Tag Archives: sick

The Week.

The Week.

Analie has a yeast rash.  There are words that describe how I feel about yeast rashes.  Not many, but there are definitely words.  Suffice it to say, it has been a long week.  Ana has felt awful and I haven’t felt much better due to her nearly constant fussing over being so itchy.

We’ve been through the entire rigamarole, too: I wash her diapers in baking soda and vinegar, she takes 2-3 baking soda baths a day, we used Lotrimin and Boudreaux Butt Paste with nearly every diaper change up until Thursday when we got some stronger stuff from Analie’s doc, and Analie gets to sit outside in the altogether for an hour or two a day.

I’m trying to keep her diaper off her as much as possible, poor thing.

She’s all about it.  It’s the best part of having a rash, really.

In addition to having a rash, poor girl has also had some issues with constipation due to the solids we have been (unsuccessfully) feeding her.  So she has been drinking 3-4 ounces of water a day (her favorite), prune juice, and I learned that pharmacies sell glycerin suppositories and how to shave them down teeny tiny.

TMI?

Sorry.  You’re reading the wrong blog.

And did I mention the teeth?

I forgot that?

Well, they finally appear to have broken through the gums, just one corner of each tooth.  BUT I’LL TAKE IT.

It’s like the Terrible Trifecta week.

But look at those eyes

and cheeks

and smile.

Mama loves.

I ate a raw egg yolk

I ate a raw egg yolk

I contracted some kind of deathly virus when I was visiting Iowa over the weekend.  My throat is really, really sore but since I haven’t run a fever or anything I figure it’s just something I will eventually get over.  Par-tay.  Taking care of a newborn is eleventy billion times more complicated when you’re trying not to hack/sneeze/cough on her face.

Currently Joey’s her singing a made up song about how she never lifts a hand to help around the house.  The song is totally true.

Anyway, last night I was suffering through my sore throat by pathetically laying on the couch watching Survivor when my friend Angel suggested, via text message, that I swallow a raw egg yolk.  Because of course that’s the first thing anyone ever thinks of when suggesting home remedies for sore throats, right?

Well, turns out that swallowing egg yolks is a bona fide old-timey remedy.  It’s called something gross like Gogol-Mogol and you’re basically supposed to just whip the egg yolk up, add some sugar and some brandy and toss the thing back.

After about ten minutes of going back and forth, during which time Angel offered me $1.00 to do it. So the stakes raised drastically and I decided why the heck not.  I should just eat the yolk and see what happened to me.  Who knows, maybe I would feel so much better.

I went to the kitchen and started mixing up my Gogol-Mogol mixture.  We didn’t have any brandy, so I left it out and just added sugar.  That turned the yolk into a soupy, thick mess.  In retrospect I should have put water or something in place of the brandy, because as I stared down into the dish with my yellow, oozy, and now very grainy egg yolk (from all that sugar), I started to feel queasy.

The yolk mixture was so thick I couldn’t just pound it back like I had originally been planning to.

It looked like I was going to have to use a spoon.  This was going to take more than one swallow.

“Come in here and do it so I can watch!” Joey yelled from the den.

I told him I’d better stay in the kitchen by the sink in case I threw up.  He agreed.  And then suddenly he didn’t want to watch me eat the yolk anymore.

I filled my spoon full of yolk and dumped it in my mouth.  Then I tried to force myself to swallow.  I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t that the yolk tasted bad (it didn’t, surprisingly) it was just so….SLIMY.  And THICK.  I counted to three…and swallowed.

It went down with only a slight quivering of the gag reflex.  Because the whole time I was trying to force myself to swallow all I could think about was the fact that I was eating Essence of Baby Chicken.

I wish I could say the second spoonful went down as easily.  And it wasn’t even nearly as large as the first one, but I did find myself coughing as I swallowed.  It stayed down though.  Gotta get my dollar.

By the third spoonfull?

I was totally gagging over the sink.

It was disgusting.

And I’m sure that if I HAD thrown it up, it would have had the opposite effects of whatever  benefits the egg yolk would have had.

But, good for me, I managed to keep it down.  Angel better not renege on the dollar.  If she does, I’m showing up at her house with egg yolks.  Although for the rest of the evening whenever I thought about it I’d start gagging again.

