Dr. Internet -- You scare me.

Worse than the 10:00 AM arrival and hug of my 2 year old son accompanied by a warning about the imminent danger of hostile robots.

I simply looked up how long I should be suffering from this very nasty sinus infection before I need to see a doctor to find out that I could die. My sinuses could swell into my brain or something, cause my eyeballs to fall out of my head after dilating my pupils, making me go blind and then killing me.

Don't believe me?

If left undiagnosed and untreated complications of
sinusitis can occur that may lead to severe medical problems and possibly
death. the following complications are medical emergencies and require
immediate treatment in a hospital's emergency department:

• Headache, fever, and soft tissue swelling over the frontal
  sinus may indicate an infection of the frontal bone called Pott's puffy tumor or
  osteomyelitis. Usually this complication is limited to
  children.
• Infection of the eye socket may result from ethmoid
  sinusitis. The eyelid may swell and become droopy. Fever and severe illness are
  usually present. A person with this infection may lose the ability to move the
  eye, and permanent blindness may result.
• Ethmoid or frontal sinusitis may also cause the formation
  of a blood clot in the sinus area around the front and top of the face. Symptoms
  may be similar to those of eye socket infection with the addition of a fixed and
  dilated pupil. This condition usually affects both sides of the
  face.
• If a person experiences mild personality changes, headache,
  neck stiffness, high fever, altered consciousness, visual problems, or seizures,
  infection may have spread to the brain. Coma and even death may
  follow.

In other words, I probably should update my will. And talk to my husband about my dying wishes while kissing and smothering Little Monster with love. And chocolate. I could go into a coma at any second. OR I COULD DIE. But then again, maybe I should just take some more Tylenol and call my Doctor if it doesn't go away by next week.

(Italicized text above taken from here.)

Everything you can imagine is renal.

At least at our house it is lately.

Tuesday I was feeling a bit "off." And I blew that off, thinking that I'm pregnant. That happens. By 10:00 at night, I was sure I had a full blown bladder infection. I tried to self treat until the morning when I could call the doctor. This required sending my dear, loving, wonderful husband out into the middle of the chilly rainy night to brave the dangers of Walgreen's at night. He said the hoodlums were a bit scary. As I paced, soaked in a warm tub, and drank bottle upon bottle of water, I waited anxiously for him to get home. When he did, I took a couple of cranberry pills, and drank some cranberry juice, waiting, waiting waiting for the pain to ease.

I figured if I wasn't asleep by 1:00 AM, it was probably bad enough to head in to the ER. I really, really didn't want to be that fool in the ER showing up because they had a problem that a normal doctor could fix on normal hours. I really didn't want to be calling my OB in the middle of the night, complaining about a bladder infection. A stupid bladder infection.

You see, January 1st 2007, I ended up in the hospital with Kidney stones. I was throwing up, miserable, in lots of pain. I thought I was dying. Maybe I had an appendix rupture -- only without the fever. Who knew? So, those several hours in the uncomfortable ER chairs waiting for a room went by really really slowly. All I wanted to do was go home and get in bed and die there. In fact, I told Not the Momma that several times during the wait. But, being the stubborn (and loving and wonderful and caring) husband that he is refused to take me home. He wanted me to die on that cold tile, writhing in pain the day before he left for a year overseas. And that's when the guy who came in before me started complaining. About a toothache. And how he really needed to be seen now. Because he had a toothache. I was throwing up every 4 to 5 minutes (how, I don't know, I'd thrown everything up already), writhing in agony on the floor in such a show that when I sat down, people fled from me like I was Moses and they the Red Sea. They certainly didn't want to catch whatever I had. It really bothered me that the rooms were full of people who had hangovers and toothaches while I was being left to die. So, I made a pact to myself that I would NEVER go to the ER if I didn't have to.

Tuesday night, I was sure I didn't really have to. I could drown the bladder infection to the point where I could sleep -- and hopefully sleep would last long enough that I could wait it out until morning. But the longer I sat in misery, the sweatier I got from the pain, the less I was able to concentrate on anything, the more I thought about going to that ER. And, so, I changed the time to midnight. If I didn't feel sleepy or better by midnight I was driving myself to the ER for a stupid bladder infection.

