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Jan 2, 2015

2014: The Year of (mostly minor) Illness & Injury

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I’ve started looking back on the year that just ended, and while I have so many good memories of the year, and so many moments to be thankful for, I also quickly realized this wasn’t the best year for our health.

For starters, this was the year of the stomach virus for us. It started at the most magical place on Earth in March, when Mira fell ill with a gastrointestinal virus, three days into our Walt Disney World trip. Aaron caught it two days later, and Cordy caught it a day and a half later, on our drive back home. While it did keep the family from seeing Animal Kingdom, we still managed to visit the other parks, although Aaron’s visit to Hollywood Studios was only a half day.

WDW 2014No, Aaron wasn’t the one taking this picture – he was sick in bed that morning.

A couple of months later, Cordy again fell ill with some kind of stomach bug at the end of our Cedar Point trip. On the upside, at least she didn’t get sick until the end of the trip.

In September, we were excited to attend an annual picnic of a group of friends, many of whom we only get to see once or twice a year. After driving two hours to the picnic, Cordy immediately became sick, and we had to turn right back around and go home, missing the event entirely. She also missed nearly a week of school after that because she was so sick.

In December, it was Mira’s stomach that required us to leave our friends’ annual Christmas party – long before we were ready to leave – after she unexpectedly lost her dinner.

So…what have we learned? Much better and more frequent hand washing, that’s for certain. I’m not sure how the kids fell victim to so many stomach viruses in a single year, all during the worst possible times. As they’ve grown older, they’ve become much better about keeping their hands clean and keeping hands away from their face as much as possible. Mira still has a desire to touch everything around her, though, so I’m sure that was the cause of at least the Disney outbreak.

I’m hoping 2015 will bring us stronger immune systems and no illnesses poorly timed to traveling or important events.

Personally, 2014 was a year of too many injuries for me. I spent the first part of the year with a shoulder that wouldn’t move without intense pain due to a poorly placed flu shot that caused subacromial bursitis. I’ve never had a shoulder injury before this, so learning to get dressed and perform daily activities with a limited range of motion on the left side was frustrating. The injury improved with a cortisone shot and 6 weeks of physical therapy, but then flared up again over the summer.

So far my shoulder has been pain-free since my second cortisone shot in August, but I can’t say for certain that it won’t flare up again. I’m wishing for no shoulder pain in 2015.

If that wasn’t enough: I started running more in 2014, and just as I was getting into the groove and starting to LOVE running, something started to hurt on the outside edge of my foot. Since mid-October, I’ve been dealing with tendonitis that is stubborn to heal. (Or maybe I’m the one being stubborn, because I want to get back to running.) Two and a half more weeks in the boot, and then hopefully I’ll be allowed to start running again.

The bootI cannot wait to get this thing off.

I want 2015 to be my best running year ever. I can’t wait to get back to training for the runDisney Enchanted 10k, and maybe even try for a longer distance later in 2015.

I’m not saying 2014 was terrible. These are mostly minor issues – very minor compared to some illnesses and injuries – and I’m thankful that we’re all still relatively healthy. I’d just like to be even more healthy in 2015.

Filed Under: Family, memories, plague ·


Aug 22, 2014

A Bumpy Start to School

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School started on Wednesday, but it hasn’t been as smooth as I’d hoped it would be. Honestly, this has probably been one of the hardest back-to-school weeks we’ve endured.

The week started with me getting what I thought was a small cold. By Monday evening I could tell it was spiraling into something worse, so I kept drinking lots of water, taking vitamins and supplements, and hoping it would go away. On Tuesday I was feeling run down, but determined to finish getting supplies packed into backpacks and clothing set out so everything would be perfect for the first day of school.

Wednesday started on a high note. The girls were awake, excited, and ready for their first day. And somehow Mira grew from 7 to 14 overnight.

First day of school 2014 No really, why does she look ready for high school?

The bus was even here only a couple of minutes late. I expect that on the first day, as drivers are still getting used to routes and some kids take longer than expected to get onto the bus. Cordy was a little nervous, and as the driver and aide greeted the kids she asked, “Are you nice? Because I had a mean bus helper in first grade and I didn’t like her.” The aide responded, “Oh, I think I’ve been on a bus with you before.” I’m really hoping it wasn’t in first grade…

But the bus pulled away with two happy kids, I settled into a (peaceful!) day of work, with only Cosmo curled up next to me and a whopping sinus headache to endure. I was pretty sure it was a full-blown sinus infection at this point. Even my fatigue couldn’t get me down, especially since there were no calls home from the school during the school day.

