I ordered some new yoga clothing from http://www.athleta.com. They carry petites and they have a bunch of built-in bra tops that are actually sized by bra size, AND they have 34DD in quite a few of them. They're not cheap but if they're anywhere near as good as I'm hoping they're going to be, it seems worth it, particularly for sizes that are really hard to find. Champion does make petites and I quite like my other pair of pants, but it's very hard to find the style/size on the rack, and they're also very spandex-ey, so I will like having a more street-casual looking pair. I can't believe I never heard of them before, and I'll give a review when I get the stuff.

Finally got in and let the vampires at me this morning, so hopefully in a few days I'll know how unhealthy I am. :) Mostly I'm worried about iron and thyroid stuff. My blood pressure was high enough at my last visit to have worried me (134/something-higher-than-80), but the doctor didn't seem concerned and blamed it on escalating weight. I'm not convinced that's the issue since this is the highest it's ever been and it's I'm a good 70 pounds less than my pre-surgery weight, and I had low blood pressure when I weight 200+. However, I was ten years younger. High blood pressure runs in my family, but it also runs in my family in the people with weight problems. I do need to lose weight, I acknowledge that, and she didn't stress it too much so my stress on that point is still under control - but it was still REALLY hard to hear. So we'll see.

My right shoulder is in a lot of pain for no easily identifable reason, radiating up into my neck and down into my elbow. Bleh.

In other news, I adore our Quality Management VP. Adore. I want to go have all his ISO-9000 babies and then work for him forever and ever and ever. He is rocktastic.

Current Mood: geeky

Huh.

I'm trying to make tofu jerky today. Like, you know, beef jerky, only tofu instead of beef. It's about 1/2 done I'd guess, and I keep nibbling at it. It tastes remarkably like... well... jerky. Bizarrely so! It's pretty yummy.

And, Evan finished putting himself to sleep (sorta) for the first time ever. I had lain with him for nearly an hour and he just couldn't let himself fall asleep. So after trying a few things to help him I finally gently told him I needed to do a few things and he needed to stay in bed and try to sleep, and I got up and left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Checked on him twice and he was awake but quiet, and just now went and he's out like a light. Didn't get up once. Wow. I'm just... wow.

I missed him SO much. Four nights is too long, though it didn't phase him in the least. When I talked to him this afternoon he told me he wanted to stay at Gamma and Gampa's for three more sleeps and then he would come home. Ummmm, no way kid! :P I'm glad he's that comfortable with them.

Current Mood: surprised

For some reason, I tend to persist in assuming that fundamentally everyone else is as moral and good-intentioned as I am. Why am I continually surprised by the fact that I am wrong?

In other news, families and their homesteads seem to be in safe zones though there is the ever present risk of tornados inland and communication at the moment is hit or miss at best. I won't rest easy for a bit still.

No sugar added Klondike bars have only 7 grams of sugar in them and as such don't trip off my sugar threshholds, and are apparently processed in such a way as to not trip off my milk protein issues. I am eating my third in as many days, and they haven't made me sick once.

There's an ice cream treat I can eat. I feel so... normal.

Current Mood: surprised

The ebb and flow of who my confidants and friends are is odd to me, as I never thought of myself as really having confidants before. I think, perhaps, that much of the reason that I have them now, to an extent, is the relative safety of realtime but virtual connectivity. I can lay bare my vulnerabilities without seeing or touching, which alleviates the panic of too many barriers trancended at the same time. For that matter, I still don't really have friends in the "call up and randomly hang out" sense of the word that I think other people use it as. I think in some ways I have always considered the only "real" friends to be the ones who are like family to me, that I truly love in the selfless way that you are unthinkingly willing to put their welfare on par or ahead of your own. It's a somewhat limiting definition, and I'm gradually getting used to saying, "My friend such-and-so..." and realizing that I'm not just using the commonly understood term to communicate effectively, but that I really mean it.

But regardless of their exact classification, I miss some of mine rather excruciatingly this weekend.

Current Mood: thoughtful (and lonely)

Being bored out of my skull with no distractions while an epic hurricane is getting stronger and heading toward my hometown is NOT GOOD.

Please, oh please,
Gustav... go west young man. I'm sorry to throw TX to the dogs like that, but my beloved North Shore simply cannot take this again so soon.

