how many weeks now?

I can't keep it straight in my head, but that's not important.

I'm settling in to this new dose, I guess.  I do feel stupid from time to time, but most days and most times I appear to be functioning normally.

If it seems odd for me to describe myself that way, I can't help it.  There are times when I feel "off", but most of the time I'm too busy to notice.  I suppose that's a good thing.

My triumph this week was finishing grading all my students' research paper work before 5PM today, so I actually had time to do some other things.  It will be nice to start the week off with a good night's sleep!

In other news, DS1 starts his new job tomorrow!  Ah, how delightful is the prospect of having an offspring that can actually support himself! We'll be managing with only 3 cars for a bit until he saves up for a car of his own, and I'm the designated non-driver: DH will drop me off at school in the mornings, and someone will pick me up in the afternoons... I hope!  We'll see how it goes.

inventory, planning

I had to go back and look to see how long I've been on this new dose.  It feels kind of like forever, but I know that's not true. 

Minor injury month continued with me stubbing my newly-healed, once-broken baby toe last Thursday.  It hurt for a while, enough for me to think What is wrong with me? Did I break it again?!? but then it settled down.  It wasn't broken, merely insulted.  It was very red for a day it's back to usual now.

Physical symptoms are not too bad.  My hip was bothering me today, probably from the way I was sitting all curled up watching the Downton Abbey movie, which was delightful.  I mean, it was a piece of fluff, but it was still fun to watch. Except I'm paying for it with a sore hip today? It's just a guess.

The lymph node persists, but is only interminttently painful.  Palpitations have nearly disappeared, as has the pulsatile tinnitus I've had for several years.  I only notice it when it's really quiet and/or I'm dehydrated, so it's not really a bother.  I could usually switch it "on" by listening for it, but now if I try to hear it, I can't.  I suppose that's good!

On the other hand, I'm definitely more likely to say something to irritate my family these days. My sanity-filter seems to be malfunctioning:  there are things that I think, but I don't say, because I know they'll only cause problems of one kind or another.  Lately I've been saying those kind of things anyway, with the predictable results of various people being annoyed with me.  I could blame the new dose but I know I'm just a jerk sometimes.  And then I think, well, do I have to be gracious when I cook a nice dinner at the end of the week when I'm exhausted and nobody says so much as thank you? Feeling unappreciated makes me want to say jerky things.

School-wise, I'm doing my best to keep up with my grading, etc, and I'm managing better.  The first half of the year is difficult because I'm losing two afternoons a week to Robotics, and also dealing with all the extra grading for the science fair.  It's a lot.  I've been looking through my plans and dropping things I've done in the past that didn't seem to help the students' learning, things like virtual labs, and that's helped me keep up a little better.  I've seen how many grades the other teachers take and even if I drop an assignment here or there, I'll still have more grades than anyone else. 

We're heading into the time of extreme exhaustion, because we're all ready for a break but we don't get a fall break, just a long weekend.  It helps, but it's really not enough.  But this year I'm taking an extra day to go to New Orleans with DD! Wedding dress shopping is something I've literally never done, in spite of the fact that I've been married twice -- and did, in fact, wear a dress each time.  The first time I had a custom dress made for me by a friend of a friend who was a costumer for her dance company, and the second time I just wore a cocktail dress.  So the whole bridal gown experience passed me by, and now I'll get to enjoy it vicariously.  I believe being the aunt on the shopping trip is ideal, because I have zero involvement in planning the wedding and therefore zero stress about the bride choosing a dress. 

Other travel plans are percolating, too. I've been going back and forth on what to do for our 25th anniversary, and had really decided to just stay home and work on the house. (We're selling in a few years, and it needs work before we do.)  But various people have told me not to be ridiculous, that we out to do something special to celebrate, and I think that's right.  I should have some good memories and not just an updated kitchen which I will eventually be leaving behind, right? So I had to really think about the kind of trip I want, because DH was talking about going to Rome.  Italy sounds really lovely, but honestly I'm worried about my dietary restrictions.  When eating wheat makes you very sick, it's really hard to be around it all the time.  The breads and pastas in Italy are fantastic, and I wouldn't be able to eat them without possibly ruining the rest of my time there with joint pain and digestive upset.  I know I would be able to find something to eat (a girlfriend jokes that I could just have a steady diet of gelato), but I think it would really bother me to be in that environment and not be able to properly enjoy it. 