This morning, my throat still hurts.  Pretty sure I’m not throwing back any more egg yolks for $1.00, though.

Now, if you pay me $10.00…I might consider it.

Shocking, yes, BUT TRUE

Shocking, yes, BUT TRUE

I was laying there, sleeping peacefully, when all of a sudden my dream went TOTALLY wrong.  Because, my mouth was burning and suddenly I couldn’t breathe and I was all, AM I DYING?!

Then I realized no, no, not dying…just throwing up.  In my sleep.

I’m pretty sure that’s a choking hazard.

And I sat up faster than I have sat up since before I was pregnant.  I’m not sure that I didn’t pull a muscle doing so. (Well, except for the fact that I feel fine this morning and no muscles feel pulled.)

To back up, Joey and I went to see Secretariat last night.  I’ve been wanting to see it for a few weeks now, because I always love a good horse movie (there are rarely jump scenes and guns, so it’s right up my alley) and we figured we ought to squeeze it in before the baby is born.  We got popcorn.  Joey purchased a Medium.  There was no popcorn left when the movie was finished.

The movie was over about 9:30, we went home and were really tired, me mostly because the ending of the movie had made me cry like a girl (yes, I knew the horse was going to win) and it wore me out.

So between eating tons of popcorn and crying all over my napkins, I must have riled up my intenstinals?  It’s hard to say.

Back to 1:00 a.m. with the throwing up business.  Fortunately it was self-contained (hence the choking hazard), and I was pretty sure I could have kept the theme going if I’d really felt like it.  (One of my greatest skillz is my ability to control if I puke or not.  It was acquired over a long childhood of stomach issues.)  I didn’t really feel like finishing the business off, because I really didn’t feel sick, so I took a bunch of deep breaths, stood still in the bathroom for a few minutes, and got some water.

By the time I returned to bed, I felt mostly normal again.  I quickly surveyed to ensure that nothing had happened to the sheets that I would regret laying back down on, and then I went back to sleep.

This is a very disgusting blog post.

But I feel like I’m doing a community service to inform you all that YES,  YOU CAN THROW UP IN YOUR SLEEP.  So…sleep with one eye open, Internet.

We Are Sick.

We Are Sick.

Thursday afternoon, I started feeling like I was getting Sickly.  You know, when it hurts when you swallow and your sinuses get all angry?  And then if you drink a ton of cranberry juice, everything in your whole head stings?

Yeah.

Then Friday, it got worse.  More sniffly and such.

And Saturday, I rallied because it was Old Threshers.  But more on that later.  All I’ll say now is that we had fun and our camera got destroyed because somehow it fell out of the basket and either got ran over or stepped on by a really, really plump person.  The screen is cracked.  It was in its safety case.

By Saturday evening, I wasn’t feeling very good at all.  My throat was hurty, my nose was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey, my lungs were tickly which made me cough, and my ears were itchy and popping.

When we arrived home at 9:30 from Old Threshers, I discovered that Henry had also fallen ill.  Quite ill.  And it’s not a head cold like me.  He was Quite Ill, actually.  I felt super sorry for him and we rushed around, dealing with cleanup while Henry just sat there, staring at us like “GUYS, where were you?!  I needed you to help me!”

I shall not describe the effects of Henry’s illness.  This is a family blog.

The night before he had woken me up with whimpering because he needed to go outside RIGHT NOW, so I should have known he wasn’t feeling well.

Poor Henry got sick again one more time before we all went to bed, and Joey and I agreed that if he got any worse overnight, we’d have to find a vet in Cedar Rapids and call one.  Fortunately he was still drinking water and not acting too lethargic, but he was still making us nervous.

Between Henry being sick and me being sick, I didn’t sleep well at all last night.  I think I woke up 6 or 7 times, and every time I checked on Henry and used about 3 tissues on my nose.  (The pile on the floor by my bed was getting pretty epic as morning came nearer.)  I was so pleased that Henry made it all night without any bouts of illness, so I got up early and made him a very bland breakfast of oatmeal, chicken, and a touch of yogurt.

He ate about half (I made him way too much) and seemed happy with his breakfast, but he went back to laying around.

An hour later, just as I was getting ready for church, he got sick and threw up all over the floor in the bathroom.  ALL OVER THE FLOOR.  Joey and I just kind of stood there and stared at him.

