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Saturday, April 09, 2005

big decisions

I'm going to the hospital on Thursday to have surgery. As if it weren't hard enough to make a decision on the scale of the one I had to make to arrive at that point, now that it IS decided, I face what is possibly an even bigger quandary:

What the heck am I going to bring to read?

So far I have in my stack: Anne of the Island. A Shakespeare omnibus edition, Four Comedies, which includes Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice. The ancient hardcover edition of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn that I bought at the Salvation Army thrift store a couple of weeks ago (possibly the most serendipitous purchase I've made in years; I have wanted this book for a long, long time, and this is a nice old edition without any modern soft-focus art on the cover, and that's exactly what this book SHOULD be. And I got it for fifty cents). I also have my bound paper journal, which I haven't written in since last fall, and of course I'll be bringing my Bible; maybe I'll study Romans in addition to my daily reading, where I'm in Joshua.

It's not like I plan to read ALL of these. I just want a variety to choose from, because who knows what my mood will be? And -- here's the scary thought -- I really don't want to be down there in the hospital, alone and in pain at eleven o'clock at night, and suddenly think of the ONE book I REALLY want to read, and have it not be with me. I wonder if I could have the surgery at home. You think? Then we'd at least be just down the street from the library... T wouldn't mind a little library outing, would he?...

Anyone have suggestions? I'm open to them, as long as they leave room in my bag for my stuffed Grover, who has been through a lot of hospital hours with me.

I hadn't planned to post this initially; I was going to keep it all lighthearted, but, well, here are some of the worries I keep giving to God and then snatching back from Him, in case you were, you know, fresh out of things to pray for:

• Pain. There will be a lot of pain, this I know.
• Loneliness. I am not really accustomed to sitting alone in a hospital room from the end of visiting hours to the beginning of visiting hours the next day.
• Coming out of the anesthetic. I'm not worried that I won't; I'm OK with that. It's just that -- well, I'm sure there must be a more miserable physical sensation than coming out of a drugged sleep into debilitating pain, but I've never had to deal with it, and, well, I feel wimpy right now.
• Having to explain to the entire world why I'm having a hysterectomy at thirty, or else having everyone think I'm trying to keep some deep dark secret if I just say "I've had surgery." I know, I know. None of anyone's business, and I worry too much what people think. But there it is. Here's a short synopsis of "why", since I know if I don't do this I'll have to do it in the comments anyway. I hope it's not TMI; just in case, you might skip to the next bullet if you're squeamish and/or male. Adenomyosis (basically low-grade endometriosis) --> really horrific, um, well, girl stuff --> severe anemia --> exacerbation of supraventricular tachycardia --> weakened heart, possible severe heart problems later. And over all of that is a family history that makes my gynecologist's pen nearly catch on fire from scribbling notes anytime I have to remind him of it. So.
• The possibility that I will be coming home to an utter disaster area. This is not very likely; T is nicer than that. But I know how things can get away from a person.
• Getting a roommate who wants the TV on all the time. Oh please, no. Please. ;)

Thursday, March 17, 2005

the textbook definition of "uncomfortable"

Today I had to go to what my dad has always euphemistically called "the ladydoctor" (all one word like that). I had to have a sonogram. I want to note here and now that this is far less fun when you're not pregnant. Especially it is less fun when you sit there (with the required full bladder, of course) for TWO HOURS in the dressing room with the little gown on, reading Les Misérables (thank you, Mr. Hugo, for that scintillating history lesson about Louis-Philippe, can we get on with Jean Valjean now), wondering if they've forgotten about you. And it is even less fun when the technician comes in to call out the third or fourth person who has arrived after you and then been seen, and tells you that by the way, the reason you're waiting is that you arrived half an hour late and they have to wait till they can "squeeze you in." Especially when you arrived on time -- early even -- and the front-desk people had your appointment time correct in their book but the technician lady didn't.

And yet I didn't kill anybody. Not even one person. I didn't even swear, not even in my head. Aren't you proud?

(Just don't ask if I, uh, cried. Because of the frustration. When I was alone.)

