My youngest has pneumonia — they diagnosed it on Monday. My family of five had four dentist appointments and one doctor’s visit scheduled this week even before that happened. We’ve been to the doctor every afternoon this week besides that. I still made it to a critique group on Tuesday and led a lesson on the Snowflake Method at the public library group on Wednesday. My eldest son sat with the smallest so I could go. Other than that it’s been pills and breathing treatments and trips to the pharmacy over and over. In one five-minute window, while sitting in the doctor’s office and overseeing a breathing treatment, I spoke to one other doctor’s office about how the scan from last week showed that my thyroid was “super enlarged”, the dentist about my husband’s recovery from minor dental surgery, and the endodontist to schedule an appointment for my abscessed gums, all while texting with the flute teacher about her own bout of pneumonia and the French horn teacher to say that we really couldn’t make it this week. Today I had to reschedule two other appointments because of bad schedules at the places I was going (how do they manage to schedule people onto days the doctor won’t be there?). All this to say that there has been no writing this week, other than the four-page document I wrote about the Snowflake Method. *sigh*
Category: health
I started having nosebleeds Saturday morning. The first few were quick and easy and spread apart. By late evening they were heavier and closer together. On Sunday I had about 10 nosebleeds by midnight and was literally bleeding out my eyeballs, so David took me to the ER. At one point there were three nurses helping because it was just too much blood. They eventually got it to stop after several hours and several things tried. I had a CT scan that turned out normal. I had an appointment with my ENT first thing this morning and he cauterized a burst blood vessel. I promptly passed out. He told me it was all (the burst blood vessel, the passing out) probably caused by high blood pressure and I need to lower my stress levels. He gave me side eye when I laughed and laughed.
All my people are home from their various places now. David and Nick have been to the Feast of Tabernacles at the Steamboat Springs site in Colorado and they had quite the adventure getting back home because they got caught in a blizzard without snow tires or chains. They ended up having to do a huge detour to get home. Greg was in Lake Texoma with his aunt, uncle, and girl cousins with a different FoT group than we went with a couple years ago, but they stayed on site at the same resort that our main festivities were at last time, so it was familiar for him. They all had fabulous times at the places they went and I’m sure soon I’ll see more photos of their trips.
They were gone for about 10 days, about 8 of which I was sick with a horrific sinus infection — like hallucinations, fever, two kinds of antibiotics sick. Poor Ree. He was stuck home with me, which meant that sometimes he had to make his own meals and once he seriously offered to walk to the grocery story (he doesn’t drive yet. We need to work on that.) In any case, we are glad other people are back now. 
The problem with being sick when your mom has died is that you have no one to call when you just want to whine about it and have someone tell you that “you should check the color of your tongue and take mucinex, why do you hate mucinex? Oh hey, did I tell you about the new building over by campus? It’s awful. Everyone is going to hate it. But there’s another new restaurant on University that we should go to when you come down…”
My exciting Friday night: two new medicines to help with my RA/Fibro flare (a Medrol taper pack and Lyrica), store bought autumn squash soup (I wish I had the energy to make homemade), and a TV show that irritates the cats. It’s just me and the cats home tonight. Everyone else feels well enough to have exciting plans. Wahoo!
I had this “Too Good To Be True” nice kind of day where you kind of secretly wait for the awful thing to happen. Yeah. Prednisone wore off and I’ve got a sinus infection. I was finally going to get to chaperone the band. I was feeling so good. Now I feel like someone took a blowtorch to my sinus cavity.
Signs that you might need to go to bed early. I’m so tired right now that I just misread a sign as “The Devil’s Roomba.” Yesterday, similarly tired, I read a different sign as “Murders Ahead.” I also got mad at a light switch for not turning on the light that was already on.
So yesterday was a good day to stay at home. I felt like trash, my meds gave me terrible acid reflux, and not even 6 prednisone gave me any energy to do more than sit on the couch. It did not, however, let me nap, so the band’s delay in getting home (buses arrived in Tyler at 2:30am) was …interesting. Especially as the light over the front door stopped working and I ended up taking a living room lamp out into the porch area so we could see to get back into the house.
I did finally sleep and today has been a better day because I got acid reflux prevention meds, I heard from my traveling boys, and Ree is back home to clean up all the cat vomit (Cosmo has decided that eating the plastic sleeves of things in the trash in my bathroom is a good plan. I keep my doors closed, but he has managed to get in there several times now. I swear he can open doors.). See! Bright sides! 🙂
Day one on new meds: I’m having one of those days like those old V8 commercials where they were leaning sideways (for me it’s left side only). Feeling super weird.
Some people have asked about the fibromyalgia, since I don’t talk about it much. My version of fibro has been really quiet until recently. Now in addition to the muscle spasms, pain, and weakness, I am also having a lot of the cognitive issues (severe brain fog – I literally forgot I had a 3rd child the other day – inability to do simple math – not being able to figure out where I am in familiar places like my own kitchen, inability to comprehend speech, sensitivity to loud noise -which never has ever been an issue before, etc), plus dizziness & vertigo, trouble swallowing, and other digestive issues I don’t feel like discussing. It’s a LOT. Thanks for being concerned about me!
Here’s a link to a good fact sheet about the symptoms of this disease: https://www.verywellhealth.com/fibromyalgia-symptoms-716139
Lisa Holcomb 