Double Digits

Eating is best done with a distraction these days. SO while I choke down this awful granola, how about a nice, unorganized, rambly, graphic blog post?

The Calendar
Ten weeks down, thirty to go! This bun is one-quarter cooked. I just hope I have enough in me to transform this prune into a watermelon! I feel so drained. My stomach is so flat and empty, I can see my heartbeat shaking it. How’s that for ironic—my stomach is flattest when I’m pregnant. Ha. But I’m in the double digits now, whew.

The Lakecation
I almost forgot to include this part because I wasn’t THERE for this year’s Brown family lake vacation. I stayed home sick, near the hospital. My whole family except me and my missionary brother Kyle convened at Lake Entiat near Wenatchee, WA last week—they rented the same house as last year. Jeff, Jay, and Rose went up and spent 2 nights with everyone.

Nothing like a nice pile of boys

Jay is so grown up

Rose had some quality time with Grama Meri.

Ring around the rosie

3/4 of the cousins—poor little Dan got sick so he wasn’t feeling photogenic. Next year we’ll have 6 little kids all together (my sister Em and I are both pregnant and due a month apart).

We always have to measure Jay and Steve.

None of the Whites were here for this picture, and Dani was taking it so she’s not in it, but I just love this so much. I adore my family. And our feasts.

I’m so glad that Jay and Rose got to go see their only cousins, as well as those aunts and unks that live far away. It was hard for me to miss out on all the family fun, games, and food, but I’m glad everyone else had a great time!

The State of the Shaina
Oh pregnancy, how you hurt. Right when I think I’ve seen the worst, a new, deeper circle appears in the Inferno. Last Sunday when I hurled 4 times in 90 minutes, I thought for sure that was as horrible as it could get. But then Friday night rolled in. Out of NOwhere, right before bed, I hurled so hard that my throat bled. Later that night I woke up and did it again, and my nose bled along with my throat. Nightmarish. I was kind of freaking out about the red stuff, even though there was only a little bit. I texted good ole Dr. Weaver, and he informed me that it was normal to get micro-tears in the throat from puking acid, and he said to try not to do it again. I think he was joking a little on that last nugget of advice.

The State of the PICC Line
It is still very convenient and much-needed. I go in to the hospital 2-3 times per week for a “refill.” Story: my PICC line has a large sticky bandage covering it, which has to be changed and swabbed with alcohol once a week to prevent infection. Last week’s changeroo was fine, but this week’s bandage change was ultra-cringe-worthy. The nurse didn’t seem very experienced, so I was scrunched into a queasy little ball of tension while I tried not to watch but watched anyways. See, the bandage has to be peeled off without disturbing the purple tube it’s stuck to. The nurse was yanking and tugging on the sticky thing so much that the purple tube SLID OUT of my arm about 1-2 centimeters. SHUDDER. I about passed out. There wasn’t any blood, but watching this tube floss my vein nearly did me in. It is so weird to see a tube poking out of my arm. I feel like a Borg. Knowing that this tube is threaded all the way through my shoulder to my heart is just a little too much when I see it sliding around.   

The Mourning
I feel like such a shell of my normal Shaina self. I MISS myself—how weird does that sound? I miss waking up excited for a new day. I miss running in the cool fresh morning air and walking my kids to the library and the park. I miss hugging and kissing. I miss my brainpower and taking care of my home (even cleaning it!). I miss showering daily (I’m clean once a week right now—eeew). I miss church. I miss FOOD. I miss liking food and making food and buying food. I MISS JIF PEANUT BUTTER! I knew the storm was coming a few weeks ago when I licked some Jif off my finger and shuddered. I miss having energy and creativity. I miss being independent. I miss LAUGHING! Sigh. I know that life has its phases, and I’m in a phase where people take care of me instead of me helping them, but IT IS HARD anyways, especially since I can’t even make cute thank-you cards for all the amazing people who have pitched in already. Moan. Mourn.

The Hair
Jay went out to the farm with his aunt Steph this week, and he got so dirty that she ended up buzzing his hair off. I was SO glad because his hair was getting a little out of control.

Jay kept saying “my hair is all gone!” He is now a super-white-guy with this white-blond buzz. Goodbye sweet red tints.

Rose LOVES wearing “pretties” (hair bows). I attempted pigtails on her this week, and she begged for bows in each one. We don’t have any matching bows, so pink and yellow it was. She loved it. She walks around touching her bows and saying “diddy! diddy!”

One of our favorite books is Bink and Gollie. We’ve started calling Rose Bink when her hair goes a little crazy…

Definitely Bink.

My constant bedhead-reclinerhead could also qualify but I think Rose makes a much cuter Bink, so I’ll spare you my picture.

