17 Days in Ashes

So I promised the tale of finding out I was going to become a mother but I have to start with my 17 day stay in the hospital.

As mentioned before; I was feeling run down, Dear Hubby and I had a challenging summer. Working two jobs quickly burned me out, Dear Hubby and I barely saw each other and the only communication we were having at a certain point were arguments. We planned for our annual trip to visit his clan and we were hoping that the time away would be good for us and it was. We hit complete rock bottom on that trip. We came home and had previously agreed to watch my Parental Units house and the Heir Apparent because while my parents think he can do no wrong the lack of opposable thumbs makes it difficult for him to feed himself.

During the week staying at my parents house I was feeling worse and worse. I had noticed a small bump on the back of my head before we left but assumed it was a pimple. I have a tendency to pick at things, especially when stressed and since we spent 5 days out of town with Dear Hubby's clan with the tension between us so thick you could cut it with a knife, I was picking. Before leaving for our vacation I had a cardiac stress test scheduled at my doctors office, while I was there I mentioned to the nurse I had a painful spot on the back of my head. He suggested it was folliculitus and that I should stop messing with it but had the doctor give me a prescription for an antibiotic. It didn't get better and 3 days after being back home I went to the doctors office again, this is where I should mention that while I like my GP, normally he won't touch you with a 10 foot pole. He will run almost every test under the sun on you yearly but if he could just email you the results of what is wrong I think he would prefer it, he does not have the best bedside manner but he is a damn good doctor.

He looked at the area, which I will admit was hard to see because I have really thick hair, I explained that I could barely move my neck I was in so much pain. He thought it was still folliculitis and I needed another round of a stronger antibiotics but before leaving he ordered a blood test. I got a phone call with 45 minutes telling me to go the closest Emergency Room because he was admitting me. My white blood count was over 3 times as high as normal.

17 days in Sunrise Hospital. I had a particularly nasty MRSA infection.

I got to stay in isolation in the ICU which the only nice thing was that meant I had my own room. It also meant everyone who was exposed to me had to be completely covered in PPE (personal protective equipment) gloves, gowns, masks. Everyone; Doctors, nurses, orderlies, my family and my friends. I don't know if you have ever spent 17 days in one room (Because having me leave the room wasn't an option) I only left for cat-scans. I had to have a PICC line inserted because I kept blowing out my IV's. I was miserable and Dear Hubby and I were still scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as our relationship went.

I missed my first week of classes, I went home with IV antibiotics. Literally I have never been sicker in my whole life. The fear and the reason for the long stay was that the area of the infection was so close to the brain stem that if the infection wasn't controlled quickly the doctors were afraid it would spread and your blogger would be worm food.

I obviously couldn't work during this time but like most corporate retail establishments my job acted like I was faking it.  So I could booze it up while hanging out at nightclubs and tanning at casino pool parties. I had to provide so much documentation and they still acted odd towards me. I worked 3 more shifts after being medically released and then they just never scheduled me again. I called and I tried to talk to the manager and the scheduler but everyone was always busy and no one would call me back. I took it as a sign that it was time to move on with life. My census job had ended before our vacation and Dear Hubby and I had finally got down to the nitty gritty in our relationship.

I mentioned we hit rock bottom on our trip, the things about rock bottom is you sometimes don't realize that it is rock bottom for a little while. We were very touch and go but ultimately we both honestly communicated that neither one of us had any desire to be with anyone else, that our marriage was most important and that both of us had to let go of some baggage we had been carrying around for years. My always working had caused distance, my fears that I needed to be perfect caused me to be a fake version of myself. There were just a lot of little things, we were both to blame but this is my story to tell and you would have to ask Dear Hubby if you wanted details from his perspective.

Like a phoenix our relationship rose from the ashes.

Miss Me?

It has been over a year since I last posted and you my lovelies will not even begin to guess the changes that have taken place since I last spoke with you.

I will come out with the biggest change of all right away and quench your curiosity.

Your dear blogger has become a mother.

Not a stepmother. Although I am still the most kick ass stepmother that The Kidlet has ever met, but a life form living inside my body using my bladder as a punching bag and causing irreparable damage to the skin on my stomach, kind of mother!

I am also finished with Dental Assisting school, spending my last semester knocked up wasn't probably my brightest idea but I kicked ass none the less and graduated with the award for "Best Clinician".

I am no longer employed at my ladies intimates retail store, in fact I am no longer employed anywhere! I spend my days lazing around, eating chocolate while lying on a Tempurpedic with a 4 inch feather bed topper. I often enjoy long days of reading and sleeping, cuddling with the cat while warm in our safe haven during a rain storm or laughing and rolling around in our gauzy white sheets with the Dear Hubby.

Which is to tell you that shortly after my last post I spent 17 days in ICU with a MRSA infection on the back of my head. No joke, my hair fell out on the back of my neck/head and when it grew back it came back in adorable ringlets which totally make doing my hair a pain because all of the hair on the underside is cute curls while all the hair on the top is almost stick straight. Does anyone know where I could get my hands on some ringworms because I am thinking of infecting the rest of my head because that is how my Dad claims he got his redheadfro.

