MRI Birthday

So I had my birthday, (yay!) but had an MRI first thing on my birthday morning (sucky) and generally my birthday rolled by not feeling at all like a birthday. I don't know the last time I had a medical appointment free birthday. Because of the overwhelming pain in my hip I stopped doing any activity and the pain went down. I managed to walk 10 minutes after my MRI and ended up in a bit of pain from it but not as bad as usual.

I kept off my hip and then after a few weeks the pain went away. Within that time I had gone into a thrift store and contemplated buying a set of crutches but decided to wait until I had the MRI. By the next week the pain was almost completely gone.

They stuffed me into the giant machine and played ABBA for me while the imaging was taking place.

Here is my fancy 'before' picture with me in the hospital robe.

She put me on the narrow little bed and it moved into place and then I was raised so that my nose was inches from the top of the inside. She put the headphones on me and told me it wouldn't be a long one, just 20 minutes. For the first time in my life I panicked. I pulled off my headphones to call out that I was feeling claustrophobic but it turned out she had been walking into the booth and didn't hear me. I calmed down and popped the headphones back on and stayed as still as possible. I missed her instructions that she had relayed to me over the headphones but I was glad that she missed my little panic episode.

I'm not really sure what came over me, I think I've just filled my personal lifetime quota for being in large machines, getting my insides looked at. This has just been enough already. When I headed home, trying to not let the stress overtake me, I wandered through the neighborhood coffee house. I'm not a coffee drinker but I felt like I needed a distraction.

This particular coffee shop has a really nice, bubbly girl in there who seems to remember me for some reason. I went in, made my order and she asked me about my day. I told her it was my birthday AND my MRI day. She happily made my iced mocha (with a shot of hazelnut) and told me it was a gift.


I can't tell you how much that meant to me on that lonely morning. I had the weight of wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I had to wait 4 days for the results. As I was in that machine, feeling the humming and sound vibrations going through my hip, I kept saying, "Please find out what's wrong, please see what's wrong, please see what's wrong", to myself or maybe to the machine.

On the Friday at my oncology appointment I was told they saw nothing but a healthy hip. The relief washed over me at the same time as, 'what the hell?'. Add a little dash of, am I crazy? and that was my initial feelings of finding out my hip was in tact.

This doctor was not the one who I saw last time and she ran through all the same questions that the last one did. After some thinking, she suggested it may be a pinched nerve in my back. I thought that was ludicrous that that much pain could come from a pinched nerve but then I got to thinking. My uber healthy/active/young grandmother has been laid out with a nerve problem in her back. And truthfully, I can't really tell what the pain is. It feels deep within my hip but it also radiates down my leg and sometimes into the knee.

I was given a requisition to have my back x-rayed but I tossed it. I have been poked and prodded to no end. My back has been x-rayed more times than I can count when the doctors were unable to give me lumbar punctures. Each subsequent lumbar puncture was done with a series of x-rays. I've had enough. I have done everything my doctors have asked and I will get that next x-ray if they insist.

At the moment the pain is gone (whoohoo!) but I also haven't been walking or exercising at all which is terribly, terribly bad. I had a good week and a half until another wave of fatigue hit me and now I have the flu. I'm starting to feel very down about my prospects at building a normal life.

Halloween is my favourite day of the year and I wasn't able to go out. After 4 years I wonder if this cycle will ever end.

Well, after writing this depressing post I'm going to take this sad sick body out for a walk in the sunshine.

Sweet

I made an epic discovery yesterday. Seriously. Epic.

I've been out of commission for so long that I've been wondering how to meet men again. Everyone I know keeps saying, the internet, but I'm not really down with that. Not sure why. I'd just like to meet someone al fresco. I've been thinking of where or when that might occur or how to make that happen, when BAM, I stumbled upon the answer by accident.

I was walking from the grocery store to the car holding a cheesecake. I had parked quite far away so I would get a walk in as well as getting my son's birthday cake. Apparently the wild and white whipping cream nestled beside the sensuously glazed strawberries was irresistible to the other gender. Every one of them that passed by rubber necked, ogled and cooed. "Mmmmm, that looks good", with a devilish look in their eye. It was a little like the Red Sea parting as everyone moved out of my way but at the same time couldn't keep their eyes off me. I, with that cake, was stunning!

With the reactions I received, you would almost think I had been walking down the street naked with the whipping cream on my nipples.

Not that I'm opposed to that.

Climbing Mountains

I was rummaging through a random disk and found photos of my sons surprise spelunking birthday trip.

I planned it all out and woke him up early in the morning saying, guess what we're going to do today? Then we drove a few hours and crawled around deep pitch black caves with crystallized spiders and stalactites. It was so dark and quite down there that you could hear your own heartbeat. The flash of the camera made it possible to see the cave walls in these photos.


I squeezed through places in the darkness that I never believed I would have ever gone! I felt like spider woman because up and down didn't seem to matter too much. I could climb everywhere.


I wish this was the mom my kids remembered instead of the slow "lazy" one they have now. These were the days when I could tackle any mountain. I felt powerful like I could conquer anything. I could wrestle lions, earn honours degrees and still read to my kids at night. I guess I got that over the top challenge that I thought I could deal with.


Too bad I looked so geeky on the way home.

Nose Job

My son received a nose job for his 18th birthday.

He also received a concussion.

On Monday he had an accidental collision with a friend of his while leaping over a 6' object in Gym class. He ran as fast as he could, jumped, made it over while a friend of his did the same thing coming the other way. Neither of them knew the other was jumping nor could see each other. My son took a knee to the face in mid air.

It was pretty bad. His nose was on the wrong side of his face and his eye is completely black. I had always though of broken nose as painful but not a big deal. His nose was well beyond that.

We spent the first day in emergency, the next morning at the hospital plastic surgeon clinic and then the afternoon in surgery. He literally has a cast on his nose. He also has splints imbedded up each nostril, to keep it straight.

His 18th birthday is in a few days and he will have the cast on until the day after.

Blog Tag

I've been been tagged in a rip roaring game of Blog Tag. Now I have to list 6 unusual things about myself. Hmmmm. Where shall I start?

1. A friend of mine and I have dubbed ourselves "Pinky and the Brain" as we plot to take over the world.



2. I graduated from university with blue hair.




3. I have two birthdays a year. When you get a bone marrow transplant, that day is considered your other birthday. I've had my 1st birthday now and soon I'll get to turn 35!



4. My kids. This particular moment is known as "Beaver Attack". You've got to be careful up here in Canada.



5. I'm a CSI episode waiting to happen. After my transplant, I no longer produce my own blood, I have my brothers. I could go on a killing spree and they would trace my DNA back to my brother! It's a nice little back up plan...you know. Just in case.



6. I'm So clueless on how to post links etc. on this blog or or on how to post comments on others. I'll have to go figure it out so I can tag other blogs! Ok. I'm a bit of an internet nitwit.



I'll figure it out and update this post.