Then after I finally finished that unpleasant business, I went shopping. Alone. I went to Subway alone and then sat on the grass at the park alone and ate my sandwich alone while reading alone and I went to Costco and Save Mart and Smart and Final alone. It was like a vacation and a prison sentence at the same time. Like being Martha Stewart maybe, only I bet Martha Stewart never had the fun of figuring out the best way to spend exactly $55 at Costco.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Ware the Ides of March

I love when March 15th is on a Sunday, because then when I see my high-school English teacher at church I can walk up to him and say that.

Me a geek? wha?

My head is so stuffed up. In every other way I am almost completely done being sick, so I'm grateful that this is all I'm dealing with, but wow. I am going around mouth-breathing like, well, a mouth-breather, and my ears feel like they need to pop, and I can't taste anything. NOT EVEN CHOCOLATE. I have Tim Tams that someone (bless you bless you you are my hero bless you) sent me from Australia, and while I ate, um, quite a few yesterday, I'm saving the rest until this head congestion passes, so as not to waste them. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is HARD. Have YOU ever had a package of genuine Tim-Tam goodness sitting on your counter and walked past it without taking one? It hurts. Oh, the pain.

Friday, March 11, 2005

reflections from a sick person

A few facts about me and sickness:

• There are muscles involved in coughing that I didn't even know I had.
• I buy tea bags at Costco. This week, since my new "comfort food" seems to be tea and toast, that's a very good thing. (actually it's because I go through about thirty bags a week in the summer, making sun tea, but it's also convenient when I'm making a cup of hot tea every forty-five minutes. Now if I could just keep track of my cups so that I don't have every coffee cup in our house dirty at the same time, that would be progress. Also, I heart my teakettle. Anything that whistles when it's done to remind me that I'm using it has my stamp of approval at this stage.)
• We buy the not-terribly-soft-but-long-lasting 1000-sheet rolls of Scott toilet paper. (wow, bet that just made your day, finding that out.) Remember in a previous post, I mentioned that I could not find a box of tissues, so I was using a roll of toilet paper instead? I just finished off the roll. So it lasted, hmm, about thirty-six hours.
• The underside of my nose should have its own Crayola named after it. "Rachel's Raw Nose Red". Catchy, no? It's so very attractive.
• From the time I had LT up until last year, other than hospitalizations for c-sections and some complications from C's birth, I was never sick enough to have to drastically change my daily routine. Everyone else in the house would get sick, everyone else in the COUNTY would get sick, but I was fine. I think that this was God's way of making sure that someone in the house could take care of everyone else. I'm serious, I really do. And now that the kids are old enough to take care of themselves a bit better, I guess the germs are making up for lost time.
• Last night I reached the point where I was unable to envision a time when I would ever not be sick. I would be hacking and sneezing and feverish at the kids' college graduations, that sort of thing. Today, however, I am at the point where I feel like it's patently ridiculous that I've let this alter my behavior for so long, and if I just snap out of it, I'll be fine. Not sure which is less realistic.
• Ice cream is no fun when you can't taste it. What a waste of six hundred calories.

I'm going to go answer the siren song of the couch now.

P.S. My brain is so, um, absent -- that's it, absent -- today that I posted this to the wrong blog and then had a little rant at Blogger when it kept not showing up where I thought it was supposed to. I think maybe I should not be allowed out of the house today.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

ahh, Mr. Darcy

Not in a "ooh, isn't Colin Firth handsome," kind of way, you understand. Just in a "what a totally fantastic and amazing dynamic character, how well-written, how subtle, and most of all, how TOTALLY-SIGH-WORTHILY ROMANTIC" kind of way. My new-but-already-dear friend Kristen was mentioning to me today (er, yesterday?) that she enjoys watching A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" when she's sick, and she's right, it's the perfect accompaniment to sniffles and fever and a cozy bed on the couch. I love reading (and watching; this is a rare excellent adaptation, even though there's the periodic use of a crow sound effect which reminds me startlingly of the cat-swinging scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail") the subtle ways in which Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth change their attitudes, and analyzing their reasons for doing so. I love Mr. Bennet's wry remarks. I love Caroline Bingley's expression every time she tries to get Mr. Darcy to say something nice about her, and he says it about Elizabeth instead. I love that when T is in the room while the movie's on he doesn't even pretend not to watch it.

