Brr

Just because it’s an impressive change and you’ve all been following along… I’m back to my chilly self — it was nice being warm for a little while tho…

Well maybe I am?

We finally had decided over the summer to try to not try. Of course that is terribly hard to not notice now. We were going to, at my urging, wait to officially try next summer. As in try/try. Really just out of convenience because if I got knocked up in oh, say June, then I’d have a baby somewhere around March? Then I’d have 12 weeks off work, followed exactly by Hubbin’s 3 months summer vacation. Presto 6 months free childcare! w00t! Ahhem. However after the summer we’ve both had a little difficulty adjusting back to “trying not to” after throwing caution to the wind all summer. We had one episode that occurred squarely on what I believe was ohhhh probably just the most dangerous day of the whole month. The little built in ovulation predictor on my iphone thinks the most dangerous day was the 29th, but I think with that drastic dip it was probably the 28th… whoops. (PS who really gets a temperature of 96.6… talk about cold blooded!)

At first I was like little freaked about it because Gah! Plans! The plans! But I don’t know… My opinion is starting to turn around a bit. Last night we went to dinner at my parents with Hubbin’s mom too, so our whole immediate family to have dinner and look at my parents pictures from their trip to France. Now my mother in law has been hard up for babies for years. To the point that before he met me she told her old lady friends she didn’t even care if he had an illegitimate baby as long as he came up with some grandbabies. Now we were looking through the France photos and my dad took like 6 pictures of someone else kid on the ferry in Paris! A little kid playing pattycake with her dad, my parents just thought she was so cute. LOL! Hubbin leans over to me and goes “I think maybe they’re ready for grandkids now too”

Then three days ago my mother in law called Hubbin to say that her doctor wants to set up a meeting with him because they’ve now diagnosed her with early onset Alzheimer’s.

😦

So… no time like the present either way I guess? Thoughts?

 

33

Day 33. Still waiting on that period. WTF? …Just putting it out there… (And before you ask, I dipped my pee at work and it still says negative) …I thought I was a little nervous before!

Internets…

I miss thee…

Approximately the same time as student’s arrival (We’ll call him Stu from now on shall we?) Hubbin decided he was fed up with Comcast raising our bill every month so he decided we’d get dish network.

So now we have dish network.

I haven’t noticed a difference yet really, but that could be because our remotes are all up in the air now and I haven’t taken the time to master what settings every appliance needs to be on yet… Or maybe because I’m diligently studying for the NCLEX? I’ll leave that up to you.

I am studying (taking a break right now, I swear) which is a good thing because D-day is fast approaching. The 16th to be exact.

Anyway back to the original story. So we switched to dish network and Hubbin signed us up to get Verizon DSL for Internet instead but because we don’t have a home phone line hooked up it apparently becomes quite a production. SO Hubbin was going to keep the comcast internet while we were waiting for all this verizon nonsense to unfold. So he called comcast to discontinue our TV stuff but the lady cancelled the whole shebang. So here we are now without Internet since I last wrote! Thank god for my iPhone or I would have been all “Hurricaine? What hurricaine?” because god forbid we watch the evening news in this house….

I have many exciting ER stories to share from the other day I’m just waiting till I can type with a full sized keyboard again!

The big news around here is 16yr old Stu? Yeah he’s staying with us now. (as I predicted before he even moved in) he’s not too much trouble so other than I don’t really want a teenager I didn’t have complaints. He does the dishes too, which helps his case. 😉

So I’m a soccer mom now, or so we’ve been joking, which is awesome! I always liked soccer (never played) without any real reason, but now I have one. Soccer keeps my kid at school until 530-600pm nightly and I can only assume there will be weekend games?! Perhaps even out of town travel overnight?! I love soccer!

My only other commentary about being a parent to a teenager all of a sudden is “holy shit does he eat a lot!” hubbin and I used to go to McDs and each get a cheeseburger split a fry and drink for maybe $6? Now it costs like $16 to go to McDs because he gets a double cheeseburger and fillet of Fish, large fry and large drink. He regularly eats more than both of us together at a sitting. And some parents have mocked me for being surprised at how much he eats, so I remind them that they’ve had their own teenager it’s whole life to get used to the increasing intake and adapt whereas ours just showed up at our doorstep able to eat two full helpings of dinner and large sides.

I suppose I need to get back to studying now. I can’t update my “NCLEX Accountability” on the side bar from my iPhone app either! 😦

9/3: 74/100 = 74%
9/3: 35/47 (peds) =74%

So that will have to do! Hope our Internet gets setup soon!

