miracles of science – Page 4

Category: miracles of science

shakin'

Posted on August 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

hello, and welcome to another edition of things that scare me.

what terrifies you? (i mean, besides john mccain as president.) while i don’t have any diagnosed phobias at this time, there are a lot of things that scare the bejeezus out of me. not the usual suspects, i suppose. f’rinstance, spiders don’t bother me. going outside without makeup is a daily experience, so that doesn’t cut it. and i like rollercoasters as long as my feet are not hanging free.

so, things that scare me, in no apparent order:

1) having veins that don’t cooperate with people who are trying to put in IVs. like yesterday, when i ended up having seven or eight holes put in my arms and hands. (two in my right hand, one in my left hand, three in my right arm, one or two — not entirely sure — in my left arm. you should see the lovely purpley-bluey green bruise on my arm.) apparently, between scarring and collapsing veins (as well as 3 sets of IV tubing that weren’t cutting it), my arms didn’t want to cooperate with yesterday’s treatment, a treatment which ultimately took over 7.5 hours to complete. my hand was so swollen that i couldn’t get my college ring off.

i absolutely adore the nurses who take good care of me. i cannot say enough good things about them. i was so upset at one point, i burst into tears, not because being poked hurt (and it did, especially in the hands), but because i felt like i was making their lives difficult. bless them both; they were upset because they didn’t want to make me the human pincushion.

i live in fear that one day, my veins won’t permit an IV thanks to scarring. it’s so unfair; i’ve never, ever been an IV drug user, and yet i apparently have the veins of one. (note to self: i wonder how keith richard’s veins are doing these days?) the day that happens, i will end up with a PIC line, an idea that frightens me not only because of how it is put in but also because those thingies are prone to providing me with a whopper of an infection. which brings me to…

2) infections. normal people don’t worry too much about them. after all, they’ll take an antibiotic for 7-10 days, and off they’ll go. unfortunately, i am allergic to two different families of antibiotics. i have to use antibiotics that are safe for me sparingly, as i will definitely need them when/if i experience The Infection To End All Infections. which could be a simple infection for a regular person, but not for me. which leads me to…

3) not being around for my kids. well, duh. this is every parent’s fear, isn’t it? when you’ve been in a situation where, out of the blue, you lose things you need to live, then you are never the same again. one day, i was walking down the street, having lunch with old friends, doing my job. the next day, i was in the hospital with almost no platelets. if i had done something to precipitate this change, it would make more sense to me.

but i didn’t. just because i possess some wonderful genes, i magically developed ITP, then CVID. boom! everything changed.

in some ways, it has been a blessing. my entire life perspective has changed to the point where i think i’m living most of my values for once instead of glancing at them, like a passenger on the subway watching the blur of movement out the train window. and every day, i attempt to be healthy, though i’m far from perfect on that front.

i’m in remission from ITP. i’m in treatment for CVID. and i’m still shakin’.

and i’m trying to push back the thoughts over when the other shoe will drop.

ants marching

Posted on July 15, 2008 by wrekehavoc

ARGH!

the heavy rains, probably combined with my stellar ability to keep up with the massive crumbs and spills that the kids (especially hellboy) rain down upon the floor have resulted in a ton of ants visiting us. to be fair, they started about a month ago, one or two intrepid souls (souls? do ants have souls? brains?) trotting around the table where we eat. easily smooshed and removed. (hey — don’t confuse me with sharon stone and her treatment of tarantulas.)

but last night at dinner, BS noticed a swarm (swarm? what is a group of ants called? a gaggle? a colony? a political party?) by the table, right where hellboy had spilled an entire cup of apple juice the night before. i had cleaned it up with a lot more than just soap, water and paper towels, but evidently, that was not enough; those ants picked up the trail of sweet stuff and off they ran. so off i ran to the store to buy ammonia; and with it in his possession, BS started his radical clean, followed by some ant bait he had on hand. (note to self: must figure out where he keeps this stuff.)

this morning, there are a bajillion ants swarming in and around this ant trap thingy he has set up. i’m afraid to let the kids eat at the table, though jools has no such fear.

i really like nature; i just don’t like nature when it shows up in my house looking for its next meal.

