Busy week, and I'm tired and fried

And sore.  We've had some really weird weather patterns, this week.  It was actually in the 60's for a lot of the week (M-W), then the temperature fell like a rock.  Thursday and Friday were cold and rainy (not freezing rain, thank God, even if that was a possibility).  And I had doctors' appointments both days--Thursday was a follow-up with the cardiologist (more on that in a bit), and Friday with my GP, so I was out in the rainy cold...which didn't do my joints any good.  Not fun at all. 

Less fun was what last night did: the temperature went up overnight, from 36 degrees at sunset to 51 overnight.  And then dropped again.  Right now, it's 39 degrees, and it's been warming back up for a while.  Yeah, it's doing what you'd think it'd be doing.  I'm huddling under a heat blanket with compression gloves on. 

So, Monday and Tuesday...we'd gone to my mom's, so I felt like crap and didn't get much done.  I made up for it Wednesday, and paid for it, hard, Wednesday night.  I got both the hall bathroom cleaned, and the utility room (including sweeping out the dog's corner around her kennel).  Joints weren't hurting too bad, and breaks between steps in my chores made it possible.  As well as help from the pixie after I got them picked up from school.

Thursday, I found out I had an extra stop that had to be made over and above the doc's appointment: we were entirely out of bread after I made lunch for the imp to take to school, and the kids both wanted sandwiches for Friday's lunch.  Since I was meeting Odysseus at Sam's Club around 10:00 anyway (there's a veritable rabbit warren of doctors' offices on a loop around the hospital, and it's confusing, and trying to find the right place in an unfamiliar area would have been panic-attack inducing for me), I stopped in and grabbed the bread. 

Doc's appointment went fine...I thought.  I don't need a cardiologist, and was planning to just...not go back.  Went for lunch with Odysseus, got home, crawled under my blanket for a while, then went and got the kids.  Got them about halfway through homework...and then the cardiologist's office called.  They wanted me to come back in, because the doctor wasn't paying attention to the chart.  And he wanted to discuss something with me (probably my weight and my blood pressure).  Um...gotta put that off for a while because I'm not capable of driving myself to that appointment.  I need to figure out a day and time when Odysseus can help me with it again (and maybe do lunch again). 

Friday.  Yesterday.  I was already feeling fucking awful after the rest of the week, and had a doctor's appointment.  And it took about three minutes for my alarm to wake me, so I was behind the eight ball from the get-go.  Running late.  And no time for coffee. 

Got to the doc's office, and got my concerns and thoughts dealt with...and got a prescription for a water pill/blood pressure med.  One specific to reverse high blood pressure caused by steroids...and estrogen-based meds.  I'll have labs done with that office at the end of the month to make sure I'm not too low on certain minerals, and a follow-up at the end of next month to see if a) it's working, b) the dosage is right, and c) if I even need to still be on it (yes, it's already making a difference for me). 

Then, since the office had gotten me in early (and out early), I went to Walmart.  And got the things I needed from there.  And went home and collapsed until I had to get up and eat. 

And then, last night, Mother Nature forgot her lithium, and maybe had a hot flash overnight.  I hope the bitch is as miserable as she made me. 

So yeah.  Tired and fried.  Not planning on doing much today because of it.

Sad.

One of my favorite lyricists and best drummers of all time passed away yesterday, after a long fight with brain cancer.  He'd lasted much, much longer than most do with that particular form of it, but the cancer still won in the end.

Raise a glass for Neil Peart tonight.

Here's one of my all-time favorite songs...a song that he wrote most of the lyrics for.

Stuck in my head, tonight

Reflections and resolutions

Last year...

Most of it was overshadowed by one big, bad event, and the fallout thereof.  It was both bad, sad, and good, all at once.  But one thing it was, was heavily stressful. 

This new year...

1. I'm going to be working harder on trying to build routines.  Last year, I had some (small) success, to the point I wasn't living in CHAOS* as much as I always have.  But then, I got hit with a series of health attacks, then Christmas's new issues...yeah.  The house got to looking like it'd had a tornado go through the insides.  I need to get the cleaning routines down to nothing but maintenance.  For me and for the kids. 

