Illness and Injury | Goddess in Progress

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Mmm, Vicodin

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· December 5th, 2008

Just what you’ve all been waiting for, a blog post while I’m buzzed on painkillers.

The foot surgery was this morning, it went just fine. It was actually at this outpatient surgery center, not even a hospital, which was kind of a funny experience. Very in and out, very casual. The only problem was that they were telling me all variety of instructions and things while I was still only half out of the anesthesia. Thankfully, the doctor (a long-time family friend) repeated it all to my mom when he called her to come get me, so it wasn’t just reliant on my addled brain.

Anyways, it sounds like the recovery is going to be much less of a big deal than my podiatrist in Boston made it sound, so this 3-week stay with my mom may, in retrospect, seem like overkill. You know, since I’m already walking on it a little! Ah well.

All is well here in Chicago, kiddos are adjusting well if a touch on the clingy side, and I brought the cable with me so I’ll be able to upload the many pics we’re taking onto my laptop. I’m not getting as much computer time as I usually do at home, so I don’t know how often I’ll post. But hopefully I’ll manage to keep checking in.

Alright, I’m a little woozy and cross-eyed from the vicodin, so I’ll leave you with that thrilling update. Sorry, no weird hallucinations to report. Maybe later…

Comments (5)

Categories : Illness and Injury

Of all the things I will teach my son

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· November 20th, 2008

… Right now, I wish I could just teach him how to blow his nose.

Poor guy is runny all over the place, clearly stuffed up, and spent much of the afternoon quite miserable. His little nose was sore and raw because I kept wiping it, so he hated that. But of course he will, under no circumstances, allow me to use the bulb syringe anymore. Poor kiddo. He was quite the mess today, and with the obviously stuffy nose, the usual level of drool was ramped up even more. It’s such a glamorous life.

Anyone know at what age kids can learn to blow their noses?

Comments (6)

Categories : Illness and Injury, Toddlers

Tags : NaBloPoMo, stuffy nose

All for a stupid foot

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (14)· November 6th, 2008

Plans have changed. I am no longer having foot surgery the day before Thanksgiving. I’m now having it a week later. In Chicago. The kids and I will fly out together and spend most of December with my family. Without M.

I’m really torn. As far as childcare is concerned, it’s the right decision. Coordinating 2-3 weeks of nearly full-time help when we have no family nearby was going to be logistically very difficult, as well as potentially expensive (in so much as people who aren’t related to you sometimes need to be paid for their efforts). And while several of my awesome local MOT friends totally offered to step up in any way they could (thank you, guys!), they have their own kids and are in no position to be full-time nannies for mine. Going home, where I can stay at my mom’s house, and take advantage of the countless aunts, cousins, and family friends who have already “signed up” for baby duty, is clearly the way to go.

But that doesn’t mean I’m entirely happy about it. I won’t be in my own space, I won’t have my usual activities available for the kids. And we’ll be away from M for nearly three weeks. Even though I know it’s the right thing to do (and M agrees completely), it still feels a bit shitty to take the kids away so that someone else can take care of them. Not to mention the fact that I’m just plain going to miss him, and he’s worried that he’ll miss out on a lot of our rapidly-developing kiddos.

In addition to the emotional stress, there’s a lot of logistics to deal with. Do I fly to Chicago with the kids by myself, or does M take one of his precious few days off from work to fly out and fly back in one day? Will the kids be OK sleeping in Pack & Plays for three weeks, or should I scour Craigslist for some small cribs for my mom’s house? Speaking of Craigslist… high chairs or boosters, toys, and the like… lots to either buy or scavenge or ship from home.

Delighted though I am with all of the offers for babysitting from family and friends in the area, how will I coordinate them? Will they respect the nap schedule? Will I be able to unclench and let go of control a little? Hell, will I even see my kids while I’m there, or will everyone be taking turns having entirely too much fun?!

And, for that last bit of headache, I have this little freelance gig that I kept from my working days. It involves being the admin/coordinator for a small grant program. One of the most labor-intensive parts of the job is managing the applications when they come in, and distributing them to the trustees. When are the applications due? Mid-December. When do the trustees want the materials? Before Christmas. Great. Looks like I’m going to have to tell the applicants to send it all to my mom’s house. How very professional of me.

But, however this all pans out, it’s going to happen. Our flight has been moved, the appointment has been scheduled (as luck would have it, a long-time family friend is an orthopedic surgeon who was more than happy to fit me in). It will be fine, it will be hard, it will be fun, it will be stressful. I know it’s the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean it’s the easy thing to do.