(warning to the raccoons who use my trash can as a diner: it won’t be long before i attach bungee cords to the can and you’ll have to dine elsewhere.)

it don't come easy

Posted on June 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, i share the tale of the Easy Bake Oven. it will be a tale much like another famous tale, though it involves no curtains. mercifully.

it’s starts with a little girl. let’s call her BC, shall we, as we always do around here. when BC was about three years old, she went to a chanukah party at her uncle BTD’s house. there were many children there, as her uncle has five kids, and her uncle’s wife’s family has a lot of children and cousins. at this party, everyone had presents to exchange; everyone, except the uncle, who had presents for all of the other children but no present for his beloved (and at the time only) niece, BC. probably a little oversight on the busy present shopper’s part.

in any event, bless BTD’s heart: this is conjecture, of course, but it appeared that after BC’s beloved uncle scrambled upstairs, and then downstairs, he presented BC with a gift he had plucked from an upstairs closet from thin air: a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. BC loved this oven; only, too bad for her. EBOs are for children age eight and up. no matter how mature madame was at this age, she was not ready for an EBO. carefully, her grandmother whisked the present away to toys r us, where she exchanged it for something a little safer for a spunky three year old.

fast forward to our hero, the now-eight-year-old BC. that same grandmother, remembering how much her granddaughter wanted that EBO, got it for her for chanukah. her other uncle, the lovable, right-wing nutball larry, supplied a whole bunch of EBO mixes to keep her own personal glycemic index at about 1000. happy days are here again, right?

not quite.

for our hero, who had not yet fully developed her ability to read fine print, took the giant long cattle prod pushing tool and shoved it into the oven, lodging it permanently inside the oven, even before she had any chance at baking anything. oh woe, she cried. her mom, desperate to dislodge the long plastic thingy, called up hasbro for guidance. unfortunately for all, hasbro and our friends at the cpsc had just announced a recall of the EBO. apparently, other things were getting entrapped in the ovens. (things called fingers.) dutifully, BC’s mom and dad packed it up and returned it, as they had been instructed. the mixes lingered, but the oven was gone with the wind postal service.

months went by, months when hasbro said they might rebuild it; or then again, maybe not. eventually, they issued a $25 gift certificate for any item on hasbro.com. considering the shipping, it wasn’t the best offer in the world. (BC’s mom promptly lost the offer, so in truth, she’s just rationalizing because she felt so guilty.) in time, BC’s evil mom, fearing that the mixes were going to be nastier than nasty, chucked them as well.

fast forward once again to this very date, a date which shall be remembered for so many things. for one thing, BC’s brother jools celebrated a whole week of dry nights; he was to be gifted, as promised, with a shark slip and slide. (after weeks of obsessing about this item, he decided to choose two other items instead as his reward.) for another, BC achieved straight As on her report card. and, remembering that a child had been denied her EBO for so many years, BC’s parents caved bought her her very own EBO.

hurray!

but woe to BC: her mixes are gone. BC’s mother, being cheap industrious, located DIY EBO recipes on the internet, as she knew the three included mixes would last about two minutes. and after BC’s dad returned from the store with a lightbulb (the secret to those crispy crusts delicate cakes heated plastic oven walls), we set forth on our baking adventure.

#1: yellow cake (one packet) with chocolate frosting (one packet), baked especially for the man who bought the lightbulb.

#2 and #3: chocolate peanut butter fudge, one serving shared by wreke and jools, this serving was affectionately dubbed gloop for it’s consistency. imagine the fine taste of confectioners sugar with a slight brownish tinge. the second attempt, eaten by BC after a stint in the fridge, fared a little better.

