Since the last posting, I got married, and life has been for the most part wonderful. Lately it's seemed like a roller coaster, only because of everything that's been going one, but here so here's a big update on the latest craziness.
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Man, have the past 4-5 weeks been a ride. Ugh. I've honestly had enough.
Depending on what you belive, good vs bad luck, yin/yang, the karma train, speed bumps of life, ebbs and flows, or whatever. Ours seems to have hit the downward spirl.
Things had been for the most part pretty great. We've kept up our appearances that we gave a crap about the world and trucking right along. Then the universe just started sending signs that the tides were changing. But good gawd, did they have to change THIS much???
I think for the last 5 appts I'd had with Dr. Group (most wonderful pain dude in Austin, hands down, if you are hurting, no matter what it is, as Amy says "You need to get with the Group! Period ) I have had to cancel at least 4 of them and I feel horrid about it. Not just physically, but emotionally too. I hate cancelling appts. I really do. It's bad enough that I haven't been doing my stretches like I should. Although, I have discovered that the stretches that had been causing numbing and stuff in my foot and leg no longer do that. I know because that's the ONLY stretching I've seemingly been able to find time for. But that's a good thing because that probably means that not only have the DRX-9000 treatments been working, but any swelling and what-not has subsided. Yea! I so miss everyone at the office, Dr. Group, Dr. Garcia, Tiffany (well I'm not really gonna say I've been missing her.... I love you Tif! ), Nicole, Jessica, Jane, and the stones. I really miss the stones. LOL!!! Oh for what I wouldn't give to just be able to spend my days there. Oh as the patient liason, yeah that sounds good. I'd be a good girl, I promise (hush Tif! ) It's probably been a good thing, Janie has been able to go through her internship without the crazy patient being around. LOL!!! So....moving on...
Libby, my beloved Jeep. Bless her heart, she blew a lower ball joint.
We'd decided to be cheap and run into Liberty Hill to get ice from the ice machine. Hey it's 20lbs for $1.50 compared to $2.99 & $3.99 at the other much closer option. It's a good thing that we chose to take CR213 to by-pass the 183/29 intersection because in the middle of the curve on CR213 the ball joint went. BAM - POP- GGGRRRRR - WTF!? There was no way she could be driven home. So I called my dad to bring the trailer and I call Dr. Wheeling (Matt, the best mechanic in Austin) to let him know what happend, and he says bring his girl in. So Dad and Jeff get the wheel secured and she loads right up. The next morning we head over to Dr. Wheelings Day Spa (as I like to call the shop). What happened next had me feeling like a mom with a kid in the ER with a broken femur. I know I was on the phone with Tiffany when they were trying to unload her and all the straps and everything that was being used to secure the wheel came undone. I probably sounded horridly frantic. Hell, I was. LOL! It seemed like it took hours to get Libby off the trailer, I'm sure it wasn't, but it sure seemed that way. She had gone on so easily, but she sure wasn't going off that way. They finally got her off and as soon as Matt backs her up about a foot, it all blows apart again. It was a horror film I tell you! Jeep Nightmares from Hell! That was it, I couldn't take it any more, she was in Dr. Wheelings good hands, he'll take good care of her. He loves her too. I put myself in the truck. I just couldn't watch anymore.
Come to find out, the ball joints had been recalled. They weren't on the recall list last time I'd checked, and sure enough they had been added to the list in 2006. Like within 6-8 months of when Rich had passed and I honestly don't think I've looked at the recall list since then. Oh well. So long story shortened...a bit, the new ball joints and work were going to be covered by Jeep. Ye. So Libby was moved to the dealership. They ordered replacements, turns out those were bad, they ended up scrounging the state and got (supposidly) the last set of ball joints in the state for my girl.
I got my Libby back on a Thursday. Life was good. The birds were singing, the sun was shining and all was right (for the most part) in the world. Now, let's all get in the magic time machine and jump forward a week to the next Thursday.
We wake up as usual. No, if I remember we had actually gotten up a wee bit early. Anyway...I head downstair to put Licorice and Flipper out for their morning constitutionals. I go to the kitchen to make coffee in our new coffee maker (the one I'd had for like 6 years died over the weekend) and I hear this blood curdling yelp. Sounded just as though one of the dogs had hit the eletric fence in the back yard. But the fence wasn't on. So I go out on the front porch and walk around to the left side where I had heard Licorice walk around to and she's not there. I hear the yelp again. So I head back around to the right side, Flipper is laying at the door, as I pass the door Jeff's like "Did you hear that?" And like yeah, but...there's the yelp again, so I call for Licorice and she comes running up the garden path, her tail tucked between her legs. She runs up on the porch and starts rubbing her face. I thought maybe she'd been stung by something, but as she was rubbing she pulled her lip back and that's when I saw it. Her canine tooth was sticking straight out to the side. OH great! I've seen this before, when Foster, my beloved late Corgi had gotten his tooth caught in a D-ring on a collar. She's broken her jaw bone and ripped her tooth out. Wonderful. A dog who hates car rides is going to be hauled off to the vet to get her jaw wired and have weekly checkups for the next 2-3 months. Wonderful.
So we make the phone calls we need to make, load her up and head into Cedar Park to the vet. Apparently, things have changed greatly since Dr. Wells fixed and wired Fosters jaw. If you want that done, you have to go to the doggie dentist (wtf?), so since Lic is 12 1/2 yrs we opted to just have the tooth removed. It's not like she's out having to hunt her own food. She is the current reigning spoiled rotten princess after all. The vet said she couldn't have broken it any better for it was broken pretty cleanly on either side of the tooth instead of the bone breaking into shards like it usually does. So her surgery wasn't as bad as they had expected. They packed the area with some crystals that will help the bone grow back in and she'll have to go back in a week or so (now) for a check up.