Then we called the vet.

The vet said Henry was probably OK, but keep an eye on him and if he’s still getting sick with such magnitude, to bring Henry in on Monday morning.  He advised me to feed him rice and boiled hamburger for dinner, assuming he hadn’t been explosive for the rest of the day.

I was feeling better after this and continued getting ready for church.

Then, Henry got sick again.  Only, not the kind where he throws up all over the floor.

We decided that we’d lock Henry in the bathroom while we all left for church…just in case his intestinal tract wasn’t quite as empty as we thought it was.

“But at least he lost less blood this time,” I said.  It made me feel about 10% better, but the remaining 90% of concern for Henry was making my ribcage itchy.

So yeah.  Henry is sick and so am I.  And it’s lunchtime now.  I can eat it (Joey says it smells great; I can’t really smell anything), but Henry is cut off.

More water, please

More water, please

For Indiana, today was a muggy day.  Deceivingly hot and humid.  The kind of day where you have to be cognizant of your water intake.

This afternoon we made a second pass at our top house choices, and I brought my purple SIGG bottle along filled with nice cold water.  I drank a ton of it at the first house (which we subsequently decided was waaaaaaaaaaay overpriced, plus too small) and we hopped in the car and buzzed off to the second house.  I drank my water before we got out of the car, and then we spent the next 30 minutes looking around the house, walking the yard, and chatting with Bobby, our stand-in Realtor because Trena was unavailable.

Bobby wound up being hilarious.  We like Bobby.

Sometime about halfway through the second house, I started noticing water on my shirt.  And I wondered…did I stand under a trippy downspout?  Or lean up against something wet?

I dried myself off and continued walking around outside…and noticed it again.

And again.

And again.

By the end of the third house, I was feeling absolutely awful; my entire body was aching for some weird reason, my head was pounding, and I felt dizzy.  It was then that I noticed the lower middle part of the back of my pantleg had gotten wet.  I was just trying to figure out what in the WORLD I kept getting in to, when I realized that all this water?  It was coming from ME.

I guess pregnant women perspire?  Apparently this one does.  Perspiration is a new and uncommon thing for me, which is why I kept thinking I was getting in sprinklers or standing under drips.  By the time I figured out what was going on, I had been basically gushing water for about an hour.  It was way past time to re-hydrate.

And of course as soon as I realized I had dehydrated myself, I really started feeling awful.

I dragged myself out to the front lawn and Joey took one look at me and said, “Um, are you OK?”

“My morale is destroyed,” I said.  “I feel fine except for the fact that I am aching everywhere and thirsty and sweaty and my head hurts.”

So, maybe I didn’t feel fine and I just wanted to think I did.

We headed home and I drank two glasses of water, one glass of juice, and lay down for an hour.  I was still feeling achy and basically terrible when it was time to go for dinner.  “What time is our meeting tonight?” I asked Joey in the car.

“It’s at 8, and I don’t think you’re going,” he told me.

“I feel fine,” I said.  “I can still go.”

Then I tried to get out of the car and it hurt so bad that I amended my statement.  “OK, maybe I don’t feel fine.  Maybe I should stay back.”

Joey just looked at me like, Um, YEAH.

This is why I have my hair in a ponytail, I am wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a comfy chair, and am not wearing any shoes.  I have to stay here tonight and I can’t go.

All because I dehydrated myself.

Note to self: drink even more water than normal.

Woozy

Woozy

First of all, let me try to find this blog under the thick layer of dust that has collected on top of it.

……………..

HELLO, INTERNET!

Let me just begin by saying there is really one word to sum up my little hiatus: Olympics.  And secondly, I have a major head cold.  So that’s where I done gone off to.  Every spare moment I have I’m watching the Olympics and blowing my nose and throwing the tissues on the floor.

(Not really, I’m throwing them in the trash can.)

I’ve spent nearly the last three days kind of lazing around in this strange Day/NyQuil haze, which makes me not a safe person to be around, trying to remember what I said I wouldn’t forget.  Poor Joey, we have the same conversation about 12 times a day when I take NyQuil, since it takes about 36 hours for it to get out of my system after I take it.

He is a longsuffering and noble husband.