The Paint
I had a list of things I wanted to do before I got sick, but I barely made it through half of them. One of the things left undone was the kitchen paint job. Jeff TOOK IT ON this week as a last hurrah to his summer vacation (teachers in-service starts tomorrow). Have you seen the yellow paint sample on the wall in the backgrounds of any pictures?

Jeff has never painted a room before (neither have I), but I thought he did a good job.

The edges aren’t done yet (we later learned that it’s better to do the edges first. Oh well), and we’ll hang gauzy white curtains over the porch doors. The yellow is much yellower than I thought it would be, even with my painted sample, but I think it’s warm and happy. The light and time of day change the way it looks drastically. I think it looks darker than it is in this picture. I’ll get a better picture of it when it’s all done—or should I say I’ll have Jeff take a better picture of it when it’s all done. I took all these pictures from my recliner, so there wasn’t much choice of angle or lighting.

The End
See you later alligators.

Ups and Downs

It’s hard to write when I just don’t feel like it. I’ve been putting this off for days. Normally when it’s time for a blog post, I feel glad to have an outlet for my thoughts, and I enjoy the challenge of composing clever paragraphs or witty captions. In my current sick state, however, I haven’t felt that lure. But just because I don’t feel like writing about life right now, it doesn’t mean that my dear family and friends don’t want to know what’s going on! So watch me overcome my mental lethargy, if only for a few minutes.

Every day is a new challenge. I’m surviving, mostly (Wallace of Wallace and Gromit says, “I’m inventing, mostly. Well I’m surviving mostly). Some days I feel good enough to shower. Most days I don’t. I spend every day in my recliner, letting everything go on around me.

Jay’s hair is growing so long. I’m the only one who cuts it, so he’ll probably have a pony tail by the time I’m ready to get out the buzzer again. Jay’s uncle Jasen has been giving him “party hair” on Sundays for church. Even though I prefer boys with buzz cuts, I do like how much strawberry-red shows up in Jay’s hair when it grows out a little.

These two get all rosy-cheeked after roasting in the car on the way home from church in this heat. I wonder when I’ll be able to go to church again.

Jay alternates between super-sweet and helpful to his pathetic mother and little IMP-child: grabbing, throwing, jostling, etc. Today was an impish day, but earlier this week, while I was moaning in my chair, Jay climbed up onto a stool, crawled over the counter, took a cooled baked potato out of the toaster oven, walked (on the counter) to the cabinet, got a bowl out, put the potato in the bowl, and chopped it up with a fork. Then he climbed down (somehow not dumping the mangled tater onto the floor) and brought it to me, all without being asked. Even my dulled sick emotions were touched. I wished that I could eat the potato just because he was so sure it would make me feel better. But instead I texted Jeff to come take it away because the smell made me want to hurl. I did make sure to say thank you so much to sweet Jay.

Another day Jay said “I like to help you feel better, Mommy.” He keeps asking me, “are you better, Mommy?” especially when I get back from the hospital. He can’t believe that I’ve been sick for so long. This week I went to the hospital twice (on Monday and Friday) to make use of my PICC line. That thing is so convenient! Ok, well, it’s like being a Shaina shish-kabob having a tube skewering from my arm to my heart, but I’m finally used to having the thing in me. And it’s awesome to be an outpatient at the hospital--way faster (and hopefully cheaper) than the ER. I can be in and out of there in just over an hour! They don’t even make me change clothes or pee in a cup. And the best part is I can go in whenever I want for a bag of saline juice and a shot of Zofran. No pokes. Just sweet relief. I think the PICC line has helped me stay on top of my ultrasickness because I don’t have to wait till I’m on death’s doorstep before I go in for fluids. I just notice when I’m behind on drinking (it happens every few days because swallowing is a chore), and I zoom on in for a top-off.

I’m still losing weight, but I don’t expect to start catching up for a few more weeks (when I can eat more than a few bites at a time). Needless to say, some (most) days I just feel AWFUL. When awful days combine with impish-Jay-days, I’m likely to cry. Like today, por ejemplo…

I sat by and let Jay and Rose unload the whole plastics drawer from the kitchen (I couldn’t stop them). They said they were making dinner. It was cute. After a while though, “dinner” was over, and Jay started chucking the dishes at me. Point-blank range. He even threw a shoe. Now I know it seems really easy to avoid or stop, but I asked him to stop nicely, and he didn’t. I couldn’t raise my voice or intervene physically. All I could do was cover my face with my blanket and feel like the most pathetic excuse for a mother EVER. I texted Jeff for backup and he came up and carted Jay off, but I was crying all over the place and it made me feel even sicker. I just hope that in the future, Jay can be the helper more often than he’s the attacker.