In passing conversation

Do you ever have a conversation with someone when you’re going through something that may or may not contain specific details, or even necessarily be about what’s happening that really changes your perspective?

When I was in highschool I had a male best friend. He was amazing, I had never in my life felt so comfortable talking about things with anyone else. We saw each other nearly every day and barely went a day without talking on the phone. Eventually of course, gossip caught up with us and people starting believing that we were dating. While we both denied it I think that’s really what started me thinking “hmmm, maybe we sort of are”. My senior year of highschool we were supposed to go to the fall dance together but he got really ill and wasn’t able to go. I was in my dress with hair done and ready to go when he had to cancel. I did cry.

Not long after, I became good friends with a girl in one of my classes that I only really knew peripherally before hand. We had SUCH a good time together that of course before long the three of us hung out together. Then they started dating. For real. I’ll never forget riding in the car with him when he finally made his confession to me that they had made out after a party and he really-really-really liked her. Good lord, stab me in the heart with a knife and then TWIST it why don’t you?! I was heart broken. Genuinely heart broken. I had a list of “why”s a mile long. I mean Why her? What’s wrong with me? We had such a good time together and had been that way for so long, if he’s going to chose someone to date, why not let it be me? And her! She was my friend? How could she do this when she knew I liked him?!

Then perhaps even worse than the car ride conversation was after they had been dating for a few weeks he called me up to find out why I had been giving them the cold shoulder and why was no longer friends with her. (men) Then he said she told him it was because I had a crush on him and was that true. That definitely rivaled the car conversation for the winner of my most awkward and painful conversation of my life. I mean seriously, think back to when you were 17 and how would you like to confess your feelings for someone you knew preferred someone else? Major embarrassment.

I was in a funk for a long time.

Very long. Now I had lost my best friend to my other closest friend and neither of them wanted anything to do with me.

I’m sure it was several months into this grieving process when I had a dream that helped me more than anything else. In my dream I was at camp with this boy named Matt who 3-4 years prior was my first kiss (ever, at camp, very cliché) and in the dream he came right up to me and grabbed me by both shoulders real steady and looked directly in my eyes and said “are you ok?” and I said “yes”… but in a way that sort of brushed off the question and this dream Matt gave me a gentle shake, squinted and said “are you sure?” and I briefly paused and said “yes, I’m going to be ok” as though after a brief pause for consideration I knew with certainty that yes, I would be ok.

Earlier this spring when I was at perhaps one of my lowest points in recent memory, perhaps ever, I was in the computer lab at school when I ran into Dan and had a similarly moving conversation. I came over to see how he was doing and make some small talk. I was going through the motions of life while I felt like my world was falling apart when I asked Dan how he was. Dan is a case manager for mentally ill patients and had a self-described worst day of his life. He went to make a house call to pick up his favorite patient for his doctors appointment that day and found the door unlocked. He then found his patient inside laying face down in a pool of blood. Dead. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. He was so upset, but seemingly had it all together. Then Dan said to me, “You know, SSFB, we go through life thinking everyone else is doing fine. That everyone’s life looks good from the outside and that’s what they want us to think. Like you always look good, get good grades, and say you’re fine in passing, but no one really knows what you’re going through right now either”

I was borderline speechless and I don’t remember what I said, but I know I didn’t hang around too much longer after that because I didn’t want to cry at school, I much prefer to keep up the act that everything was fine.

No more safety net

Today I’m taking my last birth control pill of the summer.

We still haven’t come to a definitive decision regarding a baby, I’m a lot more wishy washy about the decision then I thought I would be. But that’s not the topic of this post, so back to birth control pills for now:

I promised long ago I would never write about my s- life on the internet and this post isn’t exactly about that, but it’s standing in the way of the entry so it’s about to get run over. The short version of what I want to type about is I’m 26, nearly 27 years old and I have close to zerolibido. That’s not right. Is it? Through the process of reading online about how long ahead of a baby-plan I should quit taking my birth control pills I’ve begun to suspect my birth control pills might be at least part of the culprit, because I wasn’t always that way.

Of course there are lots of other explanations for lowlibido right now, the top three being:

1. Stress
2. Anxiety
3. Fatigue

All three of which are plentiful right now.

