Living

Thanks for all the emails and concern. I have good days and bad days and good and bad days combined into one. I go back to the doctor tomorrow to have stitches removed and be recasted. I am pretty sure I will be sporting a Christmas themed cast complete with santas and trees.

Anyway, there is a reason why I posted a smiley face. My surgeon gave me a smiley face on each side of the ankle. The slits for the eyes are about 2 inches above each side of the ankle and the smiley face starts 1 inch outside of one eye slit and goes down to the bottom of the side of the foot then back up to an inch on the outside of the other eye slit. Seems my surgeon has a sense of humor. I haven't decided if I do yet although my right cankles will now sport smiley face scars on the inside and out. Maybe it will be a new fashion statement.

I thought I was doing lots better. Seemed to have more energy so yesterday decided to go to one of the offices. The main office girl's mother was having a triple bypass open heart surgery. She insisted on working since she didn't feel she could sit at the hospital all day with her husband dying just over a year ago. So she worked but I thought I had better get my rear in there just in case she had to leave so I went to work. Yeah....not as strong as I thought I was getting. Went straight to bed with ice bags and drugs. Got up this morning and went to another office for 3 hours.....then realized I did way too much and the whole leg went back into what is called a peroneal spasm. So dear hubs gave me another shot in the knee and knocked out the spasm and took me home, put me in bed and I had orders to stay there. I obeyed.

But during the day I received 2 deliveries.....one a huge fruit basket fom Edible Arrangements from the group of doctors I do consulting work for with a message that was a riot: Ok all right all ready....time to stop lollygagging around and get back to work...we miss you!. awwwww..... The other delivery was a basket from dear friends (thanks Jeff and Lisa) with books, magazines, Godiva chocolates, a cute Hallmark ornament called a shoe tree, and a stuffed pig. For those of you who don't get it....I have pig parts in my ankle holding it back together. What was really funny was their card: "Sorry to hear you've been laid out...ooops I mean laid away....no, no, make that laid up....or do I mean laid down....uh...laid back...er...laid over...well, whichever way you've been laid...hope you get laid the right way!

I leave you today with a remark my husband said to me as he watched me get ready for bed last night....."Did you know your breasts are in a race to see which will reach your waist first?"

Yep my crutches were used once again as a javelin and hit their mark!

Recuperating

I missed posting this pic for you for Thanksgiving.....so am posting it now.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Well, I feel my age. People told me that as one ages, it is harder to recuperate from having surgery. I totally believe them now. My surgery was the 15th and I have been mainly on my rear most of the time. I have managed to get some work done between anti-inflammatory meds since they knock me out but remembering things is hard. Hubs had an emergency patient this past weekend and sent him for some bloodwork. Well, we can access the results now via a secure log in....no problem you say? Yeah well every 15 days it asks you to change your password so I changed it. I have no idea what I changed it to so we had to call the hospital to have it reset. All I can say is this surgery has been harder to recuperate from than I ever expected. Up until last Friday I had hot poker shooting pains coming from my ankle to the knee and then to the hip. I rarely slept and Thanksgiving I spent on the floor of our family room floor snuggling with the doggies while hubs and kids went to his parent's house. I was perfectly fine with that. They brought me home a doggie bag but I had hubs make me an omelette as my tummy gets nauseated from pain and pain meds. Last Friday hubs took me to his office and took off my cast and gave me a nerve block into my right knee which promptly put my leg to sleep and ended those nasty spasms. I haven't had one since which is doing a lot for my mood. Hubs called me a bear with a thorn in its paw.....I think he was being nice. I was a bitch.

So I am still not allowed to return to work at the offices yet but can work at home. I am catching up on the sleep I didn't get the past week or so and yesterday slept 12 hours all in a row. I couldn't believe it. Slowly I feel my energy coming back. Friday I get the stitches out and recasted. Maybe I can start going back to work then.

Learning to be a patient

Yeah...not easy when you are trained to be a nurse. I am the patient from hell. I admit it. I do not like being confined or told to stay in bed. This is driving me nuts. I have never eaten in bed in my life. That's all I have been doing since surgery. I feel crumbs everywhere although I have yet to find one. I caught on to hubs today when I managed to keep my eyes open for more than an hour. He has been keeping me drugged. Probably cuz he knows I wouldn't stay in bed otherwise and this way I am quieter too.

