Category: miracles of science

themus interruptus

themus interruptus

Posted on by wrekehavoc

so here i sit with a cold that appears to be moving me into a familiar upper respiratory hell. breathing is challenging, and i’m probably working my way toward pneumoniaville thanks to my monday with jools.

how do people do it? what i mean to say is how do people with immune systems like mine manage to stay afloat with young children? these walking petri dishes of love, these little people who use your hand as a tissue, who cough in your general direction, who spew contagion of every type at every turn. how can i refuse that little face when it so sweetly smooshes a cheek next to mine?

i can’t.

and yet now, i am battling an awful cold, something which qualifies as a nuisance for most normal people. for me, though, it’s frought with angst. i ponder the all-too-familiar what ifs: what if i get an infection from this, what if antibiotics don’t cut it when i develop that infection, what if its the infection to end all infections? i try not to think about that too much; it makes me sound like a complete and utter hysteric. i mean, fer crying out loud: it’s just a fucking cold.

and i just had my IVIG last week, so one would think i would be in fighting form. if this is fighting form, though, i shudder to think about what my 98-pound weakling self would do with this germfest.

so i wonder: is it more important for me to be healthy, yet distant from my children? or is it better for me to behave as any other normal parent would behave: taking care of children while they’re sick, pouring love and affection into them to help them feel better, at the peril of my own health? i always opt for the latter.

i hope it doesn’t kill me someday.

still looking for one divine hammer

still looking for one divine hammer

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…of course with my luck, i’d probably end up beating myself in the head. (actually, with my luck, i’d beat myself so senseless that i’d need yet more scans. i suspect i will soon hit the point that i will no longer need scans; they will merely darken the room and say: eureka! she has XYZ! i see it, clear as day, without machinery.)

but life will resume some peace and calm. today, as i mentioned in the last entry, we lost our field trip. we did, apparently, gain an extra shot today, to the tune of four shots. yes, four. BC did her best to completely freak jools out on the subject. oooh, they hurrrrrrrrt! ooooooohhhhh! i haaaaaaaaate shots!!!! waaaaaaahhhhh! (BC will cry early to avoid the rush.)

so i decided that we would make the morning as fun as we could to offset what i figured would be an afternoon from hell. first, we started to clean the inside of the fridge (woohoo! let’s replace the insulation next, or tackle plumbing!) until a shelf i washed and put back fell to the floor, resulting in a broken jar of applesauce AND a broken bottle of soy sauce. (see? even G-d doesn’t want me to be domestic.) i thought at first that i had slashed myself in the process, and i sat stunned for a second, trying to figure out whether i had soy sauce coming out of my finger or blood. i licked the wound (don’t judge me!) and realized that, in spite of the stuff that gets pumped into my veins every four weeks, i doubt i am starting to taste like a stir fry. as soon as jools looked concerned, i lightened up. noooo, mommy is okay. it’s only a flesh wound. (jools may be the only four year old who likes monty python.)

yep. we know us some good times around here.

then, i wondered randomly, as i looked in the cabinet for a fresh jar of applesauce — what can we do with a can of pumpkin? (note to self: are you a latent ADHD kinda grrl?) we found a recipe in one of my favorite bread machine books for pumpkin challah, so there went half the can. i used the rest in a pumpkin bean soup that no one save for me likes.

and then, it was shot time. i promised little man that he could pick a slurpee or nerds candy as his reward for getting three shots. unfortunately, when we arrived, we discovered that he actually needed his tetanus, too. four shots. woohoo. i put on the happiest face i could and told him that he could squeeze my hand as tightly as possible if he wanted and yell if he wanted. i braced myself to keep smiling and not cry. and i’ll be damned.

the boy did not cry. not once.

in fact, he made what i refer to as his lee harvey oswald face, then laughed between shots. i wasn’t sure whether to be overjoyed at this development or terrified that my son is a burgeoning psychotic. but 7-11, the magic you weave will never be forgotten in these parts. slurpee must be the elixir of life.