I'm up late, coughing, watching/listening to P&P while reading online journals (Amy Loves Books just took up a good two and a half hours of my time, thank you Amy), using a roll of toilet paper in lieu of the box of tissues which always manages to disappear exactly when it's needed most, smelling of VapoRub and cough drops, surrounded by heaping baskets of clean laundry which I had intended to fold whilst watching the abovementioned P&P and by little fluffs of tissue. Just so you can have a little snapshot of my undeniably glamorous life.

And now I'm going to make a night of it and put in THE SECOND DVD. I won't be sleeping with this cough anyway; I may as well have the pleasure of seeing Pemberley.
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Tuesday, March 08, 2005

[cue Energizer bunny] ... still coughing.....

I have had this really obnoxious cough hanging on to one degree or another for more than a month. I had the full-out cold back I think at the beginning of February, maybe late January, and ever since then this cough just refuses to leave. It gets better and worse but it doesn't go completely away. Last night it was so bad that I was keeping T awake (for the second night in a row, since C was coughing like this the night before) so I went and slept on the couch. And today it's just gotten worse. Finally tonight I consented to take some Day-Quil (since we have no NyQuil and T pointed out that I wouldn't be sleeping if I was coughing anyway). So now I have a really bizarre disconnected buzzy sort of feeling, as well as, um, a really really bad cough. See, T? SEE? My chest hurts. My abdomen hurts. My head hurts. And because I am so clever, I did not replenish our supply of ordinary cough medicine today, and anyway I'm not sure I could take any since I took the blasted worthless Day-Quil.

Please pardon me while I through a pity-party hissy fit over something so inconsequential as a cough, while real people have real problems on such a scope as to cause my problems to completely disappear. To even be pleasant.

Also please pardon me while I stay up all night jiggling my foot and twitching my head back and forth to feel if it's still attached. NEVER AGAIN WITH THE DAY-QUIL, HONEY. NOT HAPPENING. EVER EVER.

Friday, March 04, 2005

I am SO grown-up

First, I have to get this out of the way. Yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn, which of course I photographed:

(OK, so that's sunrise, not dawn, quibble quibble. I'd also already been up for about an hour when I took that picture. Artistic license, OK? Oh, and you can click to see that bigger, in a new window)


We drove to first one city and then to another, to visit doctors. Here is what I learned (ooh, a list!):

• I have a flow murmur and a classic case of supraventricular tachycardia (neither of those things is actually that scary, but they sure sound like it).
  
• I will probably be having a hysterectomy sometime this spring.

• I should always turn off my cell phone at the GYN office, because otherwise I may end up talking to my dad whilst being examined, and folks, that just feels all wrong.
  
• T and I still have the happy ability to make a day of boring, necessary stuff into a date, just because we love each other and enjoy each other so much. (kids were with my parents).
  

Anyway, enough about that, on to the real news.

First, in case you are new to my journal(s), I must re-confess that I was a thirty-year-old woman who had never owned a pair of high-heeled shoes. This has to do with having reached my adult height (which is taller than average) in junior high, and all this deep-seated insecurity about being taller than everyone else. And also laziness, also known as "never getting around to it".

Yesterday, however, I figured, what the heck, and we bought me these:

T wants me to make sure you know that he picked them out. I said I wanted high heels, he did the rest. Aren't they darling? DO YOU SEE THE POLKA DOTS?

Then last night I wore them to a community chorus concert. My first time in high heels, how sweet. Now I need a frilly organza dress and a cute little ponytail.

(Seriously, though? HOW DO YOU WALK? I mean, is it really all about these little bitty short steps -- well, they're little bitty short to ME, anyway -- or is there some trick to moving quickly and gracefully at the same time which I just don't know about? And also, very freaky when you take off your shoes and feel like your heels are downhill from your toes.)

Thursday, February 03, 2005

a teeny bit of boring medical stuff, and then a music survey-thingie

Only one quick note in this entry about the whole boring medical thing, and then on to other (boring, but hey, what can I do?) things. I realized today that there is one thing I like about the anemia. I had thought that I had no symptoms at all, except for the low numbers in my blood, but then I remembered: I used to have this really ruddy complexion most of the time. I totally hated it. I remember on my honeymoon I got one of those department store makeovers (which was really crappy, by the way; I'm a brown-warm type, not a coral-warm type), and there was a $25 purchase requirement for it to be free. I spent the whole $25 on a big bottle of this green lotion foundation which was intended to tone down the red in my skin. Now I am more pale, with a few freckles -- no noticeable ruddiness. I am glad about this. If it's because I'm anemic, and if my face starts getting red again as soon as my iron comes back up, I am going to be really ticked off.