I used to think all I wanted was peace and quiet and to just lay in bed and do nothing. Well, it's not all it is cracked up to be. My husband made me get last night and helped me take a shower. That made me feel a wee bit better although doing things with a cast protector on and non-weight bearing and in severe pain when I put my foot in any other position than up was an hour long occasion. By the time I got back in bed, I was ready to be knocked out for hours. Which amazingly I did. I slept 12 straight hours last night.

Son hooked up my computer today for me and I managed to stay awake for an entire movie (I wed me)...corny but cute. I will admit it feels nice to be waited on. OP report not up yet so can't say what occurred cept I was told I have pig parts in me. In some ways I am thankful since there seems to be a lot of people getting AIDS from donated parts. Pigs don't get AIDS.

Right now I am watching the Magnificent Mile 2007 Lights Festival...an amazing parade and festival on the magnificent mile in Chicago on Michigan Avenue. It is something you need to see at least once in your lifetime. It is gorgeous! Hopefully dinner is being cooked....cuz I am getting hungry!

Countdown - 35 hours to go

It's been literally crazy here. I am down to my last 35 hours and still have bunches left to do. This morning I woke up to the landscapers ringing my doorbell at 6am along with I swear hundreds of men (all speaking a foreign language). How the haydees can anyone be happy at that hour? Our front lawn looks like it was stripped naked. I am waiting to post pics until they are done cuz the transformation is amazing already. I can't wait to see everything in full bloom and how it will change per season. They are still putting in a stone wall on either side of the house so I imagine they will be back tomorrow bright and early. I did tell them they did not have to tell me they were there tomorrow.

As for the roof: they couldn't get the one we picked out so last week I picked out another that was close to what the one we had picked out. Hubs wasn't around. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought he would have cared. Believe me it was like I lost his remote. OMG.....I swear it was male pms week. I picked out Tamko's Heritage AR/50 Thunderstorm Gray which was close to the GAF we had picked out. They upgraded us from a 40 year roof to a 50 because of the delay at no extra charge. He swears the tile has green in it. I say gray has some green in it but you are looking at it up close. It will be going on your 2nd story roof so it won't show the green unless you get out a ladder and climb it and put your nose next to it. Not good enough. The man had to get out the ladder and take a bundle of shingles and lay them out on the roof to prove his point. I still saw no green but he swears he does. So he says...pick what ever you want. Should not have believed that. I chose to stay with what I had picked out. For the past 4 days the man has been dragging everyone he could to see the shingles and then added up who saw green and who didn't. So I said fine - change the danged thing. I don't need the hassle - I have a list to finish. So we changed the roof. At this point the roofer made him sign this is the last time he is allowed to change the order.

**sigh** 35 hours to go to lala land.

Countdown

Ever since my doctor scheduled surgery I have been doing all those things you just need to get done before you do anything. You know those things...the ones you put off for a rainy day then you realize how long you have procrastinated on them and just do them. So I made a list of things I wanted to get done before surgery. We are now into countdown.

I have stockpiled my vitamins, made a pot of beef vegetable soup and canned it today and made 12 dozen pizzelles (anise, lemon, chocolate, and tried a new one: almond which tasted great!). I would have done more today but I had to work for most of the day. Tomorrow I am planning on making a pot of pea soup and canning that along with making a pan of lasagna and a pan of stuffed shells. I figure that I can't mess up my already fubarred ankle any more so cooking this weekend won't hurt it.

A friend reminded me that I needed to get rid of all my latest journal writings (those notebooks I write in to let off steam and anger and disappointment) as a just in case. So they went into the shredder today. I added another envelope to the safe for each kid and my husband (I have done this since hubs and I got married just in case something ever happened to me). I try to update the letter at least yearly and tell them about the year and my thoughts and feeling about who they are becoming and how much I love them, etc. I highlight positive things that happened to them that year.

I went to the bookstore last night to add to my already 3 foot high stack of TBR books (just in case I ran out of reading material). I picked up Water for Elephants, Three Cups of Tea, and a couple of others whose names escape me at this time.

I have done a shopping list for things for Thanksgiving although I won't be going anywhere and no one is allowed to enter my house. Hubs and the kids are going to his mother's house for a few hours so I figure the dogs and I will take a well needed nap then get served dinner in bed. We will still make our standard 1200 cappelletti on Wednesday and I will make the pumpkin pies with the help of my daughter. I plan on making a fresh turkey with dressing either Fri or Sat for just our family.

