just back into the normal routine

So the kids went back to school yesterday post-Christmas break.  I know I haven't even written about the joys that were our holiday break celebrations, but I will now present to you what these last 2 days of getting back into the "normal routine" have been.

Yesterday, first day back:

First Abigail's alarm didn't go off in the morning as she expected so she was just a bundle of cheerfulness, as you can imagine.  Then Samuel couldn't find his shoes.  Like no shoes, anywhere. There were lots of tears and screaming and crying about the loss of said shoes (I may have joined in with some yelling). How could we not have any shoes?!?  Isaac joined the search, I searched.  No shoes.  I texted Zac who told me to look in the car.  Why his shoes would have been left in the car when they normally would have joined his feet into the house, I have no idea, but lo and behold, there were the shoes. 

Then I got the younger 3 kids to school and drove back to find that Abigail's middle school bus had not arrived.  It was about 15 min late but I told her I was sure it would come soon and I left her standing in the cold at the bus stop.  About 20 min later, there was a knock on my door and there was Abigail and her friend frozen into popsicles telling me school already started about 5-10 min. ago and the bus had still not arrived and begging me to drive them.  So I did.  Wearing my polka-dot pajamas that Samuel gave me for Christmas.  Based on the line of about 20 cars dropping off kids (15 min after school started), it looked like we weren't the only ones that had waited for the bus-that-never-came (apparently they had some issues with buses not being able to start - nice).

In the afternoon, I picked up Elisabeth to take her to her gymnastics lesson.  She was showing me her very slightly wiggly front tooth and was convinced that it was coming out - today!! She wanted me to wiggle it and get it out.  It was clearly not ready to come out, but I gave it a good wiggle and we got in the car to go.  As soon as we pulled into the gymnastics parking lot, she wanted me to twist it,  sure that I could get it out.  No dice.  And she was getting mad that I wasn't helping her get this tooth out.  If you don't already know, when this girl gets mad, she gets mad.  She is the kid who still has hour long tantrums if, perhaps, she didn't get to go first in the bathroom.  Ugh.  So we're walking in and I'm trying to diffuse the ticking bomb.  I tell her, hey I wonder what you're going to do in gymnastics today?  What?!? she says.  I say it again. No! She says, that's not what you said before, tell me again!!  (this is a common explosion she has).  We're walking into the locker room where she has about 5 min. to change into her leotard before her class begins.  We don't really have time for a lot of dawdling.  But she's still stuck on this idea that I didn't repeat what I said verbatim and is now in full blown tantrum mode over it and refusing to change her clothes.  I help her out of her clothes, trying to tell her what I said, and then she goes back into the wiggling tooth, etc etc, crying and screaming in the locker room.  And she starts the "I'm not going to gymnastics!" spiel.  Sigh.  So I've manually helped her change all her clothes and I gather up all our stuff and walk out and over to the gym with her trailing behind me, still in tears.  We go in the gym and she's clinging to my legs, still crying. I explain to the teacher that she's "just a little grumpy." And one of the other teachers comes over and peels her off my leg, telling her how good she is at gymnastics, and I leave her in tears.  Wonderful.

The rest of the afternoon and evening, I have a killer migraine that has migrated to both of my eyes and both sides of my head.  One of the worst ever.  I go to bed with a headache, dream about my head hurting, wake up several times in pain and wake up, of course, with my head still hurting.

In the morning, as I am trying to direct everyone getting ready for school and trying not to move very much because me head, face, eye hurt like the dickens, all of a sudden I hear a lot of yelling coming from the kitchen area.  "There's a bird in the house!!!"  "Whaaaaat?!?!"
yeah.
There was bird - from outside - in our house - freaking out and flying around.  Elisabeth was screaming at the top of her lungs.  Isaac was reminding us that we certainly didn't want the bird to poop in our house (so helpful).  Samuel was yelling.  Abigail grabbed her video camera and recorded the whole chaos, along with a whole lot of "oh my goodness!!!"  And about all I could do for several minutes was groan and hold my head.  How were we going to get a bird out of our house.  Turned out that turning off all the lights and opening the back door wide and getting everyone to be quiet, was enough for it to get it's wits together and fly out.  Thank goodness!!!  I'm not sure how it came in, since I missed that part, but I think it must have been in the garage and flew in when someone opened it (it was -6 F outside, guess I can't blame it).

