Last Thursday, my Dad and I went up to UT for the Lady Rocket Fan Club’s basketball clinic. The coaches answered questions, as did one of the refs who frequently is assigned to Lady Rocket games. Here is a picture of Barb the ref looking like a normal person while she answered stupid questions like “Can coaches request a certain ref not be assigned to their games?”
I was suuuuuper excited to be back in Savage thinking about the Lady Rocket funtimes coming soon.
Not much has been happening this week (this staycation is kind of lame…), but I am feeling a little spunkier. My lower right wisdom tooth hole was aching a bit, so yesterday I went back to the oral surgeon. I think they will shove the weird clove oil bandage thing into any wisdom tooth hole that considers bothering you – all the while saying it’s probably not dry socket because YOU’LL KNOW IT if you have dry socket. Whatever, the clove taste in my mouth is kind of interesting. It HAS kind of soothed me.
Today I went to Findlay to hang out with my friend Jean. Tomorrow is her last day at her job as Queen of Drug Info at the University of Findlay. She has been so involved and enthusiastic about her teaching job, but I think the DI overlords finally broke her spirit. She has had me come down and talk at UF about nuclear pharmacy a few times, and I’ve always thought everyone seemed friendly and nice (but I also thought, “thank God I don’t have to deal with these people and being friendly and nice all the time…”).
Here is something that would have extended my tenure at UF if it were me:
OHMYGOD!!! WHY IS THIS NOT MORE OF A THING??? It has a little counter of the saved water bottles!
I parked in the same parking lot outside of the pharmacy building that I always park in, and I was there for less than an hour. I came out to this on my car (I didn’t rip it in a fit; it ripped because it was wet)…Too bad tomorrow is Jean Weiner’s last day and I’m never going back to UF, or I might pay a mijillionty dollars for my infraction, except not.
We went back to Jean’s house, and I gave her some presents.
1) Remi got a costume that I found at Meijer for $1.99 when I stopped to get a bag for the presents.
It is worth noting that Findlay had Trick or Treat last Thursday (something about it always being the Thursday of the last full week of October…)…WHAT THE HECK?
2) I made the baby a fleece blanket and forgot to take a picture of the blanket. It had hedgehogs on it.
3) I made 3 sizes of hats: adult, tiny baby, and some vague after-tiny-baby-but-before-adult size. Me and Alley + Jean and Remi:
Jean picked our activity. She selected pedicures. I had never had a pedicure. It was way weird. Not completely unpleasant, but weird (tiny Asian men touching your feet is weird, right?) and expensive ($32). I hope I don’t get some weird foot fungus or something. It will not have been worth it to me:
We walked around the Findlay mall a little and then picked up some food at Kroger. The baby is eating Jean’s brain and making her indecisive and extra flighty.
Her engineer husband fixed the hangy thing on my car, and we had dinner and hung out some. Here’s another picture of my best canine friend Remi:
I’ve been off this week, mostly avoiding dealing with my pharmacy students and also doing some wisdom teeth recovering. My sockets are not dry, that I can tell, but they are sore. I wonder how my wisdom teeth soulmate, Kyrie Irving, is surviving his extractions…I hope things are going better for him…since he’s much younger than me, I bet he’s out living it up with non-sore sockets right now. I might take a Percocet and go to bed. YAY FOR OLD PEOPLE WISDOM TEETH SLOW RECOVERY YAY.
Other things:
I went to Ikea with Kim and Anthony on Tuesday. I bought a new duvet and duvet cover that has been too warm to use since we’re in Indian Summer or something. These purchases might be an innovation, though, since both are washable and will fit in our washing machine…if, for example, a cat puked on our blankets.
I also got a bunch of cheap crap and some cinnamon buns. Ikea is so great.
We’ve done quite a bit of leaf-raking, but our oak trees still have most of their leaves. Fuckers.
I sat outside yesterday for quite a while, and the bees were quite busy enjoying the warm weather:
Brian and I took advantage of the nice weather this afternoon and enjoyed a fall trip to the Zoo.
Only one polar bear was in the exhibit, and he was taking a nap:
The sloth bears were similarly bear-disappointing.