of course, now i’m reeling because my doctor’s office has apparently not yet received my IVIG, so i am not sure whether i am getting my treatment tomorrow or not. i should be secretly happy if it doesn’t arrive — i mean, i already had one IV this week, mr. vein needs a little rest. but there’s the trains must run on time part of me that just wants to stay on course.

but either way, it’ll be ok. i just won tickets to see tori amos. and reaction or no reaction, slurpee or no slurpee, hell or high water — i’m a’goin’.

don't push me cos i'm close to the…eddddddgggge

don't push me cos i'm close to the…eddddddgggge

Posted on by wrekehavoc

this starts with an apology to all the stay at home moms who manage to do this, day in, day out, with nary a complaint. i’m not worthy. really.

for the rest of you who are not candidates for mother of the year, pull up a chair. it’s:

incoherent rant-o-rama time!

every tuesday, jools stays home with me. i love our tuesdays together, and, since i know next year, he starts at the big school with BC, i won’t have a ton of tuesdays left. i love having a day when i get to focus on just one of my kids at one time. don’t get me wrong — i adore each of them with every beat of my heart. but when there’s more than one, you simply have to divvy your attention, your brainspace, your patience. and, with apologies to morrissey and marr, i just haven’t earned it yet (baby).

[neither has that guitarist. yet. but i digress. per usual.]

this tuesday, BC didn’t feel so well. her throat hurt, her ear hurt, and she was dead tired. so i relented. girlfriend stayed home with us and rested, and later that day, when she was swabbed at the doctor’s office and ended up with negative for strep, i thought, oh well, a mental health day for girlfriend. but her being home threw our little balance off. we couldn’t go out and do stuff. we just stayed in. and in. and in. nevermind the fact that girlfriend otherwise felt fine and frankly wanted to buy halloween stuff to “ghost” some of her friends’ houses on our street. (move over lourdes: make room for the holy miracle cure of Target.)

but we didn’t do squat.

then, last night, while jools soaked in the tub, BS yelled for me to come and take a look in jools’ ear. there was this HUGE white blob in his ear. and, according to jools, it was moving. in a word, EWWWWW. could it be a penny? a worm? jimmy hoffa? who the eff knows. i called our amazing pediatricians’ office, where they kindly let us bring him back in at 8:20 pm (yes, you read that right.) nevermind it was the same dr. who saw us earlier in the day and probably wanted to strangle my misbehaving kids. nevermind that poor man has a child sick with croup in his own home (which is no cakewalk, i assure you.) we all wanted to know what the hell had landed in jools’ ear and was making a home there. only, it was just massive amounts of wax and scar tissue from all the previous zillion ear infections he has had. once the doctor cleared it out and sent him on his way, all seemed well.

until this morning. mr. klingon wanted to stay with me. again. madame was fine for school, so i figured, okey doke: today’s half day elementary school in our People’s Republic; jools and i will run errands and have a laff. only, its raining, and while i’m thrilled to death it’s raining from an environmental perspective, it surely messes up all the day. and i’m single parenting for the entire day. can you say loooooooong day’s journey into night? joy.

and tomorrow. oh, tomorrow. jools was supposed to go on a field trip with his class, and i was going to chaperone. only, the class trip is now cancelled thanks to the weather, but the 3 shots that jools has to take in the afternoon are still on. the trip was the proverbial carrot for the medical stick that followed. and now, someone has TAKEN AWAY MY EFFING CARROT. ARRRRRRGH.

it all kind of makes me look forward to sitting with an IV in my arm for 6 hours on friday. sure. it will hurt like a mofo and be boring. but sometimes, boring is good.

radioactive

radioactive

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…and this time, with no apologies to jimmy page whatsoever. (although you friends from miami are probably smirking at me right now. you can apologize for your smirks any time you want 😉

i’m currently radioactive. see, i had a HIDA Scan. the gastroenterologist is trying to figure out why the hell my abdomen hurts after certain things. like exercise. or eating certain things. and he doesn’t think the teeny tiny gallstone is to blame. i swear, i am going to change my middle name to no food or drink for X hours before the procedure.

