Mamarati

So, I forgot to mention in my last post… so far, I’ve had luck drinking a gigantic glass of water right before I go to bed. Then I wake up naturally in this gentle way about 3 hours after I fall asleep because I need to go to the bathroom. I realize then that my eyelid is stuck to my eyeball and I keep a bunch of vials of the Bion Tears by my bed. I fumble around for those and it usually takes a full vial between both eyes. I gently spread it around my lids and put the slightest pressure on my eyes to open until they come open without tearing anything.

Then I go to the bathroom and drink another big glass of water and repeat the process again 3 hours later. It helps me stay hydrated, too, which is just one contributing factor with the dry eyes.

I’m waking up about every 3 hours, but since I’m just getting my eyes to open and then going to the bathroom it doesn’t seem that disruptive to my sleep and I’m still having plenty of dream time.

I’m also taking 1mg of melatonin before bed to help conquer the anxiety / insomnia cycle I’ve got going. It helps a lot. I find I’m not laying in bed in a panic, fighting sleep.

I read over my words in these eye-related posts and find it’s just so strange that something can come along and have such an impact… turn your every day and night into something it wasn’t before.

I was thinking about this and how much my arm injury changed my life for a while. I was trying to remember what my life was like right after it happened… I was trying to remember dinner, what did I eat? How did my boyfriend manage everything? We (mostly he) did some pretty major cleaning this weekend. It’s not like I’m the best housekeeper, because I’m not. I think I’m missing the gene that sees things like dust… But after the arm incident I couldn’t even open the toothpaste, much less operate a vacuum or a broom. Still, more than a year later, using the vacuum tires me quickly and makes my arm hurt for days.

So, I was trying to remember cleaning during that time. Cooking. Anything that I did. I couldn’t even dress myself. I couldn’t dry myself when I got out of the tub. Hell, I couldn’t even bathe for the longest time. More than a month, I guess it was. Jacob stayed with his dad most of that time. I was taking so much pain medication. I slept day and night. I guess I was really only awake a few hours a day. Mostly what I remember about that time is the cat. She never left me. Ever present, curled up on my chest or right on top of my injured arm… she was there with me almost every hour. Crazy cat.

I wanted to write more about everything going on then, but I couldn’t type for so long and any energy I had I used to do the handwriting recognition so I could do what I needed at work. Then I was zapped and would just crash again. I had so much to say about what was going on, though. The frustration and uncertainty of it all. I had so many fears about how much use I was going to get out of my hand and arm. At the time, the nerves in my hand were completely shot and I could hardly move or feel my fingers… It was really scary.

But now… even though there are still lots of problems and I can’t sleep the way I once did and there is pain and all those things… I have an arm and hand that both work. And all that fear and anxiety were for nothing. Even if I didn’t have working bits, what good would all the fear and anxiety have done?

I wish I could keep that in mind now. That yes, this thing is turning my life upside-down right now and I’m having to take lots of measures all day and all night long and it’s a pain in the ass and it’s painful and it’s affecting me greatly… And it could affect my vision and change things even more… Still, what good does it do me to have all this worry?

I go to the doctor tomorrow. I really just want to relax between now and then. I’m worried he’s going to tell me that it’s not healing well and who knows what the next course of action will be… I’m worried he’s going to be upset that two other doctors have stepped in and maybe have done things that he wouldn’t have done. I can’t really help that, however, since he wasn’t available and I wasn’t in a position to wait for treatment. I’m also concerned that while my cornea issues are being addressed, the underlying problem (in my opinion) has not been addressed at all beyond “drops.” The dry eye problem needs more aggressive treatment, I feel. There’s no end to that and I just have this feeling that no matter how many times they scrape or zap my cornea, it’s going to happen again because my eyes are so dry and they resist hydration so completely.

But, you know, who am I to say?

(Yeah, right. I’ll be saying plenty.)

In other news, I am not eating beef any more. I keep saying I’m going to swear it off… each and every recall just adds to that resolve. I just can’t take the thought of it any longer.

The cat is circling my chair… guess she needs a lap / nap.

I went to the doctor to have the contact removed again and have the healing cornea checked out. It’s been doing all right, though sticking a bit. Still, the contact seems to act as a buffer between my lid and the cornea… so the spot that’s getting stuck now seems to be either lower on my eyeball or where the two lids are touching. Good news, too, since my lids usually never touch. I have “incomplete closure” but I think the goggles are helping put some pressure on my lids to stay more closed. The bad news is now my other eye is getting stuck.