We were NOT disappointed by all the growing and being cute that my zoo pal, the amur tiger, has been doing:
Swollen-cheeked self picture in the Tembo Trail area:
The lemur babies did a lot of growing since we saw them last…I don’t know if this is a baby or an adult…all the lemurs were so similar and fluffy like Baby Cat:
The aquarium being closed (for 3 years!) was way more deeeeepressing than I thought it would be. We walked around in the conservatory/gardens area, but between the Aquarium construction and the Lights Before Christmas setup, the Zoo mojo was disturbed. Here is an excellent photo I took without even trying:
I elected to not go up to Detroit last night with my brother – I took Percocet and got itchy instead. Good times. I was going to offer to go to the UT-UC game for a quarter or two last night with my Dad, but he had decided to go up to Detroit with Matthew, so I got to lay on the couch and sleep through the weird espn3.com broadcast of the funnest game we didn’t go to. Oh well, yay team! Very exciting, plus who doesn’t love seeing UC lose? No one.
So with my Dad not around to ride with up to Detroit this morning like I had planned, I made Brian get up early to go with me (not nearly as early as I would have had to get up if I was in Detroit or able to run…) and we headed up I-75. We found a weird parking garage to park in (and later not understand where to pay for, as the signs said to pay the machine but the machines were out of order…Detroit!) and got to see Matthew run by after the half-marathon/marathon split. He did not see us, and I was too flustered to flash any of my signs.
We found my dad, who had missed seeing Matthew run by Joe Louis Arena, and headed out to where the marathoners turn left off the mainland to their loop around Belle Isle. We saw Matthew and I held up a sign that said,”YOU CAN DO IT (put your back into it)!” – My signmaking is a little weird.
There’s always a ton of people pissed off about something at Detroit Marathon – when I ran the half 2 years ago, everybody was pissed about them running out of shirts, and this year, everybody was pissed off about the tracking app and tracking website not working. Lame. They never have these sorts of problems at Columbus or Chicago…Get it together, Detroit. Also, try to remove all the dead sea otters off sidewalks that spectators might walk on. Thanks.
We managed to hustle back to very near the finish line and saw Matthew run by with about the last 0.2 miles to go. I took a really shitty sideways video where you can sort of see Matthew skulk by and me scream “GO MATTIE GO!” but I don’t think it’s really worth the bandwidth to put it up anywhere. It was very exciting to see him do this…he worked really hard and ran a WHOLE MARATHON. I know how hard I worked two summers ago just to get into HALF-marathon running shape – and how I couldn’t ever do more than 14 miles…he’s amazing and dedicated. Very cool and also emotional..the human body is capable of SO SO much if you bother. That shit is cray.
We (of course) couldn’t find Mattie after the race…things were so confusing, despite my dad and my brother agreeing to meet at the medical tent (good thing we didn’t NEED a medical tent because we had no idea where it was…).
Matthew’s girlfriend, Nursey Amanda, couldn’t get out of work this weekend, but she told me what to put on her sign for him (it’s pet names or something…):
This was our special brother/sister sign that Matthew wanted me to hold up:
Here’s Mattie and me (note my baby chipmunk cheeks):
We walked with Matthew over to the hotel where he and my Dad had stayed last night, he took a yelp-filled shower (so much chafing!) that we laughed at. Then we had Matthew drop us off closer to the car (not too close – on account of the marathon course still being open) and said buh-bye. YAY MATTHEW YAY. Poor Mattie has to go in to work at 22:30 tonight. I hope he gets a nap and isn’t monumentally immobile.
I survived my wisdom teeth surgery…so far, anyway. I remember the laughing gas and the surgeon dude saying I’d feel a slight pinch as he put the IV in, but there was no counting down backwards or any of that business. The first things I remember were when I woke up asking for my teeth, plus there was a nurse (or something) lady there with a navy blue scrub shirt and gold scrubs on so I kept trying to ask her if she went to UT (I was a bit difficult to understand at that point, but luckily the other nurse lady knew what I was trying to say).
They fetched Brian when the had me walk to the “recovery room,” and I felt OK. I asked what drugs they gave me (I think Brian translated and told them that I’m a pharmacist) – fentanyl, Versed, and Brevital…anesthesia didn’t make me puke, and I had been really nervous because of our infamous inability to rouse Matthew after he had his wisdom teeth taken out (we called 911!), but I didn’t have any problems. The nurse lady said I asked for my teeth at just the right time, but they could only give me the top 2 – the partially impacted bottom wisdom teeth did not fair so well – and she warned me that adult teeth are considered biohazards, whereas children’s teeth are not (the more you know…also I’m totally going to stab someone with my grody biohazard teeth):
My gross yellow wisdom teeth are so different than I imagined – teeth look so pretty on x-rays. Also, I think there’s a cavity in the one on the right, kind of in the middle of the picture – bullet dodged!