Comments (14)

Categories : Family, Illness and Injury, Toddlers, Travel

Tags : NaBloPoMo

Cranky pants

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (6)· October 28th, 2008

It’s been a cranky-pants kind of… day? week? month? I don’t know. As much as I love this age in that the kids really “play” a lot more and are learning neat new things, it’s also a cranky age. New-ish walkers mean lots of losing balance and smacking heads. Adventuresome climbers fall off of things. Uncertain needs and spare communication skills lead to early-stage tantruming. Nap transition plus weekend illness plus cold autumn rain = lots of screaming in my house.

Add to that today’s finally-rescheduled annual checkup… let me just say THANK GOD M decided to be a wonderful person and take a sick day so I didn’t have to bring the kids with me. The office called yesterday (and you know I was sure they were calling to cancel when I saw that caller ID) to remind me of the appointment and ask me to come 15 minutes before the appointment. Fine, I showed up at 11:30 for my 11:45 appointment. So that I could… tell them nothing at all has changed with regard to insurance, address, etc etc etc. Great. Sat and read a magazine, and no one called my name for 35 minutes. Finally went and got the initial blood pressure check and all of that with the nurse, then back to the waiting room for another 10 minutes. All so I could have my 5-minute annual exam. It took longer to check out and schedule next year’s exam (an exercise in futility) than it did to have the actual checkup. I finally left at nearly 12:45. Thank god I didn’t have screaming lunch-time kids with me.

And just to continue the rant (in case any of you are still reading), I’m trying to deal with the whole foot surgery issue. I have it scheduled, but childcare during the weeks following is looking iffy. I can piece a few things together, but it’s minimal and I’m not sure it will be enough. Enter the latest idea: fly to Chicago with the kids and have it done there, where the whole famn-damily can pitch in. Good for childcare, not fun to be away from M for several weeks. Plus, insurance is being a pain in my ass (or foot, rather).

But hey, the sun is briefly peeking out and the kids took at least a brief nap. We’ll hit the new mall playspace so they can run around, we’ll get a tasty snack. It’s not all bad.

Comments (6)

Categories : Illness and Injury, OB Appointments, Toddlers

Daddy and Rebecca’s Hospital Adventure

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· October 25th, 2008

Last night marked our first unscheduled trip to the hospital with one of the kids. Around 9:30pm, Rebecca woke up crying. She does that sometimes, but I knew her teeth had been bothering her and she was just having a rough day, and it was definitely no-kidding-around kind of crying. so we decided to go get her. Immediately, M remarked how warm she felt. She was bright red and warm to the touch, and the thermometer confirmed a temperature of 103 (all while mid-dose of Motrin for tooth pain), despite the fact that she was almost shivering.

M asked if we should call the doctor, and I said not to bother and just go straight to our local ER. Honestly, if we called the doctor, that’s all they would have told him to do aside from Motrin/Tylenol and lukewarm baths. Might as well go straight there. There was a brief moment of debate as to which one of us would go, or if both of us would (our friend happened to be visiting from out of town – Hi M.C.! – and offered to stay with the soundly-sleeping Daniel). I made the quick decision that M should go, helped him pack a little bag, and off they went.

I had a few reasons for wanting M to go. For one, he’s much more of a worrier than I am. I probably would have been OK with keeping her at home and doing the bath and the Tylenol, but I know he’d just be worried that something serious was wrong. And if I took her, he’d be equally worried because he wouldn’t know what was going on, since we’ve discovered there’s zero cell phone reception in our hospital.

Plus, I sort of wanted him to have the opportunity to be the Daddy in Charge. Being the full-time stay-at-home mom, I’m generally the boss when it comes to all things kid. And while he’s a perfectly capable and certainly devoted Dad, he still tends to ask me what to do in most situations. I wanted this to be all him, since I obviously trust his judgment and thought it might be good to gain a touch of confidence and experience.

Anyways, after a few hours and a very thorough examination, infections were ruled out and every parent’s favorite vague diagnosis was issued: probably a virus, treat the fever with Motrin and Tylenol, call if the fever stays high even on the meds. Sleep was (and is) restless, little girl is cranky, mommy and daddy are tired (Daniel’s just peachy, thank you). Rebecca’s first late-night trip to the ER was a pretty uneventful one.