But back to the doctor.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the anxiety that’s built up surrounding this. See, I don’t do well with pain. I really really don’t. I’m the biggest wimp you could possibly imagine. If they’re offering up pain relief, I’m all for it. I don’t care if it’s a hangnail. That’s the kind of wuss I am.

So I have some anxiety about going to sleep now. The first night that I was without the contact lens (actually the only night) I was so freaked out that I was going to rip open my eyeball, I stayed up till 5am. I kept drifting off on the couch and I would bolt awake in a complete state of panic. Finally I gave in, knowing that my boyfriend would wake me up in 4 hours.

My anxiety was further bolstered when after those mere 4 hours I did indeed wake up to my eyelid peeling away from my eyeball… lifting away the newly healed area that was just days before scraped away with a friggin’ exacto knife, basically.

So, anxiety. Insomnia. Fear. Loathing. Not Las Vegas.

I feel like I’m going to have to stay up all night and then maybe set a quiet and gentle alarm to wake me up every hour or so to add more drops and check for sticking… No big deal. It will be like I’m a new mom all over again except without the crying. At least not from a baby, unless you count me.

Doctor… right, so with that said, I go into the doctor… the contact is removed, he checks the eye out and asks me how it’s going… I say fine. He says it looks good. This is not my regular eye doctor, either. This is a follow-up appointment because I saw him the last time it ripped open and my regular doctor wasn’t available.

So he is about to let me go and is telling me to follow up with my regular doctor… I tell him I already have an appointment for the 12th with my regular doctor. Then I tell him I’m scared to go to bed between now and then and I’m afraid it’s going to rip open again. He gets this agitated look on his face and I’m not sure why. Then he says, “Well, use ointment and if you have some of the Muro around, use that.” I say, “Yeah, that’s what I did last time, but the ointment doesn’t seem to work well enough to stop it from drying out and sticking. Is there something stronger I can use?”

Silence. He’s writing something in my chart. I suggest that maybe if I could keep the contact lens then I could wear that at night since it seems to prevent the sticking and ripping. He looks up at me with this completely nasty look on his face and says, “But that’s not a cure. You have to follow up with your regular doctor.”

Ummm…. OK? I’m not sure what one has to do with the other and since I just told you that I already have an appointment with him, I don’t know how wanting to wear the contact lens negates going to see him. I say OK.

He continues on about going to see my regular doctor. I say, “Yes, I get it. I’m going to follow up. I already said that. All I’m saying is I’d like to wear the contact between now and then so I don’t mess up what’s already been done to my eye.”

He goes on. He’s yelling at me now about it not being a cure and I might need to see a cornea specialists because I might need surgery and if I don’t follow up with my regular doctor then I might not know whether I do or not.

I start to get agitated at this point. I’m thinking, “NO SHIT?” I thought we already cleared this up about going to see him. Can you drop it? He doesn’t drop it. He goes on and he’s pointing at the contact lens and he says, “It’s right there, you can have it.” I say, “Look, you don’t have to get mad at me, I’m just saying that the contact offers me some security. I have to work. I don’t have insurance right now. I’m a writer so all my work is done on the computer. I have to be able to see. Every time that I rip my eyeball open or every time it has to be scraped… that’s pain and it’s time that I lose at work and it’s less money that I have to pay for all these appointments. I’ve been here 6 times in the last month. It adds up. I’m not looking to the contact as a cure, I’m looking at it as prevention.”

And then he says, “Well, it can be a cure. But it’s just one treatment. It’s called a therapeutic contact lens. But you need to follow up with your regular doctor. You could need surgery.”

Geez. OK broken record.

So, then I’m all pissed and I’m crying when I leave he’s been such an ass… I get home and I start to research this whole contact lens thing and it turns out that I am not the only FREAK to have some anxiety over this whole thing:

“Symptoms may gradually subside over the course of the day and then start all over again the next morning. The unpredictability of these episodes may lead to an associated anxiety.”

and from the Journal of the American Society of Ophthalmic Registered Nurses:

The patient history is pathognomonic with a description a foreign body sensation upon opening the eye after awakening in the morning. The symptoms can progress to extreme pain and photophobia with profuse tearing. During the night, pressure from the eyelid on the dry epithelium produces an adhesion to the epithelium which is stronger than the adhesion of the epithelium to the basement membrane. Hence, upon awakening, the eyelid separates away from the epithelium. The unpredictable nature of recurrent corneal erosions often amplifies patient anxiety. Since erosions occur during sleep or on awakening, some patients experience varying amounts of insomnia, which exacerbates the psychological stress related with this condition.

