Managing

Temperatures have dropped below 80 degrees finally, so I'm back to wearing layers and layers, and I put the big cuddly blanket back on the couch.  The boys all wander around the house in shorts and t-shirts, when I'm bundled against a cold they don't feel.  A side effect of my lowered thyroid meds? Possibly. For a while there, I felt like my thermostat was more like a normal person (ha!), but now I'm back to being too cold or too hot a lot of the time.  I don't get it.

The weekend was a blur of Thanksgiving preparations, helped along a bit by the fact our internet was down for most of it.  It's amazing what you can get done in the real world when you're not spending hours online.  In general I've been better about that since I have too much to do, but the temptation is always there. 

There's only so much you can do so many days ahead: dry out the bread for stuffing, make the cranberry sauce, that sort of thing.  The apples are ready for the pie, which was the probably the most time-consuming of the prep tasks.  Tuesday afternoon I'll be making the pie crust and popping it into the fridge to be ready for baking on Wednesday.  There's still some laundry and general cleaning to do, also, but that can wait until Wednesday, too, because our house guests' flight doesn't land until 9PM. 

One more day of school this week and my heart is just not in it... I want to be home cooking and baking or just under a blanket reading a good book or knitting.  In the face of all the many tasks I have ahead of me, I still found the time to start that scarf project.  So far it's working up nicely, but we'll see if I actually like the final product!  I do like the pattern itself, but I'm not sure about the weight of the yarn I'm using for it.  Since the pattern is so flexible, there is no "wrong" yarn to use, but I'm not sure I'll end up with a scarf that I would actually wear!  We'll see. 

missed one...

Yeah, last week wasn't a great one, so it's no wonder I missed my weekly post.

Apparently, I'm doing fine on the thyroid meds, so I should just stop worrying about it.  I'll have a blood test in another couple of weeks and we'll see what the doctor says about my levels.

Ironically, the weekend was long and lovely.  I had time to finish everything I needed to do, and I even got to work on the alterations to the dress I bought over a year ago, to make it fit for work (that is, long enough -- I sewed some wide lace at the hem).  Many compliments when I wore it, too.

Since Monday was Veterans' Day, we had a short week, but short weeks with Monday off are always the worst.  It just felt like crisis after crisis, albeit minor, and/or every time I  turned around something else was popping up to take away class time.

I survivied, we all survived.  DH has a brutal cold right now and DS1 was making noises that he was coming down with something, too.  So far I'm healthy, thank God.

Trying to be good about doing my tiny exercise set each day, and I do think it helps.  Still not doing very well at getting to bed at a decent hour, though.  I'll sleep when I'm dead still rattles around in the back of my brain some days, but that attitude convinced me that it was OK to read an entire (albeit not very long) book last week, Bernard Cromwell's Agincourt, which I adored. Way too much fun, and I did spread it out over three days, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Also not as bad as it could have been: the number of peppermint mochas consumed by me last week; was it 4, or 5? I just want them all the time now, they are so delicious.

In another fit of insanity, I bought some beautiful (very cheap) yarn and a new, simple but very cool knitting pattern to work it up in.

 Now to get caught up on my grades so I can actually start that project!

from the outpost just past exhaustion

This was a very long week: parent-teacher conferences.  For what I believe is the first time, I was ablae to meet with all my students' parent(s) in the space of a few days, plus one other.  I wasn't at school any later in the evening, but I did get up earlier so I could be at work before 7am.  This was a minor inconvenience to me but it also involved putting out DH since we're still sharing cars with the boys.  Just now it's the boys who get the cars during the week since I just stay at school all day.  At least I get to drive on the weekends!

At any rate, we actually had two half-days of school so you might think I'd be feeling pretty good by the end of the week, but no.  Today was our annual party day and that's a semi-fun but mostly boring day of supervising groups of children in various unstructured activities where they can get into trouble if left too long to their own devices.  The day went well and the weather was perfect, but it just seemed interminable.  At the end of the day we have a sort of "awards ceremony" to recognize the biggest fund-raisers, and if students donate a certain amount, they can put a whipped-cream "pie" in their teacher's face.  The third grade teachers had very generous students this year and were basically covered in whipped cream by the end of it, but I got off easy.  The one student in my class who met the donation requirement was a sweet girl who really didn't want to "pie" me, but I encouraged her to pick it iup and go for it.  She barely touched me with it!  I'm not complaining, though.  It's not exactly my favorite thing!

