August 31, 2010
When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep, you're never really awake.
I have insomnia again, surprise, surprise!
I rarely if ever sleep anymore, and on the very rare nights that I do manage to fall asleep, it's usually very, very late, like around 4:30am-5:30am, and by then, Carmine the indoor-outdoor stray we've adopted, starts to literally smack me in the face with his paw, and then start meowing very loudly directly into my face for me to get up, because that's when he wants to go out.
Now.
I try to ignore it as long as I can, but I can't, so I get up, let him out, pee, and then I'm wide awake again.
Tonight is one of those nights where I can't sleep, so if he wants out tonight, at least he won't have to paw my face off to go out, one meow should do just fine.
Having chronic insomnia makes you feel odd, out of place, not right with the world in any way at all.
It is actually extremely depressing.
When you don't get hardly any sleep for days and days on end, when the depression from not sleeping starts to creep in, the thoughts also start to creep in.
One of the things Mark and I talked about was suicide.
We talked about Rachel, and we talked about how I'm too much of a coward to do it to myself.
And it's true, I am a coward.
He did ask me though, that if I were ever going to do it, why would I do it, would be it because of the never-ending pain, the never-ending medications, just what would it say on the note if I did do it and left a note.
It didn't take me very long to think about it at all, I know what my note would say.
It would say exactly the following:
No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try or have tried, no matter what good I do or good I have done, it will NEVER be enough for people. It will just never, ever be enough. They will always find faults with me, look right past all of the kindness and good that I do and have done, they will always point of my faults in detail, they will never let them go, they will never see me as anyone but a screw-up. I could win the Powerball lottery, like $300 million, I could give every single one of my family members $10 million each, I could donate millions to charity, I could do so many good deeds with it, and someone somewhere, WILL say that I am not being genuinely generous, that I am simply doing it to make people think that I'm a good person, that I'm just trying to buy love and respect, but you can bet your ass they would all still keep the money, keep it to "teach me a lesson."
I'm sorry, I really am just having such a super hard time tonight, the pain that I am feeling is burning me to my core, I haven't stopped crying in several hours now, so I apologize for being such a downer this evening.
I really do because I love all of you, my faithful readers who have been with me for years, read and listen to me, relate to me, and without this blog and all of you, I can't say that I would have made it this long, so thank you, all of you, for being with me on this roller coaster that is my life.
___________________________________
You know what I want?
Afterr wasting many hours browsing the internet tonight, I found that I want one of those unlocked phones so I can go with any company, and I'd probably stick with my same company, but I'm like dying to try to get and have one of those "crackberry" phones that everyone talks about.
People brag about how it's like the absolute best phone ever, it's addictive, and I suppose that's why they have nicknamed it the "crackberry". 
I do love my current phone, it works awesome, but someday I would really like to have one of the latest and greatest cell phones like everyone else has just so that I can say yeah, I have a crackberry too.
You gotta be somebody just like everybody else.
Continue Reading �
August 31, 2010
Rainy, hard, educational days.
While Sebastian was at school today, Mark and I had a very long talk about a lot of things.
It started out with how he was feeling about some stuff, some issues that he didn't quite know how to bring up to me.
I told him the same thing that I have always told my sons, "No matter what you say to me, I promise I will not get mad at you, ever, I may hurt, but I won't get mad, and I PROMISE that I will NEVER stop loving you."
So he told me some things about how some people who have been in my life just a little bit longer than my sons have, just some of my extended family, really feel about me.
I am hated actually, and I can understand why, I really can.
I'm one of the only ones in my extended family who has never forgiven my ex-husband for the things that took place during all of the short years we were together.
He's a changed man you see, yet I have not forgiven him like they all have.
He's never asked for it, he's never apologized, so how can I forgive someone who has never apologized or asked to be forgiven?
I have not forgotten or forgiven him for the things that he's done to me or to my sons, he hurt my sons terribly, and I love them more than my own life.
The conversation with Mark went on for hours, things that I am being accused of doing, still, but now by them, people who live in Maine, thousands of miles away, people who never see me or speak to me unless I pay for us to fly up there.
I just love being accused of doing all kinds of drugs, not just the drugs that my doctor prescribes to me on a monthly basis, but hardcore street drugs, like cocaine, and heroin.
Did you all know that I was shooting up?
Between my toes so that there's no visible track marks on my arms or body?
Did you know that?
Did you know that they sit and talk about how I need to go in for some very serious opiate detox very soon?
I'm not to be trusted with money, ever, I'm a thief, a liar, a strung-out junkie and a horrible mother.
Did you know those things?!?
Yes, these are the things that I am told that I am and am doing, they are told to my sons who spend day after day with me, they would know if I was doing those things, they would see me doing those things, yet, at the very same time I am all of those things, I am expected to come up with enough money to fly the three of us up north to Maine every single year so that the teens can visit all of their family.
I am a disabled and single mother living on a very limited income, yet I'm supposed to somehow come up with ALL of the money to fly us all up there every year before the older relatives die ya know?
Does anyone, has anyone, EVER offered to help me buy the plane tickets for us to get up there?!
Hell no!
Have any of them ever come here to visit us?
Hell no!
It's expensive dammit!
And oh forbid that I say that I can't afford it one year, I am guilted so bad for it, but um, hello?!
Did y'all miss the part about me being a single and disabled parent living on a very, very limited income?!
I do the absolute very best that I can every single day of my life.
I pay the bills, I buy the food, I work as much and as hard as I can, I take damn good care of my sons, they have turned out really amazingly well, and believe me, it was not because anyone helped me, I did it all by myself.
People who sit in judgment of me, saying all of those horrible things, hating on me, yet my sons have turned out incredible, and that is because of me, so if I am so freaking bad, how did they turn out so damn good huh?
HUH?!?!?
I would really, absolutely, sooo TOTALLY LOVE for that Freaky Friday kind of stuff to be true.
I would love for all of the people who sit in judgment of me, to spend just 24-48 hours in my body, in my life, do what I do every single day of my life, live it.
Hell, spend a week inside my body, swap souls with me, live my life, and then at the end of it, I can guarantee that they will be BEGGING to go back to their own bodies and lives, and then maybe they will shut up and leave me and mine alone.
What's that saying?
"Before you accuse, criticize, and abuse- walk a mile in my shoes".
August 26, 2010
What a rainy, crazy, and crappy week it has been.
It has been raining off and on all week long, and when it rains, I am a totally useless lump of flesh on the couch.
I haven't been able to do much of anything at all, I've been in far too much pain to do anything, and I have been sick on top of it, so yeah, just miserable.
___________________
On Tuesday morning, I received a text message from Moe, the guy who owns the corner store, a really great guy, who was letting me know that Rachel, the girl who worked there and was a friend to me, had killed herself sometime around 2am Tuesday morning.
She left her purse, cell phone, all of her things at the store around midnight, said that she was going home, but something snapped I guess, and she ended up hanging herself in the little wooded area right behind the corner store.
I've walked up to the corner store and back a few times now, and there is now a cross, flowers, and 4 large candles placed there for her.
This afternoon when I was on my way to the pharmacy and grocery store, I stopped and lit all 4 of the candles for her. The rain had put them all out.
I said a few words for her as I lit them, I said that I hoped that she finally was at peace now, that whatever it was that drove her to that, hopefully, she was at peace now. I also said that if I had known she was thinking of doing that, that I would have gladly talked to her, that I would have been a friend to listen, and a shoulder to cry on, that I would have tried to help her.
I know all too well that feeling of hopelessness, of feeling like there's no way out of the current and horrible situation that drives you to think of suicide, and that if she had only talked to someone, maybe it didn't have to end that way.
I know that's what happened for me.
In 2001 when I had to stop working, when I got the wicked bad news about my back, I felt so lost and hopeless, like a total failure as a mother, I couldn't work anymore, how was I going to provide for my boys, what was I going to do, how the hell was I going to get out of this super mess?!?
My landlord, of all people, just happened to knock on my door on one of the days that I was crying uncontrollably and thinking of ending it all, he asked what was wrong, and it all just came spilling out of me like a flood.
He came in to my home and talked to me for hours, he gave me so many reasons to not kill myself, he saved my life that day, and I have never thought of suicide again, and the very few times that it has slipped back into my head, the words he said to me that morning come back.
If only someone had been there for Rachel, if only someone had asked her what was wrong, maybe it wouldn't have ended this way.
If I had known she was thinking of suicide, if I had only known that she was feeling so lost and hopeless, I know that I would have talked to her, I would have repeated the same words my landlord said to me, maybe it would have made a difference, maybe it would have helped, or maybe it wouldn't have, there's really no way to know now.
All I can do now is hope that she's finally at peace, that whatever it was that brought her to hang herself, was finally over for her.
_______________________
In other news, Sebastian started school again on Monday, they didn't have him registered for any classes yet, none, so he had to sit and wait for almost 3 hours while they figured out why he didn't get signed up for any of the classes he had registered for, then register him for them again, and print his schedule.
Ugh.
Then on Wednesday, the teens had to go and give their depositions in the "iced tea mugging", so he missed a day of school for that and the vice principal is demanding he bring in proof that he was doing depositions, she wants the actual subpoena, not a copy, and uh, sorry, he needs those for the courts, so she's getting a photocopy of it, like it, lump it, or suck it.
________________________
This morning started out really good.
The sun finally poked back out, and I got an email from Lori at A Cowboy's Wife, letting me know that I had won the giveaway she had on her blog for an awesome pair of Langston's cowboy boots!
I have been given the promo code to go to the site and pick out my pair and order them, yay!
These are the ones that I really like, so I'm pretty sure that they are the ones that I'm going to get.
________________________
The sun came out, I won a great giveaway, and I got paid a day early so I was able to go and pick up my meds, pay a bill to keep the lights on, and get some groceries for the house.
Hopefully things just keep getting better from here on out!
August 18, 2010
Whoah, been a few days huh?
As soon as I finish this post, I need to go hop in the shower to get ready for my doc appointment.
Well not hop in the shower, I cannot hop at all these days, but you know what I mean, I need to get in the shower and take a shower so I can be all nice and clean for my doc appointment today.
I am going to my doctor's new practice today for the first time.
He and his PA (Physician's Assistant) Mary left the old practice they were at and are now at a new one, so I am headed there this morning for my appointment.
It was supposed to be last week, but that was at the old practice with the other doctor that has never once treated me, so I had to be rescheduled for today because they moved.
I really don't mind even though it is in a different part of town, I have a ride there and back, so no biggie at all.
OK, time to go get ready and get my butt in gear to go.
Later days!
August 10, 2010
Rain, sick, sleepless.
I have been sick and in pain for like the last four to five days now, and it has totally sucked.
Between the rain and my arthritis, my back, insomnia, and meds running low, I have just been a totally useless waste of flesh laying around the house.
Sebastian spent most of the weekend at my sister's house, and Mark spent most of the weekend at his friend Jeff's house playing video games, so I didn't feel quite so bad about being so sick and sleeping off and on, complaining about my pain and the crappy rainy weather.
No one was here to listen to me. haha
I spent the whole weekend either sleeping for 15-30 minutes at a time or watching movies when I had insomnia and just couldn't sleep at all.
I watched the entire Indiana Jones collection, Iron Man, The Karate Kid, and a ton of other movies that the names are currently drawing a blank on me.
The only thing of any real importance that happened this weekend is that my doctor's PA Mary, (physician's assistant) called me on Sunday afternoon, and she told me that my doctor and her are no longer at the office that they were previously at, and she gave me all of the new information on where they are and stuff, and so then today, I called and scheduled my appointment with them for this month instead of at my old office.
I never saw the other doctor from that practice, so I want to stick with my doc and the PA Mary if I can, so I did.
I have no idea why they left, but hey, whatever, as long as I get in for my appointments every month I'm happy. I'll ask why they left when I go in to see them.
I figured that I should at least check in here in case anyone was wondering about me.
Not that many people do anymore, and I know that it's because my posting has become totally sporadic, I often don't post for days at time and I wish I could get back on track, but I don't know, I just feel so out of it for the last few months.
Like I wake up in the morning and just feel, empty, blank, just totally empty.
Ever feel that way?
Like not sad, not happy, no depressed, not hungry, not tired, not sleepy, not anything, just blank, empty feeling, like no emotions at all.
Empty.
That's the best way that I can explain things.
Empty.
August 3, 2010
To sleep, perchance to sleep?
Well Momma Maggie and her four babies have gone on to their new home today, just right through my back yard!
My friends got a duplex apartment on the street right behind me, and their back door faces the back of my house, so we can go visit with the kitty babies any time that we want to.
That's really good as we've loved having them here, it's always fun to have baby kitties around, and Momma Maggie was just so sweet and loving, and she let us hold her babies too.
They were all so soft, they had that new kitten smell, it's like a brand new baby smell, but from a cat.
They mewed so tiny and sweet, they slept in funny positions, it was just a lot of fun having them here.
I think that I'm finally exhausted enough to sleep, at least I hope I am.
It's now been five days, maybe six, that I haven't slept at all, and I feel like I'm running on fumes.
Well that's not totally true, I'm actually running on Diet Coke, Pall Mall Lights, and sugar cookies.
After so many days of not sleeping, I can't even really eat a meal, it makes me feel sick, so I just drink my Diet Cokes, smoke, and ingest sugar to keep me going until my body finally decides to let me sleep.
I know, not a healthy way to do things, and yes, I know all about the smoking, but I'm doing the best that I can do here.
I have been suffering from terrible bouts of insomnia for about the last five to six years now.
I'll go for days and days without sleeping at all, maybe catch a few minutes dozed off in my chair, or maybe 15 minutes or so on the couch, but these last few days, I haven't gotten any sleep at all, not even one single minute, so I'm so totally exhausted, my brain is completely fried, I am not even sure if I'm thinking clearly or not at this point.
I feel like I'm rambling on and on,yet I can barely type at all, my hands and fingers feel so very heavy, I keep making mistakes, having to click on the spell checker or backspace to correct my mistakes.
Before I try to go to sleep though, I have quite a few emails that I need to answer, I have been putting a few of them off for at least four to five days, so now I need to answer them.
Hopefully it's not too late to answer some of them, they didn't say they were time sensitive, but you never know, some people expect a reply within 24 hours, and if they don't get it, they just don't want anything at all to do with you after that.
I really hope that's not the case with some of them, they seemed kind of interesting to me so I'll keep my fingers crossed that I haven't lost my chance to talk with some of these people.
Anyway, I am going to go answer those emails now, hopefully answer those emails now. haha
And then yes, I am going to go lay down, and I am pretty sure that this time, I'll be able to fall asleep.
I really do think that tonight's the night.
Yes I do.
July 31, 2010
A very long and rough night for a friend of mine.
I have permission from my friend Nik, who this is about, to post this.
I have blogged about Nik a few times on here, and before I left to come back home tonight, I asked her if it was OK for me to blog about this just in case some people may be wondering where I was and what I was doing all night long.
I know I don't lead a terribly exciting life, but I do get emails from friends every so often asking me why I haven't posted, asking if I am OK or not because I haven't posted.
So this will explain where I was all night long.
My friend Nik (Nikki) was on her way to pay her cell phone bill and get it turned back on, she was a little late making the payment so they shut her off, and so she was going to pay it in person and get it turned back on, and then run a few more errands before coming back home and then her and I were going to have a movie night up at her place.
She stopped at a Hess gas station in Bradenton to get some drinks for her and her eight year old daughter Leonna who went with her, and when they got back to the truck, her daughter got in on the driver side, slid over, Nik threw her keys and cell phone on the seat next to her daughter and was just about to throw her purse in and hop in the truck herself, when some guy hit her on the back of the head really hard, grabbed her purse, and took off.
Nik never saw him, she got hit in the head from behind, it dropped her to her knees she said, so she never even got a glimpse of the guy, and her poor little daughter Leonna, was so scared and freaked out, all she can remember seeing was a black man in a white tank top and dark colored pants, she was just so scared because she saw her mommy get hit, heard her mommy scream and cry, and so that is all she saw, a black man in a white tank top and dark colored pants.
Nik called the cops from the store phone, she never even got to get to the cell phone place to turn her phone back on yet, the cops showed up did their thing, took her and her daughter's statements, asked other people if they saw anything, then the cops had to call Hess corporate to be able to review the video surveillance tapes of the parking lot to try and get a look at the guy, try to see how he escaped, either on foot, bike, or a car, and hopefully, if it was a car, get the make, model, and HOPEFULLY, a plate number to try and catch this jerk.
Nik had to go to the hospital in Bradenton to get checked out and luckily she didn't get her head split open, but she has one hell of a knot on the back of her head, and her poor little girl is absolutely terrified.
Nik is not allowed to go to sleep because of the possibility of a concussion, so I had to go up to her apartment up the street and stay with her to keep her awake until Gerb, her daughter's father and her roommate, (they are not together as a couple but live together for the sake of their daughter, looonnnng story) came home from wherever he was so he could keep her awake for the rest of the night.
He came home around 1:45am and I stayed for a little bit to help Nik explain to him what had happened and why she has to be kept awake all night.
I also told him that I took Leonna to her grandparent's house, his parent's house, who so conveniently (thank goodness they do in situations like this!) live right across the street from their apartment building.
I told the grandparents what had happened, why poor little Leonna is so scared and upset, and so they hugged her tightly and are going to be taking care of her for the whole night, letting her sleep over their house, cuddling with her, and letting her know that everything will be OK in the way that only grandparents have that special way of somehow making the grand-kids really believe that everything really is going to be alright.
Leonna was just crying and sobbing, and she was holding onto my hand so tightly as she and I crossed the street to go to their house, and she kept saying that a really, really bad man had hit her mommy on the head and took her purse, he hurt her mommy bad, she kept repeating to me as we crossed the street and knocked on their door.
She just fell into her grandmother's arms when she opened the door.
Poor little thing. *wicked sad face*
So anyway, I just got back home a little bit ago.
But poor Nik.
She had just got her first SSI monthly check in the mail, yesterday, Friday, and she had just cashed it and was on her way to pay and get her cell phone turned back on, and then she was going to go pay her car insurance bill, and then come home and she, Leonna and I, were going to have a girl's movie night at her place.
But it was so wicked hot out, so she stopped for waters for her and Leonna at a Hess gas station.
The guy must have been in line behind her, or next to her, or something, saw the amount of money in her wallet, and just went for it, decided to take her whole purse, violently.
She said if he had spoken to her, if he had just asked for the money, or just threatened to hurt her for the money, that she would have just handed him all of the money as long as he didn't hurt her or her daughter, she would have just given it to him to avoid a violent confrontation in front of her daughter, she would do anything to protect her child.
He hit her so hard in the back of the head so she doesn't even know if he used his closed fist or if he had some sort of weapon in his hand, she just knows it hurt really super-wicked bad and dropped her to her knees.
She has a massive lump on the back of her head where she got hit, so she is really lucky that whatever he hit her with, didn't split her head wide open, the lump is that freaking huge.
Nik is so upset, and not just about the lump and the pain and the money, but because she had just cashed that check, it was her very first check after finally being approved for SSI and SSDI after almost 4 years of court hearings and doctors, and paperwork up the butt to finally get approved.
It was the very first check in what feels like a never ending battle to get approved, that first check is like a huge sigh of relief when it finally comes, it just takes all of the stress and worry off of your shoulders that you've been carrying around for all of the years that you have been fighting to get approved for your disability.
She just got a new set of MRIs and saw her doctor, he is talking major surgery, spine fusion surgery, and she is so scared, so she and I have been talking a lot about it, I've been there, done that, so I can help her get through it.
Anyway, it was just a monthly check, not the big retroactive check, that would have really sucked, but still, it was a lot of money to have taken that way, almost $500 just ripped from her violently in front of her daughter, and not to mention everything else in her purse.
Her license, her social security card, her food stamp card, medicaid card, her prescription insurance card, her bank and debit cards, freaking everything was in her purse, so not only did I have to help keep her awake all night long until Gerb came home, but we had to call as many places as we could that were still open for customer service calls and tell them to cancel all of the cards, give them the police report case number so the cards could all be marked as stolen.
Thank goodness all of them had the press the number option to report your card as lost or stolen, so we were able to report every single one of them as stolen, and I also had her call the three credit reporting agencies so they could put alerts on her credit reports just in case something happens and her SS card number doesn't get canceled immediately by the SSA.
The whole late afternoon and night were a freaking nightmare for her.
The attack happened around 3pm or so, maybe a little later, and she didn't get home from Bradenton and the hospital until around 8pm when she called me up crying really hard and begging me to come up to her apartment, she begged me for help, she didn't even know where or how to begin reporting things as stolen, and her head hurt really bad, she was just sobbing and begging me for help, so with the teens gone for the night to my sister's house, I immediately got myself dressed and walked straight up to her place.
I did every single thing that I could think of to report all of her cards as stolen, and a few of the places that we called gave us some other numbers to call for some of her other things that were stolen, so I think we got it all covered and taken care of, I hope.
Identity theft really sucks so I really hope that we got everything canceled ASAP.
What helped a lot was that I made her remember and write down a list of every single card that she could recall being in her wallet slot by slot, visualize the contents of the wallet, so that I could look up all of the telephone numbers for each one so that she could call them and explain, I kept track of each one as we called it, checking it off of the list, made sure she gave each one the police report number and everything that she needed to tell each place when she called.
I had written it all down for her so that she wouldn't be stumbling over her words not knowing exactly what to say.
It was so hard for her, she was in such wicked bad pain, I kept changing out her ice pack for her, getting her drinks of water, hugging her when she started to break down and cry again, and she was trying really hard not to cry when she was speaking to people on the phone, but her whole purse with everything in it was stolen so violently from her in front of her daughter, it was just such a horrible night for her.
I feel so so bad for her, but I did every single thing that I could think of to do to help her.
I really think just having a friend sitting there on her bed with her, hugging her when she needed it, letting her cry, telling her that things were going to be OK, letting her talk about her very frightening experience, helping to take care of her and her head injury, and making sure her daughter was in a safe place for the night, and just being a good, loving, and supportive friend, is what she really needed to help her get through a very traumatic afternoon and night.
Once Gerb found out what had happened and he knew that Leonna was in a safe place for the night, and also knew that his daughter didn't get physically injured, he also was extremely supportive of Nik.
They may no longer be married, they may sleep in separate bedrooms at the apartment, and they may really just be living together for the sake of their daughter, but I saw the look in his eyes as he was listening to Nik tell what happened.
There is still some love there, he still cares very deeply for her, he has never moved on, never gotten into any serious relationships after her, and even though they agreed to split the rent and bills, just live as roommates who happen to be the parents of Leonna, he just pays everything and doesn't complain.
I really think that he takes care of his family because that is how he sees it, it's his family living in that apartment, and he loves both his daughter and Nik.
Really, the look in his eyes and also the way that he hugged her when she started to cry again, yeah, he still cares for her and loves her very, very much.
July 27, 2010
Trying to stay cool, day 4.
It has been so hot out the last few days, I am totally ready for it to be winter again.
We have just been trying to stay as cool and a comfortable as is possible under these hot temps.
It has only been in the low 90's, but there has been a high heat and humidity index every single day making the 93 degree temperatures feel like 103 degrees.
You take one step outside, and you are immediately covered in sweat.
It is really rather gross and disgusting, take a shower, go out to get the mail, and need another shower.
Yuck.
The poor air conditioner has been struggling to keep the house at 78 degrees, we only have window units, an LG window air conditioner, and it is just working really hard to keep the house cool.
All of the appliances are working over time, so tomorrow I have a plan to clean the dust out of all of them.
I am going to clean the filter on the AC, and have Sebastian and Mark help me move the refrigerator so that I can vac behind it and vac out the refrigerator filters of all of the dust so that it can work more efficiently.
I am also going to clean the hose on the dryer, vac it out and clean the lint filter really good.
If you let dust stay in all of those filters, not only does it have the potential to cause a house fire, but it also causes the appliances to work harder which increases you electric bill.
Tonight we are just chilling out, relaxing and watching movies.
Right now, we are watching Clash of the Titans, and so far, it's not too bad.
It just started, and I know that it got some bad reviews, the story line and script is bad apparently, but the special effects go good ratings anyway.
Meh, it's something to watch, something to do that doesn't take up any energy and make you sweat, so we'll watch it.
Not too much else going on here, really just trying to take it easy and chill out as much as possible.
July 22, 2010
Almost scammed by another pharmacy.
I just woke up after falling asleep in my chair for about five hours.
I fell asleep like that because of sheer exhaustion, insomnia for about the last six days, maybe a total of three hours of sleep over the last six days, plus a lot of stress, and a really horrible day yesterday after leaving my doctor's office.
I left my doc's office, I was in and out in 15 minutes, and went straight to the same pharmacy that I have been going to for the last two years.
As I was waiting to be waited on, I watched as five other people were told that their insurance no longer covered their medications because the price went up.
I listened as the pharmacist told these people that they couldn't pay cash for their scripts either because then they could go call their insurance and try to get reimbursed by saying the pharmacist was making them pay cash.
A lot of angry people left the pharmacy.
I handed in my scripts, waited, and then was told the same thing.
My insurance no longer covered it because the price went up, he was losing money.
I've heard this same kind of story before, been there, done that,
I called my insurance company to find out what to do, to verify it, that they no longer covered it.
My insurance company said they did cover it and they were going to call the pharmacist and find out what the problem is.
So my insurance called him to tell him it was covered, he lied to them and said he didn't have them in stock anyway.
My insurance company said they were looking up other pharmacies to see if they had my pain meds in stock, please hold.
I'm standing in the pharmacy waiting to hear, I needed to be in the AC because it was about 98 degrees with a high heat index and massive humidity, I felt like total crap, I had been sick for the last 4 days, no sleep, I needed to stand there and wait to find out what to do.
As I'm waiting on hold, the pharmacist said that if I really wanted my medications, even though they ARE covered by insurance, if I really wanted them, he was refusing to take my insurance, he told me that if I really wanted my pain medications that I needed to pay $879.90 for my medication, but he would not take my insurance which has a co-pay for me of just $2.50.
He was so totally trying to rip me off!!
This is exactly what that other pharmacy did, but they only extorted me for $20!!
I told him that was not the price of the medicine, that my insurance just told me how much they were for the cash price, and it came to $358.00, not $879.00.
He said the price went up, I either pay it or I don't get my medication.
I said no, that wasn't the price, I was not going to pay that, he was trying to extort me.
While he and I were talking, my insurance company called back, his assistant got him to the phone, the rep I was on hold with came back on the line and I told her what he told me, she relayed that info to the supervisor who was now talking to him, the supervisor told him that he legally cannot charge people whatever price he wants if he accepts insurances which he does.
He started yelling at the supervisor, screaming, said he was not going to fill it, he was losing money, he did not have to fill it if he chose not to, and that yes, he can charge whatever the hell prices he wants.
He then hung up on the supervisor and came around to the front where I was still waiting, glaring at me.
The death stare.
He started yelling at me like he just yelled at the supervisor.
Because I called the insurance company and he got caught in a lie saying my meds weren't covered by my insurance, my insurance company is now investigating him for fraud, so he told me to get the hell out of his pharmacy, I was "dismissed", he told me to get out and that I can never, ever, go back to his pharmacy ever again.
So then I had to go to 3 other pharmacies which didn't have them in stock, then I finally found one that had them, but the wait to get it filled was going to be about 45 minutes to an hour, so I had to sit there and wait for almost an hour after just spending almost two and a half hours dealing with a total jerk and extortionist of a pharmacist, and going to other pharmacies, in and out of the car a whole bunch of times in the heat, I just wasted time all afternoon and my doc appointment was only 15 minutes long, but I spent nearly three hours trying to get them filled!
I was tired, sweating to death, angry, upset, I just wanted to get my meds and go home.
I finally got them filled and came home where the teens had been waiting for hours and hours for me, they kept calling to make sure that I was ok because I'm usually only gone for a max of two hours on doctor day, and now I had been gone for almost three hours and they were worried about me.
Then later that night, Mark asked me to pop this huge zit he had on his forehead, he couldn't get it to pop, he wanted me to use my nails on it.
So I popped his massive, and I do mean MASSIVE zit on his forehead, holy crap that sucker was enormous!
After that, I dug through my medicine cabinet and make-up bin finding all of the 10 - acne products+ that I've bought for the teens over the last six months or so trying to help them clear up their skin, and I washed his face with a cleanser, then I applied a mask for five minutes, washed that off, then I applied a toner and told him to keep his hands off of his face for the rest of the night, if I saw him picking at his skin I was going to dig out some old mittens and tie them to his hands to keep him from picking at the rest of his pimples.
He laughed, but I was so not joking, I said, "Don't push me dude, I had a really bad day, I will so totally tie mittens on your hands to keep you from popping and picking at the rest of your pimples."
He looked at me wide-eyed, knew I was seriously in a bad mood, and swore to not pick at his face for the rest of the night, pinky-swear promised me.
I just can't believe that there are so many unscrupulous pharmacists out there trying to extort people, trying to force people to pay outrageous prices for their medications when they accept insurance but just don't want to wait for the reimbursement or whatever.
This is now the second time that I have had a pharmacist try to extort me, and the second time that my insurance company has had to investigate a pharmacy for fraud.
If my insurance goes back through the records and sees anything that looks suspicious, like price fixing and upping the prices or whatever, he is in so much trouble.
The rep that I was speaking to said that the supervisor was so not happy with him at all, that the supervisor called his actions "shady", said that he was a liar, he had said that he didn't have them in stock, then he said that he did if I wanted to pay $879.00 for them, the supervisor said that he was totally trying to be fraudulent, and so the supervisor was personally going to investigate him.
I hope they do, he was totally shady, totally trying to extort me, and now I wonder just how many other customers he's done it to and because they needed their medications, they just paid it.
July 20, 2010
It's been a totally crappy 4 days.
I started getting sick sometime on Saturday, and between that, my back hurting, and running low on my pain meds, it's been a hellacious 4 days.
I look absolutely awful, I look like I got hit by a truck.
I have huge bags under my eyes from not being able to sleep due to being sick plus the heat, so before I go to my doc appointment tomorrow afternoon, I need to dig through my make-up bin and find my eyeseryl eye cream.
It generally reduces the puffy bags and lightens up the dark circles a little bit so I don't look quite so crappy at my appointment.
Sebastian did make it home safe and sound, Mindy and I picked him up at the Tampa airport around 11:30am on Sunday.
I brought him a sub from Publix and a Coca-cola, some Swiss Rolls, and he was so happy to have it because neither of his flights served him anything.
Everything cost extra money, and even though he had $20, he didn't want to spend $5 on a single can of Coke.
Those prices are ridiculous, so yeah, he was very happy to have some yummy food to eat on the way home.
I'm very happy to have him home though.
I missed him like crazy, just sucks that I've been sick since he came home.
July 15, 2010
I hate my belly pudge.
I have lost a lot of weight over this last year, I am doing really good in the weight loss department I must say.
My starting weight last year at this time was 196 pounds, yeah, I was really heavy.
But over the last year, I have lost a good amount of weight, I am now down to 158 pounds, a 38 pound loss over the course of a year is really pretty good, and I've managed to keep it all off too.
But the one thing that I hate and can't seem to get rid of, is my belly pudge.
Because I can't do sit-ups or crunches, I seem to be stuck with this pudgy belly, so I have been reading a lot of fat burner reviews to see if maybe a product like that would help me melt away some of the pudge.
I really can't stand it, every time I look in the mirror, I hate seeing my fat belly.
I so wish that I could do some sit-ups, crunches, side bends, something, anything that would help me lose my belly.
Has anyone had any success with a fat burner?
If so, did it help you lose any weight, help shape you up a bit better?
I would really love to get rid of this belly, it's the one body flaw that I have that I cannot stand.
July 15, 2010
Huff and puff and blow your house in.
I was laying on the couch this morning trying to rest which was an impossible feat.
I have barely slept at all in the last 3-4 days, so I was trying to get some sleep, but my phone get beeping with text messages from friends stressing out over stuff, and then the door happened.
I was laying here, almost asleep, I was totally dozing off, almost to la la land, when there came a pounding on the door so loud I thought someone was trying to actually come in the house.
Mark got up and answered the door, it was a process server here to subpoena the teens to court over the iced-tea mugging incident.
In August, either the 12th, 13th, 19th, or 20th, at 9:30am, the teens have to be in court to testify against the two teens who mugged them a month ago.
Four days, we don't know which day yet, so basically, they have to be in court on all four of those days just in case the court case gets heard on one of those days.
That's ridiculous!!
July 13, 2010
My new meds are messing with me.
I am on another new med, a new blood pressure medicine, and it's really messing with me after just one dose.
My vision is all blurry so I'm very happy that I have spell checker right now, I can barely see anything, I have my text all zoomed in, and I can still barely see anything.
If this keeps up, I'm gonna tell the doc that I can't keep taking it.
It sucks not to be able to see.
July 7, 2010
Oh! There it is!
For the last couple of weeks I have been in a total funk.
I have had absolutely no motivation to do anything at all, I have been mildly depressed and I hate to admit it, but I have to, talking about it helps, says my doctor.
I have been feeling this way ever since Sebastian told me that he had a decision to make about whether to live up in Maine for a year, or come back here and finish his education.
Every time that we talked on the phone, I have been totally supportive, telling him that no matter what he decided, I would stand behind his decision 100% even though it was ripping my heart out to even think about him not coming back home to stay.
I've done hardly anything at all, my house clearly showed what was going on with me mentally, it was a mess.
I haven't been sleeping, and I have barely eaten anything at all in weeks.
With me, the very best natural diet supplements is the thought of not having either or both of my sons with me for whatever reasons, be it an accident, going away to college, or moving away to live with the other side of the family for a year.
It was killing me inside, I ate probably once every two to three days, and you couldn't really call it eating, it was more like nibbling on a single slice of deli ham at one am or whatever.
I have been laying around on the couch most days just mindlessly watching the tv, or sitting here in my chair and mindlessly surfing the internet.
I had lost all motivation to do anything at all.
My home and work have both been suffering because of it, and I just couldn't shake it.
Then around 1:15-1:30pm this afternoon, my Mom called and then I called her right back because I have free long distance, and I talked to Sebastian for about 45 minutes.
Sebastian is spending the night with my parents to help them out around the house and go grocery shopping with my Mom in the morning because she has a hurt knee and a broken vertebrae, so she needs some help and he's great at grocery shopping, he always goes with me and he's really great at helping.
Sebastian said that he'd be home on the 18th, and I asked if he had made a decision yet because if he chose there, then we needed to hurry and try to get a child custody court date, transfer his school records etc.
He told me, "No Mom, I'm coming home on the 18th for good. I'm going to finish my school and then go to SCF for the required classes, and then try to go to Full Sail for my computer and digital art classes that I want to do for my career."
I was Soooooo happy to hear him say that!
To hear him make his education a priority, that makes me so so SO proud of him!
I feel sad that Great-Gram and Aunt Heather will be sad and miss him terribly, but his education is the #1 priority right now, when he finishes, he can go back if he chooses too.
Gah!!!! I miss him but I'm so happy that he's going to be coming home!
Yay!
Yeuuuusss!!
After I got off the phone with him, it's like my mojo came back!
Mark and I went and did the grocery shopping, and then tonight, I finally cleaned the floors like I have been saying I was going to for oh, about two weeks now.
I vacuumed the rug, and I mopped the totally sucky terrazzo flooring in the kitchen, hallway, and bathroom.
I hate the terrazzo flooring, it is so hard to get clean.
You can mop it repeatedly and it still looks filthy, it's just the way the floor is, it's this yucky stone type stuff, and nobody knows how to get it to look clean.
I've talked to people who clean for a living, and nobody knows how to get it to look good.
You can mop it over and over, your mop will wring totally clear, no more dirt is coming off of the floor or wringing out of the mop, the floor is clean, but you look at the just mopped floor, and it still looks totally gross.