OK, that's all. See, that wasn't SO bad.

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I made a really, really good salad for dinner last night. Romaine lettuce, yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, red onions, Italian dressing. MMM. I was happy all morning because I knew I was having that salad for lunch. Which reminded me of a time in high school, when I had actually taken the time to make myself a nice salad to eat at lunchtime, and I had a little Tupperware container of dressing nestled down in the bowl with the lettuce and stuff, and I went through the whole morning in pleasant anticipation of that salad. Then I went to get it out of my locker at lunch and it was GONE. Everything else was there -- books, flute, jacket, nothing was disturbed except MY WONDERFUL SALAD which had simply disappeared. I had a picture of Dwight Yoakum in my locker, and from then on I joked that he had eaten my salad. I would write "KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANLT OFF MY SALAD, DWIGHT" or something similar on my lunch bags. That salad today just made me think of that.



Hey, I never said I was sane.

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Here is a music survey. You're supposed to wait until someone else with a journal passes it to you, but since I am a social leper even in the world of online journaling, nobody's going to do that, so I'll just do it all on my own. (Oh dear lord I'm turning into my whiny grandmother. Somebody shoot me now. Please.)



1. What are the total amount of music files on your computer?
hold on, lemme check. Apparently 325, including some incomplete ones. And maybe a few duplicates.



2. The last CD you bought was?
Chanticleer, "Sing We Christmas". Chanticleer gives me that Anne-of-Green-Gables-ish "funny ache", along with the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Jane Austen (especially the letter-writing scene in Persuasion), dark starry nights, the first sight of the ocean as we drive toward it, both kids hugging me hard at once, a hard snowfall when everyone I love is home safe... shoot, I'll have to do a whole list sometime of things that give me the "funny ache", I guess. But Chanticleer will definitely be on it.



3. What is the song you last listened to before this message?
Well, "The Courier" from the "Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack was on in the car. But C is watching an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" and I was just hearing the theme music from that. I don't think that can count, though.



4. Write down five songs you often listen to, or that mean a lot to you.
oh sheesh. Um. I listen to so many songs, so much of the time, that I can't just do that. I'll try the "mean a lot to me" angle and see what happens.

• Listening to late 80's/early 90's music reminds me of junior high and high school, which is a time from which most of my happy memories of friends and things come, as far as school goes anyway. Tops in this category might be "Stand" by REM. I'd been stood up by the boy I liked most at a dance, and I cried like a whiny baby until the DJ played that song, at which time I pulled myself together and started dancing, and managed to make something fun out of the rest of the evening.
  
  
  
• There's a song by the Mavericks called "Oh What A Thrill". If T and I had a song, this would probably be it.
  
  
• Unless it were Loreena McKennitt's rendition of Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman."
  
  
• Christmas music, GOOD Christmas music (like Chanticleer, yum) is some of the happiest music I know. I love Christmastime, especially with kids.
  
  
• Our whole family enjoys Vivaldi and Mozart and Bach and basically everyone who composed just about anything until about, oh, 1905 or so (no Debussy, thank you, but we also like Gershwin a lot). When we listen to classical music (in the loose definition of the term, with a lowercase C, not necessarily the Classical era, just classical music) in the car, the kids either pretend to play instruments, or we take turns telling each other what story the music is telling. I enjoy this immensely now, and I think when I'm an old lady and my children are grandparents, I will still cherish the memories of it.
  

5. Who are you gonna pass this stick to (three persons and why)?
Well, not many people whom I know read this also keep journals, and at least one of them already did this particular survey-thingie. Jennifer, Debi (this means you have to UPDATE, ha!), and Kat -- it's all yours.

