5 things...

1. I am grateful for the rain that fell for a good part of the day. The drive home from dance this late afternoon was just beautiful. The foothills were so green and lush, I felt like I was back in New Zealand.

2. That, even though it was just barely, I made it to Rylan's dance class on time, with her costume. One of the other moms forgot it was picture day, and I know she felt like an idiot. I have been in her shoes so many times... I am grateful that this was not one of those days.

3. I am grateful for chocolate Teddy Grahams. Even though it wasn't the dose of chocolate I sorely needed, it worked in a pinch.

4. I am grateful that Owen was excited to write the letter 'f', and that Rylan remembered the verse we worked on yesterday:

"In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

5. Constant physical pain will most certainly lead me back to the slippery slope of depression. I'm well on my way into the pit of despair, (no thanks to forgetting to take my happy pills 4 days in a row), but I am thankful that a small voice in my head worked hard today to slow down this descent, and to take stock in what made me happy today.

 

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Simple Woman's Daybook Entry

 

 

 

Outside my window... It's 8:30 a.m. and the skies are a beautiful blue, the birds are almost done with their morning cacophony, and the sun is shining bright. It is supposed to be in the mid-80's today.

I am thinking... About three successive strange dreams last night. First I was involved in a guerrilla war in a rainforest, then I caught a special 'green jasmine' blossom falling from a tree, which meant that I won a very important Girl Scout Award. As I held it in my hand, about 20 minivans surrounded me and all of the moms hopped out, completely pissed that I had won the award, and they tried to take it from me. So I ran. I ran to this sports complex, and got caught up in the midst of a running club that was about to begin their run. Somehow I got drafted to join their club. They meet on Wednesday nights and on Saturday mornings. Their called 'Ron's Group Mix' if you are interested in joining this fictitious club that appeared in my dream. They also like eating Taco Bell, because that was how we ended the 'meeting' - we ate Taco Bell burritos. Don't think there was actually any running involved at all. The good news is that the angry mob of minivan moms never found me, and I seemed to have escaped certain death in some distant rainforest. So why am I going into such boring detail about my dreams? Because I almost never dream anymore...


I am thankful... On this Memorial Day, I am thankful for all of the sacrifices that all service members have made for our nation. The traveling version of the Vietnam Wall is in our city this week, and the name of my dad's cousin is on there. I've seen it before, on the real wall in D.C. If I feel up to it later today, maybe I will take the kids over there to see it again.

From the Learning Rooms... Even though Jordan is on official break since he is gone for the next six weeks (week 1 has already passed), Rylan and Owen are not. We are in the home stretch, and there is a lot to finish before our annual term ends in July. We usually take off the last week in the month, but we already took off last week because of my surgery. So even though I am not feeling 100%, we will carry on. I also did some bookshelf pruning, deep cleaning and switching stuff around, because I am going to try workboxes!! I have always wanted to try this, and I think this will help my highly-distractable kids.

In the kitchen... I have been very blessed this past week with tons of help. My mom made a batch of Gazpacho for me, a friend delivered dinner on Friday night, and another friend delivered dinner on Saturday night. Dean has covered breakfast and lunch, and I chip in when I can. I am so very thankful for the thoughtfulness - it was a huge boost during a rather tough week.

I am wearing... Pj's and a robe.

I am creating... Workboxes! I have two wooden shelving units with twelve individual shelves (ideal for 8.5x11 papers) that I used during my teaching days for student mailboxes. I decided to reappropriate them for the use of workboxes. They are just big enough to be able to hold a textbook. Unfortunately I only have two. If it works well for the next couple of months, I'll invest in two more for Owen and Colin - that is if the local office supply store still carries a similar item.

I am going... To my mom's neighborhood pool to take the kids swimming. And maybe the memorial...

I am wondering... How long it will take for me to get my mobility back. Right now I'm like a one-armed T-Rex. My right arm is pinned to my side simply because I can't lift it more than 4-5 inches away from my body. I hope that this is normal for recovery, and that the surgeon didn't mess up. I fell on the garage steps the day before yesterday and by instinct I reached out my right hand to catch myself. It hurt so bad I cried. Hard. I'm sure that didn't help things.

I am reading... I still haven't picked up the Drums of Autumn again (yet), but I did get The Graveyard Book (the name of the author escapes me, but he also wrote Coraline) in the juvenile fiction section the other day at the library because my 'to read' list is growing ridiculously long. I have no idea where the recommendation came from. I should note that in my list for future 'must-reads'. I read it in a morning, and it was 'okay'. Sort of a page-turner, but it left quite a bit unexplained. It think it could have been developed a little bit more.