Ugh.
Then I did almost all of the dishes, I have just the silverware and cups left to do, I folded all of the laundry in the drier, and I even cleaned the kitchen counters.
Hearing that my baby boy is coming home and he's going to stay home, totally brought me out of my funk.
I got my motivation back.
Sebastian is coming home on the 18th.
To stay.
July 6, 2010
Been doing nothing much here.
I know that I haven't posted in quite a few days, there just really isn't much of anything going on here.
Mark and I are just hanging out, each of us doing our own thing, it's been really kind of boring around here.
It rained all day yesterday which sucked, the both of us just laid around watching movies because the both of us have arthritis, so the rain just makes both of our backs hurt a lot, so we just laid around so as not to make it hurt even worse.
Mark was digging around in his keepsake box, where he keeps all of the things that are special to him like birthday cards, his collector edition Boba Fett, stuff like that, and that's when he found a gift card to AMC theaters, so he asked me to check the balance on it.
I called the 1-800 number, and it said that he has a balance of $19.50, so that's enough for him and I to go see a matinee and maybe get a small popcorn and a small drink.
There's a movie coming out that he wants to see, the new Predators movie that starts Friday.
We're planing on going to see it sometime next week in the afternoon.
Mark loves the Predator series, so I figure what the hell, we'll go see this new one together, it will give us something to do.
It actually looks pretty decent too.
July 1, 2010
Overwhelming emptiness.
It has been very, very quiet around here, both on my blog and here at home.
I never realized just how much Sebastian and I interacted with each other until he was gone.
Mark and I are very much alike, we go and do our thing and we stay doing our thing, we only interact with each other at meal times and if we're watching a movie or going to the store or something.
Other than that, it's very quiet here.
I am out here at my desk mindlessly surfing the internet or playing with my Sims 3, and Mark is in the other room playing his video games.
I have been a complete wreck without him here, knowing what I know about what's going on up there and the decision that he has to make, and so I have been under a ton of stress.
What used to be my "hives of unknown origin", has now officially been labeled as "stress hives".
When I get stressed, I break out in hives all over every single inch of my body.
We know, the doctor and I, that the hives are from stress because I make a very strict point of not going near any of my triggers, and making sure that none of them come in to the house.
There are never, and never will be, any peaches or strawberries in the house.
Those are my food triggers, and I don't use any of my other triggers either, one of which is the Bounce dryer bar, and thanks to that experience, I am allergic to all fabric softener sheets, so I can only use the Purex 3-in-1 laundry sheets, and I really hope that I never become allergic to those.
After doing some journal writing, writing out the dates that I broke out in hives and what I ate and did, what my mood was, what was going on in my life on those days, my doctor figured out that they are 100% stress related.
At least I know now so that I can attempt to keep my stress under control, but that's not really working right now, not with this situation.
So because of the massive amounts of stress that I have been under, I have been broken out in hives almost every single day, all day and all night long for the last 4 or 5 days.
The Benadryl is not working, but I'm taking it anyway in the hopes that it will eventually kick in and start working.
I also wasn't getting much sleep at all, so I had to pick up some sleep aids when Mark and I were at the store the other day, and so I have been getting about 5 hours of sleep per night now.
That's better than nothing, definitely better than not getting any sleep at all like what was happening, so I'm at least feeling a little better.
I don't know, I am just dealing with it all the very best that I can, just trying to be patient and at least I know that he will be home on July 18th.
That's when his return ticket is for, and I know that at least I will see him when he comes home that day, and then from there, I don't know what will be happening, but at least I will get to see him and hug him again.
I just miss him so very much, I know that I'll probably hug him and not let go until he tells me I'm squishing him or something. hahaha
June 19, 2010
Friday was one of those days.
Yesterday, Friday, I had a couple of things to do to get ready for Sebastian to go on his trip to Maine for a month, and a friend was supposed to take me so that I didn't have to walk everywhere that I needed to go.
I needed to go get the grocery shopping done, and I needed to go down to the credit union and get a letter notarized giving Shell and her husband Ray, temporary medical guardianship of Sebastian.
He's going to be in Maine from Sunday June 20th, until Sunday July 18th, and if he gets hurt, (oh please no) I want Shell and Ray to be the ones who make any medical decisions for him, they can legally sign for medical treatment of him, and no one else.
But because said friend never showed up yet kept saying they were on their way in 30 minutes all day long, absolutely nothing at all got done.
All day long they had excuses, but they kept telling me they were on the way, for me to stay here, wait, they were definitely coming, so I waited, wasted my whole day.
I didn't get the grocery shopping done, and I never made it to the credit union to get the temporary medical guardianship notarized.
I know that going to those two places doesn't sound like a lot to do, but it actually is because of how much time each thing takes me to get done, especially when I'm distracted and stressed out.
I usually do not go grocery shopping with any friends because friends like to talk while I'm trying to shop.
I have a list in my head, I know each aisle, I know exactly what I need, where it is, and how much it's all going to cost, (Hello? OCD much?) but when I'm with a chatty friend, I lose my place on my mental grocery list and end up forgetting to buy at least a dozen or more items which aggravates me to no end when I get home and realize that I don't have a much needed item to make dinner with because it means that I have to go back to the store.
*breathe*
So for today's outing, knowing that I was going to be with a friend who likes to talk and talk and talk, I wrote out a real list, had my coupons ready, I was ready to go and get it all done as fast as possible without being distracted and stressed out.
Why didn't my friend show up?
I'll tell you why.
She was supposed to be here at 11am, but she said that it was just one thing after another, the dogs needed to go out, the pool needed to be cleaned, the counters were dirty, the dryer stopped and she didn't want things to get wrinkled, she was considering going to North Carolina where her mother lives, where she grew up, because she needs to go see her Charlotte dentist that's been treating her since she was five, and then her and her "old man" got into an argument and she was pissed off and thinking about packing up and just moving back in with her mother in North Carolina, and "OMG Kat! He's driving me nuts! But Kat! I'm on the way! just give me 30 more minutes! I am on the way! I will be there!!"
So I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I really should have just gone, said screw it, and just walked everywhere that I needed to go, got it all done with because now I'm even more stressed out than I already was.
This trip he's taking has me wicked stressed out and worried.
I'm nervous about him flying alone, nervous about him being alone for the layover in New Jersey, nervous he's gonna wait at the wrong gate and miss his flight and be stuck in New Jersey, all kinds of things that a mother worries about when sending her child off alone for the first time.
Just being told over and over that she was on the way in 30 minutes, to stay here and wait, put me in stress overdrive all day long as I watched the hours ticked away.
It just amplified the stress that I was already overloaded with.
See, when I tell someone that I will be somewhere in 30 minutes, I WILL be there in 30 minutes, probably even there in under 30 minutes, because I hate to wait for people, so I don't ever make people wait for me.
Ever.
When someone tells me that they are on the way to get me, I am ready to go.
I have my shoes on, purse by my side, and the blinds open so I can see them pull in the driveway, and as soon as they do, I'm up and closing the blinds and out the door before they even put the car in park.
I did did call another friend to take me to the store to just get the teens something to eat for dinner.
I ran into Publix and grabbed two subs as fast as they could make them, and then came back home thanking my other friend profusely while I was on the verge of tears the whole time, and so now, I have to go do the full grocery shopping today.
It's gonna suck.
Saturday grocery shopping sucks because it's always super busy with people who can't do their shopping during the week due to their work schedules, and tons of old gray hairs whacking me in the butt with their carts.
Then on Monday, I have to go to the credit union and get the temporary medical guardianship notarized, and then stick it and his insurance card in the mail for Shell.
He was going to have the letter and insurance card on him, in his backpack or suitcase, and just give it to Shell when he sees her, or she could go and pick it up at his father's house so it doesn't get lost or anything, but now I have to mail it and just hope he doesn't get injured between the time I mail it and it gets there because Shell and her husband are the only people that I want making medical decisions for him.
I know that Shell knows CPR and other first aid stuff, I know she knows what to do in the event of a broken bone, excessive bleeding, etc etc, plus I know that if he does get hurt and has to be treated, that Shell will call me and keep me informed every step of the way, and ask me what kind of treatment I want him to have.
I didn't want to burden my parents with that duty, they have their own health issues to deal with, and his father doesn't know any of his allergies or other medical history, Shell does, I know that she can answer almost any medical question about him because we practically raised our kids together when I lived there, and even after moving here, I still told my best friend everything about the teens as they grew up.
I know, I sound totally overbearing and that was a massive run-on sentence, but he's my baby, I'm nervous and worried about him, he's never been away from me for this long, ever, he sticks to me like glue, he's my boy, where I go, he goes, so yeah, I'm really super stressed out about this whole trip.
I don't want to be, I want to not feel this way, but I can't help it, I cannot stop feeling like this, I want him to go and have a great time, but I am going to be a nervous wreck the entire month that he's gone.
And I hate it.
June 18, 2010
Amega Amwand product review.
I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this is a very serious product review of a medical device that claims it can completely relieve pain, "remind the body to heal itself", and strengthen the body's immunity, and many, many other medical claims
About two months ago, I was contacted by a woman named Cheryl who said she had an amazing product that would help me, help me with my back pain, blood pressure, all kinds of things, and she would love it if I would try it out and review it on my blogs.
I agreed to test it out and I have been using it as she told me to ever since receiving it in the mail.
It's called the Amega Amwand, and it claims to use "zero point energy" to help the body heal itself.
I HATE giving these people a link, but I feel that I need to so that people WILL NOT fall for this scam, I need to warn people that this thing is a total scam and costs hundreds of dollars ($304.00) to buy, and all it is is the body of a ball point pen minus the ink and ink chamber.
It is one solid piece of metal shaped like a pen, it looks exactly like the image above.
You can pretty much tell that this thing is a scam by the url of the website where they sell it.
The url to purchase this thing has the words "CASHRICHES" in it!
Another of their sites is just one big page all about positioning yourself to get in on this amazing money making scheme!
Cheryl told me that in order to get the most benefits from it, to use it properly, all that I needed to do was to simply "wave" the Amwand over my body, the areas that are in pain, in a clockwise circular motion for 30 minutes, 5 times per day.
"It's vital" she said.
She even told me to "wand" my son Mark with it as well because he is having bad back pain too.
Mark laughed at the idea, but he let me use it on him for the entire two months that I've had it and have been testing it out.
Below are the claims that this "wand" can supposedly do to help people.
Usage of AmWand Can:* Discharge blockages in the body
* Clear distortions in our bio energetic field
* Facilitate the body in healing
* Energize food and drink increasing potency of the minerals & vitamins within them
* Use it on our pets and plants to supplement any energy deficiencies that they have
* Balance and energize imbalances your body may be experiencing
* Help to remove aches, pains and other discomforts
* Lift the face...tightens the skin
* Energize our environment in which we liveAmega AmWand Benefits Can:
* Help the body obtain homeostasis condition
* Help the body's bio-energetic field to source Zero Point Energy
* Relieve aches and pain
* Neutralize harmful elements (energetically) from the liquid we drink, & food we eat
* Energize the skin providing a "face lift" with noticeable improvement
* Energize creams and oils for better absorption of nutrients
* Facilitate and strengthen the flow of energy in our body
* Stimulate bodily functions and strengthens immunity
* Help the body to look and feel youngerYou also can have quicker and stronger nail and hair growth, and a greater resistance to tooth decay that is visibly seen. The lifting of the face with noticeable improvement has also brought forth an additional and extremely high interest.
When water is treated with the Zero Point Energy Wand and then used in conjunction with any supplements, they can be absorbed much more quickly and efficiently, and effectively by the body's cells.
I have used the Amega Amwand every single day, five times per day for 30 minutes each session as I was told to do.
I even "wanded" my water with it as I was told to do.
I am here to tell you that the Amega Amwand did absolutely nothing at all for me.
It did not relieve any aches, pains, or other discomforts, it has not helped reduce my blood pressure, and I saw no noticeable improvement in my hair, nails, or face.
It has not helped me to look or feel younger.
It has not helped or strengthened my immunity, as a matter of fact, I've been really sick several times during the last 2 months, and it did not help me get better faster, or at all.
It did not do a single thing that it claims it can do.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam and I feel the need to tell people the truth before they fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on it.
Every day, millions of people live in pain and are desperate to be free from that pain, and would take any kind of supplement or other types of self care items to try and relieve that pain.
If you live with chronic pain or know someone who lives with chronic pain, then you know how desperate you can feel to get any kind of relief, and there are very unscrupulous people and companies out there who know that desperation and are ready and poised to take full advantage of those people who live in pain.
There are thousands of products on the market already that make thousands of claims that their product can help you be free from pain, and people buy them because they are so desperate.
This product, the Amega Amwand, is one of those products that claims so many amazing things that it can do for you, but it does absolutely nothing.
NOTHING.
The existence of zero point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.
No device claimed to operate using zero point energy has been demonstrated to operate as claimed. No plausible description of a device drawing useful power from a source of zero point energy has been given. Thus, current claims to zero point energy-based power generation systems currently have the status of pseudoscience.
That means that this Amega Amwand is a total scam.
It is pseudoscience, fake, not what it claims to be.
Amega Global makes all kinds of products that claim to use zero point energy to help the body heal itself.
They make the Amwand for $304.00, the AmPendant in silver for $394.00, another AmPendant in Rose Gold for $404.00, and another AmPendant in bronze for $409.00.
They also make "food" that ranges in price from $52.00 up to $270.00.
They make all kinds of other products that claim to use this zero point energy, and they are selling them to people that are desperate to be free from pain, there are testimonials out there that claim this thing really works, but I can tell you after testing it on both myself and Mark for almost two full months, that it DOES NOT work.
I really feel the need to warn people about this new self care, help the body heal itself, scam.
I do not want to see anyone at all fall for this, and that's why I have used the name of it, Amega Amwand, as many times as possible so that it will get indexed in Google and other search engines, and be in the search results for it so that people will find this post (cross posted to KatScan as well) and learn that it is a total scam.
I feel very strongly the need to warn people so that they do not fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on any of these Amega Global products that will do absolutely nothing for them except remove hundreds of dollars from their bank accounts.
Please, if you or someone that you know suffers from chronic pain and have either been told about the Amega Amwand, or they read about it, and are thinking of buying the Amega Amwand, please, direct them to this post.
I would not ever lie to my readers, this product, the Amega Amwand, is a total scam, it does not work as it claims to.
I tried and tested the product 5 times per day for 30 minutes each time, for two months, and saw no noticeable improvement in pain relief or energy, or any signs of looking and feeling younger either.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam.
Back when I first received the Amega Amwand, I brought it with me to one of my pain management appointments so that I could get my doctor's opinion of it.
I took out the box and explained to him what the distributor Cheryl was selling to people at a cost of $304.00 and a promise that it could heal people's ailments and completely relieve pain.
He read the little pamphlet, looked at the wand very closely, and then he asked me if I had actually paid for this thing.
I told him no, of course not, and explained to him how I received it and what my plan to review it was.
He told me, and I quote,
"Kat, you have to use your websites to tell people about this. This is probably the single biggest medical scam that I've seen in the last five years, and believe me, I've seen a lot of them. If you have your blogs (he looked kinda confused on what a blog really is) and the power to reach as many people as possible, you absolutely must tell people the truth. And Kat, the truth is that this thing is 100% garbage. It is a lie packaged and sold to desperate people, people who are so desperate to be free from pain that they will do just about anything they can to get relief. You have the ability to help people not waste their time and their money. Use the power you have to do something good. If you just spare even one person from wasting their money and their time, then you've done something great. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I am going to go to the website and then email this to as many of my colleagues as I can, they need to know about this too and try to stop their patients from getting scammed if any of their patients happen to mention it or ask their doctors if they've heard of being healed by zero point energy."
When I got back home and was going back over the pamphlet and stuff that came in the box with the wand, I found the certificate of authenticity, and one thing that I noticed on this "Certificate of Authenticity" that comes in the beautifully padded and silk lined box, is the ultra fine print typed so freaking small that I had to get my jewelry making magnifying glass out in order to be able to read it.
On the very, very bottom of the back of the certificate of authenticity, it reads in super tiny fine print exactly as follows:
DISCLAIMER: These statements have not been evaluated by The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or physical condition.
These lying scammers know full well that this freaking magical "Amega Amwand" absolutely cannot treat, cure, or heal any ailment of physical condition.
They know that it cannot relieve pain, the number one claim that they use in their selling techniques!
The FDA won't approve this damn thing because they know that it's a total fraud, and these scammers admit, right there in super fine print, that this thing cannot do any of the things that they claim that it can!!
I will be updating this post on both of my blogs with new information or links to other articles about the Amega Amwand and what a total fraud it is, as I find or come across them.
If I find other reviews, I will link them, if I find video reviews, I will link to them as well, and when I see my doctor on Tuesday at 11am, I will be updating him about my "progress" after using it for two months.
**EDIT**
Added links on 6/22/2010
Here is a link to a Youtube video and a post about the Amega Amwand scam.
I am not a hamster, Boob product: Amega Amwand.
Amega Amwand: Medical Scam, at the blog I Am Not A Hamster.
Amega Amwand Is a Scam at Blahvert.
The comments on this post at a money making blog are quite interesting, especially one by someone named Chadi.
FTC disclosure;
I was not compensated in any way for this post.
I received the Amega Amwand for free to test it and review it, and I have to send it back.
It is not mine to keep.
There is absolutely no free product to keep, or compensation received for reviewing this product.
The opinions expressed here are my own, but some of the wording has been taken directly from the Amega Global websites where they either sell the product or hype the product to get people to become distributors of these products.
June 10, 2010
Jamba All Natural Smoothies product review.
I was recently given the opportunity to try the new make-at-home Jamba Juice All Natural Fruit Smoothies, I was sent a freezer pack containing the 3 all new make-at-home flavors.
There's Mango-a-go-go, Razzmatazz, and Strawberries Wild.
We've tried all 3 flavors, well the teens have, because I'm allergic to some different fruits, namely, strawberries.
The teens really liked them, and they were so so easy to make!
All you do is tear open the pouch, and dump it in your blender with just one cup of apple juice, and blend!
The first one that I made is the Razzmatazz, which is strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, and non-fat yogurt, and it's real fruit, chunks of real fruit, whole blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, you can actually see the real fruit, it's not a blended-up pouch of mush like some other make-at-home smoothies that I've tried, but actual fruit pieces!
I was very pleasantly surprised!
Once blended, each pouch makes 2 eight ounce servings, only 120 calories or less in each glass, so it was just enough for the teens to each have one big glass of a yummy and healthy smoothie.
The teens loved it!
I know that I am allergic to strawberries, I know they make me break out in hives, but something possessed me to get a straw and take just a few small sips out of Mark's smoothie.
A few hours later, I was completely covered in hives.
Head to toe.
Everywhere.
But the smoothie was really super tasty, I wish that I had been able to drink more of it, it was awesome tasting, but even just a few small sips, and BAM! super itchy hives. Hahaha!
But the important thing is that the teens loved them, they are really good for them, lots of healthy ingredients, and not bad on the price.
They retail anywhere from $2.99 to $3.29, and can be found in the frozen juice section at the grocery store.
I've already seen them on the shelves at Publix, and they are priced at $2.99, so I know that I can buy more of them for the teens.
If you like smoothies, or just want your kids to get more real fruit and antioxidants, and a full 100% daily dose of vitamin C, you can pick these up and make them for your kids.
I promise that they will love them and so will you, they are really super great tasting.
June 8, 2010
Nervously waiting.
Today is Mark's first day on the job, and I'm sitting here all nervous waiting on him to get done and come home.
I'm anxious to hear how it went, if he likes it, and how his back held up being on his feet all day long and stocking shelves etc.
He has his medicine with him, only one dose to get him through his shift, but he's not used to standing on his feet all day, lifting things, I'm nervous/worried that he's in a lot of pain right now and just trying to deal with it until it's time to clock out and come home.
He's usually sitting in a chair playing video games, or watching movies with me, not standing up and walking around for 8+ hours, not lifting 12 packs and stocking the shelves, so yeah, a nervous and worried mom because I know that pain he's dealing with, I used to have to work through that kind of pain.
*bites nails waiting*
In other news, the teen's father and I actually had the most pleasant, polite, and cordial conversation that we've had in 17 years, this morning.
He called because he didn't actually buy the ticket yet, or send the money order yet, he was calling to get full name, date of birth, and address, so that he could purchase the plane tickets today.
He called close to 10am, he asked for the information, I gave it, we politely talked about the cost of tickets and fees that airlines charge for minors flying alone.
Jet Blue considers minors to be 13 and under, and the airline that he was going with says that minors are 17 and under, so he was being charged extra fees for Sebastian flying alone.
I swear, I was really, truly polite, I wasn't biting or sarcastic, I held my tongue because this is something that Sebastian wants, and I want him to be happy, I want him to do this, to have this experience, so when he, their father, asked me for Sebastian's birth date, he didn't know it, he knew it was like a week or so ago, but he didn't know the date, and that really pissed me off, but I held, I held.
I know he has six kids, I know it must be hard to remember all of their birth dates, but to me, this is something he wants too, he wants Sebastian there, he should at least have tried to know the date, Great-Gram knows it, his sister, Aunt Heather, knows it, he could have asked them for the date if he didn't know it.
Know what I mean?
Am I wrong?
Am I asking too much by feeling that him not knowing his son's birth date, is just really wrong?
I didn't yell when I got off the phone, I was still being all calm, cool, and collected on the outside, but inside, I was frothing because of him not knowing Sebastian's birth date.
A parent should just know their child's birth dates, even if they haven't been a part of that child's life for many years, they should just know it, they should know the birth dates of all of the kids that they created.
In my opinion, it's what I think, and I could be wrong, and if I'm wrong, if people tell me that I'm wrong or asking too much, I'll admit it, but really, it hurt.
It hurt to know that he didn't know his birthday.
Today was a rough one for me because of the heat, it was just wicked hot out, I couldn't get cooled off even inside with the AC, even a shower didn't help me.
I needed to go to the store, so we just walked up when Mark had to go at 1pm, got what we needed and came home, but that whole walk, it felt like my heart was gonna beat right outta my chest.
I felt dizzy and light-headed the whole way there and back, and when we got back, I kicked off my sandals and laid on the couch for nearly 2 hours just trying to cool down, relax, and get my heart to stop beating so damn fast.
The store owner, Moe, said that I didn't look well when I got there, and I'm sure I didn't, I was sweating like I was a faucet and hose, my skin was all clammy, and I felt faint, so I'm sure that I looked un-well.
I really am hoping that the summer doesn't get too much hotter than it is, or I'll be spending the entire summer indoors.
The walk, it's just an eight minute walk there, eight minute walk back, but it felt like an eternity, I felt like I was going to pass out the whole walk back home.
I told Sebastian that if I started to go down, to push me toward the grass so I didn't hit my head on the cement sidewalk, I knew that there's no way he could catch me from falling, so I told him to push me toward the grass yards and at least it wouldn't hurt too bad.
Since being back home in the AC and it's night, it's cooled off a few degrees, I feel much better, but I need to remind myself to take my blood pressure meds every day, and I need to drink much more fluids.
I know that I don't ever drink enough water, and after today's experience, I know that I need to drink much more so it doesn't happen again.
Tell me if I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, I'll admit it, I'll say that I'm wrong, but it just really hurt my heart quite a bit because I love Sebastian so much, and his birthday is always important to him, he doesn't ever ask for anything, he just wants to know that people remember his birthday, he doesn't want to be forgotten, and so yeah, it hurt my heart, but if I'm wrong, I'll admit it.
June 7, 2010
He's got a job! He's got a job!
Mark got a job!
He will now be working up at the corner store, starts tomorrow at 1pm.
I am so happy for him to have a job!
He'll have spending money of his own, he'll be able to help contribute to the family food bill, and he'll be doing something useful with his time instead of sitting around here doing nothing but video game playing all summer until he starts classes in the fall.
This is totally awesome.
I helped him get the job, the store owner and I are friends, and he had to fire his last employee because he was stealing, so the owner asked me how old Mark was, if he was honest and hard working, and I said yes, he's a great kid, and he said ok, bring him here at 1pm tomorrow.
Yay!!
Also, can cats get hemorrhoids?
And if so, do they make hemorrhoid treatments for cats?
For any animals?
I'm asking because Nova the fat cat, keeps licking at her butt-hole and meowing loud like she's in pain.
I really don't feel like taking a closer look, but I think I'm going to have to.
I don't wanna.
Looking at a cat's butt is really, truly, absolutely, horrifyingly disgusting.
June 3, 2010
Letting him go.
DISCLAIMER
Before anyone asks or decides to make a judgment about me blogging too much information about my kids and their lives, Mark who is 18, and Sebastian who is 17, have read this post and both have agreed that it could published.
It was edited to their wishes which I have always respected when it comes to blogging about them.
Stress is a hell of a fat burner I tell you.
This is probably one of the biggest reasons that I am so stressed out and not sleeping well, having blood pressure issues constantly, etc.
It's killing me.
Remember how I posted about Sebastian spending a month with the teens father this summer?
After a lot of talking, arguing, crying, and more talking, I've decided to let him go.
It was not an easy decision at all, it's been extremely hard on Mark and I to even talk to Sebastian about it, but after a lot of talking not just with the teens, but with many family members and friends, it was decided that letting him go would be the best thing, for him.
He needs to go and see his father and learn for himself who his father is and get the answers to any and all questions that he may have about him, about things that happened, and maybe he'll get the truth, and maybe he won't.
Sadly, my money is on him not getting 100% truth.
The ticket has been bought and stuck in the mail, it's a round trip ticket, or supposed to be, and it should be in the mailbox sometime soon, by the middle of next week at the latest.
There are rules, lots and lots of rules, some of which are no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, no piercings, no tattoos, to be allowed to visit with his Ninny and Pop-pop, (his grandparents/my parents) and that he is NOT a babysitter there to take care of his little half-sister Sixx.
If a sitter is needed, someone else needs to do it, a different family member, or hire someone.
Sebastian is there to be with his father and be able to visit with his other relatives, he is not there as a free babysitter.
These rules and others, will be written down and given to him to give his father, if he comes back and I discover that any of them have been violated, there will be hell to pay.
I have full, legal custody, he only has visitation for 6 hours on Saturdays, he's lucky that I am letting Sebastian go, so my rules will be followed or there will be trouble.
Do I sound angry?
I am, but this is something that Sebastian has to do, I know that, it just kills me to let him go.
June 1, 2010
My baby turned 17.
Sebastian, my baby, turned 17 today.
He had to go to school today, it's the last week, the last day is Friday, so when I woke him up at 6am, I gently called out his name, I gently rubbed his back, he opened his eyes a little bit, and I sang happy birthday to him very quietly.
He let me sing the whole way through, all the while he was smiling, and when I finished, he sat up in his bed, thanked me, and then told me that he loved me.
His day at school went OK, some of his teachers remembered that it was his birthday and they gave him some special treats, a HUGE candy bar from one teacher, a free pass from another teacher to not have to do any of the last days of school grunt work some teachers like to do, (1 teacher had the students write out multiplication tables, another had them copy down 100 words from different letters of the dictionary, etc) and another teacher just let him play on the computer through the whole class.
When he came home, my sister called and had decided to take them all out to dinner and then do some video game shopping.
I did not go because A) there is not enough room in my sister's new car for her, me, both boys, and both of my nieces, and B) because I am on bed rest for blood clots in my ankles and feet again.
It started on Sunday night, and I thought if I rested, kept them elevated, that it would go away, but it did not, so I called my doc this morning, and he puts me on bed rest and to keep my feet elevated.
They are elevated right now too.
When I sit in my chair, I have this little table that is like thigh-high, it is like a small side table, and I use it as a foot stool when I am sitting here.
I sit like this all the time, my feet are always elevated when I am at my desk, my keyboard on my lap, it is a totally comfy position.
I am really hoping that the swelling goes down soon, and it should, the new blood pressure medicine, Triamterene, 37.5mg, has me peeing so much, that I will probably drop another 10lbs using it instead of any diet supplements.
Anyway, they went out to eat and then to Best Buy for a new video game.
He got Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce for their Xbox 360, from my sister, and then when I get paid later this week, I will be buying him Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires.
Both of the boys love those Dynasty Warriors games, they have played every single one except for these last two which Sebastian will now have this week.
They came home from eating out and shopping, and both Sebastian and Mark sat down and cracked open the new game and played right until Sebastian had to go to bed.
Tomorrow is the last full day of school, and then Thursday and Friday are half days, and I am really hoping that by then, all the swelling will be gone so that I can take Sebastian out for his birthday.
He told me he wants to go to Taco Smell to eat, and I will buy him the other Dynasty Warriors game, we will have a chocolate layer cake, and he will be a totally happy kid, excuse me, a totally happy young man.
Hard to believe, Sebastian is now 17 and Mark turns 19 on August 15th.
The time just flew by didn't it?
I started this blog when we moved here, Sebastian had just turned five years old when we moved here on June 3rd 1997.
He was just a small, wiggly five year old kid, and here he is now, a really tall deep-voiced 17 year old young man.
Time just flew right by me.
May 28, 2010
My teens are the awesome.
Ever since like last Thursday, not yesterday, but like Thursday the 20th, I've been sick and battling health issues again.
I'm not going into it all over again, you can read about it at KatScan if you want to, but I'm sorta starting to finally mend from that, but now tonight it's raining and so my back is killing me and my ankles are swelling up from blood clots again.
When they said, 'when it rains, it pours', they really must have meant that saying for me, because it's just been 1 thing after another since last week.
I'm like beyond fed up with my body at this point.
So anyway, I've been home all week now, mostly laying on the couch watching tv and movies, resting as much as I could stand to do like all of my doctors have all told me to do, and then my tv started acting all funky.
First, while watching a movie on Tuesday evening, Empire Records, the colors started fading in and out, black and white, then all funky and stripey during the brownie Gwar scene, so I checked a few other channels and they seemed to be ok, so I just chalked it up to being either the movie being old, or an error with the movie channel.
Then later that same day on another channel, it happened again.
And it kept happening until my tv set was showing absolutely nothing at all but black and white on every single channel.
*sigh*
I do have another tv set, it's the one that I was using before my sister had brought over this one that is now faded, and so I knew that I was going to need to go get it from my bedroom, haul it out here, and make the switch, but I physically just couldn't do it, so I just decided to deal with the black and white until I could do it later on when I felt like I could do it.
Here it is now Friday evening, and I still hadn't done it, I had just gotten to the point of I don't really care anymore because it has just been 1 of those weeks in my life where when I dared the made-up gods to just go ahead and send me just 1 more damn thing that they felt like throwing at me, and *poof*, my big 26inch tv went *poof*. ha ha
I decided to go and take a long, hot shower, hoping that it would at least calm me down, soothe me if it did absolutely nothing else at all, and so I went in there to stand in the hottest water that I could possibly stand, even allowing the tub to fill up over my ankles because they've started to swell up now too this evening, and I just stayed in there for oh, maybe 20 minutes or so.
I stayed in there until no matter how hot I turned the water, it was no longer getting hotter, but colder.
When I came out, I went to other other room, threw on some comfy clothes, and came back to sit in my chair.
That's when I looked up and noticed that my now all black and white 26inch tv was gone, and now in it's place, was Mark's Vizio 26inch widescreen LCD HDTV that he got for graduating last year.
I asked the teens, who were sitting here smiling, why they did that, it was their tv for playing their video games on, I have another tv in the other room.
They said they knew, and they went and got that one and hooked it up in their room to play video games on.
I asked them again why they did that, why didn't they just put my old tv out here and keep theirs, and Mark said that it was his tv to do with what he wanted, and he felt wicked bad for me because of the really super crappy week that I had, because all of my docs yelled at me and told me that I need to stay laying down as much as possible, and because I never sleep, because all I can do when I have insomnia and I'm being forced to lay down and behave myself, is to lay on the couch and watch tv and movies, so he decided that he wanted me to be able to watch tv and movies on a wicked nice tv for a change, that I deserved to have at least 1 nice thing this week, so he and Sebastian swapped out the tvs while I was in the shower.
I do have to admit, it is a really super nice tv to watch movies on.
My old tv worked really good for like the last 10 years, great picture and color quality, I never complained once about a movie looking bad on it, but yeah, this is a really super nice tv.
Mark told me that he'd rather I just keep it out here from now on too, as this is the room where we all watch movies together, and the other tv set is actually much better for playing video games on, he says.
I don't buy that at all.
Not for a single second.
I've seen him play Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, on the Vizio, and there's a big, massive, HUGE difference when playing video games on an old standard television set, and on one of the new LCD HDTV flat panel sets.
BIG DIFFERENCE.
I tried talking to him about it, tried talking him into swapping it back, it's his tv that he got as a present for graduating high school last May, it was given to him specifically so that when he played his video games, that they would look so super cool on it, and he said that he knows and agrees, games do look really super cool on it, but he said that he wanted me to have a really wicked nice tv to watch movies on for the next week or however long the doctors tell me to stay laying down and resting because I had such a really bad, totally sucky week.
He said I deserved to see all of the super gory details of a fave horror movie if one comes on that I liked, in the most awesome picture quality, that I should at least be able to enjoy myself a little bit while my docs force me to rest 24-7 even though they still haven't got a single clue as to why I should be being forced to rest.
He said that even though his back totally sucks too, he's going to see if the owner of the corner store up the street needs to hire anyone, and he'll get a job to try and help out financially around here, and if the owner says yes, he'll work his butt off for the guy.
He said that he's old enough to work any of the shifts alone too, because you only have to be 18 to legally ring up cig and alcohol sales.
He really wants to start pitching in financially around here, to help make it easier on me because he knows how difficult it is for me sometimes to do the work that I have to do, and because he sees just how hard I work to not just make sure that the bills are paid, but so that I can pay for all of the things that make them happy.
He said that he really wants to get a job, start helping to pay the bills, and then return all of the love and generosity that I give to them when I pay for their video games, game subscriptions, and all of the little tiny stuff like bottles of soda and bags of hot fries whenever I go to the corner store, and so he wants to be able to buy me my own LCD HD flat panel tv on sale some one of the days he earns enough pay.
You know, sometimes, teenagers can be real jerks, they can say things that really hurt your heart, they can shoot you the most painful looks, and they can say 90 million times that they will clean the cat's litter boxes and not do it, and then watch you do it like you should have been doing it yourself all along.
They can do and say a lot of things that make you wish they would age from toddler to adult in less than a year because the teen years are the hardest years that you'll ever face when you decide to have a kid, but then sometimes, they do something as simple as swapping out your old crappy box tv set for their nice one that they rightfully don't have to share with you at all, and it can be the nicest thing that's been done for you all month long.
And then they can just say that they want to get a job and pitch in on paying the bills, and that they want to help pay for all of the hundreds of dollars worth of food that they inhale every week, and that they want to buy you your own really nice tv set, and even if it doesn't ever happen, even if they do get a job but never buy that tv set, it's the fact that they said they wanted to do it, and because they said that you deserve it, that makes you feel like you got the best damn kids in the world.
Yeah, I know, this is all stupid and mushy sounding, and it's like wicked way long, but really, just swapping out the tv sets to surprise me while I was taking a shower, really made me happy after the week that I've had.
It's just like, wicked nice to know that they've been paying attention, they saw how hurt and upset I am, and they were at least trying to understand how this week has made me feel and they wanted to do something nice for me to try and make me feel better, and it did, it has.
It's been a very lonely and scary week, and they did one of the nicest and coolest things for me.
May 18, 2010
Take 2 and sleep late.
Sebastian came home from school today, went straight to his room, and on his way through, he asked for his migraine meds.
I met him in his room, gave him his meds, something to wash it down with, and then tucked him in.
He's been in bed ever since, just sleeping off his migraine.
