Updates

So, my once a week minimum of blogging hasn't really worked out for the last month and a half. Things have been a little nuts. Between Michael's arms and my own health issues, it's been rather interesting. It turns out that Michael did actually fracture his elbows. When he landed on his hands with his elbows locked, they came close to dislocating from the pressure exerted but couldn't, so the radial head where it connects into the joint fractured in both arms. Yay. They didn't put him in casts or have to do any surgery or anything, but he hasn't been able to lift much over a pound for the last month and a half. Which means I have to do any heavy lifting and take out the trash and carry all the groceries and everything else. Normally Michael insists on doing all that stuff, so it's been interesting. He's slowly but surely getting better, though. The soft tissue in his forearms took a beating too, so his wrists have been hurting a lot. He's scheduled to go back in to the doctor in the next week or so to follow up and make sure everything's healing properly, so he should be back to normal before too much longer.

In the meantime, I've been having fun in doctors' offices myself. At the end of April I started having some intense lower abdominal pain and nausea, so I stayed home for a few days hoping it would go away on its own, and went to the doctor when it didn't. Since I thought it was just a bug, I went to my family doctor. After examining me he suspected an ovarian cyst. Well, that freaked me out quite a bit and they scheduled me for an ultrasound, but the imaging place couldn't get me in until the next Friday (the doctor visit was on a Wednesday). By Monday I was feeling worse and didn't want to wait until Friday for an ultrasound, so I called a gynecologist's office and was able to get in to see the nurse practitioner that afternoon. I ended up changing gynecologists at the same time, which was good. The doctor I'd been seeing was a jerk and didn't listen to me. I tried switching doctors within the practice, but apparently you have to get a special dispensation from the Pope in order to do that, or at least that's how they acted. So, I went somewhere else. And they are soooo much better. Anyway, they did the ultrasound that day and it wasn't a cyst. The nurse practitioner (who was very nice, but definitely not a doctor) told me there was a lot of gas on the ultrasound and that was what was causing the pain so to get some anti-gas medicine and I should be fine. I tried that, but still felt horrible the next morning so I called back to the doctor's office. This time they scheduled me to see one of the actual doctors the next morning. He saw me and decided I probably had an infection, so he gave me lots of drugs and made me come back a week later. So, I'm finally better from all that. Yay. Also, I've had abnormal pap tests for the last year. Last year I had this LEEP procedure done where they shaved off the abnormal areas with this electrified little wire. Doesn't that sound like fun? Well, things are still abnormal, so I had to go back to the doctor yesterday to see about getting that taken care of. Now, I'm going to a different doctor than who did the LEEP last year, because he was the aforementioned jerk. The guy I saw yesterday is so much better than my former doctor. He explained everything he was doing and gave me a lot more information about the way things work than anyone has before. Apparently women who've had the LEEP done can have pregnancy complications and have a higher risk of going into premature labor. I was not informed of this last year, and I'm thinking that might have been nice to know. When I went in yesterday I pretty much expected to have to have another LEEP done (and if I'd gone to the other doctor, who knows? I might have). I basically told the doctor that if he thought another one was going to be needed to just do it and not make me come back in a few more weeks. He then explained that there are more risks involved than I was previously made aware of and that it probably wouldn't be necessary since my last pap test was only mildly abnormal. Anyway, they ended up taking a biopsy (which isn't all that much fun either), but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected. So, hopefully this will be the end of my incessant doctor visits, and hopefully the end of abnormalities.

Now that I've written a novel about all our medical issues, on to lighter subjects. Last weekend was the student recitals for the Northwest Academy of Music, where I teach violin. It was fun and my students did a good job. Also, I've finally finished knitting the sweater I started before Christmas. It's not entirely put together yet, as I'm in no real hurry to to that. The weather's warming up, I'm not going to be able to wear it anytime soon. So, now I've got three projects on the needles, two sweaters for me and one of a pair of baby socks for an upcoming baby shower.

The nearly finished sweater.

The newly cast on sweater. This is the lower back section of what will be a belted cardigan. The other sweater I cast on for myself isn't very exciting to look at. It's just dark brown stockinette stitch and it's rolling a lot right now. It'll have a really pretty fair isle type yoke. I'll post pictures when there's actually something to look at.

This is the first of a pair of baby socks. Hopefully they don't take too long. The baby shower's on June 8!