Comments (5)

Categories : Hospital, Illness and Injury, My beloved, Toddlers

Bum Foot

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· October 7th, 2008

So, I’m apparently 29-going-on-70. Why? I mean, aside from the knitting and quilting? Because I’ve been going to a podiatrist. Every time I’m in there, I feel like I pull the average age down about a decade. Anyways, I have a bum left foot. I noticed over the summer that my foot really hurt when I wore sneakers. Turns out, I have a tailor’s bunion. Essentially, a sort of mal-formed bone in my foot, which then has caused a lump or cyst on the outside of my foot, making the balls of my feet much wider. Hence, the foot pain in sneakers but not flip-flops. Anyways, we’ve tried a few things to get the lump to go down, but it’s just not happening, and it also doesn’t deal with the root cause of the problem: the bad bone.

I have two options. One option is to just live with it, work around it. I could try getting wide-width shoes, but of course I only would need it for one foot. Hrm. I have one pair of shoes (other than flip flops) that I can wear (very similar to these). But the reason I can wear them is that they have little cutouts, one of which is in precisely the right spot for my lumpy foot. Those cutouts are going to prove a problem once it snows. And they don’t exactly go with anything other than shlumpy jeans.

Option two is having an outpatient surgery to fix both the lump and the root cause. It’s a one-day, local-anesthesia kind of thing, so the procedure itself isn’t a huge deal. However… it means I would be in bed or on crutches for probably a week, and then in a removeable cast for 1-3 more weeks. Does anyone else think that doesn’t sound especially good for a stay-at-home mom who is the primary caretaker of two toddlers? Yeeeah.

I’m a little conflicted. On the one hand, it’s by no means a life-threatening condition. I could go about my business wearing inappropriate shoes in cold weather. It hurts a little sometimes, but not all that bad. Do I really want to go through a possibly painful surgery and very inconvenient recovery period for something so minor? On the other hand, it has become clear that it isn’t going to get better on its own. It may not get tons worse, but it definitely won’t get better. Should I just fix it once and for all?

I’m leaning towards getting it done. But the childcare issue is a major one. What might work out the best is to have it done right before Thanksgiving. Then M will be home for the long weekend, and hopefully my mom can come out after that. We’ll see… Bleh, bleh, bleh. What a pain in the ass.

On a positive note, we tried out a new playground after the doctor’s office! [You like how I threw in a gratuitous photo of my kids, there? Yeah, baby.] The trouble with being a SAHM and having no family around is that you have to bring the kids everywhere, including miscellaneous podiatrist appointments. Playing at the park for a while seemed only fair.

Comments (12)

Categories : Illness and Injury, Just me

I need a vacation

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· August 20th, 2008

It’s been a rough couple of days over here. It started with the whole Toys-R-Us debacle on Monday.

Tuesday was not a ton better. It started off with a bang, as the dog decided to find poop in the yard (not her own), eat it, and then throw up all over my first floor. Delightful. I’m so glad I took that 6 years to convince M we should get a dog. I then had to go to the doctor for my foot. We still don’t know what’s wrong with it, but now it hurts more than before. The doctor said he’d take an x-ray and see me back in 3 weeks. Lovely. I’ll limp until then. Had a nice lunch with a wonderful friend of mine who is 30+ weeks pregnant with her first baby, despite Daniel throwing his sandwich all over the floor.

Daniel then completely skipped his afternoon nap, and was not a happy camper later in the afternoon while the plumber was here (again!), trying to make my bathtub drain properly. But I had my monthly twin club meeting last night, which was lots of fun (and blog-tastic, with Mommy, Esq. – 36 weeks pregnant, c-section on Monday!!! – and Nancy in attendance). I stayed entirely too late, but it was worth it. Until I got pulled over on the way home. For a damn expired license plate. So guess what I got to do all morning today? Yay, RMV and unpaid Boston parking tickets.

Hopefully, though, this is all just to make me appreciate the upcoming week even more. Because on Saturday morning, we leave (at the crack of dawn) for a week in Virginia Beach with some dear friends and their two kids. We rented a house on the beach, how cool will this be?! One 10-month-old, two 12-month-olds, and one nearly-3-year-old. And anywhere between four and six adults, depending on the day. Sure, the trip presents some new logistical challenges, since it’s the first time we’re not primarily staying with family who can shop ahead and all of that. But I think it will be great, and if not totally relaxing, at least lots of fun. And if we can get the stars to align just so, I might even be able to meet up with Cheryl! Blogosphere and real world collide!

Now, I just have to do laundry… and make a grocery list… and pack… and make a reservation for the dog at the kennel…. oy.

In completely unrelated, but incredibly cute, news… Rebecca is getting a big kick out of playing peekaboo by herself:

Where's Rebecca?

There she is!

Comments (7)

Categories : Home, Illness and Injury, Out and about, Secret society of twin moms, Toddlers, Travel

Update on an awesome day

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (12)· August 5th, 2008

Wow. It’s been a real winner today.

