kismet09 | Entries tagged with sick days

so, my life since march 25, eh?

march 27:

jmallick's fantastic surprise birthday party, complete with scrabble, prizes and cake.
march 28: no idea.
march 29-apr 2: tons of student meetings.
apr 3-apr 5: surprise visit to chicago to celebrate mom's birthday. got to see best friend from high school who also flew in. ate a lot, did the easter thing, had a lovely time. got back home at 2am after plane delay.
apr 6: went to work. came home, packed like a crazy person, left for conference in cape cod.
apr 7-9: conference. some good sessions, nice to see people. made me want to learn more about education policy/reform.
apr 9: got dropped off in newburyport, set out for long island. about 10 hours in the car. whee. arrived around 12:30am.
apr 10: wedding (excellent - great food, fabulous people). left directly after wedding for home. arrived home around 10pm.
apr 11: realized i was once again developing tailbone cyst. went to ER. got cyst removed and scrip for vicodin.
apr 11-13 are kind of a blur. i laid on the couch a lot. i did about 4000 scrabble flashcards. maybe more. i watched tv. i'm still half a season behind on 24, but i'm up to date on everything else.

and now, i'm back at work. downgraded from vicodin to advil. sitting is still not a lot of fun.

apr 14-16: interviews for student leaders.
apr 16-18: big scrabble tournament
apr 19: life may get back to normal for a bit.

note to self: you may have done some over-exertion in those last couple of weeks.

So, on Friday, I woke up with what I thought was a bug bite on my tailbone. This would not be out of the ordinary for me - I've been getting tons of bug bites this summer, especially while sleeping, in annoying places like on the soles of my feet. So I mostly ignored it, even though it hurt, and went about my day waiting for Scrabble tournament to start.

Saturday, it was bigger and more painful. I tried advil, allegra, zyrtec. Nothing seemed to help. Called the advice nurse on Sunday and was told to get to the hospital ASAP. I was in the middle of Scrabble tournament, so I had no plans to heed said advice until by Sunday afternoon games, I could barely concentrate due to pain from sitting. Car ride to ER was zero fun.

Turns out I had not a bug bite, but a cyst, pretty much right on the base of my tailbone. ( more gory details )

Why go to the doctor when they just tell me what I already know? They do have a cool insta-strep test these days, so I know I don't have strep (but I think I knew that already). Whatever. Five days of sore throat is about enough for me. Mucinex + allegra + dayquil + Halls Defense will be the continued regimen, and if I'm not better by Friday, I'm to take antibiotics. But, I have steak and ribs to look forward to tonight - that may be an even better rx for my maladies. I'm a sucker for the restaurant coupons that I get in the mail. I wouldn't normally eat at Texas Roadhouse, but if you're going to send me a buy one get one 1/2 off, I will deal with the peanut shells on the floor and eat my chain restaurant meal.

I'm having guests this weekend! I have to be better for this reason. The plans right now include Scrabble, Boggle, Scattergories, Wii, and lobster.

We have traced many of my nausea/dizziness/fainting spells to times after which I ate scallops. Thus, no more scallops for me. A couple of outlier times when I ate asian food, which may very well have included dishes that had oyster sauce in them. Will eventually get tested to confirm, but how ironic that I never had a shellfish problem until I moved to a place where I am surrounded by shellfish.

Went to the Physical Therapist yesterday and got exercises to do, including Wii Bowling. Good times. We'll see if I do them.

Have iTunes shuffle on today and it's mostly playing musicals, including Dr Horrible. Sometimes I think my iPod just has moods where it plays certain songs on shuffle.

we got our grill on Saturday, and after the some assembly required part, we fired it up. we've had hot dogs twice, and i had marinated flank steak once. three out of our last four meals were grill creations. it's amazing how much more power and precision a grill has when you actually spend money on it.

not much else to speak of this weekend. scored in the 425 range with no bingos against tim, bunch of 40+ pt plays including DREICH/REX and CH(AY)OtE double double, but it was marred by a phony MOJITO*. Why wouldn't that be a word?

i also tried on all of my last year spring/summer clothes and they still fit. small victories.

went to the orthopedist today. got chided for not going to PT yet (i am now scheduled for this wednesday) and got to see mri results. my spinal cord is being pretty well crunched in various places. nifty. now i get to see a surgeon for a follow up consult. and do PT.

argh. for now, a list. maybe more detail later.