In the conclusion it stresses helping the patient cope. Hi. That’s me. The patient. I need help coping.

I do some more research, since he said it was an option.

Turns out, a therapeutic contact lens or bandage contact lens is considered a “conservative” treatment measure. It’s something to be considered even before things like what I had, which was debridement (the exacto knife / passing out incident) or before stronger measures like anterior stromal puncture or Phototherapeutic Keratectomy (PTK).

I found this case report and the patient here sounds incredibly similar to my own situation. Here is some of the treatment plan and the results:

The impression remained as recalcitrant recurrent corneal erosion OD and the plan was to continue with the bandage lens; however, the patient was instructed to wear the lens only at night and to remove the lens every morning…

At a four-month follow-up visit, the patient said he was “doing great” and that he hadn’t had another episode. He was wearing the high-Dk silicone hydrogel 8.6/-0.50 lens during the night, removing it each morning, and was using the hypertonic sodium chloride drop three times per day. Corrected visual acuities were 20/20 OU and the slit lamp examination revealed resolution of the recurrent corneal erosion. The plan was to discontinue the bandage contact lens and use a lubricant eye ointment (GenTeal® ) at night and lubricant drops OU as needed during the day. At one year, the patient was using the lubricant ointment at night and was still doing well.

Dude, that is good news to me. I like reading that. I realize that my doctor may want to do something different. I may need surgery. I get all that. But don’t act like I’m acting for crack or something when all I’m asking for is a contact lens. I’m not some crazed drug addict in here trying to con you into prescribing me narcotics (as nice as I think hydrocodone is, I don’t need any more of it!). It’s a friggin’ contact lens and I only want to wear it at night.

It amazes me that people wear these things all the time. I know people who don’t take them out for weeks at a time. And I’m not asking for that…

Whatever. It’s all very frustrating and I don’t appreciate being yelled at by this doctor. No one deserves that…

I’m so ready for all these eye shenanigans to be overwith and get back to some normalcy.

Well, I started out an entry (unfinished) yesterday like this:

“The contact lens bandage has been peeled away and now I am left with this scratchy, dry feeling and the nervousness that I’m going to go to screw it up again.”

And as fate would have it, despite putting the thickest mineral oil / petrolatum mix on my eyes three times last night to keep my eyelid from sticking to my eyeball, I screwed it up again.

I woke up with my lid completely stuck and the pain was unbearable as my eye tried to roll into a normal position, taking my eyelid with it. I grabbed the drops and started squirting it in like crazy, hoping that it would facilitate smooth separation, but to no avail.

Pain, oh God, the pain.

I went to the bathroom to see if there was any obvious damage, and it was complete redness, just like before.

I called the doctor’s office and they squeezed me in. He looked at it and gave me those delicious pain drops that change my mood from “I want to die, please just take my eyeball out” to “Woohoooooooooooooo Party Time, Where’s the margaritas?” He said that I didn’t completely open it up, but that it looks like I’ve pulled it away from my eye a little bit, loosened it up around the edges. Nothing needing scraping yet, but since it’s causing me pain, it means that there’s definitely a problem there that could get worse.

So, he stuck another contact lens bandage in my eye and said that would act as a barrier between my eyeball and eyelid and would help press all this mess to my eyeball a little firmer. He said to use the lube drops every 15 minutes and go back on the antibiotic drops. Call if it’s worse before the weekend, otherwise, this is staying on until Tuesday.

Which is fine with me. I can’t take much more of this pain and ripping and such. Once again, though, I’m sitting here typing through a fog. Using spell check and I never do that. I just can’t read my own words enough to know if I’m screwing up. I have so much work to do, so many projects going on… and all I can do is sit around in the dark, take baths, be mopey, take naps and watch Law and Order. If I wasn’t in so much pain, that all might sound like a good time…

I’ve had it with you, eye. Straighten up and fly right.

I did get these fancy goggles to wear at night, though. Oh yeah. You want me.

Hardly any redness left and it’s feeling better, too. It’s less scratchy and no more shooting pains since yesterday. I’m still completely aggravated by light, though, and even walking across the room causes enough of a breeze across my eye to make me wince.