Brian has been an excellent caregiver – he has a pill schedule and has been helping me with gauze and water and my frozen pea bags to hold on my cheeks. I didn’t eat anything for a long time and after I took my second Percocet of the day, I passed out in the kitchen when I was in there enjoying some water, so Nurse Brian made me eat applesauce and pudding. Subsequently I had some ice cream and am feeling kind of decent.
I think that it has all gone pretty well so far…I can tell the Percocet is wearing off, so I’ll probably get one at 12 or 1 and then try to sleep through the night.
Tuesday was Day 30 of my Whole 30. I really was tempted to get fast food (or any food really) on Monday when I was in Tiffin for Brian’s migraine, but I didn’t…I made it 30 whole days without any added sugar or any of the other things I cut out to follow the Whole30. I felt really good, both in general and about the accomplishment. I had been wavering between extending it out and wallowing in processed foods after the 30 days were up…which should really have MADE me extend it out, but as I’ve stated melodramatically, I am terrified of tomorrow’s oral surgery (yes, I know, I’m a wuss and people have this all the time, eff yourself)…so I decided that Wednesday and today would be free, gluttonous days. I probably won’t even eat much the next few days, and once I’m mostly recovered, I’m going to do a new Whole30, with the intention of maybe doing a Whole 60 or 90 and seeing how that is. I obviously did not do it long enough this time, though I do think I made some progress…but not so much progress that I could ignore the giant tub of Halloween candy on our counter indefinitely or that stress would not cause a fatty pity party.
Here’s me, I did let it be me…well maybe not quite so bad:
Also, it’s funny that I had decided to be a RESPONSIBILITY CHAMPION! because of Whole30 and schedule the wisdom teeth surgery – because that pretty much led to the demise of my big plans to keep eating paleo, at least temporarily.
I wish I had made myself write about the Whole 30 on Tuesday, but alas, I did not…and now I’ve had pizza and ice cream and am a gross sloth of doomy apprehension.
At any rate…I should try to sum up my Whole30 experience, I suppose.
Things that were pleasing and/or went well: I made some progress in my hatred of cooking. I made some tasty Whole30 food and tried out some recipes. The first 2-2.5 weeks I spent more time planning and pre-cooking, and that worked out really well. I made decent choices when put on the spot…maybe not the most ideal, but decent. I have a lot of spices now, so some of the initial expense of cooking is out of the way. I allowed myself to not fret (much) about my weight (I did lose a little bit) and ate 3 meals/day most days. I didn’t miss things like I thought that I would until I opened the door to the idea of these cheat days pre-surgery.
Things that could have gone better: Night shift is a dirty whore. I didn’t plan well enough for night shift, and I didn’t sleep enough when I worked nights (either night shift week this month)…I’ve let myself get a little derailed in my running since I scheduled my wisdom teeth surgery and knew that the Detroit Half was out of the question. I had too much fruit and nut butter the last week or so…I was just counting down the days by then, which I need to get over.
Things I’d do differently: I need to reread the It Starts with Food book now that I’m more familiar with eating/cooking this way. I need to get more organized with recipes and planning and food-using. I need to take before/along the way pictures next time. I need to go to Andersons Whole Market or whatever it’s called and get some new and different things. I need to be more aware of omega 3 vs. omega 6, etc.
Australia is the worst, as their candy sucks and they don’t do Halloween. I sent Chiara a care package that weighed 14 lbs. and was almost entiredly Halloween candy. She might be dead right now.
Also, for future reference: I mailed it on Saturday 10/6, that Monday was Labor day, and she picked up the package today, 10/18. It had not been opened in customs, hooray!
Since I worked the weekend and am now in my night week, I asked Bennett if I could work early on Monday. Monday afternoon, I was sleeping and got a text (well not right then…who among us is not a huge fan of “Do Not Disturb” in iOS 6?) from Brian saying he thought he was having a migraine.
A little while after that, he called me to tell me that he was going to leave work (this was around 2pm) and head to his parents house. Brian said his headache was bad and he had a scotoma (dark or blind spots in one eye). When he got in his car, he was very sensitive to light. He called me again, maybe 10 minutes later, to tell me his arms were tingling and he was having a hard time breathing, so I told him to go to the nearest ER – this began many frantic phone calls between Brian, his mom, his work in Marion, and me. He could have gone to Wyandot in Upper Sandusky, but he didn’t want to end up lost…so he (stupidly) persevered and went on to Tiffin. I left home right away and drove in that general direction, and his parents headed towards Tiffin Mercy.