BC had a great time, though her mother, wreke, was left with the realization that the same woman who would not buy wreke an EBO was willing to do so for her grandchild. no, instead, wreke realized that her own mother, aka the grandmother, was willing instead to let wreke use the real oven instead.

in retrospect, it was probably safer.

what's the frequency, kenneth

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this week, one of BC’s best pals is hanging out with us. because their names rhyme we decided they’d go by codenames. don’t ask how we got there, but BC’s pal is now going by moose and BC is going by the moniker of squirrel. (somewhere, jay ward is laughing. i know i am.) the plan is that every morning, we do something (or nothing), then every afternoon, the girls go over to the ice skating rink for skating camp. BC’s pal is one of the nicest kids around; they have been friends since they were about five or so, and having her around is a pleasure.

yesterday, things didn’t go completely to plan, though. jools had to stay home, as i needed to take him to the pediatrician’s to get his friday TB test checked. (happily, he is TB-free.) so i had two young ladies of around nine and one little newly-minted five year old. jools only wanted to play with the girls, and the girls preferred playing without his presence. there was much whining and gnashing of teeth. i took them to one of our great sprinkler parks, hoping that there would be something for everyone. and there was, for a time, until jools was too chilly and moose needed a knee repair after getting a bit of a scrape.

re-enter the whining. i don’t think i have ever seen jools so whiny. it was frustrating. hours and hours of never-ending whining. they took my scooter! they won’t let me in BC’s room! they don’t want me around! as the youngest child in my family, i knew all-too-well the joys of this scenario, as i experienced in many times over. i talked to him about it, too. but as he was over-the-top in his mood, i was beginning to wonder whether he was actually not well.

we dropped the girls off at camp. i encountered an obnoxious parking deck checkout woman who looked at her nails while my free 15 minutes in the parking deck turned into 16 minutes and a $1 fee. we hit the doctor’s office — no TB, remember? and then, we went for a swim, just mr. whiny-pants and me. and d’ya know something? the dude was happy. he was swimming to me, diving after his spiderman dive stick, and playing with his little girlfriend, jo-jo. in fact, when he gave his dive stick to jo-jo to borrow and some young cad of about their age came by and took it from her, you had to see mr. man inflate himself and yank it back. i thought they were going to come to blows, so i ambled over, only to watch jools get out of the pool and put the dive stick back into my beach bag. he then returned and just continued to swim with jo, who was not bothered by the loss of the stick (and who then got whacked in the head by a volleyball gone wrong. poor kid.)

all in all, a most pleasant afternoon.

we picked up the girls. moose is a more skilled skater than is squirrel, and apparently, the powers that be at the rink noticed this and wanted to place her in a different camp. no, moose told them, my father signed me up for this camp and this is where i want to be. what a loyal, sweet girl! i dropped off moose, and the fighting continued.

ah, sibling rivalry. is there no one it can’t unhinge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fxfDRYGtjw&hl=en

radioactive

Posted on June 13, 2008 by wrekehavoc

heh.

as foreshadowed last week, yesterday, i had a stress test with pictures. this means in normal human parlance that i had some radioactive dye injected into my arm so that they could see how well my heart functions as i walk faster and faster uphill. not really too hard until you realize that all i was allowed to eat all day was toast and a little juice before 5 am. and the three-hour test started at noon.

but i passed. i believe the doctor’s words were: you have a good heart. he literally went into no details, such as my recovery time after hitting 90 percent of my heart rate. nada. i still don’t even know what was seen on my echocardiogram i had the day before. (because of insurance vagaries, i had to schedule the tests on different days.)

i still have chest pain which radiates down my left arm. i guess since i am not dead it is probably something else, like a nerve. but the nifty thing i have now is a letter. a letter which will help me enter federal buildings, airports, and anywhere else with a detector. see, for the next three weeks: i’m radioactive. i can set off all sorts of things.

i always thought i was a little radioactive, considering i grew up a little ways from a nuclear power plant. but now, i have a letter to prove it.

whee! better living through science!

i wonder if i glow in the dark?

piece o' my heart

Posted on June 5, 2008 by wrekehavoc

welcome to crazy-busy central, where, at the rate we’re all going, someone’s going to shoot out an eye. jools is graduating from preschool next week; BC is hugging trees at school (as uncle larry put it, though they’re actually simply identifying them. but you know uncle larry, AKA the man who is to the right of attila the hun, will never shy away from an opportunity to put a political slant on a situation, joker that he always is…); and i’ve had a date this morning with a cardiologist.

see, i just don’t have enough specialists in my life at the moment, so i thought i’d go for the gold. i’ve been having pains in my heart and weakness that radiates down my left arm and into the left side of my neck and head. i feel like a crazy person, but BS strongly suggested that i’m not and that i need to take care of myself (as did my parents), so i broke down and ended up at a cardiologist, someone who seems quite approachable. my blood pressure is fine, and so was my EKG, but next week, i have to have a treadmill stress test and an echocardiogram. i figured next week would be good in case they need a vein, as tomorrow is another date with my IVIG!

