Monday, March 30, 2009

Tomorrow's the day

I am excited and nervous for my surgery tomorrow. Excited because I've been told after I heal that I'll be able to breathe through both nostrils and nervous because it's another surgery and I hate the feeling general anesthesia leaves me with. The missing time feeling bugs me. I'm also a little nervous about the healing process and pain but my dr assured me that I'll be alright, especially when he found out I left early after my last two surgeries (went home same day after my gall bladder and a day early after the c-section). I also don't like having to depend on others during my healing process. My mother in law is coming up to help take care of Lex while Nate is at work and school and to drive me tomorrow since Nate is at school.

My big concern is Lex's behavior. We are working so hard to get him to behave and I'm worried that my down time will screw it up. His new favorite thing is to climb on top of tables. This concerns me because he fell off one in the living room and hurt himself and now he insists on climbing on the kitchen table and I can just imagine him falling off that and what kind of damage would result. Time out is sort of working, sometimes he comes back and is helpful and nice other times he goes right back to what he was doing that put him in time out. I think a big part of our problem is that he doesn't talk much (mama, dada, yay, kah/cat and sometimes nana) so he can't tell us what he's feeling. I know another one of our problems is that Nate and I have different views about "rules". I think it's fine for him to climb up on the kitchen chairs if he sits down or I'm around to make sure he doesn't fall off, where Nate says no climbing on the kitchen chairs. I'm also a stickler for keeping him in time out no longer than a minute and Nate doesn't really keep track and if Lex does something bad while he's in time out he extends it. We are making progress when he throws things on the floor, I pick them up and make him put them back.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Surgery scheduled

On the 31st I'm having a septoplasty and turbinate reduction. My nasal septum is pushed off to the right side and the structures that help moisturize the air entering your nose are too large. I saw the ENT and we settled on getting those fixed sooner rather than later so I can breathe again and hopefully it'll prevent any more major sinus infections. I'm kind of nervous even if this is my fifth surgery because it's the first one that isn't abdominal (D&C, exploratory laproscopy, c-section and gall bladder removal) so if something goes awry it'll be visible on my face vs being buried in my shirt and pants... oh well anything to breathe better.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

My doctor is wonderful.

I saw my doc yesterday to discuss losing weight and how I should go about it. My efforts in the past have included counting calories and exercise and really it hasn't stuck. After explaining to me that PCOS is more a metabolic disorder than a fertility one and that my body loves fat (fat creates estrogen and the estrogen prevents me from ovulating and my body doesn't react the way it should to insulin and my blood sugar) she recommended I see the clinic's dietician. Since she is a mother too she understands the difficult nature of getting regular exercise and planning out healthy meals and not picking whatever Lex didn't eat off his plate because I'm working on other things at the same time. So she made a deal with me, she's going to lose 20lbs with me. I love that she's leading by example and is not just telling me to do it.

So tomorrow is my first appointment with the dietician to see what permanent changes I can do to get my weight down into the healthy range from the obese level I'm at now. I know it's not just going to be easy but I need to set time aside for me, ask Nate to help out with the house stuff more and get out with Lex for walks. The weather is still icky (we have a winter storm blowing around right now) but we can mall walk (as is the plan if the roads are clear enough to get us up to my dietician appt tomorrow). At least it's March and not October so the weather is headed in the right direction to help me move the right direction.

When I get it figured out I will put a weight loss ticker in my side bar so I'm a little more accountable to others than just me.

Yesterday Dr Sprengeler also saw Lex because I suspected he had an ear infection (he had been tugging on his ears, protecting them from the wind and the left ear had a red streak coming from the opening into his ear) and he'd had green mucus coming out of his tear ducts on both eyes. I was right he has a double ear infection, he still sounds a little wheezy and she suspects he may have a sinus infection (hence the green snot from his eyes) so he's on amoxicillin three times a day for 10 days. Thankfully he takes it pretty easily. I'm glad this is the first time he's had an ear infection, I had lots of them when I was younger than he is. But overall my boy is healthy and my doc thinks he's just adorable and honestly if his doc wasn't the same year as my doc I would just have him see her, but his doctor is pretty good too. Nate's doc is the same year as mine and Lex's docs so I think after they are done we'll move on to a St. Luke's clinic and have one family practice doc for all three of us (unless my doc joins a clinic up here that my insurance covers because I would love to stay with her).

I'm going to leave off with a couple of pictures because I promised Sarah I would post with my new haircut. It's hard to see but I have layers now versus the blunt cut I had previously.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

That's my boy



My boy is such a ham, as if you couldn't tell by this expression. He is such my pride and joy I don't know what I would do without him some days. He has a bit of a cold but you couldn't tell that by this picture. I just had to share this one, he's come a long way since this one...


Friday, March 6, 2009

"It's never lupus"

Let's play a game, it's called "what the frick is wrong with Cate?" I've been having rib pain on and off for a few days that I just wrote off as a pulled muscle from carrying Lex to the bus stop in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday, no big deal right? Then today Nate and I were shopping and I reached up to grab a pack of the color wonder paper (Lex and I are going to try the finger paints tomorrow) and all of a sudden I felt a sharp pain in my chest, so sharp it took my breath away and I couldn't even say Nate's name loud enough for him to hear me. I tried to ignore it and we went about finishing our shopping and even ran to a couple more stores before it became unbearable and my left shoulder and upper back started to throb too. So it was off to urgent care where I was told I just pulled a muscle. Now I'm pretty sure that's what it is and it's responding to the pain meds so I'm not worried, just a couple days of rest and then working it back to normal.

Here's my big concern, I do this regularly, I pull muscles doing the dumbest crap, usually reaching for something, not even something heavy or bulky that normal people would pull muscles on, stupid things like paper, suture material, my purse. I've had some testing done, namely a sed rate and I know there were some other tests that were run when I was pregnant, but they didn't want to take those results at face value since I was pregnant and that can skew results anyway.

I see my wonderful doc on Monday to discuss my less than successful attempts at weight loss (this threw another wrench into the machine, can't carry the stroller down the stairs to take Lex for a walk tomorrow and definitely can't do most of the wii fit exercises) so I may ask her what she thinks about this whole situation. It's just frustrating because I wasn't even really pushing myself when I was exercising out of fear of hurting myself, I was attempting to work out every other day to give my muscles a day to recover. If she thinks I should have more bloodwork done I may ask her if she'd be willing to order some cd3 bloodwork, just so I have an idea where my hormones are at right now. While I'm alright with holding off on ttcing until I lose some weight and we are closer to Lex's birthday (not to mention paying off my parents and Nate's parents for the money they have loaned us) I just want to make sure my ovarian reserve is still good and my testosterone levels haven't gone all wonky. Who knows what's going on in there... I may just need to rent myself another body to live in. :)

We got our car back Thursday, only $1533 to get the darn thing fixed. Thankfully my parents were so kind as to lend it to us, they didn't like the idea of Lex having to ride the bus in our nasty weather (negative temperatures one week, low 50s the next) and it cuts 2-3 hours off my travel time to and from work. Although my manager there and two of my co-workers were wonderful enough to offer me rides if I needed them, I just happen to be too bull headed to accept help when I can take the bus and not put anyone out. Besides it meant I got to see my friend's gorgeous little man last week, I hadn't seen him in a while and wow he's gotten big.

I should head to bed and quit rambling...zzzZZZzzz