I guess I'm used to this new thyroid dose?  I feel... calmer, I guess? Less keyed up.  Maybe  I don't really know.  I am able to get things done even at the end of the day, so that' s good.

One important lesson from this past week:  last weekend I made up a to-do list and included estimates of how long I thought everything would take.  I estimated 3 hours for grading my students' materials and procedures, when in reality it took at least 7 hours if not more.  I knew I'd be getting up early every day and really didn't want to stay up late, but that's what happened, and I was a zombie the entire day on Monday. (Even so, I worked efficiently at school Monday and Tuesday, and finished everything I didn't get done over the weekend!)  I realized that I'm much better off giving the students class time for these assignments on Monday and making them turn them in before they leave.  This gives me an entire week to grade them, so I can spread the grading out and possibly still have something resembling a weekend.  This week's project plan papers were due on Tuesday, and I've already graded one class set -- and since it was one of the classes destined for more comments, the others shouldn't take nearly as long. I hope! 

It's a 3-day weekend and DD says she's coming to visit on Sunday, she's coming down with some friends.  We're all thinking it's about 60-40 she'll show up; there are a few things she needs here, so she has incentive.  I've invited her for a belated birthday lunch on Monday.  I do hope we get to go.

I feel like I'm making progress on the work-life balance with this week's decison.  We'll see how it goes.

the new normal, apparently

I write here for myself, although I know there are a few others who read here. Life goes by too fast and I want to record some of my internal state, at least occasionally, and I know if I don't write it down, whatever I'm thinking now will be lost forever. 

It's always a surprise how much I forget.  Just today, when I popped into the blog, I saw the past few entries and thought, Right, that new dose of thyroid meds!  Completely slipped my mind in the end-of-grading period business I've been swallowed by.  I guess I'm used to it?  I feel more sensitive to cold, but the temperature just dropped here considerably, from nearly or over 100 degrees to the high 70s, low 80s.  It's delightful, but I'm freezing, or I'm too hot!  It's difficult dressing for weather when the mornings are quite literally close to freezing but the afternoons are in 80s and toasty. Layers.  Lots of layers.  I layer on scarves and sweaters in the morning and then gradually peel them off as the day goes by.  This explains why I have so many scarves!

This weekend's necessity: shoe shopping.  My existing colder-weather shoes don't work with my orthotic and wearing them without the orthotic is a huge mistake, as I found out Thursday.  I was able to make my sandals work because they already had nice cushy insoles with at least some arch support, so I added a metatarsal support and I was good for the day.  No such luck with my little black booties, which were very cheap and cute but completely flat.  They've got absolutely no support but also no room for an insole.  I practically lived in them last winter.  I have a pair of Bjorn booties that are getting to the falling-apart stage but I've had them forever and they're awesome... but again, they won't work with my orthotics.  My riding boots do fit my orthotics but they're a little snug now, I wore them today and my feet felt better at the end of the day then they did in the morning, when they were still reminding me that not wearing proper footwear on Thursday was a bad decision. 

I'm resigned to doing something about this, though, because I can't do my job if my feet are killing me.  I feel lucky that just a change of shoes eliminates my symptoms (Morton's neuroma), although the pain comes back if I spend too much time walking barefoot or in bad shoes.  It's just a reminder not to screw around with this condition.  I will go to great lengths to avoid having foot surgery.  I spent the last two summers with my foot in a boot, and I never want to deal with that again.

Once again Friday evening finds me vaguely hopeful for the weekend, and I'm not feeling too swamped.  I posted my grades for the end of the grading period already, but of course have new work to grade anyway.  (The grading never stops!)  But it's November, and the holidays will be here before we know it, and overall everyone seems to be doing just fine, at least for the moment.  It's good to acknowledge it, and I am very thankful.

not just love

I have a saying, kind of a family motto: Food is love.  There is nothing better than sharing a meal with my family or others that I love, and it's made even better if I, or we, prepare that food especially for the occasion.  Even if the occasion is just Sunday morning breakfast.

Today I realized that it's not just love, it's therapy.  I got up earlier than I could have and made the big fall breakfast: eggs, bacon, Trader Joe's gluten free pumpkin pancakes... and that chip on my shoulder has shrunk considerably.

My frustration this week involved struggling to do what I need to do when there are other things that I'd much rather do. As an adult, I do what I have to do, but as a human, I get annoyed if I never get to have any fun! (This from the woman who just got back from a weekend trip to New Orleans...)  But even if I can't do everything I want to do, I can at least take the time to make a decent breakfast. 

