Category Archives: Friends & Family

on the mend

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Cate finally seems to be recovering from the worst of this latest cold, but she’s still not back to her normal self. I ended up using baby tylenol suppositories to help with her fever because I couldn’t get her to keep anything down. Her fever finally broke yesterday, so she’s gradually been getting better. Her appetite is still off, but at least she isn’t vomiting everything back up.

I, however, am not so good. My cold seems to have turned into full-on bronchitis. I keep waking myself up at night with coughing fits that feel sort of like spasms in my chest, so that’s pretty miserable. Luckily I have a full course of antibiotics that my doctor gave me when I got sick last month, so I’ve started on those to try to kill this thing off before we leave for Mississippi. I try not to take antibiotics unless I have to (hence the reason I never took the ones I was prescribed last month), but past experience has taught me that when I get bronchitis, it’s always bacterial, not viral. So, time to bring on the drugs.

And I must confess, the absolute worst time to have a cold yourself is when your baby is sick. She wants to have her face buried in my neck all the time, and she wails when I set her down, so trying to figure out a way to free my hands so that I can blow my nose is almost impossible. And no one else can soothe her, she just wants her mama all the time.

Last night I put her in her crib when she was already asleep, but she immediately woke up and started to fuss. For the first time ever, I let her cry herself to sleep in her crib because I just needed a few minutes of her not being on me. I still feel guilty about that, but it took maybe four minutes at the most for her to settle herself back to sleep. And she wasn’t wailing, it was more like pitiful whimpering. So I’m pretty sure I haven’t inflicted any long-lasting damage on her. Still, it sucks.

Thinking of deep psychological trauma, though, I think we might’ve accomplished that when we took her to get her picture taken with Santa last week:

It probably wasn’t worth the money to get that one picture, but you know, it’s her first Christmas, so it seemed like one of those big milestone moments that should be documented. And he was a good Santa, real beard and everything.

Update on my mom: she’s doing really well. She’s home, and sounded totally normal when I talked to her. She’s started cutting her painkillers in half so they won’t make her feel stoned, so if she’s able to do that, it doesn’t seem like she’s in that much pain. So that’s good news there. Can’t wait to get there and give her a hug (a week from tomorrow!).

misery and woe

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We are all sick as dogs here. With the exception of my mother-in-law, who seems to have an immune system of steel, the rest of us (including her boyfriend Roger) have succumbed to the snotty crud. It’s awful. Nothing like trying to take care of a sick baby when you feel absolutely horrid yourself.

Poor Cate seems to have the worst of it. The pediatrician found that she has the beginning of an ear infection, so we’ve got her some antibiotics to fight that off. She’s also had a really high fever (102.8 last night, 102.4 this morning) and has just been miserable. Last night was the sickest I’ve ever seen her. I tried to give her Tylenol or Motrin on a couple of different occasions, but she was so upset and agitated that she kept vomiting it back up when I put it in her mouth. We let her squirm around on our bed and whimper for a while to get her to settle down, then tried again. I finally managed to get some Tylenol in her, and she seemed to feel a little better after that. But it’s been pretty horrible for the most part.

This morning she coughed up mucus all over me and herself. That was a special little mommy moment that I hadn’t been expecting. Truly lovely.

In other news, my mom had a double mastectomy today. I just heard from my sister, who said that she’s out of surgery and doing fine, so that’s great to hear. My mom has decided to hold off on the implants for a few months. According to the plastic surgeon, this is a little different than the reduction, and the outcome is usually better if you wait for the surgery to heal first, so she’ll go back in for reconstruction in 5-6 months.

This has been the most bizarre week, between my mom’s two surgeries, us getting sick, my in-laws being here (who we haven’t seen since our wedding in 2005), and the upcoming holidays. I really can’t process everything that’s been going on. And the Sudafed isn’t helping either.

Oh, and I’m supposed to go to a meeting tomorrow and actually sound somewhat coherent and smart. Ha! We’ll see about that.

ah, sh*t

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My mom had a follow-up today with her doctor to get her stitches removed and talk about her test results. I don’t really know how to sum this up, but basically, the story is that the surgeon removed the entire tumor bed and everything around it tested negative, which is great. But they also run tests on the extra tissue that the plastic surgeon removes when he does the reduction. And unfortunately, when that came back from the pathologist, they found a whole other cancer against her chest wall.

On the one hand, it’s good that they found it, because it’s so small (only 0.9 centimeters) and so far back, it could’ve been years before it showed up on a mammogram. And by that point, it might’ve been stage 3 instead of stage 1. But at the same time, are you kidding me? She just went through all this, and now she has to start over? WTF?

So she’s going back on Tuesday for a full mastectomy, and reconstructive implant. She isn’t sure yet if she’s going to have a preventative mastectomy of the other breast or not, she’s going to wait to discuss that with her doctor. She has a really good attitude about it, she says that she feels like she’s still in recovery mode, so the idea of starting over doesn’t seem so bad. She says she thinks it was divine intervention that this was found when it was.

