Posts tagged health
Glasses
Aug 26th
Not much going on so far today. I have an appointment this afternoon to get my eyes checked and get new glasses. I’m actually looking forward to it this time, because I need a solution to wearing my reading glasses at the end of my nose half the day. Yep, you heard me. We’re talking bifocals. I’ve had bifocals before, but the frames I chose were just too small, and half the lens was taken up with the magnifying part, so I just reverted to reading glasses.
Over the past few months, my eyesight has really gone to hell… I need glasses to work on my computer, which I’ve never needed before. Let’s hear it for getting older! I’ve worn glasses for a good bit of my life — when I was a kid, I wore them all the time to help correct my amblyopia (along with the eye patches, but let’s not go there. *shudder*). I’ve not worn them often for the past 15-20 years, but I guess it’s time. I’m really tired of needing to look over the top of the reading glasses to see anything else. For the first time I had to ask Brian to read the menu at a restaurant for me because I had forgotten to bring my glasses. I need a pair I put on in the morning, and just leave on all day long.
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Update on the ring: Still lost. :(
Woe!
Aug 25th
I lost Brian’s wedding ring.
A little bit of background. Brian can’t wear his ring at work because it’s an amputation hazard. His dad is in the same line of work, so his mom wears his dad’s wedding ring on her thumb. I loved the idea, so we had Brian’s ring resized to fit on my thumb. I’ve never had a problem since i got it resized, it fit snugly and didn’t have any problems with falling off.
Well, the past few days I’ve noticed it sliding off very easily, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Yesterday, I looked down at my thumb and it was gone. Disappeared. I have no idea where it is. I never noticed it leaving.
I’m pretty sure it’s in the house somewhere, as the last time I remember seeing it was when I was baking bread yesterday. There was a two hour span between then and when I noticed it missing. We’ve looked all over, but no luck at all.
Our Wedding Rings
As you can see, the rings are nothing fancy, just plain white gold bands, but… they’re our wedding rings. I try not to get attached to “things”, but this has really upset me more than I thought it would.
Wish me luck finding it. It has to be around here somewhere.
Man… I am horrible at keeping the blog updated lately.
Aug 18th
Yep, that’s me, procrastination incarnate. Why put off tomorrow what you can put off today? :D
Updates:
I have finally been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. While I am less than thrilled with this diagnosis, I am happy as hell to finally have a diagnosis. Now we can treat the damn thing. Pain pills were just taking the edges off the pain, because pain pills don’t really work for fibro. My rheumatologist has started me on Lyrica, and I can tell the difference already. Still pain, but a LOT less than it was. Still ramping up to the full dose, and I’m hoping to see some good results after a month or so. We shall see!
William is doing well here. He has been taking over all the housework that I have been unable to do. He’s doing a pretty good job. There was some complaining about the yard work, but today he got right out there and pulled a bunch of weeds and piled them all into the bed of the truck so we can take them over to Grammy and Grandpa’s to dump. The truck is full! I think we’ll have to tie stuff down or something.
Will and I went school shopping yesterday, and got him all the supplies he needs to start school tomorrow. I had him get a haircut to even his hair out, it was looking really shaggy. He’s trying to grow it long, and it’s in that awkward stage between short/manageable and long/manageable. He had saved up his allowance to get his ears pierced, so we went to Claire’s (well, Icing) and let him pick out the earrings he wanted. I talked him out of getting the big CZ “bling” earrings. Had to remind him he’s not in Sacramento anymore, this is small town Colorado. He picked out (with the help of a girl from his school that happened to be there) a nice set of 4mm white gold posts. They look great on him! I will post pictures later.
More updates soon, I will try to post more often. I’ve been horrible lately, but I think I’ll be able to keep it up more now that I’m feeling better.
Guest Room… Progress!
May 20th
Well, here it is, May 20th, two full months after I started this project. I’ve only been feeling well enough the last few days to take another stab at it. The “circus wall” has been covered with one coat of paint, and the room no longer offends my eyes. The trick is going to be finishing before my son gets here for the summer… in one month. Yikes!
