Category: whining and complaining (Page 7 of 12)

The flu has hit our house. How exciting for us. Without all the gory details,
-Cole’s been home sick since Sunday. He missed four days of school and was finally able to go to school today. I live in fear at the amount of homework he will have after missing four days of school.
-Megan, who has had some weird symptoms off and on since Saturday night, is home today. She stayed home on Monday or Tuesday, but then felt better, so she went back. Today, she’s got full blown symptoms of coughing, runny nose and fever, so I just sent her back to bed.
-John acts perfectly fine during the day, but then when he goes to bed, he wakes up crying that his neck hurts, and he freaks out and screams and throws a fit when we try to give him medicine. He stayed home yesterday, but seems FINE right now. But after last night’s horror, I don’t see how I can send him to school.
-Ryan woke me up with his coughing the night before last. He finally got up and left, so I could get another hour of sleep, but then after I got up, he went back to bed and slept until almost noon. He doesn’t feel great today, either.

I am doling out tylenol, zinc, euchinachea, cold-ease, cough drops, thera-flu, dristan, vitamin C…and the list goes on. I wash my hands constantly, I’m using lysol wipes on my computer and mouse and the phone. I am gargling with salt water and taking all my vitamins because, while I have sympathy for my family members, I. can. not. get. sick. Someone has to be around to take care of these people, even if they don’t want to swallow the pills I am forcing on them. Besides, I have a CONCERT next week, and I can’t miss it.

I’m going to see if I can take John and Megan in to the doctor and see if we can’t find out something–anything about what they have and what ELSE I can do to help them get better.

And maybe pick up a mask for myself and the two girls who are still (knock on wood) healthy.

As of today, I have one less working vein. My left great saphenous vein is now inoperational. Hooray.

You may remember that I had my first vein surgery back in May, and it was a pretty unpleasant experience. The surgery was NOT quick and painless like they advertise, and the recovery process was long. Not debilitating, but just not jump back on your feet again in a few days fast like they tell you it will be.

I did a few things differently this time.

*When offered a Valium, I took the whole dose, instead of trying to be tough about it and only taking a half a dose. Who cares if I’m out of it for the whole day, right? It was a little bit better to be that much out of it.

*They have new paper shorts!! Instead of the tiny paper underpants that leave nothing to the imagination, they have new paper shorts! They look like long boxer shorts, and they are made out of that not really paper but not really fabric. They are much more comfortable, and I felt much less exposed. I should make sure they know how much I like the new shorts next time I’m there.

*I still had my MP3 player, but this doctor was more chatty, so I had to keep turning the music down to hear what he was saying. In fact, everyone was much more chatty today. The ultrasound tech and the nurse were chattin it up before the surgery, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. Maybe because it was Friday, or the sun was shining, or maybe they really like making people wince in pain-I don’t know.

*I cleared my schedule. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but the last time I went in, since I thought it was going to be an in and out things and not really make an impact in my life, I had a relief society thing scheduled for that night AT MY HOUSE, which I totally thought I could pull off. It was just the ladies who had birthdays that month coming over for dessert. And I would have been able to do it, had I not ALSO had a call back for Annie get your gun. That, I thought, would be a quick and easy thing, too. I mean, for Seussical, I had just gone, sung a song, read a few lines, and then they let me go. This was a long grueling process of learn a song in parts, sing it in groups, sing it in other groups, read some lines, sing more songs, etc. I was there until 10:00! And I had people at my house! They went on with the Relief Society thing without me, and I suffered through my audition (no wonder I didn’t get that good of a part! No, just kidding–my part was just fine), and then I felt horrible the next day. In short, I DID TOO MUCH.

This time, though, I’m smart. I came home and went to bed. I only slept for an hour or so, but I did not come out of my room until I smelled dinner. And I locked the door so the kids couldn’t come in to ask me stuff every two minutes. Or climb all over me. I’m not doing anything tonight, except this blog post, and then I’m going back up to bed. My dear sweet husband just went and rented me a movie (not the Proposal like I wanted, but Ghosts of Girlfriends past, which also should be funny. And who doesn’t like a little Matthew McConaughey when they are down? Am I right, ladies?).

My visiting teacher brought me dinner, even though I didn’t even tell her I was having this done. That makes me think that the Relief Society President must have called her and asked her to do it. I wasn’t going to ASK for meals, but if someone out of the goodness of their hearts wants to bring us a meal, my family is not going to complain. And it was very yummy. I have NOTHING scheduled for tomorrow, and I plan on lazing around all day. All day. Stop laughing. I really do. I also weaseled out of my commitments for Sunday, and I don’t plan on going to church that day, either. Just resting, relaxing, and healing. Really. Because I’m really hoping that if I take it really easy for the first three days that I can jump back into my life by the end of next week. We have things happening that I need to be involved in (more about that later).

*This procedure really did seem to go much better than the last one. I think the vein on this leg wasn’t as snakey and twisty turney as the right leg was. They also did NOT do any schlerotherapy at this time (they might do it later) which, I think, will make the recovery a lot less painful. Well, that’s what I hope.

So, there you have it. I’m gimpy, I’m wearing my lovely support compression stockings, and I can’t shower for two days. But I’m “vein free”, if not “pain free”. Ha, ha.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I’m heading up to bed to watch my silly movie, and hope I can sleep tonight.