(for those of you in the viewing audience keeping track, this will make five, count ’em, five IVs necessary within one month. that’s a personal best:

1) IV for endoscopy

2) IV for IVIG

3) IV for CT scan plus contrast

4) IV for HIDA Scan

and

5) IV for IVIG all over again!

woo hoo! all this scarring, and no IV drugs to show for it. life is unfair 🙁

anyhow, it took nearly two hours to do this one. the last time, the phlebotomist gave up after two tries and brought in another guy to do it. a saint of a guy. and after two tries, he got it in. this time, i told them up front that my veins suck. they brought in the phlebotomist they bring in when they’ve tough veins to tackle — and it happened to be the initial phlebotomist from my previous adventure. she saw the marks, still on my arm, from her adventures two weeks prior. i nearly burst into tears when i heard she was coming. but she just went straight for my hand. and, while it hurt like a mofo, it worked. unfortunately, they had the wrong type of plastic thingy (that would be the technical term) for the IV. she ran to find a good plastic thingy while my blood oozed on my hand. “don’t look at your hand!” she told me before she ran off to find the right thing. and she did. and i lived.

and then i had to basically lie on a table flat for 90 minutes. at one point, the nuclear med guy injected me with stuff that made my stomach feel just awful. parting words: make sure you drink a lot. you’ll be radioactive for a day.

hell. i’m from new jersey. i’m probably radioactive for life.

i saw my regular, normal, everyday primary care doctor last week. i love the guy. he has seen me through shingles, he has seen me through ITP, he has seen me through two successful pregnancies, he has seen me through basically everything over the past 11 or so years. i get a gazillion infections, and i try reallyreally hard not to go on antibiotics because the day may come when they won’t work. and i’ll be VERY screwed, to put it mildly. but i needed to get looked at because i just wasn’t fighting my latest infection too well. he always has such a wonderful sense of humor. i was complaining to him.

doc, i said, i see doctors so often, i feel like i must be one of those munchausen people. a professional patient.

he laughed and patted my arm. nope, he said, you aren’t. the difference, unfortunately, is that you really have the things you have.

shit. i’d rather get attention by winning the nobel prize or something. but no.

i’m just radioactive.

G-d and Death

G-d and Death

Posted on by wrekehavoc

as you can tell from a post or two, we’ve been struggling to understand the death of our five year old friend. BC and i went to a celebration of mason’s life yesterday. it was a lovely afternoon, filled with people’s remembrances of this little force of nature. i hadn’t even realized that he had met Queen Elizabeth II when she visited children’s national medical center, where the little dude got his treatment — the pictures are incredible. the most wonderful thing for me was hearing about the family’s life before cancer.

on a personal level, one of the hardest things for me as a parent is explaining to my child why G-d would allow such a glorious little boy to get sick and leave his family and friends at such a young age; honestly, i can’t even understand it myself. this morning, i saw our rabbi at hebrew school, and i asked her: what is the rabbinical explanation? cos i’ve searched and searched my heart, and i have a hard time telling my children that sometimes, G-d says no to our prayers. maybe i’m just a lax parent, but i really and truly want to believe that if there is some sort of Benevolent Being, that He/She would want to do better than that.

our rabbi, who i like very, very much, was so warm. yes, she said, there is a school of thought that feels that G-d is omnipotent and therefore sometimes simply says no. she, however, personally believes that G-d is omniscient, not omnipotent. G-d can’t change what’s happening; G-d can only try to provide us comfort and strength in situations that happen. G-d doesn’t make things happen in the world; G-d simply tries to support us.

at least, that’s what i thought i heard. i may be completely taking her out of context, in which case, i am soooooo sorry.

anyway, one of the loveliest gestures from the ceremony yesterday was receiving bulbs to plant in mason’s memory. and on the back of the instructions, there’s a quote from one of my most favorite books: St. Exupery’s the little prince. i’ll end with it since it makes more sense out of the situation than i or anyone else can.