You can’t tell very well in this picture, but that eye is still dilated, too. It’s so weird looking to have one pupil gigantic and the other just a dot. He said that would last about 4 days.

I’m still really tired. I don’t know how or why an eye injury can make one so tired, but I am truly exhausted and have been napping once or more per day. I’m about to take a little cat nap right now, even.

Tomorrow the contact lens gets peeled off. I’m nervous about it and feel myself getting a little light-headed just thinking about it. I worry so much about him taking layers of my eyeball with him or worse, going back to eyelid sticking to eyeball in the morning.

I’m a total wussy when it comes to pain, don’t you know?

Other good news is that my actual vision is starting to come back up to par. Though it comes and goes. Last night I could read stuff on the onscreen channel guide with the good eye closed. Now, however, I can’t even read this text that way. At least I know the potential is there.

I tried not to work today and just rest, but ended up doing a little bit. I have kind of liked just sitting around, sleeping and watching TV. I had a Law and Orderthon yesterday, which I haven’t allowed myself to do for years and years. Kinda fun.

The pain is incredible today. I took a lot of hydrocodone last night with little relief.

Took ibuprofen this morning to try and reduce the swelling. Am going to go take a bath and then just go back to bed today. Hopefully sleep since I didn’t do much of that last night. This is starting to rank up there with my arm on the pain scale.

I really like my ophthalmologist, by the way. He doesn’t try to push lots of expensive prescription stuff on me. Maybe it’s his military background. I don’t know. Anyway, here are the things that he recommended I use for my Saharan eyes.

To clean eyelids and eyelashes:

• OcuSoft lid scrub solution
• I-Scrub solution
• Neutrogena unscented liquid facial cleanser
• Johnson’s Baby Shampoo (dilute with equal parts water)

Artificial tears that can be used daily up to 4x:

• HypoTears
• Tears Naturale Forte
• Genteal Mild
• Systane
• Genteal Moderate
• Refresh Tears
• TheraTears

If you need the above more than 4x a day, move on to these preservative-free artificial tears for very dry eyes:

• Genteal PF
• Tears Naturale Free
• Bion Tears
• TheraTears PF
• HypoTears PF
• Refresh PF
• Moisture Eyes Protect PF
• Protect PF

The thick stuff for folks with severe dry eyes and for anyone to use at bedtime:

• Celluvisc
• Aqua Site
• Refresh Liquigel
• TheraTears Liquid Gel (I love this stuff, but boyfriend hates it because it does leave crust on your eyes in the morning)
• Genteal Gel
• Refresh PM

I could have picked up some of this stuff at Camp Baby. Why, oh why did I spend so much time at the table-o-lubes? I mean really, I can’t use KY Warming Gel on my eyes, now can I?

More:

Kim Moldofsky talks about her issues over at Momformation: Not without my Baby (Shampoo)

The ER said corneal abrasion, but when I got to the ophthalmologist, he said it was recurrent corneal erosion.

I haven’t written about this yet… in fact I’ve been doing a little less work and writing and all that sort of thing in favor of having days where I do nothing but lay in bed all day in a completely darkened room hopped up on hydrocodone while applying copious amounts of tetracaine to my eyeball.

It’s a good time.

That’s not been the be-all, end-all of my existence since I wrote about my ER visit. In fact, I’ve had some pretty good days. I even had a stretch there where I was virtually pain-free and was able to get caught up on lots of things. I could go outside and the light didn’t cause me supreme pain and confusion like I was stuck in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

And then it started happening again. I started waking up with my eyelid stuck to my eyeball. Once again, it was time to hop on board the effin’ pain train. Chugga Chugga Ughleavemealone.

Two days ago, I did it three times. I don’t even know what it was that was waking me up. I’ve trained myself to wake up gently without trying to open my eyes. Try this some time. You’ll see it’s not easy. It’s a like a reflex to open your eyes. You hear a loud noise, open your eyes. Your baby is crying, open your eyes. A lot of light in the room, open your eyes. Loud ass thunder, open your eyes. The alarm goes off, open your eyes. The phone rings, you open your eyes. You just do it. I’m glad I don’t have a baby crying and waking up every few hours or I probably wouldn’t have an eyeball left.