This actually makes it look not as bad as it was
Drugged up snoozing girl on the way home.
And this brings up to Friday. Ah Friday. The end of the week, the day the majority of the working folk longingly look forward to ALL freaking week long.
Jeff stays home to look after Lic. I head out in not the best of moods, I've got a migraine brewing and a intense meeting staight out of the chute that morning on a project, no one really has a clue about, but it will mean insane web work for me...and then some. I finally get to the office and start trying to get my materials ready for the meeting. The print jobs got screwed up the night before. I'm trying to make copies, the new copiers are S-L-O-W A-S M-U-D. And to top that off, it messed up a page and is shooting them out all wrong and stapling in the wrong place and oh gawd what a mess. The boss starts breathing down my neck. My eye starts twitching. I'm fighting hard to keep my oatmeal down and it wasn't working real well. I really don't know anything more about this new project than anyone else. I really don't have any answers to anything, it's really all new to me too, but I was standing my ground. If I didn't agree totally with an approach I said so. I mean, hello, not everyone works the same as others. What method you may take to review 250 web pages is not necessarily what would work for someone else. And if saying so makes me a total and utter bitch, well then, I guess I'll just have to be the one to wear the bitch hat.
I've gotten so used to my thoughts and opinions just being so automatically shot down that I have really gotten to the point that I just keep my mouth shut. I still try every now and then to join the team and help on things, but 99% of the time, everything I bring is wrong. Looking at photos for covers, flip flip flip, that's your cover, no that's all wrong that the worst option... mag goes to print...huh, that's the photo I suggested, and cropped just as I was going to suggest. It's one thing if it's an isolated situation but it's not. So anyway....
We were suppose to go out for Kathy's birthday, but I felt like total crap. I just wanted to puke and crawl under a rock. By 12:20 I'd been spending the past hour freezing, I checked with a couple of other ladies in the office and they said they were cold too. But I justed seemed too cold. So I checked my temp, it was 99.8. Okay, let's watch this. So I set about working on things for this new project, was working backwards and had reached our area on it, I felt drained, I hadn't eaten because my oatmeal still felt like it was in my throat, and I was still freezing, actually it felt worse, so I took my temp again. 101.7. That's it. Time to start following our H1N1 protocols (that's the Swine Flu for those that might not know). I call my dr and they can't get me in till Monday. Since I thought this might just be related to the migraine and the stress I go ahead and set an appointment, knowing that I could always go to an after hours clinic or the ER if things got worse.
By the time I get home and we find a thermometer I'm 103.4. I down some Tylenol and start the bath. All night I fight the fever. 3 1/2 hours into that 4 hr Tylenol window the temp starts creeping up. It never really break below 100. When Saturday afternoon rolled around, I'd still be in the 100's thought I'd try and stretch that 4 hour window out a bit to stretch the dosing, because I'd already be hitting the max they say on the bottle. Well big mistake THAT was. Jeff had gone to band practice. I'd been pretty stable all day, so I told him to go, I was okay. By 2:00pm, I was in the 102's, by 2:45 in the 103's. Bath time!!! By 3:15 I was at 104.6. HOLY COWS! As much as I hated to interrupt band practice I had to call Jeff to come home from Bastrop. Yes, Bastrop. It was time to head to the ER. I know it did climb to 104.8 and for the next hour or so it bounced back and forth between 103.8 and 104.6. It would look like it was going down and then would shoot back up. All the while I was turning the temp down on the water and draining the tub and refilling. I did have a bit of a panic attack. Here I was, in a tub of cool water, super high temp, and alone waiting on my knight, my brother is in Dallas, Mom and Dad are in South Texas at the ranch. I had to snap myself out of it, this was no time for weakness. I was alone, with a super high temp, in a tub full of water waiting on my knight, I had to keep my head together.
Jeff gets home, we head off to the ER to basically be told "eh fevers are fevers" and I don't have a kidney infection (in the past if I spike a fever like that it's a kidney infection 4 out of 5 times it has been) they didn't bother to test for anything else. Course I should have listened to Jeff and taken a towl to dry the PA's ears off. So nothing new came out of that. Well, nothing that I didn't already know. Yea....not.
So Monday I keep my appt with my GP. 2nd visit ever. First time I saw him it was in Dec as a recommendation of Dr. Group, Dr. Mauldin had been a DRX-9000 patient too so he'd def know what I was in for. Think I shocked him a bit. I didn't want pain pills or muscle relaxers or physical therapy or anything other than a referral to Dr. Group. If it was possible to fix my back and pinched nerve that's what I wanted to do, not just mask the pain. So anyway, he said my ears and throat were infected, didn't think it was the flu, gave me antibiotics, took a ton of blood and I have appt on Monday for results.
I know part of what the results will be. And I know that means a return to my Xyience days diet and stuff. Jeff's been saying I REALLY need to get back to my yoga more because my stress levels have been so high because of my stressor. Our schedule is so wacked that that probably will mean getting up at 4:30 again.
The changes that are gonna come will be so much better and easier if we can do it together. I can't force what I need on him, but I need my old life back, the healthy part of it, not not being with him. He's the most wonderful man ever. But I have to do this change for me. Things are always better when we do them together, but if we don't, then I know he'll be at home keeping the home fires burning for me.
Okay, I think this is WAY more than enough of a catch up. If you have managed to read to this point answer this question, what's the name of my Jeep? LOL! For all that answer I'll buy you a drink next time I see you!
So, can I get off this roller coaster pleeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeeeeee?
Many hugs and kisses!
Ms. Bad
