What’s my deal, anyway?

I think I’ve broken up with my blog or something. Lately, I just can’t muster up the “give a damn,” to well, give a damn. I can’t think of anything to post about or witty comments to leave on your blogs. I’ve just sort of lost my blogging mojo.

Maddie’s two-year-old-douchebaggery has escalated to heretofore unseen levels. We’re at douchebaggery alert orange here, people. I actually had to put her in her crib this afternoon so that we could all just chillthefuckout for a while. My god, EVERYTHING is such a BIG DEAL for her. And the crying and whining and demanding…. ugh. Needless to say, all efforts to conceive child #2 are on hold. I’m pretty sure my ovaries have packed their bags and are moving into an “adults only” community somewhere in Boca.

Work is good. There’s nothing like the dread of staying home with the aforementioned douchebaggy kid to make one appreciate one’s job. A bad day at work is still a picnic compared to a bad day at home.

To be fair, I should tell you that my kid is extraordinarily charming these days. She’s big into singing and putting on little shows. Old MacDonald and the ABCs are two of her signature pieces. I’m convinced this is a survival instinct on her part. Otherwise, her tiny hiney would be looking for a room to rent and a job.

I’m practically healed from last week’s Birthday Surgery Extravaganza. No pain so far, so I’m hoping things will settle down on the health front. Although, Gerald will be going through is own surgical gauntlet in a monthish, so there’s always HIS complications to look forward to.

Um, I guess this post perfectly illustrates why I ought not be posting. I’m kind of a grumpasaurus rex, huh?

Dude. Enough already.

So, I’ve got to have surgery on Wednesday. The Mysterious Pain in my abdomen hasn’t gone away and is now accompanied by elevated liver enzymes. Since CT scans haven’t revealed the problem, my surgeon feels it’s in my best interest to carve me like a Thanksgiving turkey go in and have a look around the joint. At this point, he thinks it may be either an internal hernia or a twisted bowel. Neither one sounds pleasant, but he assures me that should he find either one whilst wandering around my belly, he’ll be able to fix it right up.

On one hand, I’m feeling like perhaps I made a mistake having the bypass. I’ve lost a metric ass-load of weight, but I can’t stop having complications. I wanted to be healthier, not having THREE surgeries in nine months. GAH!

On the other hand, I look like this now, so perhaps it’s not such a bad deal after all. (My in-laws got me this dress for my birthday. I saw it at Christmas time and it was too expensive. She found ONE last dress and it was on sale. Notice the size. And yes, I can zip it all the way up AND still breathe, thankyouverymuch.)

Um, hi…. remember me?

Look, let’s cut to the chase. I’ve been negligent with my blogging and commenting lately. My excuse is that I’ve been sick and whiny and, well, no one wants to read that crap.

So, this is a quick post to let you know that I’m still around. I’m still reading you and I’ll be back as soon as I get over this swine flu black death sinus infection.

xxoo

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

So, I spent most of last night in the emergency room. Around 6:15, I  started getting some stabbing pain in my upper abdomen, right under my sternum. A half an hour went by and the pain intensified. Since I was at work, I didn’t want to make a scene. I shuffled over to the break room and called Gerald. He told me to go to the ER and that he and Maddie would meet me there. Well, I don’t know about you, but my personal version of hell is entertaining a toddler in the ER well after her bedtime. So, I nipped that plan in the bud and asked my boss/friend to take me to the hospital. Luckily, I work near the hospital where I had my gastric bypass, so I felt comfortable that they had experience dealing with post-op bypass patients.

I got there at 7:00 and was in a room by 8:00. They gave me some pain meds that didn’t work, so then they gave me morphine which also didn’t work. I had X-rays to check for a bowel obstruction and they came back clean. The pain got so bad that I broke out in a cold sweat, then my lips and hands started tingling and I passed out right in my hospital bed. Thank goodness the nurse was in the room with me. They gave me a second dose of morphine and a shot of a drug called Bentyl. In 10 minutes, the pain was a horrible memory. A couple of hours went by and then I had a CT scan. I went back to my room and watched late-night TV and texted Gerald with updates and plastered twitter with drug-induced misspelled tweets. At 1:00am, the doctor came in to tell me that the CT scan showed an internal hernia, most likely involving my colon. Apparently, hernias are one of the most common “complications” following gastric bypass. “Complications” in that it happens after the bypass, but isn’t caused by the surgery itself. Rapid, massive weight loss (like 105lbs in 8.5 months) results in loss of supportive fat in the abdomen and often results in a hernia.