Well, he did get up for about 2 hours or so, ate something, got another dose, and headed back to bed about 20 minutes ago.
I know it's really bad for him when he gets like that, tears in his eyes because it hurts so bad, and all he wants to do is lay in bed and sleep it off.
I've had a headache myself for the last hour or so, it's because I didn't get any sleep at all last night, and now I've been up all day and night, I'm totally wiped out and need to try and get some sleep soon before my headache turns into a migraine.
I've just got a couple more things to take care of around the house, and then make sure that Mark is ok, and then I can try to get some sleep.
I hope that when I do try, that I do actually get some sleep, it's impossible to keep functioning normally for days on end without any sleep.
Plus, I'd like to look somewhat rested, I have a doc appointment in the morning, and I know that if I go in with huge bags under my eyes, he's gonna make me go to the lab for blood tests to check my white cell counts again.
The last time I had a battle with insomnia like this and went to see him, even though I explained why I was so tired and looked so crappy, he made me go to the lab anyway, he called ahead and told them to expect me so I didn't even have a choice.
I hate going to the lab like that because it's the middle of the day, and there's usually a half dozen or more people in there waiting, and the techs go so so slow.
It's a big pain in the butt.
I don't even want to get into the hassle it becomes when my blood tests come back.
Ugh.
May 18, 2010
My gift to myself in 2010 will be...
This EdgeStar Portable Countertop dishwasher.
I've once again been awake all night long, insomnia, it's just 1 of the things that I have to deal with, but I sometimes feel like I'm going crazy because of it.
I actually caught myself talking to myself in great detail late last night over the dishes.
So, I was up all night, and every time I walked into the kitchen to get a drink or something to snack on to help me get through the super long night time hours of total quiet in the house, I saw the sink.
Both sides of my kitchen sink are once again full of dishes.
Cups, silverware, bowls.
We use paper plates because I hate doing the dishes, so we use paper plates for all meals that need to be plated, but that still leaves all of the cups, silverware, and bowls, that need to be washed by hand.
I'm sick of doing the dishes.
I do the damn dishes every single day, and there are always more.
It seems like I just get them all done, and there's already more piled up in the sink again.
So in between all of my trips to get drinks, use the bathroom, and yell at myself about the dishes, I decided that this year I'm getting myself a dishwasher at some point during the remainder of 2010.
I need one of these portable countertop dishwashers because our kitchen is really small and there's really no room for 1 of the bigger models on wheels to be moved in and out of the kitchen, so I started hunting online around 2 or 3am and doing comparison shopping, and I found this 1 on Buy.com, and even though it's not on sale, it's regular price is totally doable.
At some point this year.
$268.00 which includes the shipping price, is really totally doable.
I could just put all of the cups, silverware, and bowls, into it and run it instead of me standing at the sink for 20-30 minutes and ending up with my back hurting from leaning over the sink washing them all by hand.
The teens do their part, they do the dishes when I ask, but after all of these years of washing the dishes by hand, I just can't take it anymore!!
I do not want to have to keep washing dishes by hand, ever again!
I will have this dishwasher before the end of the year, I will.
It will be mine and I will never wash a dish by hand again!
May 14, 2010
Bug season.
Yup, it's bug season here in Florida, for all kinds of bugs.
We have cats, so we have to deal with flea season which is really bad so far this year.
I've had to treat all 4 cats every single month with the strongest flea killer that I could find, Carmine had to be bathed and treated twice it was so bad for him.
It's also spider season, and worst of all, roach season.
Specifically, German roaches.
These guys.
Once summer hits, these little suckers come out in force and you have to get forceful right back at them to keep them from overtaking your house.
See, they will increase their activity as the temperature increases, and decrease it as the temperature decreases, so once it gets hot outside and inside, the more active they get.
And they love to feed.
Foods that have high levels of sugar, starch or grease seem to be preferred.
They love pet food too, so it's highly recommended that you remove your pets food dishes as soon as your pets are done eating.
These nasty critters are big eaters and will gorge themselves routinely every 24 hours.
I've already had to buy a huge pack of Raid roach baits because I spotted one, and where there's one, there's many, many more.
I will be stocking up on them every chance I get to get us through the whole summer.
I've checked out the prices in stores and online, and even though Buy.com doesn't have a lot of roach killer products yet, I even checked to see if they had any on sale, and while they don't, I'll keep checking over the summer months to see if I can get any good deals.
I'm going shopping at one of those big warehouse stores later today with my sister, and I'm going to see if they have any roach killer there, and what the prices are, and if the prices are good, I'll be picking some up.
Like I said, if you see one, it means that there are many more that you haven't seen, so you have to take action quickly or they will breed and multiply, and before you know it, your entire house is totally overrun with them.
May 13, 2010
Here in my car, where the image breaks down .
I've been up all night again, insomnia is just sooo much fun, I totally recommend that everyone try it at least once. /sarcasm>
The only good thing about having insomnia is that I'm wide awake when Sebastian gets up for school, I'm not all tired and wanting to go back to bed after waking him up, which makes him feel lonely and stuff.
It gives the 2 of us some mommy/Sebastian time even if it is only about 35-45 minutes, it's really nice to spend the time with him and talking about whatever is on his mind.
I promised him a few days ago that I would go through all of the emails that he's sent me from school, from his digital design class, save all of the pictures, art, that he's made, and then post my favorite ones to my blog to show everyone.
I'm going to try and do that today, no guarantees that I will get that post done because I've got a wicked lot to do, but I will try.
But here's one of my faves that he made this year, and the painting that he did in the 4th grade that I still have framed and hanging in my dining room.
Both of these are clickable for bigger.
I LOVE that painting!
To think, if I hadn't gone to school that afternoon to pick him up, it would have ended up in the trash.
The teacher was throwing away all of the stuff that the students hadn't taken home, and he didn't bring it home because he didn't think that I would like it.
I loved it the second that I saw it, it's huge too, poster size, so I brought it home and put it in an awesome frame, and it's been hanging in my dining room ever since.
Anyway, he's off to school and not too happy about it.
He and I had to do some homework last night for one of his classes, I can't even recall the name of it, some theory of living, or economics of living, something something of living, and we had to get together a list of all a person's expenses when they first move out on their own.
They had to be realistic about it, base it on their life and what they think they will be earning, how much they will be able to afford for everything, and so we had to make lists of apartments that he could afford, how much his utilities would be, and get a list of car insurance companies, pick the kind of car he wants to be able to drive, figure out how much his car payments will be, and then figure out how much his insurance might be, and which company to go with, all kinds of stuff.
We worked on it for quite awhile, like 2 and half hours, just making the lists, budgeting, it drove him absolutely nuts, and that's when he said he wasn't moving out until he graduated college and had a really, really god job and could afford everything, because looking at how much everything was going to cost, was just way too much so he was gonna stay with me.
Maybe even forever. Hahaha
I think we did a really good job on his homework, I can't wait to find out what grade he (we) got.
We worked hard on it looking everything up, having to figure out the price of utilities and everything based on apartment size, amount of water used, all that stuff, all the stuff I do every month when I budget the bills, and so he should get a good grade, I based a lot of it on what we actually use.
The only stuff I was guessing at was car payments and insurance costs because I don't have either of those.
Continue Reading �
May 11, 2010
Growing old before my own eyes.
I didn't blog on Monday, I was tired, and not just tired, but exhausted tired.
I'm not sleeping well again, insomnia, restless sleep when I do sleep, gray hairs are sprouting up every single time that I look, and I'm finally starting to look as old as my body feels.
I actually sat here on Monday afternoon reading up on sybervision wrinkle cream reviews.
I read about 7 reviews on that page, I read a bunch on another page, I read about products on their own actual websites, just tons and tons of reading about wrinkle creams because I am not enjoying all these new wrinkles around my eyes and the ones on my forehead.
I must have stared at my face for an hour or so in the bathroom in the early morning hours yesterday, from every angle, scrunching and un-scrunching my face, thinking how much I've physically aged in the last few months.
I'm not liking it.
I spent close to an hour on the phone with the vice principal this morning, didn't really get that far but some of the absences were looked at and investigated, and found to have been marked wrong, incorrectly, just as I had stated they were over and over.
Just knowing that I felt better, but there is still so much they have to fix in these last 17 or so days of school left for the year.
I still don't have answer what I'm supposed to do when he has a severe migraine attack, they are still trying to figure out what to do.
I told them to hurry up, there's not too many days of school left, and if gets one soon, there needs to be an answer.
They said they know and are trying to figure that out.
May 9, 2010
Messy feet and a blind kitty?
Ever since my feet and ankles have been swelling up as bad as they do from the blood clots, my feet are a total mess.
When the swelling starts, the skin gets all stretched out, red, tight, and the more they swell, the worse it gets, and then the skin starts cracking.
Once the swelling goes down, my feet are in even worse shape if you can imagine.
The skin is totally dried out, cracked, and peeling, it's so gross.
I've tried to prevent this by using different lotions which are supposed to retain the moisture in the skin, I do this at the very first sign of the swelling, and even though it hurts like crazy to even touch my feet, I continue to put lotion on during the whole terrible time.
None of the lotions that I've tried have worked, and I've used quite a few.
Cocoa butter, shea butter, lotions with aloe vera, vitamin E, all kinds of stuff, and nothing at all has worked.
My feet are totally disgusting.
So next time I get a few extra bucks to spare, I'm going to see if Buy.com puts the as-seen-on-tv stuff, Heel Tastic, on sale.
Heel Tastic is supposed to really heal the dry cracked skin on heels and feet.
It's supposed to totally fix this dry, cracked-skin problem on people with chronic dry, cracked-skin, and have had the problem for a long time, and nothing else has ever worked.
People like me.
So after I get some extra money and I buy it, I'll use it and review it.
I really hope that it works.
I cannot stand my feet anymore, I cannot stand looking at them, feeling them, it's so so gross!
_______________________________
**Note. NOT a recent picture of Kali.
Does anyone know if old kitty cats can go blind?
I'm really starting to think that Kali is going blind.
Her eyes look kind of cloudy, sorta foggy looking, and she's been over-the-top starving for affection and attention.
She is following all of us around 24-7, trying to sit and lay on us, on our keyboards, she is never more than 2 feet away from these days.
And for a cat that never made a single sound during her first 10 years of life, (she's 13 now) and then when she did, it was this tiny little barely audible mew, she is now meowing all of the time, loudly.
I love her and am very concerned for her health and well being, and I'm afraid that she's going blind, maybe even a combination of blind and deaf, because of how loudly she's meowing these days.
I have felt her all over, there's no lumps indicating any type of noticeable tumors or anything, so I really think this whole starving for attention and affection thing is because she's losing her sight and maybe even her hearing.
Right now, she is on the arm of the couch after I refused to let her lay on my lap while i sit here and try to type, and she keeps rubbing her head on my arm, and meowing at me.
Does anyone have any experience with a blind, possibly blind and deaf, cat or other pet?
May 8, 2010
Playing a mean game of catch-up!
As I've said, my life has been in a state of 'what the hell' for about a week and a half now, give or take a few days, probably give rather than take.
I have so much to do, so much to take care of, and I need to be very careful as I have some health issues that could be affected by too much stress, and I need to watch what I eat, and I know that I definitely won't need to take any fat burners because I've barely been eating anything at all during this whole mess of stuff going on in my life, but I do need to eat, and eat a little better.
I'm trying here and that's all that I can do at the moment.
I had a a missing friend/suicide scare, and I'm dealing with Mark's ever progressing genetic spine deformities which may be getting resolved, because Mark's friend Jeff's Grandparents are very close personal friends with Congressman Vern Buchanan, and they've personally spoken with him regarding the situation with Mark, Medicaid, the doctors, all of the problems, and he asked for my phone number, they gave it to him, and he's going to call me directly and speak with me about it and what I need to have happen to help my son.
Not getting my hopes up, but taking a deep breath. *inhale/exhale deeply*
And then all of the school crap with Sebastian, which will be resolved on Monday, hopefully.
As I said, I called and spoke to the vice principal, she threatened Sebastian with expulsion, me with court for failure to provide him an education, and she said that she was going to call me back, but she did not call me back.
That was on Thursday morning when we spoke, 11:34am to be exact, so when I didn't get a call back, I emailed her later on that night at 5:26pm.
I figured that she'd get my email on Friday morning, and either email me back or call me back.
She did neither, so I decided to step it up a bit and I emailed her again, and this time, I CC'd the principal and the superintendent.
I included the principal, because I'm pretty damn sure that the vice principal cannot decide completely on her own to expel a student and take a parent to court.
I'm pretty sure that the principal has to be involved in the decision, and even though I know that the principal already hates me because of all of the problems that we had with Mark being able to graduate with his class last year, I'm feeling pretty positive that she has absolutely no idea what's going on in regards to Sebastian and this threat of expulsion.
And I included the superintendent because of the way that the truancy worker spoke to me, she's his boss, they both work out of the school board building up at The Landings, she really needed to be made aware of how the truancy worker speaks with parents, and also, she needed to be made aware of what was happening with the vice principal and the threats made against Sebastian and myself.
I sent off that very detailed email last night, Friday, May 7, 2010 at 11:43 PM, and I explained every single thing that I know about Sebastian's absences, about the teacher who kept marking him as absent/skipping a class he was no longer even registered in since December, about the dates that we were in Maine where the principal herself had verbally told me in a call that I made to her a week before we left, that she would personally excuse those dates as long as I sent in a detailed letter explaining when we were leaving, returning, and the reason for our trip, which I wrote that same night that I had called and spoke with her and Sebastian took it in the very next day and personally handed it to her, and I wrote out in great detail, the situation with the zero tolerance policy and Sebastian's migraine medications, and everything that I had done to try and get the school to allow him to take his medications at school and was denied every single time.
I wrote out in great detail what happens when Sebastian suffers from 1 of his severe migraine attacks, what happens when he takes his medications on schedule, and what happens to him if he doesn't.
I ended my email by repeating the vice principal's words to me, "If Sebastian misses even 1 more day this year, he will be expelled immediately and you will be taken to court for failure to make sure that your child gets an education", and again, I asked for someone, now 1 of the 3 of them, to tell me exactly what I am supposed to do if Sebastian gets a severe migraine attack on 1 of the last days of school because of the threat of expulsion.
The vice principal couldn't be bothered to call me back on Thursday, and she couldn't be bothered to answer my first email that I sent on Thursday at 5:26pm, but she is obviously very upset about the email that I sent on Friday night to her, the principal, and the superintendent, because at 7:02am today, she finally replied to me, to the email to the 3 of them, with this very upset and almost threatening sounding statement,
"This information regarding my involvement is not entirely accurate! I will make contact on Monday.
Please be aware that all mail sent to and from Sarasota County Schools is subject to the public records law of Florida."
She sent that reply to all of us, and I sent back the following reply to all,
"I am fully aware that all emails sent to and from Sarasota County Schools are subject to the public records law of Florida.
When I did not receive a call back, as promised by you, I felt that I needed to get in contact with you again, and include others, as this is a very important issue that needs to be addressed immediately as school ends on June 4, 2010, and if he suffers another severe migraine attack, I need to know what I am supposed to do."
I'm not afraid of the public records law of Florida, but obviously she is.
I'm going to make sure that on Monday, I have a way to record or document the entire conversation when she calls, and I'm going to let her know that I'm recording or documenting it.
I can put the phone on speaker, and I'm a hella fast typer, I'll just type out everything she says to me word for word so that she can't say that she never said something.
I mean, she's trying to say that her involvement in this is "not entirely accurate!", but what she doesn't know is that as soon as she threatened Sebastian with expulsion the 1st time, I began typing out everything that she said after that, I knew that I needed to document what she saying, so I did.
I had my email open and I just began composing a new email, and when the call was over, I emailed it to myself.
What I posted, is exactly what she said because I had copied it from the email that I composed while on the phone with her.
I don't type in shorthand, but I can type 80 to 95 words per minute, and maybe some of you have guessed that at the sometimes long entries that I type. (like this one, sorry)
I just get going sometimes and just keep going, plus, I've worked in a customer service position for Georgia Power and Gas, (yup, GP&G customer service is located in Sarasota, Florida) where we had to be able to type 35 wpm minimum in order to even get hired for the job.
I filled out the application and was taken over to a computer to take the typing test where several others were also taking it.
Each person was given just 2 tries to meet the 35 wpm minimum.
I heard a few people start cussing, someone slam their chair and and then storm out, and then I sat down to take my test.
We had a piece of paper with about 3 paragraphs of something typed on it, (can't recall after all these years) and we had to type out the entire thing as fast as we could with a minimum of 4 typos and spelling mistakes.
I got myself into a good seating position, got my hands and arms comfy, (knuckles cracked) and I clicked the start button.
I typed out the 3 paragraphs in just under 1.5 minutes, only 2 spelling mistakes, and my speed was clocked at 84 wpm.
I was hired on the spot, so yeah, typing what someone is saying word for word, is something I can easily do and will always do if I feel that I may need to have proof of something said at a later date.
"Not entirely accurate!"
Yeah, that ain't gonna fly with me.
You said it, you meant it, now deal with the consequences of what you so courageously yelled at me.
May 8, 2010
Despite all the bad, there were some moments of good.
I've had quite a really bad time for the last week, week and a half, I still have 2 posts in draft that honestly, I don't even know if I'm going to publish now.
They are things that I wanted to say, but after some thought, I'm just not so sure now that I want to say them anymore.
Anyway.
I am always entering contests on a lot of my friends blogs that I read, and I won a few of those contests sometime last week.
First, Jenn, aka Five Dollar Shake, had a contest to win a t-shirt from Crazy Dog t-shirts.
I won, and then chose a shirt that, well, just really does suit me.
I think you'll agree. *wink*
I received the shirt and absolutely love it, so thank you Jenn and Crazy Dog T-shirts!
Click here to follow Crazy Dog T-shirts on Twitter, and click here to follow Five Dollar Shake on Twitter.
Then Jenn at In My Bag, had a giveaway for a Tungsten ring from Tungsten Rings Online, valued at $120, and I won that too!
I chose this Womens Tungsten 6mm Dome Wedding Ring, yeah yeah, wedding ring, blah blah, I just like the way that ring looks.
It's very clean, simple, and it's both catch and scratch resistant, meaning it will never snag on a sweater or any kind of fabric, and it will never get scratched during all of the sometimes really crazy things that I do with my hands.
It also comes with a Lifetime Warranty which is fantastic because of all of the sometimes really crazy things that I do with my hands. Hahahaha!
Thank you to both Jenn and Tungsten Rings Online so much for this giveaway, and once I get the ring, I will happily post a pic and a review of it!
Click here to follow Jenn on Twitter.
Tungsten Rings Online does not have a Twitter account, yet.
Sebastian was surfing around the net on their computer one day last week, and he found a contest to win some pull up bars like this one, the contest is now closed, but because you had to be 18 to enter it, he asked me and I entered on his behalf.
He's hoping that my good luck at winning contests will rub off and he'll win it, he really wants to start building up his upper body strength after what happened.
May 6, 2010
Sarasota County school system can kiss my ass.
I was writing up my post last night, I kept getting interrupted, it's in draft, it's ok, trust me, a post in draft is probably the best damn thing going at the minute.
Because of Sarasota County's Zero Tolerance Policy against drugs, what you see above which includes OTC drugs of any kind including Tylenol, Advil, and oh heaven forbid, a prescription medication for migraines.
Sebastian has missed some school, but I have sent him with a note the very next day, as the school tells us to do, every single time he has a migraine and has had to miss a day here and there for it.
We went through this last year, and seriously debated doing the ol' cough and swallow so he wouldn't miss any days of school at all.
In yesterday's mail, I received a letter from the truancy officer for Sarasota County.
The letter states that Sebastian has missed 87 days of school this year.
He has not.
From the first day back in January after Christmas break, until about 3-4 weeks ago, a certain teacher was intentionally marking him as skipping her 7th period class.
He wasn't skipping her class, he transferred out of it before Christmas break, but apparently, no one notified the teacher, so she marked him as absent from her class every single day, and those missed classes got marked as unexcused, and those absences now count against his absences for the year, so for a total of 87 FULL DAYS MISSED, out of 156 full-time class days.
I called the school, spoke to Dr. Moore, the vice principal in charge of attendance, and she said if Sebastian misses even 1 more day, she's expelling him and making sure that I go to court for failure to make my child get an education.
I asked her what I am supposed to do if he has a severe migraine and because of the zero tolerance policy, he cannot take his prescription meds every 4 hours as prescribed, nor can he have any Tylenol or Advil to even try to fight the migraine off so he doesn't miss school, what am I supposed to do Dr. Moore? Tell me what I'm supposed to do? Send him to school suffering with a migraine that blinds him and every sound makes him feel as though his head is going to explode, please tell me what I'm supposed to do, what would you like me to do Dr. Moore?
Her answer to me was "I have other important things to deal with, but if he misses even 1 more day, he's expelled, and you will be going to court."
Click.
She hung up.
I am so so upset right now, I can barely breathe.
I've been crying non-stop since this morning being called a liar, (the liar thing has to do with this as well, but it's a long story, and I am so fucking upset I just don't even want to type anymore right now) and my blood pressure is through the roof.
My friend showed up here when she called just to say hi, and I could barely even speak, so she brought over her cuff and my BP is 162 over 101, probably the highest it's been in months, and I'm so fucking upset, I can't get myself calmed down, this situation is a huge mess, they won't correct the wrong amount of days absent, they are making threats, and last night, my ankles and feet started to swell up bad, but now they are like swollen to super size and are extremely painful because they are blood clots, and because my BP is up racing, the blood clots are just building up even more rapidly than normal.
I'm so lost on what the fucking hell I'm supposed to do!
What the fuck am I supposed to do!!!
May 1, 2010
His fears and worries.
Mark sent me an email around 4am this morning when he couldn't sleep.
I asked if I could post his email, he shrugged his shoulders, said yeah.
"Hey Mom, we don't talk much about things that bother us. It's just the way we are.
I'm worried about you and me.
For every passing day I get further scared of what is coming and what is not.
I am scared that even If I did college, even if I did find some sort of employment, and whatever else, it would be for nothing. The doctor refuses to respond to us and with my back in pain the way it is, it's a constant reminder of what my life is, and watching you, what my life forever will be.
I'm really sorry if this email upsets you, but I just wanted to get this off of my chest.
I love you Mom.
I love how much you are fighting for me.
I love that no matter how much pain you are in, you are fighting for me anyway, and then I worry about you and how much you're hurting.
This whole thing scares me Mom, all of it.
I just needed to tell you this.
I just needed to tell you that I love you and I'm so proud of you for all of it, for all that you do and try to do.
I so wish that I could make it easier for you, for me, for all of us, I hate seeing how hard you work at this, at fighting for me to get a doctor to help me, and they don't, and then I hear you cry, and I know that I can't do anything at all to help you.
I just need you to know that it matters to me, it matters so much Mom.
I don't always say thank you or I love you, but I do, I love you and I just wanted you to know that, to know I love you and thank you for all of it."
I think I cried for about an hour reading that this morning.
I went in Sebastian's room after he left for school, buried my head in his pillows, and just cried.
I wish I could fix Mark, I wish I could take it all away from him, his pain, his fear, his worries.
I wish so much that I could make it all better.
He thanks me?
He thanks me??
I'm the one who thanks him, I'm the one who has every ounce of pride the world over to have him as my son, he's far too awesome for me to even put into words.
April 30, 2010
I'm tired of being a medical test in progress.
I have serious medical issues, I've never lied about them, and I know that I complain too much about them, but one of the things that drives me absolutely batsh*it insane, is the amount of drugs that my docs try on me in order to get some sort of result.
I spent Sunday afternoon in the ER, from probably noon-ish sometime, until about 6 pm.
I was completely dehydrated, again, after not being able to eat or drink for about 5 days due to whatever went in came right back out.
Rapidly.
So 3 bags of fluids, some Zofran, and dilaudid was pumped into me over the course of about 5 hours.
The doc had ordered my nurse to set the fluid bags on high drip, and every time she changed the bag, to inject more Zofran and dilaudid.
I felt tons better about halfway through the send bag, but they kept going because the pinch skin test was still not functioning properly.
The skin test is when they pinch a small pit of skin on the back of your hand, hold it for about 5 seconds, and see how fast it drops back down and even with the rest of your skin.
It didn't drop down fast enough, so more fluids got pumped in.
I had to pee so bad, Oh man did I ever have to pee, and they wanted me to use one of those female urinals, but I just can't, I cannot pee laying down in a bed into a bucket.
I insisted they unhook me or the iv machine from the wall, and let me hobble over to the privacy bathroom
After the nurse hemmed and hawed a bit, the supervisor nurse came over and helped me get to the bathroom.
Then that doc sent me home with some Promethazine.
Promethazine is used to prevent motion sickness, and treats nausea and vomiting or pain after surgery.
It is also used as a sedative or sleep aid.
And he also gave me a script for 20 Percocet t10/325 for the sheer amount of discomfort that I was in due to days of agonizing pain from the constant throwing up and other fun stuff.
I stuck it out as long as long as I possibly could on those 2 drugs since Sunday night, but neither of them were doing what they were supposed to do, I was still puking my guts out, and still puking outta my ass, just about every 20 minutes.
I couldn't take it anymore, and nether could the teens.
I was left a HUGE note on the table for when I woke up, to call my pain doc or they would.
They being Mark and Sebastian.
I made the call because the teens have been absolutely amazing to me, with me, for all of these past years dealing with all of this stuff, they really are going to grow up to be some fantastic young men.
I called my doc's office before they even opened this morning, I called around 7am, they open at 9am, and so I left him a message a begging "Please oh dear doc, please help me, I'm dying! telling him what was going on still. I haven't been able to eat or drink since April 21st, and it was still continuing, please for all that is right and holy in this world, please help me!"
So the doc called in some of the Zofran that the ER had given me, that stuff did work after just 2 doses at the hospital.
He also called in some 10mg Diazepam.
In case you don't know, Diazepam is the generic name for Valium
Diazepam is used for the management of anxiety disorders or for the short-term relief of symptoms of anxiety. Diazepam may also be used to relieve agitation, shakiness, and hallucinations during alcohol withdrawal and relieve certain types of muscle spasms. It may also be used to treat seizures, insomnia, and other conditions as determined by your doctor.
Diazepam may also be used for other purposes not listed in this medication guide.
It got called in to the pharmacy around 9-9:30am when their office opened, I was able to go pick it up around 11:30am after mark won't up so I wouldn't have to go alone, we came back came home, and then took 1 of each, I tried to eat, I tried to do drink, and then promptly passed out for the next 3 hours.
I finally feel somewhat normal except that I'm under the ever-so dashing Prince Valiums spell.
Just since taking 1 dose of the charming Prince Valium's spell, I have encountered almost every single one of the following side effects,.
I've bolded every singe one that I've experienced just since this morning, just since taking just 1.
* confusion, unusual thoughts or behavior;I had absolutely no idea what day or time it was upon waking up.
* unusual risk-taking behavior, decreased inhibitions, no fear of danger;
* depressed mood, thoughts of suicide or hurting yourself;
* hyperactivity, anxiety, agitation, hostility; Oh, my poor boys. I yelled at them for absolutely no reasons whatsoever.
* double vision, hallucinations;
* weak or shallow breathing;
* feeling like you might pass out;
* muscle twitching, tremor;
* fever, chills, body aches, flu symptoms;
* jaundice (yellowing of the skin or eyes); or
* urinating less than usual or not at all. Holy crap! I really need to pee!
Less serious Diazepam side effects may include:
* drowsiness, tired feeling; Just how many 15 minute naps can a person take over the course of 6 hours?
* dizziness, spinning sensation;
* blurred vision; this is no fun
* sleep problems (insomnia), nightmares;
* muscle weakness, lack of balance or coordination; Mark, my son, asked me if I was drunk
slurred speech; Same as above, was I drunk.
* nausea, vomiting, constipation;
* headache, memory problems; freaking make it stop!
* drooling or dry mouth; So attractive to drool all over your pillow.
* skin rash; or
* loss of interest in sex.
_________________________________
Seriously.
I'm so sick of being sick, sick of all of the damn drugs, since of ruining my body even further because of all of the drugs.
This is beyond ridiculous now!!
While I was at the ER on Sunday, they took about a half dozen vials of blood from me, and the doc said that if he found anything serious or even just concerning, he was going to call me and have me come back in,
Ill bet that the white cell counts are through the roof, and he'll be freaking out thinking it's cancer again.
It does feel like though that something is seriously wrong with me all of the time, like I should be more worried than I already am, and so yeah, maybe it's time to try one of those universal life insurance quote places that hopefully doesn't have an age limit, and if they do, a no-existing medical condition clause so that Ic can't be turned away.
The very last thing that I want is for my sons and family to find the money to take care of my remains.
Cremation is cheaper, but it's still a lot whole than SSDI pays out.
April 25, 2010
Big boys and aerobeds.
I still haven't posted much about our trip to Maine to visit all of the relatives, and I was just checking out what Buy.com has on sale this week, when it totally reminded me of what happened at Great-Gram's house.
Great-Gram lives in a seniors only apartment complex, they are all 1 bedroom - 1 bathroom -1 floor, side by side apartments, with 4 apartments to a row, about 16 total apartments up in Standish Maine.
Whenever we go to stay with her, Great-Gram insists on taking the couch, I always tell her that I'll take the couch, I actually sleep better on her couch than her bed, but she insists on me taking her bed, and the teens each take an air mattress with 1 of them in the bedroom with me, and the other in the living room with her.
Great-Gram doesn't get a lot of people staying with her as much anymore, the kids and grandkids are all mostly grown up, so it had been a long time since anyone has needed to sleep on the air mattresses.
When Great-Gram and the teens got the air mattresses out of her closet and had begun to blow them up that first night, neither of them would inflate.
Great-Gram and the teens tried for about an hour to get either of them to inflate and when they wouldn't, she called her daughter Sherri, and then Aunt Sherri sent Uncle Jimmy down to Standish with their air mattress.
Their air mattress wouldn't inflate either, and so Sebastian slept in the queen-sized bed with me, and Great-Gram and Mark got every single blanket that they could find in her closet and piled them up 1 on top of each other on the floor in an attempt to make it as comfortable as possible for Mark to sleep on. (he didn't want to sleep in the bed with me because he's a kicker and he didn't want to kick and hurt me)
The next morning after we had all woken up and had breakfast (except Mark) and made ourselves look presentable, Great-Gram had us all pile in the car and head on down to North Windham to go to Wal*Mart and buy a new air mattress.
We only needed to buy 1 new air mattress because Heather and Kristina (Heather's fiance) have an air mattress that they were going to let us borrow for the week.
Kristina was going to bring it down in the afternoon after Sullivan got off the school bus sometime around 3pm or later, so off we went to Wal*Mart.
Great-Gram found a nice big air mattress kind of like this Aerobed, but a twin sized one.
We also picked up some extra D-cell batteries because the pump that the air mattress comes with uses batteries and Great-Gram wasn't sure that she had enough of them, or if the ones that she did have were any good anymore.
Then Great-Gram insisted that we go to McDonald's for lunch, it was about 11am and time for lunch, and Mark never eats breakfast so he was definitely hungry, so we all went to McDonald's and then to Hannaford's so that Great-Gram could buy more food that I kept telling her not to buy because while the teens do have big appetites, there was already quite a bit of leftovers in the fridge that needed to be eaten.
Both Great-Gram and my Mom bought a ton of food and cooked enough food for an army, and the teens and I tried to eat as much of the leftovers as we possibly could so that nothing went to waste, (I hate wasting food because wasting food is wasting money) and by doing that, we all put on some weight.
We went back home to Great-Gram's house, put all of the groceries away, and then tested out the new air mattress to make sure that we didn't need to turn around and take it back for another one.
It inflated in about 2 minutes, yay!
In the afternoon, Kristina came over with Sullivan and their air mattress, we tested to make sure that 1 still worked, it did, and then they stayed and hung out with us until Heather got done at work, and then they all stayed and we got to have a nice visit until about dinner time.
Neither of the teens is playing with Sullivan and the action figures in this picture, and that's because as soon as they saw my camera, they both jumped up and sat on the couch so there wouldn't be any evidence of them playing with the action figures.
Ya know, they are 16 and 18, they don't want to be seen playing with the "little kid toys", but trust me, they were both down on the floor playing with Sullivan.
Sullivan loves to play with his cousins and the action figures, it's all he could talk about since Heather told him that we were coming up for a long visit, when would he be allowed to go play with his cousins, he even asked if he could he have a day off of school to play with his cousins because of how rarely we go up for a visit.
He (Sullivan) loves Mark and Sebastian, he tries so much to be like them, like the big boy cousins, he's only 8 years old, but he wants to be just like the big boys.
On the Friday night before we were heading back to my parents house for the next week until it was time to fly home on Easter Sunday, we all went out to eat at this awesome restaurant in Cornish called Stone Ridge.
Sullivan wants to be like the big boys so much that when they ordered the never-ending ribs plate, Sullivan ordered it too.
The ribs the teens got were huge, and they got a lot of them on the first plate.
Mark was the only 1 who finished his first plate and got the 2nd plate, but the waitress was really nice and gave each of the boys, including Sullivan, another order of the ribs in take-out boxes to take home.
Sullivan thought he was so cool getting take-home ribs just like the boys, he talked about it all the way home.
I do have a few more things to post about our trip to Maine, I'll get to them as the days go by.
April 23, 2010
Dropping the weight we put on while in Maine.
When we went home to Maine to visit everyone, both Great-Gram and my Mom, fed us huge meals every single day, there were leftovers on top of leftovers stacked up in both of their refrigerators.
Now don't get me wrong, we totally loved every single thing that they cooked for us, but oh man, we were so stuffed after every single meal.
All 3 of us put on quite a few pounds while we were there, I put on about 12 pounds.
Yikes!!
But since being back at home, we've all started getting back to our normal eating habits and losing the weight we put on.
I've managed to lose the whole 12 pounds that I put on and another 7 pounds without having to use my usual diet supplement that I used to take to help me lose weight.
It really works too, I absolutely love it and when my friend Shell emailed me about it the other night, I gave her the name of it and told her how she should take it, and that it works if you remember to take it every day.
I used to buy it at my old pain doctor's office, he highly recommended it to his overweight patients because being overweight can cause your back to hurt more because you're carrying around all of that weight which just puts stress on your back.
I did notice that once I started dropping some weight, that my back didn't hurt quite as much as it normally does, but the pain never truly went away.
I was just happy that some of the pain was gone and that I was losing my belly fat.
_______________________________________
The movie Avatar came out on DVD today and I want it.
I absolutely loved seeing it in the theater in digital 3-D, and I know that the DVD won't be in 3-D, but that's ok, it's still stunning to look at.
I've added it to my wish list so that I remember to buy it when I have some extra money to get us a new movie.
I like to buy us a new movie that we all really loved when I can so that we can watch it over and over again.
The teens have certain movies that they've watched like a gazillion times like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Evolution which they watched every single night that I was in the hospital, both times that I was in the hospital.
I asked them why they watched it every night both of the times that I was in the hospital, and they told me that it just comforted them, it took their minds off of me being gone, and it took away their worries about me while they watched it.
I found it interesting that that particular movie is what comforted them.
I honestly don't know why, I've watched that movie and I cannot figure it out.
April 23, 2010
Mugged for a few cans of iced tea.
Yesterday afternoon, the teens went to Publix to get some subs, soda, and some snacks.
On their way back home, 4 teenagers, 3 white and 1 hispanic, stopped the boys up at the apartment complex right up the street, and asked them for a couple cans out of the 12 pack of the Brisk iced tea the teens bought.
Mark said no, told them to go buy some themselves.
The hispanic teen told the teens that they were homeless and thirsty, so Mark replied to go get a job and stay at the homeless shelter.