Here are the progress photos:
The window, blue wall, and the carpet have all been masked off. Isn’t that wall lovely? (Blech)
Ozzy is helping. He loves the masking paper.
Here I’ve painted all the edges with a paintbrush. I really wish I could have masked the ceiling, but it has that “popcorn” finish and tape just refuses to stay attached. I also attacked the wall in a few places where I’d patched holes to make sure they were filled in completely. It looks like someone came and played with mud all over the wall now.
The first coat is complete! You can still see some of the striping under the paint (though you can’t really see it in this picture), so I will be adding another coat in a few hours… or maybe tomorrow. I hurt like hell already from doing this much, I don’t know how much I want to push myself today. I overdid it yesterday and am paying for it today. I’d really like to be able to get out of bed in the morning.
So, I have made progress. My goal is to have the bedroom complete by the end of the second week of June. By complete, I mean painted, furniture in, linens on the bed, and curtains hung. I should probably put the blinds back up, too. I could probably buy cheaper curtains if I have blinds on the window. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this room is going to turn out. Hopefully it looks as good in reality as it does in my imagination.
Spring at last.
May 5th
Tulips by *Kaessa on deviantART
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and spring is finally here. I’d love to go out and do some yardwork, but that is currently on hold. I did manage to make it out to spray some Roundup on the weeds, however. My biggest challenge is trying to figure out how to Make the Sunflowers Not Grow. When we bought the house, the yard was overgrown with sunflowers, and I didn’t get them out before they totally went to seed. Unfortunately. Now I have a bazillion baby sunflowers coming up, and I’m not physically up to going out and pulling them all up. I’m waiting to see if the Roundup has any effect on them. If so, it’s herbicide, baby.
On the plus side, I have some lovely tulips coming up, and my lilacs are in full bloom. The late frost didn’t kill off all the blooms on the peach trees, and it looks like I’ll have a nice crop of peaches for the fall.
My overgrown front yard, with my lilac in full bloom
Pretty, yes?
On a fun note, I just discovered the new and updated photo feature in my WordPress. Yay for updates! This will make it much easier for me to post random photos from Picasa or from my Photobucket page.
For those of you following my illness, here is an update: no news. My doctor still has no idea what’s causing the pain, and has officially given up and referred me to a rheumatologist. He thinks it may be some type of auto-immune disorder. I’m just hoping we find out what it is and hopefully make it go away.
Recuperating
Mar 20th
Well, I haven’t managed to get that second coat of paint on the wall, because “a little sore” doesn’t begin to cover it. Went to a friend’s house to work on her computer the next day, and when I got home I could barely walk. Taking it easy today… had a doctor’s appointment today (my annual “girl stuff” appointment), and stopped at Borders to say hi to everyone. Now I’m home, and I’m done. I really need to wash the dishes and do a couple of loads of laundry… my house is suffering. Poor house. Well, maybe I’ll do that after breakfast tomorrow.
Hopefully Brian won’t be too grumpy with me. ;)
Guest room upgrade
Mar 18th
Well, my youngest will be here in June to stay for the summer, so it’s time to start on the guest room. It’s currently rather scary, with one wall painted in pink and orange stripes (no, I didn’t do that, it came that way… along with about 50 plastic flowers nailed to the wall). I really wanted to do something different with this room, so we’re really taking the plunge and going dark. William would have loved it if we would have painted it black, but I just didn’t want to go there. Black is just… no.
We did choose a fairly dark grey for the main room color.
The grey wall in the front is my “test wall”, and I like the color a lot. It’s Behr’s “Dark Ash” (770F-5, if you’re wondering). You can see the circus wall in the background. That definitely needs to go.
This is the wall that I will be painting in the accent color (Behr’s “Rain Storm”, 530F-7). This is patched and ready for paint.
This is the first coat of the accent color. The circus wall looks really hideous now. This will definitely need another coat, since it’s over a fairly glossy white. I suppose I could have used a dark primer, but the good primer cost more than the paint. A second coat is just as easy. Oh, the paint in the picture will dry flat, the gloss is because the paint is still wet in this picture.