Current Mood: anxious

I miss my baby. :( Four nights is toooooo long, especially when I'm not otherwise occupied. It's best for him to not be here, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.

You know what really sucks? John and I have three entire days alone, with nothing we need to do, and we can't have sex. Karma is a real bitch sometimes.

Current Mood: lonely

Oh, and did I mention it took me three pharmacies and over an hour to get John's prescription for 30 Percocet? What kind of pharmacy doesn't have a reasonable supply of standard painkillers on the last day of the week before a long weekend?! CVS apparently. You know, that place that is JUST a drugstore/pharamacy?

Safeway couldn't figure out our insurance, despite the fact that we've gotten tons of things filled there, and then the forementioned problems with CVS. Target to the rescue. I think they will be getting 100% of our pharmacy business from now on. They already get all the baby stuff because of their awesome pharmacist and the fact that they have those child liquid dispensing bottles. I should have gone there first, but it was the furthest away and I wanted to get in and out quick. Safeway is usually really good for that, but apparently it didn't work out today.

Also had a bit of an issue with the nurse at the surgical center. John was being a pain in the ass, quite honestly, though in an entirely good natured way. He was just super medical-geeky and talkative with five paragraph answers to questions that needed three word answers, or going off on entirely different tangents, and she took it as armchair medicine, basically, especially when he mentioned his mom being a critical care nurse and his own first responder stuff from when he was younger, and she got really snotty when asking him about pain and pain meds. It totally went over John's head but had me seeing red. I was pissed when she asked him if the pain pill had helped, and to his answer that it did, told him, "Good. Because you aren't getting anything else until you get home." *blink* *blink* Excuse the fuck out of me?! WHAT did you just say to my husband?! I brought it to the attention of another nurse at the desk, acknowledged that he absolutely was being annoying but indicated that her response was completely unacceptable, and asked for someone else to do our discharge. The nurse said she would speak to her and take care of it. Well, the same nurse did come back and provide all the remaining care and discharge, but her demeanor was completely different when she came back, and I have to hand it to her that if she was angry or resentful she managed to completely hide it, and was completely professional and compassionate the rest of the visit, even going so far as to deliver John all the way to the car rather than just the doorway and have me drive up. I still feel bad about complaining, sort of, and the confrontation was not easy, but I actually feel good about the way it went. She may well have just been having a stressful day and not realized how she was coming across.

Trying the ENT again. *sigh*

On the bright side, after needing the max dose of meds 3 hours (an hour early) after leaving the hospital, he's a half hour past his minimum time now and hasn't asked for anything. I think I'm going to go prod him to take the minimum dose to keep it under control. It's so much easier to keep pain control steady than it is to relieve it once it's peaked.

Current Mood: cranky

John's doctor talked to me when he was done with the surgery, but I forgot some of the details of what he said. I was worried and anxious and perhaps not 100% in the best mental place to be noting important details, so I should have written them down. But I also would have assumed that we would have been given a little more information upon discharge like, oh, the doctor's instructions. Nope. We left the surgical center with ONE piece of paper other than our receipt, and it is just badly copied standard follow up info that does not include what he told me. Specifically this is regarding saline spray irrigation that John is supposed to do, but I don't know when he's supposed to start doing it or how often. And now I'm wondering what else I've forgotten - John actually asked me about irrigation and it jogged my memory. I was concentrating on what the doctor had done and the results of the surgery and I didn't pay enough attention to the right things, apparently.

So to further irritate and make things difficult, he told me if there was any problem to call him, he or the other doctor would be on call. So I just tried to do so. The office number refers you to a pager, with no instructions on how to use it. When you call, it beeps, pauses and then does more beeping noises. So, hoping that it might work, I put our phone number in after the beep and pushed pound and then it did the more beeping noises thing again. I have no idea if it's broken or if I did it right or what, it's been about 20 minutes and no callback. I'll keep trying in case it's broken or something I guess. The surgical center is an out-patient center so it's now closed. FRUSTRATED. I am not sure what to do. This can't wait until the office opens on Tuesday, and I'm really angry that the discharge paperwork was somewhere between horrible and non-existent. Does anybody know an ENT? :(

I found some information on the web for similar procedures and they say to do the saline every two hours, I'm assuming right away. But you know, I'm not a doctor, I don't really think we should be relying on what I can find on the internet.

Did I mention, FRUSTRATED?! I fail wife/caretaker today. :(