Anyway. After all that excitement, my head was about to explode so I loaded up on good meds and slept the rest of the morning.  In the afternoon when I was going to pick up the kids, I realized that our garage door was frozen.  This happens sometimes.  And someone has to push the garage door opener button while someone else simultaneously pushes the garage door up to get it open.  Well.  There was no one else to help me push the button.  So, after several minutes of panicked texting to Zac, I realized that I could go outside and use the keypad and push that button and be able to reach the garage door and push it up at the same time.  So I went outside.  But I slipped on our snowy and icy back steps and slipped all the way down, falling on my back and landing in the snow at the bottom.  Yes, I screamed and laid for awhile in the snow crying.  It just wasn't really what I needed.  You know?

But I got the door opened.  Picked up the kids. I think my coat had provided a good cushion protecting my back from serious injury.  But still. I went back to bed afterwards to nurse a killer migraine, face pain, and a nice sore back to top it all off.

Just getting back into the normal swing of things...
No big deal.

(oh and Elisabeth has just come into my room as I write this telling me that her tooth is definitely ready to come out now.  Seriously....)

Merry Christmas!

 

 

Here we all are,

wishing a very Merry Christmas to all of you!

Best Wishes!

 

 

Love,

Kristen, Zac

Abigail (age 13), Isaac (age 11), Samuel (age 8) & Elisabeth (age 6)

 

not the kids' real names

fifteen

Zac and I just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary! 

 

 And I know a lot of these pictures are repeats from facebook and Instagram, but I am making a (small) effort to get things back into the blog so I'm putting it here too.:)

 

 

First you have the privilege of witnessing the best wedding photo ever:

 

 The night of our anniversary we had decided to go out to eat at a "nice" restaurant, one requiring reservations, with tablecloths.;)  I stayed in bed most of the day trying to save up my energy, hoping my pain wouldn't be too bad that night and ruin my chance to enjoy a nice dinner.

 

I think it mostly worked.

 



 

 Of course I couldn't resist the chance to get lobster tails, yum yum (unfortunately I took this picture after I had slaughtered my mashed potato so it's not as "picture perfect", but oh well.). It was delicious.

 

 And I tried to catch a quick photo of Zac enjoying his meal, too.

 After dinner we walked around an outdoor mall for a bit.  But it was cold.  And the stores were closing.  So it didn't last long.  But we took an awkward pic in front of a pretty lit tree, so that was nice.;)  (Sometimes we are just very photogenic - haha)

Finally, the Instagram photoaday prompt for the day was pardon.  I was trying to be sneaky with my camera phone in the restaurant (just felt a little self-conscious in the fancy atmosphere) so none of them are very great photos - this one especially. But what I posted was that "15 years of marriage has required a lot of pardoning of many faults on both sides."

And that is the truth.

Happy 15th Anniversary Zac.:)

I will love you, again

“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
- Ellen Bass

Last night I found this poem that I copied into my journal a couple years ago, I think I may have even posted it here on my blog, and I was reminded of it again today as I read a talk about enduring trials and having hope.

Ironically, I identified with these words then when I was "just" dealing with depression, which certainly seemed hard enough. Now I have this chronic facial pain crap, along *with* the depression, which uh, well sometimes makes me want to swear and throw things. And sometimes leaves me sobbing on my floor.

And I struggle. I struggle to take life between my hands and look it in the eye, this life, these trials I have been given, and say, yes I will take you. I will love you, again.
I will take you. I will love you. Again.

That's what I am reaching, hoping, praying, struggling and striving for.

(Oh, help...)