The worst part of what happened this week is that my training was failing me. Because my eyes felt like they had rolled up into my head in some way and gotten stuck to my eyelid like that instead of getting stuck the normal way. So not only did my eyes want to open, they wanted to roll back down into the normal seeing position. I literally could not stop the two from ripping apart.

Three times.

I was a zombie the next day.

Did I mention that your cornea is just jam friggin’ packed with nerve endings?

Good times.

Yesterday was a good day, though. Pain free.

Today, I have what my doctor called “foreign body sensation.” This does not mean that I thought I had the sense of having the body of Salma Hayek. No, instead it means that I feel like I have something in my eye, like a cat hair or an eyelash or a shard of glass or a metal fragment or like, an axe or something. But really, nothing is there. No matter how many times I look, no matter how many eyelashes I pluck. There’s nothing really there.

And it’s odd that nothing is there. Because my eye is getting redder and redder and hurting more and more. It seems to me that something should be causing that, but I guess it’s just the persistent dryness and my eyelid dragging across the wounded areas.

I was supposed to go back to the doctor yesterday, but I had to reschedule and I’m glad. Because he said that they were going to have to do phototherapeutic keratectomy if it wasn’t healing properly. I’ve been looking around and it looks like this might not even get it on the first go around, but that the second go is very successful. He gave me this stuff called Muro 128. I use the 2 percent drops every four hours during the day and I use the 5 percent mayonnaise ointment during the night. I’m writing that mainly for my fellow eyelid-stuck-to-eyeball-in-the-morning comrades who are coming here via Google. I see you guys. I know your pain. You’re not imagining what is happening. Get to the doctor. I also use TheraTears Liquid Gel for lubrication since I have a variety of issues going on that dry my eyes out (not very much tear production, sleep with my eyes partly open, dry house, fans, allergies and thus antihistamines that are drying, I don’t drink enough water, my hormones are all jacked up, lots of computer use thus less blinking, it goes on and on really. My lifestyle is no friend to my eyeballs.) I’ve also started taking TheraTears Nutrition for Dry Eyes to help increase tear production naturally and I eat oily fish about 9 trillion times a week now. Again, get to the doctor, Googler. Or Yahooligan…

Anyway, I’m glad I rescheduled, because I think I want just a couple more weeks to try to get it on the road to healing before he decides what to do. Maybe I can avoid that procedure. I mean, they basically scrape across your entire cornea and then cross their fingers that it heals right. It’s a bit like rebreaking someone’s arm when they have a bad break so that it will heal better… to get a “cleaner” break… And I’m sorry, but I am going to go ahead and cross my fingers for it to heal some more with what I’m doing now. The thought of them scraping my eyeball results in waves of nausea.

Right now, I’m going to take some hydrocodone and lay down and put some more mayo in my eye.

So, I just got back from out of town… road trip with the family. Good times. Until… Suddenly my eye starts hurting.

Really hurting.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t open my eyes because it hurt. I couldn’t close my eyes because it hurt. No matter what I did, it hurt.

We started the long drive home (about 12 hours in the car) and I literally sat with my finger pressed into my eyelid (the only semi-comfortable position my eye could be) the entire time. It is
really difficult to try and keep your eye closed when it wants to be open and looking at things. Road trips are for seeing, no?

We got back home and the pain was getting worse, so we headed to Harris ER (savers of my arm, and quite possibly my life last time) where they gave me some numbing drops (boyfriend said they must have been loaded with mood enhancers as well, since my outlook on life changed
immediately upon application) and looked at my eyes with dye under a black light and said I have a corneal abrasion. Apparently your cornea is just loaded up with nerve endings, so it’s a bit of a painful thing.

They gave me a prescription for hydrocodone (my favorite oh darn!) and some antibiotic drops and sent me home feeling much better. I slept like a baby after nearly 48 hours of no sleep at all. I got up this morning at about 11:30 and went to open the front door to see if White Thing was out there wanting some crunchies and was blinded by the light. (Though not cut loose like a deuce or wrapped up like a douche or anything like that.) It was like instant migraine pain engulfing my entire head. The light was hurting me on the way home but not nearly this bad. Of course my eyes were closed and covered by fingers and sunglasses the whole time… but wow, this was seriously painful. It’s getting worse, too, which I don’t get, since the other pain is getting better (or is just masked by the hydrocodone?). I am sitting here writing this wearing sunglasses in my damn house because even at its lowest brightness setting, my screen is killing my eyes. I was in the back room doing laundry in my sunglasses.

