An update.

If you're male, and/or don't like to hear about feminine issues, then don't continue to read this. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
This will be WTMI..
All of you know I have what the medical industry calls 'chronic migraine' (15 or more migraines a month) I tend just to try to keep track of the days I don't have one, much easier to do. Many sufferers only have one or two types of triggers for theirs, I, OTOH, have triggers in all categories (environmental -odors, bright lights, loud sounds, too hot/humid, emotional, stress, sleep or lack there of, hormonal, and food I believe are the major categories). One category is hormonal fluxes (ie
monthlies). So, my OB, and Neuro thought to minimize the number of
fluxuations with BC (VERY difficult because I am very senisitive to
artificial hormones. Vomiting up a bc pill would not help me in any way) and ended up with the NovaRing.
It worked fairly well for 9 months, but see, almost every morning I would get up to use the toilet and would have to reinsert the ring. I was putting it in correctly (my OB checked), it just was being ornery! After much discussion, hubby and I decided to try the Mirena IUD again. Last time I had one in (2002), my next PAP came back abnormal and eventually lead to a LEEP (2004), then 2 Laproscopies because my cervix sealed shut (2005). Which made us have an emergency C-Section (2008) for our third child. AND when my OB went to insert the IUD he had to manually dilate my Cervix. Needless to say, THAT was an experience I would care not to experience again.
With the Nova Ring, I was leaving it in for 4 weeks, then just changing it the same day (as per instructions from my OB). Since the Mirena IUD has a similar amount of the hormones, it should still react like I was wearing the Nova Ring. The procedure to put the IUD in happened in Jan. February, I was ok and March was so so. I spotted some, but nothing like what I was having before: 5 days of constant migraines so bad that rolling my head on the pillow was painful and cramps like someone was stabbing me and twisting the knife around.
Did you notice I didn't say April above?Right now I have cramping so bad I feel like I am going to vomit. And I have had a migraine that just won't go away for 3 days now.

I did get the results back from the blood screen for gluten intolerance. One of the two came back positive, so since April 3rd (Monkey's Birthday!) I have tried my damnedest to eat gluten free. It's been about 3 weeks, and I have noticed some difference in my guts, but that is all. My Neuro said it could take 3-6 months to notice a difference.
Also, my GP AND our pediatrician think its a smart move to get the kids tested too. Now, the trick is, how to do it so Buddy doesn't freak out?

Being a pin cushion

I got to go to my neurologist past week. She's concerned that I'm using a lot of pain pills, as am I. I mentioned that over the last couple months it seems my headaches have gotten a lot worse with the bronchitis, and it doesn't feel like my daily medications are helping much anymore. After some more discussions she decided that it might be prudent for me to get tested for a gluten intolerance and then for celiac disease, if I had a family history of Celiac's disease. Which, unfortunately, I do. My mother's father's brother was diagnosed with it about five years ago.
Sasha gave me a prescription to go to the lab that's on the first floor of her building to get the blood drawn to test for the gluten intolerance and then if that comes back positive, they'll test for celiac disease. As there is no point to test for celiac disease unless there is a gluten intolerance.
So, being a good girl that I am, on go downstairs immediately to get the blood drawn. The vampire/lab tech stuck me with three needles and got absolutely no blood whatsoever. Not even a drop of blood was on the cotton ball used to cover the puncture point when she pulled the needle out! No big deal, I needed to go see my GP anyway to have him listen to my chest to see how my bronchitis was progressing, so I'd just have his nurses do the draw of blood when I saw him the next day. I was so happy when they got blood out of me! I am a notoriously hard person to get blood out of, because I have small veins and they tend to roll around.
The next day, which happened to be a Friday, I got a call from my neurologist office. It turns out the nurses at my GPs office put the blood into the wrong specimen vial and the blood was not viable for this test. I almost burst into tears at this point. I would have to go back and get more needles stuck in the me!
Tuesday was the next available day I was able to get to the lab again. Misty I made sure I trying plenty of liquids before going to the lab to make sure I was well hydrated. But, yet again, she stuck me three times and absolutely nothing came out. After I got home I called mineralogist office again and told them what happened and asked if there was some place else I could go to try to see if they could get blood out of me. They told me just to go down to one of the hospitals downtown to their outpatient lab and hand them the prescription. There they should be able to stick me and get blood and put it into the correct vials.
I was able to go the next day which was Wednesday. Again, I made sure I was well hydrated to make it easier to get a vein. The vampire/lab tech there got the three vials she needed to fill and was able to stick me to get blood! I was so relieved when I stop applied starting to fill the vial, let me tell you! The first biofilms just fine the second file was almost full when the blood started to slow down. She had to massage the same to get the rest of the second vial filled. The third vial, even with her massaging the vein, she was only able to fill about halfway. So what she did was she told me to wait in the waiting room and she ran to the lab to double check with them to make sure there was enough blood in the third vial before I left. And thankfully there was enough!
But, in about a weeks time I got stuck eight times! I hate needles.

