 | Diary Navigation:
|
May 23, 2003
Forgive me for being long lost. I wish I could justify my absence with a wild and exciting recap. Or maybe I could, if you’d consider those freaking ants that are taking over my freaking life, excitement.
I could maybe bring you back to the worst Mother’s Day of my entire career. Or I’d probably have to start the night before. We had just wrapped up a great supper, just us, our first Saturday night without a plan in a long time, and it felt fantastic. We rented Kaillan a Barney sing song movie, Brandan a Scoobydoo one, and one with Hugh Grant for me. That week Remo had arranged to have
most of his trucks painted, and at 8:00, he said he’d have to run and meet the painters. He’d be really fast though...An hour went by, and then another, one by one the kidlets flaked out. I wondered what
was taking Remo so long, and then it hit me: Mother’s Day. Since I hadn’t noticed any secret plans taking place, he was obviously out organizing something. Maybe shopping for breakfast fixings, maybe he went to pick up the wrought iron bistro set and bench I was hoping would be the icing on our landscaping in the front. I’d strategically placed a picture of them only yesterday, where had he
stored it? When he walked in at 10:30 and parked outside, I knew it had to be because there was something in the van he didn’t want me to see. I was even a little smug.
We talked about the trucks for a bit, polished off the Trading Spaces episode and just hit the hay. It felt like hours later, Remo tapped me on the shoulder and whispered something about us going to watch the movie before the kids woke up. Down we went and impressively, we got through almost all of it before our house was rocking. But they forgot it was Mother’s Day. When I sang Happy
Mother’s Day to me, Brandan, my not even five year old, went in the kitchen to make me toast. Though it was more like warmed up bread with a little margarine, and a half a glass of water on the side. It was probably about then I started getting, sad or wispy or maybe even a little choked. Was it by hormones or right that I wanted them to do something special, a card even? Nothing. So I told Remo I was going downstairs to work on the flipping mess I’d made with a room I was trying to organize. Sitting there, feeling sorry for my lonesome self, I acknowledged how over his head Remo is right now, but couldn’t he have concocted something? It was the not even a card part that bothered me. My aunt called and I limped upstairs. Funny, my foot was asleep but not pins and needlie. I told her in a voice that was surely eavesdropped on, how they hadn’t done anything. Not even smoochie
kisses. I loved that it made her mad, and grinned when she asked me to put Remo on the phone right now. Go Dee Dee go!
We had a baptism that afternoon, so I started getting our stuff ready, but it was so weird when maybe an hour later, my foot was still asleep. Then Remo noticed I was dragging it. Then I noticed holy crap, I was. I realized it wasn’t just the foot, the weird numbness was crawling up my leg. Remo was sure I was having a stroke, I knew I wasn’t, but still something wasn’t right. I went upstairs to pull out my 12 inch thick medical book and diagnosed myself with Multiple Sclerosis. I had every single
sign. For about fifteen minutes there I convinced myself that it probably wouldn’t happen just like that and tried to look up some other cause. I started to feel a bad pain in my hip and called the caseroom. The nurse there felt that I probably didn’t have MS, more than likely the baby was on a nerve.
Phewf. I, of such infinite wisdom, could fix that! I ate chocolate and went upstairs and hung myself in a monkey-like position to drop the baby out of whatever it was crashed on. I think I quite successfully wedged it farther into that position because all of a sudden I felt excruciating pain. I couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk, couldn’t lie down, couldn’t breath even. It was as bad as end labour. Remo had the kids outside so I wouldn’t worry them and I called the case room. The nurse called Dr. Bray who said it sounded like a sciatic nerve problem, but because it is not obstetrical, I should go straight to the emergency room at the hospital. At one point, Kaillan came
in the house while I was laying flat on my back on the floor thinking how lying flat on my back was not good for the baby, and got on her back beside me. When I turned, she turned. When I lifted my leg, she lifted hers. She put her arm around my neck and warmed every cockle of my heart.
