procedures continue…

This is an overdue update. I had a procedure done a week ago at the pain clinic.

We are continuing to try and fix the old noggin. Given the (admittedly limited) results from injections into my head — we’re working towards my neck, where these nerves branch from. The big nerves we were injecting were the third medial nerve and the nearby occipital nerve. We did diagnostic injections on both sides of my neck. They had to put an IV in because ‘we have to put in an IV anytime we’re putting needles in your neck’. Sounds like a good plan to me.

So I was ready to go and we started with the pokin’. First they put a little local anesthesia. And then they put in some contrast dye so that they could see the nerves clearly. Then some local anesthesia (short-acting) into one nerve and then the other. It was more painful than I thought it’d be. Then we repeated that on the left side. I was glad when it was over.

I had less pain relief than I thought from it, but there was some definite relief.It lasted a few hours and then faded as the anesthesia wore off.

So back to where I said it was diagnostic – we’re doing another diagnostic procedure (same injections, long-acting anesthesia this time) in another week. These are required to find out if the radio-frequency nerve ablation would likely be successful for me.

Meme from Blackbird

Two things for you today. First, since I cannot keep a good thing quiet, is the link to a fantastic recipe. It’s a chicken pot pie, and one of the best I’ve ever had.

Second is this meme – I stole it from Blackbird. Let me know if you do it – for some reason, I continue to enjoy doing these. I’d have thought the appeal would wane, but no!

This one is a one word challenge –

Cell phone? Red

Hair? Brown

Mother? Loving

Father? Musical

Favorite Food? Sweet

Dream last night? Wacky

Drink? Water

Dream/Goal? Music

Room you are in? Living

Hobby? Jewelry

Fear? Ferris

Where do you see yourself in 6 years? Mother

Something you are not? Athletic

Favorite Muffins? Cranberry

Wish list item? Shoes!

Where did you grow up? Ohio

What is the last thing you did? Iced

What are you wearing? Pajamas

Favorite TV Show? Office

Pets? None

Friends? Yes

Your life? Blessed

Your mood? Happy

Facebook? Yes

Favorite place to eat? Indian

Missing Someone? No

Your vehicle? Honda

What you aren’t wearing? Earrings

Favorite Store? Gap

Favorite Color? Blue

Last time you laughed? Minutes

Last time you cried? Sunday

Best friend? Spencer

Place you go to over and over? Library

Cooking…

Well friends, I have a question for you all! I like to cook – maybe liked to cook is closer to the truth?

The last year I’ve had a really hard time cooking DINNER because I can stand for 10 minutes, but 15 minutes of standing and my back is starting to spasm.

So I’m hoping that you, my friends, will have some great ideas for me. I can do some prep and then put it in the oven, but most of the recipes I know and have used in the past are prep and then standing over the stovetop for 20 minutes or so.

I know you’ll come through for me, right?

*fingers crossed*

Books of 2009

I kind of forgot about this list – but then I found it again! Here are all the books I read in 2009, in general chronological order. And of course I had to look at last year’s post along the same lines. It looks like I read fewer books in 2009, which surprised me. And I have to mention a few favorites; the Uglies series, The Time Traveler’s Wife, A Christmas Carol, and Unexpected Blessings.

If you want to read my thoughts on each book, find me on goodreads.com! I’d love to be friends. Goodreads is awesome because I get so many ideas for books to read. And more importantly, I have a list so I don’t forget what I want to read!

1. Papa Married a Mormon
2. Mamma’s Boarding House
3. A Much Married Man
4. Giovanni’s Room
5. The Red Badge of Courage
6. Life is Just What You Make it: My Story So Far
7. False Impression
8. The Importance of Being Earnest
9. A Christmas Carol
10. The Code of the Woosters
11. Mozart’s Ghost: A Novel
12. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
13. Uglies series
14. Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain
15. The Strangler
16. No Country for Old Men
17. Something Borrowed
18. Black Boy
19. But for a Small Moment
20. The Body Broken: A Memoir
21. The Wednesday Letters
22. The Time of Our Singing
23. The Killer Angels
24. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time
25. Patience With God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us
26. Unexpected Blessings: Finding Hope and Healing in the Face of Illness
27. Pay It Forward
28. Inés of My Soul
29. To Siberia
30. The Lost Garden: A Novel
31. The Westing Game
32. Thirteen Reasons Why
33. The Time Traveler’s Wife (a re-read)
34. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
35. The Wet Nurse’s Tale
36. In Cold Blood
37. Speak
38. Their Eyes Were Watching God

A very strange day, indeed

Well yesterday was such a crazy day, I had to write about it. No pictures, you’ll thank me later.

I wanted to make some crystallized ginger. It is SO GOOD in ginger cookies, and it is also really expensive. So I was thrilled when I found this tutorial for making it at home!

I began peeling — this took a while, as I figured it would. During the peeling, I managed to peel off a little skin from my knuckle. Oops! But got a bandaid on that and stuck a fork into my ginger while I peeled it — keeping it further from my hands. This worked great. Finally it was all peeled, and time to cut up the ginger into smaller pieces. I had a few done when all of a sudden I cut part of my finger! It is my left ring finger and I cut part of my nail and some of my skin. My stomach sank and I started feeling nauseated. It started bleeding.