+ paula and marcel! yay friends visiting.
+ Bazaar Bizarre - meeting people, making money, getting inspired to knit more.
- forgetting to eat during the craft fair and being very dizzy.
+ Oleana! including bacon brittle on my salad that made my meal.
- getting home at midnight and being exhausted.
+ taking monday off and staying in my pajamas until going to the gym.
+ getting some gifts wrapped, cards written, House watched.
+ four days at the gym in Dec so far - we should make it to the required 8 before going to Chicago.
- grandmother fell yesterday and broke thigh bone. extra stress for family around holidays. Ugh.
- back at work today - it's freezing in my office, and I have to walk across campus in the snow soon to meet with a prof about a hopeless student.
+ snow is pretty.
- I must've slept with my jaw clenched, because I can barely open my mouth right now.
+ almost done with new Clapotis. Should have enough yarn to finish.
+ found a bunch of new patterns I want to do on Ravelry this morning while multitasking.
- not enough time to knit xmas gifts.
- new Wordscraper on Facebook is v. bad.
+/- my Brandeis email acct has finally be shut off.
+/- I'm here til 9 tonight, but I get to see my students in a band concert.

still sick. phlegmy and gross. i have sneezed about 20 times. also ravenous. feed a cold, i guess.

my body can turn the sick on and off, though. facilitated my 90 minute meeting last night and felt reasonably fine, but as soon as i got in the car, it felt like my whole face filled with pressure. gross. i'm now on sudafed, mucinex and benadryl.

i am sending myself home at 330 and will try to nap before the sox game starts. my couch is delayed by at least 2 weeks. i wish we had a couch. it sounds like a good place to snuggle and feel sorry for myself right now.

I would organize my pictures folder on my hard drive. it's out of control. same goes for my iTunes. you don't notice clutter and disorganization as much on a computer, but it's still there...

I'm officially sick, which isn't surprising given the lack of sleep, 4.5 hour bus (aka germ capsule) ride, and number of sick students and co-workers I'm surrounded by. Pad thai + Halls Defense + oscillococcinum + orange juice + 10 hours of sleep seem to have helped. I can feel the germs trying to mount their attack in the back of my throat. Yuck.

I did manage to work out yesterday, for which I'm proud of myself. I used an Arc Trainer for the first time, and it was kinda fun. I could feel muscles working that don't work the same way using an elliptical. I'm currently letting beaTunes check the bpm on my mp3 collection so that I can put a good exercise playlist together. It's fantastic. I think 120-135 bpm is about the right range for the speed that I travel. I'm also watching leaves blow around in my backyard. Pretty.

Also, I am experiencing job apathy. This is bad, after six weeks. I'm trying to wait it out. It's probably exacerbated by Scrabble hangover. I have decided that my perfect job would be to create handouts for students and analyze data in order to tell other people how to better serve their students. Maybe it's instructional design. Maybe it's program eval. I'm not sure, but I wish it existed. I might try to create it at my current institution.

There was some odd karmic exchange on the flight to Chicago. I ate normal foods and had my usual mocha prior to flying to Chicago. I bought my magazine, took my dramamine. I'm pretty sure I wasn't virusy at the time, but I managed to make myself fairly nauseous prior to flying, and had to wander up and down the airport to try to calm my belly. During my walking time, Tim was working out getting out seats for the plane. By the time all was said and done, the flight was completely full, and we'd been bumped up to first class. First class! Exciting times! ( brief details about the karmic part of this ) A lesser affliction might be a decent trade for an upgrade -- a headache, maybe some muscle aches, but this stomach grossness is a little too much to swap for extra leg room and fancy drinks. Maybe if Tim and I could take turns. Or it worked on international flights. I might trade for an international upgrade.

Okay, I feel largely better - I'm glad that this headcold hasn't pestered me as long as it did Tim, but here's a few weird things that haven't righted themselves yet:

1. Textures feel more texturey than they usually do. I can feel the chenille that I'm wearing, in a way that I don't usually notice my clothes. The same was true of my sheets when I was waking up this morning. It's like my perception of touch is magnified.

2. My head still feels swimmy, like the synapses aren't connecting in the useful way that they usually do. Like I killed off a noticeable amount of brain cells by over-self-medicating and they haven't been able to keep up in the regrowth department.

3. I feel giggly. All the time. Like I want to laugh out loud at things. Hopefully I won't laugh out loud at any students should they come by.