They gave me the a prescription for the pill from of Bentyl and told me to make an appointment with my bypass surgeon. You know, because I want to have ANOTHER damned surgery. This will be three in 9 months. That’s ridiculous. I’m avoiding making the appointment and probably won’t do it at all until the prescription runs out and the pain comes back. I just can’t deal with another surgery. Not emotionally and certainly not financially. We’re still paying out $3000 on my bypass and $2300 on my gallbladder removal.

Gerald commented last night that I certainly am not the poster-child for gastric bypass success. I know things could be much, much worse, but this pretty much sucks. I’m not skinny enough for all this trouble to be worth it.

Not quite as pathetic anymore

Thank you all for the sympathetic comments. I wallowed in them for a full 24 hours. I’m fine now, so you can go back to your lurking/smart ass comments.

I still don’t know anything about The Stones Situation. The sonographer called in sick on Wednesday, so bad luck for me. The dr is sending me for an abdominal and pelvic sono tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully that will yield some news. Some GOOD news. Not “omgIhavecancerandI’mgonnadie” news.

In a weird turn of events, my OB removed my Mirena IUD on Wednesday. He knew I was going to come back for the removal in a month or two and he said he’d just do it then and save me a trip and a co-pay. So, meanwhile I’m fertile. Or, I’m going to be soon. My husband is doing his best to make sure that his fertile parts stay FAR, FAR away from my fertile parts. Apparently, Maddie has killed his desire for a second child, too.  I’m pretty sure he’s willing to move into his own place just to avoid “accidentally” impregnating me.

My car is at the car-fixer-place and I’ve got a rental. My insurance company only pays $25 a day on the rental and I’m cheap and I won’t pay extra for a nicer car. This means that I went from my pimpmobile with heated leather seats and power everything (EVEN THE DOORS ARE POWER!) to a car that’s one horse away from being an Amish buggy. Dude, it’s got roll-down windows. That you have to crank. Like with your arms and shit. Also, the door locks are manual push down things. I’m surprised I don’t have to wind it up to make it go. The upside is that it’s sure to get much better gas mileage than my pimpmobile. The car-fixer-guy says it’ll be at least a week before my car is ready.

There’s also been an improvement on the Maddie vs. Daycare front. Gerald dropped her off on Wednesday and there was no drama whatsoever. It seems Maddie drama queens that shit up for my benefit. Your kids do it to you, too, don’t they? Gah. They’re such little douche bags sometimes, aren’t they?

Reasons the last seven days have sucked ass

1. I think I may have kidney stones. The pain is unfuckingbearable. I have a sonogram/dr’s appt tomorrow morning to “scope” things out. I’ve decided that the new gastric bypass slogan ought to be “Lose Weight and Be Full of Stones!”

2. I wrecked my car tonight. I was leaving work and in the parking garage some schmuck was going the wrong way down the aisle. I swerved to miss a head-on collision and ended up hitting a fucking pole. It scraped down my fender and then collapsed my passenger door. It’s not pretty. Of course, the schmuck drove off and since his car never touched mine it’s really my fault and that means paying a deductible and that leads us to…

3. I fucked up our checking account so badly last month that our mortgage payment bounced on the 1st of March. We’ve NEVER missed a payment or been late on a payment before. Guess I can’t say that anymore, now can I?

4. Maddie hates her new daycare. She sobs to the point of gagging when I drop her off. I spent 10 minutes sitting in my car bawling my eyes out after this morning’s drop off. There will be a whole post on this once I get five minutes to my goddamn self.

