Life Lately

Life lately has been hectic... we've been traveling so much, and I am just flat out exhausted.

Some may consider this post a photo dump... but I'll add commentary as well so I can remember all these events. I sure hope life decides to calm down a bit before Baby Cookie arrives... I could use some quiet days.

I sure did miss these fur-babies while we were out of town! More on that out of town part in another post or two...

I love when I'm able to get them both in the same photo. 

Hospital stay #? Who knows anymore. I was admitted for pyelonephritis, which is a kidney infection. No good. They kept me overnight and pumped lots of fluids and antibiotics into me. 

While I was stuck in the hospital, it was National Hug Your Cat Day. I was super bummed, so I told Dan to hug the kitties for me when he got home. This is the photo I got... nice try, babe. It's the thought that counts, right? :)

One night, we went out for custard... and I thought, "let's bring Smudge along"... so glad we did because they had a dogwich on their menu! It was frozen custard between two dog biscuits. He loved it. 

We went to the Strawberry Festival in Troy, OH... but the best part was taking a photo with Babe Lincoln!

Stormy climbs Mt. Janelle every day. She loves her baby.

My handsome husband ran his first half marathon! And the lucky guy wasn't even sore afterward - he even mowed our yard that day!

These two... staring at an airplane. She's such a daddy's girl.

On the 4th of July, we made patriotic French toast. It was SO delicious. 

And then we spent the rest of the holiday weekend sanding and painting furniture for Baby Cookie's room.

I wore my respirator (Walter White style, yo) because of my asthma... and so Baby Cookie didn't have to get all the fumes either.

No caption needed. :)

We celebrated Tyler's second birthday with him, and we had so much fun! He is such a little character, and we love seeing him so often. 

After flying, I was super sick... again. I had an ear and sinus infection, so I loaded up on juice since I can't take many meds right now. 

Dan and I have started (and almost finished now) a six week Lamaze class through our Air Force Base hospital... it's 2.5 hours each Wednesday night, but we're learning a lot. This is after the first class when we deserved 1/2 price shakes for having to watch a live birth on TV without any warning.

The MLB All Star Game was in Cincinnati this year, which happens to be only an hour away from us! Groupon was so nice and offered a big discount for the Fan Fest... so we went! It was a lot of fun, and we got to pose with the world's biggest baseball.

And I got to hold one of Cal Ripken Jr.'s old bats, which was pretty sweet.

Gilligan likes exactly TWO human foods: ice cream and peaches. When I had peach ice cream, the guy went nuts. I can't blame him, though. 

Stormy is always laying on her baby. She's going to be so confused when Baby Cookie doesn't have whiskers or a tail...

Smudge is the goofiest dog in the world. This is his "I'm so happy after a walk" face. 

Due to my sinus infection, I was actually admitted during a routine appointment with the pulmonologist. I was wheezing too much for their liking, so they hooked me up to an IV with some meds to open up my lungs. It worked, but I had a slight allergic reaction, so what should have taken 30 minutes actually ended up taking 2.5 hours because they had to dilute the medicine with saline and drip it super slowly into me. I'm all better now, though!

We keep catching Stormy sleeping on the changing pad. In her defense, it does look like a cat bed... and here's a tiny sneak peek at Baby Cookie's room! 

I made these cherry lemonade cupcakes for our Ohio baby shower that a couple good friends threw for us... more on that later!

Has your life been crazy lately too?

Have you done anything fun?

    

Sick of Being Sick: A Trip to the ER

A few months ago, I wrote a post about my awful joint pain that flares up from time to time. It was back last week in my left elbow, and it was miserable. It was while we were visiting friends in Philadelphia, but my husband is awesome and helped me through it. There's no medicine I can take that makes it better, so it's really just a waiting game.

We do think that it was for sure caused by an antibiotic in the 'flox' category, though. It's promising knowing where it came from, but.... unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done about it, so I may just be stuck with this crazy pain from time to time for... ever.

On top of that, I had a crazy sinus infection and ear infection. Actually, I think I still do. I've been drinking all kinds of green juice and trying to pump my body full of nutrients. I'm using my Neti pot (nasal irrigation) once or twice a day to clear everything out. And yet, it got worse and worse until finally, it triggered my asthma to act up.