2 of the teenage thugs walked away, they wanted no part of it, and then the white teen punched Sebastian in the stomach area, and then saw the ace bandage that Sebastian has been wearing on his knee because he pulled a muscle in it from slipping and falling a few days ago.
The white teen then kicked him right in that knee, and Sebastian dropped to the ground.
The hispanic then grabbed the 12 pack of iced tea, Sebastian grabbed it back and it ripped open, and then the hispanic grabbed 4 cans of the tea while Mark was pulling the white kid off of Sebastian.
The hispanic teen told Mark "Stay out of it, don't you dare hit my boy or I'll cut you", and he patted his right front pocket to show Mark that he had a knife.
A teenager in a house across the street came out and said that he was going to call the cops, and so the teenage thugs took off with 4 cans of ice tea, then my teens picked up the rest of the cans and came home.
They walked in the door and Mark said "We got mugged for our iced tea, I'm calling the cops."
The cops came and took my teens names and dates of birth, and their statements.
Suddenly there were 6 cop cars in front of my house because 3 other people had called it in, they were witnesses willing to give statements, and all of them said that what happened was not the fault of my teens, the teen thugs are the ones who stopped my teens, threw punches and kicked Sebastian, and all of them said that Mark never threw a single punch, he simply pulled the white teen off of Sebastian.
Sebastian knows the teenage thugs, he goes to school with them, and so the cops rode Mark and Sebastian up to the apartment complex and started asking people where the 2 thugs lived.
The 2 white teens who were not involved immediately gave up the other 2 who actually attacked my teens.
The cops found the hispanic teen, he answered the door of his apartment holding and drinking 1 of the cans of iced tea.
The cops asked him where he got the can of iced tea, he was all "um, uh, I found it".
The cops asked if he really found it, or did he take it off of 2 teenagers walking home from the store.
He hummed and hawed again, and the cops took that as a yes, he took it from the teens, so they cuffed him and put him in the back of the cruiser.
What he did was now his third strike in a state that has a 3 strikes you're out law.
He's screwed.
The white teen who hit and kicked Sebastian, is now on his third strike as well, so he's screwed too.
That teen took off running, but like I said, there were 6 cops here for this, and he was found and cuffed and stuck in a cruiser too.
The cops then asked Mark and Sebastian to say yes or no when he rolled the window down so that my teens could identify them.
They identified the white teen, and they identified the hispanic teen, and when they identified him, he started crying immediately because he knows he's going down big time.
The district attorney called today, they need my teens to go down to the DA's office on Wednesday to give their official statements so this can go to court.
Because Mark is 18, he can legally press charges on the 2 teen thugs who mugged them, so the DA didn't even want to talk to me today, but I do have to go on Wednesday because Sebastian is still a minor.
The DA is pressing charges and asking for the max because both of the teen thugs are on their third strike, they are both going down big.
The 2 teen thugs are both 17, so they will go to juvenile jail until they turn 18, and then they will go to the big house.
Because the hispanic teen threatened Mark and indicated that he had a knife, he's being charged with a felony assault in the first degree, and conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree.
Even if he didn't have a knife in his pocket, he's getting charged with both of those because even threatening to stab someone is a felony, he's so totally screwed over a couple cans of iced tea.
It's just mind blowing that they did that over a couple cans of iced tea.
My boys are not being charged with anything at all because in Florida, if you're attacked, you are allowed to defend yourself by any means necessary.
Mark didn't hit either of them, but Sebastian did elbow the white kid in the head when he was struggling to get the 12 pack back.
I'm still shocked that they did that over a couple cans of iced tea.
They both knew that if they did any kind of crime that they would be on their third strike, yet they attacked my sons over a couple cans of iced tea.
How freaking stupid do you have to be to physically attack someone for a couple cans of iced tea?
April 21, 2010
They're lucky they're my kids.
This is probably a TMI (too much information) post, but my sons are funny.
Due to my spine being what it is, and all the titanium in there, I'm on pain meds, 1 pill 8 times per day.
And that 1 pill 8 times per day constipates me severely.
And I once again forgot to pick up some stool softeners, so I just happened to mention it to the boys as I passed the room where they were playing WoW and some other video game.
And then Mark says really loud, "Mom, you better not try and push too hard or you'll end up popping a vein or something and need one of those hemorrhoids treatment things the commercials talk about with all of the warnings."
Then the 2 of them busted out laughing and started saying all of the warnings with all of the various drugs that are on the market and you should ask your doctor for.
Like if you're depressed, ask your doctor for such and such drug, but be warned! If you are a senior citizen and seriously depressed, taking this medication could cause sudden death or make you suicidal!
The teens laugh about that one all of the time, an antidepressant that makes you more depressed and possibly suicidal, or it could kill you, but they must have rattled off the names and warnings for at least a half dozen or so drugs, and they kept telling me to be careful if my doctor gives me a certain one, it could cause me to have a sped up heart rate, some stomach issues are possible like painful cramping, constipation or diarrhea, and lose my sex drive, but dag nabbit! I'll be happy about it! ha haha
They must have teased me for a good 20 minutes before they finally dropped it.
That will teach me to mention any of my health issues to them again.
April 20, 2010
Migraines and food.
I felt like total suck all day today.
It started with a blinding and mega painful migraine that I couldn't shake off no matter what I did, so I spent the majority of the day just laying on the couch just watching tv and movies.
The migraine finally decided to leave me about an hour ago.
Looking at bright lights still hurts a little but the migraine is ending.
My lower back started to hurt really bad around noon, so I took my meds and then took a long hot shower.
I just stand there hunched over with my hands on the wall so the hot water can hit is directly.
I wish that I had one of those walk in bath tubs though so I could just sit in a tub full of hot water for as long as I want to.
I miss being able to take baths because I can't bend able.
Oh well.
But I'm feeling well enough to eat something, so I've got 4 of these Barber stuffed chicken breasts with broccoli and cheese, in the oven right now, should be done soon so that I can actually east something today.
I would have cooked them in the NuWave, but I didn't wash it yet from making BBQ chicken legs in it the other day.
I'm cooking all 4 of them (2 per package) because the teens want some too even though they ate huge foot long subs for dinner about 3 hours ago.
I don't mind sharing because I know that they will eat it all, but I hate making something and then they don't eat it all.
I store leftovers for a max of 3 days before tossing it, but the teens won't even touch some of the leftovers if they didn't like it the first time around.
I try to make foods that I know they will like and eat, but sometimes the on;y person who likes it is me.
Ok, gotta go check the chicken and then sit down and eat it, later days.
April 16, 2010
Ripping my family apart.
Before anyone asks or decides to make a judgment about me blogging too much information about my kids and their lives, Mark who is 18, and Sebastian who is 16, have read this post and both have agreed that it could published.
It was edited to their wishes which I have always respected when it comes to blogging about them.
I can't go into many details about what is happening because there are certain people who read my blog, and because some of the details are too emotionally painful.
When we were in Maine, we spent a week with Great-Gram who is 82.
She is their father's grandmother, and she said to the both of them on our very 1st day with her, that she will probably be dead by the next time we can go back up, we only go up to Maine about once every 5 years, that's all I can afford to do, but anyway, she said that she'll probably be dead by the time we get up there next, so her dying wish was for the teens to make peace with their father.
The teens have not spoken to their father in many years, and not for a lack of trying either.
We have lived at the same address since 1998, have had the same phone number since then, have told their father he could even call collect to talk to them if he couldn't afford it, the teens have emailed him from their own accounts, and in the past 12 years, he has only called them once, has only sent one letter and package which contained some of his band's swag, t-shirts, a cd, and bumper stickers.
They only received Christmas presents once, and they weren't even signed by him, his girlfriend at the time and mother of his 6th child, a daughter named Sixx, was the one who signed the gift tags "Love Dad", it was clearly not his handwriting and his sons knew it because they read the letter he sent with the band swag.
When he did reply to their emails which was not often, he often accused them of being me, so he called me names and spoke to me the way he always does.
So when Great-Gram asked the teens to make peace with him, Mark apologized to her, but said no, he will not ever forgive his father for all of his wrong-doings against them, that he will never forget any of the things that he did and said to them.
Sebastian, always the people pleaser, said yes, so she set up some visits with their father.
Sebastian has no memories of what happened to him as a baby, he doesn't remember the abuse done to him at his father's hand, and he wants to get to know his for father himself instead of all of the stories from Mark and other family members including Great-Gram.
The visits went well, he said that his father has totally changed, has all of his kid's names (6 kids in total) tattooed on his hands, has their pictures everywhere in his apartment, and tells everyone how much he loves all of his kids.
The visits went so well that Sebastian and his father discussed Sebastian going to stay with him for a month this summer.
His father said he would pay for everything including the plane tickets.
This is a man who can't pay the child support amount of $59 every week, but somehow he's going to come up with the money for a round-trip plane ticket.
Sebastian says that he wants to go, he wants to learn who is father is for himself, and he wants to meet and spend time with all of his half-siblings.
Mark is absolutely furious that Sebastian wants to do this because of all that they went through when they were little, because their father has never paid any attention to them for 12 years, but suddenly, now, now he wants to be "Dad" and love them, now he wants to spend time with them, now that they are all grown up and the hard work of raising them is over, now he wants to be a part of their lives.
Mark wants absolutely nothing at all to do with him ever, except to take his father to court and sue him for all of the back due child support owed to them, but other than that, he doesn't want anything to do with their father.
Mark said that any old asshole can make a baby and be called a father, but a real man, a man who is there for his kids all of the time no matter what the relationship with the mother is, is a man who has earned the title of "Dad", and the man who made him is not his "Dad" and never will be, he hasn't done a thing to earn that title.
The teens argue about this trip constantly, if they aren't bickering over the video games, they are at each others throats over Sebastian wanting to spend a month with their father.
Mark is so angry about it, irate over it, that he told Sebastian that if he goes through with it and spends a month with their father this summer, that when he gets home, he will no longer have a brother in him, that he will disown Sebastian, he will be dead to Mark.
Since coming home, this has been a constant source of stress for me, for all of us, it's ripping my family apart.
There has been hours and hours of yelling and screaming, crying, begging, pleading, more yelling and crying, and silent treatments too.
We went to the grocery store late this afternoon, and something set them off in the store, something was said, I missed it, but it started them at each others throats again.
No matter how many times I told them to stop it, to stop bickering about it, save it till we get back home, they kept at each other with snarky little comments back and forth through the entire store and the whole walk home.
When we got home, they gave each other the silent treatment for about 3 and a half hours.
Every single day since getting back from Maine, there has been some sort of argument between them over this.
I am at a total loss of what to do about all of this.
I have tried talking to them about it, but they are both dead set on their side of this issue.
I have my own very valid concerns about Sebastian going, things which I have discussed with him, told him to be very aware of if he does go, but other than telling him my concerns if he does go, there's not much that I can do because he told me that if I love him, if I really loved him as much as I say that I do, I'll let him go.
I love him far more than he will ever know, but I know that if I put my foot down and say no, that he will be angry at me and resent me for a very long time.
I don't want that, my heart couldn't take it if he ended up resenting or hating me because I don't want him to go spend a month with their father, but all I am trying to do is to protect him.
I can't give you the details on why I want to protect him so much, but there are very real, very valid reasons why I am trying to protect him.
I really am at a total loss of what to do here, if I let him go and he goes, Mark will disown him as his brother and things will never be the same or ok between them ever again.
If I don't let him go, he will end up hating and resenting me.
In the meantime, my sons are at each others throats, this is really ripping our little family apart and I don't know what to do.
April 11, 2010
Johnson's Buddies Easy-Grip sudzing bar.
I have so many things to blog about our trip to Maine to visit all of our family and a few of my friends, and I'll slowly be posting all of the stories now that my internet is back on and working correctly, but I just have to tell you this one thing!
It's probably a totally silly thing to most people, but it's something that I love so I want to tell you about it. haha ha!
At my Mom and Dad's house, they have this soap in the bathroom, it's called Johnson's Buddies Easy-Grip Sudzing Bar, and it's about $1 per bar.
It's made for small kids and toddlers to help teach them good hygiene practices by helping them wash their hands with a bar soap that won't slip out of their hands.
The soap comes in a non-slip pouch, you get it wet, and then lather up, and it will not slip out of your hands.
The soap also comes in a fun and bright color to attract kids, and it also comes in a great scent, yummy watermelon.
And when I say a great scent, I mean it, the smell of this soap is fantastic, intoxicating, and addicting.
I have taken a couple showers with it since coming home with a few bars that mom bought for me after I kept coming out of her bathroom smelling my hands and raving about it.
"Mmmm, Mom, I loooove that soap, what is it called, I want it, it smells sooo good!"
This is what the soap looks like.
The soap is allergy tested so I won't get any hives from using it, and the non-slip pouch is really perfect for me because sometimes my finger joints get really stiff, and so trying to pick up and hold onto a bar of soap can be rather difficult.
This is also why my Mom and Dad use it, they both have gripping issues due to arthritis, so the Johnson's Buddies soap is really perfect for people who may have that disease, or a neurological problem that causes them to have trouble holding onto things.
The non-slip pouch is also great for taking showers, if it can't slip out of your hands, you won't be dropping it in the shower and having to bend down to try and pick it up, and then keep losing your grip on it, which is another reason I really like it.
I can't bend down in the shower to pick up a bar of soap because I don't bend so well, so this bar is really awesome in the shower for people with arthritis, neurological gripping issues, or people who can't move so well any more.
I can totally see this bar being used by more than just kids and toddlers, I can see seniors, people who use a shower chair, people who have mobility issues, all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons, the non-slip grip is really perfect for a lot of people, not just kids.
As I said above, the Johnson's Buddies Easy-grip sudzing bar is only about $1 per bar at most stores, and can be found in the baby goods aisle, and it can also be bought online.
I went and looked, and found out that Buy.com sells it, (they really are becoming more than just an electronics e-tailer!) and they are temporarily out of stock on the single bars right now, but I'm hoping that they will get more in stock, and also start carrying and put on sale the 24-packs of it too.
A 24-pack is only about $25-$27, and because of that price, the shipping is usually free.
Most regular bar soaps average around $3 per bar, and that's just a normal bar of soap, not a no-slip one, so to get a full size bar of soap that won't slip out of your hands at the sink or in the shower, is allergy tested, and smells absolutely incredible, for about $1 per bar, you can't beat it.
I know this post probably sounded kinda silly to most of you, but I just had to share because I love it so much!
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March 16, 2010
Aspirin, shaving, hair dye, and packing.
Every morning I wake up and take all of my medications.
I take my pain medicines, my muscle relaxer, my joint supplements, my cal/mag/zinc, my blood pressure medicine, and for the last week and a half, since going to both the ER and my doctor, an aspirin a day for blood clots.
Aspirin thins your blood out so that you don't get as many blood clots, and it also helps to break up some of the larger already formed blood clots.
Today I decided to do some things to make myself look and feel a little better before we leave tomorrow for our trip.
I colored my hair for the first time in a year, plucked my eyebrows, and shaved my legs.
I don't shave my legs all that often, like maybe once a week.
I just don't see the need to do it often as I have no one to be looking at my legs, or rubbing my legs, so I let it grow and then shave it once a week or so.
Yeah, maybe people consider that kinda gross, but meh, shaving my legs is a total pain in the butt and I usually use Veet, but I didn't feel like doing that today.
I now wish that I had used the Veet though, and from now on I will.
When shaving your legs and taking an aspirin a day, if you cut yourself, you bleed and bleed and bleed.
Holy crap do you bleed.
I didn't even realize that I had cut the skin near my ankle bone, I lose feeling in my lower legs and feet from time to time, so I didn't feel the cut.
I didn't notice that I had cut myself until I looked down into the tub and saw that the water was tinged with red.
I looked all over both of my legs for the cut, and that's when I saw it right on the ankle bone, and it was just gushing.
I finished up my shower and got out making sure to stay standing on a towel so I didn't bleed on the floor, but I still didn't know how bad the bleeding was going to be.
I dried off my legs really good, cleaned and dried my ankle, and by the time I got done opening the first aid kit, opening the box of band-aids, and opening a band-aid, there was blood just gushing out of the cut, my foot was covered in blood, it had soaked through the towel and was starting to stain the terrazzo floor.
I cleaned off the cut again and put the band-aid on.
I got dressed and looked down, it had bled through the band-aid and was running down my foot again.
I took that band-aid off and put on a new one, it bled through that one in a matter of minutes too, so I got out a gauze pad, folded it up, and taped it to my ankle.
10 minutes later, it had soaked through that too.
I changed that one out, and it bled through the new one in about 20 minutes, so the bleeding was slowing down, but it was still bleeding too much.
I put on another new gauze pad and tape, and this time it finally stopped bleeding enough after a good 2 and half hours that I could put a regular band-aid back on it.
It was really scary that way it just kept bleeding, the boys were joking about how I was going to bleed to death from shaving, but I didn't think it was all that funny considering how much it was bleeding, it really scared me.
After I finally got to stop bleeding, I went and finished packing my stuff up, well most of it.
There's some things that I can't put in my suitcase and carry-on until we are actually ready to leave in the morning, but it's mostly packed right now.
The boys are all packed up too, I think there's just a few more pieces of clothing for each of us in the dryer to pack up after it stops.
We're heading over to Mindy's house for dinner tonight, then coming home, trying to get some sleep, and then leaving here around 4:45am to head to TIA (Tampa International Airport) to fly Jet Blue to Maine.
Everyone is so excited for our trip, we're excited to be going, and family and friends are excited to see us.
It's going to be a very good trip.
March 15, 2010
Allergies, cats, and a sorely needed vacation.
I woke Sebastian up at 6am for school, and then went back to sleep.
When I woke up again at 8am, I had been hit by another allergy attack.
My left eye was completely swollen shut, and my lips were swollen to a size like a combination of Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie.
Huge.
Enormous.
Like those wax lips we had when we were kids, but 3 times bigger.
My lips were so swollen and painful, I thought if they got any bigger that they were going to explode.
I've already taken 4 doses of Benadryl and it's just now starting to go down.
A little.
It looks really, really bad.
This happened on the 12th too, I took a picture of it that time, but I am so not taking a picture of it this time.
No way, not this time, I look absolutely horrible.
Other than allergy attacks which are preventing me from getting some stuff done, the teens and I are just getting things ready to leave for our trip to Maine.
I've been needing a vacation for so long now, it's been almost 5 years since we last went home to Maine, since we had a vacation, and I've been saying for a long time now that I need to get away, just go home to my family and friends, I need a break away from here, so I'm very excited to be going.
We've almost gotten all of our clothes and things ready, stuff we need to take, and making sure that everything is ok here at the house for Mindy to take care of the cats and stuff.
I went to the store on Saturday and bought 8 bags of cat litter and 4 bags of cat food.
I dumped 2 bags of the food in the bucket with some that was already in there, and stuck the other 2 bags in the fridge so that it won't get chewed at and opened by the cats if I were to place it under the cabinet where I keep the bucket of cat food.
Mindy is going to come over everyday and feed them, clean their litter boxes, and collect our mail for us.
Her daughter Katie is going to help because the cats are going to be so lonely with no one to pet them and talk to them, so while Mindy is cleaning the litter boxes and feeding them and grabbing the mail, Katie is going to pet and talk to the kitties to let them know that they are still loved, that they are ok, and that we'll be home eventually.
Poor Kali is going to lick the fur off of her belly anyway, but maybe having someone come here everyday and lay down on the couch with her and pet her, will make her a little less anxious and she won't lick so much of her fur off.
Right now the teens are at Publix grabbing some dinner and snacks for all of us, there's no way that I was going to go anywhere looking like this.
I look like I got beat up because my left eye and lips are so swollen, I don't want anyone to ask me what happened, and I don't want to have to explain that I'm allergic to something yet I don't know what it is.
I really have no idea what is causing this.
It's not the laundry stuff, I got rid of that quite awhile ago.
I don't eat peaches or strawberries, I know I'm allergic to those.
And it's definitely not pollen as I'm not having any other symptoms of a pollen allergy.
Anyway, I have some dishes to do to make sure that the house is mostly clean when we leave.
I told Mindy that she didn't need to clean my house, but she said she was going to clean the house anyway, that she thought we'd like to come home to a clean house.
It's true, it's always nice coming home to a clean house, but she doesn't have to do it is what I'm saying, I didn't ask her to, and even if I say no, she said she was going to do it anyway.
So I'm going to do all of the dishes and as much general cleaning as I can so that there isn't too much for her to do.
Ok, off to get some more stuff done and hoping that the swelling goes down soon, I look terrible and it's really kind of painful too.
Later days.
March 11, 2010
Trying to get ready to go.
There's so much to do and take care of before we can go on Wednesday, and I'm stressing out big time.
I am going through my clothes trying to find warm enough clothes to bring with me, and so I was going through my pants and instead of finding my jeans, (I can't find my damn jeans!) all I found were an old pair of jogging pants that look like tuxedo pants, they have like these satin white stripes going down the sides.
I don't want to have to wear those while there.
I want my jeans.
Things are just slowly falling apart too.
My ride to the airport on Wednesday morning bailed on us, their car now has to be used by their son, so yeah, no ride to the airport unless I come up with money to pay for car service.
Yeah, no pants, no ride.
Way wicked stressed the hell out.
March 10, 2010
Lift, tighten, and dance.
I stay up so late that I think that I have seen infomercials for just about any kind of product that you can possibly think of.
The latest one that I watched was last night, it was for the kymaro body shaper.
I thought I had seen it before, and I was kind of right.
Back in January, both the LA Times and The Huffington Post, had reported that one of Lady Gaga's costumes was in fact just a Kymaro Body Shaper.
The story was not true of course, but you do have to admit that her costume does look like it.
A rep for Lady Gaga says that it's definitely not true, and that the skeleton part of the costume was designed by Gary Card.
I have no idea if the body shaper actually works or not, I just found it interesting and kind of funny that people thought she used one of them as a costume.
March 6, 2010
I'm going even if I have to call a cab.
I am definitely going to the ER today, Saturday, even if I have to call a cab to get there and back.
I was going to go on Friday, but everyone was working and I feel like a huge pain in the ass asking for people to help me again and again, and it looked as though it was going away.
I swear it looked a thousand times better by Friday afternoon around 3pm.
I absolutely have to get looked at, I know this now, I thought it would go away, I thought it was going away, but as I sit here right now, at 2:32am, the severe pain, hot to the touch, and swelling up like balloons, is back.
It really had started to go away, the swelling was mostly gone, the pain was gone, the redness was gone, I thought it was finally going away and I could avoid the doctor or hospital, but it now looks like I may actually have what the pain doc was worried about, DVT, Deep Vein Thrombosis, aka, blood clot in the leg.
DVT is as described;
A clot blocks blood circulation through these veins, which carries blood from the lower body back to the heart. The blockage can cause pain, swelling, or warmth in the affected leg.
The exact symptoms I have been experiencing, and even though I have a blood clot filter (vena cava filter) it can't stop all clots, or the filter itself is clogged up which is the cause of the DVT.
I have been reading up on both DVT and pulmonary embolisms, and I am not liking what I'm reading, so I need to go to the ER today.
I'm scared, I don't want any more health problems, I have enough of them already.
I'm sick of being sick, I'm sick of having hives from allergies, I'm sick of being in pain, and now this?!
I possibly, more than likely really do have DVT, the symptoms all match up, things that the doctor said, things friends have said, things my sister Jo said to me on Friday, all of it points to DVT without any of them actually saying it.
With all of the things I have wrong with me now, I wonder if I would be denied for social security disability like I was when I first applied.
They denied me twice, it took almost 5 years of fighting and lawyers to get it, and I know a couple of people who are going through it right now, they are on their second denial/second appeal, and could probably use a good lawyer like I had who has major experience fighting the denials.
I swear the SSA loves to deny everyone who applies at least twice.
I think they like to test people, to see if you file the appeals to prove that you're serious.
If you give up after being denied the first or second time, then maybe you're not really disabled or something.
It's a theory.
Anyway, I am going to call a friend in the morning, see if she can just drop me off and I'll call a cab to come back home when they release me, if they release me.
Oh man, what if they keep me because it's a severe clot and they gotta open up my right upper thigh/groin area, to clean out my vena cava filter?!
I swear, I can't take much more of this stuff, it's all just really too freaking much man.
March 5, 2010
Update on Sebastian's arm.
I took Sebastian to the doctor on Monday to have his arm checked out because of the pain he's been dealing with for almost 2 weeks now.
The doc is his primary care doc, a pediatrician, and not the pediatrician that Sebastian was seeing at the time that his arm was broken.
So basically, he didn't quite know what to do, so he gave him a referral to the orthopedic doc right next door, Sarasota Orthopedics.
I am trying to get him an appointment scheduled, but it's not going very well.
They keep giving me dates and times that I simply cannot get him there.
Times like 7:45am.
Um, I do not have any way or any one to give us a ride at that hour or the day.
Dates and times like RIGHT NOW.
The scheduler asked me if I could get there in the next 20 minutes.
Um, no.
How many times have I repeatedly told her in just this 1 phone call, I do NOT have a car, and I am not allowed to drive, and everyone I know who could give us a ride, is at work right now.
Yeah, this is how it was going so I told her that I would call her back.
I had to get off of the phone, she was totally frustrating me.
March 3, 2010
Almost killed by an elderly driver today. Seriously.
I had my regularly monthly appointment with my pain doc today, it went well, and then I talked to him about my swollen feet issue that I've had for the last 5 days.
On Saturday night around 6pm or so, I noticed that on my left calf, there was this weird red patch, it was hot and painful to the touch.
By later that night, around 9pm, the red and painful patch had grown, started to swell, and moved down into my left foot, and my foot had also swollen up.
I went to bed and when I woke up Sunday morning, my right foot was swollen as well, and my right calf was also swollen, red, and hot to the touch just like my left.
By Monday morning, both feet, calves, and all of the way up to my knees, were swollen, red, hot, and extremely painful to the touch, just trying to walk to the bathroom was agonizing.
My ankles and feet were the worst, they just kept getting bigger and bigger, but they were not soft, the skin was rock hard when I touched it, which I tried to avoid doing because the slightest touch sent waves of pain through my feet and legs.
My toes were huge, they looked like if they got any more swollen, that they would just explode, and the toe ring I wear on my right foot, had to be taken off on Tuesday night because it was starting to cut off circulation.
I took this picture of my feet right before that, and in it, you can see how swollen up my feet, ankles, and toes were, and you can see the red areas too.
Click the pic for biggie size.
So I showed the doc my feet, he touched them which hurt so bad I thought that I was going to cry, and just walking from my house to the car, the car to the elevator at the doc office building, basically, everywhere I have walked has made it hurt so much that I have had to use my cane which I haven't used since my last surgery.
My doc told me that I absolutely needed to go see my primary care doc tomorrow, or go to the ER if I can't get in to see her, or he's going to call and send an ambulance to take me and have me admitted to the hospital.
The reason is that he believes that it may be a blood clot problem, and even though I have a Vena Cava filter, a blood clot filter, the filter may not be stopping all of the blood clots.
He said that the Vena Cava stops large blood clots, and breaks them up, but if a small blood clot passes through, it will get to my heart and lungs and possibly cause a pulmonary embolism.
He said that I absolutely need to get to either my primary care doc or the ER, tomorrow, and if I don't go tomorrow, he will call an ambulance and have me admitted even if I don't want to, he can order it and there will be nothing I can do, the hospital will not release me until he says so, so I will be seeing my primary care doc tomorrow, no problem, I do not want to be forced to stay in the hospital against my will.
Now this is when I was almost killed by an elderly driver.
After I left his office, I went to the pharmacy that I always go to, it's just a couple of blocks away from his office, they are really quick, and there's other stores in the plaza so that I can go get a soda to wash down my meds after I get them.
I made a very crude drawing of the pharmacy and stuff so that you can sorta see the layout and what happened a bit better.
But what happened was that I was almost in one of those videos where a car goes crashing through the front windows of a store.
This is my very badly drawn picture of the pharmacy, and I had dropped off my script at the drop off window and was sitting in 1 of the 8 chairs that are lined up against the windows.
The windows are very large, they go almost floor to ceiling, and my friend Nic had just left to go back out the the truck to have a smoke and call back her friend who had called while we were in the doc's office.
Just 10 seconds after she walked out, a young man about age 20 or so, who was sitting next to me, grabbed his girlfriend and threw her toward the pick up window, then grabbed my left arm shirt sleeve and yelled at me, "GET UP AND MOVE!! NOW!!!"
I got up as quickly as I could and ran toward the drop off and pick up windows where the young couple had moved to, I turned around just in time to see 1 car coming at us sorta sideways, and it was being pushed by a silver SUV that was being driven by an elderly man who we found out after the cops came, was age 87.
He had tried to park in a space in the parking lot directly across from our windows, and instead of hitting the break, he hit the gas.
His SUV went up over the median and cement curb, and hit a car that was illegally parked along the side of the road, but if that car hadn't been illegally parked there, the old man's SUV would have definitely come straight through those windows, no doubt about it, he was going very, very fast.
The illegally parked car was pushed sideways up onto the sidewalk bending the passenger side wheel almost down flat, and it was pushed up against this huge rubber trash can that squished completely up against the pharmacy glass windows.
The windows cracked, all of the chairs where we had just been sitting, were pushed about 3 feet into the pharmacy lobby, 1 of them was pushed up against the legs of the young man who yelled at me to move, his girlfriend was screaming and trying to squeeze herself up against the wall and pick up window as much as she could.
I was standing there up against the wall in complete shock, I don't know if I screamed, spoke, or if I even made any sound at all, but I do know that when I saw those cars coming at us, I saw the smiling faces of my sons flash before my eyes.
Lucky for us, both cars stopped before coming through the windows.
We are so damn lucky that they stopped, there was absolutely no where for us to go, no door to run through, no counters to jump up on, and the drop off and pick up windows are very small, only big enough to pass through the prescription bags, payments, hands, and the rest of the area of those drop off/pick up windows are covered in thick Plexiglas so that no one can try to jump over the counters and steal medicine.
We were trapped basically, if those cars had come through, we would have been totally trapped with nowhere to go, nowhere to move to, and we absolutely would have been and probably killed by one or both of those cars.
My picture makes the lobby look kind of big, but it's not at all, there's probably a total of 8 feet from the row of chairs to the drop off and pick up windows, that's it, the lobby isn't even big enough to fit 1 car to park it, never mind 2 cars coming fast into it.
After the cars stopped moving, the old man got out of his SUV and looked at the other car and said, "Everybody looks ok", and he got back in his car and tried to drive off.
3 or 4 people started yelling for people to dial 911 and for him to not leave, 1 guy reached through the old man's window and yanked the keys out, he was just going to leave!!
The pharmacy clerk called 911, said there was an accident, a bad one, we needed and ambulance too, and fire and rescue was there within minutes, less than 7 minutes, they were very fast.
The passenger in the car that had been hit and pushed, in the front passenger seat, was trapped inside the car, the dashboard and steering wheel was squished into him.
The driver of that car was using the ATM next door, she saw the whole thing.
She watched as her car was 100% totaled and her 2 passengers, her own elderly father in the front seat, and her son in the back seat, were both injured.
Her son was wearing his seat belt, but the car had been hit so violently from the left side, that he was whipped side to side and his head hit the window on the right passenger side, and his head was bleeding.
Her elderly father was trapped as I said, and he was bleeding from his head also, and he was yelling out in pain about his left leg and he said that his ribs hurt too.
Fire and rescue got the son out first and then worked on the elderly father while the woman was frantically going back and forth between her son and her father, face as white as a sheet, crying, screaming, and the old man who caused all of this, was out of his car and looking at the damage he caused to her car, he picked up part of the radiator grill off of the sidewalk and placed it on what was left of the hood.
There was glass and pieces of the car all over the sidewalk.
Nic came running, from where the truck was parked, she saw the accident but couldn't see if the car had gone through the pharmacy windows or not because of a cement pillar, she didn't know if the car came through and I was hurt or not.
She had to tell the police that she had a friend inside the store, she needed to get in and make sure that I was ok, I heard her yell at the cop who was trying to stop her, "MY friend is in there! She is a disabled single mother! I need to make sure she's ok! Her sons! OMG her sons! You HAVE to let me in there!! NOW!!"
I'm not big on people touching me, I very rarely hug anyone except my own kids and very close relatives like my parents, my sisters, my best friend Shell, etc, but when Nic came in and threw her arms around me, I was never so happy to have someone to hug as when she did that moment.
I was so scared, I was shaking, I felt nauseous, my whole body was shaking uncontrollably, and I started to cry a little bit.
The young couple were hugging each other, the girl was crying very loudly, the pharmacist was also very upset and she just kept asking us if we were all ok, it was like a broken record, she just kept repeating it over and over, "Are you all ok? Are you all ok?"
We were, thankfully both cars had stopped coming, if they had come in, we would probably not even be able to answer her, heck, she might not have even been able to ask that question.
It was a very terrible, absolutely horrifying, experience.
I have never been in a car accident, I have never come close to being hurt or dying from an accident like that.
I have had my heart stop twice during my last surgery, so I have been close to death before, but I have never been that close to almost being seriously hurt or killed in a car accident.
The medics and police did everything they needed to do out there, the pharmacist hurried and filled the scripts of the young couple and myself so that we could get out of there.
We asked the police if they needed statements from us, they didn't, but they did get our names and phone numbers in case they need to talk to us later, and after I finished giving the cop my info, I yelled very loudly that allowing the elderly to renew their license by mail is so fucking wrong because of shit like this.
There are so many accidents in Sarasota that are caused by the elderly, I've posted about it many times before, about all of the accidents that happen every year during season because of how the elderly drive, or should I say, because of how the elderly CAN'T fucking drive, and it pisses me the hell off that they are allowed to renew their drivers licenses by mail every year, that they don't have to be road tested, it's not right.
The elderly should have to be road tested every year after a certain age, they should have to be road tested every single year after the age of retirement, if they take the road test and fail, their license gets revoked.
If this was made into a law, there would be far less accidents every year because a lot of the elderly would have their licenses revoked, I just know it, I see so many elderly people driving around who clearly shouldn't be.
There are so many of them who should not be driving for so many reasons.
Their vision is horribly bad, their reflexes are bad, the medications that they take, they drink and drive all of the time, but the medical reasons alone would probably cause a good majority of them to have their licenses revoked.
I know that this subject gets brought up every couple of years in the state senate, but it needs to come up every year until they actually do something about it.
The elderly absolutely should have to be road tested every single year past the age of retirement.
I'm sick and tired of watching the news and seeing about another accident, watching them cause or nearly cause accidents while I'm out on the road myself, or like today, almost being killed by 1 of them.
Something has to be done, a couple of people, me included, almost died today because another elderly person hit the gas instead of the brake, again.
March 1, 2010
Sebastian is off to the doc today for pain in the broken bone area.
Sebastian has been having some pain in his left arm where it was very badly broken in 2003 by a teenager in our neighborhood, when Sebastian was just 9.
The doctors told me back then that he would be needing surgery when he got older, because he wasn't done growing yet, the bones were going to keep growing, and then when he was done growing in his late teens, he will need surgery to correct the probable rotation issues, and to also shave off the excess bone growth in that area of the arm.
For those of you new to my blog and the story of The Teen™ and Sebastian's broken arm, just click that link up there or here, and read the long entry to get caught up.
That entry is so long because the original post about that day was on my old host and when I was using Word Press, so I had to copy/paste it from all of my saved and exported blog entries.
Anyway, for about the last week or so, Sebastian has been waking up in the morning with pain right at the break site, it's hurting at the break site when he carries his books around school, when he carries his backpack home, and when he sits at the computer for too long because their desk chair is a little bit too low.
Even though I knew that the day would come when his arm would start giving him problems, I always hoped that it just wouldn't.
I always had this small hope in the back of my mind that the orthopedic doctors who treated him in 2003, were wrong, that they couldn't predict the future.