I feel like Corey Hart or something.

I have an appointment with an ophthalmologist on Wednesday… I’m going to talk to him about this and also the dry eye thing… because this pain is not something that’s new. Only the severity of it this
time is what’s new. I’ve been waking up with my eyelid stuck to my eyeball off and on for about six weeks now. Generally it hurts just like this episode, but goes away within about an hour or so. It’s been
happening so frequently lately, though, that I’ve trained myself not to open my eyes too quickly when I wake up so that I don’t rip it. It seems to be OK if I take my time and allow some tears to build up with
pretend blinking before I open them completely. So, I don’t know if it’s possible that I have the chronic dry eye thing going on or if maybe I injured my eye six weeks ago and it’s just never healed
well… We were around a lot of smoke, sun and wind as well as recent painting and scraping of the house, so maybe that added to the injury? I guess I’m just trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg here.

Here’s the scary eye:

Oh, and mental note to self: started period today. Joy.

lots of stuff going on as usual. I can barely find the time to think. I’m so friggin’ tired. Basically, though:

• flus and colds at both houses
• MRSA at the ex’s house so J was with me without a break for weeks
• hurt my thumb and couldn’t type for a few days
• stomach ailment requiring multiple poo samples from J
• five or six days ? out of school in the last few weeks for J
• stray orange cat gave birth to three kittens either premature or just way too small and two didn’t make it
• the one that made it cries all night and has a hard time finding a nipple and she doesn’t want to take care of it

I am exhausted and behind in school, behind with where I want to be workwise, haven’t been in the mood for any good lovin’ and I’m just generally worn out and grumpy. Having the kittens and worrying about them making it has been stressful. One of them could just not find the nipple at all and had such a weak suck. I think it must have gotten a chill since the mom cat kept leaving them at first. I was worried that she had another one in there.

She literally gave birth to one on the couch sitting between me and my boyfriend and if I hadn’t looked down and seen it I wouldn’t have even known. That was Thursday night. She didn’t have the other two until Sunday!! The whole time inbetween she was acting crazy and was glued to my side, meowing over and over and over. I felt so bad for her although she didn’t seem to be in pain. She was just doing that “talking” meow or that meow they do when you’re getting canned food ready. I’d say something to her and she’d just meow back again and keep meowing at me.

There are not enough hours in the day for all this stuff sometimes.

I will write more later (famous last words) but right now I’ve got to get the rest of my reading done and post some stuff for a group project. My saving grace is that J’s stepmom isn’t working in an office this week and she’s offered to pick him up every day from school this week, so I’m going to blow it out and get caught up. Yay! I’d feel bad about not seeing him except he’s been over here so much with the MRSA stuff being over there, so I know he misses being over there and misses his sister, especially. No guilt. That’s my new mantra. Or credo. Or mission statement. Whatever.

No guilt. I’m tired of guilt for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nothing I do is that friggin’ bad.

So, I have about 20 minutes before a kick each a cab (I go get Jacob) from school. It’s been awhile since I’ve used my speech recognition, but here I am again. Injuring my damn self.

This time I was throwing some hot dogs out the window for the raccoons. I had B plate Greta asked (a plate grasped) between my thumb and the rest of my hand and as I went to toss them Iceland (I slammed) my hand against the bottom of the window. But (not) my whole hand but just that part around the second joint of my thumb. You know the part that makes it a pose a bull (opposable) I guess.

It looks like I need to do some more training on my speech recognition are (or) maybe it’s just because this (the) heater is on and somebody’s got a leaf blower going.

I think I’m gonna just leave the mistakes when I’m writing in my block (blog) because sometimes there (they’re) kinda funny. Aldus (I’ll just) make the corrections in parentheses.

Anyway, I think OMG in a run of two care now (I think I’m going to run up to Care Now) and get an xray. Or maybe all (I’ll) just run to Walgreens and get one of those things that you wear that stabilizes it. When Jacob broke his finger, are rather bland (when) he fractured it, which is what I think I’ve done, that’s all they could do for him so maybe that’s all I need.

The real joy of this situation is that it’s on my other hand. Not the hand that was already messed up from when I fell. Oh but no. It’s got to be a whole new injury. Chile (Joy).

I took some Advil this morning. It started to hurt when I woke up but it did not really bother me during the night. Today it hurts like hell though and I’m getting all kinds of Tingley weirdness.