I am half hoping that this comes back positive for the gluten intolerance. Because if it is that that could solve a lot more than just my migraines. But the other half of me is hoping that it's not that because going gluten-free is very challenging.

I was told it would take about a week to get the results back and since the blood was finally taken this past Wednesday, we should get the results back hopefully this coming Tuesday, which just happens to be The Monkey's birthday I believe. (since I gave the blood at the place where they do the tests, it doesn't need to be transported to the lab, which means it should take a day less)

I hate being sick.

In September, my neurologist put me on prednisone to help with some rebound migraines I was having. Because of that and possibly service on the air conditioning unit in our apartment, I got bronchitis which lasted through the rest of September, all of October and part of November.

In December and January, I was coughing some but not very much and the mild winter also helped. But the last week of January I ended up coming down with bronchitis again! Now we are about halfway through March and I still have bronchitis. Last week I had an allergic reaction to the sulfa antibiotic my doctor put me on to make sure it wouldn't become pneumonia (I believe that was my fifth round of antibiotics. But since I had been going into the doctor almost weekly and having a fever they wanted to make sure it wasn't a bacterial infection). That reaction started last Thursday afternoon.
It's been seven days since I had the reaction and I still feel like I have poison ivy over most of my body. As well as my hands are too swollen to wear my wedding ring. I am on yet another taper dose of prednisone. If I remember correctly, this is my fourth since that one I started in September. I am also on two different inhalers to help clear up my chest, too.

After this chest cold from hell clears up, my doctor and my husband want me to get tested for adult onset asthma to make sure that my lung functions are okay after suffering this on and off for the last six months.

On top of having trouble breathing the past couple days I've had some world doozies of the migraine that just won't go away. And the kids aren't helping much I screeching and fighting and doing whatever they can to annoy me and make this migraine even worse.

Side note I used the speech to text function on my phone to write this entry. So if there are any homonyms or other little grammatical errors it's because Siri didn't correctly translate my words into text. But Siri usually does a fairly good job with this kind of thing.

Better late than never! My Saturday Evening Hoodie knit.

Last year, around this time, Lion Brand had a knit along for their Saturday Evening Hoodie.  The yarn I picked was the Bluebell color of their Wool-Ease Chunky yarn. I didn't think it would take me that long to knit because it was a chunky yarn.  Boy, was I wrong.   I got 2 new needles - US 13 36 inch cable needles and US 11 30 inch cable needles, both made of wood.  Mainly because its easier to travel, I usually get cable needles since both needles are attached to one another. You can knit flat or on the round with cable needles.
I knitted both sides of the front and the back using the round needles as flat needles.  I think I finished those three pieces in September.  That is when I got hit with bronchitis for the first time.
Mid-November is when I got started on the sleeves.  I wasn't looking forward to knitting 2 sleeves on flat needles (I am not fond of knitting flat, I prefer knitting on the round)  so I spent the first few days trying to convert the sleeves from knitting each one separately to knitting both on the round using the method of 2 socks one needle (magic loop is another term).
The way they wrote the instructions, they have you start at the cuff using Knit 2/Purl 2 ribbing for the first 3 inches.  They wanted you to cast on 30 stitches. If I did that, I would have had 4 Knit stitches in a row, so I had to choose do I add 2 stitches or take 2 stitches. I chose to add 2 stitches so I would have 32 inches (since the ribbing pattern is 4 stitches, I wanted to have the cuff be divisible by 4 so it would be a clear pattern with not obvious seam.) I have to admit, the ribbing kntting on the size 11 needles was challenging for the first 5-8 rows.  What made it easier was I got another set of 11s and so I would knit back and forth between the 2 cable needles. It took me most of December to finish the cuff, but it was hectic and I was still recovering from bronchitis.