Iwent to get a rag and covered it, put pressure on the cut, yadda yadda. Now I started feeling dizzy. I was worried I was losing a lot of blood and decided I’d better call my husband – I didn’t know if it needed stitches, and couldn’t get a good look at the actual cut. I called my husband and he said he’d call some of our neighbors, because it would take him 1/2 and hour to get home. I hung up with him and was feeling really dizzy now. I knew I should sit down. On my way to doing that, I hit my head on the corner of the fridge and passed out. I came to in the dining room (no idea why or how I got there) and was feeling yucky. I had that cold sweat come over me, and I started out to the front room with my shoes (in case I needed to leave?), when I lay down and puked on the floor.

I can’t remember the last time I puked and DIDN’T puke in the toilet. So that was weird, and gross. A few minutes later Spencer called back to say that our neighbor was coming over. She’s a nurse. I told him I didn’t think my cut was that bad — didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. I also told him (I think) that I passed out and threw up. He said he was coming as quickly as he could and that I just needed to let our neighbor (let’s call her C) in when she knocked.

C came in and got things taken care of. She looked at the cut and said it’d be fine – then wrapped it up in the rag again. I couldn’t believe the nonsense that this cut had caused, especially when it wasn’t even a bad cut. She got me up on my couch and laying down – gave me ice packs for my head. I was starting to feel better. Then she proceeded to clean up my puke. Yikes, I tried to tell her to leave it and my husband would clean it up when he got home. She said, ‘No, no, I’m a mom, this isn’t a big deal.’ What a sweet neighbor.

And so – I apparently don’t like to see my own blood. Learn something new everyday, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day

a lengthy update!

Thanks for your great ideas on nausea. Things are improved — I met a woman recently with hypoglycemia. She has to eat a small meal every two hours. The more we talked, the more animated she got, saying that this could really help me! I thought it was worth a try. So I eat my normal meals, but eat a snack every two hours. Doesn’t help the headaches, but it does improve the nausea most of the time. Hooray!

I was talking to my sister the other day and she said it had been a while since I wrote/put up pictures on my blog. It’s true. I feel sometimes as if telling you the events of my life is a little depressing. The last five years reads a lot like this ‘We tried _____, it didn’t work. Now we’re going to try _____.’

But nonetheless, there is so much good to tell and I need to continue to update my family on my health (one of the main reasons for starting this blog), but I will also try to write about other stuff going on. Thanks for sticking with me.

What is happening now in the world of doctor’s appointments…I went in Tuesday and we were going to do more trigger point injections (in the back), but talked about it and since they hadn’t been working we didn’t do anymore. So that was good, and we just made it into a followup appointment  about the Botox. The Botox worked for two days and then…nothing. I caught him up on that and we made a game plan for both the head and the back. We wanted to attack the back first, and so this morning we did injections into my sacroiliac joints. I don’t know if you know what the sacroiliac (SI) joint is, but it’s where the sacrum (the very bottom of the spine) meets the pelvis…the bottom of the pelvis are the ilium. Anyways, it’s the biggest joint in the body (interesting, right?), and takes all your weight when you walk and sit. Which is why those things hurt me so much. So he did some tests and found that my SI joints were inflamed and dysfunctional in some way.

The injections went well – these have to be done under Xray, and while I was under there he could see arthritis in both joints (more in the left) and the left was over-rotated. And so, I am hopeful that we have finally hit on something that will help. This should help with the pain and physical therapy should help get my back into better shape. Time will tell!

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So I have two really good friends – we get together for lunch every couple of weeks. Last weekend (Wednesday to Sunday) we went to St. George, Utah. Those of you out of state are probably not familiar with St. George. The most important thing to know is that it is 4 hours SOUTH of Salt Lake City. So… warmer.

Nausea — any ideas?

Hi guys! I’m rolling along with the same old here. There have been storms every day (seriously!) for the past week. I haven’t been feeling the effectiveness of the Botox. I’m hoping that’s just because of the weather.

But in other news, my nausea has returned over the past month. What a bummer! It was basically gone, we found a medicine that helped and I had hardly any nausea. Now….it is back. It seems I’m nauseated unless I’m eating. 10 minutes after I eat I’m pretty good, too. Ay yi yi. I don’t like to drink soda (so 7up and ginger ale are pretty much out), but I do drink club soda with lime juice or ginger tea.

I have nausea meds but I don’t feel think it’s a good idea to take them everyday. Anyone have any other good ideas?

How about an update?

Well it’s been long enough! I’ve still been around, reading friends’ blogs. Just haven’t felt like blogging for whatever reason.

So you all know I’m seeing the pain clinic for back pain, but that the Dr. feels he can help with my headaches. I’ve been doing physical therapy (for my back) since the treatment plan. It’s been a couple of months of PT and I’m not seeing any results yet. But that’s not the good part.

The good part is this – my pain doc is working on the headache angle and I think we have actually hit on something.

I KNOW!

So we did some (more) nerve blocks, these in the back of my head on the right side. So those were about like the previous nerve blocks, only effective as long as the local anesthesia is working. But that led my doc to think that Botox in the same locations might work. And so last Tuesday we did Botox injections in 3 locations, around the back of my head on the right side. So he said it would probably take a few days to see any results. I waited hopefully… and then on Thursday I woke up, and my headache was much better than normal (on the right side). It still switches back and forth to the left side (where the pain is its normal bad-ness). As the day progresses, my headache gets worse and gets back to its normal levels. It also seems to be affected by not enough sleep and weather (worse before storms). So I’m still figuring out how much it has helped.

But clearly it has had some effect. And that is really good news!

Here is an overdue update on my hair…this summer and fall my hair was normal on top (blondish) and then purple on the bottom half. Here are some pictures for you…

Least favorite Christmas song…

I think this year it’s gonna have to be Christmas Shoes.

Anyone have any songs grating on your nerves?