My dad, on the other hand, is really freaked out and pissed off. They’ve been married for almost 38 years, and he’s 10 years older than her, and I think the idea that she might not be around scares the bejeezus out of him. So I’m almost more worried about him at this point.

My sister was supposed to head back to NYC on Wednesday, but since my mom’s surgery will be on Tuesday, she’s bumped her flight until Sunday the 16th. I still wish I was there, but there isn’t really anything I can do about that. I’ll be there two weeks from today as it is.

Somebody pass the ibuprofen. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop grinding my teeth at this point.

family stuff, etc.

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My mom’s surgery went well. The doctor removed the three lymph nodes closest to the tumor and they all tested negative, which is great news. Not sure yet what the next steps will be as far as treatment, but so far so good. She was discharged from the hospital this morning, so she’s home and high on painkillers. Sounded like things were as normal as can be expected. Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers.

Just to make yesterday a little bit more stressful for me, my in-laws arrived from the UK, so I went on the Mandatory Cleaning Frenzy that I do every time we have houseguests. I don’t know why I do that – they’re here to see us, they don’t care about the state of the house, but you know, I have this Southern Hostess Gene and it makes me a teensy bit irrational sometimes.

Also, why is it that every time we have company, everything in the house starts falling apart? In the past 36 hours:
1. Cate’s closet door fell off (WTF? No idea how that happened)
2. Our septic tank alarm keeps going off because of all the rain we’ve had. Seems the tanks are getting flooded. Fabulous!
3. Our kitchen sink started to leak, which is the exact same thing that happened back in March when Alphagal and e-baby were here.
4. The faucet in our bathroom broke and we couldn’t turn the cold water off, so we had to shut off the valve under the sink.

Our plumber is here fixing the last two items on the list. We’ll get the closet door fixed later, and there isn’t really anything we can do about the septic tank until all this damn water starts to dry up. Oh, and our street is flooded again, just like it was last year, so we have to go on crazy-long detours to get anywhere.

I hate winter in the boonies. Oh well, at least we still have our electricity. (Quick, knock on some wood before that statement sends me to Jinx Hell.)

good vibes request

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My mom is having her breast cancer surgery today. I’m relieved that she’s just having a lumpectomy and a reduction, but I’m still a little freaked out and worried. It’s just that whole idea of thinking about your parents’ mortality, which I think is one of those things that nobody likes to think about.

If you are at all the praying type, please throw one or two in our direction. And if not, good thoughts and healthy vibes are just as appreciated.

NaBloPoMo Day 28: all over creation

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First of all, if you haven’t been following the comments on this post, go read them. That Google is a funny thing. Although I’m slightly mortified that I dissed a cartoon in passing and then the show’s creator left me a comment. Eek!

Today has been crazy errand-running day. After dropping Cate off at daycare, I:
* Made the rounds at Costco and stocked up on formula and other essentials.

* Got a haircut. (It’s been over three months since my last one – I was due.)

* Hit a health food store for protein and vitamin supplies (end results of my gastric bypass). While I was there, I ran into a former friend who I haven’t spoken to since before Dave and I got married. That was awkward, but I decided to be the bigger person and say hi. It wasn’t so bad.

WARNING TO MY DAD: No reading below this point!! (Not that I’m worried, I don’t think he ever reads this site.)

* Went to the Microsoft store to buy my dad’s Christmas present. This required me to be kind of sneaky and subversive, since I haven’t worked there for a year, so technically I’m not allowed to shop there anymore. I tried using my old badge to unlock the door, which of course didn’t work, so I asked the security guard if he’d let me in, and he did without even giving my badge a second glance. The thing is, my badge showed that I was a contractor, so it’s not like I would’ve gotten any cool employee discounts anyway, it was just gaining admission to the Sacred World of Things with Microsoft Logos on Them.

(I got my dad a golf shirt. He loves them. He likes bragging to his golf buddies about how his daughter works there. Or used to. Technically, my paycheck still comes from them in a very indirect way, but that’s a long story.)

(Oh, and I got Cate a “Microsoft Kid” t-shirt since she’s outgrown her Microsoft onesie. Hee! Dave says she isn’t allowed to leave the house wearing it. Whatever. We’ll just see about that.)

And now, it’s off to give the baby a bath and head off to bed. I feel like I haven’t stopped moving all day. So tired.

NaBloPoMo Day 26: random stuff

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1. My mom is having her lumpectomy a week from tomorrow (December 4th).

2. I think I’ve been more worried about my mom than I’ve been letting on, because I’ve been grinding my teeth in my sleep. As a result, my jaw is killing me, and ibuprofen isn’t touching it. I’m not sure what to do about that, short of sleeping with a bite guard in my mouth (sex-ay!).

3. Work is slowing down. I’ve finished all of my projects, so I’m just working on edits right now. Which is kind of nice, since the in-laws arrive next week and I don’t want to be frazzled with work stuff while they’re here.

4. Cate has been doing all kinds of new, groovy tricks lately, but I’m saving them for her 10-month birthday tomorrow. Finally you’ll have a blog post worth reading.