On Saturday, I had a hard time breathing throughout much of the day. I kept using my nebulizer machine for albuterol breathing treatments, but ultimately, Dan took me to the ER around 9PM. It wasn't fun, but they fixed me up quickly at Wright-Patterson AFB and sent me on my way home.

It was like a miracle... except that as I write this (on Sunday evening), my chest tightness is back. I hate this, and I just want to feel better.

At least my husband cheers me up with cupcakes. It's all a girl can ask for, right?

[My half birthday was last week, and all I wanted was a cupcake. My husband thought it would be humorous to bring me lots of different kinds because he thought celebrating a half birthday was ridiculous. Oh well - I still got lots of muffins / cupcakes.]

[carrot cake muffins from Panera are the best]

Sorry for ranting about this. I am not really posting this to ask for sympathy but moreso just to get it off my chest. If you're the praying type, I would appreciate some prayers to kick this nasty bug.

In Sickness AND In Health

Today's topic is something I haven't really discussed here before. I have hinted that I've been sick, but I've never really explained what's going on. I still don't know, for that matter, but I have decided to share this journey with the blogging world.

When my handsome husband married me at the end of May, he said he would be with me in sickness AND in health. Little did he know, the whole sickness thing would happen a lot quicker than we thought.

Actually, let me backtrack a bit. This all started exactly one year. It was October of 2013, and my life was completely normal. One weekend, I decided to head to Denver to hang out with Dan and some of his friends after they finished a physics conference up there. We got a hotel, had dinner, drank a lot of wine, and then went out to Dave & Buster's for the night.

We had a blast, and I had the most delicious 'adult snow cone' (pictured below) that night.

The morning following our fun night, however, I woke up feeling like death. I stumbled to the restroom in the dark, nearly falling down. The joints in my hips, knees, and ankles hurt so much. I was confused since it was 6:00 in the morning, so I shrugged it off thinking I slept funny and my limbs were asleep or something. Then, I reached for toilet paper, and my arm felt like it was going to fall off. And my fingers couldn't even rip a piece of toilet paper off the roll.

Uh oh.

But I went back to bed because I thought maybe I was just experiencing a terrible hangover. But I never get hangovers.

I woke back up a few hours later and was still in excruciating pain. Dan started to freak out, and we made a correlation that I had started a round of antibiotics a few days prior. Quick - check Google. Could that be the problem? Maybe. Call the doctor. Another maybe. I stopped taking the antibiotic right then, but the pain continued to worsen throughout the day.

Dan wanted to take me to the ER, but I kept saying no. I did think I should go, but I desperately wanted to enjoy the weekend in Denver with him. He had been out of town a lot for competitions, and I really just wanted to be with him... so I was stubborn and refused. We had donuts, went to the Celestial Tea company in Boulder, walked around downtown Boulder, and drove back to Denver for dinner. I was limping the entire day from pain, but I tried to put a smile on my face and have fun.

After dinner, we drove back to Colorado Springs, and Dan told me we were going to the ER by my house. We did. And we waited for HOURS. And finally, they got me in and told me that it was probably a reaction to the sulfites in the antibiotic - oh, and in all of that wine I'd had the night before. Apparently, sulfite intolerance usually presents as a skin or breathing issue, but mine was causing my joints to swell. They felt like they were grinding together every time I moved. My asthma was also flaring up (probably the breathing effect), so the doctors wanted to treat that and kind of dismissed my pain.

I left the ER at 4:00AM with a prescription for Vicodin.

It did nothing. I had to fight through the pain for three or four days, and then it finally just disappeared completely. I did a lot of reading online about sulfite intolerances and saw a different doctor about it. I had blood tests run, but nothing was ever confirmed.

I learned from Dr. Google that B12 fights against sulfite intolerances. I promptly bought some dissolving pills and started taking them daily. Then, one night after drinking wine, I felt the joint pain creeping in. I took a few B12 pills, and the pain subsided. Seriously. It was great.

Over the past year, any time I have felt the joint pain, I simply pop some extra B12 and call it good. I hadn't felt anything like it again... until this past weekend.

