What's new?

So....what's new in my world, you might ask?  Well...not a whole heck of a lot.  I'm still going stir crazy in this house.  I'm still not willing to take Zoloft.  I've sucked at meditation.  I started back up with yoga.  I even jumped in like I said I wasn't going to and took the huge step of taking not one, but TWO classes at Lifetime....one of them was a very slow yin-like class where you hold a few poses for a long time....GREAT STRETCHING. But then the class right after that was by an instructor I knew, so even though it was a flow vinyasa, I knew I could rest at anytime and I was excited because I really liked this instructor.  I didn't make it through every pose and sequence in the class, but I didn't give up either, and that always feels good.

It's a lot harder right now to try to start up yoga because I'm so terribly anemic.  The last time my hemoglobin was checked it was at 7.1....super close to needing a transfusion.  I declined it at this time, hoping the EPO and venofer will do the trick.  Being this anemia makes it feel like my muscles don't respond when I ask them to....it's like walking through honey sometimes.  And the recovery is twice as long....my body was SO sore from yoga last week that I had to take 3 days off.  I did tiny amounts of stretching on those off days, but WOW, this is going to take forever to get back into shape. But I'll get there, dammit.  I try not to mentally abuse myself when I don't do it every day because, if there's one thing I've got, it's time.

In the meantime, Izzy's sick.  This kid has NEVER been this sick for this long.  She's missed 2 days of school already, and will miss tomorrow as well.  I took her to urgent  care, fearing the flu, but luckily it's just a viral infection that needs to run it's course.  I guess it's times like these that I'm thankful I'm not working.

 While we were sitting in urgent care, I could feel my bronchiectasis acting up in my lungs....the mucous was growing and my oxygen sats were decreasing rapidly.  I kept thinking that I was going to end up in the hospital myself in a day or two, so I came home and did a breathing treatment with the nebulizer and compression vest.  Those things work wonders, because I was actually better this morning and much less fearful of another hospital stay.

I seem to be having some serious issues walking up/down the stairs lately.  I think I've fallen 3 times in as many weeks, and I can't tell you why.  Today was the scariest, by far.  I slid down 3 or 4 of them on the area that had the vein harvested and broke open the incision at the top.  This was literally right after dialysis, and maybe there was some shock involved, but I was certain that I had royally screwed up something.  I was on my way to my ENT appointment at the U of MN, so I had to cancel that (which sucks because this specialist worked me in to deal with the never ending tickle I have in the back of my throat and she might think I'm a complete flake of a patient and not see me again :(.  I called the vascular center because I think they should've brought me in to check it out, but they told me to go to urgent care and I was like, "Well, if they don't think it's that big of a deal, then neither will I".  That may not have been my smartest move, but so far so good.   This is the underside of mt arm, where they harvested the vein for my fistula. No serious bruising, and the would closed up again on it's own.  It's sore and bruised inside, but I think it'll be okay.  If it was my fistula, this would've been a totally different tale, but thankfully it wasn't.

My toes, on the other hand, took beating.  You can see, although not the greatest, that there's some pretty good bruising starting to form on my pinkie and the toe next to my big toe.  It hurts like hell....even putting a blanket on it is painful, so it looks like I'll be keeping that foot out of the covers tonight.  I just can't understand why I'm so clumsy on the stairs lately....I mean it's honestly strange....

I've decided to wait to try nocturnal hemo until after I get back from vacation.  I decided that I don't want to train on it, and then end up reverting back to daytime hemo while on vacation because I'm nervous anyway, or try nocturnal on vacation and have it go badly so as to affect our vacation, so the plan is to start right away on it when I'm back.  Yay....just in time for summer!!!

Life without my Murphy has been sad.  It's so quiet in this house.  We had him cremated, and I'll be honest in saying that I felt so much better when he was returned to us for forever in his beautiful little box.  I can say good morning to him every day, just like before.  I don't give a crap how weird that sounds....it's good to have him home again.  I am seriously thinking about fostering now.  I have thought about it in the past, but it didn't make sense with two dogs and a cat already.  But now I think I have the time and we have the space.  I want to wait until it's a bit warm out, because I don't want all of the walking duties to fall onto Joacim.  He's not totally into this fostering thing yet because I'm sure he worries that he'll end up doing all the work.  I can't blame him :) But our neighbors just started fostering this week, and she's the cutest pup ever!  I'm lucky to be able to help out with potty breaks, where I get my share of puppy breath and sharp puppy teeth.  It just might be the thing I need to push me back over that edge.....

Have I mentioned that I'm still going bat-shit crazy in this house? Have I mentioned that we've gotten about a foot of snow since the last time I posted?  I mean, it's super-pretty, and awesome having all of this snow, but with Izzy being sick and me possibly with broken toes, I'm not sure we're going to be able to take advantage of it.  I had hoped to try out snowshoeing or cross country skiing this weekend...guess we'll have to wait and see!