At 11:57 (okay, so that might not be the exact time, but close enough), I went to the bathroom and passed another kidney stone. Immediate pain relief. I've never thought anyone would be crazy enough to praise the lord for a kidney stone, but I did it right there in my bathroom. Within the hour, I was sleeping soundly upstairs in my bed. Well, sort of. There was the small matter of the 64 oz of water and 32 oz of cranberry juice consumed between 10 and midnight. Compound that with the whole "I'm pregnant" thing, and I was getting to sleep for about an hour at a time with pee breaks. But I wasn't in pain. It was great. Everything is fine for me around here now.

However, there's another little tortured soul in my home. My girl dog started using the house as her bathroom the other day. Not normal behavior, especially when she'd just been out. Last night I noticed that when I let her out, she went about 5 times. Not good. She has an appointment tomorrow to get her poor little bladder infection fixed. The first vet I called suggested we come in on Feb 25Th. Which I said OK to initially. The dogs need their shots anyway. Then I came to my senses. What if I'd called the doctor the next morning and they said they couldn't see me for a few days for my bladder infection -- let alone two weeks? I'd have lost it. I would have died or killed everyone around me. So, she'll be seen first thing in the morning tomorrow. That's better. Much better. In the meantime, I'm eyeing those cranberry pills and all that cranberry juice. And Little Monster's diapers.

Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we'll all be happy and everything around here will be real, and not renal.

*"Everything you can imagine is real." -- Pablo Picasso

Boo-Boos!

I'm not talking about Halloween. I'm talking about ouchie boo-boos.

Little Monster had his two year visit today. After the discussion about our guns (we don't have any) and the location of our knives (yes, they are placed out of his reach -- every day except Thursday. That is when he has his playgroup. We get out the knives so the kids can all play together. Ha.) and whether he knows what HOT is, he got his shots.

Since Not the Momma has been away since Little Monster has been born, he hasn't been around to witness the joy and celebration that goes along with stabbing a small child with long needles full of fluid that burns upon injection. Not the case this time. He got to come along. And while Little Monster didn't cry as much as he has in the past, he did turn beet red. The difference was that this time he screamed MOM MOM MOMMMMMMAAAAAA the entire time.

And when it was done, through tears, he started saying "boo-boo, booooo boooooo mom boo boooo."
In order to keep myself from bursting into tears, I asked "Aw, poor little guy, do they hurt?"
LM's response was, again, through and with tears, "YEEE-EEEEEESS!!!" Somehow my two year old managed to twist the word YES into a two syllable word, and in those two syllables he used more condescension and tone in a more appropriate way than some adults can.

He finally quit sobbing as we left the doctors office. But that wasn't the end of the drama. Oh, NO! Not the Momma tried to get him to walk to the van on the way out. When he was on his feet, he'd take two steps, then he'd knock his knees and thighs together while his feet were normal width apart. He looked like a knock-kneed goofball. And then he'd whine until he was picked up. This went on for the duration of the morning until I took him to the park. It isn't convenient for him to have to be carried through the park, so he pretended to be better. Or maybe there was some miraculous healing?

The next drama session was saved for right before nap time. I took off his pants and he saw the band aids. And again. It started. the bawling, and saying "boo-boo!!!" through tears.

Luckily, again, there was a miraculous healing and everything is fine in the household. And even better -- we don't have to see the doctor to get shots or anything else for another year.

Thank you!

Thank you to the wonderful, most kind, lovely lady with whom I spoke this afternoon. She must have more pull than I, a measly, lowly taxpayer and wife to a service member. She lit some fires.

This morning, when my husband left for work, they claimed I couldn't be pregnant, and therefore, did not get to see an OB for any reason other than infertility. This afternoon (before my husband returned home), they decided that maybe I was pregnant after all.

It's a good thing we don't have a milk man. Not the Momma might suspect foul play.

Just when I had decided I was NOT going to cancel my OB appointment for tomorrow -- I was going to keep it, and fight the insurance company because THEY were the ones who didn't get the work done on time and in the proper fashion -- even if it meant having to pay the bill, I got the call from the wonderful, most kind, lovely lady who works as a benefits counselor at the nearby Army base. I truly, truly appreciate your help.

Death by Bicycle

That’s what it’s called when a – what did Not the Momma say it was going to be – slow and leisurely bicycle ride turns into something that belongs in part of the Tour de France. We started off fine, pushing it a little bit up the hill. Then, we ended up PUSHING the bikes up the hill. On foot.

