Made a tremendous amount of progress on a Stargate fanfic the past few days. If you have not seen all there is to see of Stargate to date, you *really* shouldn't be reading it. It doesn't include Continuum, yet, but everything else up to the end of Season 4 Atlantis, you really ought to know in order to "get' the references. Anwyay. I need someone to go over it with a fine toothed comb and tell me when it sucks so I can make it better.


Spoiler alert:
( you wuz warned )




















So anyway, if you're interested, please reply, I'll put you on a special filter and you can kibbitz to your heart's delight. I'm very accustomed to being edited, so no worries there.

*totally* retouched to remove the scrapes and bumps she got when she dived headfirst out of the jogging stroller onto pavement.

GOD that was awful. Really really soul-suckingly bad.

Was on SL and started having shoulder pains at 1 am on Thursday morning. By 3 was no longer "ache" and was "sharp ow radiating". Called mom and she suggested I take advil and wait an hour. 15 minutes later it had progressed to radiating into my chest and we went to the ER. By 5 or so they'd decided I had clots in my legs for sure, and took me for the world's longest VQ scan. The VQ was "clear" which meant only taht it took them a little longer to get the heparin started. All this while I was feeling new clots break loose, travel, and land. Not fun.

I'm not going to go through the bizarreness that was that sleepless day.... in fact, the one time I did sleep, they freaked out and stopped giving me morphine. Took them 5 hours to figure out a med I could take.... In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom, and when I came back to bed, threw the mother of all clots which landed at the bottom of my lung and was brutally excruciating for the longest hour of my life. They gave me more Oxycodone, morphine AND toredol before I was able to stop climbing the walls with pain.

And this morning, they let me go. Don't ask me. But I'm glad, because they were doing such stupid stunts with my regular meds that I could not get out of there fast enough.

I have a doctor's appointment with the doc who missed the first clot at 3:15. She better be doing some grade A grovelling.

Dumbasses all.

I seriously thought I was dying last night, it hurt that bad.

THank you for all your kind thoughts and well-wishes.

Oddly enough, the conference is not out of the question, but not a given at this point.

Jenrose is in the hospital as I type this.

Those leg pains she's had for a couple of weeks now. The ones that the doctor told her not to worry about. Should have worried. Turned out to be clots.

There will be updates later, when we know more.

Yesterday morning I woke up at about 10 am... and quickly noticed that Shiny's left ear had a red bump under it. Felt it, and immediately called the doctor. That dog prescribed antibiotics and sent us on our way with instructions to call if it got worse.

By 6 pm she was lethargic and sleeping and difficult to rouse. By 9:30 pm we were in the after hours clinic, where the doc said, "See an ENT in the morning for sure, I'll make the appointment for you."

At 11:30 this morning the doctor saw her and said, "She needs surgery now, I'm not able to leave the office, we'll have my collegue do it."

Fortunately, I'd taken one look at her in the morning and decided not to feed her, because it looked surgical to me.

So we were at the hospital at about 1 pm. Lots of citric acid discussion, they finally decided not to even try to give her pre-op meds. WHich is fine. But did decide to intubate and put new grommets in while they had her under. To reduce stress for Shiny, I went back to be with her until she was out. It was blessedly simple, she did not fight, but jesus fucking christ on a crutch I HATE SEEING MY CHILD GO UNDER. Seriously. hate it. HATE HATE HATE.

Then we got to sit as the "20 or 30 minutes" turned into 45, before the doc came out and said that it was a lymph node that got infected, and that he'd installed a drain and put in new ear tubes and that she'd had a lot of fluid behind one ear and that she'd probabaly hear better now.

She's now playing and not pulling at the dressing.

But I feel like I've been run over by a fleet of trucks.

Needless to say she did NOT have her first day of school today. We'll have ot do that next Tuesday.

*cries*

Just snipped a few people off who had not reciprocated. If you think you were cut in error, please comment (screened). If you already had me on your friends list, you were not cut. Just not here enough right now to be reading a lot of people who aren't reading back.

The PT at ECCARES brought in a walker for Shiny. Unlike the one she had before, this one is incredibly flexible, so we were able to basically reverse it and raise the handles really high, so now she is willing to use it. And I took her shopping, set her down at the front door of Costco, and she walked all the way back to the chickens, rode a little while, then started signing and saying, "Go go go go" and we put her down and she walked up to the front registers. Seriously, *I'm* tired after all that.
At home, the walker is a Bad Idea until the living room is done. But grocery stores are a GOOD place to do it... lots to look at, wide aisle, doting adults going, "awwww...."

http://www.toysrus.com/category/index.jsp?categoryId=2257808

It's about time.