I started taking one of the well known brands of birth control pills in college and never had any problems with it. Then I went through 2ish years in my life where my migraines were so frequent and so ruling my life that I was desperate to try anything, one of the last ditch efforts was switching BCPs, to one that doesn’t fluctuate during the month. I switched to that about the same time I very first met Hubbin’ I didn’t have any problems with that at first either but in retrospect: prior to that I think I’d had 1 maybe 2 yeast infections in my life and I’d never had BV… since the switch I swear several times a year I’ve got something going on. The latest of those issues is random cramps. For the past three months I’ve had about a weeks worth of random cramps per month when I’m not supposed to. And that’s totally not fair if you get them for no reason which is exactly how my gyne explained them last month. That makes me trigger shy to go back for the same problem and is why this week I broke all the medical rules and treated myself with random left over medication that’s probably expired. I’m a bad person. Very bad. But I’m convinced I have an under-the-radar-case-of-BV and that’s why I’ve got the random cramping + irritation + dryness.

Actually she told me I probably had cramps because I was ovulating. You know that can randomly happen while you’re on birth control pills. But, funny, I never had cramps when I ovulated before I took birth contol pills? Which can only lead me to believe that theory is bunk. Oh sure I might have believed it, if random cramps hadn’t become recurrent random cramps. Which now they have. Not a fan.

After mulling over it for a week or so I finally brought it up with Hubbin that regardless of the baby decision I wanted to quit taking my pills this summer to try and get my body back to “square one” and see if it would:

1. Help put a stop to all these random infections
2. Help me recover at least a minimal desire for all things s- related

Hubbin was quite supportive of the decision because obviously he would reap the benefits of both of those outcomes as well and understanding that pregnancy control will now rest on his shoulders as well (This post is obviously going to require a follow-up post regarding the baby issue). So I’m cautiously optimistic about both outcomes, and I think that’s partially because I don’t know what else to do about either of them! Because when I consult Dr Google all I find is information on menopause and I’m fairly confident that’s not the cause of my issues at 26. So cross your fingers this works!

Therapeutic Communication

So I’ll admit I’m not the best with the therapeutic communication business. I’m more of the type of person that would say “oh? You see little green men in the corner? You’re right. And the little green men say it’s time for you to take your pill and go to bed”….

(PS for those of you non-nursing types the ‘therapuetic response’ would be ‘I don’t see the little green men, but I’m sure that’s scary for you’…. and the next time your senile grandma tells you she needs to go home because her father’s worried about her you’ll know that the therapeutic response is ‘it’s 2007 your father died 23 years ago’ –orient to reality– which results in 45minutes of desperate tears of: ‘why didn’t anyone tell me he died’… therapeutic. Right. -But I digress…)

…Last night at the mental institution we had another 4 hours (FOUR HOURS) to sit and practice therapeutic communication with whichever crazies (That’s the PC term 😉 ) were sitting in the TV room. I don’t know about you but I have trouble sitting and talking for 4 hours straight with someone I like, let alone someone I don’t know. Turns out I would get to practice my therapeutic communication afterall. I’m sitting next to a fellow nursing student, my age, female, and we start chit chatting (she’s not so into the mental health rotation either) and she says “So remember how sick I was last week?”

(…and here’s where I need to interject that no student nurse will ever willingly miss clinical for illness. You have to pay a fine, and make up the hours, and risk failing out of the program… I’ve only known one person to miss clinical for being sick and that’s because she was admitted to the hospital. If you recall I even dragged my sorry butt to clinical 3 days post-op while I was still bleeding from the ass…)

I said I did and then she proceeded to tell me “I found out why. I was 6 weeks pregnant and just found out last week” I attempted to hide my surprise because I was still a little unclear “you are?!” “I was” “wait, you are?” (you may be able to see where this is going faster than I did because my brain just does not function rapidly these days) “I was 6 weeks pregnant, I got an abortion yesterday”. I’ll be honest and say that I’ve never actually known anyone first hand who got an abortion and didn’t really know how to react. While I don’t think I’d make the same decision even in the same circumstances I’ve long maintained I don’t think that’s something you can know what you would do until you’re in the situation and godforbid you ever have to think about something like that.

We ended up talking about it for quite a while and she told me she was horrified when she found out and there was no question in her decision. She told another girl in our group last week when she found out and told the girl she wasn’t going to keep it. The girl told her “well if you’re not going to keep it just don’t even tell anyone” I said “that was probably very good advice because that’s something people feel very opinionated about in this country” (the girl I’m speaking with who got the abortion is from Africa) She talked about it with her boyfriend (of 3 years) and told him this was what she wanted. Her boyfriend has a job in Chicago and she didn’t want to go through a pregnancy/baby without him here. She told me she was not emotionally, mentally, or financially ready for this. Her due date could have delayed her graduating till the following year and that’s just not an option.