Yep, the weekend we spent away in Chicago. Let me tell you - my body sure knows when to go haywire.

Needless to say, we spent one full day of our trip in the ER. My pain was at a 10 (and I NEVER use the sacred 10; I always say 4, even if I'm in a LOT of pain), and I told them I was at a 10+. Unfortunately, nothing they did would relieve the pain.

I ended up getting a high dose of Tylenol and Advil, but those didn't do much. They took the edge off, and my pain went down to maybe an 8. If that.

Here I sit, five days later, and the pain is still in a few of my joints. I can't move one of my fingers on my right hand (at all), and my left shoulder is killer. Yes, I had a follow up with my primary care doctor on base. No, he didn't know how to explain it. Yes, blood tests have been done for arthritis and have come back negative. Yes, more blood work has been ordered to test for a few other possibilities... because my current doctor doesn't seem to think it's a sulfite intolerance. We'll see, I suppose. I am just ready to have this all figured out.

I see an allergist next week for the first time, so maybe just maybe they can figure something out. In the meantime, please be thankful for your healthy bodies. I took mine for granted (and even ran a full marathon in between pain sessions!), but I would give anything to have my health back.

• Have you ever gone to the ER? 
• Do you have some kind of illness too?

Sick of Being Sick

Yep, I'm sick again. Actually, I have been. I thought I had kicked my sinus infection from last fall, but apparently it never went away.

When I had that diagnosed in October, I quickly started taking an antibiotic. A few days later, I had an AWFUL reaction to the antibiotic, so I stopped taking it. (The reaction, by the way, was EXTREME joint pain - think not being able to move your shoulder, elbow, wrist, finger, hip, knee, etc. all at the same time - for TWO MONTHS. It was on and off, at least, and at first the doctors thought I was allergic to the Penicillin {which still hasn't been completely ruled out}, but it's pointing more toward a sulfite allergy now... which is a major bummer because WINE. Every time I drank wine, I started feeling achey, and it seemed to exacerbate my symptoms. The joint pain finally subsided; I think the sulfites from the medicine finally got out of my system.)

Since I never finished the antibiotic, the sinus infection stayed. I grew accustomed to what that pain felt like, and it became my new normal.

After my nine mile run last Saturday (not this past one), I was sneezing like crazy (stupid allergies) and wheezing (I also have asthma... I am just the picture of health, huh?). It didn't stay for just one day. I couldn't breathe properly for five days before I decided to go to urgent care because it was getting scary.

They diagnosed me with a sinus infection AND bronchitis AND an acute asthma flare-up. All at the same time.

I've taken an entire round of antibiotics and steroids this time around (no sulfites, thank goodness), and I'm actually starting to clear up. I feel like I have more energy, and I'm not as congested (again, I thought that was normal after having it for so long).

Despite all of that progress, however, I am still struggling to breathe, so my doctor sent me home with a nebulizer breathing treatment system, and I do it twice a day now (down from three times). It helps, but it feels awful not being able to breathe properly on my own. Luckily, I've been able to get a few good runs in despite the whole breathing issue... I just make sure I take my inhaler along these days.

• Have YOU been sick this winter?
• What's the worst part of being sick to you?

What a Week!

What a week it has been!

Did it feel incredibly long to anyone else? I thought it would never end!

Okay, so I'm a bit melodramatic. But really... it was the first FULL week back to work in a long time. We hada three day week before winter break. Then, we had two full weeks off for winter break. We had a two day week last week when we returned. Quite frankly, I'm shocked I made it through all five days in one piece.

In other news, I am still recovering from an awful cold I got last Friday. I am feeling MOSTLY back to normal, but it's still a bit tough to breathe at times.

I know I haven't blogged much, especially compared to 2012, but honestly, you wouldn't want to read my every day posts. I don't have much to say. I wake up, go to work, work out, come home, eat dinner, and go to bed. Seriously. I need something better to blog about, and I am looking for that something right now. I have a few picture posts to make because I want to show off the professional pictures Dan and I have had taken... three different sets! But that will only take up three posts, so I'm working on something better. I promise.