Then at 4pm, half an hour after the end of the school day and just as I was starting to wonder if the bus would show on time, I received a call from the school. I expected it to be an update on how Cordy’s first day had gone. Instead, it was her teacher telling me that Cordy and Mira were still at school, as their bus had not shown up yet and the school didn’t know where it was.

Seriously?? I expect first day delays, but when the bus hasn’t shown up to the school 30 minutes after it was due, and no one knows where it is or when to expect it, that’s a problem. I sent Aaron a message quickly and he left work to go pick them up, rather than wait for who knows how long for the bus to arrive.

While waiting, I checked the transportation department’s Twitter feed – which is designed to alert parents to bus routes running late – and despite notices for several other routes, ours wasn’t listed. What good is an alert system if you only provide updates on some of the routes?

When Aaron and the kids got home, the girls looked exhausted. Gone was the excitement of the morning, replaced by sweaty hair and shirts and half-open eyes. They said they’d had a good first day, but it was very hot at school. (No air conditioning in the building, and it was near 90 degrees.) We went through their folders and pulled out the requisite first day stacks of paperwork for me to fill out.

We ordered pizza as a special treat for the first day of school. Mira only ate one little square of pizza, and despite being home in air conditioning, looked really worn out. At one point she asked me, “Do I feel warm?” I placed my hand on her forehead and said, “No, sweetie, you’re cool to the touch. And a little clammy, too.” Half an hour before bedtime, she announced she was going to go to bed because she felt so awful.

But before she could go upstairs, she suddenly clamped her lips tightly together and had that wide-eyed look that all parents quickly recognize – she was about to vomit. Aaron rushed her into the bathroom and they made it just in time. After that excitement, we cleaned her up and, in true Mira fashion, she said “It’s a good thing I only ate one piece of pizza!”

She said she felt better and so we put her to bed. At first I thought her vomiting was probably related to being in the heat all day. Cordy had a 24-hour stomach virus on Saturday, but those tend to have short incubation periods, so Mira would have been sick long before Wednesday, right? I convinced myself that her proclamation of feeling better meant it was a one-time thing.

My assurances fell apart about five minutes later when she started vomiting again. And then 15 minutes after that. And 20 minutes after that. It was clear now that this wasn’t related to the heat. She finally stopped vomiting around 2:30am.

I slept fitfully the rest of the night, waking up with sinus pain and coughing. At 7:15am yesterday, I dragged myself downstairs to help Cordy get ready for school. The second day of school routine wasn’t nearly as cheery. Even though Mira was already on the couch sipping juice and announcing she felt better, I knew she wasn’t able to go to school. So yesterday she spent the day on the couch, watching Phineas and Ferb episodes all day long, while I sat across from her doing my best to get a little work done through the brain fog and exhaustion. I felt bad that Mira had to miss the second day of second grade – what a lousy way to start.

And then at 4:05pm, the phone rang. It was the school, telling me that the bus had just shown up five minutes ago, so to expect Cordy to be home late. 30 minutes late to the school again? And yet again, no notice on the Twitter feed. Oh wait, they updated after I complained to them on Twitter. But they updated 10 minutes AFTER all kids had been dropped off. Thanks for letting us know the bus was on its way back to the depot empty.

Guess who has earned themselves the special honor of being my project this year? I’m utterly fed up with transportation, and it’s only the second day of the school year. I can understand some delays at the start of the year, but their lack of communication and their lack of respect for parents and students is unbelievable. I’ve heard some horrible stories from other parents already, too. Stories that make ours look minor.

The good news is that we’re hopefully ending the week on a positive note. Mira was completely recovered by last night, so she happily went to school today. The bus was on time this morning. And I think I’m finally starting to get over this sinus infection. Now if the bus could make it to the school on time this afternoon, we’ll hopefully have a perfect day to end the week.

Filed Under: Mira, plague, school ·


Aug 7, 2013

Compromised By A Cold

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I came home from BlogHer a week and a half ago full of energy and full of ideas. It seems to happen every year, and I spend the first two weeks home trying to mentally sort these new blogging ideas and choose where I want to start first.

Only this year, most of that energy was abruptly stopped four days in when I started to get sick. I had already heard others saying how they came down with the post-conference crud, and by Wednesday I felt certain I was in the clear from it.

But then Thursday, I woke up exhausted. Utterly exhausted. Friday was the same, along with a slight sore throat. I tried to dismiss it as dehydration and not enough sleep, drinking more water and trying to go to bed earlier to combat it.

Over the weekend, the exhaustion continued, and the lymph glands in my throat were swollen. I was definitely getting sick, but I didn’t really have a lot of symptoms yet. It wasn’t until Sunday night that I started to get the stuffy nose and (again) the sore throat to tell me this was a full-blown cold coming in.

