zeptember

I talked to my ma tonight to ask about superstition - apparently I am creeped the hell out by cracking open eggs and seeing double yolks. This happened to me this morning. I’ve looked it up on the web and there are many old wives tales surrounding double egg yolks, including the bad luck thing, which is the vibe I get every time I crack open doubles.
Wanting to know if I learned this behaviour or if it’s just me being my usual weird self, I asked my ma. She replied something along the lines of, “eww no, I dump them out, it’s like eating twins!”
A few of my friends also react the same way and dump the eggs. I get the ‘bad omen’ feeling before the ‘eww twins’ feeling, but in any case, twins and bad luck do go together in some parts of the world as far as superstitions go. So I still wonder where I got it from - is it ancestral memory carrying over again? This stuff fascinates me.

I used to always dump them, but I’m learning to overcome the creep out factor.

It has been a full week since I went dancing, and my knees are still killing me. This is not the first time that I’ve complained about my arthritic knees.
Read here
and here
and here
and here.

Now that I’m working with children again, it takes even longer for my knees to recover from a night out dancing, because I have to go right back to work the next day, bending and running and squating all day, getting down at a child’s eye level all day, sitting on the floor with children, getting back up again, moving around. All day. The knees get no respite.
It has been a solid week of visibly inflamed knees. They’ve been warm to the touch and swollen. But a trip to a specialist this year revealed that I still only have osteoarthritis and chondromalacia patella, not rheumatoid arthritis, and I was assured that I was not a candidate for knee replacement surgery any time soon.

Well, after this past week, I want a second opinion.

This also creates a dilemma -

It’s been over two years since my laparoscopic surgery, which diagnosed me with endometriosis. Two years is usually about the time it takes for endometriosis to start causing a problem again, because it’s either continued growing or started regrowing. It can continue to proliferate in the same place if one has only had the area cauterised during surgery, or it can regrow near the cauterised area. It can always sprout in new locations, too, regardless of type of surgery performed. It was in November 2008 that a large ovarian cyst was found on my left ovary - the same ovary that had a lot of endo cleaned off of it in February 2007. Since November, I’ve had a lot of problems with my menstrual cycle, so this leads me to believe the endo is getting worse again. I fear it’s trying to twist my ovary back again like it did before, and I also fear that the endo is growing in new areas because I’m experiencing pain in different areas on top of all the usual places.

So I really need to have a second endometriosis surgery, and I’m really interested in excision surgery this time around.

And now my knees are really bothering me, so I’m feeling ready to take care of my knees, which means surgery.

I can only barely afford one surgery at a time. First of all, I do not have the luxury of taking a couple of weeks off of work to recover from endo surgery again. I cannot afford to go without a check for that long, and I have no paid time off whatsoever at this current job. I’ve already taken 18 days off of work to go on my honeymoon this year. Then there’s the biggie - the type of health insurance we have through my husband’s work is nowhere near the quality health insurance he had at his last job. Every little lab draw I get and anything above the normal doctor’s visit brings me a huge bill to pay, because the current insurance doesn’t cover as much as the old insurance did.

I estimate that the next time I’ll be able to financially afford to take time off work for endo surgery won’t be until next summer at the earliest. I say summer because if I am still teaching at the same school, I can just request to not be added to the summer daycare schedule for three weeks to a month and in summer it will be okay to do that. They won’t fire me for taking the time off. During the school year however, different story.

Once I’m recovered from endo surgery, I can tackle the knee surgery. I hear the recovery time is much shorter, but I haven’t researched it yet. Perhaps I can do it over a four day holiday weekend or something. But the funds to cover the out-of-pocket expenses that insurance doesn’t cover - I won’t have money again after the endo surgery perhaps for another year.

So IF I am fortunate, I can swing endo surgery for 2010 and knee surgery for 2011. Otherwise, give another year each.

Blah.

Hate being broken. Hate being in pain. Hate coping.

I know, I know. It could always be worse.

I am watching full coverage of the inauguration on NPR online.

Tried to watch it on HBO online but don’t have the bandwidth for it, or else the site is swamped, cuz it’s barely coming through.

I think the last time I watched an inauguration, I was a child. I am very proud of Barack Obama.

Edit: Holy crap that was a great speech. My husband was purposefully late to work so he could watch the inauguration with me. We held hands through the entire thing, and giggled whenever we saw the ex Bush presidents with pursed lips and glares. Obama sure ripped ‘em good in his speech!

And this is the best photo of the day so far:

After the pain hit right at the end of my shift last night, I got home and was a bedridden zombie for the rest of the night.

I was fine this morning.

Barely any bleeding. No pain. Got to work on time in pleasant spirits. Fed baby the rest of her breakfast, took her upstairs to play and dance about with her (our morning routine is me holding her and dancing around).

As I was rocking the baby to sleep for her morning nap, I suddenly felt pain in the bladder. Since the endometriosis is attached to the bladder, I’m super sensitive and can tell when the pain is hitting the uterus, the ovaries, the bowels or the bladder. All of that is clearly defined for me. The pain ramped up, I felt like I really had to go to the bathroom, but the pain one gets from a full bladder? That wasn’t the pain I was having. I can’t explain it. It’s different. That’s how I knew I was in for more trouble.

I gritted my teeth and beared it - the baby had to fall asleep first before I could get up. She’s had a rough night and didn’t really sleep past 3am so it’s imperative she gets to sleep now.

Once she was asleep, I stood up to put her in her crib, and that’s when the gushing began. My legs grew weak instantly. The baby woke when I set her in the crib, sat up and began crying. I soothed her and rubbed her back and helped her lay back down. I held onto the crib for dear life to support myself and stayed as long as I could to ensure baby drifted back to sleep.

I could feel my knees going - I was about to fall from the pain so I backed away as slowly and carefully as I could from the crib. The baby woke and began crying again. I just staggered out of the room, held onto the stair railings and made my way carefully down the stairs. Fumbled for my meds and water. Took an entire Tylenol 3 because I knew if I didn’t, I could end up back in E.R.

The result of all this pain - squid. Yes, I’m going to be very graphic.

I birthed squid as I call them - and one was a giant clot the size of the palm of my hand had come through my cervix, that’s what caused all the pain. There’s so much blood that it didn’t have time to liquify to ease through the cervix like a normal menstrual flow would do. So basically the cervix had to dilate to pass the clots. This is what causes me to collapse from the pain, or vomit, or sob uncontrollably.

I maintained today without doing any of the above. I got safely to the couch with my heating pad. I’m drugged - it’s already taken effect.

I’ve notified the baby’s mother that I took an entire Tylenol 3 and that the pain is really bad and that should her baby wake before 11am and I’m still in bad shape, she or her husband may have to come home.

Of course, the family’s cat now thinks it’s a great time to attack my laptop cord and my feet. It’s a good thing he’s so cute.

I go pass out now. Hopefully baby stays asleep for a bit.

10am Edit: Just passed another huge squid. On the phone with my GYN office now. I never pass them this huge. I’m shivering cold, shakey and nauseous. The pain radiates down to my inner thighs. The GYN office is trying to get me to my GYN directly.