(i wonder if keith richards experiences this many medical interventions?)

i have to laugh at the concept of a treadmill being my stress inducer. ha! i seek out the elliptical stepper to relieve my stress. here’s my idea of a real stress test:

1) up intermittently all night with one child who is barfing.

2) wake (ha! ha!) in the morning knowing that something is due. a report? paperwork? oh. now i remember. a presentation in front of bigwigs. a presentation i dutifully and diligently completed but was going to put finishing touches on last night after the kids went to bed; only, too bad for me. a kid got sick.

3) the realization that your spouse and you will now play the game whose job is more important today!? let the shouting begin!

4) “winning” that competition, off to work you go, exhausted, with other child in tow. drop other child off at school. park car; take a bus and two metros to work.

5) give important presentation, realizing that important piece you didn’t get to was actually more than just windowdressing. oops.

6) call from other child’s school. child is barfing. please come pick up child. spouse cannot pick up child, as other child is currently reenacting the magic of krakatoa in full bloom.

7) take two metros and a bus to get to car. get to school. get to child. child blows chunks on your Jones New York suit. (hold in those tears. it’s not your turn.)

8) after your dry clean only apparel is destroyed when child helpfully wipes a wet paper towel over the spew, get kid into car. do happy dance when you locate a plastic target bag in the back. place target bag in front of child.

9) get home to find that spouse, too, is kissing the porcelain god. spouse sees you, mutters something of the whereabouts of barfy child #1, then runs upstairs to the bedroom and closes door. buh-bye. won’t be seeing him again until saturday.

10) there you are: sleepy, queasy, in heels and a formerly good suit, with two kids looking up at you for help. it’s 3:00 p.m. go.

now you can attach electrodes to me and see how well my heart fares. not that this has ever happened to me… well, not necessarily in this order. i suspect there are other, better scenarios out there. i can even recall the night when i had a child and a husband barfing and a child not breathing. i held a bucket under one and a nebulizer on the other. oh, if only i had the wherewithall to take pictures of this joyful wee-hours-of-the-morning family experience. but in the end, i had to leave the barfers to themselves and drive the non-breather to the hospital at 4 a.m. — behind a weaving, probably drunk driver. really. good. times.

in short: i don’t need no stinkin’ treadmill.

(doctors? you can thank me later for this test design.)

the name game

Posted on May 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

jools has a spiral notebook. he has impaled some of his artwork to fit inside it (his idea), nestled beside some sheets of notebook paper (my idea.) lately, we have been playing a game where he rattles off some letters, then asks: what does that spell, mama? since the words are usually consonant-heavy, they usually sound mostly like words from some eastern european language where vowels appear sparingly. they also often resemble those letters you need to copy when trying to post something but the site wants to make sure you are a person and not some automated spambot, like WTK4O.

last night before bed, we continued our game. it had been a long, exhausting day together, and i frankly wanted him to put the blasted notebook away so we could read and get to bed. but the dude is persistent, and he picked up his pencil. mama, he said, what does this spell? and he scrawled W T E L E.

nothing, honey, i replied. let’s close the notebook.

no, no! the dude was not compliant. typical for him, of course. so i took the pencil. i never write in the notebook, so this was a minor mommy revolt. i wrote the letters M O M. don’t know why; i guess i wanted consonants and vowels, living in perfect harmony. do you know what letter that is, i asked, pointing to the M?

he scrunched up his face. considering the only C i ever received in my elementary school career was in handwriting, this is not exactly a surprise. it’s an M, i hinted.

he smiled. M O M, he said. MOM.

how did you know that spells MOM, i asked, surprised.

i dunno, he replied. i just put them together.

i used to weep because BC’s first spoken word to me was Bye Bye!, which is what i said to her every morning before i went to work. and i don’t even remember jools’ first word; i think i wrote it down, but somehow, you begin to forget everything subsequent children do. it’s not fair; but it is what it is.

but only dementia will ever make me forget jools’ first word read.