To the above right is a picture of the finish cuffs on the US 11 needles. I am using 2 skeins of yarn - one for each sleeve to make it a bit easier. From there, I knitted directly onto the US13, making it the first row. On the 4th row, I K1, increased a stitch (I think I did M1L) K15, M1L, K16 (to the beginning of the round on that sleeve.) and then repeated on the second sleeve on that same row. 3 normal knit rows, and then I did another increase, and the second increase was K1, M1L, K16, M1L, K17.  Each progressing increase I would move the 2nd increase 1 stitch farther along.

Above Left are my knit markers.  They snap closed so I can snap them into my knitting and easily remove them. (so I can snap them into stitches directly to help count rows!) Above Right is my sleeve, with 4 of the adding rows done, marked with my stitch markers. To the right is what my sleeves look like currently.

To the right here is the sleeve on my arm.  I have done 9 of the 10 increases.  It currently covers my arm from wrist to just past my elbow.












Here is the sleeve with a tape measure next to it. from the beginning of the cuff to the end of the sleeve is 13 inches long. :)











I am doing the sleeves this way for several reasons.  One of which is the fact I want the sleeves to be the same length without having to count and recount rows.  Another is, I hate sewing up seams, so doing this I wont have a seam for most of the sleeve.

When the second part of the sleeve directions start - where you decrease stitches and start to form the shoulder, I will do that flat.  Hopefully this will work out!

Migraines are awful

I look up this morning feeling groggy and yucky. That's to be expected with someone with bronchitis, right? I also felt the start of a migraine forming and started to think what else could go wrong?!?
Then I looked at the clock. I could see shapes - circles, lines, squares. But I could not make sense out of those shapes into any kind of numbers. Great, I thought just great. So I took my rescue medication just after I woke up, and discovered that I could also not read letters! Let me tell you that made it very fun to figure out which medicines were which.
I told Munchkin that I was going to need her help with Monkey today so I would need her to get her schoolwork done as quickly as possible.
Almost 10 hours later is when I realized I could start making sense of numbers and letters again as long as I concentrated hard. This was after taking almost a four hour nap after taking all of my rescue medications for a second time.
If you're wondering how I am writing this, my phone has a transcribe feature that I'm using that all I have to do is add punctuation. Makes a heck of a lot easier than finding the letters on little keyboard!
Right now the migraine is just sitting there throbbing and being annoying but it is not debilitating like it was this morning and this afternoon.

Kitteh torture- aka bathing

My counselor, Dr. K gave me two kittehs for therapy last May. Dora - all black except for when she's in a sunbeam, then her beautiful fur shows browns and reds. She is the smaller that the two kittehs. The second kitteh is named Hattie - black and white into a similar pattern the the cat in the hat.
Both are females and are litter sisters. They are both loving and playful kittens.
They both have longer than most kittens, and they do have difficultly keeping themselves clean. Many times things get caught in their fur after they use the litter box. Because of this, we try to bathe them to help clean off.

Tonight was bath night. At least both kittehs are talking to me again

Today's summary

So, I have the cruds that are going around. My GP, Dr. H, said yesterday that my lungs still sound gunky (I love his technical terms for things!) like they did at the end of January. He gave me a different antibiotic this time, in hopes that it will help clear it up AND prevent me from getting any further infections from having congestion in my lungs for more than 3 weeks. Say like a sinus infection, ear infection or for my congestion from getting worse and progressing into pneumonia.
And here I lay, at my parents house in their guest room with the humidifier on, heating pad on my chest, doing my best to regulate my breathing so it is slow and steady (not gasping and panicky like I feel currently). I just took one of my inhailiors to help with the irritation in my chest. Hopefully the inhaled steroid will help this nasty thing to go away.
One thing I have found out today: it is not pleasant to wheezy cough and hiccup at the same time.
I woke this morning, feeling like that woman in the COPD commercial is at the beginning - laying on the sofa with an elephant sitting on her chest. An apt description on how it currently feels for me to breath. And then about 45-60 minutes later my voice decides to go hide, so I now have a frog in my throat, too. What will next come upon me that we compare to animals?