So, Daniel woke up with a 102-degree fever. At 9AM, made calls to the pediatrician, and to the plumber for the laundry room sink that was backing up. The plumber could come between 11 and 1, and the pediatrician could see Daniel at 2:45 (so I had to cancel my own doctor’s appointment that had been made 2+ weeks ago, so I still don’t know what the hell is wrong with my left foot). Great start.

Plumber shows up, and quickly determines I have a main drain backup or some such thing, so the drain carrying everything out of my house was all messed up. He had to go back to the office to get a bigger machine. Super. He came back, and there was all manner of drilling noise coming from the basement for a solid two hours. I finally told him I had to leave for the pediatrician’s office. He said he still didn’t know what he was up against, but would keep going.

Off to the pedi’s office. Did I mention Daniel had skipped the PM nap? Yeah. And by the time we got there, Rebecca was catching up and had her own 101-degree fever. Ears clear, slightly red throat. Finger pricks to rule out a bacterial infection, which you know they just loved. Much screaming, decide it’s a virus, not much to do except Tylenol or Motrin to keep the fever in check. Delightful.

Took the long way home, since Daniel finally fell asleep in his car seat, and got a well-deserved Grande Iced Vanilla Latte and a slice of pumpkin loaf. Yes, I’m a stress eater. Pull up to my driveway, and there is now a second plumber’s truck. They’re shaking their heads at me. Crap. Turns out there’s a broken drainage pipe. Where is it broken? In the middle of the street. Right where the city was digging in front of my house a few weeks ago. Coincidence? I think not. But the plumber (husband of a fellow MOT) has already called the city, and they’re closed for the day. At 3:45 in the afternoon.

Well, the plumber is packing up, nothing more he can do until the excavator shows up at 8:00 tomorrow morning. Oh, and he called the cleaning crew, so they can work on my basement when things are fixed, so I don’t get mold. Oh, and as the entire house’s drain is busted, we can’t so much as flush the toilet.

And, so, I greet you now from the friendly Residence Inn. The kids are, once again, sleeping in Pack & Plays. Let’s hope everything gets fixed tomorrow. Let’s hope I can sleep at home tomorrow. Let’s hope the city picks up the tab. Sigh.

Comments (12)

Categories : Home, Illness and Injury, Not good times

Wrenches in the plan

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· August 5th, 2008

I want to tell you all about our trip, I really do. All about our 11 nights in three different beds in two different states. But in addition to the usual post-vacation craziness (dirty laundry, no food in the house, picking up the dog, fixing the lighting on the 900+ pictures I took), we’ve hit a few stumbling blocks. For one, there’s something wrong with the drain, so that if I attempt any more laundry, I will flood my basement. Liquid Plumr didn’t work, time to call the real thing. Secondly, my in-laws are coming to town this weekend and we’re throwing a little birthday BBQ for the kids, so that requires some amount of planning and mental energy. And third, I knew something was awry when I woke up at 7:45 this morning. My kids usually wake up closer to 6. Daniel has a fever of 102, and Rebecca is 99.5. Off we go to the pediatrician.

So I’ll be back, really I will. Lots to share. Including a ton of really cute pictures. But it will have to wait…

Well, maybe just one or two…

Daniel on the pontoon boat in Wisconsin.

Rebecca appears to have a sweet tooth, and enjoyed chocolate ice cream before dinner one day.

Comments (5)

Categories : Family, Home, Illness and Injury, Photos, Travel

Ten Months Old

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· June 3rd, 2008

It’s the 3rd of the month – time for another “birthday!” Daniel & Rebecca are 10 months old today. They aren’t having the greatest day, as I believe they’re both fighting off a virus. Plus, as I was taking their chair pictures today, Rebecca took a header off of the chair. So sad, felt awful, bad mommy… Don’t get me wrong, I was sitting right there, taking pictures of her. Clearly, I was focused on where she was and not just letting her hang out on a chair by herself. But damn, she’s so fast it happened practically before I realized it. So fast I was actually snapping a picture right before she went over. Bad, bad mommy. And to make matters worse, she not only whacked her head on the hardwood floor, but I believe hit half of her face right on one of their board books. So now she has this awful red mark on the left side of her face. I feel terrible. If she was old enough to like things like cookies, I’d give her some today. Instead, some hugs sort of calmed her down, and having yogurt with lunch was enough to put a smile back on her face. Oh, and just to empathize or something, Daniel later managed to fall backwards from sitting and whack the back of his head on the floor grate. Good lord. Not a super day. Let’s hope tomorrow is better…