In all seriousness, we’ve been trying to be healthier in general. This includes daily walks, and playing outside more often, eating at home, etc. We have been scoping out bike routes since I got my bicycle a couple of weeks ago. We thought we had found a route. Nice and easy for our first trip. Part of it wasn’t accessible by car, but we could see most of it, and it didn’t look bad. After all, we’ve ridden through our neighborhood, and our house is on top of the hill, right? Right.

We started off strong. That was probably our big mistake. We should have started off slowly. Who cares if we would have looked like fools riding our bikes at a whole 3 mph, even if a herd of turtles did pass us and flip us the bird on the way by. We were taking the hill pretty well. We got to the top, and turned the corner to find… that the hill didn’t end. Ever. We turned the corner and stood there, looking up at the top of the hill, contemplating whether we should have brought our technical climbing gear, the hill seemed so steep. We powered through, though, because, hey, at the top of this hill, it’s downhill the rest of the way. Right? Right? RIIIIIIIIIGHT. Why didn’t the hill look this steep yesterday in the car?

Anxious to get to the downhill portion of the ride, we pumped it up and went full throttle. We rounded another corner, and finally crested the hill. There it was before us. The downhill portion of the road. When we saw the ‘downhill’ portion of the ride, we both considered just exactly HOW risky it would be to trek through the ‘unexploded ordinance’ area to get home. We could see our house. It was about 200 yards away. What really were the chances that we’d ACTUALLY step on an old land mine anyway? I mean, coyotes walk through here all the time, and I haven’t heard any explosions. But then my common sense (yes Mom, I still have some left), got the better of me. Like I told DH, “It’s better to get home, and feel dead, than to go through those bushes and BE dead.”

To illustrate our plight in mathematical terms, we thought the road was going to be a fairly steady incline, like the road we came in on. General slope of -1, (with an occasional rise and fall).

What was in front of us may have had an average slope of -1, but it looked more like a sine wave than a straight line. A sine wave with a VERY large amplitude. It looked like this:



We ended up walking our bikes up a couple of the hills, racing the downhill sections to get as much momentum as possible, so that we could ride as far up the hill as we could before we had to hop off and walk. There were a few times I contemplated puking. The baby whined the ENTIRE time, because the road was too bumpy ,the sun was in his eyes, his helmet was chaffing him, he didn’t like the song that was playing on my iPod(with speakers, not earphones), his water had spilled on his hand, the sun was in his eyes, and yeah, did I mention that helmet?

Do you think we learned anything? Um, probably not. We’re going to do it all again… Not the Momma would like to do it every weekend. Because, despite my incessant whining, the baby’s moaning and groaning, the sick feeling in my stomach, and the crazy ribbon of hilly road, we had fun. We had fun, together, as a family. We’ve got less than two years left together before Not the Momma returns to Sea Duty, and we’re going to soak (read: suck) it up – even if it means death by bicycle again.

More on military standards...

I have been informed that the tables I have a link to are old. I haven't found anything newer, but here's a better, more thorough website about the Navy Standards.

My husband is 6'5" and weighs around 250. I am 5'3" and weigh around 125. By Navy standards, in order to stay within regulations, my husband needs to drop to 216, losing 34 pounds. I, however, am allowed to GAIN 28 pounds. There is something a teensy bit wrong with their computations of body composition here. That is according to the height/weight chart. If we use their backup plan, my husband is still considered 40% body fat. Yeah. Right. They are full of shit. How do they compute that? They have a magic table. Yes, they measure the neck, and abdomen. Subtract the neck from the abdomen. Then they go to the height of the person, and going down will find the computed measurement. That number from the table is what the person's body fat is.

Want to know who else is "overweight?"

[picture of President Bush removed... 2/6/08]

Yup. Sure is! Does he LOOK overweight? I think not. He's one of the fittest presidents we've had! (This has nothing to do with my view of the bush. I don't really know how I feel about him at the moment...)

Someone who is NOT overweight according to Navy Standards...
[picture of chubby man in the military removed, 2/6/08] (notice his fat neck... that will compensate for any "spare tire" that is there..)

This guy probably wouldn't fit the standards:
[picture of Dwayne Johnson, The ROCK, removed 2/6/08]
I bet he's probably OBESE according to Navy standards!! I'd like to find out!