He was just this small, skinny kid who weighed barely 70lbs, always active, running around and playing, and all of that running around playing is what got him the broken arm on the afternoon of January 12th, 2003.
That was the day that The Teen™ picked up my skinny, barely weighing 70lbs kid, and flung him to the concrete driveway like he was a ragdoll, causing a level 4 out of 5 break in his left arm right at the growth plate. (the x-ray of that break is in that entry)
The orthopedic doctor on call for the emergency room that night, told me that he would be needing surgery when he grew up, the orthopedic surgeon at All Childrens Hospital, told me that he would be needing surgery when he got older, it was just a matter of waiting until he grew up to start seeing the problems.
This just sucks, I was so hoping that the doctors were wrong, I wanted them to be wrong, I wanted them to be so damn wrong about this!
We have an appointment at 3pm to get his arm looked at, he'll have to go get x-rays I'm sure, and then we'll learn if he really is going to need surgery like the 2 orthopedic surgeons said 7 years ago.
February 27, 2010
Window shopping and dinner out.
I was really hoping to be able to find a desktop gaming pc on sale at Buy.com a little sooner, but it hasn't turned out that way.
Did I mention in the post that we are wanting a gaming pc?
I didn't?
Well yeah, seeing as the teens really only use the computer for playing WoW and other video games, Sebastian does all of his digital design stuff on the mini-netbook, they use the desktop to play WoW and do a few other things, but mostly gaming.
Buy.com does have a couple of refurbished desktops on sale this week, an HP, and a Dell, but they really aren't built for what we are needing, so we're going to do a look in-store later this afternoon and see what we can find, check out prices, and then I'll probably come back to Buy.com and see if they have a good gaming pc in stock to get.
They do have some other great stuff on sale though, like a Kingston 4GB microSDHC Card, for just $12 bucks with free shipping, which I could use either in my camera or in my cell phone.
I did buy myself a new cell phone today, I bought a Kyocera X-tc, I bought it for my birthday present to myself on Monday.
It was totally on sale too, just $59 down from $129, so yeah, I got a really great deal on a birthday present for myself.
They also have the hard rubberized cases for the X-tc, I want the purple one, but it's currently not in stock in that color, so I'll add it to my wish list to get later on.
Those are only $6.55 including the shipping, so yeah, I'll add that for a later date purchase.
What?
How old will I be turning?
40.
Yuh.
The big 4-0.
I feel like I'm 80 today, the cold and rain are kicking my butt, but after we get done doing some window shopping for the pc and go out to eat with sis and Susan, I'm going to come home, take a long hot shower, and bundle up under some warm blankets for the rest of the day and night, maybe curl up on the couch with my blankets and use the netbook from there for awhile.
Ok, this soon-to-be 40 year old needs to go get myself ready to go, hair brushed, teeth, clean clothes, ha ha.
Later days!
February 16, 2010
Food, allergies, and hopefully, a vacation.
Things have just been so mega crappy for me lately, and I know, I complain way too much on my blogs, but eh, they're my blogs and I'll whine if I want to.
The cold weather is freaking killing me, every single joint aches so bad from the cold and my arthritis, it's just been miserably painful, so I haven't been online much at all, haven't done any work, or done much of anything really.
I did go to the store yesterday to buy some food for the teens to eat, I haven't felt like eating much lately, but while there, I must have touched something that had some peach stuff on it.
I'm seriously allergic to peaches, so within an hour of getting home, my hands and lips, and parts of my face had started to swell up and be painful.
And of course, I didn't know that I had come in contact with any peaches, so I didn't buy any Benadryl or anything to combat the allergy attack.
Then the hives started to form all over my whole body.
Arms, legs, torso, hands, and face.
By 11pm, it looked as though I had just gone through a round of acne scar removal therapy, my face had huge red puffy hives all over it, eyelids swollen, cheeks puffed up and red, it looked bad.
I'm glad that I really don't go anywhere or have to look good for anyone, because I looked really, really bad.
I will be getting my income tax refund back sometime next week, direct deposited to my Amscot account, and I am hoping that after I pay a few bills and things off, that the teens and I can go to Maine to visit everyone.
Visit my parents, the teens Great-Gram and Aunt Heather, and then all of my newly found bio-siblings and families.
The teens and I would love to go up, we haven't been back home to Maine in like 4-5 years, and now, with all of my newly found bio-siblings, I have so many people to try and visit in just 1 week of vacation time.
I seriously need a vacation, and even though it will be wicked busy visiting everyone, I still need to get up and go home, go away from here, go see my best friend Shell and sister Joanne, everyone.
I think a huge part of my lack of focus and drive, my lack of motivation, and even part of my depression, for the last few months, is because I am so far away from everyone that I love, I am away from them, alone, and it really bothers me sometimes to not be able to just go hang out with my best friend, or now that I found her, be able to go talk to my big sister Joanne.
I really hope that I can find some good ticket prices so that we can afford to go, I need it in a bad way.
Keep your fingers crossed for me to find good prices from either Sarasota or Tampa, to Portland Maine, ok?
I have so much to do still, so much work to catch up on, I have laundry piled up, I still need to go get the actual groceries too.
I just bought simple and easy stuff yesterday, just what Sebastian and I could carry home, so later this evening, my friend Nic and I are going to go do the real grocery shopping, so I need to make sure my list is complete, get my coupons together, and then just wait for Nic to be ready to go.
I'm going to attempt to get as much stuff done as I can in the meantime though.
February 12, 2010
Slowly coming back to life.
All I can say is please let this sickness finally be over, please.
I have been so sick for going on almost 3 and a half weeks now, it's been horrible, and I certainly have absolutely no need for any kind of diet supplements right now or probably anywhere in the near to see future.
I haven't been able to eat anything, cook anything, not even look at any kind of food, or else I have ended up running to the bathroom to hurl up nothing but stomach bile.
Tonight, my friend Nic was out running some errands and called to ask me if the teens had eaten dinner yet.
I said no, not really, they had some cereal I think, I couldn't be sure as I was in laying down on Sebastian's bed with all of the kitties, so she said she'd bring them back something to eat.
About an hour or so later, she knocked and then just came on in, (friends are allowed to just walk in) and she had brought the teens some burgers and fries from Checkers.
She just grabbed them each 2 cheeseburgers, 2 fries, and a drink each, off of their dollar menu.
The teens were thrilled and started chowing down almost before she set the bags down.
I was eternally grateful because there was simply no way that I could cook anything at all.
On top of being sick, it's been cold here for the last 2 days, and then it rained all day today, so I was sick and in horrid pain all over my entire body.
I'm just now able to really sit up and do anything at all.
I tried to combat the pain and stiffness from the weather, and took a Soma.
Bad idea.
It's not nicknamed the Soma Coma for nothing.
I'm glad that it started to wear off though, I couldn't take it much longer, I was so out of it.
I was like a walking zombie.
I couldn't see straight, think straight, walk straight, very bad idea.
In bio-family news.
My bio-brother Randy sent me an envelope full of pictures
It was pics of all of us from when we went to NYC.
I thought that was cool, Randy and I don't get many opportunities to talk or anything, he's always so busy working.
I will text him tomorrow and say thanks, hope he texts back.
We play cell phone tag more than we actually talk to each other.
Anyway, I'll have to scan some of the pics and post them, they are really nice, there's one of just he and I.
I don't even recall that one being taken, everything that happened was such a blur that morning, but now I have one of just my brother and I.
I really miss them.
That time we spent together was simply not long enough, not at all.
I want to get together and hang out, talk, spend time getting to know each other.
It's so hard, me down here in South-west Florida, and all of them up in Northern Maine.
It's very hard to learn that you have these siblings, this family that you never even knew that you had, and never get to see them.
February 9, 2010
Totally yucky day.
Woke up this morning to really heavy winds, so bad that the trash cans had to be chased down and caught, and Carmine couldn't wait to come back in.
Then the rain started and hasn't stopped.
It's let up a little, but it's been windy and rainy all day, and will be cold for the rest of the week.
I hate it when the weather gets like this, cold, windy, rainy, it just makes my body ache so bad, feel terrible.
I end up tired and with absolutely no motivation at all to do anything other than lay on the couch.
I'm really tired of laying on the couch lately.
And wasn't Cyber Monday back during Thanksgiving?
I got an email earlier today saying that I could still get great prices on all the hottest items for the holidays.
Total weirdness.
February 8, 2010
The neighborhood is getting worse.
When I first moved into this duplex, the neighborhood was great, a lot of single family homes, kids playing safely, riding bikes, neighbors actually talking to each other, a really nice place to live.
Over the last few years, it has gone downhill big time.
I keep saying that I need to get a gun for home protection due to almost attempted break-ins, and low-lifes stealing things right out of my carport.
I want to get some home insurance, or renters insurance, not really sure how that works if you rent a house, do you get home insurance or renters insurance?
Anyway, it's getting worse, as I said.
Saturday night, it wasn't late, maybe 8:30pm, the teens wanted to walk up to 7-eleven to get some snacks for themselves, I was still feeling sick, and they had just gone out the door when they came right back in not even 10 seconds later.
There was a really drunk man, looked to be late 20s- early 30s, walking down the sidewalk screaming at anyone else who was outside, that he was "going to get them".
I opened the door a crack so I could hear him and see him, and there he was, walking really fast down the sidewalk trying to catch up to 2 other teenagers, 2 boys looked about Sebastian's age, maybe 15-16 years old, who were trying to get home.
The guy was screaming, staggering around, but looked really angry, fists clenched up, and the 2 teens were trying to walk as fast as they could to get away from him, and he kept yelling.
The neighbor guy next door went out to see what was going on, the 2 teens were by his mailbox now, and he asked them what was going on.
They asked him for help, they told him the guy was following them, had followed them all the way down the street, they asked him to please help, to call the cops.
The neighbor didn't go in and call the cops, instead he tried to talk to the drunk guy.
Tried.
The drunk took a swing, that's when I told Sebastian to get me the phone, I called the cops and told them what was going on, and they said they were sending 2 units out.
Lucky they were close by, they got here in about 1 minute, so they must have been just down Ashton road by the post office or something,
The neighbor was not fighting with the guy, not swinging back, but he did get hit a few times, the 2 teens were practically hiding behind the neighbor's SUV, they were still scared, being quiet, 1 of them yelled to the drunk guy to leave him alone because the drunk kept swinging at and connecting about 1 out of every 4 swings, to the neighbor.
The cops just grabbed the guy, didn't even try talking to calm him down, just grabbed him because he was being violent.
They cuffed him and put him in the cruiser and then got statements from the neighbor and the 2 teens, and then came and took our statements, then they hauled him off to jail.
We were in the house, the teens watching out the windows, and I out the cracked door, none of us were going to go out there, no way.
I'm getting really annoyed with the kinds of people who have moved into the neighborhood man.
I'm just tired of the attempted break-ins, thieves, and now, the belligerent drunks trying to beat up teenagers.
January 28, 2010
I am so proud of Sebastian.
I haven't been feeling very well at all since last Thursday, I have an intestinal thing, that's all anyone really needs to know as I'm sure if you've ever had some sort of intestinal thing, you know all too well what I'm dealing with.
Anyway, Sebastian is doing so well in his digital design class and in his technology class, that a teacher has helped him prepare for something greater than where he's at right now.
There is a special high school here in town called Suncoast Polytechnical High School, that specializes in technology based programs.
You can read a bit more about them at that link, but their mission is as follows;
The mission of Suncoast Polytechnical High School is
to provide a highly personalized educational experience where students master a rigorous career and technology driven curriculum within a thematic, analytical, and interactive teaching and learning environment.Vision
It is the Vision of Suncoast Polytechnical High School to be recognized for providing a world-class technical education.
Not only do the students have to adhere to some very strict classes and rules to stay in the school or be dropped back to their regular district high school, but the parents also have to do certain things to help their student stay at SPHS.
Parents have to volunteer 15 hours per year in the booster program or in the classroom, they have to check their students work every single week and sign-off on it, they have to be able to provide a computer and high speed internet connection, and they have to make sure their student attends every single day.
Any mistakes in following the rules by either the student or parent, results in the student being dropped back to their regular district high school.
Part of the admission process is to write an entrance essay explaining why they want to attend SPHS, and tonight Sebastian had me read his entrance essay.
I was absolutely blown away by how amazingly articulate he has become, what he stated as his career goals, and some of the reasons why he wants to work in the technology field, what he excels at, what he wants to excel at, and what his future employment plans are after attending SPHS and post-secondary school.
He also stated that he wants to improve his life, to not have to struggle to make ends meet like his mother has for so many years.
He explained in his essay about me and my work ethics before my body quit on me, the surgeries which completely changed my life and theirs, and how during the last surgery, I died twice on the table, had my lung collapse, and ended up in a medical coma for 4 days.
He explained that almost losing the only parent that has ever been there for him, that has worked so hard to provide for him and his brother, and still tries to provide the best that I can for my children, but struggles every day to make ends meet, to give them everything that they need, that he wants to be the absolute best that he can be at a career that he absolutely loves to do, so that once he's made it and providing well for himself, that he will be able to take care of me when I'm older and on my own.
He said,
"My mom has always been there for me, she provided not only my needs, but also provided me with all of the love, support, and encouragement, that has enabled me to have the courage to follow my dream career. I could not do any of this without her, even with all of her own physical limitations and problems, she has never once told me that I couldn't do anything that I wanted to do. My mom has always told me that if I want it, go get it, fight for it, be the absolute best that you can be, and that you will have the career of your dreams, the life of your dreams, and be able to stand up and be equal to any other person applying for those dream technology New York jobs where I want to live and work. Once I make it there, once I make my dream job come true through attending SPHS and any further education that I want to pursue, I want to be able to give back to the woman who has stood by me my entire life, loved me, supported me, and encouraged me to reach for this and to never let it go. If you allow me to attend SPHS, I will work hard for you, I will give you my all, and my mother will be here for the parents portion of enrollment, and then you will see where I learned to go after my dreams.
Thank you for your consideration in allowing me to attend SPHS for the 2011- 2012 school year. "
The giveaway for the book Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops will close at midnight tonight, Thursday the 28th, and the 5 winners will be drawn.
So far, only 5 people have entered, so if no one else enters, all 5 of them will automatically win a copy of it.
So if you'd like a chance to win a copy, you have until midnight tonight to get your entries in.
January 24, 2010
Ugh so gross! Make it stop!
Ok, so I seriously need some adult acne treatments that really do work, work well, won't make the skin become dependent on having to use it every single day for life or anything, because the zits be getting out of hand around here.
The teens just came home from my friend Mindy's son Jeff's birthday party, and after he eats his dinner, he sits down on the couch and a few minutes later announces that he "just popped a big huge zit and it shot across the room Mom! Holy crap!"
Yes, that is so what I want to hear being said while I'm eating some ice cream and trying to relax after my long afternoon in the ER with intestinal issues, 3 bags of fluid pumped into me, 2 injections of some stomach meds, and 2 injections of dilaudid for the back pain and muscle spasms that I was battling for the last 3 days.
Yup, sure did want to hear that now somewhere on a wall close by the couch, is a giant wad of zit juice.
This kind of grossness really needs to stop, and it will stop when we make the zits disappear.
January 22, 2010
Clogged again.
The bathroom tub is clogged again.
I hate it when it gets clogged, it takes forever to get rid of the clog.
In the past, I've used de-cloggng stuff like Liquid Plumr, the plunger, I've even used a straightened coat hanger to try and snake down there when all else failed.
I've spent countless hours at times trying to unclog that drain, and like after a good 2-3 days of working on it off and on for hours at a time, I finally get the clog to go away using a combination of de-clogging tools.
It hurts, too, being hunched over like that for hours and hours trying to get rid of the clog, every single muscle in my body aches, oh man, it sucks.
I feel like I'm getting a super workout on my arms, legs, and lower back muscles when I do it, I feel like if I was using a supplement like super pump 250, I'd probably get really ripping biceps just de-clogging the tub drain. haha
This is a very old house, it was built in 1976, and I think it still has all of the original plumbing fixtures in it, and it's still on septic even though the city has been promising to get us on the city sewer system for the entire 11 and a half years that I've been living in this house.
I really wish they would just get this sewer system project started at least, then at least I would know, or have some kind of time-line on when we may finally get some free flowing drainage going on.
Septic is so hard to deal with when it gets clogged, and sometimes when plunging, you end up plunging some super funky smells because of how old the septic system is.
Those super funky smells are soooo not pleasant, not at all.
January 19, 2010
I think it's broken.
My thermometer that is.
I tried to take my temperature this weekend when I was sick, but it wasn't registering correctly.
I know that I had a fever, but the thermometer said that I was barely breathing.
It said my temp was only 94.3!
So yeah, I think I need a new one and Buy.com has a Q3 ThermoHAWK 220 Infrared Thermometer on sale for just $19.99 with free shipping too!
I'm not sure that you can use it on people, but it's touchless so you aren't spreading germs, so that makes me think that you can use it on people.
You just point it at the object or person's head, press the button, and it tells you the temperature instantly with a 1 second response time.
That's pretty damn fast!
Our current thermometer takes about 1 minute or so, so yeah, having an accurate temp in about 1 second is pretty awesome.
It has an accuracy reading of +/-2.5% and a measurement range of -33C-100C.
It's small enough to fit in a pocket or purse, or my stuffed first aid kit box.
I'm really pretty positive that our thermometer is broken and I really should have bought a new one quite a long time ago.
I think my thermometer is about 8 or 9 years old, so yeah, it's definitely time to get a new one.
It lasted a good long time though, so I really can't complain about it being broken now.
January 19, 2010
Tired of getting sick so easy.
Remember how I said that I felt like I was coming down with something?
Well I did come down with something, I've been sick for the last 4 days or so.
Blah.
And on top of being sick, I got a few pimples.
What the hell?
I haven't had any pimples in years, but now I have some, so while I'm still searching for the best acne treatment for the teens, I'm now searching for one for myself too.
I haven't been able to sleep much at all, so yeah, it really sucks when I get sick because all I want to do is sleep, try to get some rest, and my body just won't cooperate.
I've had less than 6 hours of sleep for the last few days, I just lay in my bed and toss and turn all damn night.
My brain is in a fog, my hands are all shaky, I just feel like total crap.
I really hope that I can get some sleep tonight, I need it bad.
January 15, 2010
Extraordinary Measures movie review.
Last night Mindy and I went and saw Extraordinary Measures at the Muvico in Tampa.
Many thanks to CBS films for letting us be at the advanced screening of the film for free, it was most definitely appreciated as we both needed a night out, just us girls, so we could see a good movie, talk, and have some fun.
Synopsis
"Extraordinary Measures" is inspired by the true story of John Crowley, a man who defied conventional wisdom and great odds, and risked his family's future to pursue a cure for his children's life threatening disease. From his working class roots, John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) has finally begun to taste success in corporate America. Supported by his beautiful wife Aileen (Keri Russell) and their three children, John is on the fast track. But just as his career is taking off, Crowley walks away from it all when his two youngest children, Megan and Patrick, are diagnosed with a fatal disease. With Aileen by his side, harnessing all of his skill and determination, Crowley teams up with a brilliant, but unappreciated and unconventional scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill. (Harrison Ford) Together they form a bio-tech company focused on developing a life-saving drug. One driven to prove himself and his theories, the other by a chance to save his children, this unlikely alliance eventually develops into mutual respect as they battle the medical and business establishments in a fight against the system - and time.
I thought the movie was going to be a total tear-jerker, but it wasn't.
There was only one scene where I felt like crying like the main character did, John Crowley, played by Brendan Frasier, when he thought he had screwed up so bad that he ruined his chance to help save his kid's lives.
Based on a true story, John Crowley was doing everything that he could do and think of to try and save the lives of his kids who suffer from Pompe Disease.
In Pompe Disease, normally, the body uses GAA to break down glycogen, a stored form of sugar used for energy. But in Pompe disease, mutations in the GAA gene reduce or completely eliminate this essential enzyme. Excessive amounts of glycogen accumulate everywhere in the body, but the cells of the heart and skeletal muscles are the most seriously affected.
Kids with the disease often don't live much past the age of 9-10, so John Crowley gave up his job, moved his family across the country, to try and prove the theories of Dr. Robert Stonehill, played by Harrison Ford.
Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of both Crowley and Stonehill, an enzyme replacement therapy drug was created and it is actually working to help babies and kids with the disease to keep their hearts and other organs from growing too large and breaking down the muscles.
It was a really fantastic movie, I really enjoyed it, and as I said, it wasn't the tear-jerker that I thought it was going to be, not at all.
It was a movie about the hard work, determination, and love a parent has for their children.
I would highly recommend the movie to anyone to go see, it was definitely a movie worth watching as both Frasier and Ford did an outstanding job in their roles.
Harrison Ford plays a really eccentric and cranky scientist with a theory about the disease and how to treat it, but he's never had a drug go to trials, and never had a drug approved, so getting the venture capital needed to make and test the drug was an impossible feat for him.
That's where Frasier's character comes in, he has the business skills needed to get people to invest, he does whatever he has to to get the funding so Stonehill can get the drug made and into trials, and then approved, including having to sell-out to a larger drug company so that everything can happen at a much faster pace.
The things he did, he had to do even though it really angered Stonehill to have to sell-out and go work in a huge pharmaceutical company, but it had to be done, Crowley's kids were drying, they didn't have much time left at all.
In the end, Crowley even had to be fired from his job in order to get his 2 kids into the sibling test trials for the enzyme replacement therapy.
As a parent, I would do anything for my kids, I know how Crowley felt, do anything, everything, to try and save his kids.
Luckily, my sons don't have any life-threatening diseases like this, but Mark does have problems with his spine and I am fighting with the doctors and insurance almost every single day to get him treated now, not in 15-20 years when it may be too late to help him, when it may be so late that he ends up like me.
He's 18, has his whole life ahead of him, I can't let him end up like me, so like Crowley, I will fight and do what it takes to help my son get the medical treatment he needs now, not later.
The movie isn't that long, so we made it home before midnight, and I was dead tired from the long ride there and back, and sitting in the theater seat all that time.
I woke up this morning exhausted, I had big dark circles under my eyes, so I grabbed my eye ice pack and laid back down on the couch for another couple of hours.
I'm still tired but have a lot to do including the grocery shopping.
Ugh.
Oh, when we got to the theater, CBS had saved us our seats because I had asked to be in the handicapped row, middle seating if possible because of the tilt of my head, I cannot be way down front.
Sharon, the host of the screening, escorted us to our seats which she had roped off with caution tape.
The theater was totally packed, there were a lot of people there for the screening, so walking into a packed theater and being escorted to our roped off seats was kind of embarrassing.
Everybody was staring at us because she escorted us to the roped off section and she said really loud that the seats were for the VIP movie screeners for CBS Films, and that they had to hold up the movie for a few more minutes for a few more VIPs.
Ha!
All of the other screeners were from some group that I want to look up, GOFOBO or something like that, but we were treated as VIPs, given special seating, and thanked like a million times, so it was fun and kind of embarrassing, but kind of cool too to be given special treatment.
So thank you very much to CBS Films for allowing us to be a part of the advanced screening.
Extraordinary Measures will be in nationwide release on January 22nd, and I highly recommend the movie.
January 14, 2010
Off to the movies in a few hours!
Tonight Mindy and I are going to see the movie Extraordinary Measures all of the way up in Tampa.
It starts it's nationwide theater release on January 22nd, so we are going to see an advanced screening of it tonight, then come home and blog about our thoughts on the movie.
I'm really excited to go see it, it looks like a good tear-jerker of a movie, and I like seeing movies like this especially when they are based on true stories, and I don't mind a good cry because of a movie or tv show every now and then, but I will be prepared for sitting in the movie theater this time.
I'm bringing a pillow with me to sit on so I hopefully don't end up with the same kind of horrible pain that I was in when we went and saw Avatar.
This time, I am going to do whatever I need to do to try and make sure that I don't end up in too much pain from sitting all of that time.
I'm going to take my pain meds and use some of the joint pain treatment things that I have to try and relax my muscles and stuff before we go, and use the pillow to sit on while we're there.
I'm going to take a nice, long, hot shower, rub on some of the pain gel stuff that I have, take a muscle relaxer, and use my wearable heating pad for the ride up to Tampa.
Hopefully, this will keep some of the pain away so that I can enjoy the movie.
I'll let you all know how the movie is when we get back.
It starts at 7:30, so I don't expect to be home until around 11:30pm or midnight.
January 13, 2010
Sick of the Special K commercials.
The Special K commercials are getting more and more annoying, but there's one that drives me absolutely bonkers.
Every single time I see it, I start yelling at the tv, I end up leaving the room I get so upset.
I can't find a video for it on youtube, but it's the one where a mom and daughter are sitting at a CHILD'S PLAY TABLE AND CHAIRS, and the phone rings, the mom gets up, and her butt is stuck in the chair.
A chair that is made for a child, but this freaks the mom out so much that she goes to eat some more Special K cereal to help her with quick weight loss.
It's a child's chair, the mom is already skinny, but OMG! She wants to lose even more weight because she gets stuck in a child's chair, one that is made for like a 40-50lb child.
Every single one of the Special K commercials is like this, the women in them are already skinny, but they need to lose more weight, they just have to, so all they eat is Special K.
I hate these commercials, can't stand them, I think they are just sending the wrong message to women.
Skinny but not skinny enough?
Not anorexic enough?!
Eat some more Special K!
January 12, 2010
Dragging butt and coming down.
I haven't felt like myself over the last few days, not at all.
I'm not sure if I'm coming down with something, or just in a total funk.
All I know is I don't feel right, I feel off center of myself, out of place, out of whack.
I know something is wrong because normally, a few days after the holidays are over, I take down all of the xmas decorations.
Nope, they are all still up.
The teens don't care, they said just leave them up year round, I'm all like no, people will think I'm totally nuts if I leave them up all year long, so they told me to take them down if I don't want to be called nuts.
Problem is, I can't seem to take them down.
I look at them, tell myself to take them down, yet I can't, I just have no motivation at all to take them down, box them all up, and put them all away.
I dunno.
Maybe it's the after holidays blues kicking in and kicking me hard, I'm down and dragging butt, just want to lay on the couch and sleep with the kitties.
I am waking Sebastian up for school every day, that's a plus, and I am talking to Mark about school, there's another, yet I can't seem to motivate myself to put the damn decorations away.
A friend of Mark's is also talking to him about school, so maybe he will decide to do it soon.
He needs to do something other than sleep and play video games, and feel bad about stuff.
Oh, and enter my contest to win 1 of 5 copies of Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops, or at least spread the word on your blog and Twitter, please and thanks.
January 9, 2010
Girls' night out in Tampa this Thursday!
This Thursday night, the 14th, Mindy and I will be having a girls' night out in Tampa, to go see the movie Extraordinary Measures.
Synopsis
"Extraordinary Measures" is inspired by the true story of John Crowley, a man who defied conventional wisdom and great odds, and risked his family's future to pursue a cure for his children's life threatening disease. From his working class roots, John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) has finally begun to taste success in corporate America. Supported by his beautiful wife Aileen (Keri Russell) and their three children, John is on the fast track. But just as his career is taking off, Crowley walks away from it all when his two youngest children, Megan and Patrick, are diagnosed with a fatal disease. With Aileen by his side, harnessing all of his skill and determination, Crowley teams up with a brilliant, but unappreciated and unconventional scientist, Dr. Robert Stonehill. (Harrison Ford) Together they form a bio-tech company focused on developing a life-saving drug. One driven to prove himself and his theories, the other by a chance to save his children, this unlikely alliance eventually develops into mutual respect as they battle the medical and business establishments in a fight against the system - and time.
I know, not your typical girls' night out, no partying at a nightclub until dawn, but it's a night away from home and family, no kids to tend to, no cooking, no cleaning or dishes, but a night out to see a what looks to be a good movie, with a friend.
Now when I went and saw Avatar 2 weeks ago, I loved it, it was a fantastic movie, but sitting through the movie was very difficult on me.
I may have wide hips and a bit of a belly, but I have a very bony ass.
And not just my bony ass, but I also have two 4 inch titanium screws in my hips, and the titanium rods from my spine fusions that go all of the way down to the bottom of my tail bone.
Even though the theater chairs are very well cushioned, having a bony ass and that titanium in my tail bone, made sitting for almost 3 hours, extremely difficult.
Not even at the halfway mark, I could feel my tail bone in my butt, I could feel the titanium in my butt, and I kept trying to shift side to side to make it a little more comfortable.
When I'm sitting here at my desk, I do have a great office chair, it's very cushioned, but I have to have a pillow on it to help, and I still can feel my tail bone and the titanium after a few hours.
What am I getting at here?
Well, when I go see the movie this Thursday night, I'm going to have to bring a pillow with me to sit on, but I would honestly pay $20 for a movie ticket if there was at least 1 specialized movie theater.
What kind of special theater?
Well, one with good and comfy, home style seating.
Maybe some super plush but contemporary sofas, some big and squishy recliners, super long and soft sofas, furniture like people have at home.
I would totally pay $20 per movie ticket to be able to either kick all of the way back with my legs and feet up in a super soft recliner, or lay down on a big and soft sofa.
I would totally love it.
Heck, a big movie theater could makeover just 1 of the many theater rooms they already have, into the special theater room, and play the top movie release of the week, maybe change out the movie in that 1 theater every day or something, but charge $20 a ticket and see if people would buy tickets.
I know that I would, my sons would love it too, so I would pay for them to be in the theater with me on a big sofa or in recliners.
Those of you who have a home theater in your house, you know that it's awesome.
You have all of the benefits of surround sound, a really great and big HDTV, but with the total comfort of home.
I think a special theater would be really cool and totally work, and so if a theater made-over 1 theater room to have the super comfort of home, would you pay more for a ticket to be in there?
January 8, 2010
Almost got whacked in the parking lot!
My friend Nic and I went to the dollar store early this afternoon, I needed to grab some cat food and stuff, and when we got out of the car to walk to the store entrance, we almost got whacked by not 1, but 2, going way too fast in a parking lot, high risk drivers of the blue haired senior variety.
We almost got run over by 2 blue-haired seniors who obviously couldn't see where they were going because A) they were driving way too fast, and B) because they think they have the right to do whatever they want to whenever they want to, and C) because they probably didn't even see us!
They didn't use their blinkers either, and 1 of them parked in the handicapped space and did not have the thing on their license plate or the plaque hanging from their rear-view mirror either, there was absolutely no handicapped sign anywhere on their car, and neither of them appeared to be handicapped.
Being old is not a disability, it's just being old.
I know that not all disabilities are visible, I know this better than anyone as my disability is not visible, but if there is no handicap sign somewhere on their car, they should not be parking in those spaces no matter how old they are, as I said, old age is not a disability.
When they got out of their cars, Nic yelled at them to watch where they're going next time, and 1 of the old ladies turned around and told us to leave them alone or they were going to call the cops.
WTH?
Call the cops because we told them to watch where they were going?
Seriously, I absolutely hate season, hate it with a passion kind of hate because of all of the out-of-state seniors who are here and driving so dangerously, thinking they own the roads, thinking that they can do whatever they want, and just being incredibly rude.
Moving on!
The dollar store had a really good deal on the kind of cat food that I buy, The Goodlife Recipe.
At Publix, it's $4.99 for a 2.7lb bag, and the dollar store had it for just $3.29 for the 2.7lb bag.
I saved $1.70 per bag, so I might just have to go buy the kitties cat food from there from now on.
I also got a box of Arm & Hammer carpet powder to not only get rid of odors, but I found that it also helps pull all of the cat hairs out of the carpet.
With 4 cats, there's always a ton of cat hairs in the rug, and I end up dumping a ton of dirt and hairs out of the bagless vac normally, even more if I use the carpet powder.
I also picked up some night time cold medicine for Mark because he ends up coughing a lot from his cold when he's trying to sleep.
He's coughing a lot, but he coughs even more at night.
I think I may get some of that Mucinex and see if that helps him, I know that it worked good for me when I tried it, so hopefully it will work good for him so that he can get some sleep.
The poor kid had huge bags under his eyes when he got up today from not getting much sleep.
I'll try to remember to pick some up when I go to Publix tomorrow to do the grocery shopping.
PLEASE check out and enter the giveaway below!
It's to win 1 of 5 copies of a really fun and interesting book!
January 7, 2010
Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops review and 5 book giveaway!
I received a free copy of the manuscript for Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops: The Origins of Objects In Our Everyday Lives, about a month ago to read and review here on my blog.
It's a really fascinating and funny look at why certain things got invented, and why they were named what they were.
Take the bra for an example, a lot of people believe that it was invented and named after someone named brassiere, not true.
It's kind of a long story, but all the way back in 2500bc in Minoan Crete, they were using pieces of fabric strapped around the chest to support the bosoms, it probably resembled a sports bra of today because it was wrapped so tightly.
Corsets had been around since the 16th century, but it was in 1893 when American socialite Mary Jacobs was dressing for an evening event when she got really upset about her whalebone corset.
She took 2 hankies tied together with ribbon, and used them to keep her breasts looking the way she wanted them too under her tight party dress.
She was so pleased with it, that she patented the design and began selling them as "Caresse Crosby" bras but with very limited success.
Eventually she sold the design rights to the Warner Brothers Corset Company, and they went on to make a huge fortune from Mary's idea.
By the 1920's, they were in wide circulation, and now today, we have a huge assortment of over the shoulder boulder holders that flatten, tighten, plump, support, volumize, and of course, push up!
There are a ton of very interesting stories in this book about all kinds of products like the breathalyzer, the condom, toothpaste, cigarettes, bubble wrap, paper clips, bar codes, the camera, lipstick, the airbag, the GPS, parking meters, aluminum foil, canned food and carbonated drinks.
There so many things in this book that I'm sure you've heard a story about how they were made and it's probably wrong, so this book tells how and why things were made and why they were named what they were.
It was a really fun book to read, I learned a lot and laughed a lot along the way, so I want to share the learning and laughs with 5 lucky readers.
Do you want to win a copy of Bubble Gum and Hula Hoops for yourself?
Or maybe you know someone who enjoys learning about why things were invented?
If so, all you have to do is follow the rules below.
Here's how!
Rules:
The giveaway is open to United States, (including Alaska and Hawaii) and Canada!
This giveaway is open to all, not just bloggers, but rules must be followed.
Only 1 entry per person/family/household.
Only 1 person per IP address can enter the giveaway and complete the required entry and extra entries.
No entering on behalf of others, using extra identities or others identities, no automated program entries, etc.
I can check and verify IP addresses and email addresses. *wink*
If you are caught cheating, you will be banned from this giveaway and any future giveaways on my blogs.
This giveaway is only open to those ages 18+ only.
All entries must be received by 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Thursday January 28, 2010.
I will pick the 5 winners randomly using random.org on Friday January 29th, 2010, email the winners, and they will have 48 hours to claim their prize.
If I do not get a reply within 48 hours, I will pick a new winner using random.org again.
How to enter:
The required entry:
This is mandatory, if this one entry is not done, you will not qualify for the giveaway.
For a chance to win, leave me a comment telling me what you would have named any current product/invention, and why you would have named it that.
For extra entries:
The following are all for 1 additional entry each, and you must leave a separate comment for each 1 that you do.
If you bundle entries in 1 comment, the comment will be deleted and disqualified.
1.
Post a new comment telling me what you would like to see invented.
2.
Blog about this on your blog, and leave a separate comment with the url to your post.
The post must remain on your blog for the duration of the contest.
3.
Post about this giveaway with a link back to this post on Twitter, and then leave a comment on this post with the link to your Twitter post about this contest.
You can use this link in your Twitter post to tweet and tell others about this giveaway! http://tinyurl.com/yb4zlw3
5.
Post about this on Facebook and give me the link to your Facebook profile so I can verify it!