Then I started thinking about what kind of trip I would like:  a nice, comfortable place to stay - no camping or roughing it in any way; really good restaurants; nature that I haven't seen before that is accessible to someone who's in pretty good shape but is not a mountain climber; perhaps some culture (music, museums, shopping), but those are the least important. I want to be able to go for beautiful hikes to breath-taking places but be back in time for a really great dinner.  Today I settled on Colorado Springs, but we'll see where (and when!) we end up going. DH rather maddeningly keeps asking me what I want to do, without telling me what he wants to do.  I think both should be considered in making any plans, and the planning really is a big part of the fun.  Sometimes I think the anticipation of the trip is at least an equal pleasure to the trip itself.  If it seems as if it's more, that's only because the anticipation lasts so much longer!

fall

Minor injury month continues (extended from minor injury week.)

Yesterday was a long, mostly pleasant day.  School was fine, and afterwards I led a professional development session that went well.  I was able to leave almost immediately afterward and came home, and shortly after that I went to pick up DD where her ride-share dropped her off. We stopped on the way home for Starbucks for everyone.

Back home, all the offspring (no longer kids, right?) were gathered around the kitchen counter with their drinks, catching up.  I unpacked an Amazon delivery and decided to empty the small, indoors recycle bins into the huge one outside the garage since there was no room for the box... and that's when I fell. 

Our garage has a raised area by the door, kind of a like a sidewalk.  I appreciate it because it prevents you from accidentally driving into the back wall of the garage, at least if you're going slow enough.  I honestly don't know what happened, but one minute I was walking with the two recycle bins and the next I was on the garage floor with recyclables everywhere.  The garage is well-enough insulated that the offspring didn't even hear it, even though all that plastic and glass crashing to the groud seemed very loud to me.  I'm very grateful that none of the glass broke!

I picked up everything I noticed and disposed of it, then limped back into the house, grumpy.  I have several nasty bruises in progress -- they're still not visible but they hurt!  I don't think I hit my head (I fell near the car, after all), but my jaw is sore and my hip joint is really complaining, too.  Ah, well.  This won't kill me, but it certainly wasn't fun, and when the bruises come out it's not going to be pretty. 

Just another note in my "hey, you changed my dose and look what happened" file.  For the record: no alcohol had been consumed prior to this event.

haha!

Of course I blogged yesterday about a painful node, body aches, brain fog, and getting little sleep because of too much work to do.

So today, on less than 5 hours of sleep: the node has made barely a twinge, body aches just about gone, and brain fog, well, I can't really tell but it's certainly not worse. 

(eyeroll)

No harm in keeping track of these things, but this reminds me of the times your tech refuses to work until you actually call tech support, when it auto-magically starts working perfectly again.

I'm just glad I'm feeling a little better.  We'll see.

hmmm

Just keeping track a little more closely:  I do think I'm coming down with something, but I can't figure out what.  I have no sign up anything upper respiratory -- no post-nasal drip, no congestion -- except I now have a remarkably painful lymph node just under the jaw joint on the right side.  I think I've had this before?  It's a weird place to have a constant pain and it is kind of distracting. It started Monday morning, I think, but yesterday was an all-over painful kind of day so it was just kind of background noise.