In the garden... My peas, turnips, carrots and lettuce are up. My spinach is ready to pick. I am still waiting on the parsnips, and I think the beets are a bust. I am debating about planting some tomatoes. They were a disaster last year. I also don't know if I will up for keeping up with too much this year. I do need to get a basil plant or two, yet.

I am hoping... For my shoulder to get a lot better this week. I am supposed to start physical therapy this coming Friday. At this point in time, when I can barely move my arm, I wonder how that is possible. Post-op appointment is on Thursday though, so I will get answers then.

I am looking forward to... Moving my shoulder again. Pain free. Is it normal to wince when I see people swinging their arms and do push-ups?
I am learning... This week I learned how to remove nail polish from couch cushions. Colin's latest 'painting project' involved an entire bottle of sparkly pink nail polish.

"Rylan!!!!!!!!!"

I am hearing... Ni Hao, Kai-lan. Second-most annoying show. Ever. (First place will always go to Dora)

 Around the house... Dean is spraying for ants - they are a horrendous problem every spring. We have three more boxes of flooring that need to go in - maybe sometime this week.
I am pondering... About the pace of early summer. I think I am pretty happy with what the kids will be doing, just, as always, wishing it were less.

One of my favorite things... The birds in the morning. Our neighborhood is a mature one, so we have quite the spectrum of bird calls in the morning. I don't think I could ever move to a neighborhood with new construction - I would miss the birds too much.
 
A few plans for the rest of the week... Signing the little kids up for swim lessons, this will be Colin's first year, and he is very excited. Owen is about to burst open with excitement as well - it will be hard for him to wait a whole week. Rylan has formal dance pictures on Wednesday, for her ballet class. They will be doing a jazz piece for their recital in a couple of weeks. I have to have her all decked out in costume and makeup for the pictures. Luckily, all that is required for her hair is a simple ponytail. Unfortunately, that involves two-handed dexterity that I just don't possess at the current moment. My mom said she would help. I have a post-op appointment on Thursday, and I begin physical therapy at the orthopedic center on Friday. 
 

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...
 

This picture was taken on 5/16/13, when we took a Daisy field trip to a local small family farm.

To read more entries and visit a variety of other blogs, go here...

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Fading into the background

On Tuesday night, the night before my surgery, I attended the last board meeting of the year for our homeschool group. My position was Membership. I processed new member applications, conducted an annual audit, and handled quite a few squabbles and issues during the year on our Yahoo group. Homeschoolers can be a passionate, feisty bunch, and on a few occasions, downright mean.

 

So, of course, in my charmed life - such as it is, my term ended on an incredibly negative note, given the breach that happened last week. Yep, I am all too happy to fade into the background, where I belong. My social life will consist of tea-parties with my daughter and Park Days with the kids, instead of attending meetings, reading and writing tons of email and being the 'polite police' that nobody likes. Maybe I'll teach myself to knit. Again. Maybe I'll start writing on the blog about my unrelenting need for organized perfection again, and not really care if I get made fun of this time. No.. I'll care. But I'll do it anyway, because that is who I am.

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Numb...

Yesterday was shoulder surgery day. My mom accompanied me while Dean stayed home with kids. I went into the surgery knowing that there would be a 25% chance that the surgeon would do a SLAP tear repair, which would mean 5-6 weeks in an immobilizer brace. Otherwise, it was just debriding my AC joint to relieve the arthritis pain, and removing the bone spur that has been digging into my rotator cuff, and initial recovery meant a couple days in a sling.

The nurses told my mom that there would be a monitor in the individual family waiting room and that she could watch the scope portion of my procedure. How cool is that?! After I changed into my gown and got my IV inserted, mom and I worked out how to get Skype on her iPhone so that she could share the video, live, with Dean and the kids. Then I had a nice video chat with Dean and the kids before the anesthesiologist came in to put in my nerve block. The nerve block meant injecting a strong local around the brachial nerve bundles, so that my entire arm would go numb. I got to watch on the small ultrasound monitor as he positioned the needle in a variety of locations. Shortly after that my arm grew very heavy. Then it tingled. My diaphragm on the right side grew heavy, making a deep breath impossible, and my right eyelid drooped. All normal, and all quite strange. Pretty soon he came back in and asked me to move the fingers on my right hand. Try as hard as I might, they would not move. That meant it was time for surgery.