That's it!
***There are 5 books in total, they will be shipped directly to the winners from the publisher, so you will need to leave me a valid email address when you enter, and if you win, I will contact you for your mailing address which will only be given to the publisher, and only for the purpose of sending you the book.
None of your information posted like full name, email address, or mailing address which you have given for contest entries, will ever be given or sold to any person or company, it will only be used for the purpose of contacting you, if you win, to send you the book.***
Good luck!!
January 7, 2010
Yesterday. Oy vey!
I didn't post yesterday because I just didn't feel like it.
Hey, just being totally honest.
At 3:15pm yesterday afternoon, I had my monthly appointment with my pain doctor to do a check-in.
Check-ins usually all go the same way, him asking me a bunch of questions like, tell him on the 1-10 pain scale, where my pain was at right at that moment, what it was for the last couple of days, how the new medicine is working since my last appointment, have I had any new or unusual symptoms, any news on whether or not my surgeon has been able to come up with a way to fix my head, any more visits to the ER for itching, rashes, welts and hives, and do I have any questions for him.
The whole thing probably takes less than 10 minutes, in, out, see ya in 30 days, but because there was an emergency with a patient at the hospital, he was running about 45 minutes to an hour behind.
My 3:15pm appointment didn't actually happen until 4:27pm.
My pain on the scale yesterday was a 10 due to the freezing cold temperature.
My pain on the scale for the last few days has been bobbing back and forth between 9 and 10 because of the freezing cold temperatures too.
The new pain medicine works pretty good, not as long as the old one did, but that's because they were ERs, (extended release) these are immediate release, and they just do not last as long.
I'm supposed to take 1 every 4 to 6 hours as needed for pain, so between 4-6 pills per day depending on the amount of pain that I'm in.
It's been terribly cold as you you know, (I've been complaining about it enough) so the rods are frozen which causes a lot of pain, so I'm on the higher end of the dosing.
Nope, no new or unusual symptoms.
Nope, my surgeon has not found a way to fix my head yet.
Nope, I didn't have any more trips to the ER that he didn't know about, and nope, I didn't have any questions for him.
I left from his appointment around 4:35, then me and my friend Nic, who had driven me to my appointment, drove over to the pharmacy to pick up my scripts.
We waited about 10 minutes and they call me to the window to pick them up and pay, and their merchant services machine goes down.
Great.
I have to leave there and go find an ATM.
The shopping plaza the pharmacy is in, is like the only one in Sarasota that doesn't have a single ATM machine, so we have to drive over to the Hess station across Bee Ridge Road.
I use the ATM, grab the cash, and drive back across the street.
I go back to the pharmacy, the girl tells me the machine is still not working, so I pay in cash, get my scripts, and we leave.
From there, we start heading home but we both need to run to the store to grab something to feed our families for dinner.
We run into the Publix closest to our house, she runs 1 way, and I run to the frozen pizza.
Hey, I'm tired and cold, the teens can eat frozen pizza and love it, and they did, moving on!
I use my debit cards all of the time, I rarely ever use cash anymore, so when I went to pay, I instinctively swiped my debit card.
Declined.
What. the. hell?
Swipe again.
Declined.
Ergh, what the hell is wrong?!
Please tell me not another machine is down!
Swipe again.
Declined!
*smacks forehead*
D'oh!
I don't have enough money in my account for this purchase because I used my debit card to pay for my doctor appointment which ended up costing me less than the appointment girl told me when she called me Tuesday afternoon to remind me about my appointment, and I had to withdraw some cash earlier to pay for my prescriptions.
D'oh!
ATMs only let you withdraw in multiples of $20, so I had to draw out more than my scripts actually cost, but it also wiped out my balance down to like $4.89, the pizza that I was trying to pay for was $12.50.
I totally forgot that I had the remaining cash in my wallet.
So I looked like a totally broke fool at the register while a growing line of people stood behind me making it vocally clear *ahem* *cough* *ahem* that they wanted my dumb butt to just pay for my stuff or get the hell out of the way!
I swear, I can be just an absolute idiot sometimes, but honestly, when you get so used to using only 1 form of payment all of the time for everything, shopping, paying the bills, gas, take-out food, whatever, it can be very easy to forget that you have other forms of payment available to you like I did.
By the time I got back home a little after 5:30, my toes were completely frozen because of how cold it was outside and because I still can't wear regular shoes, only sandals, and because there's no heat in Nic's car, so the 2 of us drove all over the place and back home yesterday afternoon freezing our butts and toes off, I came in, changed and got into comfy clothes, and then aimed the portable heater at my chair and my feet for probably over an hour.
After they finally warmed up around 7pm, I got up and made dinner.
I made some home made General Tso and home made teriyaki chicken strips, I cleaned up from dinner, and then I was so tired and started to get cold again, so I laid on the couch, watched some tv, and then got my second wind which has now, kept me awake the entire night and the entire day. .
I'm so tired right now, I don't even remember if I got any sleep on Tuesday night.
I think I did, but I honestly don't remember if I did.
January 4, 2010
Why hire the same company again Florida?!
A road construction project, a HUGE one, down in Fort Myers has been halted due to a possible asbestos issue.
The $25 million dollar Summerlin road project has been stopped, roped off with caution tape, while state inspectors check for asbestos, a cause of cancer, most specifically, mesothelioma.
While county leaders are reserving their comments until after results are announced, on Monday state inspectors shared more information about what they're finding and how much asbestos may be out there. "If you look in close, you can see the fibers up in here and that's usually an indication of asbestos," said Sherrill Culliver of FDEP.
Posen Construction, the contractor for the flyover, has had asbestos issues before. They were forced to clean up asbestos chunks on a site near Alico Road a few years ago. The company, which has not returned our repeated calls, has several other high price contracts in the county.
The state does allow up to 260 feet of asbestos laden material to be at a construction site. If the tests come back positive and exceed that amount, those responsible will face environmental fines and, possibly, action by the county.
If the state of Florida knew that Posen Construction has had issues with asbestos before, if they knew that they had gotten in trouble for using it before, why did they hire them again?!
This is a huge project, a $25 million dollar project that has now been halted while state investigators search for the asbestos.
If it's found, all of the work that has been done so far on the flyover will have to be taken down and the whole thing started again, costing the state of Florida, the taxpayers, to have to hand over even more money to get it done correctly.
I just don't understand this kind of stuff.
I don't understand why it took so long for them to start investigating this construction site when they knew that this construction company, Posen Construction, has used more asbestos than the state allowable amount on past construction projects.
When I know that someone has messed up something in the past, I don't wait for the project they are doing for me to be more than halfway completed before I start looking at it, I usually try to find somebody else before using them again.
Isn't that what most people do when they get bad customer service somewhere?
You go somewhere else or try to find someone else, before ever going back to the place that gave you bad customer service, or did a bad job, you don't go back to them again, and if you do, you keep a very close eye on them.
Does the state like wasting taxpayer money?
Apparently they do because now not only will it cost the state more money to get the flyover done correctly, but now we're paying for the investigation.
The investigators who do the work, the lab tests, the lab workers, and so on, it's just even more money that's being spent on an already very expensive road project.
January 3, 2010
My toes are froze.
The teens went to Publix late Saturday afternoon to grab some subs for themselves for dinner, some 4-cheese pizza Hot Pockets for me, and to pick up some laundry detergent so I could do the laundry before Sebastian has to go back to school on Monday.
I know, Hot Pockets aren't exactly good for you, some people think they are totally gross, but I actually like the taste of them.
They are all that I was able to cook for myself for weeks on end for lunches after both of my surgeries, so I got used to them and grew to really like them.
Anyway, the teens picked up a big 64 use/wash-load bottle of Tide, the biggest bottle that they could find because I had that coupon for a free bottle thanks to the Bounce Dryer Bar fiasco, and the coupon did say any size, so I made sure that they knew to grab the biggest bottle on the shelves.
If they are going to give me free product because I went for 3 whole weeks with itchy red hives, a rash, and welts, from my neck all of the way down my entire body, anywhere my clothes, towels, or blankets touched, caused me to be covered in it, you can bet your butt that I'm going to get the biggest sized product available.
I had to re-wash every. single. load. of. clothes. that I had dried with that thing in my dryer, and considering I do about 6-8 loads of laundry per week, yeah, I ran out of my Purex 3-in-1 laundry sheets really quickly.
After they came home, I started getting the laundry done, I think I just have 2 more loads of towels to do, and then I'll be done for a day or 2.
I posted to KatScan late last night about how cold it is here, and so I've been up all night long with insomnia and freezing my toes off.
I am still totally unable to put on socks and shoes, I still can't bend over to tie shoes either, so I've been wearing flip flops, actually, they are Dr. Scholl's sandals, and they are what I have been wearing since August 2008 after the kitties chewed apart my last pair.
Yup, I've been wearing the exact same sandals every single day since '08.
I've never had an issue with wearing sandals every day, that is until now.
Like I said, it's freaking cold outside!
I'm in the house, but the floor is cold, it's just cold in here, and I can't put on socks and shoes, and wearing my sandals would be like wearing nothing on my feet, so I went Amazon hunting for some slippers that I could actually get on without any problems.
I found some Dearfoams Women's Boucle Mules, and they look like they would work perfectly for me!
They are indoor/outdoor, foam cushioned, lined with faux fur, and slip on!
Perfect!
They come in my size, and they come in black!
Yeuss!!
I could wear them in the house as slippers, and I could also wear them outside to keep my feet warm when I have to go to the store and stuff.
The best part?
They're less than $20 bucks!
I am so getting a pair as soon as I pay off a few bills this month because I don't think my toes can survive the super cold weather much longer.
It's not usually this cold here at this time of year, it doesn't get really cold until around the middle to the end of February, the beginning of March, not right now or in December when we had a few cold fronts come through, so this super cold air is making my toes freeze and my titanium like an iceberg.
I've been wearing my Thera pod practically all night long.
Every single time it cooled off, I nuked it for another minute and then strapped it back on my lower back.
It didn't warm up all of the titanium, but at least my lower back was warm, that's the area that I have the most pain in, so it worked good for that at least.
I really should have turned on the portable heater much sooner than I did.
I completely forgot that I even had it, it was sitting right here in the living room though, right on the other side of my tower table on the floor, but d'oh! I didn't plug it in and turn it on until like 7am after spending the entire night with frozen toes.
I can be such an idiot sometimes, but at least it's starting to warm up so that when the teens wake up, it'll be a bit warmer in here.
I can't believe that Carmine the kitty wanted to go out so early, he was crying and meowing to go out starting around 6am, but I didn't let him go until a little after 7.
I'm going to go check and see if he wants back in yet.
Last night, he kept wanting to go out, and then we'd hear him scratching at the door just 10 minutes later because of how cold it was.
I bet anything he's either sitting right at the door, or sitting on the chair that's out there right next to the door.
It's still only 38 degrees!
Brrrrr!!
December 30, 2009
I hate the cold weather.
For the last 24 hours, it has been cold and just generally yucky around here.
It was in the low to mid 30s which usually doesn't happen for the last few years, but it was super cold last night, and it will be super cold for the rest of the week too.
I really hate it when it gets cold like this, nobody wants to go out and do anything, everyone is dressed like we live in Alaska.
Seriously, I saw someone in a big thick winter coat, a scarf, and gloves.
It was cold enough to wear a winter coat, but it isn't cold enough to dress all of that on.
The weather really hurts me when it gets cold, the titanium screws get frozen, then they make me feel like I'm frozen, freezing to death from the inside out.
When it gets cold like that, I wish that I could just pack up all of the stuff we need, and then go on to find someplace warm to stay in the cold has gone away.
Rent a motor home, get the insurance and a motorhome warranty, and start driving to the lower portions of this state like Miami maybe, or even further south.
A motor home would be cool because we could all fit in it, our kitties too, pack up whatever food we have in the house, all of our sodas and stuff, and just start driving south to get to warmer weather near the equator.
Someday I will do the things that I talk about, going to the mountains, motor home, just go wherever it takes up.
December 21, 2009
Acu-Life Thera Pod product review.
I was very fortunate to receive an Acu-Life Thera Pod soothing 2-in-1 therapy heating and cooling pad for my review.
I received it free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion of the product.
The Acu-Life Thera Pod provides both moist heat and cold therapy to help facilitate healing of sore and tired muscles, aches and sprains, and even migraines.
For moist heat therapy, you remove the cold pack from the Thera Pod and place it in the freezer, and place the Thera Pod on a microwave safe plate, microwave for just 1 minute, and then you place it directly on the area that needs the moist heat.
It stays in place because it comes with an adjustable velcro strap.
So you can wear it on your lower back, arm, leg, shoulder, (like in the picture) knees, ankles, anywhere that you need to use moist heat or cold therapy.
For cold therapy, you insert the cold pack and wear it where you need to.
Moist heat helps with stiffness and flexibility, and cold therapy helps with inflammation and swelling.
All 3 of us have used the Acu-Life Thera Pod since getting it.
Sebastian has used the cold pack for his migraines, and both Mark and I have used it for our sore lower backs.
It really works well too.
Both Mark and I absolutely love the moist heat therapy, just nuke it and wear it until it cools off, and by the time it has cooled off, our lower backs no longer hurt as bad, and we both had improved flexibility, we were able to bend over and stand up straight without the usual discomfort.
The other night when it was a bit chilly out and I was really hurting from the cold weather, I nuked it for 1 minute, strapped it around my lower back, and laid on the couch and watched a movie for 2 hours.
When the movie was over, my pain was drastically lessened and I was able to get off the couch without the stiffness that I usually have trying to get up off of the couch.
I've tried to use heating pads while lying on the couch before, but if you roll over or change position, the heating pad would move and I would have to readjust it over and over again.
With the Acu-Life Thera Pod, because it's strapped to my lower back, I was able to lay on the couch, change position as I needed to, roll over, and it moves with me, so it's perfect for laying down and soothing and relaxing my sore lower back.
I almost wish it was full back size, like big enough to strap around my entire back, because then it just might help with the freezing cold and stiffness from the titanium rods.
But wearing it on my lower back and laying on the couch with a blanket over me, it did help warm me up a bit on the inside, and it did help with the stiffness and pain in my lower back.
I really like the Acu-Life Thera Pod, it works very well, it can do both moist heat and cold therapy, and both are needed in soothing and relaxing sore and stiff muscles.
I'm very glad that I was given this product to try and review, I would have never known about it had I not been asked to give it a try.
Continue Reading �
December 21, 2009
32 and dead of natural causes?
Actress Brittany Murphy died early Sunday morning of what the coroner is calling natural causes right now, until an autopsy is done.
Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said they will conduct an autopsy Monday to try to determine what killed the actress, and said her death appeared to be from natural causes. He said the reported illness could have contributed to her death, but it will be weeks before a final determination is made.
If a 32 year old can die of natural causes, then someone my age, almost 40, can die of natural causes too.
I have underlying health problem as well, I take a lot of medications, I keep getting my medications switched on me while we still try to find one that works well, but it's things like this that make me worry about my health and my life.
I'm always looking at getting a term life insurance quote, yet I still haven't gotten life insurance.
I know that I should, I know that I need to have it, but I keep not doing it.
Two things always stop me from doing it, money to pay the monthly insurance premium, and the totally irrational fear that if I do it, it will cause me to die sooner.
I know that it's totally irrational, but it's still a very real fear that I have.
So many people have died in the last few weeks, families have lost children to drowning, a mother lost her husband, 4 year old son, and a 17 month old baby this past week, only she and her step-daughter survived the fire, a blogging friend tweeted this morning that a family friend found her husband dead in the bathroom, it's just not been a good few weeks for people.
All of this has made me feel, first of all, very sad for these families, I can't even imagine, but second, even more strongly that I should get life insurance, I don't want to leave my sons and family burdened with having to pay for my funeral, which I don't want anyway, I want to be cremated and just leave it at that, but still, cremation costs money that none of my family can really afford if I were to die soon.
I don't know, I just feel very sad right now, sad for all of the losses that people have suffered.
December 20, 2009
I love the cold but hate it too.
It's been rather chilly here all day and night now, the high today was 62, and the low is going to be somewhere between 42 and 47.
I love the cold, I really do, but my body doesn't.
I love the cold we're having right now because it makes it feel much more like Christmas, but my body is hating it.
I had to go out today and fill up another script of my pain meds because I just wasn't able to deal with the pain from the frozen rods attached to my spine.
That's the one thing that I absolutely cannot stand about the spine fusion, the freezing feeling of the rods when it gets cold or rains, it's truly an unreal feeling, people without the rods have absolutely no idea what it's like, and every person who has the rods, tells me the same thing, they freeze when it gets cold or rains.
When Sebastian and I went for our nightly walk, it was around 47 degrees, a bit on the chilly side for Florida, so we wore our new hoodies that we got from Joanne.
They are wicked nice, warm, and incredibly soft, we love them and they are perfect for the chilly weather here.
It rarely ever gets super freezing cold here, but there are times that does get chilly enough to turn on our portable electric heater to just keep it at a nice warm temperature in here.
Not so hot we're sweating, but not so cold that we have to bundle up.
The boys are more used to the weather here than I am, they were little when we moved here, so their bodies adjusted to the weather much more than me.
My body still isn't totally used to it, plus ever since my surgeries, my internal thermometer is like broken, I'm always about 10-15 degrees hotter than everyone else.
It could be 70 degrees, and to me, it will feel like it's 80-85 degrees, so when it's really super hot out in the summer, I'm sweating to death, that's why I have both the ac on and a box fan sitting about 4 feet from me blowing on me constantly when I'm sitting here at my desk.
I love my little portable heater, it does a really good job keeping us warm enough during the winter, but if I had my own house and it had a fireplace in it like most of the bigger homes here in Sarasota do, I would probably convert it to an electric fireplace to save on the cost and the mess of using real wood in a fireplace.
They make and sell a electric fireplace insert that plugs in, it looks like real wood burning, it feels like a real wood burning fireplace too.
I've been in a friend's house that has one and they love it because they don't have to buy any wood for it, and the cost of running it is about 3¢s per hour to just have the look of flame, and about 8¢s per hour to have the heat turned on.
It uses a standard electrical outlet, and provides 4700 BTUs/hr of heat, and provides supplemental heat for up to 400 sq ft, that's enough to heat up my entire house that I live in right now.
I love the look of fireplaces but hate having to chop up wood and clean up the ash and soot after the fire burns out.
Tomorrow night's low is going to be around 43, it's going to be wonderfully chilly out and if the boys ask me to turn on the heat, I will, but we usually don't have to use heat until around February.
Just check out this video that I found about electric fireplace inserts, it looks so easy to install and use, I would love to have one if I could, it would make the house look and feel so nice.
Once I started to feel a little better, I started to do some cooking and baking.
I have a pot roast cooking in the slow cooker, I'm going to let it cook on low all night long, it will be absolutely perfect to eat tomorrow, the meat will just be so moist and tender, and the carrots, onions, and baby potatoes will be perfect too.
I just got done making some peanut butter blossom cookies with Hershey's kisses on them.
They came out perfect, and tomorrow I may make some chocolate chip cookies, I love baking cookies around the holidays, they make the house smell awesome, and everyone loves to eat them.
December 17, 2009
But I don't wanna switch plans!
It's the time of year when people on Medicare start getting bombarded with mailers, emails, phone calls, and everyone sees the commercials for the Medicare supplement plans, because now is the one time per year when you can change your plan, and every company wants you to switch to their plan.
I don't have a supplement plan, I only have a part D drug plan, and that's because all of the plans available in my area cost way too much and the co-pays actually get more expensive with some of them.
There is one that I would switch to if it was available in my area, Blue Advantage, but I can't get it here.
If I lived in Tampa I could, but not here in Sarasota, so I won't be switching to any of the other plans because I don't like having to pay $50 when I walk into the ER, that's totally ridiculous to have to pay before you can be seen in an ER in my opinion.
The other plans just don't have as much to offer me, the plans would cost a bigger monthly payment, and right now I only pay $6.30 per month for my part D plan which is good enough for me.
I just wish all of the mailings, emails, and phone calls would stop.
They're starting to drive me crazy.
December 16, 2009
Our new netbook is here!
The netbook that I ordered for Sebastian to use at school and for his digital design projects came today!
It wasn't supposed to be here until Friday, but FedEx really kicked some major butt getting it here.
Just yesterday the 15th, it was in Anchorage Alaska, and FedEx somehow got it from there to Memphis Tennessee, and then to Tampa, and to Sarasota between 3:30pm yesterday and today at 5:21am.
That is freaking outstanding delivery time!
It's an HP Mini 110, it has 1 GB DDR2 RAM, a 160GB Hard Drive, comes with WinXP, about a 7 hour battery life, a bunch of games were installed which Sebastian just loved checking out, it all a ton of programs and features to it, it's a pretty great little netbook.
I spent some time checking it out, it's going to be really handy to have around when Sebastian isn't using for school.
I figure it will be prefect for those days when I'm not feeling well or in a lot of pain and just not able to do anything but lay on the couch, that I'll be able to use it and get my work done from the couch.
It comes setup for wireless, so I set up the wireless network connection, it searched for all available signals in the area, ours showed up in the list first, but I saw 5 of my neighbors connections in the list.
They were all secure which is nice to see, nobody can steal their wi-fi signals, but I set it all up and Sebastian then checked it out from every room of the house...hahaha
December 15, 2009
Video games, kitty food, and front teeth.
I just ordered the video game the teens wanted for xmas, Cally of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I got some money in sooner than expected, so I ordered it now before I got stuck having to order with 1 or 2 day expensive shipping.
I also bought the kitties a present, a food feeder, because it's been a total pain in the butt having to constantly add food to their bowl.
It matches the waterer that I have already, so I know that it's a good quality product to have.
The money order from Mom and dad came in today's mail, so I don't have to watch for the mail for that, but I still have other things coming to watch for, so tomorrow while I'm getting my tooth fixed, Mark will have to be the lookout.
I think I'm going to try and go to bed early, see if my body and brain will let me sleep or if it's going to be another night of insomnia.
Later days.
December 14, 2009
Did you really take a shopping cart home from the store?
Yes, yes we did.
Yesterday when Sebastian and I went grocery shopping, we called for a taxi cab like we had planned on doing, we bought a wicked lot of groceries so we needed a ride home.
Well, the taxi cab's phone rang busy every single time that I called it.
For 20 minutes.
It usually goes to voice mail if they are busy, you leave your name and number, they call you right back and schedule you for a pick-up, so I have no idea why it kept ringing busy, but we had all of that food to get home, meats, milk, and other perishables, so we did what we had to do, the food had already been sitting in the cart in the heat for 20 minutes.
Sebastian and I did what we had to do, we walked home with the grocery cart full of groceries.
Now there's a Publix grocery cart sitting in my laundry room, I didn't want to leave it outside and have it get stolen or have the neighbors look at me funny because come on, having a grocery cart sitting in your driveway is as white trash as having an old rusted out car sitting up on cinder blocks.
All of the way home, people were looking at us like we were total white trash walking the mile long way home.
Yes, we live about 1 mile from the store and we walked home with a grocery cart, it's total white trash! Hahahaha!
At least we got all of the food home before it got ruined, I was seriously worried about the milk spoiling, it was about 80 degrees yesterday and so walking the food home, I was really worried that things would start to spoil, and then there ya go, wasted food and money.
I hate wasting food because it's wasted money.
I always store-up leftovers and when the teens tell me they are hungry, I hand them the Rubbermaid of leftovers and tell them how long to reheat it in the microwave.
I make them finish off the last quarter cup of milk in the gallon, the last slices of bread even if they are the crusted loaf ends, I don't waste any food if it can be helped, so walking the grocery cart home as fast as we could so nothing spoiled was super important to me.
Sure we looked totally silly and totally white trash, but I couldn't reach the cab company so yup, I did what I had to do.
Now I'm just sitting here waiting on the mail man again today.
I'm waiting on 3 things to be delivered this week, the money order from Mom and Dad, the netbook is supposed to be delivered by FedEx by Friday, and a review product is also supposed to be here sometime near the end of this week, so it's a full week of stalking the mailman and other delivery people.
It kind of sucks to have to just sit here with the blinds open and waiting, I have other things that I can be doing, but I don't want stuff to get stolen, and this is the time of year when things get stolen by desperate and ignorant people.
December 13, 2009
Shopping, decorating, and no sleep.
Once again I've been up all night with insomnia, and then when Sebastian woke up on time because we had planned to go do the big grocery shopping this morning, I had started to doze off right here in my chair.
I hate it when that happens.
I'm so tired from being awake all night long with insomnia, fighting to go to sleep, being unable to sleep so I give up and play on the internet all night.
I end up either goofing off online all night doing totally stupid stuff, or like last night, I was actually checking out all of the various e-tailers looking to see who had the best deals on the video games that the teens want for Christmas, hoping that there will be a good sale when I get paid this week, and also hoping for free and super fast shipping on those video games.
I do not want to have to go into a brick and mortar store to get those games, but because I am doing the Christmas shopping so late, I just may end up having to go to a physical store.
Buy.com does have the best price for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and they do have it with free shipping, but according to their holiday ordering deadlines, if I don't get it ordered by Wednesday the 16th at noon, if I still want to order it and get it by Christmas eve, I will have to pay for 1st or 2nd day air which would cost a lot more money than I want or have to spend, so I may end up having to go to a physical store.
As of right now, the price for 2nd day air is only $4.50 more than the standard of $4.40, but that may change the closer we get to the holiday and shipping schedules get tighter or busier, or maybe that's just their really awesome super low price for 2nd day air all of the time?
Wow, I just looked, and 1 day next day air is only $6.00 more!
I know that other e-tailers charge way more than that for 1st and 2nd day air, a whole lot more.
I don't know and I'm really trying to not stress out over being able to order their games on time without having to pay crazy shipping fees, but that's just how I am, my OCD will drive me absolutely crazy every single day until I can actually place the order.
I just hope that I will be able to get it regardless of being able to order it or have to buy it in store.
I know that it's a popular game, so all I want is to definitely be able to get it.
Ok, off to do the grocery shopping now that it stopped raining and the sun actually came out, and then when we get back home, I need to decorate for Christmas.
I've been putting it off all week, and I promised Sebastian that we would definitely get it done this weekend.
Shopping and decorating on no sleep, should be totally awesome.
Not!
December 12, 2009
Up, up and away
Tonight the teens and I watched the movie "Up" by Disney and Pixar.
Well, Friday night, it's now officially Saturday morning.
Once again I've been up all night, spending the entire time crying off and on, just beyond tired and stressed out, and frustrated, and angry, and all kinds of emotions all just slamming into me all night long.
It's not just one reason for this, it's many different reasons and it would all take far too long to explain so I'll just talk about the movie ok?
Ok.
The movie was really good, it was happy and cute, funny and sad, and just a truly wonderful love and friendship story.
I absolutely loved the character of Russell, I thought that kid was just downright adorable!
I wanted so much to just reach out and hug that little guy, his heart was just so open even though it was hurt and broken because his dad wasn't around any longer.
Russell just wanted so much to get it right, to earn that last Wilderness Explorer badge, the Assisting The Elderly Badge, because then maybe his dad would pay attention to him again.
Go camping again, go eat ice cream cones and count the red and blue cars while sitting on the curb, Russell just wanted so much to get those boring things (he called them boring) back.
At the same time that this cute little adventure story is going on with Russell and Carl going up and away in the balloon, we have another story, a love story that happened and is the reason for the whole house going up in balloons.
Carl and Ellie, their love, their life together, ups, downs, happiness, and extreme sadness, but through it all they remained together and on their own adventures together.
Love, friendship, adventure, belonging.
I loved every smile, every laugh, every single tear that this movie made me feel.
It's on sale right now and if I have enough money left over after getting the teens their gifts for Christmas, I might just get this for myself, I enjoyed it that much that I can totally see myself watching it on rainy Saturday afternoons while I lay on the couch with a blanket, a cat, and a few tears sliding down my cheeks.
I know I did a terrible job telling you about this movie, but this post wasn't a movie review, it was just me talking about how my Friday night was, how I'm feeling now at 5am Saturday, just a weird random post filled with all my feelings, mostly sadness.
There are several reasons that I should be happy, but I keep finding myself just totally overcome with sadness every so often these last few days.
I just keep welling up with tears, they start to fall and then I feel the reason that I started crying, it's supposed to be the other way around, feel then cry.
I think this movie just made me feel put on hold, it reminded me that I'm on hold, and I can't get off of hold.
I know that I'm not making a whole lot of sense, I'm exhausted and frustrated with things, and I just want to, actually, I have absolutely no idea what I want other than an intense need for a cigarette right now and I don't have any. hahahaha!
December 9, 2009
I think it's the paint.
I am really starting to think that it's the paint at the high school that is causing Sebastian to keep getting migraines.
Starting the last week of November, Sebastian started a new class that he takes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
He needs to take and pass this class to earn the required English credit for graduation.
This class is the 2nd period of the day, and every time he has this class, he ends up getting a headache that ends up turning into a migraine at some point during the day or night.
He had the class Monday, had a headache for the rest of the day, and then had the explosive migraine that night at 1am.
He had that class again today, the class starts at 8:45am, and within an hour, he had a headache.
I wasn't home for most of the day, I had my doc appointment, but he sent me this email when he got to his digital design class at 11:45am.
Hey when I get home do we have any Tylenol or Advil something like that.
I got another migraine so I want to get something when I get home.
I asked him a few hours ago, after giving the medicine a chance to work, questions about that particular classroom.
Questions like, was it recently painted, does the teacher wear perfume, do any girls in class wear perfume, do any of the guys wear cologne, can he smell anything harsh like paint or a chemical?
He said his teacher says that perfumes are bad for people so she doesn't ever wear any, he does not sit near any of the girls or guys in the class because he likes to sit near the back of the room away from people because it gives him a little bit of privacy so he can concentrate better, and he said that the class always has a slight smell of paint.
Aha!
He doesn't get headaches every day, only on the days he has this class, the class is at the same time every day, and the room always smells a little bit like paint.
Smells can trigger headaches and migraines, I know this because I get perfume/scent headaches, and certain perfumes and scents cause me to have an instant migraines.
The scents that cause me to have an instant and excruciating migraine are cinnamon and vanilla.
I love cinnamon rolls, I love the taste of them, but I cannot inhale the smell of them too deeply or this food that I love to eat will give me a blinding migraine from breakfast time straight on through the entire day.
At this time of year at Publix, they sell these stupid and absolutely horrid cinnamon brooms and they place them at both store entrances and at various locations throughout the store.
I can go from the dairy aisle and take a left into the deli section and get ambushed by the scent of those brooms and have an instant migraine that makes the rest of my grocery shopping an absolute nightmare.
The vanilla perfume that causes the instant migraine is Vanilla Fields
I know that perfume as soon as I get even the slightest whiff of it.
I first started getting migraines from it when I worked at Pier 1 Imports.
There were 3 (three!) girls who worked there that wore it, and a whole hell of a lot of it.
Ugh.
It would suck when all 3 of them worked on the same day, I would beg the manager to let me work in the stockroom all day because if I had to be on the sales floor with those 3 girls, I would be be curled up in 1 of the papasan chairs and crying by the end of the day.
Strong scents, perfumes, spices, and chemical scents, can causes headaches for almost anybody, but for people who are susceptible to migraines, those scents can turn a regular easy-to-kill with Tylenol headache, into a migraine that just makes you want to chop your own head off.
I really believe that it is the slight smell of paint in that 1 classroom that is causing Sebastian's migraines.
Last year he was getting migraines almost every single day.
Last year the school was being built, there was a ton of construction and painting going on every single day, so he was getting headaches and migraines almost every single day.
Sebastian has to take this class 3 days a week, he has to get this credit in order to graduate, and there is no other teacher in his grade level teaching this class, so he has to be in this classroom 3 days a week.
The school has the most absurd rules about stuff like Tylenol if I wanted to try and help him stave off the impending migraine, too.
No student can have or use any Tylenol or other OTC medication at or on any part of the school property, or face suspension with their zero tolerance policy concerning drugs.
Even if a student has a prescription and a letter from a doctor, they cannot have their pain medicine at school.
We went through this last year when he had to take a migraine medicine every 6 hours, they refused to let him take it at school, they wouldn't even dispense it to him in the school nurses office, it was this huge hassle and that's when I asked them about Tylenol and other OTC meds.
They had the same response, no medications, zero tolerance, but if I wanted to, I could appeal it at the school board, they would investigate the students need for the medication, I would have to give my written consent for them to contact the doctor and find out how much the medication was really needed to be taken.
It was basically a do or die kind of thing, like, was Sebastian's head going to explode if he couldn't take the medication at exactly every 6 hours?
Would he survive if he took 1 dose before he left home in the morning, and then didn't take the next dose until he got home?
He would survive?
Thank you doctor.
Sorry Ms. Cooper, Sebastian will not die if he can't take it at school, so our original decision holds, he will not be taking his medication at school, thank you, and now shut the fuck up.
There were quite a few days last year when I had him stick 2 Tylenol in his pocket before he left home, and I told him how to take them if he started getting a headache.
I told him that when the bell rang and everyone was changing classes in the hallway, to reach into his pocket, grasp the pills in his hand and when he got near a water fountain, start coughing really hard, cover his mouth with his hand so he doesn't spread the germies, pop the Tylenol into his mouth, and then get a drink at the fountain and keep on going to his next class.
If he continues to get these migraines every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we may just have to start doing the cough and swallow trick again.
It's absolutely pathetic that we have to do that, that any student has to do that.
I know that Mindy's son Jeff had to do that when he injured his foot and was wearing 1 of those boots, they wouldn't let him take his prescription pain meds either, so Mindy did the same as us, cough and swallow.
I hate that we have to break the rules, and I know that if he gets caught doing the cough and swallow he will be suspended for a minimum of 1 week, but knowing that he is getting horrible migraines makes me feel like I have no choice but to break the rules.
His migraine was barely starting to fade away at 9pm, but he finally felt like it was easing up enough to where he could try to sleep, so he went to bed around 9:45pm, and I went and checked on him around 10:15pm, and he was asleep, so I'm hoping that the migraine goes away completely, that he won't wake up screaming later on tonight.
I'm not tired at all, so I'll keep checking on him all night until I do feel like going to bed.
Migraines are truly the suck, both for the person who suffers from them, and for the people caring for the sufferers.
I really hate seeing him hurting so much, I hate seeing the pale and pained face, I hate hearing him cry in a barely audible whisper because even crying normally makes it hurt even more.
I wish there was a safe medication that he only needed to take once a day every day, and it would make it so that migraines never happened at all, and if they did, that it would quickly disappear.
That would be awesome, but so far the only meds sort of like that have terrible side effects, and I refuse to make him end up having chronic diarrhea, chronic dry mouth, heart palpitations, urinary problems, or any of the other multitude of side effects from those medications.
Looks like it will be the ol' cough and swallow trick 3 days a week.
December 8, 2009
Explosive migraines and shopping.
Around 1 am, Sebastian woke up screaming from an explosive migraine.
Mark was awake and playing a video game, I was out here playing around online, and we both heard him screaming, so the both of us ran in there to see what was wrong.
I turned on the light and ran to his bedside and asked what was wrong while brushing his hair out of his eyes.
He was crying and clutching his head, all he could say was "migraine, help me", so I had Mark grab a t-shirt for Sebastian and help him put it on while I ran out to the kitchen to turn on the water and let it get a little colder, and then I came to my desk where I keep my meds and I got out a Hydrocodone, and went back to the kitchen to fill his cup with cold water.
Hydrocodone is basically Vicodin, and Sebastian's doctor has put him on that before so I know it's ok to give it to him.
I had him swallow down the pill and then lay on the couch to try and relax.
I sat next him and rubbed his forehead and temples gently while having him slowly inhale deeply through his nose, and exhale deeply through his mouth.