I started my second to last semester of school late, I quickly caught up but then found myself becoming more and more and more exhausted. I was emotional, ok more emotional than usual, and as I have already shared I was preggo.

I am not going to get into the preggo story tonight, I want to do it justice and I want to have some material to write about for the next week.

So until next time!

The Things My Cat has Seen

So I have been told by my Dad that I need to share the story of Cat Butt spending the night outside earlier this week.

The weather here in Vegas has been weird, it is getting colder but not nearly as cold as normal for November. We have been keeping the windows open, I like the cooler weather at night and I love having my windows open. I dream of living someplace where I can keep my windows open most of the year, it just makes the house feel less stuffy.

During the day I had been opening up the window in the kitchen, it doesn’t have a screen so I had been making sure it was closed at night. Then last weekend I had a sinus infection and Dear Hubby was mainly running the house for 2 days, while I remained in bed trying to figure out if a “sinusectomy” was even a real medical procedure I could consider. I mean why keep your sinuses, if all they do is: breed new strains of bacteria, ratchet up mucus production and feel like they are about to burst forth from my forehead and engage in a rampage, I assume would be similar to Godzilla verses Mothra wherein they destroy the Las Vegas Strip with all the mutant bacteria that has grown inside them.

So not blaming anyone but the window in the kitchen didn’t get closed one night. Puppy Butt thinks it is her duty to chase Cat Butt out of the kitchen and back over the baby gate that divides the house into 2 sections. One section where Puppy Butt is allowed and one where Cat Butt can go to escape. I basically have a turf war between the cat and dog in my house (god forbid you are wearing the wrong colors in the laundry room) we had to put the baby gate up because Puppy Butt feels that the cats litter box is a great place to sneak a little treat and then lick your face, also she feels like The Rapscallions room is not technically part of the house so she must be allowed to poop in there.

I guess Puppy Butt chased Cat Butt and instead of retreating to the safety of the extra bedroom where she can lay in a laundry basket containing blankets, Cat Butt decided to jump out the open kitchen window. I was in a NyQuil induced slumber and didn’t hear anything and Dear Hubby, well he could sleep through a marching band walking through the bedroom.

In the morning, Dear Hubby got up for work and heard a pissed off cat yowling in the backyard. As he was brushing his teeth, the thought occurred to him that the pissed off cat sounded an awfully lot like Cat Butt so he went to the back door and checked. Sure enough she was sitting on the back steps and glaring at him. She ran into the house meowing and expressing her displeasure with being left outside. Apparently a night out makes a cat hungry, so she ran straight for her food bowl and began eating in haste, while continuing to glare at Dear Hubby and meow between mouthfuls. She then decided it was time to wake me up to discuss how upset she was, she jumped onto my head and meowed in my face repeatedly.

Cat Butt was filthy, her paws were covered in black, I am not sure if she ran the streets for a little while after she realized she couldn’t get back into the house. I can only imagine she ran into the neighborhood tomcat Haggard Cat.

Haggard Cat sleeps under cars and I suspect him of being the one who broke into my jeep and ate a 6 inch Subway sandwich that I accidentally left in the truck one night. Apparently street cats enjoy a Spicy Italian BMT when they can get one. Cat Butt and Haggard Cat have seen each other through the window, he gets up from under a car in the morning looking like he had a rough night of drinking and Cat Butt sits on the back on the couch looking out the window at him and acting like she has it hard because “I had to sleep with the humans, I don’t understand why they sleep in my bed” I can only imagine that if Cat Butt ran into Haggard Cat he was completely sympathetic “where are your humans now?”

So after I calmed her down and she went to sleep on my pillow, I tried to discuss the tensions in the house with Puppy Butt. I figure if Ronald Regan could get Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, I could broker peace between the cat and the dog. It has been a tense peace, Puppy Butt hasn’t chased Cat Butt over the baby gate but then Cat Butt has been strangely cocky since spending the night outside, like we should respect her because she is almost a street cat now and we can’t even imagine the things she has seen.

A Series of Unfortunate Situations

Dear Hubby and I have a theory that good things cannot happen to us for too long, we both instinctively start to worry when we haven't faced some sort of challenge for too long. We were worried on the way back from our little trip to San Diego and then the tire caught on fire. Dear Hubby was then bit by a spider, the breaks on my car went out and now to top it all off Dear Hubby has broken out in a terrible rash as a reaction to one of the medications he was given for the spider bite. On a plus side this can mean that the tides can turn and we can get out of this phase, I just feel terrible that he has been so uncomfortable during all of this.

I will update about the vacation to Colorado we just got back from, we had a great time with our families. We are lucky!

Quarantined

The Kidlet is sick again, whereas I thought it was allergies 2 weeks ago this time around it is a full on sickness. He has sniffles, coughing, wheezing and just loads of general crankiness. Yesterday he took a 4 hour nap. We have busted out with all the cold medicines and creature comforts that we engage during times of illness. My whole house smells like Vick's vapor rub, we are hand sanitizing fiends and he has had more baths with comforting vapor bath, I even let him eat a Popsicle in the bathtub because he has a sore throat.

Of course I woke up this morning feeling slightly under the weather but I don't have time to be sick, which of course means I will be sick by the end of this week. Nooooooo.... don't make me go!