Month: August 2012

I’ve got nothin’

There’s nothing left in the tank.

Much has gone on but I can’t find the words to tell it – I wrote a post yesterday about my health and even I was bored. Drugs meant to be helping making things worse but still needing what those drugs do to make me well. Meds for the head, the thyroid and insulin resistance don’t seem to really like each other. This last week I have been consumed with drug side-effects that leave me simultaneously jittery, on-edge and racing while so exhausted I fear I may fall down.

We’ve stopped one of the meds to see if it helps, but it’s the one that deals with my blood sugars and they need to be stable not just so I don’t develop diabetes but for mood stability. So I need to lose weight and lose at least 5kgs fast. Yeah, like I haven’t been trying to do that for forever. Starvation September is underway.

This week has been hellish. Oscar had a molar removed under a general on Tuesday and only today voluntarily opened his mouth to talk. Eating is still not on the cards and drinking water is still a battle. He’s been home all week. Just sitting on the lounge. Mute.

Can you imagine being in pain or just being traumatised and scared and not being able to tell someone, to explain exactly where the pain is, what sort of pain it is, when it’s worse, when it’s bearable?

I’m now worried he’s got a dry socket – there was moderate improvement today when he ate a weetbix with some stewed apple and told me it didn’t hurt – when tonight he had one spoonful of custard I’d made him and grimaced and asked to go to the hospital.

This morning we had his arranged-a-lifetime-ago endocrinologist appointment. Yeah. Awesome timing. It was fine – just a chat but – of course – the need for more bloodwork.

It seemed like the cruellest trick of all but I made the call. He hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink. We were at the hospital. With its own blood collectors. We were there. So bloods were done.

Can you tell my head and heart are so weary?

 

Onward.

Open wide

I have quite the dentist phobia. When I was a child our dentist was a man who looked remarkably like John  Howard which probably explains a lot. He was mean and intolerant of children who were nervous of the dentist so naturally I found the perfect opportunity to vomit all over him. Sure, the whole reclining nature of visiting the dentist meant I covered myself in vomit but it was so worth it. What? I have a very sensitive gag reflex.

These days the phobia operates on a number of levels:

– it is NEVER ‘just  a clean’

– the drilling

– the needle in the gum hurts like a BITCH and never works

– the drilling

– Dentist Condescension – you know, where they tell you how to brush and that you should floss and use a flouride mouthwash – in THAT voice which says, ‘yes, I really do think you are an idiot’.

 

In the midst of the last few weeks both Jasper and Grover developed toothache.

Both have had to have a molar pulled. Grover has an abscess.

I’ve made Chef deal with it.

Then last week my lower jaw on the left hand side started to ache. A lot.

It was unavoidable.

We thought it was because I’m clenching and grinding my teeth.

That – of course – was just a part of it.

There was – of course – the pesky issue of the two back teeth on the lower left in my mouth that had been broken for years a while.

In fixing them he found decay going into the root of one of them.

Of course he did.

So on Thursday I had a root canal and now have the ultimate Mood Killer Mouthguard as part of my nightwear.

On Tuesday I get to take Oscar in for day surgery for dental work.

 

Not enough drugs people, not enough drugs.

 

Onward.

A serious of events

Today I felt a little ‘off’ all day. A bit, well, manic. Not overly, just a quiet internal quickening of the cogs.

There was Felix’s semi-final – that deserves a happy post all of its own.

Then home and Oscar’s best friend Josh coming over to hang out.

I made everyone garlic bread and opened packets of junk food for them with soft drink. I KNOW, I am such a hostess.

I popped a rolled shoulder of pork into the oven for dinner – up high for half an hour and then down to about 100C for 6 long slow hours of cooking.

Then I vacuumed the house and cleaned up the lounge room.

A load of washing went on.

I prepped some baby beetroots and carrots and they went into the oven for a long slow cook too.

Throughout this there was, you know, the standard life of many children and not enough electronic devices or multiples of particular toys in demand.

Then I made strawberry jam.

And lemon butter.

Chunks of cauliflower went into the oven to roast.

By then it was time for Josh to go home and holy crap it was dinner time.

And I got all panicky that dinner was so late and none of the boys would eat it anyway.

So Chef took over and made some delicious creamed spinach to go with it all.

Everyone ate dinner.

And loved it.

And it was actually DELICIOUS.

I noticed the strawberry jam was too thin so back into the pot it went. So I thought – I know what I’ll give Joke’s oven method a try.

Except I couldn’t find his recipe and stupid things like international time differences meant he wasn’t around so I did a bit of a google search and then just winged it.

You know where this is going yeah?

I kind of forget about it. If by ‘forget about it’ you mean really forget about it until you can smell burning sugar.