2. I'm going to start journaling daily again.  It's a massive stress-buster for me.  And the less stress I'm under, the less my own body attacks me.  I really didn't do enough of it last year.  I can see that, now, in hindsight. 

3. I'm going to be changing up some of my standard health routines.  I can't really add exercise, and if I cut calories further, I'll be into starvation diet levels, so I'm not going to worry about my weight.  There is, literally, nothing I can do about it, given my restrictions.  I can, however, try changing up what I eat, and I will try that.**  I can, and will be, cutting sugar out as much as possible, given that it's an inflammatory food substance, and I can't take NSAIDs any more.  And as I'm now over 40, I need to get off of the oral contraceptives for my health's sake.  

4. I'm going to get the kids involved in, and responsible for, the massive amount of paper they bring home from school.  I'm going to teach them how to sort and file stuff.  It's something I didn't learn, and am learning as I go for household paperwork.  I'm not finding it easy, and I'd like to shove the school papers off on the kids to make less for me to work with. 

5. I'm going to write every day.  Something I let slide starting in July of last year.  I think that's probably added to my stress levels, too, but whatever.  I'm going to start writing every day, even if it's just a few hundred words.

6. I'm going to set the laptop down early and read every day.  Paper books.  I've got a lot that I haven't read that I want to, and my brain's finally coming back online with the natural thyroid replacement, in ways it didn't with the synthetic therapies.  And there's a lot of books that the kids are interested in, that I haven't read, and don't know whether they're appropriate or not. 

7.  I'm going to read the Little House books to the kids.  They got a set to share for Christmas, and I started reading the first one to them.  They love them. 

Overall, nothing really huge.  Just...little things, that won't be too hard to implement.  I hope.

*CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.  From The FlyLady.  

**Less a diet and more guidelines of things I need to start eating more of...which means less of other things.  I'll be following the guidelines set out by the MIND diet...but not using margarine, and not reducing my beef intake. 

What an awful fap that was...

So.  I woke up at 4:30 Christmas morning with what I thought was an earache below my left ear, radiating down my neck, just behind my jaw.  I flopped a pillow over the affected ear, and tried to go back to sleep.  Got up and took an aspirin at 5:00.  And ended up with a cascade of other symptoms hitting, one after the other. 

Kids got up at 6:30-ish, like a school morning.  And they opened presents.  It was a lot of fun to watch, but I kept feeling worse and worse as it went on. 

I asked to be taken to the ED around 7:30 or 8:00.  The last time I requested that was when my water broke eight weeks early with the imp.  But...with the symptoms I was having, I wasn't sure it wasn't an emergency.

I wound up spending Christmas in the hospital, with blood drawn frequently (and not from the I.V. port already in place...no, these were from new sticks.  Lots of other tests run, and me run all over the hospital for said tests.  And nothing by mouth until 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.  By that time, I was ready to bite someone for a drink of water.  My usual water intake is between a half a gallon and a gallon of water per day, and I had had...less than a cup by that point.  And I was going mildly nuts with thirst.

I came home yesterday before noon, with sticky patches all over the place, a bruise the size of a fifty cent piece inside my left elbow, and bruising all around the top of my right arm (those hospital blood pressure cuffs are vicious), and a new diagnosis of GERD, a new prescription for six weeks of a proton pump inhibitor...and orders to stop taking aspirin from one doctor, and orders to take a baby aspirin from another doctor.  I also came home with a doctor's orders to get a blood pressure monitor for at home, and check it twice a day, and take the record with me when I went to see my doc in three weeks.  (It's already a lot lower than it was in the hospital...and trending downward.)

I am feeling much better today than I was even yesterday, and I was feeling much better yesterday than I had been the day before.  But I am not going to do anything I don't absolutely have to, and am planning on simply reading a book for the rest of the day.  Odysseus suggested David Weber's In Fury Born...I started it day before yesterday, and I'm greatly enjoying it.  And I'm incredibly thankful it's a very long book, and that it was on one of the Baen free CDs they were putting in the hardbacks years back.  Because, while we have the hardback, it really is a long book, and kinda heavier than I could probably have managed day before yesterday. 

He is Born!

Halford - Oh Come O Come Emanuel