So we talked about everything from how she was feeling to her thinking about getting an IUD so she would not have to worry about this happening again. Even by the time I got home late that night I was still in disbelief: “Wow, I can’t believe she actually told me all of this” because when it comes right down to it, I still barely know her. I hope it helped her to be able to talk about it with someone, and to let someone know how much she was hurting that night.

I told Hubbin when I got home and honestly didn’t know how he would react. I wonder sometimes how I would feel and how he would react if I ended up pregnant before I finished school. Obviously we’d end up with a baby, but still, I wonder what emotions would be most prominent at first. –Although I know his mother would be excited enough for all of us– I think I’d be scared, I’m pretty sure I’d cry. (Even though I still sometimes wish on my way to clinical at night we could go back to the post-partum unit and I could bathe the babies and long to take one home again) I feel so overwhelmed with everything that’s going on in my life already that it was still possible for me to be sympathetic with her decision even though I sometimes get caught up in the emotions of wanting my own baby right this minute.

and Here I Sitz on my Bath

Whooooopsies. I’ve taken a bit of a break haven’t I?

Not to worry, I’m doing pretty well for 1 week post op I’d say. Still having some minor pain and discomfort but nothing taking a break and sitting to watch some TV for a while doesn’t cure. Today is the first day I have not taken any Motrin at ALL all day. Really though, the past few days have only been one or two doses of 400, so that’s not bad at all.

I did make it to clinical on Sunday although I had to make Hubbin drive me. I finished out the semester with a B. Which is fine and what I expected. I had an 89 going into the final and you have to get a 92 to get an A, so I’m pretty sure even with 100% on the final I still wouldn’t have gotten an A. Oh well, next semester starts, ahem, Monday. Lovely break isn’t it? I’m already having panic attacks about how much time we’re scheduled to be in class and clinical.

I went to work Monday because, well, I said I’d be there and I had a lot to do that no one else could do for me. I did leave early but only managed to get out an hour early because the work took me all day. I really think the whole recovery period would have been better if I hadn’t HAD to go to clinical Sunday and work Monday because Tuesday was when I really started to feel better. Fortunately for both clinical and work I was able to wear scrubs because pants were just not happening. Wednesday was the first real pant day.

I decided to not work this week afterall even though we’re not *really* on vacation. My boss, who I haven’t seen in more than a week and a half probably thinks I’m in mexico swimming in the blue ocean. But I’m not, I’m at home parked on my Sitz Bath. They gave me a sitz bath at the hospital and I’m in lourve with my sitz bath. I’m supposed to do it 3 times a day and after every poo. That’s a lot of time with your ass on the toilet.

So far I haven’t really been a compliant patient as far as Sitz baths though. Can I please add though, it is complete torture for someone who is a germaphobe like me to not be able to wipe after going to the bathroom. I can’t stop myself. I’ve been very gentle, but I don’t know how someone could honestly just rinse off after pooping. Please.

Anyway, I come back to you bearing pictures taken a week ago in my vicodin haze. Photo #1, my mesh hotpants…
You want a pair I know…
and #2, my IV site with NO BRUISE WHATSOEVER. Can you believe it?! After how tiny and frozen shut my veins were?

Hey that went better than I thought…

So today is post-op day 2? 3? for myself. I don’t know, it was Thursday but Thursday was all sort of a blur, so we’ll go with 2.

They took me up to pre-op, told me to strip and put on a gown and booties I begged the nurse to let me keep my socks on because I knew what was coming. I knew they were going to want to start and IV soon and I know I’m an extremely cold blooded person. So by the time the nurse came in to start and IV she shocked at how cold my hands were and how shriveled my veins were looking. I ended up with something ridiculous like 7 heated blankets on trying to warm me up so they could start an IV. That seemed to be all anyone commented on during the day “we’re going to need to start charging you for blankets” “wow that’s the most blankets I’ve seen”… I just kept saying “Hey, I’m a cold person”

My mom and husband came with me and my mom called a couple days ahead of time to arrange for someone she knew to do the anesthesia. She asked me if I wanted to be anonymous or if I wanted her to call ahead and get someone she knew and I said “Please, after my colonoscopy, I’m desperate for someone good”.