The ENTIRE base of the oven was covered in molten strawberry sugar. The jam, miraculously, is FINE. Not tainted with the smoke that the entire house now is.

Then I made some roasted carrots (the ones I put in with the baby beets) and pine nuts hoummous.

* And then I knew I had to deal with the oven because I still had to make a cake or some muffins or something for the boys’ lunchboxes tomorrow.

I pull the oven trays out and survey the wreckage of the internals. Then I notice something wrong with the door.

So Chef get’s the whole door off for me, we find the screw that’d come out and I pull the whole thing apart to clean it as, well, you do.

And I clean the inside of the oven – that lava-esque quality of charred sugar syrup is quite something huh.

* And then we put the whole oven back together again.

And then I whip up a batch of meringues using the egg whites left over from the lemon butter.

And hung out two loads of washing.

Somewhere between those two * I go to my bag for something and discover the little box of my tablets I was meant to take this morning when we went to Felix’s rugby. I hadn’t taken them because I’d only just taken my thyroid meds and I need to leave an hour after those before eating anything and then take all my other morning tablets – all basically expendable except the TINY LITTLE BLUE ONE.

Can you hear my head hitting the desk over and over again?

I totally forgot to take them because the game was so exciting and then, well, just go back to the top of this post for the rest of the reasoning.

Anyway, there were loads of pictures of all I made today to intersperse through this but OF COURSE my phone and ‘puter won’t talk to each other and I’m just not willing to go down another whole rat hole.

It’s midnight. I’m going to bed now.

ONWARD.

 

 

Stuff ‘n nonsense

The morning routine

6am up, shower, get dressed

Get Oscar up, showered, dressed – how easy those five words sound

Take thyroid meds

Breakfast for Oscar, lunches for everyone, dishwasher emptied, first load of washing on (if it didn’t got on while Oscar was in the shower)

7am Oscar out the front ready for his transport – I really try to have us out there after one particularly foul neighbour once berated our previous driver for tooting his horn at such an early hour.

Back inside someone else is normally up by now – breakfast rounds, more getting dressed scenarios, sometimes I even get to sneak a sit down snuggle with little people here.

Sometime in here is finally an hour since I took my thyroid meds and I can have breakfast and a cup of tea. Take my 500 other drugs.

7:30 Felix out the door

I have no idea what happens to the next almost hour and a half but I do know it rarely involves me sitting down relaxing. First load of washing gets hung out.

8:50 Jasper to school and Grover to pre-school on Mon – Wed

Second load of washing hung out

 

Today:

I then worked, part of which involved talking to two scientists about marine climate environment for just over an hour. Have I mentioned how much I love this job of mine? LOVE.

This afternoon was then Felix to rugby to play with the As – he was so chuffed to be called up (a certain number of players can play up or down in the comp as reserves for teams who are down players). While they lost (OH BOY they were so gutted, it was heart wrenching) the coach said he was really pleased with him, that he did what he asked him to do and he’ll be asking for him in their reserve line-up for the finals games. His own Division 2 team have their first semi-final on Sunday. I’m already tense. Have I mentioned how much Felix loves his rugby and how much we therefore do too?

But my GOD it was cold. Our home field is on the hill heading up to the Bilgola Bends with stunning views out over the ocean – lovely in summer with cooling ocean breezes I imagine. Baltic in winter.

From there we had major special treat of produce from a Trans Fat Food Giant and then headed up to the Aquatic Centre in the hope of seeing Felix’s best mate play his second game ever of water polo. We arrived just in time to see them leaving the building. Not to worry, another time.

 

9:55 – three children only went to bed about half an hour ago.  I’ve sorted and put away some of the three loads of washing I also got done today but am now to bed.  I’m going to Tough Mudder Bootcamp in the morning. The first time in three weeks. I had a goal of not missing one session but my brain decided otherwise.

 

As you can probably tell I am feeling a WHOLE lot better. I am the poster child of how a very bad situation can be salvaged very quickly through excellent psychiatric care, a strong support network and some really good drugs. I can not believe where I was a week and a half ago and yet I so very can.

 

I need you all to know that your words of encouragement, your SUPPORT were a critical component to me getting through those hideous few days.

I realise now that those hideous few days had probably been brewing since Oscar was in hospital in May and that the psychotic episode triggered by a reaction to new medication was really just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I can see it so much clearer now just how much energy I was expending on keeping ‘it’, me, together over the last few months.

 

So here I am and yesiree, I am enough.

 

ONWARD!

New Favourite

It seems fitting for the crazy lady to post some videos about cats. That and I think Blackbird will appreciate it. Actually as will quite a few of my friends! Jane. I suspect you will chortle deeply at this.

Behold, Henri:

and one more with feeling:

and three times the charm: