Just Some Things

As of last Thursday I am officially done with orienting 3 days/week and because of that, I was able to catch up on a lot of schoolwork between then and today. I even went ahead and wrote my article reviews and my paper that are due over the next two weeks. School is hard but I think it will be manageable. I'm also discovering that I actually enjoy pharmacology; drugs are good.

Today I headed out to my parents house for a visit. We did some yard work, ate Chinese, ran a few errands, and packaged up a box of toys to send to Laird. Even though Alex requested nothing be sent yet, I had some place mats made for Laird on Shutterfly and wanted to get those over to him before he forgets who I am. Three year olds are not known for their memories! It was also nice to spend some time with my parents. I saw them much more over the last year because of Alex and Laird being there, and sometimes I forget how nice it is to have them so nearby. I've always been close to my family and sometimes I take that for granted.

On the down side, my right flank is continuing to cause me discomfort. By discomfort I mean, on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst pain I could imagine, I am living daily on a 5-6/10 level. That's not acceptable. I'm also hanging upside down multiple times a day on our inversion table, and while it may be stretching my back out nicely it doesn't seem to be moving anything stone-wise. Also, I'm tired of taking Flomax and peeing every 30 minutes when neither of those are accomplishing anything. I'm not sure what I will decide once I go back for my next follow-up, but I definitely cannot live like this indefinitely.

I'm also continuing to attempt to post a picture every day for #100HappyDays. I believe today was day 8, but for those who don't have Instagram I will try to put those pictures on here once a week also.

#100HAPPYDAYS and Updates

I'm slowly but surely catching up on everything I mentioned in my last (serious) post. Some things have gotten easier; other things, such as my kidney stones, have not. I went to my urologist on Tuesday, and once the xray was done he skipped the exam and led me down the hall to see the film. The good news? The litho worked and broke the stone up into 4-5 small pieces. The bad news? They're all sitting there along with a nice hematoma and continuing to cause me constant pain. The result? Drink more water and come back in two weeks. At that point, if I'm still having pain, he wants to do a ureterscopy and stent. I don't think so. Enter the inversion table.

Red face

According to my urologist AND multiple peer-reviewed articles, inversion tables have been shown to help post-lithotripsy fragments pass b/c it helps force the stones via gravity towards the top where the ureter connects. So now I'm putting myself at risk for water toxicity daily with my 4+ liters and hanging upside down with a bright red face trying to force tiny pieces of calcium oxylate out of my body. Go team!

On another note, I went to my shrink and she is taking me off of my nutty meds, and instead running a DNA test to find out which kinds of drugs my body does and doesn't respond to and which ones would be more likely to cause side effects. I never even knew genes could tell you that much already. Surprise! Needless to say, I'm already feeling better while I'm being weaned off the crazy drugs; no crying for days.

As for my #100HAPPYDAYS, here are a few of my chosen photos...

Boating

Indy-Meow

Sushi boats

Battleship

Pumpkin everything

Pen-Pen

Beer flights

Also, Alister brought me a huge bouquet of flowers to work for our 3 year anniversary. Love some pretty flowers.