Bonus: leftover pancakes make great take-to-school snacks. 

6 days in...

Nearly a week (the aforementioned 6 days) on the impossibly-tiny 112 mcg/day dose of levothyroxine, and the main thing I can say about myself is that apparently everything is pissing me off.

I feel as if I've spent most of this week with a chip on my shoulder, and I don't exactly know why.  I'm still struggling mightily with work-life balance, and I'm acutely aware that I rely on everything going smoothly 100% of the time so that I don't get swamped.

Of course, not-so-smooth events occur every week, so I'm swamped every week.  I'm really tired of it, and I want to change it, but I don't exactly know how to do that.  I'm figuring it out as I go along.
For example, I'm putting all my quizzes into Google Classroom, so I don't have to grade them ever again.  But it's a trade off of up-front time vs grading, and sometimes the grading seems less tedious than entering the quizzes, since every single question and answer has to be manually entered... unless there's some magic "upload" button I've been missing all this time.

I think the school year is going well.  We're coming up on the close of our first trimester (I know, I know - weird) so I really do have to catch up on entering grades.  I'm not really even that behind with the actual grading, just getting them into the gradebooks... it's another tedious and thankless task.  For example, there is a way to link assignments in Google Classroom to the gradebook so the grades can be imported automatically, but that costs another not-significant sum to enable, and it's not in our budget this year.  So I end up copying grades from one to the other, and due to odd variances of student names, they're not always in the same order, so something that should literally be a button push becomes 10 minutes of tedium. (It's probably not 10.  It may only be 2 or 3 minutes, but it's so tedious it feels like at least 10.)

Yesterday by the end of the day I was feeling irrationally happy that it was Friday, and I had two days off.  Today, at 9PM, I'm annoyed again.  I literally just thought to myself, I didn't get anything done today, when I, in fact: bought groceries for the week, shopped for DD's birthday, finally bought the notions I need to fix a dress I can't wear because it's too short, went to Mass, made a fantastic from-scratch shepherd's pie for dinner and washed all the dishes (of which there were many), and finally applied for the refunds for DD's aborted flights to New Orleans.  That's not nothing, in fact it was a rather busy and productive day, I just didn't get any schoolwork done, and so... I didn't get anything done today, and now I fear tomorrow will be a long, horrid slog, priming me for a miserable week ahead. 

I do hope not.  I like to believe I can choose, but I'm struggling this week to make my choice  -- not to be angry all the time -- stick.

Oh yeah: residual upper respiratory crud continues; body aches galore, headaches many days this week.  I want to blame all the wheat I ate last weekend but I don't know if that makes sense.  Most likely it's my lack of consistent exercise, but I'm also exhausted all the time these days, so the idea of getting up earlier to put in my workout strikes me as absurd.  My hands hurt. Also, I don't think I've shaved my legs for a month now and I don't think anyone would be able to tell.  Isn't lack of hair growth a hypothyroid thing?  I don't want to have furry legs but if I never had to shave them again, I wouldn't be sad about it!

meds update

On Friday, my endocrinologist called me when I was hanging out in DFW between flights, and we had a brief conversation about my dosage.

She wants to lower it again.

So now, after 15 years or so on 137 mcg/day, I'm down to 112.  Dropping to 125 mcg/day barely budged my TSH, from 0.1 to 0.2, and the doctor has targeted 0.5 for me.  I suppose I'm used to the lower dose, more or less, but I did tell her about feeling slow and stupid, and the hives.  She was skeptical that any of that had anything to do with the thyroid medication changing, and in that, she is typical of every endocrinologist ever, in direct contradiction to every thyroid patient's experience ever.

But I asked her again why she wanted to reduce my dose so much, and she is worred that I'll have a fatal arrhythmia or a stroke or a heart attack, and since both my parents had heart problems, I am trying to be more agreeable about it.

I wonder when she'll go for my 5 mcg/day of Cytomel?  I know my chart notes mention how attached to it I am, and I know in the past when I've given it up, my autoimmune symptoms worsened considerably.  At that point, though, I hadn't yet figured out that I have a problem with wheat, so who knows what would happen now?

I don't go for my blood test until the end of November.  I'll continue to track how I'm doing here, so I have some data over the course of this grand little experiment.  I have noticed I am having fewer palpitations, but that hasn't dropped to zero.  Also, my pulsatile tinnitus is back, but that may have something to do with the huge right-side lymph node under my jaw,  which is dealing with the remnants of the upper respiratory crud that descended upon last week.