I told Remo we had to go to the hospital, he made arrangements to bring the kids to his parents, who were in the parking lot of the restaurant they were going to celebrate Mother’s Day at. I called our friends in tears (the pain was that bad) to say we couldn’t go to the baptism, I was worried it would affect their bill at the reception, and more sorry to miss such an important day in a little man’s life. In the car, I tried to get comfortable and breathed through those waves of really bad pain. Brandan
asked what was wrong, I told him I had a little boo boo. He thought I said I had to go poo poo. So his cure was simple, just go! Remo dropped me off at the emergency room and it took everything in me to get into that triage room. I couldn’t stand in line because I needed to lean on something, so people who all seemed to be bleeding to death kept getting in front of me. An old man offered to wait in line for me, a woman asked if she could buy me a water. I overheard someone say a six hour wait and then it was my turn. Someone brought me a wheelchair but it hurt too much to sit in it. So I held onto the change machine, cheek to metal. When I finally got into the nurse, my blood pressure was creeping up, 166/95. They sent me up to the case room for the NST, which was like a sentence because you have to lie in one position for the entire reading. The baby was fine. We stayed there
seven hours and I learned I had just had severe sciatica. Now for the record, till now, I THOUGHT I had a sciatic nerve problem here and there, when I’d get up and feel pain in my buttocks or hip, the kind of pain you rub for a bit and it mostly goes away. My girlfriend has complained forever about
her sciatic nerve, and I sort of pooh poohed it in my mind, because it wasn’t that bad. Oh how to CURSE yourself! Anyway, it was really sweet because Claudia came to the case room while we were waiting there. And I more or less forgave Remo for not orchestrating a special Mother’s day. Though
I will milk this for a very long time. My bet is he never again makes the same mistake. Too bad for him he did it while I’m a sensitive preggo.
Good news? I was cured of an incurable disease. How do you explain those minutes of fear, when all you can think of is the devastation to your family. With how fast my MS was progressing, I had maybe 5 years to live. Better news? The pain they told me I would have for a while, lifted later that
same night though two weeks later and I still have numbness in my foot. For a couple days after, I dragged it even. Dr. Bray said I suffered nerve damage but with all the RESTING I’ll be doing, it should get back to normal.
Three days after the attack of the nerve, he sentenced me to bed. BP 150/90. I think I’d just hit 31 weeks, I lost my little calendar. It happened in the worst possible week work-wise. When my retired boss came back for just that week, and I was just wrapping up a big project. I expected bed rest would come, my track record sort of dictates it, but I wasn’t ready for it just the same. He made me promise I would go straight home but may lightening strike me down, I went into the office to wrap
up a few catastrophes and fill out one form after another. I felt horrible for them there, because they had to be really choked with me, but the baby means more than everything. So here I am. Parked on aching sore from lying on them hips, getting chubbier by the minute, watching an awful lot of TV and wishing I could just get up and do, do, do. But soon enough I’ll be doing alright, remind me I should just be grateful for these few weeks of rest before my life turns whirlwind and never again
slows down.
Kaillan continues to be a captivating sweetheart. She’s shy but not and sooooooo easy when it’s just her. Same with Brandan. Alone, he’s a dream, but put the two of them together and it’s like there’s ten of them. Big news in Brandan’s life? He plays soccer for real. We signed him up but waited till
days before the first practice to pump him up about it. He talked to each of us about how he wasn’t sure he would be able to go. It would probably be too warm to play. Or he would probably be too tired. Or the other kids would all know how to play, or they could run too fast for him. One problem
at a time, we tried to reassure him he would be fantastic, and we were already so proud of him. He’s athletic and coordinated and we knew he would do well. Sending him off with his coaches and his team (the Retrievers) was a big thing for me. Blink and they’re that big. Anyway, Brandan did as well as we expected, though he didn’t get the team playing concept. He took off with that ball and flew down the field, wanting to be first. When practice was over, he was heartbroken. Did the next group maybe need him? We pulled up to the house and he jumped out the van and flew to the neighbors to show them his cleats. He had us pull both cars out of the garage so he could practice
in there. That night, I tried talking to him about what it meant to be part of the team. It wasn’t about him wanting to be best, he had to share turns. Both my aunt and Remo sort of nixed my interference, they were too proud of his determination, and felt I should leave it for the coach to fix if need be. It’s amazing isn’t it, how powerful that need is to make life easier or at least better for our kids? It’s so clear to me that we’re breaking through a new stage in life now. With kindergarten starting and real
relationships with other kids to forge through, it’s all so different. More trial and error?