In one of the stars I shall be living,
In one of the stars I shall be laughing,
And so it will be as if the stars were laughing
When you look at the stars at night.
You, only you, will have
stars that can laugh.

better health through pat diNizio

better health through pat diNizio

Posted on by wrekehavoc

okay, okay. pat diNizio has not, in fact, become my workout buddy (though if you’re out there, pat, c’mon by. we’ll swap some of that nasty exercise drink crap for something more motivational. like a mojito.) its just that this morning, i had a minor revelation, and it happened while working out and listening to the smithereens on my mp3 player.

see, yesterday wasn’t the best day ever. yes, i spent the day with jools, which always ends up being fun in a mommy gets to hang out with her little boy and do things she didn’t always get to do when SHE was 4-sort of day. other than a big bottle of gold glitter glue developing a HUGE hole on the side (i was so sleepy that i watched the glue ooze, caterpillar-slow, into a blob that ended up all over my hand. i didn’t mind having a sparkly hand for most of the day.), it wasn’t too eventful until the evening, when i went alone to mason’s viewing.

mason looked beautiful and serene, surrounded by things he loved and people who cherished him. he and his family have made a definite impact on our community, incredible considering they’ve been here for about a year and a half. i never know the right things to say in these situations; i only know too well that there really never are right words. words can’t reach into the places where you want to be, places that somehow make the pain a little less stinging, hollows where people’s hearts seem to have deflated. and you just want to give them air, and light, and love.

but the things that come out my mouth are so limited and pathetic. i just wish i could do and say more. give like he gave me. see, as i started my treatments, i would look at this child, this incredibly intrepid being, and realize — he’s going through something 100 times tougher. if he can be strong, i surely can be strong. and every time i saw him, my little superhero, i quietly cheered for us both. i remember how elated i felt when his eyebrows started growing back, gentle peach fuzz.

i’ve been struggling with this.

and so, this morning, i decided i need to do something. i need to get strong. really, really strong. see, there’s this drug-resistant staph out there, thanks to all those people insisting on using antibacterial everything coupled with purell and antibiotic abuse. (i wonder if we could start a campaign to get those things off the shelves?) and that’s especially scary news to people like me, who have compromised immune systems at the get-go. i wash my hands aplenty (howard hughes would approve), and i try to teach my kids decent health habits. i’m on antibiotics again thanks to another infection, and it scares me to think that a day could come when that won’t work.

so i’m determined to do what i can since there is so much in the world that i simply cannot control, cannot contain. i’m working out.

and there i was, on the elliptical, when the smithereens came on my mp3 player, which i let chug along at random. alone at midnight. and it all came together in my head. the epiphany. i need to do this. i need to do this. i can’t control the fact that i’ve CVID, but i can control my weight, my food, my health to some extent.

and i’ve got to. too many people depend on me.

i may never be as strong as a certain special little boy, but i’ll honor his memory by trying to be.

oh mercy, mercy me

oh mercy, mercy me

Posted on by wrekehavoc

with sincerest apologies to marvin gaye.

today is blog action day. because i’m a lemming because i’m a bit distraught over the weekend’s events, it comes as something of a relief to write about something like the environment (which tells you how awful the weekend truly was)… although there is a part of me that wonders whether we are adding to the pollution in the blogosphere.

but i digress.

clearly, we need to use less, as my dear pal kellyo notes beautifully. i’ll try to tackle another piece, however picayune, of the puzzle.

recycling is a topic near and dear to my heart, especially on tuesdays when i start getting cans, bottles, cardboard, and the 57 editions of the washington post that BS has left under his chair ready for our friends in the recycling truck on wednesday. i dare not take them to the bins for fear i’ll get chastised by the Woman Who Haunts The Recycling Bins, she who informed me one day that some of my cardboard was not, in fact, cardboard. she wasn’t wrong, and i was chagrined, and now, i am pretty well informed about my paperboard and my cardboard. i’m strongly against segregation, but in this instance, i’ll try to keep the twain from meeting, so to speak. nevertheless, i’ll let my friends in the blue truck help me out in case i’m mistaken one day. i don’t want to be wrong on that and enter recycling hell. more importantly, i don’t want to eff things up and actually create more pollution than i would have if i left things well enough alone.

