Mommin' It Up!

June 3, 2015June 3, 2015

Burning Up

Here we are, two weeks post-op and into menopause. The good news is that I’m crying less than I was at this time last week. Maybe that had more to do with the medication/overall stress surrounding the surgery than hormones, I don’t know, but knock on wood it seems to have leveled out.

This week’s exciting development has been hot flashes. Specifically, hot flashes at night. I wake up pretty much on fire and drenched in sweat. It’s just about as fun as it sounds. Fortunately they seem pretty short lived, or at least I am able to go back to sleep fairly easily. It is a strange sensation, though, because they seem to come on so fast and nothing helps them pass – I can tear off my covers and still be just as hot as I was under them. It also feels kind of hard to breathe. Very odd.

My doctor recommended evening primrose oil supplements, and I started taking them last night. I’ve also ordered some ~~snake~~ essential oils that are supposed to help. We shall see.

Overall, though, I am feeling pretty good. I am still sore and move pretty slow. As I told my dad yesterday, my grandma could beat me at a foot race at this point. But I am trying to move a little more every day without overdoing it, which is proving to be a bit of a hard balance to strike. I’m using my Misfit Shine activity tracker and yesterday hit a post-surgery high of 2500 steps. Needless to say, that’s not much, and it is weird to not be able to do the things I want to do. I can’t even unload the dishwasher because I can’t bend over repeatedly. But, I know it’s temporary and this has given me a whole new appreciation for my overall good health. I’m looking forward to being back to normal!

June 1, 2015

Desperate Times Call for FREAKING OUT

Today is the first Monday of my first summer as a work at home mom with KIDS OUT OF SCHOOL. To say I’m nervous about this enterprise is an understatement. I work about 30 hours a week and I have child care 14 hours a week.

It seems that perhaps the odds are not in my favor.

Jonah has summer school June 15-July 12 so basically I’m living for June 15th right now. At least then I will have four hours a day when he’s not perpetually pissed off that Joshua would rather play Minecraft than play with him. Of course that week the big kids are also in VBS, so I have to drop Jonah off (15 minutes each way. Last year summer school was at the school 90 seconds from my driveway. This year, ACROSS TOWN.) and then truck it back home , be home for 15 minutes, and take the big kids to VBS. So really I shouldn’t be that excited about the week of June 15th I guess.

*tears out hair*

I need to go read some blogs about how to organize your life when you’re a work at home mom in the summer that does NOT involve spending 75% of my income on day camps.

But I didn’t get up at 5:45 to do THAT, so I better just get to work and see how much I can get done before they jump out of bed at the crack of 7:30 (The time at which I have told them they may emerge, you KNOW they are awake before that. Maybe THAT’S why I hate summer, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT JUDGY PEOPLE? MY KIDS DON’T SLEEP IN!) and get to work.

But first I am going to read every single square on this and laugh a LOT. And guzzle coffee. You’re welcome. Happy June, everyone!

(Click on the pic to be able to read it well. It’s hilarious!)

May 27, 2015

Honey, You’re Going Through The Change

This is totally me right now.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-Tpr62bY7thbbuJ/fried_green_tomatoes_1991_evelyns_going_through_the_change/

But let me back up a moment!

My surgery (total abdominal hysterectomy bilateral salpingo oophorectomy – aka they took out all my parts) was a week ago today. The surgery itself was more complicated than they had anticipated, as the endometriosis had progressed quite a bit since December and was attached to all sorts of stuff it shouldn’t have been attached to. And evidently I am a bleeder. So I required the surgeons to really work for their money that day but they did an awesome job and cleared it all out for me and everything turned out just fine.

The first 24 hours afterwards were a bit rough. Jenny arrived to visit shortly after I arrived in my room – before I received my pain medication… which, for some reason, was fairly difficult to acquire. She almost started a #giveEmilydrugs campaign on Twitter, but fortunately it didn’t come to that.

An unfortunate side effect to having surgery so close to one’s bladder is that said bladder becomes very sore and unable to expand to its usual capacity, so the first night I had to go to the bathroom pretty much every hour on the hour. And as those of you who have been in this situation can attest – getting out of bed to do so is no easy process! I had to have Andy unhook me from contraptions on my legs and manage my IV cart and magical ball of pain medicine each time I had to get up and then hook me up to everything when I got back in bed, only to do so again 45 minutes later. It was great fun! But I was so thankful to have him there with me, because calling for the nurses and having to wait on them every time would have been much worse. And he was a great sport about it.

The following day I was feeling better but unsure about whether or not I was ready to go home, which my doc had said was a possibility. Fortunately, she made that decision for me when she came to check on me – my hemoglobin was pretty low because of all the bleeding I did the day before, and she wanted me to stay an additional night. That was definitely the right thing to do and by Friday morning when I was released, I felt ready to go home.

Everything has continued to improve – I am getting up and around pretty well, my pain has been very well controlled (although I am beginning to run out of Percocet and it makes me nervous… I am rationing them out very carefully at this point!) and my friends and family have been taking great care of me.

Right now I’m sitting on my deck with an iPad, a book and a cup of coffee – hard to complain about that.

I am a bit, how should I phrase this, emotionally fragile at the moment, though, and have had a couple breakdowns over very minor things… hence the video above! I don’t know if it’s hormonal at this point or just a result of all the emotional and physical stress from the past couple of weeks, but I have been crying a bit more than usual! But probably still way less than Jenny does on a good day. So it’s all perspective, right?

Anyway, thank you all for the support, prayers and well wishes. It means a lot to me! And now I will knock off this mushy stuff before I start crying again.