Anyway, we were sitting around today when I was all, Joey I feel woozy.

And then I began a long diatribe about how the word “woozy” is really an onamotapeia because just saying “woozy” makes me feel woozy.

It’s a true story.  Say the word “woozy”.  Come on, say it.

Didn’t you feel kind of weird afterwards?

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Ugggggggh

Ugggggggh

So last night we went to Gloria’s for dinner with some friends.  We had a ridiculously fun time eating chips and salsa, eating yummy Mexican food and LAUGHING OUR HEADS OFF.

Joey and I left early because, um, HELLO didn’t you know that the 2010 US Figure Skating Championships in Spokane were on TV last night?  Women’s long program, Internet.  And it’s like prelude to the Olympics (which make me cry with excitement just thinking about them.)  And since Joey is a rockstar who realizes that I have been literally GLOWING with anticipation for about the last six months, he got our Olympics TV Setup finished yesterday afternoon so I could watch the competition.

As I said, he’s awesome.

Anyway, we got home about 8:00 and flipped on the computer/TV and for the next two hours I happily absorbed figure skating.  But…I had started to feel kind of weird.  Like, not so good at all. Not so good.

About 10:30 we fell asleep and set the alarm early enough so we could make it to Sunday School.

At 2:30 a.m., I woke up and was suddenly, COMPLETELY awake.

Something was wrooonnnnnng with my innards.  I did not feel like getting sick at all, but I was feeling so miserable that that’s all I wanted to do.  Whenever I get sick I always wind up waking up in the middle of the night and pacing the house for several hours before It Happens.  Joey is way more lucky, he’s able to get It over with so much quicker than me.

So I paced around wrapped in a blanket, dug around in the closet and somehow didn’t wake Joey up, brought Henry into our room, tried to read a book…for so, so long.  Something had totally been wrong with my food.

Two hours, a bunch of water and two tablets of Gaviscon later, I decided to cut my losses and try to go back to sleep.

Miraculously, I fell asleep and woke up when the alarm went off, blaring at 8:00.  I rolled over and told Joey how awful my night had been, and all he wanted to know was if I threw up all over the place.  No, no of course not, I said.  I took Gaviscon and that’s like the magical stomach-aid that Pops showed me a couple years ago.  That stuff works.

Joey lit a fire under me and told me to hurry up and get ready for church, unless I thought I was going to throw up on him right then and there.  But I told him naaaah, I was probably fine and I felt much better.

We did make it to Sunday School, ten minutes later.  But we made it.  And then we went to church and Joey held my hand and intermittently tried to squish my fingers so hard that my eyes would pop out of my head and I’d kick him in the shin.

It’s so lame, I always try to beat him at something (like Thumb War) but he totally smokes me, EVERY SINGLE TIME.  He never even gives me a chance.  Sigh.

But it’s OK.

At least I didn’t get sick from whatever it was that I ate for dinner last night that my stomach hated.

16 hours of sleep

16 hours of sleep

So pretty much immediately after typing the previous blog post, I went back to bed to wait for Joey to get home.  I fell asleep.  I woke up at 3:30, which means that I slept for 16 hours and took an 1 1/2 hour awake break around from 10:30 – 12:00.  There are two words for people like me: lazy,  pathetic zombies.

I think that was three words.  Whatever.

I was awake long enough earlier to get the report from the Embryologist.  The stats on the munchkin-embryos are in and they are:

  • 2 excellent
  • 2 good
  • 3 average
  • 2 poor
  • 1 very poor

This is good news.  I’m trying to get excited about it, but I feel to sick right now to do anything except wrap myself in my new afghan (that I successfully stole from Henry, but he’s sitting right by me just in case I decide I don’t it any more) and either read a boring book or type on my laptop.

The bad news is, though, that when I woke up at 3:30 and forced myself to get up, I was running a low-grade fever again.

FEVERS ARE NOT SO GOOD FOR IVF MOMMY-HOPEFULS TO HAVE JUST DAYS PRIOR TO TRANSFER.

So, please.  All of you who are praying for me, please, please, please pray that the fevers will break.  I am pleased to report that my lower back is, like, tons better.  It only slightly hurts all the time instead of killing me hurts.