so i thought i’d share some of my favorite recycled products. just cos.

littlearth license plate handbags. i have been jonesing for a jersey plate handbag ever since i first laid eyes on one of these things on my thelma-n-louse trip to arizona with my pal murph. see — recycle license plates and make them a fashion statement. they should get prisoners working on THESE. correctional centers would actually MAKE money. (note to BS: the ho-li-days are coming…)

recycled aluminum wall clocks. these are SOOO cool, if you like mod-ren sorts of artsyfartsy stuff. which i do, of course. of course these look more like a craft i can take up one rainy day with the kids… speaking of the kids…

junkyard cats. these pups (no pun intended, though they also have dogs and other critters) are made from scrap and rejected garden tools, farm machinery, bicycle and auto parts, which is nice because it keeps them out of the junk heap. [note to self: contact them. your garage alone could furnish noah’s modern ark.]

laptop lunches lunchboxes. not just for kids (or vegans) only! do you have any concept of how much waste is created every day because we all use those little plastic bags or buy individually-packaged cookies or hohos or whatever it is you like in your lunch? yes, these lunchbox systems are made of plastic — it’s recyclable, although at this price, there ain’t no WAY you’re recycling it anytime soon. and they are so gosh-darn cute! if i weren’t afraid BC was going to lose these, i would snap one up in a second. instead, i am trying to reuse some of the little plastic containers i have amassed over the years to pack her lunches. inside a cute, tween-approved lunch sack, of course. (GAWD, mama, you embarrass me!!!) but one day…

now, since i’m just chanelling the hints from heloise chick (for the insane parent-set), some more recycling tips for you moms, dads, and caregivers out there.

1) you know how sometimes, you end up printing more pages than you wanted to off your printer or fax? stop telling the computer to piss off and save those pages. your kids can draw on them til the cows come home. don’t let that tree die in vain.

2) hey you working parents: you know how there’s always some forgetful person at the office who also prints a bajillion pages of things and then leaves them at the printer for a few days? i say, after two days, the statute of limitation ends. if the paper(s) hasn’t been claimed or put in a recycling bin, take THOSE home for your kids to use. my kids thought it was hilarious when they wrote official “mail” that had my company’s logo on it. i just resisted the temptation to actually mail that stuff…

3) all those little bits of crayon you have lying about, naked and too small to be held by even the tiniest preschool hand? make homemade crayons. jools loved coloring with his — it made automatic rainbows.

4) there are tons of things you can make from old computer stuff. i’m hoping i can get BC to make me a disco ball. hell, i’ll hang it from the rear view mirror of the Prius.

5) this one from BS, who has never considered himself terribly crafty: take old CDs or DVDs you don’t want. buy round cork, and glue it to the backs of aforementioned disks. Voila! you’ve got coasters. (and yes, we really, really DO have such coasters in our home. pity we’re so uncivilized that we hardly use them.) BS is such a dark horse. he’s crafty!

6) recycle clothes. (hint: they’re found at rummage sales, jumble sales, goodwill, garage sales…). organize a clothes swapping party with friends. (one of my clever friends does this. there’s always wine, so i’m always there.) i’m thrilled i have friends who take the clothes off my hands, and my friends seem happy that there’s less stuff to buy. happy happy all around. if you want to make money off them, then send them to a consignment shop. but the pain and heartbreak of that process sometimes is not worth the trouble. donate. it’s good for the earth, it’s good for your karma, and hell, it’s so freaking easy. (just don’t donate the things that are permanently covered in vomit. use those as cleaning rags.)

ok. all politics is local. all betterment starts with you. turn off your computer and change the world.

oscopies, oscopies: who's got the oscopies?

oscopies, oscopies: who's got the oscopies?