These things, the breathing and massaging of the head while waiting for the pain pill to kick in, help migraine sufferers relax while waiting for the med to kick in.
If they don't calm down, the migraine can get much worse, especially with Sebastian.
He goes into panic mode and starts breathing really fast and hard, and then he starts crying, and then the migraine gets even bigger, so doing the breathing and massaging for about 10 minutes while waiting for the med to kick in, works extremely well in preventing the exploding migraine from getting any worse.
I suffer from migraines myself, I get about 1 or 2 per month, but I have gotten the exploding migraines in my sleep before, it's very painful, so painful that it feels like you've just been shot in the head at point blank range, like the gun was touching your head when it was fired.
It's not a migraine that comes on slowly, it just explodes in your head, all of a sudden, you have a migraine, BANG! there it is, an explosive migraine that drops you to your knees.
I feel so bad that he gets migraines so often, but at least it's not like last year where he was having 1 just about every other day, he's now only getting them about once per week.
I finally made up my mind and did it.
I bought the netbook tonight.
I won't be needing to buy any laptop memory for the netbook, it has a 160GB hard drive, and 1GB DDR2 system memory already, so that should be plenty for what Sebastian is needing it for for school.
YaY!
December 2, 2009
Respiratory Guard lozenges review.
I had the opportunity recently to try out a product that says that it inhibits invaders from entering into host cells, and may help you and your family with a flu cure.
I wasn't sick with a cold, but both of the teens were sniffling, sneezing and coughing during the week of November 12th.
I started giving the both of them some of the Respiratory Guard lozenges to help combat their illness, and even though it wasn't the flu which needed a flu cure, the Respiratory Guard lozenges did help fight off some of the symptoms they were complaining of, like sore throats and sniffles, and I think it helped getting rid of the ickies a lot faster too.
In my opinion, they do work to help combat the sickies and ickies of the cold, and if any of us are going to get the flu this season, the Respiratory Guard lozenges are probably going to help get rid of that a lot faster too.
The teens only complained of and had symptoms for about 3 days while I was giving them the lozenges, so yeah, that is a lot faster than I can remember them being sick like that last year.
There's only 1 problem with the lozenges though.
Both of the teens said that they taste like fruity ass.
Now I don't know what fruity ass tastes like, but I did taste 1 myself to see why the teens quickly chewed them up and then downed a full glass of water or soda to get rid of the after taste.
I totally agree with the teens assessment of the lozenges.
They do have an aftertaste that just isn't pleasant, but seriously, what type of medicine has a good taste or after taste?
Not too many, so if you just take a big drink after chewing them up, the after taste is gone in seconds.
So in conclusion, they may have a bitter after taste, but they work as they are intended to work, they help fight off symptoms and help you feel better faster.
This review is a result of a feedback campaign by Respiratory Guard. The recipients were asked to give their honest opinion about the product they received. Good reviews were not incentivized and poor reviews will not be censored for their opinion of the product. **
December 2, 2009
Acceptance.
When I got home from the ER tonight, Mark told me that he's ok with it all now, he's ok with the spine issues that he has.
He said that he woke up today and it was like a switch got flipped on, and he's decided that he's not going to let it ruin his life or stop him from doing something to help others.
He knows that he can't be a police officer, but he still wants to work with people, for people, to help people in some way in the civilian service industry.
He's talking doing crime scene investigations, dispatcher work, managing people, or maybe even getting some fire service training for some work.
He knows he can't physically be a fireman, but he can do administrative work, dispatching, he can get a masters in public safety administration too, he has a lot of options so he's open to checking out many different things now rather than his previous attitude of giving up on everything including his own life.
He said he wants to get his drivers license now where before he didn't even want to do that, and he also said that he wants to get a part time job of some sort while he takes some classes at MCC, which is now calling itself State College of Florida.
He was on the site today looking at what kind of classes they offer in public safety, he said he found some classes that are interesting to him, so he would like my help filling out his school applications and the financial aide forms as well.
He's finally at the point of acceptance with all of this, and I am soo happy to hear him say that!
It was so hard watching him be depressed and angry, it was hell getting into arguments with him over him lashing out at Sebastian and I, to hear him say he's ready to move forward is just so awesome I can't even tell you!
Tomorrow, I'm going to do the best I can to help him fill out applications for everything that he needs at MCC, get the info on the driving class so he can get his license, and everything else too.
This is such good news!
Yay!! (*applause*)
Continue Reading �
December 1, 2009
That spider bite turned out to be really bad.
I thought the spider bite issue was resolving itself, I thought I was healing from it.
I was wrong.
By this morning, both of my legs had swollen up like balloons again, they were red, itchy, and then I started getting hives on the upper part of my body.
I had huge red hives on my torso and arms, and my entire body was itching like crazy, so I went to the ER this evening after several doses of Benadryl did absolutely nothing at all to help me.
I just got home at like 10:30pm after spending 4 and a half hours in the very busy ER.
The doctor looked at my body and was like wow, that's pretty bad, let's see what we can do to fix this, so he hooked me up to an IV and started pumping Prednisone, which is a steroid, into me along with some dilaudid for the pain I was in from scratching myself silly all day long.
I had scratched a couple of moles on my shoulders pretty much off, they were open and bleeding so the nurse had to clean them up and put bandaids on them, and then she lectured me about making moles bleed.
I know that you shouldn't pick moles and make them bleed, but when I was scratching, I didn't even know that I had moles in those spots, I was just scratching where it itched.
I had also scratched a bit too hard on my legs so there were some wounds to clean up there too.
I'm home now and have my scripts for more prednisone and for dilaudid already filled by one of the Walgreens that stay open late.
I still have huge red hives all over my upper body and my legs are still swollen and red, but the doc said that should start to clear up within 24 hours of taking the steroid.
He couldn't figure out what kind of spider bit me, but he did confirm the spider bite is what caused this to happen.
I'm just happy to be home and I'll be happy when the swelling goes away, that's what's so painful, the swelling in my legs, it makes it so that I can't even walk well, I'm like limping on both sides.
It's a sight to see for sure. haha
I can't wait to get some decent sleep tonight, I'm so tired from all of the hours of scratching myself to death.
November 29, 2009
Recovering slowly.
Our Thanksgiving was good, everything was really tasty, and the turkey came out fantastic in the NuWave!
I wasn't sure if I wanted to risk cooking the turkey in the NuWave if it was going to come out bad, but it cooks whole chickens just fine, so why not a turkey?
The fresh thawed turkey cooked in a little under 3 hours, and it came out very moist, tender, and juicy, and tasted exactly like it would taste in the regular oven, so yeah, it can cook a whole turkey in less time than an oven.
But I am just now starting to recover from a spider bite that happened when I laid down to rest early Thanksgiving morning after being awake all night Wednesday cleaning the house and getting things ready.
I didn't know it was a spider bite until yesterday though when Sebastian found the bite marks using a flashlight to look at my right leg.
I laid down Wednesday morning to rest, never felt a thing, but within a few hours, my right leg, left leg, torso, and both arms, were red, swollen, and throbbing in pain.
I could hardly walk, it took help getting around the house, it was soo painful trying to walk, both of my legs were huge and red, I had no idea what had happened.
We thought it may have been a circulatory issue, but Sebastian found the bite mark yesterday.
I have no idea what kind of spider it was, but it caused such a mess with my body.
I am still swollen on my right leg where it bit me just below the knee cap on the inside of my leg.
I had a hard time finishing making the Thanksgiving meal, but I did, then we ate, and then I laid down on the couch and that's where I've been pretty much non-stop since.
I've only gotten up to use the bathroom, but then right back to the couch to keep my legs elevated.
My whole body was red and swollen, my arms, hands, part of my neck, it was really awful.
This stupid bite has caused me to be down and unable to do anything at all, so I am behind on work, the house is a mess, I'm still in pain and just feeling totally tired and useless.
It sucks.
But our meal was good, the teens enjoyed every bite, they have eaten all of the leftovers already too...LoL
Ok, back to the couch I go, sitting up causes the still swollen parts to start throbbing in pain, so I need to go lay down again.
Later days.
November 25, 2009
Getting things ready.
My sis came and took me to Publix to get some last minute food needs for the holiday, it was absolutely crazy in there today! OMG!
But I knew it would be, day before Thanksgiving, everybody was in there getting their last minute food items and pies.
After we went shopping, she took the teens to her house for the night so they can babysit the girls while her and her husband go out to dinner and a movie for their anniversary.
The teens love babysitting, they totally enjoy playing with the girls and then watching movies or playing WoW after the girls go to sleep.
She'll be bringing them back in the morning so we can have our traditional T-day breakfast, and then sis has to go to work for a few hours.
She said that on the way home today, she and the boys will be hitting a few stores to try and find those Zhu Zhu Pets
The girls really want them, so she's trying to get them for the girls for Christmas.
Those are some pretty expensive little toys, holy crap!
I had no idea that they cost that much, and of course, they are THE hot ticket item this year, every kid wants to have one.
She's also looking at those FurReal Friends
I just called her and told her that Amazon
They want the kitty that I linked to, Susan and Skye both said 'he looks like Aunty Kat's kitty Carmine', and they're right, it does!
____________________________
My newly extended family, my bio-siblings, (squeee!) are all getting together for turkey day tomorrow, I wish I could be there, they wish I could be there, Joanne and I messaged each other back and forth on FB about it, exchanged holiday wishes and birth-dates of all of our family members, but I told her that going to Maine is just not gonna happen this year, maybe next year.
I'm hoping for a February visit if my income taxes are good enough.
When we do go, I'll have to get Mark a second form of ID for travel because he's now a legal adult, and anytime I have flown since homeland security set up all of the new flying rules with the TSA, I've had to have my ID, a credit or debit card, and my 'I have metal implants which may set off metal detectors' card.
When Sebastian and I flew to NYC to meet the siblings and do the Today show, Sebastian had his school ID, and that was it, and the check-in person told me that he should get a second form of ID when he turns 18 if he plans on flying anywhere, and Sebastian piped up that he wants to go see Australia, and the lady said that he might have to do an international background check if he plans on leaving the country, that homeland security has gotten much more strict and thorough when issuing passports.
I don't know how true that is, I've never heard that said before, so I'll go look it up at some point before we fly up to Maine to check and see if Mark is really going to need a second form of ID now that he's 18, and I'll look up that international background check rule too.
I've never left the country so I have absolutely no idea what all you would need to leave the country other than a passport.
____________________________
Ok, I haven't eaten anything at all yet today, so I'm going to go grab something to eat.
I bought some of Publix's most awesome chunky chicken salad, so I'm going to make a yummy sandwich and then get cracking on doing the dishes and getting all of my stuff organized to make the turkey and everything for tomorrow.
November 23, 2009
Stressed up to here.
I've been down sick and seriously fatigued for the last few days due to stress.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it multiple times, that when I get super stressed out, my body revolts and makes me super sick.
It's my body's way of saying "Hey! Kat! Slow the hell down woman, you're killing us in here!".
It's just been non-stop arguing with Mark about all of this, and arguing with Sebastian about school, and arguing with an insane teacher who keeps calling me, and just all kinds of stuff.
The approval for physical therapy came in today's mail, so I tried talking to Mark about it, tried to get him to realize that he can do it even though the doc told him nothing more strenuous than going for a walk, but the doc ordered the PT, so yes, he can do some workouts just not do really crazy stuff.
I'm going to set his appointments up with the same place that I went for my PT because that guy who works there really knows what he's doing, and they will be having Mark use some of the fitness equipment that they have there to help him build up his core, make it stronger, it's part of the PT orders that he do mostly core strengthening exercises.
But as it's been for the last several weeks, Mark argues about it, he argues about everything.
I really try to not argue back, but I can't help it.
When he starts snapping at me, starts giving me the eye, I feel like I have to defend myself.
I hate this, I really hate this.
Then this morning, my landlord showed up, said he needed the rent for December early, way early, because of the property taxes that are due, so I needed to give him the rent.
I didn't have it all, so I had to find a way to get it.
I got it and then called him so he could come back and get it, but man, that sucked having to get it all so early.
He apologized about it, said that the property taxes came due, he needed to get down to the city and pay it no later than 10am tomorrow morning, said he got the letter in the mail this morning, and so he had to rush to all of the apartments he owns and get everyone to pay early so he could pay the property taxes and while he's there, he said he's going to yell at them about mailing stuff so late that it makes it hard for people to come up with that kind of money in a little over 24 hours.
But it's all paid now, my rent for next month is all paid, so at least I can stop stressing about that.
Money is a huge stress-er for me, it's always on my mind, and I hate it.
I hate how money causes me so much stress.
Oh well, it's all done now, dinner is done cooking too, so I'm going to go feed my boys and try to have a peaceful evening with no fighting and stuff.
November 19, 2009
Seriously annoyed.
I am seriously ticked off tonight, so ticked that I completely lost my appetite, have no need at all for any kind of appetite suppressant at all, my hands are shaking, I'm super stressed and agitated as well.
That counselor that was supposed to come to the house this afternoon?
She was supposed to be here between 2:30-3pm.
At almost 5 minutes to 4pm, she was still not here.
She finally showed up at almost 4:30pm, and said she was in a meeting, that she has meetings every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 2pm-4pm.
So I asked her why she made an appointment to meet with us between 2:30pm-3pm if she knew she was going to be unable to make it?
She said sorry, but thought that it would be ok because as I had told her on the phone, I am always at home.
That doesn't matter!
It does not matter if I am always at home or not, if you make a freaking appointment time with me, you need to keep it.
Showing up late just because I'm always home is simply not ok to do.
If you know that you have meetings until 4pm, schedule the appointment with me for 4:30pm, because even though I don't work, and I say that I'm always home, I do have other stuff to do in my life.
I go to the store for food, I make dinner, I try to get my work done, other things, but instead, I sat here from 2:30pm-4:30pm waiting on her to show up or call, and she did tell me that she would call when she was on her way.
She never called me to tell me that, just all of a sudden, there was a car in my driveway.
I am simply not ok with people who say one thing and then do another.
Just because I'm disabled and always home, it doesn't mean that people get to play with my time like I don't matter.
I am really ticked off and angry, I'm just going to go to bed, I am tired and stressed out, just way too much going on.
November 19, 2009
Trying to clean for an in-home visit.
A counselor is coming here this afternoon to talk with us as a family, to see how she can help us, what kind of things can be done to help us.
I know I still haven't explained in detail what's going on here, I will, not right now, but I will.
Obviously though, it's serious enough to get this counselor here as soon as possible because this is becoming so much bigger than I can take care of on my own.
So this morning, I grabbed my box cutter and broke down the box from the computer, started some laundry, dusting, and general cleaning of the house so it doesn't look like a total sty in here when she arrives.
I will try to post the how and the why and how it all went later on, I just have a ton of stuff that I am going through right now, so many things are now way down on my list of to-do's.
And I need a cig in the worst possible way right now. Bad habits are the suck, I know, but damn, way too much stress happening for me right now.
Blah.
November 16, 2009
Brain freeze. Or is it thawing into mush?
I have been having difficulty all weekend, actually for many days now, trying to think straight, to work, to blog, to do much of anything, and every single time I sit down to do something, I end up stopping.
I'm not exactly sure of the reason, it's probably several factors.
I'm once again, adjusting to a new med, one that I am having difficulty with, and I have a crap ton of stress, I'm trying to re-adjust to my antidepressant, and I'm just treading water around here.
Mark and I are not ok.
It's rough here, I would love to go into more detail on that, but not right now.
I really think that's the bulk of my problem, I was talking to my sister about it last night, and I was in tears trying to explain to her what's going on, and as angry as I am at him, how can I blame him for what he's dealing with and feeling?
I gave this problem to him, inadvertently, not even knowing that I was going to do give it to him, but I did, so how in the hell can I blame him for how he's feeling?!
I can blame him for how he's behaving, but I too behaved this way when I was faced with the news.
Of course when I got it, I was out on my own, my kids were young, I couldn't really snap at anyone because I had no one to snap at.
Hell, I still don't have anyone to yell at for all of this, my bio-parents are dead.
But I'm right here, I'm his bio-parent, I gave him this crap through the handed-down DNA, so I'm right here to yell at and treat like garbage.
He needs counseling, we need counseling, all of us, as a family, because this isn't just affecting Mark and I, it's affecting his little brother Sebastian too.
Just yesterday as Sebastian and I walked to the store together, we talked as we always do, and he said to me that he will never leave us, that he will get a good education and career so that he can take care of us because we can't survive on our own once Mark starts to get worse, waiting for 15-20 years, Mark will only get worse, so Sebastian isn't going to leave, he's going to provide for us, take care of us physically, and he's scared, scared of the things that Mark has said.
I too am scared of the things Mark has said, that's why he needs counseling, we all do.
It's hurting all of us.
All of this stuff is probably why my brain is like in shut down mode, can't do what I need to do, I'm struggling.
November 10, 2009
2 steps forward, 3 steps back, and 1 to break even.
I thought that I was finally starting to make some progress with Mark, not with his actual medical/Medicaid stuff, but with him and his feelings about all of this.
Last week when he was sleeping in late and Sebastian was at school, I heard Mark yelling, screaming, I thought maybe he was having a bad muscle spasm or something, so I ran to his room to help him.
He was sound asleep but screaming in his sleep.
Screaming that his life was over, that all he ever wanted was now all gone, his only dream was destroyed, and that he hated me, he hates me for what I did to him, because I gave this to him.
I spoke quietly to him to calm him down in his sleep, told him it was all ok, that he was at home, he was safe, that things were going to be ok, and after a few minutes of talking softly to him and rubbing his head, he drifted back to a calmer sleep.
It bothered me all that day and ever since.
They say that when you talk in your sleep, that you tell the truth.
I don't know how true that is, but it's been bothering me that he said those things.
I already blame myself for his spine problems, and I know, it's not my fault, it's genetic, I didn't do it to him on purpose, but I still feel guilty about it, I can't help but feel this way.
It just hurts me to know he is hurting.
And then tonight when he came back home from sleeping at his friend Jeff's house last night, he and I got into a big huge fight about it all, about how it's not fair that he has this, and that he doesn't want to be like me, doesn't want to end up like me, that he better get his surgery, the doctors had better do it now, not wait 15-20 years, that's not acceptable to him, he wants it now, he will not wait, when is his next appointment, what did I do today to get him his surgery, what's going on, why haven't I kept him updated.
He's angry, absolutely furious, and he's lashing out at me because of how he feels, I totally understand that, I did the same thing when it happened to me, when I was told that I had to stop working, that I couldn't lift anything heavier than 10lbs, that I was disabled, I know how he feels, I don't blame him one bit.
We must have gone back and forth for over an hour, me telling him repeatedly that I was doing every single thing within my abilities to get him taken care of, that I had called in and requested the appeal form to request a second opinion from a neurosurgeon other than the one that the orthopedist wants him to see, but the ortho is refusing to allow me to take him to a different doctor, so I have to request an appeal of that decision, so I'm doing that, plus I'm still trying to get the right to take him to a doctor out of network and be allowed to have a consult with that doctor, pay out of pocket for the consult, and not get the doc doing the consult in trouble because he saw a Medicaid patient without their approval.
That whole thing is totally ridiculous to me, I just don't understand that at all, how is us paying out of pocket for a consult a bad thing to Medicaid, why would they be angry over that, they wouldn't have to pay for it?
But Mark and I argued and argued, I tried not to argue back, I know that he's simply expressing his feelings, but he was so angry and yelling at me, he was saying hurtful things to me, about me, and I am ashamed of myself for arguing back, I shouldn't have.
This whole thing is so beyond stressful for the both of us, it's tiring and devastating, and so hard to deal with.
I think it's giving the both of us a big time mental beat-down.
I'm sleeping more than I normally do, I usually have insomnia for days on end, but I'm extremely tired and sleeping a lot, but I'm not sleeping well when I do sleep.
I'm having some pretty major panic attacks while I'm sleeping, enough of an attack to wake me from my sleep and I'll be in a deep sweat upon waking.
I'm not eating well at all either, what I am eating is comfort foods, I eat when I get stressed out like this, I go straight for sweets, straight for my comforts and a lot of them when I get like this.
All of the weight that I had lost over the last few months, about 15lbs, is probably being put right back on and I'll need some slim pills or something to help me get rid of the weight again.
I did get my refill of Elavil today, I ran out about a week/week and a half ago, and maybe that has something to do with how I'm feeling.
I've been taking it since July and this is the first time that I've run out, so that probably has a lot to do with how I'm feeling, it's actually, probably, the entire reason for how I'm feeling.
After taking an antidepressant for 5 months and suddenly stopping, duh, of course I would be feeling way more stressed out than usual and having panic attacks, not sleeping well, and being agitated like I am.
Funny how that just went *bang!* into my brain as I was sitting here almost near tears.
I didn't even think about that being part of the reason that I'm feeling this way.
I do have a lot to be stressed out about, both Mark and I do, this is very hard for the both of us to try and deal with, but some of my issues are due to medication changes, stopping one that I've been on for 5 months.
Duh.
November 10, 2009
Starting to look up.
I am one smart cookie I tell ya!
I was freaking out! Like war seriously freaking out about all of my saved bookmarks and passwords and stuff, and how they were lost and gone until my hard drive files can all be transfered over to a new pc.
I was like almost on the verge of tears about losing all of those bookmarks, i need them all for work and stuff, and that's when i just now remembered my Sims 3 USB drive that I got when I got my game.
About 3 weeks ago, I just said to myself, if something bad ever happens, you will need all of these sites, so back them up.
I exported all of my FF and IE bookmarks, and all of my usernames and passwords, to my desktop, and then saved them all to my Sims 3 USB drive.
I just checked it, and yeuss!
It's all still there!
Woot!
I am sooooo happy about that!
Yay!
My friends are on their way over with the desktop that I can use temporarily until I get a new one, they should be here in about an hour or so, and then I'll be able to be back out at my desk with my setup and working again the way that works best for me instead of this strained sitting position that I'm in now.
The loaner desktop isn't much, it's a small hard drive, but that's ok, I just need to be able to get online with it so I can do work.
Then when I get the new pc, I can get all of my files transferred over to it, and be good to go.
I am very lucky to have such good friends who are willing to help me out like that, loan me a computer because they know this is how I make my living, and to my other friend for actually giving me an early xmas present.
I think I said thank you about 80 times, truly an awesome thing to do for me, I am abundant in the good friend despartment and feel very lucky to have such amazing friends.
I went to my docs this morning, I'll post how that all went later on once the loaner pc is hooked up.
Later days for now1
November 9, 2009
My computer is dead.
I managed to fix the bad caller error, but then when I went to plug it back in, nothing.
I tried for hours and hours to fix it, but it simply will not come back on, it won't boot up, nothing.
The power lights flash for about a half of a second, and then that's it, nothing at all.
I am using the teens pc at the moment, but I can't use it all of the time for work and stuff, Sebastian does school work on it, Mark plays games on it, plus it's on desk and their monitor is at an angle that makes it very difficult for me to see and use, it hurts my neck very bad to sit like this.
I've made like a gazillion typos while writing this entry and had to come back and fix them all after publishing it.
I don't know what to do right now, I use my pc for work, I can't afford to get a new one right now, I won't be able to get a new one until tax time.
Wow, this sucks so fucking much.
I need my computer to work, without work, I won't have any money at all, I won't even be able to try to make money and try to save money to buy a new one.
I can only sit here at their pc for so long before it really starts to hurt me and I have to get off of it and go lay down, it's painful sitting here like this, no wonder Mark complains about his back hurting after sitting here for so long.
So anyway, if I don't reply to emails or you don't see much from me, this is why, my computer has gone to the big pc dead world.
November 9, 2009
Day off for now.
My computer is acting up, something called a "bad pool caller" error has happened, so I'm running in safe mode at the moment, using the teens pc until I can take this one apart.
Not feeling all that great either, so yeah, taking the day off for now, at least until I feel well enough to fix this pc.
Later days.
November 7, 2009
Starting to come around and other things.
Sorry that my posting has been a bit sporadic, often late at night and not every day, and I also want to apologize for not responding to every single comment like I usually do.
I haven't been able to do that for quite some time now and it really bothers me that I can't.
I really enjoy interacting with my readers, with all of you, and by responding to your comments, it also lets you know that I have read them and am reading your advice, ideas, suggestions, etc.
I appreciate every single comment, so not being able to reply to them all bothers me.
I am also running a bit behind on responding to your direct emails, I promise you that I will get to them, it just may take me awhile as I am answering the most important ones first, some are time sensitive, so yeah, it's taking me a bit to get to all of them.
I am dealing with, or at least trying to, deal with, life issues at home.
Mark is slowly starting to talk to me about how he's doing and feeling regarding the issues with his spine.
Just a week ago, he said that he couldn't talk to me about it.
In that email that he sent to me and his Aunt Jo, he said;
I cant even start to talk to you about how I feel. My mind is so upset I cant even get a grip on it.
Everything Ive wanted is now gone. Im scared. Im mad. I'm confuesed. Giving up seems to be the only thing that seems right to me.
I dont think me or you can handle this. Emotionally or physically we cant. Im sorry if I ever messed up. Or upsetted you.
We've also been talking about his career, well, trying to talk about it.
He keeps telling me that all he has ever wanted to be since he was just a very small kid, is a cop, so being told that he can't, knowing that he won't be able to pass the physical exam or do any of the physical training at the police academy due to pain and physical limitations, has him extremely upset.
I tried talking to him about other law enforcement careers, things that he could do that wouldn't require strenuous physical activity or a hard physical training course and exam, but he just doesn't want to hear it right now, it's NOT what he wanted, he wanted to be a cop, not a CSI, not a dispatcher, not an investigator or clerk, he wants to be a cop, period, so talking about anything else, no, he absolutely does NOT want to hear it.
I am going to back off talking to him about it for awhile, I am going to just give him some more time to think about things and try to deal with them on his own time, he needs more time to try and come to grips with all of this.
It's hard, he's 18, the last few years all he's done is think and plan out his police officer goals, what he needed to do to get there, college, criminal law classes at college, apply at the police academy, get references for it so it would look good on his application to have letters of reference saying what a good and upstanding young man he is, to get a police background check and attach his perfect and clean record to his application, all of the things that he would need to do to apply and be accepted, he had it all planned out and in a notebook, he was checking each step off as he went, and now in that notebook, there's a giant question mark with about a gazillion circles scribbled around it in pen.
This all just makes me so sad and angry.
Angry at the doctor, angry at Medicaid, just really angry and more determined to fight for him to get the surgeries that he needs so that he can do something in law enforcement, maybe even still be a cop, but that will only happen if he can get the surgery now, not in 15-20 years, but now, then heal up, get some exercise and physical training in at a gym, build up his strength and stamina and then apply like he wanted to, prove to them that he can physically do the job.
It's what he wants and I am going to try like mad to help him get it.
November 4, 2009
Start again in the morning.
Well the 24 to 48 hours came and went with no call back from the Medicaid specialist for Mark.
They had until 5pm today to call me back and they didn't, so at 9am tomorrow morning, I get to call them again and demand to be put on hold while I wait for the specialist, I will not wait for a call back again.
This is the same kind of crap that I dealt with for 4 and a half years, they stall, they tell you they will call you, they never do, it's just a big game of phone tag with them to try and get any answers.
Ugh.
I did get the call from the neurosurgeon's office though, and this is how that is going to work.
I have to go to the orthopedists office and get all of Mark's films, his xrays and his MRIs, on a disc, and then take them to the neurosurgeon's office and just drop them off.
The neurosurgeon and his team will review the films and if they do think that they can help Mark, they will then call me to set up an appointment to bring him in.
If they don't think that they can help him, they will call me to come back and get the disc and a referral to a different surgeon who they think may be able to help him, but I will also have to get that referral cleared not only by the orthopedist, but by Mark's primary care doctor as well.
Sounds like fun doesn't it?
In order to get our own consultation at a specialist at All Children's Hospital, I have to get Mark's orthopedist to fax the written test results to the specialist's nurse, and she will have the specialist look at them.
But in order to actually see the specialist, I have to convince the primary care doctor to request a consult with this specialist, from Medicaid.
The specialist is out of network, so we would be requesting a consult with a doctor that they do not participate with, and I can guarantee you that Medicaid will deny the request for the consult because this is what happened to me time after time after time.
We also cannot just go see the specialist on our own and pay cash out of pocket for a consultation, a second opinion, because the specialist could get in trouble for seeing a Medicaid patient without their written prior approval for the consult, even if they deny a request for the consult from the primary care doctor, they will not let us pay cash out of our own pockets to see the specialist.
That's just insane to me.
I was talking on the phone to Mindy this afternoon, and she asked me what I thought would/may happen if the health care bill passes for the public option, wouldn't it be just like Medicaid?
I said that I can't be sure, but if it's run like how Medicaid is run, then the public option would be of total non-use to the people who really need it.
Medicaid denies almost every single referral request, they deny consultations, they punish doctors for seeing Medicaid patients who want to pay for consults or appointments with their own money because the doctor and patient didn't get their written approval for a consult even if the patient is going to pay cash for the consult, and they deny surgeries that will greatly improve someone's quality of life and allow them to work, lead full and productive lives, because the surgery would cost more than doing the absolute least expensive option which is usually the absolute last thing that a surgeon can do to keep the patient alive.
They would rather pay for a leg amputation and a wheelchair, than to pay for the surgery that would allow the patient to go back to full time work in 6 months to 1 year.
Medicaid would choose the amputation/wheelchair option even though in the long run, it would cost far more, and it would mean that the patient would be on some type of assistance and government run insurance plan, either Medicaid or Medicare, for the rest of their lives.
If the public option is like Medicare, then people would be taken care of.
Medicare has never denied a single medical procedure, medication, surgery, or referral to any of the gazillion doctors that I have had to see in the 3 and a half, almost 4 years, since becoming approved for Medicare.
Medicaid forces patients to see doctors in their network even if that doctor is completely unqualified or incapable of providing the right kind of care for the patient.
Medicare allows the patient to see whichever doctor or specialist that can provide the right kind of care for the patient so that the patient can get back to a somewhat normal life as quickly as possible.
I have been on both over these last 10 and a half years, and Medicare is far superior to Medicaid, and both are government run medical insurance plans.
What makes them so drastically different?
Medicaid is for poor people, people below a certain income level, and living in poverty.
Medicare is for the elderly and the disabled, people who have worked and paid into the system.
It is clearly obvious to me which one considers the lives of their patients more valuable.
I'm just so angry right now.
I'm angry that I am going to have to fight tooth and nail to try and get Mark treated by the most capable surgeons so that he doesn't end up like me, disabled and in a constant state of pain for the rest of his life.
If they had just allowed me to be treated by the surgeon who could do it back when those first 5 doctors said that I needed to have the surgery immediately, and that this 1 particular surgeon could do it, maybe I wouldn't have ended up like this.
But no.
They made me go see 19 different surgeons, all of whom admitted that they were not capable or qualified to help me.
They wasted 4 and a half years of my life, 4 and a half years of precious time, 4 and a half years while my spine was falling apart at a rapid pace.
They waited and stalled, denied the treatments and surgery that would have prevented my current state.
I knew when my Cobra ran out that I was doomed, I knew it, and I was right.
I do not want that for Mark, he does not deserve to have to wait for years and years to get the surgery that would allow him to work, to live a full and productive life.
They are going to send him through hoop after hoop and expect him to jump through all of them, and fight and claw, and hopefully not end up so discouraged and depressed that he just wants to give up.
He's already feeling like giving up now, he knows what I went through, he knows this isn't going to be easy at all, he knows that he's going to be denied time and again.
The neurosurgeon that we have to take Mark's films on disc to?
He is one of the 19 surgeons that I saw.
He looked at my films, looked at me, and said that he was not qualified or capable of helping me.
Unless the man has become absolutely brilliant in just the last 5 years, he will probably take a look at Mark's films and say the exact same thing.
November 3, 2009
It will kill me one of these days.
Stress that is.
Oh to be a cat and be able to sleep wherever and whenever I wanted.
That would truly be the awesome.
Shahiro has taken over my Publix shopping bags and claimed them as her bed.
They do look rather comfy don't they?
I have been so stressed out over these last few days, I'm feeling so overwhelmed with the situation with Mark and his health care.
It is on my mind constantly while waiting for a call back from a Medicaid specialist who is apparently the only one who can answer all of the questions that I have regarding his coverage.
How long will he be covered for?
Is it to age 18 or is it 21?
Or is it for longer due to my being disabled?
Will his surgeries be covered or will I have to fight like I did for myself for 4 and a half years?
Can I take him to see the specialist at All Children's Hospital and have it be covered, or will I need to pay for that consultation out of pocket?
Oh to be a cat and find that one little strip of sun coming through the window, and fit whatever part of my body will fit into that warm sunny patch.
I love how Nova the fat no-tail kitty finds that one little strip of sun, and puts her nose into it and falls into a deep sleep.
I wish I could sleep like that.
I have barely slept at all these last days, probably no more than 6 hours in total since Thursday night.
That was the last time that I got more than 5 hours of sleep.
It's been a game of hurry up and wait.
Mark's doctor said that he needs to go see the neurosurgeon immediately, but we have to wait for Medicaid to approve the referral.
Mark's doctor said that he needs to start physical therapy immediately to strengthen his core muscles, but we have to wait for Medicaid to approve the referral for that too.
These are all things that the Medicaid specialist can answer for me, but I have to wait for them to call me back.
I called them first thing Monday morning, bright and early one minute after the office opened for the day, 9:01am.
The call intake worker took all of our information, said that they were passing it on to the specialist people, and that someone would call me back within 24 to 48 hours.
If I don't hear from someone by the close of office hours tomorrow, I will have to call them back first thing on Thursday morning, and play the waiting game again.
It's very frustrating and stressful.
Hurry up and wait.
Hurry, he needs to see the neurosurgeon.
Hurry up and wait.
Hurry, he needs to start physical therapy immediately.
Hurry up and wait.
Oh to be one of these lovely cats and just fall fast asleep and be at rest for hours.
I love how they can just lay anywhere, lay any way that their bodies want to, and be totally comfortable and able to sleep.
Every time that I lay down to try and sleep, I cannot get comfortable.
My body aches everywhere and I know that the stress is a huge factor in that.
When I'm in better moods, my body isn't so painful when it comes time to sleep, I'm able to just relax and sleep when I'm happy, at peace.
But stress makes my muscles tighten up and spasm all night long, sleep is nearly impossible.
I toss and turn all night long, I hear every single noise going on in the house.
The creaking of the teens beds as they roll over, the cats eating their food or getting a drink, the cats playing or fighting, or knocking things over as they play or fight, Sebastian's occasional snores, Mark clearing his throat, both of the teens mumbling in their sleep about WoW or Nazi zombies they have to fight in their video games.
All of the noises and sounds of the house and it's occupants all night long as I struggle to get even just one hour of sleep.
Oh to be one of my lovely cats who are all sleeping again right now in all of their favorite places.
Nova asleep and drooling on my sandals, Kali under the coffee table, Shahiro on the back of the couch, and Carmine in his box by laundry basket.
I can only hope to be able to sleep even half as well as they can.
I'd love to be able to sleep as well as they do even for just one night.
That would be awesome.
November 1, 2009
Taking it one day at a time.
I apologize for the lack of updates again, we're all just trying to wrap our heads around the medical news for Mark, and trying to plan our next step, our course of action.
I have a lot of phone calls to make tomorrow, thank goodness for the free long distance included with the Fios, I have a feeling that I'll be making calls all over the state tomorrow and over the next few days and weeks.
I also have a feeling that I will definitely be buying Sebastian a netbook like I posted about a few weeks ago, because not only will he be needing it for school, but I think Mark will also be needing plenty of his own computer time to take some online classes like I've also posted about.