When you live in a recliner, you have to find the joy in small things. Rose’s grin is one of those things. After a bath, Jeff wraps her like a sweet little blue burrito and she waddles out to visit me, plastered hair streaming, cheeks grinning. I also like listening to Jeff take care of the kids: cook for them, bathe them, talk with them. In a way it’s fun to see how he does things. A lot of his methods are different than mine, but it’s ok. I just watch things unfold. Luckily I don’t feel tempted to call out advice from my corner unless I’m feeling particularly…let’s call it not-as-bad, so it’s not too hard to ONLY watch and not boss. I totally sympathize when I see Jeff having one of those “mom-days” where every little thing you try to do takes about 8 times as long because of kiddy delays. It amuses my stationary self to watch it rather than live it (even though I’d much rather live it!).

There’s nothing quite like post-bath euphoria.

_______________________________________________
PS: I have no clue why that video is so huge. Oh well.

Puke, Poke, PICC

The dread Shaina-prego-SICKNESS is here, stronger than ever before. MOAN.

First of all I have to warn/apologize for 2 things:

1. My normal optimism, zest, and creativity are majorly handicapped right now. I’ll try not to adopt a whiny tone—I’m not depressed, just super sick.

2. Hopefully this post isn’t too graphic or detailed…I’ll try to be delicate, but my dulled senses may not be the best censors right now.

I look way better than I feel.
I wish I had the energy to shower.
(this picture is small for a reason)

Now for the story:

After a week of mostly manageable nausea-battles, Wednesday August 8th came. Suddenly I was just puking my eyeballs out, medicine and all. Noooooo! My Mom and my sister Mel were visiting for the day, and I was pah-thet-ic. By that afternoon, we knew we were delaying the inevitable ER visit for IV fluids and medicine. So Mom and Mel stayed with Jay and Rose while Jeff drove me in to Sunnyside Community Hospital. 2 liters of saline solution and some intravenous Zofran later, I was relatively patched up. Home we went. But there was a difference: when I went in for IVs when I was pregnant with Rose, I always felt better enough to eat and drink when I got home. It didn’t happen that way this time. I had been artificially re-hydrated (I sound like food storage or something) but I still felt like DEATH and the only thing that I managed to slip past my lips that night was a few bites of applesauce.

SO I went to bed on a more-than-empty stomach (more like concave, shriveled, can’t-stand-up-straight empty). Anyone who’s been pregnant before knows that’s a recipe for agony. The puking picked up right where it left off, in the middle of the night. I can’t think of a less-pleasant sensation to wake up to than the ultragross need to vomit. I could barely even squeeze any bile out this time though. So I heaved, sweated, and crawled back into bed, anxious to escape into sleep again. Well, repeat that scene 2 more times and you’ll understand why I was feeling beyond desperate on Thursday. I choked down some dry cereal and juice, only to hurl it back up. It was kind of a blur, with lots of pathetic phone calls to my patient Mom. Finally, we called Dr. Weaver, and he told me to go check in to the hospital. SPEND THE NIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL? I was scared. I was beyond weak and ill. Even sitting felt like hard work. I dredged up the last bit of moisture from my shriveled body and cried.

Ok, that was probably the lowest point. Jeff and his dad gave me a blessing. Dan and Leslie stayed with Jay and Rose while Jeff drove me back to the hospital. They checked me in to a room, drew lots of blood, and started the IV again. I had an ultrasound. There was a little heart thumping away in my wizened womb. Dr. Weaver came in to check on me. Have I mentioned that he’s LDS? Well, it was so different and good to have my doctor ask me if I’ve had a priesthood blessing yet. He said, “that’s better medicine than anything I can give you.” So, Jeff went home and I slept in the hospital. Well, I slept as well as anyone ever does in a hospital—there’s always something beeping or dripping or someone taking your blood pressure or a mostly-deaf old man in the room next door who needs to be shouted at so he can hear the nurses.

I spent all day Friday in the hospital too. After much consultation and consideration, I decided to get a PICC line in my arm. That stands for Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter. I thought it would be just like a permanent IV in my upper arm. When the nurses in charge of inserting it described everything to me, though, I realized that once again I was in for something scary and uncomfortable. A regular IV is just a short (kind of thick) needle that sticks an inch or two under the skin. A PICC line is a 40 centimeter tube that runs through a vein in the upper arm all the way to your chest, near your heart!

If I hadn’t been feeling so low already when they told me all this, I may have gasped or choked or resisted. But I felt like there was nothing else to be done, so away they went, draping the room in blue and ultrasounding out the right vein in my arm. They jabbed and gouged both of my tender inner arms above the elbow for over an HOUR before admitting defeat—I was still too dehydrated, and the veins weren’t big enough. Another liter of IV juice later, the masked nurses Phyllis and Judy came back with their pokers. This time, before they started needling me, Phyllis asked me “are you the praying type?” I said yes, and she told me that they had both been praying that this would work before they came back in. I told her “me too!” Then she said “are you praying, Judy? Ok, here we go.” And in 15 minutes, the tube was in place. Prayer works. WHEW. It was the cringey-est sensation to feel a tube scooting along my vein up my arm into my shoulder. SHUDDER.