I think part of it is just that I really love Fall, and every time Fall or Spring hits, my sensory perception elevates for a bit before it settles in to the new season. I think the rest of it is my brain trying to decloud itself after being so congested. In any case, it's a lot of fun - had I ever taken any sort of drugs, I may be able to relate it to such an experience, but alas, I haven't, so I just have to be entertained at how different it feels than everyday life.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Lloyd Cole - Downtown"

I woke up this morning with a charley horse

( random medical info and background on the term 'charley horse' )

it still hasn't gone away and I'm getting irritated with it. I am happily drug-free right now and would rather not take an Aleve or similar pain killer. I will walk myself to the Commons and get a beverage, and maybe the combination of walking and fluids will make it happier. Am writing a lot today...

So I didn't eat much for a week (no fried foods, no coffee, barely any sweets), and it didn't kill me, so I'm going to try to cut down/pay more attention to what I eat. I've started a food journal which will also work as an appointment book, now that I've realized that I don't leave my office enough to make carrying my Franklin planner worthwhile. It's a pretty little journal with the kanji character for Health on the front. I'm not sure what sort of changes in eating I'll make, besides eating healthier snacks, and perhaps not three bowls of popcorn a week (at least it's stove popped and not microwave). I also hope to start using my ellipse machine more now that it isn't quite as cold in the basement.

Pretty soon I'll also be able to plant the garden in the backyard. Squash, cucumbers, greenbeans, peppers (even if I don't eat them), garlic, strawberries, maybe a fruit tree... any Marylanders out there have advice on what should/shouldn't go in a garden? It's going to be my project for the few days after my conference and before registration starts and I'm constantly busy.

I think there was an Into Bio test this week, because there is a huge herd of freshmen now hanging out in the hallway outside my office, which is a door away from the intro prof's office. Loud.

Oh yeah, supposedly my doctor is in the process of fixing me...
( random medical information )

I'm just happy that I know what's going on... now if I can remember to take the drugs when I'm supposed to...

My tummy is still weird. I feel totally normal, except I can't quite straighten up without something pulling in my stomach - just kinda tugging and being sore. I hate having to feel so delicate. If this isn't better by Monday, I may have to head back to the doctor, or at least call the nurse hotline deal that Kaiser has set up, so they can ask you a lot of questions and then tell you to come in anyway.

I couldn't sleep at all last night. Tim's been out late a bunch this week - busy time in the semester, and he has a conference this weekend - so I haven't seen him much at all. That also means he hasn't been here to take care of whiny lil me, and so I think I'm going through some sort of weird withdrawal. I was finally well enough to sleep up in the loft bed (our normal bed, rather than the guest bed) last night, and I couldn't sleep, which meant that I wouldn't let him sleep, either. I finally settled around 12:30, (which really isn't that late), by making him read me some article about Yemen out of Atlantic Monthly. Yes, I'm a child when I'm sick. Yes, I'm going to make him put up with me. So there.

I'm only awake because my dog decided to start pulling things out of the trash can, and I still have sensors from when she was a puppy (she's about 2 now, so still a puppy really), that tell me to get up and stop her. She's stuck in her crate right now. It's a supreme insult to be in the crate now that she's this big. It makes her very contrite. And yet, she still tries to eat garbage when she thinks no one's around.

I've been knitting a bunch, and watching movies. Sweet Home Alabama was awfully cute. I rented My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Empire Records (thanks to the above movie making me want to watch something else with Ethan Embry). Has anyone seen Harvard Man? I know it's probably awful, but Joey Lauren Adams and Sarah Michelle Gellar? I mean really. if it isn't so bad, I may have to head back to the video store.

So all of yesterday I felt a little bit off. Went to Bowie Town Center with

dreamattack329, shopped a bit, had some dinner, and my tummy was just getting crankier and crankier. Stopped at the pharmacy, got some Tums, started popping those. Made it to Barnes and Noble, where Scrabble Club meets, still not feeling great, vaguely nauseous, achey, etc. Went to the bathroom to try to fix my stomach, and walking back to the cafe from the bathroom, everything started getting hazy, blurry and white around the edges. This has happened to me once before, in Peru, when I got altitude sickness and passed out in a restaurant. Luckily, this time I made it back to a chair, but I was freezing and sweaty and pale, my chest hurt, I couldn't breathe deeply - basically, just not well. I asked someone to call an ambulance, because the upper chest pain was really scary. By the time it arrived, I was able to sit up, mostly, and walked myself to the ambulance after being asked lots of questions. That was about 7pm.