fragile

Posted on May 15, 2008August 1, 2013 by wrekehavoc

the thing about modern medicine is that we, modern citizens in the modern world, assume it cures and completes everything. you take a pill; a malady ceases. you inhale a puffer of medicine; you breathe again. it’s simple and it seems to work most of the time.

yet BC continues to struggle with her coughs. the child is on symbacort, nasonex, amoxicillin (20 days, thanks very much), prevacid, and zantac. (she’s also supposed to be on zyrtec, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for her, so we’ve taken that one out of the lineup.) the cough has improved a bit, but her stomach aches, in spite of the yogurt i attempt to put down her gullet to counteract the antibiotic destruction of good bacteria. she isn’t sleeping well. and she’s a bit miserable at night. in fact, last night, she wailed: i wish i wasn’t on all this medicine. i was happier when i was coughing all the time!

there are those times when you wonder whether you’re doing the right thing.

it doesn’t help that i’m only finally coming out of a tough IVIG experience. understand, i ADORE/ LOVE/ WORSHIP the nurses who take great care of me. but accidents happen. i go through three bottles of Gammagard, and i sit for about 4-5 hours because it needs to drip slowly or else i get ill. unfortunately for me, the second bottle dripped so quickly, it finished it in record time. the clue, of course, was that for me, finishing two bottles in two hours is unheard-of. i stood up to let the nurse know i was ready for bottle #3.

and it all started when i sat down. my body felt fluttery and weak. my head started to ache. my stomach felt nauseous. (note that i do not barf. i am only nauseous when i am seriously ill or when i’m pregnant. i knew it wasn’t the latter.) in short, i was having a reaction to the IVIG.

see, i’m allergic to IVIG. i need it every four weeks, so i get it, but not without premedication. when i had it for the first time in the hospital two years ago, the nurse ignored my brother-the-doctor’s suggestion that she premedicate me with benadryl prior to giving me IVIG since i have such a history of allergies to so many things. it’s not written on your chart, she muttered without interest. let’s give it a try without.

within 20 minutes, my entire body was shaking violently. it was after midnight (why do they always try things in the dead of night when no one is around?), and i struggled to actually push the help button. when the nurse finally arrived, she looked at me deadpan as i was shaking uncontrollably and having what i can only guess what some sort of a seizure and said, gee, i guess you do need some benadryl.

(there are times when i wonder whether i would have been prosecuted for kicking her once my body settled down.)

once the benadryl was added to my IV, it was as if i achieved nirvana in 30 seconds. peace reigneth. probably the first time in my life i understood why some people inject themselves with drugs. there’s no wait. instant karma.

[kids: i am not endorsing injecting yourselves with anything. do not try that at home or anywhere else.]

i always have a reaction to IVIG. at first, even premedicated, i ran a temperature, had terrible chills, and was exhausted. i’ve moved on to the place where i usually just come home and go to bed and wake up fine. but for some reason, the headache i developed from the latest reaction, along with the exhaustion, followed me for days. i can’t imagine it was the IVIG the entire time; i suspect it triggered something that just went from there.

but we never went camping. i had an awful mother’s day. and i didn’t really start feeling well until yesterday.

i guess i better remember that neither my kid nor i is invincible.

remedy

Posted on May 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

our house is stress central.

one child had to get two immunizations yesterday. a child who has a limited pain threshold. i won’t mention names, but it’s a girl child. a girl child who was star of the week one minute but then not necessarily star of the pediatrician’s office the next. her hand started hurting her, along with the shot sites. tylenol was not helping. my brother-the-doctor indicated that perhaps a nerve was hit, but not a biggie. still, not a pretty afternoon.

one spouse had to work. he had to work a lot. he had to work a lot again. he called at 4:45 pm to share that we needed to go downtown to pick up one other child at school. school ends at 6 p.m. this is the height of DC rush hour, coming AND going. am i happy yet?

no. not hardly.

downtown we drove in a rush, the unhappy and now-in-pain immunized person and i. we made it in record time. my parking pass was confiscated, as i need a new 2008 one. it is now may. but nice security people let me park anyway, as the worst security threat we pose is one girl reenacting the exorcist. (i’ll let you wonder which one. the answer is not as simple as it might seem.)