None of us saw it (thank goodness, because I would have freaked the eff out), but when Brian got to the ER, he couldn’t make words to tell them what his problem was.
They did an EKG and put an IV port in (and drew blood for troponins, I read later on the paperwork) and put him in a room (not on a monitor at all – which seems weird, since they did an EKG and drew troponins, right??!). I got to the hospital a little before 4, and went back to Brian’s room. He looked really bad. He still had not seen a doctor or been given anything for the pain, and he was rating his pain at 10/10 and wincing every couple of seconds. He had puked from the pain by the time I got there. He did not see a doctor or get anything for the pain for at least another hour, and I was sending his mom angry texts about how shitty the care was at Tiffin Mercy Hospital the whole time. At some point, Brian’s mom asked at the desk about her son in room 6 getting some pain meds, and the person at the desk said, “There is no patient in room 6.” Tiffin Mercy might be the Seneca County version of St. Lukes. Also, Brian did not fit on the bed they had him on, and the pain was so bad that his eyes watered.
Finally, the (one working ER) doctor came in and did some neuro checks and had Brian tell him what had happened so far, and they talked about the one comparatively mild migraine that Brian has had – in 2009 when our basement rooms were being finished. The doctor told him they would do a CT and that he’d order some pain meds for him…so 3 hours after he came in with 10/10 pain, Brian got some Zofran and some Dilaudid and started to look like a human again. Not long after that, someone came and wheeled him off for a CT scan. When he got back, he heaved and heaved the Sprite he had drunk earlier. Because I am a dutiful life partner, I stayed with Brian and then emptied out his puke basin (and that’s how I prepaid my debt for whatever happens at Wisdomteethageddon, boys and girls…also see: had the crap scared out of me by Brian’s terrifying and unfamiliar migraine aura symptoms).
An hour and a half after that, the doctor came back and said that he was confident that Brian was having his second migraine. The urinalysis/blood work were fine, so there was no meningitis or other infection, the CT was clear, and all the cardiac stuff was fine. He said that in strokes, tingling and other sensations would likely be one-sided, and a stroke causing symptoms on both sides would likely be fatal (um, I feel like someone could have told us that earlier to make all of us migraine-n00bs stop worrying so much, but whatever). He wrote Brian some scripts for pain & nausea meds, as well as for some Imitrex. I headed home so I could take a nap and go to work that night (even though Brian was doing much better, there was no way he would have been able to ride in the car for more than an hour to come home), so his mom kept him, picked up his prescriptions, and checked on him periodically. They got home after 9, and Brian ate pizza and went to bed. He slept late the next morning and was finally allowed to drive home, and he took a nap when he got here. He had a couple of days with a little headache where he seemed kind of sub-par (Postdrome!) but he’s much improved today.
I’ve been doing a little reading about migraine auras – did you know that only 20% of migraines have auras? Also, some aura symptoms (that Brian, disappointingly, did not have) include feeling like your teeth don’t fit in your mouth and the feeling that one extremity is growing and they others are not. Maybe next time we can trade frightening aphasia for one or both of those.
Dara was in town this past weekend for her sister’s birthday and a Cousin’s Night out at the CLUUUUUB, so I got a couple hours on Saturday with her and Landon. Here’s a picture of Landon and I:
Landon is a pretty mellow dude for someone who lives with his spazzy mother.
The more you know: Lots of Black people don’t cut babies’ hair until they are 1 year old, because they might get a stutter if you cut it earlier than that. Landon is going to have the most ridiculous Sideshow Bob Blasian afro EVER 5 months from now.
<3 <3 <3
I had terribly crooked front teeth as a dweeby 12 year old. I wore really intense braces for a little more than 2 years…I had all sorts of rubber bands (9 in my mouth at one time, I do believe), and I also had headgear. Not your standard headgear that you see in 80s-90s TV shows either – also, do kids still have headgear? It doesn’t seem like a thing anymore…? Anyway, I had, like, a beanie, in addition to the neckstrap thing you’re picturing. This was after having had some weird wire and pink plastic “appliance” when I was in 2nd-3rd grade. I have MOST DEFINITELY worn my retainer more than 75% of the nights since I got my braces off, and I’m a 33 year old person. I guess my point is that I have put in some serious time to not be a buck-toothed mess.