5. I got home at 8:00 tonight and I have to be at work at 7am tomorrow to make up time for my stupid kidney stone dr appt. This means there’s TWO WHOLE HOURS in between getting home and going to bed and only 12 hours in between shifts at work.

I feel like I’m buried under 40 tons of shit. And the worst part? I can’t self-medicate with ice cream.

That sound you hear is me uncorking a wine bottle…

So, um, yeah

Things are better here. Maddie’s over her cold/demonic possession. Also, there may have been some PMS involved, but I’m not naming any names.

This latest cold meant that Maddie missed two days of preschool. Wait, what I really meant to say is that I missed two days of Maddie’s preschool. I’ve come to cherish my 10 hours a week of alone time. When I realized she was sick on Thursday morning I was so. very. put. out. “What about me?? What about my QUIET TIME??” Again, there was someone in the house who had PMS which may or may not have lead to exacerbated feelings of entitlement/martyrdom.

After a particularly hellish weekend with Legion Maddie, I cracked open a bottle of Riesling last night. I’m not technically supposed to drink alcohol until I’m a year post-op, but I’m also not supposed to kill my first born child, either. It was one of those “lesser of two evils” type of situations. Anyhow. I drank a quarter of a glass over 30 minutes and let me tell you, it was bliss. I got a nice buzz that was gone after an hour and some blessed relaxation. I woke up in good mood for the first time in almost a week. I guess I can add “budding alcoholic” to my resume now. Most people get that kind of training in college, but I didn’t. I like to think I’m taking the adult learning course over at the bar annex.

For the love of pete!

I am the proud owner of a “gallbladder full of stones,” according to my surgeon. I’m passed the point of medication to dissolve them and now require surgery. Woo-frickin-hoo.

Unfortunately, the surgery scheduler had emergency surgery yesterday to… wait for it…  remove her gallbladder! Therefore, I can’t schedule my surgery until Monday morning. He wants me to have the first available surgery, so probably early in the week.

Please leave me sympathetic comments. Also, mail me care packages full of fun things. Please forward them to Shelly’s house, because I’m totally going there to recuperate. She volunteered to watch my kid while her husband and I lie around on the couch whining and fighting over the TV remote.

I totally didn’t see this coming

I got sick a couple of days after Christmas. A nasty cold/sinus thing/the plague. Of course, I got it from my petridish daughter. Tuesday, I took her to the pediatrician because she just wasn’t getting better. Turns out she has pneumonia. She’s been sick for three weeks and I was all “shake it off and get in there and win!”

You: Nice parenting skills, Erica.
Me: I KNOW.

Anyhow, she’s on prednisone, an inhaler and some heavy duty antibiotics. The good news is that she’s already made a marked improvement. Score one for modern medicine.

Ok, now back to the reason for my post. I was sick and vaguely nauseous for four days. I thought maybe the nausea was from The Drainage, of which there was PLENTY. Yesterday, it got worse. I could only force myself to eat a granola bar yesterday afternoon and it made me want to hork. I didn’t eat again until dinner. Two bites and I was regretting the need to eat. I ended up lying in bed with horrible pain mixed with nausea. It hurt so damn bad and I just wanted to barf. After 45 minutes or so, I called my surgeon’s answering service. The dr on call called me back ASAP and after a few questions, said that it sounded like my gallbladder. I was told to call him back if it didn’t subside within the hour and to call and make an appointment to see him on Friday.

Of course, my insurance deductible reset TODAY which happens to be my first day of UNEMPLOYMENT. Gallbladder problems + $1,000 deductible + poorness = OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, ALREADY!

Happy New Year to you, too, Universe. Thanks for kicking me in the ‘nads right out of the gate.

Update

I was so tired that I went to bed at 7:30. It’s now 12:30 and I’m STILL AWAKE… despite delicious narcotics and an OTC sleeping pill. The throbbing in my toes is my personal Tell-Tale Heart. Also, my husband’s snores were giving me thoughts of suffocation via pillow and my daughter has yet another cold (thanks, preschool!) and her coughs over the baby monitor startle the crap out of me. I’ve reassessed the whole “am badass” thing and have concluded that I’m actually still a pussy.