Quick trip

Last week was kind of crazy because we had no school on Monday and then I took Friday off!  So I "only" worked three days, and I feel like I haven't worked in ages.

That's because on Friday I took off for a little jaunt to New Orleans to visit my brother and his family.  The original plans were blown up both on their side and on mine, since DD was supposed to come with me, but then she came down with the flu: no flying for her! 

I had a great time visiting my brother and his family and all their adorable cats.  They fed me all kinds of delicious food and drink and it was just nice to have time to hang out and be together.  The best thing is that now most of them will be coming to see us at Thanksgiving!  I am beyond excited about it.  When I texted DH the news he deadpanned, "Great!  I'll start cleaning now."  (The house is really not that bad! Really!)

Part of the reason I feel like I've been away a long time is because I read a novel loaned to me by my dear mother-in-law, The Lilac Girls,  about the "Ravensbruck Rabbits", girls and young women who were the subjects of gruesome medical experiments in the only Nazi concentration camp that was exclusively for women.  Most of the women were Polish Catholics, and from Lublin, which is a place I know my mother visited several times.  I think I still have cousins there.  It was meticulously researched and only slightly over-written in that "first novel, name-dropping" style, but I was thoroughly engrossed nonetheless. 

I arrived home after two entirely matter-of-fact flights in the early afternoon.  From there it was grocery shopping, mass, and then dinner prep, as usual.  And now I have to prepare myself to plunge back into the work world, and I just want to dive back into another book instead!

This is why I shouldn't read unless I have an actual school holiday.  I always want to read more, more, more. I am an insatiable reader, I just manage to keep it under control most of the time.  Still, it was a lovely weekend and I do feel refreshed.

ick

It turns out that the coming-down-with-a-cold feeling was accurate.  I woke up yesterday with a raw throat and nasty drainage.  I suppose I should be happy I'm not congested, but said drainage is making my stomache feel queasy today.

Who's ready to go back to school after the long weekend?  Not me, not feeling like this.

I did finish a lot of grading and can do more tonight, but tomorrow is going to be a rough day if I'm not any better.

The papers I dragged my feet on grading were, on the whole, about as wretched as I expected them to be.  Sometimes when the whole batch is lousy I just want to throw it out (as in, not put it in the gradebook).  It's not a crime -- not every little thing has to go into the gradebook.  But these ones, they're going in, and the students will just have to face the consequences.

This is the point where I lower the hammer: I've told them 4 or 5 weeks in a row exactly how to fix their papers, and the vast majority of them just don't do it.  I spent hours and hours (and hours and hours) making detailed comments so that they could do well, but from here it seems that was all wasted effort.

I will have to rethink the research paper process for next year, because I do not want to go through this again! It's contrary to the stated goal of the science project portfolio, which is to make the process and the outcome better for everyone.  So far, that's not happening... but then again, I graded the least-experienced class first, so maybe the other classes will be better?  Here's hoping.

learn something new every week!

It was a wretched day at school.  I was sabotaged by our (incompetent) ISP, who did not come out to repair our wifi equipment until around 2PM, by which time all my classes were over.  So instead of my students being able to share and peer edit their documents online, I had to fight the constantly-dropping connect to get their papers printed out so they would have something to do.  Then, of course, they didn't really do anything but socialize, since they couldn't actually edit their papers.

That'll teach me not to have a backup lesson plan in case of technology failure!  But today was especially bad since the students are now off on a 4-day weekend.  It's our miniature "fall break" and I never assign homework over breaks like this if I can help it.  We were at the end of a unit in both grades and there was no way I was starting another one.  I'm still turning it over in the back of my head, what we should have done, and I'm still thinking that the hardcopy work-around was the best option, even if it was far from great.

The hassles were compounded by the fact that just last weekend, DH moved us all over to a new cellphone provider, and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot to help me print the papers out more easily.  It took approximately 2 hours when it should have taken about 20 minutes, because the connection kept dropping.  And of course I couldn't supervise the students while I was fighting to get their papers printed!  It was just a very frustrating day, but still: lesson learned.