When I got my braces off, they wanted me to have this weird fiberotomy surgery where they cut the fibers between your teeth to release the “memory” and prevent your teeth from moving back to their original positions. I have, to this day, heard of one person actually having this done…my AWHS bff Stephie. At any rate, my mom took me to the oral surgeon for the consultation for the fiberotomy thing, and they scared the crap out of 14 year old me…My mom always told the story that I was standing against a door or a wall and the dentist described some part of the procedure, and I turned white and slid down the door. (If I could pick a group to advocate for now, it would be the super wussy, nerdy junior high-aged girls who, like me, secretly take everything to heart and too seriously. Life’s so hard for the painfully shy overthinker…) When we left the oral surgeon, I said no way in hell that little surgery was happening. NO WAY. As long as I wore my retainers, then everybody could suck it.
Once my wisdom teeth started coming in, the now 18 year old campaign for me to have them removed began in earnest.
My wisdom teeth came in (relatively) straight, and they only very rarely bother me – if I get REALLY worn down, they bug me a little bit. My old dentist would tell me to think about getting them out, and once he told me to take my x-rays with me to the orthodontist to see if he thought they needed to come out. I didn’t TELL him he was supposed to be looking for that, and he looked at the x-ray and said, “Everything looks really good. Your wisdom teeth are coming in straight, there seems to be enough room in your mouth, no real crowding or any issues.” VICTORY WAS MINE…wisdom teeth stay.
My new dentist said he agreed that they were pretty straight and there were no problems NOW, but that wisdom teeth are a pain in the ass to brush adequately, and that I should get them out to prevent complications later – I was already very old for wisdom teeth removal, and it would just be worse the older I get. I’ve been ignoring him, just as I did my old dentist, pretty successfully.
This last time I went to the dentist, I heard the same crap about my wisdom teeth, and then my dental hygienist spent some time trying to talk me into getting them out. I agreed to think about, partly because she told me that all 4 of my wisdom teeth were 1’s on a removal difficulty scale of 1-6 (so promising!)
I started the Whole30 and started feeling spunkier annd wanting to get things done and be more organized and adulty, so I thought I’d at least go for the consultation and see what I thought. I went last Thursday, and it was OK in the “I wait in lines at Cedar Point and then walk across the cars to wait for friends to ride the ride” type of way…I was panicky just sitting in the waiting room/treatment room knowing nothing was going to happen to me that day.
The surgeon was nice enough and explained things – including that my top teeth were 2’s (wtf?!) on the 1-6 scale, and my bottom teeth were 4’s or 5’s (SUPER-DUPER WTF!?!?). Apparently, I have exceptionally long tooth roots (yay? No. That means it’s more likely the nerve below them will bruise when they pull them…) and I should have had this done when I was 16. Um, get the time machine.
I have the next two weeks off to use up time and/or I thought I’d be post half marathon, so I decided NOW IS THE TIME FOR WISDOM TEETH REMOVAL and tried to make an appointment during the 2 weeks off…no dice. My only option was tomorrow at 7:45am, so I’m working until 7 and Bossman is coming in early so I can get this done, sort of, on my vacation. (side note: 6 more hours of work until my stretch of 12 days is over).
They sent me away with the following prescriptions:
Please keep in mind that the extent of my drug-taking IN MY ENTIRE LIFE consists of OTCs, antibiotics, birth control, and antidepressants (and whatever Xanax my grandma force-fed me when bad things happened, I suppose). I have never had any sort of pain pills, ever, and I’ve never so much as had stitches. Also, I pass out when I hurt myself (this is true – I got a blood blister once while playing baseball at Matt Wheeler’s house and barely made it across the street, and spent 2 hours with my hand in ice water above my head, getting woozy if I looked at it or thought too hard about it…My mom always insisted I tell my roommates to look out for this).
I am terrified…also, I didn’t drink, at all, until I was nearly 21 because I didn’t like the idea of not knowing ahead of time what it would be like. I am a huge terrified baby, and just because you’re worldly and/or a pillhead, don’t hassle me…and don’t tell me any stories about how terrible it was for you or will be for me, and don’t link me any “post-dentist” videos…I might freak out…In a COMING SOON post, I will tell you how Brian super-conveniently pre-evened things up so that he can’t take videos of me being ridiculous post-surgery (lucky me!)
Anyway, the appointment is at 7:45 and I’m going to spend the ENTIRE NIGHT at work fretting about it (and being thirsty…so thirsty, since I’m not supposed to drink anything after midnight).