I have actually started Christmas shopping already and have already ordered quite a few things. I figure I will not be able to get out much except for work (if that) for a while so I gotta get my rear in gear and get as much done as possible now.

All bills have been paid for the month. Roof goes on Monday unless it rains. Landscaper starts Tuesday. I will post before and after pics. I am getting excited!

Confirmation I am not crazy

Isn't it nice to have that confirmed every once in a while? I can't speak for any other moments but at least with red wines and certain foods, I know I am not crazy.

It began when I began drinking in the late 60's (the days when beer and wine were legal at age 19). I loved the taste of red wine but after drinking just one glass I would be sick for days after with this incredible horrible headache and nausea. I won't speak of the day I was dumped by a guy then drank a whole bottle of Chianti myself and on the way back to my dorm, I stopped and spoke to 'god' in the middle of the quad. Yep not one of my better days although I still get teased for it. Now I don't remember an ounce of this but it has been relayed to me by verifiable honest sources. Seems the frat I was a little sister with decided to play a joke on me. They had never seen me drink before as I was dubbed the studious serious one who worked nights and never partied (yep believe it or not that was me - a nerdy geek). So they climbed a tree that was on the way to my dorm and waited for me. When I walked under said tree, they spoke to me and I was led to believe they were 'god'. It is told that I confessed all my sins that night and the next morning, my roommate found me still under said tree still confessing my sins. I tend to believe them because they had info I had never ever told anyone before.

So, now there is a reason I am weird and can't drink red wine, chocolate, cheese, olives, nuts and cured meats. I have an 'amine sensitivity'. Here is the story for all to read:
If the link doesn't show up just go to yahoo news and to the health section. I have no idea why blogger doesn't allow links when they have a link thingie.

Nice to have confirmation!

MRSA

At the advice of a friend, I installed a site meter to check on who was coming to my blog and what they were interested in. Want to know what interested people the most? If you don't want to know, don't read any further :)

My blog is tracking an average of 27 hits a day from just about every state in the US plus places like Brisbane, Queenland and Swindon in the United Kingdom and Parow, Western Cape in South Africa and Bermuda and a whole bunch of places I had to look up to figure out where they are. Talk about teaching an old lady about Geography!

I digress....the topic everyone is interested in? A month or so ago I posted a series on the 10 dirtiest places. Believe it or not, that is the topic everyone is interested in! It actually generated the fewest comments yet it is 90% of the draw to my blog.

So since everyone is interested in dirt and the dirtiest places, I will add this one to the bunch and actually the one that scares me the most especially with my upcoming surgery. It is everywhere. The bug is MRSA.

You have to be living under a rock or be in a consistent drug induced state to not be aware of MRSA. It's the latest news piece. MRSA is an acronymn for a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection which is caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — often called "staph." It can be fatal. It has only been around a couple of decades but it has grown to amazing proportions. It was one of the first germs to outwit all but the most powerful drugs. Vancomycin is one of the few antibiotics still effective against hospital strains of MRSA infection, although the drug is no longer effective in every case.

Do you think you have to go to a hospital to get it or even be sick to get it? Do you think you need to come into contact to get it? Nope.....wrong. Staph bacteria is found on the skin or in the nose of about one-third of the population. If you have staph on your skin or in your nose but aren't sick, you are said to be "colonized" but not infected with MRSA. Healthy people can be colonized with MRSA and have no ill effects, however, they can pass the germ to others.

Why did a simple staph infection turn into a super bug?
1. The sheer numbers of over prescribing of antibiotics by physicians and by patients who insist on being given an antibiotic for a virus. We are a "we are sick and we want it gone now society".
2. The number of antibiotics in food and water. Here in the good ole' United States, antibiotics can be found in beef cattle, pigs and chickens. The same antibiotics then find their way into municipal water systems when the runoff from feedlots contaminates streams and groundwater.
3. Germ mutation. Even when antibiotics are used appropriately, they contribute to the rise of drug-resistant bacteria because they don't destroy every germ they target. Bacteria live on an evolutionary fast track, so germs that survive treatment with one antibiotic soon learn to resist others. And because bacteria mutate much more quickly than new drugs can be produced, some germs end up resistant to just about everything. That's why only a handful of drugs are now effective against most forms of staph. And the side effects of those drugs are huge! I have a friend who acquired MRSA and was off work for an entire year. This is not a bug to mess with!