The other thing I learned? Hives can be caused by 1) viruses or 2) thyroid problems.  I feel like I've been fighting off a cold for three weeks now, which is implausible to say the least.  More likely this is another side-effect of my new dosage.  For a while I had been thinking I was getting bitten by random mosquitoes (we do have some around school), but there aren't any mosquitoes or fleas at home and I'll just be sitting here and all of a sudden I've got itchy red welts on my hands or feet, or occasionally my neck.  The pattern of localization tipped me off that something weird was going on, then a colleague mentioned to me this week that her daughter, a student in my home room, was dealing with hives as she was coming down with a cold.  This absolutely blew my mind, because I've also had that coming-down-with-a-cold feeling for a while and hives, not bug bites!  But in researching it just now, thyroid issues popped up as a common cause of chronic hives.  I'm at about week 4 I'd say, so 2 more weeks and they classify as chronic.  Let me add this to the list of complaints to mention to my doctor once I get my bloodwork done...

About that:  I had an appointment for Wednesday at lunch which I had to cancel because I read the order and it said the draw had to be between 7 and 8AM.  Ha!  Let's see if I can manage to get that done in the next month. 

Between the frustrations at work, the general fatigue and body aches, and the now-ever-present itchyness of hives, I'm about ready to just say forget it and put myself back on my old dose.  I don't because I know Dr. A has my long-term health in mind and she is concerned that my old dose was stressing my heart and weakening my bones.  That said, I'd rather live a shorter, less painful life than a longer one if I'm going to be feeling like this all the time.

That's probably just the (chronic) irritation talking.  If I could just get more than 6 hours of sleep, catch up on all my grading, and not be itchy for a day, I think I'd feel a lot better.  At least tomorrow is a non-contact day, but the trade-off is getting up early to drive to Xavier College Prep downtown for in-service.  I am very much regretting not taking the day off! (Didn't I say that last year? Hmmm.)

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!

free!

Doctor cleared me from boot-wearing yesterday: the toe is finally healed!

I wore the same sandals on both feet today and felt short! It was awesome not having to stump around campus in that thing.

The toe still feels a little "crunchy" and the doctor says that's normal.   I still feel like I have to have an ice pack with me and my 20-minute timer whenever I sit on the couch.  That will wear off eventually. 

Now to try to dig out from the pile of grading I've got myself into...

checking in

Since I'm on a new dose of my thyroid meds, I'm going to make an effort to check in more frequently so I can keep track of how I'm handling it. 

So far, so good.  In fact, the beginning of this school year is almost suspiciously smooth, with no major problems or headaches or seemingly intractable problems.  Maybe it's because this is my tenth (!!!) year teaching and I've finally chilled out, but I don't have that sort-of-an-itch feeling that there are things that are just waiting to explode.

Which is not to say that those things aren't there (we're having a meeting to review IEPs for our students this Tuesday), but so far, so good.

I'm seeing my doctor regarding my broken toe tomorrow, and hope that I can finally stop taping, and wearing the boot, etc.  We'll see.  It's less than ideal timing with respect to my dose change, but I also started a bone-growth-promoting supplement the last couple of weeks to see if it helps.  Here's hoping.

Without getting too graphic, I had some kinds of an intestinal bug for about a week that finally seems to have resolved.  I was thinking it was a side-effect of the bone-growth supplement, but I haven't stopped that and everything has finally settled down anyway.  It was unpleasant but didn't get in the way of teaching, so it could've been worse!

So far no signs of fatigue or brain fog, and I'm definitely feeling calmer, less tightly-wound.  I don't think I had any palpitations this week, whereas normally I would feel my heart going crazy at least two or three times a week. It's really too soon to tell, though, since it has only been a week.  I'm going for my blood test in mid-October and have even already scheduled it.  I'm trying to stay on top of things, with fair-to-middling success so far (she says, eyeing the huge stack of projects left to be graded!)

new dose, day 1

For about 15 years now I've been on the same level of thyroid medication.  After my last (exhaustive) round of tests, my new doctor has declared me "disease free" which is very nice (I don't really buy it, but whatever, the effect is the same) and decided to lower my daily thyroid meds from 137 mcg/day to 125 mcg/day.  I dimly recall being on a lower dose before my cancer diagnosis, but that was all so very long ago...

Anyway, I have some trepidations about this.  I know my dose is high, it gets flagged as high every time I have blood work done.  But I feel good.  This is "normal" for me now.  I'm not particularly enthusiastic about adapting to a new normal, not when the school year has just begun.

That's going just fine, except for me wearing THE BOOT at school because that damned pinkie toe is still not healed.  I actually bought a new supplement designed to promote bone growth and I'm now putting up my foot in class to try to get it to actually heal.  It has been more than 2 months now!  I would like this process to be over.

Lots of stuff happened that I did not write about, as usual, now.  I accept that is the way things are for the present and forseeable future. Overall things are just fine and I have every reason to expect they will stay that way!