Body aches again today but not as bad as yesterday, but that may be because I slept for about 9 hours last night.  That's not happening again today because I had too much grading to do, since I didn't do any yesterday because I was sleeping!  Anyway, fewer body aches meant that the painful lymph node was that much more noticeable. And I'm just going to say it: it's just a reactive node, and not cancer.  The odds of it being cancer after the incredibly thorough workup I had over the summer are so close to zero we'll just call it zero. Even though it feels like one node to me, it's really a small cluster of survivors from neck dissection, and they freak out if something's going.  I've had them biopsied at least twice and examined under countless ultrasounds and they're always 1) reactive which means 2) not cancer.  (The evil-thinking part of my brain thinks, Wouldn't it be funny if you got a recurrance because you're on a lower dose now? To which the rational part of my brain responds, Shut up.)

I'm trying not to psych myself out of (or into) anything here, but I feel ... off.  Clumsy.  In the past week I have sustained 3 minor injuries in the kitchen: one burn, one knife wound, and then to top it off, I grated the side of my thumb just enough to make it sensitive.  None of these injuries are life-threatening, but to me they are a sign that I'm not at the top of my game, so to speak. 

I really can't afford to be operating at less than peak efficiency.  If this goes on much longer I'll have to think about ditching the new dose and going back on the old one, hoping the damage is reversible...  or maybe I have a little virus or something that will blow over in a few days... or maybe there's nothing going on (I just typed "they're" and stared at it for a few seconds knowing it was wrong but not knowing how to fix it! I finally figured it out.) and it's all in my head and I'll have forgotten all about this by next week!

I'm busy enough.  It's not as if I want to sit around examining how I'm dealing with this new dose, but enough "off" things are happening that I really need to document if I'm going to convince my doctor to put me back on my old dose, even if it is stressing my body in other ways.  At least my brain was working well on it...

Week 3

Everything hurts.

I have been working long hours, but my work is not physically demanding.  I don't recall spending a day grading leaving me aching from head to toe, literally, but that's where I am.  Perhaps I'm coming down with something?  It's a possiblity, but I don't feel sick, exactly, I just hurt all over.  Muscles, joints, you name it. 

I'm also exhausted beyond what I think I should be!  I haven't been too bad on getting sleep -- at least 6 hours and usually more, which is, to be honest, great for me.  I have at various times routinely stayed up until 1 or 2 while still getting up by 6:30, so shouldn't I feel less tired?

Digestion: meh.  Still nibbling on ginger frequently, and I haven't had the really horrid gastroparesis-full feeling I had a few times the previous week.  But I go from having zero appetite to being ravenous, and I'm not sure what that's about since I eat the same way all the time.  There's nothing new going on in my diet.

I have been wearing my shoes with the metatarsal orthotic, and I was thinking that was making my legs ache (not a bad hypothesis), but then I realized that there is no way the orthotics could be bothering my hands, so I gave up that idea.  I suppose it's still plausible.

Today in my first class I oollected their homework from over the weekend and put it in my expandable file, and then, about 5 minutes later, handed them back out to the students because I had forgotten what they were!  The kids laughed about it and forgave me that bit of silliness, and in all fairness we did have about five different things going on at that moment, but it wasn't one of my best mornings, to say the least.

Just a very long and painful day. Here's hoping tomorrow is better.

two weeks in

Approaching the end of my second week on my new dose, and trouble may be brewing. For the past three or four days I've experienced the return of my gastroparesis symptoms: feeling full after eating just a few bites, feeling bloated all the time, having to burp a lot...

This could be unrelated to the change in meds, but maybe not.  We'll see.  I'm coping by nibbling on candied ginger, and chewing gum when I can. Both seem to help a bit, but the vaguely unpleasant feeling is still hanging on.  I hope it goes away soon!

In other news, I scored two pairs of sandals and a beautiful pair of pumps at The Walking Company's Labor Day sale.  It will be nice to wear shoes with the correct footbed to keep me from furthering injuring myself.

I'm almost done with the ridiculous amount of grading I had to do, and then it will probably take an hour to enter all the grades.  I think fondly of how good it's going to feel when it is done, and I vow to do a better job of keeping up with the grading, going forward. Thank God for this 3-day weekend so I could catch up!