They wheeled me from pre-op into the operating room. With quite a lot of assistance, I moved from the gurney to the operating table. A nurse asked me to hold my numb arm to my chest as she positioned me better. I looked down, and there was this limp, strange arm, flopped on top of my chest. That wasn't my arm!?!? My arm was still laying by my side ... I could still feel the heaviness of it touching my hip! I looked again. There was no arm resting by my side. I was so utterly confused... I grabbed this 'fake' arm that I would swear was not mine and held onto it. Apparently it was heavy, because it slipped from my left hand's grasp, and I had to make a quick grab before it flopped off the right side of the table. It felt like I was holding a dead hand. Not that I have any idea what that would feel like, but I wasn't thinking too clearly. The nurse took my arm back and strapped on the oxygen mask and then I felt the warm, blissful tingle of anesthesia in my IV. Five seconds later I was out.

I opened my eyes and it was over. It took barely an hour. The nurse helped me put my clothes on, followed by a sling and a humongous ice pack. I had to walk to the recovery area. I chatted with mom as I sipped some water and munched some crackers. There was no need to do the SLAP repair, so the surgery went quickly and I only had to wear a sling. Mom pulled up the car and we drove home.

The day went by quickly, but it was extremely weird to have this lifeless limb attached to me. I didn't do much, but every time I moved, my arm would slip in the sling. I would walk around the kitchen and look down and notice that my thumb, hooked in the thumb strap, was bent back at a 120 degree angle as my arm was falling forward out of the sling. At one point, when Rylan accompanied me to the bathroom, my whole arm slipped from the sling and just hung there. I just looked at it, not really processing that it was my arm, swaying back and forth.

The nerves started to wake up around midnight. I could twitch my fingertips, ever so slightly. By 5 a.m. the block had worn off completely and the pain was bad. It's been an on/off day. The Vicodin makes me a bit woozy the first half hour I take it. Then I'm a little fuzzy in the head. When it wears off, the pain is pretty awful. I hope that each day to come the pain decreases and the mobility gets better. Well, I should hope so - isn't that what this surgery was supposed to fix in the first place?

I'm just glad that by sheer providence I have six straight days of nothing to do. Dean ran Rylan to dance last night, and mom took her to karate today. I needed help showering and dressing today, but I hope for a little more independence tomorrow. We'll see...

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Going under the knife...

 

 

 

I met with 'THE' shoulder guy's PA last week to discuss the results of my MRI, nerve study and to get another thorough shoulder exam.  He was very knowledgeable, thorough, gentle but emphatic that we had to move the joint this way and that, several times over,  to pinpoint what exactly was causing the pain.

 

I told him how awful 'the shot' was, how frustrated I am about not really having a solid answer or even a 'plan' on how to fix it four months into my quest to resolve my pain, and how I really can't go on.  I can't function with this pain one. more. day.

 

I think he heard me.  We studied my MRI.  We looked at the big, nasty site where I have a bunch of osteoarthritis around the AC joint.  He apologized up and down before revealing to me that IF we were going to get to the bottom of this, he would have to give me another shot.  My face fell.  I was just about to resort to throwing a fit, right then and there, when he said that it was just a local anesthetic.  He needed to inject it into my AC joint so that he could pinpoint whether the pain was primarily caused by the arthritis we were seeing in the AC joint (a test that was nicely confirmed on this site), or if the tear in the labrum was also causing pain.  The result of this little test meant a huge difference - an easy surgery with one day in a sling, or a more involved surgery with four weeks in an immobilizer.  Sure... shoot me up, doc.  It hurt.  And it wasn't just one shot.  It was three.  :( 

 

Good news is, is that in about 10 minutes time, I could swing my arm around, PAIN FREE.  I told him it was a miracle.  He told me it was temporary.  Damn.  The fact that it was truly pain free, even after he redid all of the "Does this hurt if I do this?" tests, meant that even though there was a labrum tear, it was NOT the cause of my pain.  The arthritis in my AC joint (see my MRI below), combined with a bone spur digging into my rotator cuff, was the culprit, and could be resolved with a bit of arthroscopic surgery.

 

 

So I meet with "THE" shoulder guy for another quick once-over pre-op appointment this coming Tuesday morning, and then Wednesday morning is the day.  I can't wait!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 





The shark in the pool...

 

 

 

One of my most unpleasant memories from childhood concerned the neighborhood bully, Alan Aragon.  (oh hell no, you don't deserve the anonymity of the Internet, Alan - I am calling you OUT) Alan lived just down the street from my family, and he was about the same age as my older brother..maybe a little older (I guess to me, he seemed like a really, really big kid) and I was very afraid of him.  He would push kids around at the bus stop, he threw my backpack under the bus as it was approaching, he stole my brother's bike and hit my brother when confronted, and worst of all, he played a mean, mean trick on me.