If I ever have the energy to go out into public, I just may wrap this contraption in an Ace bandage.

They X-rayed me to make sure that the PICC line was in the right part of my chest, repositioned it, and X-rayed me again. Then it was done. Jeff, Jay, and Rose came and picked me up. We got home a little after 7pm, 24 hours after I left.

Sipping runny, unsweetened cream of wheat through a straw is one of the few ways I can bear eating.

When I got home from the hospital last night, I drank a few sips of runny cream of wheat (aka gruel) and went to bed. Somehow (aka prayers) I have not barfed today. I am supposed to go back to the hospital if I ever barf more than 5 times in a day or if my doctor tells me to go get more fluids. That’s why I’ve got the PICC line—so I don’t come out of this looking like a druggy with a million needle holes in my arms.

After all those procedures and hospital time, I’m sincerely hoping that our health insurance is as good as we thought it was when we chose it last year!

I can barely eat anything so I feel like such an invalid—so weak I couldn’t even intervene when Rose was pouring her sippy cup of water on my feet a few minutes ago. Even talking is hard because it requires pressure from my diaphragm and that makes me feel barfy. Obviously laughing is out of the question. The worst part about that whole hospital ordeal is that this is just the beginning—going to the hospital didn’t solve my awful nausea. I’ve still got a solid 6-8 weeks of that left. I’ve been really struggling with the mental side of this trial: my own personal, real-life lesson on enduring to the end.

It took me a while to get there, but I think it’s finally safe to say that I can’t live without my cell phone…almost literally. Jeff and I have a great system worked out: I lay in my recliner upstairs while he’s in the basement, and if I need something, I just text him (it takes too much stomach power to call out for him). My cell phone also got me through the hospital stay. Jeff and I were amused that the nurse at the hospital called this little gadget a BlackBerry. Ha, no. It makes phone calls and sends texts. That’s all. And that’s enough for me.

Meanwhile…SuperJeff is taking over. He takes care of me. He makes me any food I can dream up. He even brought our old little TV up from the garage and hooked up Netflix on it for me in case I want to watch something. It’s so cute to see him doing all of my normal domestic duties, like loading the dishwasher, making dinner, and folding clean cloth diapers while his wife is draped helplessly on the recliner. He’s so patient and good. When school starts back up again, things will get tricky. For now, I’m just taking things one day at a time.

My view for the next 2 months.

Surprise!

I’m pregnant!

Due: March 24th, 2013.

Already 7 weeks along.

Already feeling pudgy.

Already feeling sick.

Also: feeling kind of scared to do this again.

Here we go!

Bubbly Drink

This may never get old…

Power in Pasco!

Saturday morning, Jeff did the first annual Power in Pasco sprint triathlon. He did great! After watching him swim half a mile, bike 12.5 miles, and run a 5k, I felt exhausted. I think he was tired too, ha ha.

The pre-race meeting.

They swam in the icy Columbia River. Jeff was one of the few who braved it without a wet suit. In face, he wore nothing but the required neon swim cap, goggles, and a itsy bitsy Speedo! I had to chuckle. 

The water was so BLUE. They got to swim downstream, so that was helpful.

The transition…I’m pretty sure Jeff is in this picture somewhere, because I saw him right after I took it. But he must be behind some people. It was nearly  a quarter mile from the river to the bike-transition area! I’ve never heard of one that far—everyone just made a dash for it in their swim costumes and bare feet. Don’t you wish I had managed a Speedo-y Jeff shot?

Jay and Rose had a snack while they were waiting for Daddy to appear. He dashed by so fast and unexpectedly that they never saw him for the whole race till after he finished. I was cracking up, and pointing to him but they kept looking in the wrong direction.

The leftovers after everyone had gotten on their bikes. Jeff really was too fast for me to get pictures of him in action. He said that it was tough biking on his old school road bike with all those fancy-schmancy bikes whizzing past him the whole time. He said he knew it was just his bike’s slowness (not his legs) when a 59 year old woman cruised by him on a gorgeous bike while he pedaled twice as fast as her. Now Jeff wants to save up for a fast road bike.

The children got sticky granola bar stuff on their cheeks and then rolled in the dirt, creating a nice mask.

Woah, I caught him! Jeff checked the results, and his 5k time of 18 minutes was the fastest of all by 40 seconds, even though he was not up front.

Looking for Daddy. Poor kids never saw him pass us!

Jay got tired of waiting for the race to end, so he dashed off to the playground. I was kind of hovering half way between the playground and the finish line hoping that I could keep track of both boys.

The finish: Jeff’s total time was 1 hour 15 minutes 13 minutes and 40 seconds. Way to go, Husband!