I did look up on teh interwebz (translation for Gramps: the internet) and fevers are a side effect of Crinone, the progesterone that I’m on that will trick my body into accepting an egg that desires to implant itself in me.  I have put in two calls to Dr. Babyplease’s office, and they assure me that I just need to keep taking Tylenol and not to worry.

I feel so comprehensively bad today, though.  It’s weird, because I felt SO good for all those weeks of shots!  And now, I take a tiny blue pill twice a day and shake a tube of progesterone and WHAM, start feeling awful.

Joey left me just now to go do some Christmas shopping for me.  I told him that was good because no way would I try to come along.  I’m still in my nightgown and fuzzy robe and have very bad hair, thank you very much.

My short-term goals for the evening are to get off this couch, take a shower, and make Joey some dinner so that when he comes home from shopping I will be able to feed him instead of just sitting on the couch like a useless blob.

But the good news is still that we have 2 excellent quality embryos as of today.  WIN!

Sunday Hooky

Sunday Hooky

Yesterday afternoon, I dropped the bomb.  I told Joey I was going to STAY HOME FROM CHURCH.  We usually don’t stay home from church unless one of us is

  • dead
  • mostly dead
  • dying

so I expected Joey to be all, Well, I’m not sure you really need to because you still have a very strong pulse.

He did not say that, however.  He said, “OK.”

At 6:15, we bundled up into the car with our food for Joey’s office Christmas par-tay, and off we went.  My back still hasn’t really stopped hurting, so I stood up for most of the time.  And, what’s worse!, I am now on a progesterone gel (Crinone) and an estradiol (Estrace) to trick my body into thinking I’m pregnant, even though they haven’t transferred anything into me yet.  This way my body will know to allow the eggs to implant.  (Yes, I said eggS plural, because I’m rooting for twins.  I may be crazy, but I’m rooting for twins.)

I will NOT subject you to the list of side effects for either new drug, but I’ll just tell  you I’ve felt blase and like throwing up since an hour after I first took them yesterday morning.  Those puppies work fast.

I will also not subject you to the whys and wherefores of our stop to Walgreens Pharmacy last night on the way home from the par-tay, nor will I fill you in on the details surrounding the subsequant EMERGENCY stop we had to make at the 7-11, which was just down the block from the aforementioned Walgreens, where we stayed for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Boy howdy, aren’t infertility drugs SO MUCH FUN!?

That’s what Joey was thinking as he continued to drive us quickly home after the 7-11 stop, scanning the horizon for other establishments he could pull into quickly, should the need arise.

Anyway, that’s gross.  No more speaking of it.

But back to skipping church, since it involves so much sitting and that’s the MOST uncomfortable thing in the world for me right now (yes, still!  stupid back!) I decided to forego it.  I went to sleep last night with my alarm turned off, and I was so tired I fell asleep immediately.  Joey was finishing up an assignment and I never heard him come to bed, nor did I hear his alarm go off this morning.

In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling HOT.  And WEIRD.  I got up to get a drink, and felt overwhelmingly strange; kind of intensely cold with a very warm feeling all over.  The kind of weird feeling I always get when I have a fever.  I got back in bed but then my feeling reversed to being warm with an intensely cold feeling in my bones.  Rather like I feel when I have a fever.  So I broke out the thermometer I keep in my beside table, back when I was unsuccessfully doing the charting thing trying (in vain) to get pregnant.

Sure enough: 100.1

I woke Joey up and told him I had a fever, because Dr. Babyplease had said to call her if I had a fever.  I did so, and the on-call doc rang me back almost immediately, telling me to take some tylenol and if it got worse to go to the ER.

UGH.

I was not about go to the ER, I wanted to go to sleep.  So in lieu of the tylenol, I popped a Vicodin (which contains acetaminophen) and went back to sleep.

You know when you’re sleeping and all of a sudden you get this creepy feeling that someone is watching you?  That’s how I woke up this morning.  Joey was getting ready to leave, and I could feel him standing there, so I started screaming in my sleep because he was scaring the nightmares out of me.  Then I opened up my eyes and saw him looming, so I kept screaming.  It was really, really scary.  And I couldn’t figure out what he was doing there.  Then he told me to calm down and that he was just going to church, and my mind started working properly again.