It’s hard to get a good pictures of a bruised toe. But I tried, really I did.
Here’s the toe I smacked really good on Sunday, and thought it was broken. Over a week later and it still hurts. Isn’t it lovely? Well, you can’t see all the wonderful bruisy glory of the toe because it had already started to fade. Because I didn’t take the pictures until Thursday of that week, when I did this
You see, on Wednesday night, when I was still limping and in pain from the first stupid toe injury, I tripped on an 8 pound weight that was on my bedroom floor. It’s my own fault there was a weight there, but I can still be mad about it. Since I couldn’t shove my feet into shoes and couldn’t really walk or workout, I brought up the weights and just did some mini workouts with the weights. But I left them on the floor. As I was falling onto my bed, after whacking my toe AGAIN, I said, “Are you FREAKING Kidding me?!” So, then my toes were all injured together.

Now, almost a week later, the second toe injury is all better. The first one still hurts when I walk or lift up the ball of my foot. But life goes on. And maybe I’ll invest in some steel toed boots to wear around the house.

I’m feeling kind of blah today. Tired and out of sorts. No energy and grumpy. It could be because my painting did not go well yesterday, and what I thought would be finished by now is now unsatisfactory. It could be that time of the month (well, I know it IS that time of the month, but that may be why I’m a little discouraged), it could be that summer is ending and I want to still do fun things with my kids, but don’t want to expend the energy to do any more fun things.

And in trying to plan my son’s birthday party that he’s told me ALL about what he wants, I can’t find instructions. I was pretty sure there must be a Star Wars jedi training party out there, since all of his friends have had star wars parties lately, and I’ve been searching the family fun website, but I can’t find it. And there’s that yoda pinata that he wants. *Sigh*

I want to give myself permission to do nothing. Can I do that? Can I just not do anything productive today without considering myself a failure?

What do you do when you feel like this?

I’m one week past surgery, and darn it all, my leg still hurts. I guess when they tell me that there’s a “two week recovery time”, I shouldn’t just laugh it off and think, “Oh, I’ll be better in a couple of days. It’s just one little vein, after all.” One vein or not, this has been really hard.

For one whole week I’ve been wrangling my lovely compression stockings. They are SO TIGHT. I’m just wearing one leg of the set (well, I’m wearing both of the legs, but only one at a time). They are thigh highs, so I can just wear the stocking on the affected leg and not have to bother with the other leg. They stayed up fine for the first couple of days, but then the big old elastic top started to ‘roll’. And when a really really tight elastic starts to roll, it makes it very very tight, cutting into my leg.

I called my sister for advice. She wears compression stockings every day. Seriously. Every single day. So, I asked her how she keeps them from rolling at the top. She was a little confused, until I told her that they were thigh highs. “Oh, she said, I HATE the thigh highs. I bought a set of thigh highs once and I think I wore them one time. They squoze my thigh so tight, and then my fat poked out on the top. It was like I had two bums!” Now, this is from my sister, who despite being pregnant for the last 13 years of her life (10 kids–really), is as skinny as she was when she got married. If SHE thought she had a muffin top, imagine what I must be going through. Eek. Never mind. Strike that image from your mind.

So, although the compression stockings really do help my leg feel better, I hate the rolling at the top. So, today, I wrestled into my stocking (I’m all sweaty after I get it on. It’s the only workout I’m allowed to do right now, but it is seriously a workout), and then I had the brilliant idea to wear my Spanx power panty OVER the top of the compression stocking. Because it’s all tight and everything and then maybe it will keep the top of the stocking from rolling. And the spanx is actually less tight than the stocking. But so far it’s working. Keeping the stocking from rolling, I mean. But the muffin top that expands over the top of the stocking is getting sucked in by the spanx. That fat has to go somewhere, right? Remember how Rosie put it?
She opened the NBC broadcast cracking about her weight and the seamless girdle called Spanx she was wearing under her black sequined ensemble.

“It’s a onesie for chubby fortysomethings,” O’Donnell quipped. “I’d take a bow, but I can’t.”

So I’ve got a muffin top. In fact, I feel like I’m all muffin today.

And now I’m feeling like I would just love a muffin.

Yesterday was the day for the vein surgery. Or should I say, the FIRST vein surgery. Because, supposedly, I’m supposed to come back in and do this again. I’m not so sure about that.

And really, could I have scheduled it for a worse day? I doubt it. With three softball games, and Relief Society thing and call backs for a play on the calendar, it makes me about want to cry. But, magically, I got an email that one of the games was canceled, and I’ve got a friend taking one child to a game, so Ryan only needed to go to one of the games. I’m trying to go easy on him.

To avoid going into too much detail, (if you want details, you can read up about it here I’ll just give you a few highlights…

**To avoid a WHOLE day of loopiness and being out of commission, I only took 5 mg of valium. Maybe I should have taken the whole 10 mg.

** Paper underwear is the next thing in sexy. Only you can’t tell which is the front or the back because the triangles are the same size, and they don’t really cover anything, so I don’t know why they bother.

**Plugged into my MP3 player, I could avoid most scary sounds, but I should have maybe turned it up louder. Or borrowed a video ipod and watched a movie or something.

**At the point when I thought I could not stand it anymore (think numbing shots all the way from your calf to the top of your thigh) and wondered if I could just say, “Um, never mind. I’m outta here,” the doctor says to me, “Ok, we’re JUST ABOUT to start the laser process.” What? What have you been doing this whole time?

**By the time we were done, I felt like me and that doctor were pretty close. In fact, if he’d have gone any higher with those shots, I would have had to smoke a cigarette afterward. If you know what I mean.

**Loved having two guys shove me into my compression stockings.

**I planned to sleep all afternoon, and darn it, I could only sleep for about an hour.

**The best part of the whole experience was getting Kneaders for lunch with my husband, and having dinner brought in by my visiting teachers.

So, today I’ll be limping around and feeling sorry for myself. Yep, that’s about it.