Piccys from Orycon.

http://www.jenrose.com/Orycon2007/index.htm

Or something like that.

Off to Orycon. Might post from there. Probably not. 

Dude, I am *so* there.

10 night cruse at $669 per person? Sounds like time to fob Shiny and Kailea off on the 'rents and *go*.

Not likely to happen, but but but but but

(and it happens to be the southern carib itinerary dh wanted in the first place when we first went...)

http://www.thebabywearer.com/video/2006Conference.wmv


I can't decide whether the shiny spot from the sun is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, you can't see how thin my hair is getting there, it's too bright, on the other hand, it may well be too bright because of how thin my hair was getting. I'd just hennaed. Otherwise, I like this video a lot... it is more flattering than most.

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2005/8009/8009.html

Eek.

Anyone know what the situation is now?

Zelda. Cave of ordeals.

My arms hurt from swordfighting. Specifically the shield blocks... not painful if you do a couple...but for an hour straight?

And it still killed me after about 57 levels. I think there are 60.

Shiny... I asked her if she could sign "Apple" and she reached out...and pushed her knuckles into my cheek. (The sign for apples is to rotate a knuckle against one's own cheek). I asked if she could sign "cereal" and she reached out and moved her crooked finger across *my* chin...

So we spent the day working on the concept.

And by the end of the day she was signing "Apple" and "Cereal" on her own face.

She does best if I can put her in front of a mirror when I'm explaining.

She also signed Daddy with her palm open when I was talking about him joining us for a snuggle. Then she said it out loud, to him, for good measure.

Best? She's trying to do the one-handed "ILY" I love you. I caught her trying it in the carseat mirror.. and she did it one other time, fleeting, but there, and in context.

Today I saw specifically Apple, Cereal, Daddy, I Love You, Bath, More, Cookie, Milk, Hurt. And she said out loud, Daddy, Up, and a couple of other things which were pretty hard to understand but clearly intended to be words. And I saw them in batches. Apple and cereal and More. Cookie and More and Milk.

Thanks to janandrea...

Barring a vast shift in the political climate, I'm likely voting for Kucinich in the primary next year.

FWIW.

http://cube-creative.fr/html/nt/nt_nd/elephant.html#

Reading about the San Diego fires... I can't help but flash to An Inconvenient Truth and what I've been hearing for 15 years about what would happen in global warning.

We've had bad burn summers before. In August. But an inferno in October? This big? Even in SoCal... it's pretty staggering. The thought that went through my head was, "First the hurricanes and floods. Then the fires and more floods. If we are lucky, the soot in the air will cool things off temporarily. If we're not, it will trap more heat."

For the last 12 years or so, I've felt like we were entering "science fiction time"... we keep having "new" scenarios and technologies pop up that echo fictional scenarios and technologies I read about in the early '80s, often in books written in the 60's and 70's.

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com

Don't blow it off if you already know you have a thyroid issue or if you "know" you don't... the thing that gobsmacked me about this one was the info on Adrenal Fatigue.

I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue shortly after my thyroid was diagnosed. But the nat gave me dessicated cow adrenals, and I had a *horrible* reaction to them. She was baffled.

Apparently, this is a NORMAL RESPONSE when someone is both low adrenals and low thyroid and has already started thyroid supplementation. Basically, the adrenal hormones cause a "dump" of thyroid into the cells and one is panicky, has a rapid heartrate, etc. etc. It was so bad I only took the medicines two days. Had she explained it to me the way this part of the site did... I would have adjusted my thyroid dose immediately, kept on the adrenals, worked my thyroid dose up while finding the best dose of adrenals, and I would be *BETTER* now. Not just mildly pleased that my eyebrows were growing back, but *better*. How much damage has been done with the stress of the past few years, without proper treatment? My cortisol saliva 24 hour test was *appalling*... my morning levels are like *three*. They should be 19 or better.

*headdesk*

So the good news is I now have something new to investigate. And am pissed as hell at all the time and money that has been wasted on inappropriate bloodwork and treating to labs rather than symptoms.

Anyway... for those who can't understand why they feel queasy or faint or lightheaded or anxious or can't cope with stress... the site is a MUST READ.

The stupid thing? There are good OTC Cortisol suppliments. And Armour is *CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP*. IOW, it is insanely inexpensive to treat both conditions, even for people without insurance or with inadequate drug coverage. We're talking cheap. Did I mention cheap?

*thwap* with a long dead mackerel, all you stupid doctors.

SRSLY.

Oh, and you know how pleased I was that I had finally talked my doc into letting me up my thyroid dose? I'm taking two and a half grains or thereabouts. And it has taken me a year and a half to get here. I should have been on THREE or more grains, about 8 months ago.

Fucktards.