That other wall is going to give me nightmares. I think it’ll be the first one painted in the grey, then I won’t have to look at it anymore. All the trim in the room will be in the blue, and I’m going to paint the bed and the bookcase in blue as well. I’m thinking a light sandstone(ish) color for the curtains and bedding, but that won’t come until much later.
I’m going to try to get the second coat on this wall today, then work on it some more tomorrow. I’m aching pretty bad right now, but I hate stopping when I’m not through.
Back home.
Mar 17th
If you have been following my posts on Facebook, I’ve been out of town since Friday, in a quaint little town called Naturita. SMALL town. Very nice people, and I enjoyed our stay. Brian had work near there, and I decided to tag along so he wouldn’t be lonely. ;)
I have a few pictures over on Facebook that I took with my Blackberry, let me see if I can grab a few…
Cute little town, eh? Yeah, that’s it. The whole town. I was a bit bored, but I got caught up on some of my reading. The doggers and I spent quite a bit of time hanging out, too. Lots of places to take them to go running.
Oh… if you’re wanting an updated on the medical condition… there isn’t one. Every test comes back normal. Hopefully the doc will call me this week and we can figure out where to go from there.
Diagnosis Update
Feb 4th
And the update is… we don’t know yet. Went to the doctor again today, and we’re going to get some more blood tests in 2 weeks.
*sigh*
I really hope they figure out what this is. It’s very draining.
Medical Mystery Tour
Jan 30th
Ah, the joy of handing over yet another $20 co-pay to the doctor’s office.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve been sick. Not just sick, but seriously “not well”. Test after test, and we’re finally starting to narrow down what’s wrong, but no final results yet.
It started a few weeks ago (well, longer than that, but it just started getting bad a few weeks ago)… pain in my joints. Hips, shoulders, elbow, knees, you name it. When it got to the point where I couldn’t walk without pain anymore, I figured it would be a good idea to make a doctor’s appointment. I went in on a Friday, and had a bunch of bloodwork done to see if we could figure it out.
Monday rolls around, I’m at work, and my vision starts to go all blurry. I mean really blurry. I manage to make out the phone numbers for my boss, and call her in so I can go to the doctor again. Brian comes to work to pick me up, and it’s back to the doctor’s office (by way of the store so Brian can buy me a donut). They check my blood sugar, and it’s normal, after two donuts. Apparently it should be higher than this right after eating all that sugar. So, they’re guessing hypoglycemia, and the vision blurring was just my blood sugar dropping down to nothing. I’m supposed to “Not let that happen again”. No worries, I’ll get right on that. ;) Still in pain, the hypoglycemia is not related.
Off to see my primary care doctor that afternoon, and after checking some more blood test results, he determines that I’m hypothyroid as well. There’s a pill for that, but you have to take it forever. Yay. Still in pain, possibly related to the hypothyroid. On the plus side, being diagnosed with hypothyroid explains the following symptoms I’ve had for ages:
- Fatigue
- Sluggishness
- Increased sensitivity to cold
- Elevated blood cholesterol level
- Unexplained weight gain/difficulty losing weight
- Muscle aches, tenderness and stiffness
- Pain, stiffness or swelling in your joints
- Tendonitis
- Muscle weakness
- Brittle fingernails
- Coarse, dry hair
- Depression
- Memory loss
- Irritability
- Difficulty concentrating
- Infertility/miscarriage
Quite the list, eh? And I thought I was just getting old or something. Hopefully, this is what’s causing the pain, because that means we’re on the road to making it better.
Oh… my doctor put me on a six day course of prednisone to see if that helped the pain… had a bad reaction to that. That was lovely. Missed three days of work recovering from that one. I’ve also stepped down from my full time position at the bookstore, because I can’t stand up for that long anymore. The pain gets worse at the day progresses, and usually by about 3ish I’m in so much pain I just want to go home, take a vicodin, and go to bed.
I sure hope they figure this one out, because I’m really getting tired of it.