Had a visit to the lovely Anne Arundel ER, where they took 5 vials of blood, and gave me an IV of fluids, leaving me with lovely bruises on both of my arms. They think it's just a stomach flu-type virus, but I've never had something hit that hard, that fast. Got home around midnight, at which point I slept and slept and slept, until my doctor's appointment at 1:45pm today. I still haven't eaten, but I'm hungry, so I think that's a good sign.

So yeah, if you don't see me around for a bit, that's why.

Current Mood: sore

Again I was sure that I posted yesterday, then I checked my journal today and there's nothing since Tuesday.

I am still sick, but not as actively as I was before. I am just ridiculously tired all the time - I was in bed at 7 last night because I just didn't feel energetic enough to be anywhere else. Got back out of bed at 9 and baked some cookies, but forgot the stupid baking soda for the first two sheets' worth, and so I have 2 dozen really dense cookies, and now I have to head to the grocery store and get more chocolate chips and other supplies so that I can bake a couple batches to bring to work and spread Valentine's joy tomorrow (and bribe a co-worker who I'm trying to get to run a report for me - stupid access issues - I just want to be able to do everything myself, but no, departments have to be jealous of what information they guard).

This morning, I tried not taking my prescription decongestant and my head ached and I was all runny, so maybe I do have a sinus infection after all. Who knows. I've given myself nights and nights of 8+ hour sleep, and I'm still tired and yucky all the time. I managed 10 minutes on my ellipse machine last night, but felt like I was going to die afterwards.

Work today should be pretty uneventful. I'm waiting on the report so that I can do the bulk of my work. I suppose I can go through and do some data gathering on our new transfer students, or maybe do some more web work. Sigh. It's hard to work 5 days in a row after not doing so for awhile.

Current Mood: unmotivated
Current Music: more pretty girls than one

Just when I thought I was better, the nights of bad sleep without Tim caught up with me, and I woke up yesterday with a raging sinus headache, general achiness, coughing, and everything else that I had just kicked. Grr. I think it was a combination of bad sleep and changing weather, but it knocked me down pretty hard. For better or worse, Nadine was coming over for a knitting lesson and an afternoon of shopping, so I drugged up and hoped for the best.

The lesson went well - she's a really fast learner, and it was much smoother since I'd just given an introductory lesson to someone else on Thursday. She can now cast on, knit and purl, although I don't think she quite gets the idea of doing both in one row yet - didn't want to overwhelm her too much in one sitting. We then went to a yarn store in Laurel (not very good, really - more catered to machine knitting, very little pure wool, and the person working didn' t even say hello), did some Vickie's shopping in Bowie, and took a trip to Barnes and Noble, where I found Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_ for $1.50 (!!), the Sunnydale High yearbook (also on sale), and the 10th anniversary edition of Best American Erotica. A book for him, a book for me, and a book to share. Plus some nice low-cut cotton undies. Seemed fair enough. Final stop before the airport was at Starbucks, where more caffeine helped my head clear enough so that I didn't have to lie on the floor whimpering.

Got Tim, went to chinese food (on chinese new year - how festive of us), came home, slept and slept and slept... so I'm feeling a little better today. I convinced Tim to take me to another yarn store today (out in Rockville, worlds better than the Laurel one - they fed us tea and warm chocolate chip cookies, and had Lamb's Pride and other good stuff). I bought enough yarn to make Becca's baby afghan, and a couple skeins to give as gifts to my new pupils, and a skein of blue worsted to start Tim's stocking cap, done from the pattern on about.com. And now I suppose I should start thinking about dinner -- all we have in the fridge is leftovers, drinks, salad dressings, tortillas and a block of cheese. Very sad little fridge. Good thing it's a new month and I have a grocery budget again :)

I am officially sick. The back of my throat is red and raw (but not fuzzy, so no strep throat, which is a small victory), and i'm achey and tired all over. Part of it is a Nyquil hangover, but most of it is just not feeling well. I wouldn't be at work if tomorrow wasn't the deadline for suspension appeals, meaning many failing or near-failing students should be making their way to my office so we can fill out paperwork.

All I want is to be watching tv with a nice plate of pad thai and maybe some thai iced tea. I'm not sure when I started craving pad thai during sickness -- I think it was at Miami, where I would get pad thai delivered for lunch way too often.

So here I am, hanging out at work, trying to stay sitting in my chair rather than lying on the couch. I have appointments at 930 and 10, and then if no one comes in by noon or so, I'm going home.