Posted on by wrekehavoc

hope you enjoyed yesterday’s science projects 🙂

as far as yesterday’s oscopies are concerned: the prep was awful (per usual). i was frightened (per usual). the anesthesiologist couldn’t get me hooked up on my right side because my veins are apparently too tiny and uncooperative (not to mention i’m sure i was dehydrated), but he hooked me up just great on my left arm (though it’s in my wrist, so i now have a bandage around my wrist which, once again, makes me look like i tried to end it all by slitting my wrist). i never saw my doctor afterwards (apparently, he was knee deep in someone’s ass), though the little paper said that my colonoscopy was fine and that he removed a polyp from my stomach. i don’t know what to make of the polyp thing; it could be a big nothing. i just don’t know since this is all really a new body part thing for me. he also sent some stuff from my stomach out for study since there are certain bacteria that present that could be a precursor for stomach cancer, apparently. but i woke up beautifully and quickly (i metabolize very quickly) and ate a zillion graham crackers and cranberry juice. the nurses couldn’t have been nicer (although someone put me down originally for just a colonoscopy, not that AND an endoscopy) and they nearly forgot to get blood from me in the a.m.) but it’s done. for now.

and BS was a champ 🙂 he shuttled children all over the tri-state area AND dealt with a pretty tired wife. i looked at him last night and quoted from an old paul mccartney ditty that i love:

you gave me the answer to love eternally.

i love you, and you, you seem to like me.

okay. he probably does a bit more than like me in spite of the fact that i’m a major pain in the patoot 😉 so today, after many tears, i was able to get tickets for him (and me!) to see bruce springsteen. we’re sitting up with G-d, but who cares. we’re going. the damn things sold out in 4 minutes, and i was typing as fast as my little fingers could type. in the first minute, all i could get were nosebleeds. something’s just not right about that, as if all the good seats were already sold to someone somewhere.

but i’ve got too much to do to investigate that little annoyance. we’re going. i’m eating solid food. the kids are relatively happy. all’s right with the world.

this minute.

 

people on 'ludes should not drive

people on 'ludes should not drive

Posted on by wrekehavoc

…and people who are on a 24-hour liquid diet pre-general anesthesia should not go food shopping. which i did, ‘cos i’m the most super brilliant mom alive. i walked in for bananas and walked out with $100 worth of groceries, very little of which i can eat today except for:

  1. peach jello
  2. peach jello
  3. chicken soup (clear, nothing in it)
  4. coffee
  5. pineapple jello
  6. orange jello; and
  7. popsicles.

now, this regimen, sans the soup and coffee (in which i can’t put milk today, so why bother?), might seem like nirvana to BC. but the natural fact here is that i cannot eat anything red. no red popsicles. no red jello. no red nuthin’ (unless i want my gastroenterologist to die of fright thinking i’m hemorrhaging inside.) this, of course, causes a problem because red is my favorite flavor. (i’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to red. i don’t really care if it means cherry, strawberry, raspberry, razzleberry… ha! caught you there. 😉

fortunately, it appears that my friends at jello have branched out a little and added peach and pineapple to their non-red jello repertoire. thank G-d, too, because the only way i’m having green or lemon jello is if someone makes them into shooters. you should know that i don’t really like jello all that much, but today, it is officially dubbed food of the gods!

on the bright side, my fingernails will grow strong.

now, because i am extra brilliant, i failed to consult the calendar back in may when i made this appointment. and guess what else is tonight? yup. Back to School Night. back to school night falls squarely in my domain; while BS is an involved and caring dad, i know probably leaps and bounds more about BC’s daily existence than he does. but i have a feeling that i will be feeling about as pleasant as old garbage tonight. so i will stay home with both kids (yay! fighting over the toilet with jools will be something to look forward to!) while BS goes through the hallowed halls of a school he has not yet entered. i think. (honey: make a right when you walk in the front door and just keep walking until the school ends. that’s her classroom.) it’s probably a good thing, i’m sure. he’ll meet BC’s teacher (who i see every morning when i’m dragged down the hall), see the locker she never uses, and enjoy the fact that there are no reports of girlfriend tearing the place down.

that, my friend, will not happen until the day jools enters school.

don’t worry. i’ll be sure to schedule something a little more lasting for that day. like a medically-induced coma.

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