Oh man, the day of my last Bray appointment I felt one Braxton Hicks after another. And then realized it wasn’t contractions but in fact, the baby had just flipped back to breach. I know for sure because it kicked the crap out of something very low. The day before this week’s appointment it amazingly flipped back to head down and started again kicking on top. I know I haven’t got the space in there for all this somersaulting and surely it must be tangled in umbilical cord by now. Both Brandan and Kaillan are physically active and were while I was pregnant with them. But they didn’t have anything on this one. Remo’s sure it must be a boy. I’m completely guessless. And seriously strapped for a name. I still have Jacob on my list and mostly for lack of another option, though I lost considerable interest when it was the top baby name again. Remo likes Liam, I don’t. What about
Gavin? Noah? Probably too soft for what this one moves like. For a girl, I had Jillian and Emily as my gentle names, though most people I run them by sort of shrug. The one name I like most, I’ve found NO support with. Emerson, “Emmie”. Teri Hatcher of Superman fame called her daughter that, please fork over some opinions. I liked McKinley too, but my aunt thinks it sounds like skinny. Remo likes Megan. All I know is the middle name would be Olivia (after my Dad’s Oliver). Kaillan was supposed to be a Mackenzie Olivia, till I got coerced by my mother in-law, and we went with Brandan because we didn’t have a better option, though to this day, I regret that it’s so common. My first mistake when it came to a name was in assuming one would come along that would just feel right. I admire people who know all along exactly what their name will be. Maybe I’m even envious of them.
I’m trying to think, what else, what else. I’ll post a couple recipes up on the board for any interested parties. By next week, I’ll try to get into a routine over here. I’ll be watching enough TV and doing plenty of reading, surely I’ll be able to share something really clever with you. I’m just up and running on the computer and I haven’t even checked my e-mails. Dr. Bray said I could get up to toss some laundry on. Surely, I could try out a recipe here and there if I go at it completely calm and
relaxed?
OH, the ANTS. The little frickin’ frack creeps are popping up all over the house. Or is it that I’ve been spending so much time looking for them, they’re bound to turn up. What I don’t get at all is why they never go to the kitchen where there will always be a crumb of something on the floor! Apparently ants are a big problem here on the island, and there’s no doubt it doesn’t help that we live beside the forest but I’m telling you they make me insane. Because once you see more than one, you know they’ve got the whole clan marching in somewhere. I know there are those who believe these things to be clever creatures, but I find them stupid. Running around and around in a circle and with absolutely squat for intuition. They can’t sense when they’re not welcome?
Alas, Jenna won a million dollars, Jen and Andrew will live happily ever after and Ruben and Clay will battle it out for real when their singles are released, but what’s left for a bed rested gal to watch? Amazing Race, is that all that’s looming out there? Amy, any insight?
Tell me something, who does the barbequing in your house? The one time I attempted to turn the thing on, I filled up the house even with propane, it’s just always been HIS job. But that, changing a tire, shouldn’t I know how to go at it myself? How completely self sufficient are you?
I’m sure there’s posts on the board, but I’m not even looking at them till tomorrow. It’s past the middle of the night. Sleep just now became a serious priority.
I'm fairly sure my justification here is all whacked up and in trying to fix it here and there, I created tons of typos, but writing this little update in my bed on my right side has possibly dislocated my shoulder. Dr. Phil just mentioned this week that people find complainers boring.
So next time I'll just think it.
Allisun
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