I just do not have time for the scrap (this crap). I don’t have time for the scrap either. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Just checking to see how many times it would actually hear me say ha. That’s funny. OK I’m off to get the boy. Or a cab. Or what ever.

Well, it’s always interesting around here, if nothing else.

Jacob is sick. Not only is his nose running like crazy, but he has some gastro stuff going on that is not too pleasant.

And did I mention that he broke his glasses and we’re still waiting on the frames? Meaning he can’t see very well at all except for about a foot in front of his face. Poor guy.

On top of that, over at his dad’s house, both Jacob’s dad and stepmom have MRSA.

YES. That MRSA. The superbug. He’s staying with me for the next two weeks while they undergo a cleansing regimen which will hopefully work. If not, they get to pony up $1000 a piece for the antibiotics that (of course) insurance won’t cover.

What the hell?

I’m so tired, but I can’t imagine how they must be feeling. Everyone over there except Jacob got the flu (including their 2-year-old) and then the little one also had the gastro thing for over a week.

More later, I’ve got to get some sleep so I can get up and do my school stuff. I’m a couple days late finishing up some things and I have to get caught up. Especially if I end up getting sick. Wouldn’t that just be my luck?! It’s always something in this house.

Why do people say that? Are dogs frequently sick? I’m going to have to look that one up.

I’m feeling like crap. Sore throat. Stuffy head. Ears feel like I’m in the mountains. Headache. Tired. Very very tired. Even after taking nyquil and trying hard to last through an episode of Top Gear, I fell asleep somewhere around way too early for me. 9:30? And I woke up at 9am, still tired.

I’m also getting close to my period so I’m super cranky.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s been a long time since I was sick, now that I think about it. Since well before the accident, which was at the end of April. That’s saying something. Usually I catch every single bug that comes within a hundred yards of me. Guess it was just my time. I should have listened when boyfriend said all his people at work are getting sick and he started taking echinacea. It just didn’t dawn on me that he was actually feeling crappy. I thought he was just taking preemptive measures.

Yesterday I took 3 echinaceas and 3 vitamin Cs. Hopefully that will help kick me into bug fighting gear.

Meanwhile, I’m making these collard greens in the crockpot and they are just the shit. I hope this batch turns out like last time. I didn’t get a ham hock, but I still used bacon so it ought to turn out fine… Just without the little shredded bits. I’m serving it with a pork roast, so I think that ought to be enough pig for anyone.

I’m going to take some more nyquil and lay down and hopefully tomorrow this will be over.

I’m sort of reclining right now, you’d think that would be enough.

I was feeling fine this morning… a little tired since I didn’t sleep well, kept tossing and turning and all that… but now I am suddenly feeling different.

A little light-headed and sick to my stomach. Very tired like I just want to lay down.

It’s noon thirty, so I actually could lay down for a couple of hours and sleep before I pick Jacob up.

Despite the two cups of coffee I’ve already had this morning.

WTF?

I’m salivating a bit like I could vomit.

I haven’t had that in a long time. That hot flash…

Ugh.

What is going on? I felt fine just an hour ago. And I wanted to write about stuff…

dreams, video games, organization, spelling, weekend, rain, belated Carrabas vent…

I am going to see how it goes without some pain medicine. Today is definitely not the day.

It hurts.

I think I have some nerve damage. There are parts of my tongue that I can’t feel too well and when i stick my tongue out it does this weird tingly thing in spots.

I am about to hit my euphoria in a minute.

It occurs to me that I shouldn’t answer work e-mail when I’m all cracked out.

Another reason I want to go no meds tomorrow. I want to be able to work some.

Jacob has been supersweet today.

I am so tired. I should nap.

On top of all this I started my period. Did I mention that?

Ugh. I can’t wait for it all to be over and feel like myself again.

Except myself without painful teeth. That will be different.

well, first I am using a mac widget from the good folks at google. I just thought I would mention it. That’s always good, that they are developing stuff for us… makes me happy.

second, I am three teeth lighter now.

third, I am on vicoprofen, and quite a lot of it, so do not expect me to fix typing errors here. And expect them to get worse as I go. I have got about 1 hour till it peaks and I hit euphoria and naptime.