we make it to one hellboy’s school. a hellboy who apparently as of late has made a career of knocking around some of the toddlers in the morning. (just cause.) someone is acting out. someone who might be a pissed-off palooka. but knocking babies around like inflatable punching bags is unacceptable behavior around here.

fortunately, today was not a punching-other-children sort of day. it was merely a spending-time-holding-hands-with-my-main-girlfriend sort of day. yes. the boy is in love. and he’s in love with a girl named condoleezza.

not this one (though i suspect she may be named for her. but i don’t know for certain.) ah. only in DC.

but he listened. and he behaved.

am i happy yet?

not quite. but a little better.

we three rush home, rushing in a rush hour way. which means not exactly speeding down constitution avenue. it doesn’t help that the woman driving in front of me is driving like hunter s. thompson is her co-pilot. wouldn’t it be funny if we got home and daddy’s car was in the driveway? BC joked.

don’t push me, little girl.

of course, BS wasn’t home when we got home. and i had not even cooked dinner. when it’s after 6 and dinner isn’t even started, and people are climbing the walls in search of something edible, it is time to visit mr. freezer to see what magic he holds. lucky for me, there was a wegmans veggie lasagna languishing, ever since i bought it and BS said: ew. no one is going to eat THAT. tough times call for tough measures. (and i say that in this house, if you’re not home, you don’t get to pick dinner.) that sucker was going in the microwave.

miraculously, the kids loved it. we’re talking BC, aka miss picky-picky of the western world, asked for seconds. the only criticism i got about it was that there were carrots in it, according to jools. (i don’t have the heart to tell them that there was also spinach and mushrooms. jools loves them, but BC hates both of those.)

am i happy yet? getting closer.

i get kids bathed; i read some chapters of some inscrutable Bionicle book we found at the elementary school fair last weekend. i medicate a certain older child with the zillion different things she requires thanks to her magical lungs… and immunizations. in case i have forgotten, she is IN PAIN. she CAN’T MOVE HER ARMS.

do all moms have days like this?

i start hellboy into bed. it’s 8:00. BS comes home.

DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well, so much for that mission accomplished. at this point, BS is speaking in monosyllabic grunts. he has had a long day. he has had a long, not-so-good day. he has had a long, not-so-good, and apparently hungry day. did you eat yet? i believe he grunted in the negative. enjoy the lasagna!

i get the boy into bed. i get the girl into bed. she’s in pain, so i get her something from the freezer to help at least one of her arms. in vain, of course.

BS says goodnight to the girl. BS says goodnight to the boy. after a few minutes of decomposing, as we call it in this house, BS announces he’s going to bed.

fabulous.

meanwhile, there’s one little girl who can’t sleep. in the morning, she’ll let me know that she was UP. ALL. NIGHT. but i waited, and i waited until she fell asleep before i went up to bed. so i know she was at least asleep for 30 seconds of the night.

on the bright side, little man went to sleep like a champ.

lately, i am so exhausted. i feel completely wrung out. tomorrow, i go for some more IVIG, and hopefully that will help me keep from getting sick. see, when i get wrung out, i get sick. no one around here gets that. moms are supposed to just keep going and going and going. but i have to just stop sometimes. if i don’t stop some times, i will stop. for good.

fortunately, this morning, i awoke and thought about a little boy in this house who likes to sing a certain song. how BS found out about this group, i don’t know. but jools is completely hooked on the hook of this song, called Nth Degree.

i found it on youtube. and everyone gathered around. even BS.

and suddenly, there was the remedy. it was just a few minutes, but we actually were all smiling. we were all happy.

even me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhMhm9euT8&hl=en

and that dang bird is still trying to get into our house.

welcome to the house of fun

Posted on May 6, 2008 by wrekehavoc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WDdRqs-76Y&hl=en

between my fabled lack of sleep, my mountain of checklist items to accomplish, my shuttling of children to doctors 40 miles away, and my general annoyance with the human race, we are, in fact, living in the house of fun.

(don’t you want to come over and play?)

apparently, this bird does.

this bird continues to smack into the window near my kitchen table. awhile back, i put up a picture on this window to show birds that they actually cannot fly through the glass. but this dude is a persistent bugger.

i don’t know why anyone would want to come in here.