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I know I promised only that one mention of boring medical stuff but I typed that yesterday. Today I had an echocardiogram. Basically this is all the mess of a sonogram with none of the fun of seeing a little baby wiggling around in his or her little secret place, with the addition of a good dose of embarrassment about bare breasts. Yuck, in other words.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

boring medical stuff. Especially boring to those of the male persuasion (you've been warned)

Yesterday and this morning I have spent more time in a medical or semi-medical setting than I have since I had my babies. First I went to the clinic for a pre-referral appointment with my "primary care provider" (except that the doctor/PA turnover at that clinic is so high, and I so rarely go to the doctor, that I don't think I've ever seen the same person twice there) regarding the tachycardia episodes I have. They did that really fun thing, which I'd actually never had done before, where you lie still with stickies all over you and a machine analyzes your heart function in various places in your body. Then they took blood ("they" being a perky blonde phlebotomist who seemed about eleven years old -- you know you're getting older when medical personnel and teachers start to seem too young). THEN we went to the valley so that T and I could get our eyes checked, both of us being phenomenally overdue for that. My eyeglass prescription dates from the time when I had only one child, for example. Anyway. My eyes have gotten worse, and T's (stinker) have actually gotten better. I was going to get contacts but because of the severity of my astigmatism I'd have to sell one of the kids to do that, and it's just not going to happen. But T's contacts are CHEAP. CHEAPER THAN GLASSES. And yet he only wants them for playing paintball. [blows raspberry in T's general direction]. And then this morning the kids and I took Henry to the vet. Poor Henry got two shots and two different kinds of medicine (not all relating to his upper respiratory infection; some of it's standard stuff that the SPCA didn't do before we got him) and will have to have MORE medicine at home. Poor Rachel's checkbook got quite a dent in it when she paid the bill.

Today I discussed the results of yesterday's bloodwork with the physician's assistant (PA) (not, thankfully, the perky phlebotomist). Turns out I am severely anemic. This is not startling news, I've always been pretty anemic, but it's even worse than it was and I've been ordered to take THREE STINKING IRON PILLS A DAY to try to bring my numbers up. This means I also have to take a stool softener because I am all cool that way. Meanwhile I have an appointment for an echocardiogram on Thursday, and ANOTHER appointment, this one with the good ol' GYN, in early March, to try to address the actual probable cause of the anemia, that being my overachieving-yet-useless uterus. The PA did say that anemia can trigger tachycardia, so that stacks up one more reason for a hysterectomy -- which I tend to be flippant about, especially for three or four days every three and a half weeks or so, but which really kind of freaks me out when I think hard about it. Not that I would be getting a radical hysterectomy and going through menopause at 30 and all that fun stuff -- but still. As much as my uterus pisses me off sometimes, I'm really kind of sentimentally attached to it. But all the various hormonal methods have been tried, and they really do not agree with my system (not only do I gain unpleasant amounts of weight while using them, but they frequently have the direct opposite of the regulating-and-lessening effect they're supposed to have).

The funniest thing about all this is that I don't feel "anemic". I feel normal. Who knows, maybe if I'm ever not anemic (which I've been, at least in a borderline way, since at least the time of my first pregnancy when I was 20), I'll suddenly turn into some kind of energetic house-cleaning superwoman. And I'll have the kind of house where people can just drop by and it's clean and fresh-smelling and airy and uncluttered.

Ha ha. Fat chance.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

you really would not believe how ill I am

I am so, so ill.

OK, so I'm really not that sick. I'm even feeling a good bit better now than I was this afternoon (I think I was dehydrated and that didn't help). But by golly I am going to milk this for all it's worth. So what if it's just a sinus infection? I don't get lying-down-in-the-middle-of-the-day privileges very often and I'm not going to let the opportunity pass me by. And any work I do in this condition is just extra brownie points, which are always handy.

So. I am so, so ill.

Also. Did you notice the sidebar? I am done with Villette, -- just finished it before I started writing this entry -- and I found that I liked it better as I got nearer the end. Which is probably why I plowed through about 250 pages of it today. (see above re: lying down in the middle of the day. We also watched "Anne of Avonlea", and it's been so long since I read the books that I was actually able to enjoy it. I will, however, be doing a good read-through of that entire series ASAP. Watching adaptations always gives me book cravings.)

I am going to go smear myself with VapoRub and talk like the guy in the NyQuil commercials (or, at least, the guy who was in NyQuil commercials last time I saw any commercials, which was years ago), for the extra sympathy factor, before I go to sleep. Good-dight.

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