And now it’s Wednesday, and I feel like I’m only hitting the peak of this germ infestation. This might possibly be the slowest moving cold EVER.

I’d like to think it took so long because my body put up a valiant effort to fight it off, holding the line for several days before eventually being overwhelmed by the viral enemy. In that case, I’d expect the cold to be weaker from the battle casualties, making only a brief appearance to plant its mucousy flag in triumph before my immune system regrouped and kicked its ass.

Instead, I think this cold virus has taken the lazy approach. Seeing that my immune defenses were already weakened from travel, it didn’t see the need to amass forces quickly, taking its sweet time to build up gradually, completely fooling my stressed out white blood cells, who were only looking for critical mass enemies. By the time my leukocytes sounded the alarm, the cold was already entrenched and easily overcame them.

That’s all a fancy way of saying I’ve felt miserable for nearly a week now and today is the worst day yet and why won’t this cold go away already and waaaaaahhhh!

I was lucky to avoid being sick this summer until now. But no amount of Emergen-C or zinc is helping shorten this long-game cold. I can handle many of the symptoms of being sick – stuffy noses aren’t so bad when I didn’t breathe much through my nose for the first 22 years of my life. (I had sinus surgery to correct that.) The lack of energy, however, is frustrating.

Here’s hoping I’ll be back to my usual self soon, and that my energy will return so I can get back to planning out new blog posts with a brain that isn’t quite so foggy.

We’re two weeks away from the start of the school year, which means I have exactly two weeks to get over this cold and rebuild my immune defenses before the kids bring home shiny new germs from their classmates.

Maybe I’d better have my immune system double-down on those defenses.

Filed Under: daily life, me me me, plague ·


Nov 27, 2012

Your PSA For The Week: Stop The Flu

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Some of you know I’m a nurse. I may not be working as a nurse now, but I still have my license and all of that knowledge is still stuck in my brain and used on a regular basis. (I even have nursing dreams, where I’m drawing up meds for a patient and making sure the doses are correct. You wish you had dreams this glamorous, no?)

Anyway…have you had your flu shot yet? Winter is coming (and the next season of Game of Thrones), but the flu is already here. I’ve read several Facebook status updates from friends who have been suffering with the flu. And just last week two in my house were struck down by it – first Cordy, then Aaron.

It’s a nasty flu this year, too. High fever, headache, body aches, chills, coughing, and lots of mucous. Having watched it progress twice in one week, I can safely say it doesn’t look pleasant at all. You don’t want this.

So you might argue that you don’t want to get a shot. If you’re against vaccinations for religious, medical or personal reasons, then by all means skip it. I believe strongly in personal choice, as we have skipped a few vaccinations here, too. You might get the flu, and you may feel miserable, but I’m not one to challenge doctor’s advice or a pillar of your beliefs.

But if your reason is just that you don’t want to make a doctor’s appointment, or you don’t like needles, then I suggest you reconsider. You don’t want your life to be on hold for days while you feel weak and miserable.

Just as important, you don’t want to put stress on your family to come take care of you either, right? And I know you don’t want to pass your flu on to others who might not have the immune response that you do to fight it off.

I didn’t feel like waiting for an appointment with my doctor, so I went to the Walgreens down the road for my flu shot.

(Full disclosure: Walgreens and their Balance Rewards program are sponsors of this blog. Please see their ad off to the right for more details.)

My entire flu shot experience lasted less than 15 minutes from the moment I walked into the store until the moment I was walking out. It would have been even less time than that, but they recommend you stick around for a few minutes after the shot just to make sure you don’t have any reaction.

How easy was it? I walked up to the pharmacy counter, told the pharmacist I wanted my flu shot, filled out a quick questionnaire, and then was asked to go to a little private cubicle for the shot.

the only form needed

The pharmacist then came in, gave me the injection, and put a band-aid on my arm. He then walked back behind the counter, rang it out on the register and gave me my receipt.

Because of our insurance, it was free – I would have paid for an office visit if I went to see my doctor! If you don’t have insurance, it’s still inexpensive at Walgreens. (And either way you can earn 500 Balance Rewards points for it, if you’re a member.)

If you are truly scared of needles, you can ask for the FluMist when you get your flu vaccine. It doesn’t use needles and is instead sprayed into your nose. That’s the form Mira’s pediatrician gave her at her annual check-up last month.

Did my shot hurt? Yeah, for a moment. And my upper arm was a little sore for the next couple of days. But that was nothing compared to what I saw the flu do to my daughter and husband this week. In a cruel twist of fate, Cordy’s annual check-up was today, when she was scheduled to get her flu shot. (She got the FluMist anyway.)