A fresh start with more of the same: Neurology update

Awhile back I decided to switch neurologists.  I wasn't very pleased with the actual Dr, although the Physicians Assistant I saw was ok.  Then the office staff really ticked me off, giving me a hard time about faxing a form over for me with a medical excuse for releasing me from jury duty.  Anyway - called and set this appt for 2 months out.  Eventually cancelled my follow-up at the other Drs.  And today I got to see the new Dr.  Hooray.

Last night I spent a few hours scouring over my planners and prescriptions writing down appt dates, and medications/dosages I've tried, names of all the Drs I've seen etc.  I couldn't find or remember the name of the neurosurgeon I saw - but I think I got everything else.  Handed this new neurologist, Dr Z, this 3 page chart I put together.  haha.  I'm really hoping that was helpful for her to see everything I've already done, tried, gone through, endured etc.

And so she did a full neurological exam, reflexes, balance, sensation, etc. And then she suggested switching to a different anticonvulsant. She said we have tried a lot of meds, but have by no means exhausted all of our options.  Yeah.  So I'm going from carbazepine (tegretol) to oxcarbazepine (trileptol) since I was hating the side effects on tegretol.  Trileptol typically has less side effects AND doesn't require blood work to monitor liver function.  Duh!  She also prescribed a lidocaine ointment I can try (yes on my face) to try to numb out the pain a little when it gets bad.  It's not always effective but worth a try.

She also said that my reflexes are a bit "brisk" (or overreactive) which can sometimes indicate a spinal cord compression, in my case in the cervical spine.  The trigeminal nerve also goes through there in its path out of the brain (or something) so she recommended an MRI of my cervical spine (neck) to check that out.  She also wants to do an MRA of the brain which shows the arteries and can show if there are any arteries pressing on or twisted around the trigeminal nerve (finally!!!!).  And then, also she wanted to follow-up on that little tumor (schwannoma or meningioma) that showed up on the first MRI but on the other side of my head (so not causing my actual pain).  She said these need to be monitored to make sure it hasn't changed or grown.  And since it's been almost a year since my first MRI, she'd want to follow-up on that regardless.  And it's not clear on the report whether a neuroradiologist or a regular radiologist looked at my MRI and wrote up the report, so this time she wants to be sure we have it done at a hospital where she knows there's a neuroradiologist to take a look at it.  Good idea.

So, after waiting about 30 min while the nurse called hospital to schedule it for me, I have the 2 MRI's and MRA scheduled on Wed.  It will take about 3 hrs total (with my nice friend Valium)!  And then I go back to Dr Z in 2 months, giving the new meds a chance to start working (such a slow process). 

And that's where we stand now!  Not much has really changed . . . but hopefully a new start with someone who is making sure we are really not missing any pieces of the puzzle.  Phew.  I am really hoping we can figure things out ...

Halloween 2012

 This year we had a zombie DJ (?), Clifford the Big Red Dog (for the 2nd or 3rd time), a witch (who insisted on the green face), and a cat faced tutu-ed teenager (?).  I don't know.  I hate halloween.  I hate coming up with costumes (or not) and I kind of give up and don't care... very much.  Especially this year.  Just . . . whatever.  Get candy.

 We made it to see our fantastic neighborhood "Thriller" flash mob which was pretty dang cool (except Elisabeth started whining, "can we go trick or treating nooow?!").

Samuel and Elisabeth ran so fast from house to house it was hard to get any other pictures of them.

 

Isaac liked to exude an exterior of nonchalence, but underneath he was serious about candy.  And Abigail was just silly.  Dancing along the sidewalk, silly.

 

And finally, Elisabeth was a moody little witch. 

Here she is explaining, none too patiently, to Samuel that this picture was for her only.

 

And the picture, of her only:

Happy Halloween.

Nevermind

After missing posting 2 days and probably spending today in bed again, I have decided that NaBloPoMo is just unrealistic for me right now. I know it's early in the game to give up already but I would really feel better if we could all just pretend that that last post about posting every day was just a funny little typo, ok?

I hurt so much.
And my mind is a mess.

I give up.