Buy.com has another one on sale this week, it's an ASUS Eee PC Seashell Netbook, for $389.95 with free shipping, but if you buy that one, Buy.com will send you a free $25 Prepaid Visa Card just for buying it.
It's a really nice looking netbook, it has tons of features, it's only 1-inch thick and only weighs 2.4 pounds, that's super small and lightweight!
It has 170gb of Hybrid storage, not really sure what "hybrid storage" means, but 170gb is a lot of storage room!
It has wireless connectivity with built-in 802.11n (draft 2.4GHz n) and Bluetooth V2.1, and 6 hours of unplugged use time, that's pretty decent too.
It also has a 10.1 inch back-lit LED display, for 1024x600 resolution which is perfect for viewing most things, and it also has 2 USB ports for hooking up to the things he would need in his digital design class, and a built in webcam in case he ever needed to use that in one of his classes.
I know he mentioned something about video chats with the rep from the tech school, like they chat with the rep once a week either in person or by cam on the teachers laptop.
It really has a lot of other features too, I'll have to show him this one and see what he thinks of it or if he likes the other one better.
Personally I like this one better, it has far more features to it including 10gb of free online storage for the first 18 months, a 1-year warranty, and a "flawless display" warranty for the first 30 days so if the buyer notices even just 1 itty bitty pixel damaged, ASUS will replace the entire panel at no cost to the buyer.
So yeah, I really think this will be the one that I would like to get him unless he insists on the other one.
We all need to have our own computers for all of the things that we all do and are going to need to do.
I work on mine, this is how I make money to pay rent, bills, doctors, and prescriptions for not just myself anymore, but for Mark now too.
His last appointment cost me $120 because Medicaid refused to cover it, they said that the ortho did not get pre-approval for the appointment to give us the results of his MRI.
Sebastian needs a netbook for his digital design classes, and having the netbook for him will allow Mark to use the desktop to take online classes because we may need to enroll him in some type of college courses if we want to continue him receiving Medicaid.
Because he's 18 now and no longer a student, his Medicaid is set to expire soon, it expires within 6 months of the 18th birthday or within 6 months of being out of school.
He's been out of school since May, and turned 18 on August 15th.
I have to call Medicaid tomorrow about all of this plus ask them about his referral to the neurosurgeon, to physical therapy, and also ask them if he can go see a spine specialist at All Children's hospital in St. Pete.
There's a spine specialist there who my sister knows about, the boy she takes care of sees him and will be having his scoliosis surgery very soon, I can't remember if she said in 6 weeks or in 6 months, we talked about so many medical things, but that specialist is taking new patients and sees young people up to the age of 21.
My sister is going to call that specialist tomorrow and ask him if he can see Mark for a consult appointment, get his opinion, and she said that she'll help me pay for the consult appointment if Medicaid won't.
There's so many things that they won't pay for, and I remember my own hell trying to get surgery after I had to quit working and my insurance from work and Cobra ran out and I had to go on Medicaid before I got approved for SSDI and Medicare.
It was a long battle with Medicaid, they didn't want to pay for anything at all, their answer to my spine problem was if the doctors were sure that not having spine fusion was going to cause me to become paralyzed and lose my left leg all of the way to the pelvis, Medicaid would pay for the leg removal and a wheelchair, but they did not want to pay for spine fusion surgery.
I fought with them for 4 years to get the surgery and had to take my case all of the way to the governor in order to force Medicaid to approve the surgery.
I am totally prepared to fight like that again if they start refusing care for Mark, if they don't want to pay for any of his treatments and/or surgeries too.
I will fight like crazy to get him the best help that I can.
October 30, 2009
Bad day to knock on my door.
Around 11am this morning, there was a very loud knock on my door, I thought it might have been the mailman, I was expecting a package today, (got it Mom, thanks!) but it wasn't the mailman, it was 2 women selling god.
When I peeked out the door window, I saw the 2 women standing there and one of them was holding a big wooden box.
I wasn't sure they were god sellers at first, the big wooden box threw me for a loop, I thought they may have been selling some of those entertainment coupon books, or some of those pizza discount coupons, or maybe they were going door to door selling Rocky Patel cigars or magazine subscriptions, the wooden box really threw me off.
As soon as I opened the door and asked "May I help you?", I knew what they were selling.
One of the women had started to take out a Watchtower magazine, and because now is so the wrong time to be trying this crap with me, I snapped.
"Are you banging on my door trying to sell god?!" I shouted.
One of the women started to say "Ma'am, being the day before Halloween..." but I cut her off before she could even finish that sentence, "Get the hell off of my property right now!"
The same woman who had started to tell me that being the day before Halloween they felt the need to remind people about god, tried to protest, but I just kept shouting for them to get off of my property right freaking now or I would call the police.
They tried to go to the door on the other half of my duplex, but that unit is still empty, so I yelled at them again, "That apartment is vacant, no one lives there, so get the hell off of my property right now! Do NOT make me come outside, Do NOT make me call the cops, get your feet moving very quickly and get the hell off of my property right now!"
The 2 women were looking at me in complete disbelief, like how dare I yell at them to get off my property, how dare I threaten them with the police or make me go outside after them.
They were walking rather slowly towards the sidewalk, so I opened the door and yelled even louder, and had grabbed the 2x4 that I keep behind the front door.
Once they saw that, they started running out of the driveway as fast as they could.
I just wasn't in the mood to even try talking to them about their god, I didn't want to hear it, I didn't want to even be dealing with it.
I don't give a crap about tomorrow being Halloween, the one day of the year that the dead supposedly walk the earth, none of it, I just didn't want to hear what they were trying to sell me and all of the other people on my street.
They turned into the driveway to my left and my neighbor was outside with his dog, he had heard me yelling at them, so before they even got a few feet into his driveway, he yelled at them to get off of his property too.
I don't know what it is that makes these people think they have the right to go door to door all of the time, what makes them think they have the right to do this?
Would they like it if I came to their home and started telling them about atheism?
I bet they wouldn't, I bet they would do exactly as my neighbor and I did, and yell at us to get off of their property.
I'm just so over this kind of stuff, and I seriously pity the next person who comes to my door with this crap, and I bet someone will come back tomorrow morning.
They are always at it on Saturday mornings, and with tomorrow actually being Halloween, I bet there will be another team of them going door to door trying to warn people of the evils of Halloween.
October 30, 2009
Not sure what to do right now.
I'm sorry that I haven't blogged since Tuesday, all I have done since we came home from Mark's doctor appointment is Twitter.
I just Twittered a bit ago about how Mark is doing, it's not good at all.
We went in and got the results of Mark's MRIs, and it's really not good at all.
We know that Mark has Spondylolysis in his lower spine, but we now know what else is wrong with his spine.
Pretty much everything that is wrong with me and my spine, he has wrong with his spine.
He has nerve impingement, stenosis, disc damage, degenerated discs, and worst of all, (it's all bad but this really sucks) he has the same thing wrong with his neck that caused me to have that emergency surgery back in September 2008.
His vertebrae in his neck are closing in on his spinal cord just like mine were.
It's not as bad as mine was, we caught it very early, but it is there.
The vertebrae from his C1 through C6, are closing in on his spinal cord and he will eventually have to have surgery.
The doctor said that he does not want to do either the lumbar surgery or the cervical surgery, 2 spine fusion surgeries, on Mark right now, he said that he thinks Mark is too young, but I know from experience that waiting till you're older is a very bad decision, it has caused me so many problems, I am still not healed from my first spine fusion in February 2006, so no, I do not want to make Mark wait until he's older.
I am hoping that when we see the neurologist, we have a referral but no date yet, that he will decide to do the surgeries now or very soon, not in 15-20 years like his doctor said.
Waiting 15-20 years will just cause the problems with his spine to get much much worse, he will be in pain for all of those years, and I really don't want him to be in any more pain than he already is for any longer than is necessary.
Not only that, but I don't know if Mark can hang on that long mentally.
He sent me an email at 2:30 in the morning, when I was asleep, telling me that he just wants to give up, that because the doctor told him that he can no longer pursue his dream job of being a police officer because any physical activity more strenuous than taking walks, will cause his spine to deteriorate even faster, so no, he can't be a cop.
The doc said it, "Mark, I am sorry, but being a police officer is out of the question".
Hearing those words crushed him, it has literally crushed him.
He sent me an email and my sister an email, he sent me what he sent to her, and I am going to share some of his words with you.
I know that he was very upset when he wrote it because he normally is an excellent writer, he spells very well, so he must have been sitting there crying as he wrote this which just kills me, to know he was awake and upset, crying, having all of these bad thoughts going through his head.
Well, its worse then I thought then we all thought.
I have mothers neck problem, the one that will eventually kill me unless I get surgery.
Along with that alot of diteration all through my back. My lower spine has stoniosis along with spineodilosis.
The doctor said I cannot do anything that will put pressure on my back. No physical activatitys for the rest of my life.
Or else my back could indeed end up like moms or worse. Thought you should know. I am deeply upsetted by this,
and really am starting to give up on alot of things. Becoming a police officer is now out of the question. I am going to try
and take it one day at a time. Because if I start to think about whats wrong with me it becomes over welming.
I don't blame anyone. I wish that i did not have what I have but I do.
I could use help my mind is now often going to dark thoughts that are scaring me. I need my family more than ever.
Is what I emailed to Aunt jo. I cant even start to talk to you about how I feel. My mind is so upset I cant even get a grip on it.
Everything Ive wanted is now gone. Im scared. Im mad. I'm confuesed. Giving up seems to be the only thing that seems right to me.
I dont think me or you can handle this. Emotionally or physically we cant. Im sorry if I ever messed up. Or upsetted you.
If karma is real I have done something horrible to deserve this. FUCK sitting here and the only thing I want is not to be here. Wishing that I didnt have it.
And this is some fucked up dream. All i want now is just to be loved. And have sebastian stop being a little asshole to me.
Love you.
I just feel so bad, I want to help him but I am not really sure how to help him right now, he's sad, depressed, feeling like just giving up on his life and he's only 18.
This is so not fair, it's just not fair.
October 27, 2009
Food poisoning is the suck.
Both Mark and I have food poisoning.
We just got back from a walk-in clinic because neither of our doctors could squeeze us in, and because the ER was turning away people who were not "critical", telling them to go to walk-in clinics for all non-serious issues.
When I explained our symptoms, they said it was non-critical, and to go to a walk-in clinic.
So we did.
A few days ago, I think it was Friday, Mark and I had some frozen chicken things for lunch, maybe I didn't cook them thoroughly or something, but within a few hours of eating them, we both started having some pretty major stomach upset.
I thought it would go away, we both were eating Tums and drinking Pepto to try and feel better, but it just wasn't working.
So the doctor at the walk-in clinic gave us both some anti-vomiting and diarrhea medicine, told us to try and stay hydrated, to drink clear fluids, water, gatorade once we could handle that, ginger ale if we could handle that, so while waiting for the medicine at the pharmacy, I grabbed some ginger ale and some gatorade.
We came home, took the meds, drank a little bit, and now Mark is taking a nap, trying to get some sleep because the both of us had been up all night taking turns in the bathroom.
I thought that it may be the flu at first, or a virus, but the doc asked us if we had eaten anything right before we started having the symptoms.
I told him what we ate, and that they didn't taste like they normally do, it was those Barber chicken things, the broccoli and cheese ones, and I thought I cooked them long enough, they looked done, but I guess they weren't.
It will be nice to get some sleep tonight without having to run to the bathroom every 10 minutes like we've been doing all weekend long, it's totally been the suck.
I really hope that Mark is feeling a least a little bit better by tomorrow morning, he has his follow-up with the back doctor at 9:30am if our ride doesn't cancel on us like what has happened to us 3 times now.
I've had to cancel 3 appointments because people said they'd give us a ride, and then on the day of, they either no-showed or called to tell me that they couldn't.
It really sucks having to rely on other people for rides to the doctors.
October 24, 2009
He needs his own.
Today, I taught Mark how to shave his face for the first time in his life.
He finally had enough facial hair to shave off, and he wanted it gone so he asked me to teach him, not do it for him, but teach him how.
I didn't have any men's razors in the house, so he had to use one of my Venus razors, but he learned how and got the job done.
Now I'm needing to get him his own razor, so I'm wondering what kind is the best kind to get, standard blade razors, or an electronic one.
I was hoping to see if Buy.com had one on sale, they usually have a wide variety of items on their weekly sales, but no men's razors this week.
With a blade razor, you always have to replace it, buy new ones when the blades go dull, which over the course of a year, can add up to be well over $100.
So if you buy an electronic one, make the initial investment, it definitely pays for itself over the course of several years because you're not always having to replace it.
I found a Norelco Cool Skin Moisturizing Shaving System Rechargeable Cordless Razor, a Norelco Arcitec Rechargeable Cordless razor, and a different Norelco Moisturizing Shaving System Rechargeable Cordless razor for a lot less than the other 2 razors.
The first 2 razors were well over $100, but the last one was just $85.48 including the shipping charge, so price wise, that's the better deal, but I still don't know which is better to get, a bladed razor or an electric one.
So my dear male readers, which do you prefer, disposable blade razors, or the electric razors?
Which works best and is the best to have for a young man just beginning to shave?
October 23, 2009
Online may be the way to go for now.
It's looking more and more like the best thing that Mark could do for him and his future, would be to get an online degree in some of the courses that he's interested in.
I know that there are some colleges, I even think a few of the local state colleges, offer courses in criminal justice and law like he wants to get into, and then he could take a few other courses to get a degree in something else too, something to fall back on in case he ends up not being able to do what he wants to do.
Maybe go for an online business degree plus the criminal justice, and then he'd have some extra skills and education even if he can do law enforcement if things turn out well for him medically.
Today was just a rough day for him on this subject.
He got 3 college fliers in the mail today, and as soon as he saw them, he looked upset.
He asked me to just stop giving these to him when they come in the mail, to just put them in the trash, it's upsetting him to see them when his life and future career is currently in limbo due to his spine problems.
I hate seeing him upset like this, I hate seeing him look and feel discouraged, and I keep trying to tell him that this whole thing isn't written in stone, that he's young, that maybe his spine issues aren't as grim as it looks right now, that we can get a second opinion, we can take him to my surgeon and see what he says, that maybe this can all be fixed pretty easily.
But for now, he can take some courses at a fully accredited online college, do it from home, from the comfort of our own home on his own time, take breaks when he needs to lay down and rest his back, but still be able to get an education that will help him in whatever career he ends up in in the future so that he can support himself and have a good life.
After we talk, he seems a bit more upbeat and seems to be encouraged, but I honestly think that he just smiles and says all of that to make me feel better.
I really think that he's completely bummed out about the whole thing, so he just tells me that he will consider online education and degrees in other career paths to comfort me.
I think he's really feeling like his spine issues are going to prevent him from living his dream job and the thought of not being able to do it, the thought of having to use a fall-back degree for a different career, is just killing him inside.
I wish I knew what to do or say to make him really feel better, but I know that he's watched what has happened to me and just has no hope at all for himself.
October 21, 2009
A scary start to our day.
We had a scary start to our day when I went to wake up Sebastian for school at 6am.
I placed my hand on his arm just like I do every morning, and say his name.
I always say "Good morning Sebastian, it's 6am, time to wake up for school."
Except when I did that this morning, he started crying and screaming, covered his face with his hands, and just cried and sobbed, screaming that we (Mark and I) were dead, that the cats were all dead too.
As he kept crying, I kept trying to get him to calm down and really wake up, to open his eyes.
I told him today's date, Wednesday October 21st, his name, Sebastian, my name, Mom, what time it was, 6am, where Mark was, in the bathroom, that it was ok, he had a bad dream, a nightmare, nothing happened, we were both ok, the kitties were all ok.
When he 'woke up', he was laying down still, but sprang up from his waist and grabbed onto me pulling me down toward him by my waist, he clutched me so tightly, he was still crying, tears streaming down his face now like pouring water, his light gray t-shirt now patches of dark gray and wet from the tears.
He kept telling me that it was so real, so vivid, that there was so much blood, and "Mom! It's not today! It's not today! It happens tomorrow! October 22nd! The calendar, I know the date, I was at school, it's tomorrow mommy!" and he burst into wailing sobs again.
I finally got him calmed down after about 10 minutes, he was still clutching me, I was bent over at the waist being held onto so tightly by my visibly terrified son, but he finally let me go and when I stood up, I pulled the muscle in the right side of my lower back.
I grimaced in pain but wanted him to tell me what was going on, but I kept repeating that it was just a very bad dream, that everything was all ok, and he kept saying that it wasn't.
I had him come out to the living room and sit on the couch where he grabbed my hand wicked tight, tears still streaming down his face, and he made me promise, swear to him, that when he left for school today and tomorrow, that I locked the door up tight, put all of the locks on it, slide the 2x4 under the doorknob, make sure the back door was locked and that the alarm batteries were still good.
He told me to put the laundry basket, both of the bicycles, and the wagon with the action figures and the toy truck accessories in it, put all of that stuff in front of the back door, to make sure that all of the cats were ok and in the house, to not let Carmine out until he comes home from school, because "Mom, it happens tomorrow!!
I was starting to get very worried and upset myself, he was just crying and crying, talking about locking the house up, protecting the cats, that something really bad was going to happen tomorrow, and it was all based on a nightmare that he had.
When I finally got him to tell me exactly what he was talking about, I was really upset, not scared, but upset that he had had such a horrible, vivid, and extremely detailed nightmare, and that I had to send him to school because it's FCAT testing for some of the students this week, and he's one of them, plus he missed 3 days the week before last because he was sick.
I placed what he told me behind the cut because it is detailed and graphic, so do not read if you get upset about murders of both people and pets.
Mom and Dad, you should NOT read this. Sebastian is ok, he left for school and he was ok, calm, and he fully understands that it was all just a very bad dream, that none of it was real at all.
I promise, he really was ok by the time he left, if he hadn't had FCAT testing today, I would have kept him home because of this, because he cried the whole time he was telling me about the nightmare.
He remembered every single nasty detail, and he just kept crying and crying, his face was all red and he soaked his t-shirt with his tears.
I got him to completely calm down before he took his shower, helped him get a towel and his clothes ready, I also got his backpack and sneakers ready so when he got out of the shower, he could just get dressed and be ready to go.
I made him eat some breakfast and have a big cup of cool water to drink slowly, and I kept reassuring him that it was all ok, that it was all just a dream, that nothing at all was going to happen to Mark and I, or the kitties, either today or tomorrow.
He still made me swear to lock up the house completely today and tomorrow, he said he knew it was all just a dream, but it would make him feel better if I locked up the house.
I agreed to lock it up tight, hugged and kissed him again, he assured me that he was ok now, that he was going to be ok, and I kept assuring him that he was ok too.
Below the cut is a very detailed re-telling of his dream, what I heard him say through his tears, I may have even heard some parts of it wrong because of how heavy he was sobbing, but I think this is what all he said.
Please don't read if you could get upset, it upsets me because of how vivid and real it was for him, because he was just so scared, and hearing him tell it to me, I would have been scared if I had a nightmare like this too.
Continue Reading �
October 20, 2009
Shopping, stress, and crap.
When I go shopping later this afternoon to pick up the stuff that we forgot to get on Saturday when we went, I need to pick up some more acne products, because when I went to use some this morning to try and kill the stress zit I found on my forehead, I found nothing but empty containers.
I rarely ever get pimples, never really had that problem even as a teen, but I do get like 1 or 2 pimples when I get stressed out.
Most of last week was very stressful for me, no sleep, issue after issue, some total bs to try and deal with, and I'm not even sure that's really over yet, so yeah, 1 nice big zit on my forehead and nothing to kill it with.
The teens have a habit of using the stuff, leaving the empty containers, and not tell me that they are empty.
I don't know why they do that, I mean, just tell me that they need more, and I'll get more when I go shopping, easy.
October 19, 2009
Sunny-side up!
Carmine is our indoor/outdoor stray that we adopted last Christmas kitty, and a cat that we absolutely love to have as a part of our family.
We consider all of our kitties to be members of the family, they are all wonderfully unique, but I am really just so beyond glad that Carmine is the only one that is allowed to go in and out, and boy, he was loving to be outdoors all day on Sunday.
It was just absolutely perfect out all day Sunday.
The sun was shining as bright as always, but there was no heat, no humidity, as a matter of fact, it was a wee bit chilly out there in the early morning hours, and again as it turned to night.
I think the "hottest" it reached yesterday was about 72 degrees, and the lowest it got was around 50 degrees.
I love it when the temps are like that and the sun is still shining brightly.
Carmine laid on the cool concrete ground of the carport for most of the day, letting whatever warmth from the sun that there was, shine down on him as he stretched out on his back and groomed himself for awhile.
After about 5 or so minutes of warmth and grooming, he heard a noise coming from the other half of the property, and he looked up and in that direction to try and spy whatever it was that was making the noise.
He got up and slowly walked over to the other side.
He practically tip-toed off the carport concrete and into the grass.
He stretched himself long and low as he moved further into the grass.
Staring intently straight forward to whatever it was that he had heard and was now tracking like a great hunter.
In a move that happened so quickly I would have missed it had I blinked, he had sunk the claws of his right paw and his teeth into the prey he had quietly stalked.
He held it down with that same right paw while he ripped at the creature with his teeth.
He then picked up the animal with his teeth after making sure it was no longer moving or breathing, and he turned and carried it back to me with a slow but confident stroll.
He stopped no more than 2 feet away from where I stood watching it all, and he dropped it at my bare feet.
He looked up at me squinting his eyes from the bright sun, and he let out a loud mew of satisfaction.
I aimed my camera down and pressed the shutter at the same moment that I realized what he had dropped.
He was quite pleased with himself, purring loudly, he started rubbing his head and body all over my legs, dropping down with a quickness to rub his head on my bare feet.
I have no need to even try any of the best diet pills for quite some time after this freshly delivered meal.
Because it is morning and some of you may be eating your breakfast like I had been planning to do when this happened, I'll place the very fresh gift that I was given behind the cut.
You've been warned, don't blame me if you lose your morning coffee and eggs.
Continue Reading �
October 16, 2009
North Port, here I come.
In about an hour, I am heading all the way down to the city of North Port because one single pharmacy in this state has my medication in stock.
The generic version of the pain medication that is no longer being made because of the Purdue lawsuit I blogged about yesterday.
So at some point later today, my pain will be somewhat under control, I won't have to stay curled up in a ball like sitting in an egg chair anymore.
It really is amazing what removing just one medication from my usual medication regiment does to me.
The other 2 medicines just are not controlling the pain the way that all 3 of them combined do, it's really astounding me.
And it looks like rain, so that may be an indicator of why I am in so much pain without it, the rain bothers me anyway, but without that 3rd med, it's unreal how swollen my ankles and knees are, they look like I have balloons buried under the skin.
Two of my friends are giving me a ride to North Port.
I can't believe that they are the only pharmacy that has them, it's crazy.
I have called over 60 pharmacies since Tuesday, and finally found one this morning that has them.
October 15, 2009
Filing a formal complaint.
Yesterday was just not a good day here.
At 11:25am, one of Sebastian's teachers called me, not the house phone, but my cell phone.
The cell phone is the emergency contact number on the call list if they call the house number first and do not get an answer.
The school knows that I am usually at home 24 hours a day unless I have a doc appointment, so why she called that number I haven't a cue.
But it's what she said to me that was the problem.
She asked me where Sebastian was.
I told her he was at school, she told me that he wasn't, that he never showed up at Riverview High School at all, he was marked absent by all of his teachers for the 3 class periods that had already passed.
I told her that was impossible, he left here at 6:45am, he walks to school, he wouldn't ever skip school, that's not the kind of kid he is, he's got to be there I told her.
She kept repeating to me that he was not there, that he never arrived, her exact words to me were "Sebastian Cooper has not been on Riverview High school property at all today, he is not on property."
I started to panic, Mark was now listening to me very closely.
I asked her again where he was, how did the school misplace a student, I said that I knew they got 1,600 new students this year, but come on, how can they not know if he was there?
She repeated it again, he was not on school property at all.
I hung up on her and immediately called the school's main number and demanded them to find my son.
I explained to the poor secretary what the teacher had told me, and the secretary was baffled why such a call was made to me by a teacher.
She said that anytime the school thinks a student is missing, it is not the teacher's job to call a parent, but the administration's, she asked me what number was called, I told her my cell phone, she said that was also odd because she was looking at Sebastian's information, and it clearly stated to call the home number first.
I was really panicking now, the secretary had not confirmed if Sebastian was there, she was just talking about the teacher's actions, so I asked her if my son was there.
She said that he had indeed been marked absent by all of his class teachers that morning.
I demanded that they find him, to have security go look for him, that he had to be there, he left here at 6:45am, he just had to be there.
She told me that they would go look for him and call me back.
When Mark heard me say that, he quickly got dressed, he grabbed my other cell phone and his ID card, and said he was going to the high school to find his brother.
He tore off out of the house, he was going to either find his brother at school or on the side of the road if he had been hit.
The street he walks to school has also been under sidewalk construction, so all kinds of bad things had gone through my head, I was Twittering the events, I had to do something while I waited for the school to find my son or for Mark to find him, I was in a complete panic.
When she called me back, she said that security was still looking for him, that they were speaking to his teachers and asking them if they had seen him at all, and she wanted to ask me what clothes he was wearing, security needed a visual to search for.
I told her, khaki cargo shorts, a black t-shirt, white sneakers, he has blond shaggy hair, blue eyes, he's carrying a gray backpack.
She said that they would call me back again.
When she called me back, she told me that he was there, he was in his PSAT testing all morning like he was supposed to be doing, and that the teacher's had marked him absent incorrectly, but that they all knew that he was in testing, all of the teachers had been informed and knew about it for weeks.
She then told me that I needed to file a formal complaint against the teacher for causing me to panic, for telling me incorrect information and causing me to worry, that the teacher knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sebastian was in PSAT testing all morning.
I told her that I wanted him to come home, that my oldest son was there, to release Sebastian to his custody and bring him home, I was too upset to just leave him there, if he was done with his testing, I wanted him home.
I had now been in a panic for about 40 minutes, my heart was racing, I was dizzy and lightheaded, nauseous, I wanted my child at home.
She said she understood completely, she's a mom to, that if a teacher had called her and said the same thing, she would also want her child at home immediately.
She reminded me to file the complaint, gave me the name and number of the person in charge at the school board to call and make the complaint to, she said she herself was upset about this, that it simply wasn't right for the teacher to make that call, not only wasn't it right, but it wasn't school protocol for a missing student.
She was going to release him to Mark who was now there, but an administrator, Dr. Moore, told her to hang up, that she wanted to speak to Sebastian, the teacher who called me, and Mark.
Dr. Moore called me a few minutes later, told me that the teacher had told her what she really said to me, that I was wrong.
She said the teacher told her that the teacher had asked me why Sebastian was absent 2 days last week, and wanted to know why.
I told Dr. Moore that was not true, that she never asked me or said anything about his absences last week, she told me point blank that he was nowhere on school property today, she did not say anything about last week, and if that's the story the teacher told Dr. Moore, she was lying because she now understood to severe gravity of what her phone call to me about him being missing, would mean to her job.
Dr. Moore told me that was not true, that I had simply misunderstood her, that the teacher did not know about PSAT testing, that none of the teachers did.
I told her that was complete bullshit, that letters were sent home to parents 2 weeks ago, that his teachers did know, the secretary had even confirmed that, all the teachers knew.
Dr. Moore said the secretary did not know what she was talking about, basically, Dr. Moore was calling the secretary a liar.
She yelled at me that I was stupid for wanting my child home.
She called me stupid.
WTF kind of administrator is this to call a parent stupid??
I was furious at this point and demanded to know her name.
She screamed into the phone "NO!" and hung up on me.
I called the cell phone that Mark had, I asked him who the administrator was who had called me, spoken to him and Sebastian, he asked Sebastian, and then told me, Dr. Moore.
I wrote the name down on the same piece of paper where I had written the name of the teacher and the school board contact name and number.
I called the secretary again to have my son released, she was very upset, she said she was yelled at for giving me any information.
I told her I was sorry about that, really sorry, but I wanted my son released to his brother immediately, and she said she had just let them leave.
I asked for her name, I told her that I would make sure that when I filed my formal complaint, that I would make sure the school board knew that she did everything she could to help me and that she was now in trouble for helping me find my son and releasing him.
She thanked me and gave me her name, she kept apologizing for what had happened, I told her that it was all ok, not her fault, that she was amazing, kept me calm, found my son, let him leave with his brother and got in trouble herself for helping me find my child.
During all of this mess, I was still waiting on my doctor to call me back with news on my medication and insurance battle, I was in pain, my heart was racing, I felt sick to my stomach over this whole ordeal.
I was on the phone with the school, my insurance company, and the doctor's office all morning, going back and forth with 3 places, my head was splitting.
I have a blood pressure monitor at home now because of my high blood pressure which I take meds for, and so after I calmed down a little bit, I took it.
Not good, not good at all.
It was 165 over 107, that is really super high if you don't know.
If I had gone to a doctor at that point, they would have immediately thought I was having a heart attack and strapped me down to a table and ran all kinds of tests like an EKG, and probably would have called for an ambulance.
I took another bp pill, and laid down on the couch and waited for my sons to come home.
When they came home, Sebastian told me that the teacher who had called me and started this whole mess, had actually told him on both Monday and Tuesday, to NOT go to any of his classes, to go to his PSAT testing, she was reminding him about the testing, so she did know where he was, she herself had reminded him about the testing, so why she called me and told me he was missing, he didn't know.
I called the school board and made the formal complaint verbally, and they are sending me forms to fill out for the written complaint.
Not only did I file against the idiot teacher, but I filed against Dr. Moore as well for her extremely inappropriate and unprofessional behavior for calling me stupid, refusing to give me her name, and hanging up on me.
Dr. Moore is the high school assistant principal.
October 13, 2009
What to do if things are bad?
I posted to my other blog today about Mark having his MRIs last week and getting the results of that test being a huge priority because depending on what exactly is wrong with his spine and how severe it is, it will determine how Mark proceeds with the rest of his life.
He has always wanted to be a cop, ever since he was little, but if his back is really bad, he may not be able to do that dream job of his, he may have to choose a different career path.
If his career path is completely changed by his spine, he will have to do something else, but I know that he will still want a job where he can be in charge, help people, work with people, we talked about that this afternoon, he still wants to work with people in some capacity.
He knows that he may have to totally change his career choice, and he's ok with that.
Well not totally ok, but he's slowly coming to terms with the fact that things may change for him once we get the results of his tests.
He may not be able to have such a physically demanding job, so he would have to take different classes in college, and maybe even take some online masters programs to change his path, from the comfort of our home while he gets treated for his spine issues.
He could get a masters in organizational leadership/management, and this would allow him to still work with people, he could work in development for a management position, or even do consulting work if he got a degree.
It would totally allow him to still work with people, be in charge and help people, being a project manager or doing management consultation, teaching people how to be good managers, how to show other people how to work with their employees, to get the most out of them and still keep everyone happy.
I'm sure that we've all had a job at some point in our lives where the manager or supervisor above us had absolutely zero people skills right?
I know that I have, I've had some that I thought to myself, how in the heck did this guy become a manager?
Did the regional supervisors just throw the store keys in the crowd of employees and whoever caught them, they became the manager?
As an organizational leader or manager, that person would teach other people how to be good managers, how to organize and get the most out of their work time and the people they are in charge of, to inspire people, to help build confidence and share the company's goals and focus.
All Mark has ever wanted to do is to be a police officer so he could help people, protect and serve the community, if he can't do that anymore, becoming a leader would still allow him to serve the people, to do something good in a company or community.
I am really hoping that his spine isn't so messed up that he has to let go of his dream of being a police officer, but if it is, I think becoming a leader, doing management consulting, would still allow him to do a part of his dream of helping people do their best, be their best.
People who do their best and are inspired to be their best, stay out of trouble, so in a way, he would be helping his community stay safe by keeping people happy and productive.
It's people who have lost hope, who are not happy and feel like they have to do a desperate act to survive, who commit crimes.
He would be helping people be their best and have a lot to live for.
I think that would be just as honorable of a job as an officer.
Totally different path and career, but it would still be helping the people in his community.
Make sense to you?
It makes total sense in my head and Mark's, he's the one who brought up this subject this afternoon, he wanted to talk about what else could he do to help people if he can't be a cop anymore.
October 11, 2009
Kindasorda back.
I am still battling the tail end of the flu or whatever it was that hit me last week and made me feel like crap.
I feel better now, not perfect, but at least now I can stand up without feeling nauseous and dizzy.
The past few days have just been hellish on me, the smell of what the teens were eating made me gag, finding lizard heads on the floor made me gag, cat gack on the floor made me gag, I think you get the picture, everything just made me feel like hell.
Mark has been over at his friend's house since yesterday, and he's staying there again tonight.
I really don't mind, it's nice and quiet, there's no one fighting over any video games on the pc or the Xbox 360.
As a matter of fact, the teens are chatting with each other on WoW.
It's been nice and quiet all night yesterday, and all day today, and it will be quiet all night again.
That's just what I needed, peace and quiet so that I could rest.
I need to pick up some more acne skin care stuff for the teens (both of their faces are broken out again because they ran out) when I go shopping on Thursday, or maybe after I'm done at the doc's office on Tuesday while I wait for the pharmacist to fill my prescriptions, I could just buy some there.
I have pretty much spent all of my time on the couch or my bed, but once I was good enough to sit up, I sat and watched the trailers for new movies that are coming out.
I watched the trailer for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.
Boondock Saints is one of my all time fave movies, and part 2 has the original cast which I'm happy about, it would suck if they changed actors in it.
It looks ok, I'd like to see it but no clue when or if I could go to the movies to see it, not sure how rough the chairs would be on me because I'd have to practically lay back in order to see the screen.
I am not a fan of remade films, there has been far too many of them the last few years, and now Hollywood has remade A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Sorry, but it's just not going to be the same without Robert Englund, he is Freddie in my opinion.
They are calling it "a contemporary re-imagining of the horror classic."
I dunno, I just don't know about this guy that is playing Freddie this time around.
Jackie Earle Harley is playing Freddie in this "re-imagining" of the story.
He played Rorschach in The Watchmen, he did a good job, but I just don't see him as Freddie, not even while watching the trailer, he just doesn't look like Freddie.
Maybe they got a sucky make-up artist.
*sigh*
I'll be back, off and on when I feel even better.
I think I'm gonna go read updated blogs now.
Later days.
October 7, 2009
Might be doing a talk show!
Our story is still being talked about, people want to hear more, know more, so many shows and magazines wanting to interview us, it's like wow.
We are in this weeks issue of In Touch Weekly magazine, it's dated October 12, 2009, we are on pages 74-75.
This is the cover if you want to flip through the magazine while in the checkout line. ha ha
I actually went up to 7eleven and bought the issue so I could have it as a memento.
I was told that we're going to be in this week's People magazine, it comes out on Friday, and when that issue of People comes out, I'll buy that one too.
My friend Christie is the one who told me about In Touch Weekly, she posted it to the forums we chat on, she said that it made her grandma who is in hospice care now, smile the biggest smile, that our story is touching people.
It must be, other shows want us to come on their shows.
The one that I think we've all agreed to do is the Tyra Banks show, we just have to work out 1 small scheduling conflict.
I've sent the Twitter contact for her show a message asking him to call me so we can work the schedule out.
Yes, the scheduling conflict is my fault.
They want to fly us out to NYC on Tuesday morning, do the show taping on Wednesday morning, and fly home Wednesday night, but I can't do that because I have my monthly pain doc appointment on Tuesday at 11am.
I cannot cancel or reschedule that appointment, it is set by the laws, you can only see your pain doc once per month, once every 30 days, so yeah, I cannot reschedule it, and I definitely cannot cancel it or I won't be able to even get on a plane, I'll be in too much pain to get out of bed even. <