So I had IV sedation (they did get it in eventually, and on the first try no less) and a spinal. Now, honestly I wasn’t even half as worked up about getting a spinal as I was about having a repeat experience of my colonoscopy. (I don’t have the patience to make links today so I’ll just tell you I woke up during my colonoscopy, I remember everything, and it was a horribly scarring experience). So when the anesthesiologist came in to ask me whether I wanted IV+spinal or general anesthesia and proceeded to go through the pros and cons of each, it served no other purpose than to bring me out of my active denial state and get me worked up. I agreed to the IV sedation and spinal probably within the first minute of the conversation, because the doctor told us in the appointment that helps her avoid complications but for some reason the anesthesiologist was convinced he had talked me into it and kept the conversation going despite me going “yes, spinal” “no, the spinal”… and the longer he kept going on about the complications I was finally like “please, can we just do the spinal, I wasn’t nervous about it but you’re making me nervous!”…

The official verdict on the spinal was “No sweat”… My mom’s specially requested nurse anesthetist did a great job of sedating me juuuuuust enough on the way to the OR to make me a very compliant patient. “oh you want me to bend over this pillow? No problem” “Big pinch, No problem” then I remember them having me roll over onto the OR bed on my belly and I remember barrrrely being able to feel them taping my skin apart and then nothing. Sweeeeet sweet nothing. I remember thanking the nurse anesthetist when she woke me up in the recovery room and saying “that was much better”. Then I spent about 2.5 hours in the recovery room because I wasn’t allowed to leave till I could wiggle my toes. Mom says usually people can feel their toes first but, my toes came back last. The procedure itself only took about 30 minutes but we spent a solid 3 hours there afterwords waiting till I had full motion and my pain was under control.

I did fine and even got up to pee straight away, then they handed me two percocet and it morphed into an awful day. I was fine till they put me in the wheelchair to wheel me out and then I got motion sickness like you wouldn’t believe. I managed to not throw up in the car but I had a miserable few hours writhing and moaning on the couch till my husband called the doctor and pleaded for something other than percocet. By the time he got back from the pharmacy I had gotten rid of all the saltines and plain noodles I had eaten and hopefully the percocet. Vicodin is working much better with my poor belly.

I can tell I’m moving around a bit better each day. Thursday, barely. Yesterday I was walking around holding onto things hunched over like an old lady and today I am walking more like a human…. but I’m still afraid to sit in a chair. The big goals for today are:

1. Poop- because I already got a few phonecalls from the doctor telling me to start with fiber supplements. Like, on one hand I want to so they quite harassing me, on the other, I’m afraid.
2. Start with motrin only- I have (HAVE) to go to clinical tomorrow and I can’t drive with vicodin)
3. Sit in a chair- after clinical we have a standardized ATI test we have to take back at campus.

I know, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to go to clinical, but it’s the end of the semester so there’s no time to make it up if I miss and if I skip without making it up, I’m dropped from the program. Not an option. I already spoke with my clinical instructor on Tuesday and said something to the effect of “I have to have surgery Thursday and the doctor SAID I should be ok Sunday, but I just wanted to let you know that’s why I’ll be moving a little slow”

Now… the discharge instructions said no lifting anything over 10lbs, to which I say “good thing we’re working in postpartum and maybe that means I can just play with newborns”

The bad news is the discharge instructions also say “No swimming of any type for 2 weeks”…. So, um, no Mexico for us :(…. good thing I bought that travel insurance.

Is this appropriate?

So I just got off the phone with whoever calls patients the day before surgery with instructions. I don’t know if nurses typically make those phone calls but I think someone needs to instruct this woman on a liiiiiittle bit of phone/patient ettiquiette.

She called to give me important information such as where to park and not to eat or drink after midnight.

After she verified who I was and that yes I was indeed supposed to come tomorrow for this surgery on my, you know, anus, she said (and this is a direct quote) “Is she gonna loosen you up a bit?”
….blink…blink…
Is that really an appropriate thing to say? I mean they instruct us in nursing school to not ask questions that aren’t directly related to what you’re doing, and aside from that, how about phrasing the question in a professional manner? I just said “pardon me?”

Now on a totally unrelated note, I was discussing the surgery with one of our fellows and she (she’s one of those people it’s hard to get a word in edgewise once they start talking) went off on this whole tangent about how I needed to ask the surgeon if it was ok for me to swim in the ocean in Mexico because infection infection infection and the ocean is dirty and you need to ask her and infection and you need to ask her and finally I stopped her and said “But really, tell me, is swimming in the ocean going to be more likely to cause an infection than pooping directly on the incision? Because that’s what I’m going to be doing” and she busts out laughing and says “yeah, that’s a REALLY good point”

….annnnyway. I’m still waiting to hear what time I’m scheduled, cross your fingers it’s early so I don’t have to go the whooooole day without eating.