When I was younger I never gave a second thought to a flu shot. I didn’t want another shot, so I always turned it down. After going through nursing school, and seeing just how bad the flu can be for some people (as in, life-threatening), I now routinely get them each year. I may be strong enough to fight it off, but I don’t want to be miserable for days, and I don’t want to make others sick.

Of the four people in our house, the only two who didn’t get the flu were the ones who had our flu shots. If I learned any lesson from this, it’s that I shouldn’t wait so long to make sure the whole family is protected next year.

Legal disclosure: I am a registered nurse, but this post should be considered friendly advice and NOT be considered medical advice. Always check with your doctor or a medical professional (like the pharmacist) who can review your health history before any vaccination. And yes, the flu shot only protects against the flu strains that they expect to be the most common. It is still possible – although less likely – to get the flu even if you have received the vaccination.

Filed Under: healthy living, plague, sponsored ·


Nov 26, 2012

What A Week

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Last week at this time, I was expecting to have a relaxing Thanksgiving week. My only concern was for Wednesday, when the kids would be home from school while I was still working. I had an enormous to-do list with confidence that I would get it all done.

So then Cordy, who wasn’t feeling well Sunday night, woke up Monday morning with a high fever, cough, and headache. That meant she was home with me all day, on the couch with her Nintendo DS and watching numerous episodes of Beakman’s World on Netflix. I didn’t get as much done as I had planned because I was caring for her, too, but she clearly had the flu, so keeping her home was the right idea.

Cosmo kept watch, too.

That evening, right as she was fighting sleep on the couch, finally breaking a sweat after a 103.5 F fever, the cable/internet went out. As I tried to reset the cable box, my computer prompted me to restart for a Windows Update. I let the computer restart, hoping I could get my internet back again so that I could continue working.

But then the computer wouldn’t start again. It would try to restart, get to the point of loading Windows, hang, and then reboot. Safe Mode didn’t work, running diagnostics didn’t work…after fighting with it all night, I was computerless and lost an entire night of getting anything done.

Cordy was better on Tuesday, but still not well enough to go to school. Aaron took her with him to work, where she could hang out in his office with her games and books away from everyone else, while I figured out if my computer was dead or not. Aaron’s brother saved all of the data from the hard drive (YAY!), but the diagnosis was that the hard drive was dead.

The afternoon was spent researching new computers and working out how in the world we were going to afford a new laptop. I had been planning to buy a new laptop in a month or so, but this was just a little too early for me to be ready. Tuesday evening, I went computer shopping while Aaron entertained the kids, and by 9pm I finally had a new computer to resume my online life. The kids had no school the next day, but I hoped that at least most of my plan for the rest of the week would be back on.

I wish I could have got it without Windows 8.

And then Wednesday morning came and Aaron had been gifted with Cordy’s flu. Well…damn. To make it worse, we had my family coming over for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, and we had yet to finish cleaning the downstairs to prepare for the event.

I cranked through as much work as I could while tending to the chaos around me during the day on Wednesday. By 6pm, Aaron voluntarily went to bed feverish and achy after shivering on the couch all day. After I put the kids to bed, I dumped as much clutter as I could into boxes and hid it in the garage. (The perfect hiding place when you need a house de-cluttered quickly.)

Then I pulled out the Lysol wipes and Febreeze antimicrobial fabric spray, and completely wiped down the entire first floor of the house. No fabric or hard surface that anyone might possibly touch was forgotten. None of our visitors were going to leave with the flu. I finished this task (and a lot of internet surfing) around 3am and slept on the couch.

Thanksgiving went smoothly. Aaron was still too sick to come downstairs, so Mira and I ran care packages of food up to him while we feasted downstairs. It was great to spend time with family, although I felt bad that Aaron couldn’t join us.

I did participate in Black Friday shopping. I don’t really like the craziness or the crowds, but it does allow us to get great deals on things we need and gifts for others. Luckily, I got most of our shopping done online this year, but did have to go to the stores to get a few items for family members.

By Friday I was completely drained from the week. I had barely slept for days, I was mentally worn down from the stress of losing my computer and having my plans upended, and all I wanted to do was shut down. And for the most part I did.

It’s now Sunday night. I’m still playing catch up, but feel a little better. Everyone in the house is almost well again, and Mira and I escaped the flu. I hate having my plans changed – I can handle the little stuff, but with so many large roadblocks thrown at me this week, I wanted to scream.

Tomorrow morning the kids go back to school, Aaron and I go back to work, and everything goes back to normal. At least that’s the plan.

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