 

There is nothing worse than someone pretending to be who they aren't.  One day, after school, the phone rang.  We were latchkey kids back then (do they even exist anymore?), so I answered.  The male voice on the phone started out by making sure I was the 'pretty girl who lived in the white house'.  (creepy huh?).  But it was a young kid's voice... so I wasn't thinking that it was a predator.  That was before they existed. (ha!)  The voice continued to lay on the charm, and eventually revealed that he was a boy that lived one street over.  I didn't know this particular boy very well, but I thought he was cute.  He invited me over to his house, where he said he would be waiting out front to give me a 'great big kiss'.  (Ewww).  My 8, 9, 10 ?? year-old self was so incredibly flattered by this. This had never happened before!!!  Go me!!!  So I told my brother I was going to a friend's house.  (This was the 70's, remember?  Back when it was safe for a child to walk 50 ft. down the street.  Alone.)  So I walked.  I approached his house.  There was nobody outside.  I don't recall exactly what happened next - most likely because I've repressed it - but it involved Alan and his buddies approaching, taunting me, laughing and being really shitty.  I ran home.  I. was. mortified.  I have carried that emotional scar for a long. long. time.  I don't like pretenders.  Fakes.  People who pretend to be something they are not, just so they can get a laugh at the expense of others.

 

I've had more than my fair share of fakes in my life.  My ex-husband claims the #1 spot, followed by more than a few sleazy bosses, customers during my waitressing days and a few friends from my school days.  It hurts the worst when it comes from someone you think you know.  It is the pain of the surprise - you didn't see it coming, even though you were evidently swimming in the pool with a shark for the entire time.

 

  





Earning my 'mom' stripes

 

 

 

This week is putting me through my paces...  May is our busiest month of the year.  So 'things' many come to an arbitrary 'end' in May - and even though we homeschool, we get overruled by the conventional school calendar some times.  Recitals, testing, well-checks and summer visitation seem to rule this month, no matter how hard I try to stave it off...

 

The week before last meant well-checks for Owen and Colin (both healthy, although Owen sent up red flags during his hearing test.  I think he was just not paying attention...), the dentist for all kids (Rylan had two baby teeth pulled) - with no cavities - extending our streak to 2 1/2 years - yay us!!  I had a nerve study done (carpal tunnel in the right arm, but no impingement in the brachial plexus), a violin recital, a super-fun MNO, a birthday party to attend for Rylan, and a camping trip for Dean and Jordan.

 

Last week was birthday week.  No appointments, but no less crazy.  I will write about it soon.  After I recover from this week.

 

This week is the marathon week.  Monday was violin lesson followed by an appointment for me to see the orthopaedic surgeon (more about that in a different post) and Jordan skipped his scout meeting so that he could do his make-up belt testing instead.  Belt promotions is really this Saturday, but Jordan will be camping, so we had to do it this way.  Tuesday was awful.  Jordan began the day with academic testing.  He spent a little over three hours taking his math and reading MAP tests.  He did very well, but since it went way longer than I planned on, we had to break up the testing and added an additional testing day (tomorrow) to finish up.  I just couldn't ask him to do another hour, hour 1/2 when he was already mentally tired.  We spent the afternoon of Tuesday racing around to different appointments.  Jordan had his camp physical well-check, followed by a tune-up at the orthodontist, and then karate rounded out the day.  Yesterday was a little more sane - just an eye appointment for Owen.  Today was fun, followed by no fun.  We spent a lovely morning at a small farm north of town, milking goats, chasing chickens and riding horses with the daisy scouts.  When I could finally drag the kids to the car, we dashed home, scarfed down lunch and got Jordan to his ped. psychiatrist for a periodic med check, followed by the dermatologist for a periodic check on his incredibly persistent and aggravating warts that are on his hands. 

 

 

I don't think I did anybody any favors by stacking up the week like this, but sometimes it just has to be done.  Jordan leaves for a three-week stay in OKC on Monday.  And then he comes home and goes straight to boy scout summer camp, and then he goes back to OKC for another three weeks.  It takes a lot of forethought to make sure we cover our bases before we send him forth.. meds in hand, forms signed.. it is a real headache sometimes to manage the multiple facets of his healthcare, but I would rather send him prepared than leave to chance.

 

One more day to go... then I can breathe just a little bit...