So, I guess what I'm saying is that it's a bunch of crap. I'm pretty sure "The Rock" does not have anywhere close to 22 percent body fat. I don't care that the military has standards. After all, if you aren't fit it isn't safe for you OR your peers... BUT at least allow the guys to go get calipered or dunked and get a REAL body fat measurement if the highly scientific military methods seem a bit off. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Oh, and if you happen to have or know "The Rock's" height/weight and his neck/abdomen dimensions, I would greatly appreciate knowing them.. Then I can find out what the Navy would consider his body fat to be.

Take a Stand Baby!

So, apparently my husband, who has lost about well, I don't know, quite a bit of weight since I met him, has gained body fat. At least that's what his body fat test that the military administers has determined. He used to wear a 42 inch waist pant. Now, he barely fills out a 38. He has to lose 30 pounds or 4 inches around his waist to meet standards. 5 years ago, he met standards in his 42 inch waist. For those who would like to say standards have changed, No. Not so much. For those of you who would like to say a 38 inch waist is still a Fat Bastard. Please send me your address so that.. wait, that could be mistaken as a threat. Nevermind. My husband is NOT fat. In my opinion, he never has been.. BUT he is now a very muscular (almost scary) hunk of man. How in the world the military has determined that this:




is too fat to be in the military, I'll never guess... Especially when I know there are some VERY ROUND people that pass just fine. How is this you say? The military uses a very scientific method of computing body fat. They measure your height. Then they measure your weight. Divide. Yay. The taller you are, the more fucked you are (excuse my language parents!). The taller you are the skinnier and sicklier you have to be. If, however you are 5'8" you can be nice and "thick" without any body fat issues whatsoever. In this photo, my husband probably is weighing in around 240 to 250. He is 6'5" and is no skinny wimpy twig. (yuck, I wouldn't have married him if he was!) If you fail the height/weight test, they do what is called a "rope and choke." They measure your neck and your waist. Then divide. That highly scientific method is the back up for the height/weight test. They currently do not accept caliper or other body fat computation methods. So, in otherwords, my husband (who in this picture has 40% body fat) needs to lose 30 pounds or 4 inches. How can he achieve that? Very simple. Give up food. All food. Yup. Perhaps liquids would also be a good thing to get rid of? He simply can't exercise more the guy works out every free second he has. I know, becasue he buys all his TV shows through itunes so that he can watch while he rides the bike, works on the elliptical trainer, etc. What can you do? Write your congressman and tell them that the way they compute body fat is antiquated. They need to adjust the height/weight or rope/choke standards for those people who are very tall.

Does the picture look like someone who needs to join a mandatory weight loss program? What about someone who should be reprimanded for his weight? I think not.

See this for more information about the standards in the military regarding weight, etc.

Happy Birth -er Yesterday

Yesterday was my Dad's birthday. Last year this time, he was recovering from heart surgery, so when I asked him what he would like to receive as a gift, his response was "another birthday." I couldn't personally deliver this gift, but it appears as if Someone else did. Thanks! We appreciate it! This year he is the picture of health. They took him off the Plavix. His cholesterol and blood pressure are under control. If you have ever met this man, you would most definitely NOT think that he had a hidden heart problem. This is a guy who doesn't eat a lot of vegetables (he would say: "But I drink my V8 every morning".. low sodium of course!), but doesn't tend to eat TOO much crap either. My mom tries to keep him eating right. This is a man who works out on a regular basis, walks a couple of miles a couple of times per week, spends EVERY weekend from April until October, when it is warm enough hiking, camping and waterskiing. He snow skis at least once a year. He is the picture of health. Not the person they show you in the "Welcome to Angina" video. How did we find out he had a heart issue? He couldn't walk the 3/4 mile to the hardware store without stopping to rest. He had to Sit Down on the side of the highway. This man barely sits to watch TV. Hell, I think I hear him running laps while he's sleeping sometimes. So, for him to have to sit during a walk was really scary. We did suspect something a few months before that. We (by we I mean everyone but me, because I was way pregnant) were running one mile each for the Nebraska State Games. When he was done with his mile, he looked grey and sickly. He looked so bad that we had this conversation:

Me: "How does your left arm feel?"

Dad: "What the HELL does my left arm have to do with anything?"

I'm beginning to ramble now, so I'll move on. Dad. Happy Birthday. Thanks for shopping with me today. Thanks for being such a great Dad to me; a wonderful Grandpa to the baby; beause I know you really don't have to. Here's to hoping you have another 21 (that's how old the waitress tonight guessed you were, right?) years at least left in ya. Because no matter what you think, getting old is definitely better than the alternative.