I don’t even remember what time that was, probably 8:45, but I finally woke up for good at 10:30.  Henry had long since abandoned me for the comforts of the new afghan Joey’s mom made us. I made the mistake of leaving it puddled on the futon yesterday afternoon.  He discovered that it’s the softest! thing! in! the! house! and he hasn’t moved from it since then.  Even if I wrap  myself in it and lay on the floor, he will find the one corner of it that’s flat against the carpet and he’ll lay on it.  Doesn’t matter what weird position he has to contort himself into, he will get the job done.

All this to say: I skipped church this morning.  My fever appears to be gone. I’m sitting here with an ice pack velcroed to my lower back.  Henry is laying on the new afghan protectively.

All is well in the Woestman house.

Side Effects

Side Effects

Maybe y’all remember how I was all please don’t make me take that birth control stuff because it will screw my entire body up and I will feel unwell and may even die, did you not read the stats on the back of the package?!

I was doing really good until about 4:00 yesterday.

Well, OK, I was doing pretty good.  I felt an overwhelming sense of malaise all day yesterday.  The kind where I was almost unable to get myself off the couch and get motivated to do my chores, so I begged Joey to force me to exercise.

We decided to walk to NorthPark to shop for the special shirt I am going to buy for the first day I have to give myself a shot.  We did not find said shirt, but we did walk about 3 miles.  And we forgot to bring water.  So by the time we returned home, I was really, really exhausted.  In fact, I told Joey I may even be dead.

He assured me that I was not.

Half an hour later, The Headache came upon me with full force.  I took two tylenol, being the good IVF patient that I am, and lay on the couch with my lappy to begin writing my novel for NaNoWriMo.  1,671 words later, the headache hadn’t even budged.

So we went to small group anyway, and I sat on the Paul and Kendall’s couch like a bump on a log and let everyone else participate.  Whenever I contributed something, it wound up being something that we had talked about like 2 minutes earlier in the conversation, and it made no sense.  I finally just shut up.

Once we got home, I challenged myself to finish all my chores in less than 45 minutes.  I was surprisingly successful and Joey rewarded me by trying to work some of the tension out of my shoulders while we watched an episode of HOGAN’S HEROES.  (Gosh I love that show.  Just go ahead and laugh at me.)

The headache did not lessen.

It got more worser.

So I went to bed immediately and fell asleep about 9:45.  At 10:15, I woke up abruptly, pretty darn sure that I may upchuck.

I hate that.  I hate it.  And I am bound and determined to not have any of that upchucking business until I am actually pregnant.  None of this bonus stuff.  NONE.

So I rustled around in the medicine drawer and got out the handy bottle of Gaviscon Pops bought for me like two years ago when he was down visiting and I had a stomach ache.  (Pops is always up on the newest and best stomach healers.)  I chewed my Gaviscon and lay very still, just like I had for the 6th – 12th years of my life when I was lactose intolerant but we didn’t know it. (I took 2 tablespoons of Maalox every night just to tame the stomach aches enough fall asleep.)

I fell asleep.

Then I woke up at 2:45.

It’s never a good sign when Jenna wakes up in the middle of the night.

My head was pounding, my stomach was yelling I HATE YOU VERY MUCH JENNA MARIE WOESTMAN. So I took my book and went to the bathroom, where I could read for awhile.  Just in case.

I had fleeting thoughts of do I really, really, really want children?  Is this going to be worth it? The answer is YES.  (Someone remind me that I am not allowed to ask that question at 3 a.m. while experiencing major side effect nausea.)

By 3:15, I forced myself to go back to bed, fairly sure I was going to lose the battle with my stomach.

I never did upchuck (I know, you’re all just loving this post; but get used to it…I have a feeling these next few weeks will be NO PICNIC) but when I woke up at 6:00, my head was still throbbing.

I told Joey I could not get up.  No way.

But then I realized that once I start shots and other meds, the side effects will only get worse and these will seem like a walk in the park.  So I forced myself to look out the window and notice what a beautiful morning it was, and that propelled me out of bed.

And, when I walked down the stairs this morning and took a deep breath of the fresh air, I felt like it was worth it to get up.  Worth it to keep going.  Even when I feel like this.

Ugggh, I feel like I’m going to need some serious reminders in about three weeks.