So, what ha-ha-happened was, I started having all this tooth pain. These wisdom teeth (the three that remain since having one pulled when I was a teenager) have been giving me crap for a long time. But this was not the run of-the-mill crap. This was pain with a capital p.

did I just say that/A

mercy. Anyway. So i couldn’t find a dentist that i could rrally afford, so i thought, I will just go down to the dental college and get it done. so I call and they get me in the system, tell me to arrive at window a at 8am and I’d be all fized up.

so the dental college is downtown and an hbour from here, but a traffic jammed hour, so i get up at the asscrack of dawn or rather 6am and head that way. trafric was good on the way no problems. I get there and parking is good except there’s those things ytou have to shove the money in the little slots and it’s 4 dollars and i only have a ten but you know me, all frugal and shit so there’s no way I am sticking a ten in there.

so this guy is behind me and I figure i have enough change to make 4 bucks, right? so I tell the guy to go ahead of me and stick his money in since I’m going to take a while.

so then i begin the laborious taks of shoving change in the slot. I finally finish and go to find a place to wait until window a opens up.

Wiat, let me interrupt this story to say that I am no longer using the mac widget to post this… it doesn’t scroll and you can’t resize it so the above text is all that would fit in it without going off my screen and then I couldn’t see it any more. I guess it’s assumed at google that mac users don’t have much to say in their blogs? Or maybe that they just don’t want to see what they are typing. Don’t know for sure.

so yes, I go an d instead of fidning a spot to wait for window a… boy am i naive! I found a long line of peopel waiting to get inside. So I take my place in line. And wait. After a while a scurity guard comes and starts counting people off and letting them go inside. He gets to the guy in front of me, prhaps you remember, he’s the one I told to go in front of me because of all my change in the parking lot… yeah, and he says “22″ and he gets to me and says “everyone else go home, come back tomorrow, we only have room today for 22…”

And that’s it. I drove all the way down there, went through that whole fiasco just to let some other guy go in front of me.

By this time, of course, my tooth is just screaming at me. I felt like I could probably just pull the thing out myself if I just mustered upenoufh strenght.

I go out to the parking lot and call my boyfriend… remind me to talk about the other thing, too, that I was upset about….

so I call him and I’m bawling bawling bawling. In pain. Sad. Frustrated. Wnating to die.

I vomited in the parking lot I was crying so hystercially.

I start the drive home. Not knowing what to do.

He calls me and says if I can book it then he found a dentist that can see me at 8.

so I haul ass and make it there. And theya re supper nice but still they can’t pull the tooth. It’s too impact.ed so they find an oral surgeon who can see me and tell me to hurry over there. so I do. And he only charged me $25 but told me to come back to get some fillings, because I ned them bad. I defnitely will, he was so nice about it.

So I get to the oral surgeon and he’s looking and both my lower wisdom teeth are infenct.ed and he wants to pull both of them, hell why not all three while you’re going to be sedated.

ends up costing $1050!! I paid for what I cold and my boyfriend put the rest like 600 on his cradit card so of course I am all guilt ridden and feeling like shit now.

anyway, before though, they’re trying to put me out and he can’t find a vein. never can find a vein… this is how it is everywhere. I am terrified of getting blood taken and IVs started because this is how it always turns out. He poked me in my writsts and my arms and my neck, even, but couldn’t get a vein. Stuck lidocaine under my skin to make it where he could dig around and still couldn’t get it.

So I start freaking out, because he wants to do more digging. My boyfriend got there and had to come in and calm me down.

Myu heart rate was through the roof and as soon as he came in it went right down. He’s such a comfort to me, makes me feel all safe int his world.

So he left and the surgoen is all, when you had dental work done before could you tolerate the shots in your mouth? And I was like, yeah…

So he gave me some shots in my mouth to relax me and they ended up doing the IV through there. Under my tongue. Is that nuts, or what?

I guess it all turned out OK. I mean, it cost a lot of money but maybe that guy who went in front of me needed it worse than me today. And maybe there was no way he could ever come up with the 1000 and could only ever come up with the 60 that the dental college charges. Maybe they couldn’t have even done my teeth down there with how bad they were. maybe this iall s karma>.

All I know is… wow do they hurt now, but at the same time, something about my mouth feels better already. I mean, it feels seriously altered.

My boyfriend has been super sweet and getting me icre cream and soup and alll and running me around and paying for stuff and he’s just reallly the greatedst guy ever in the world. I couldn’t be luckier to have him in my life.

k, vicostuff kcicking in super hard. must nap.