Risk factors:
1. A current or recent hospitalization. A 2007 report from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology estimates that 1.2 million hospital patients are infected with MRSA each year in the United States. They also estimate another 423,000 are colonized with it.
2. Living in a long-term care facility. MRSA is far more prevalent in these facilities than it is in hospitals. Carriers of MRSA have the ability to spread it, even if they're not sick themselves. I read not too long ago that 50% of nursing home patients have active MRSA infections and the other 50% are carriers because they have been exposed to it.
3. Invasive devices. People who are on dialysis, are catheterized, or have feeding tubes or other invasive devices are at higher risk.
4. Recent antibiotic use, especially antibiotics like cipro, ofloxzcin, levaquin, or a cephalosporin.
5. Our children who do not have fully developed immune systems or our aged whose immune systems are no longer as healthy as they used to be.
6. Participation in contact sports. The bacteria is spread easily through cuts and abrasions and skin-to-skin contact.
7. Sharing towels or athletic equipment. MRSA has spread among athletes sharing razors, towels, uniforms or equipment. And here all you thought you had to worry about was athletes foot and warts :)
8. Anyone with a weakened immune system.
9. Anyone living in crowded or unsanitary conditions: military training camps and prisons.
10. Association with health care workers. Yep be afraid of me!

When do you get medical help? Keep an eye on pimples, insect bites, cuts and scrapes. If they become infected, see your doctor. INSIST on having any skin infection swabbed and tested for MRSA before starting any antibiotics. Drugs that treat ordinary staph aren't effective against MRSA, and their use could lead to serious illness and more resistant bacteria.

Prevention:
1. Wash your hands frequently and I don't mean just get them wet. Scrub your hands briskly for at least 15 seconds, then dry them with a disposable towel and use another towel to turn off the faucet. Carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer containing at least 62 percent alcohol for times when you don't have access to soap and water.
2. Properly disinfect surfaces...good old Lysol spray works..along with bleach... alcohol (not the drinking kind).
3. Wear a mask and gown and gloves if you encounter someone with MRSA.
4. Insist that all medical staff (even doctors) wash their hands before touching you — each and every time. It isn't good enough to be wearing gloves...where did those gloves come from and who did they touch last?
5. If you are hospitalized, ask to be bathed with disposable cloths treated with a disinfectant rather than with soap and water. (This is also why I refuse to remain in the hospital after my surgery. Come hell or high water I will be going home that day!
6. Make sure that intravenous tubes and catheters are inserted and removed under sterile conditions and that they have sterilized your skin before inserting that IV.
7. Keep personal items personal. Avoid sharing items such as towels, sheets, razors, clothing and athletic equipment. MRSA spreads on contaminated objects as well as through direct contact. Yep it lives on objects for up to 8 hours.
8. Keep a wound covered. Keep cuts and abrasions clean and covered with sterile, dry bandages until they heal. The pus from infected sores often contains MRSA, and keeping wounds covered will help keep the bacteria from spreading.
9. Sanitize your linens. If you have a cut or sore, wash towels and bed linens in hot water with added bleach and dry them in a hot dryer.
10. Wash gym and athletic clothes after each wearing (put a cap of lysol in your wash).
11. Get tested. If you have a skin infection that requires treatment, you should be tested for MRSA. Many doctors prescribe drugs that aren't effective against antibiotic-resistant staph, which delays treatment and creates more resistant germs. For that matter, if you are a health care worker, get tested monthly with nasal swabs. If you visit someone in a nursing home or hospital, get tested.

So who is running to wash their hands?

Halloween Pics

Just had to show you my granddoggies' Halloween pictures. We dressed up at the office for the patients and they had a riot with our costumes. I had forgotten my camera so don't have any pics of us yet until the one girl forwards them to me. If they are good, I promise to post them. Hubs was King, one office girl was a cat, another girl was a police officer whose name was Ivanna Bribe, and I was a princess. I didn't bother buying candy this year for trick or treaters because we were working and I knew we wouldn't be home before the mandated hours ended. Around 9PM our doorbell rang and it was my granddoggies trick or treating. And yes, of course they got treats....after all this is grandma's house!

This is Bella as a ladybug.

This is Brittany as a pumpkin.