week day, thinking I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew in the middle of the day as I staggered around unshowered and confused.  Ha! I ran into a distant relative who was shockingly well put together for a trip to BiLo, as well as a former teacher from elementary school AND a high school boyfriend.  GREAT!

When I ran out of Sprite the next time, I decided to try Ingle’s in my pajamas since BiLo was too much of a social hotspot.  And I ran into a Crank County Daredevil (were you wearing eyeliner at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon?) and a Hollywood Vampire just as I walked in the door at the good ol’ Ingle’s.  Superduper!  I smell funny, I look like hell and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for days so it’s a perfect social opportunity!

 I’m better now.  Finally have enough energy to get around to paying bills, doing laundry and bitching on my blog.  It’s not too late to send those flowers.