Thursday, September 6, 2007

Just point me to my pillow...

Hey - are ya'll tired of hearing me say that I am EXHAUSTED yet? Well, I'm tired of saying it, and even more tired of feeling it. I spent the day today playing taxi driver from basically 9:30 - 3:30. Now I'm home and I get to start on my work for the day. (to be honest, I expect that 90% of it will be put on the "to do another day" list.) Our house guest (Nancy) needed rides here, there and everywhere, and Bryan had his 2 year well - child check up.
While at the Dr., I asked him about Katrina's arm. About 10 days ago she started crying anytime she bumped her arm, or if anyone touched it, or if someone picked her up, etc... Upon questioning the kids, Aaron and Trina said that she was running and fell down, and her arm got hurt. I asked when, but they could only say "yesterday or maybe another day ago." I have been vacillating as to whether or not I should take her in for x-rays, since it is obvious to me that something is wrong, but it just didn't seem to be either too serious or something they would be able to do anything about. The pediatrician confirmed my suspicion today, that she did fracture her clavicle bone, that it is healing, and there is nothing they really do about it except let it heal on it's own.

Can I just tell you a HORRIBLE experience I had yesterday? I had to go to the dentist. I had an old filling that had outlived it's usefulness. Apparently it was letting gunk in and the tooth was decaying under the filling. Now, the last time I went to the dentist, it took 3 shots to finally numb up the tooth they were trying to work on. This was a new dentist, he gave me a numbing shot, and within 5 minutes I could tell this wasn't going to cut it. I told the assistant about my previous 3 shot experience and that the shot I had had wasn't numbing my bottom lip or gums at all. She said, "no problem, that happens fairly often, we have this super numbing stuff that will work." So, the Dr. comes back in and gives me another shot. Soon my EYELID begins to go numb. I am not joking! The Dr informs me that my nerves must be a bit skewed in their 'wiring', but soon my lip was numb (along with the ENTIRE LEFT side of my face - from my chin, to my hair follicles, and back around behind my ear.) I had the old filling removed, the decay was deeper than they originally thought and they had to drill very close to the nerve, but luckily not quite ALL the way, then they put in the new filling. (I'll just add here to all you who have forgotten about the increased hypersensitivity of the GAG REFLEX in pregnant women - this was a real challenge for me. I was SO relieved when it was over - not knowing about the fun that was yet to come.)
I left the dentist, hurrying because Katrina had an appointment. with a speech pathologist for testing. I didn't feel great, and my numb face was very annoying. Looking in the rear view mirror, I realized that I had no control of my left eyelid. I literally could not close my eye! I was a little freaked out. I ignored it and just focused on getting Trina to her appt.
(As a side note, Trina more than qualifies for speech therapy. She tested at an 8+ year old level as far as vocabulary and comprehension, but a 2 year old (or less) in articulation. Her speech falls into the 2nd percentile. i.e. 98% of children her age are easier to understand then she is. We go in next week for her IEP meeting, then she starts weekly "preschool" (speech therapy). Hopefully we'll see improvement relatively quickly, because it is incredibly frustrating for both her and me to communicate.)

Now - back to my dental numbing nightmare. After her speech evaluation, I needed to drive Nancy on a couple errands - as I was driving I realized I SHOULD NOT be behind the wheel of a moving car. I seemed to have lost all my peripheral vision in my left eye, I was seeing a waving blurry spot right in the center of my vision, and then I realized that I also seemed to have random spots where I just couldn't see. It was scary! (I didn't feel comfortable letting Nancy drive because she has a suspended drivers license. I figured I would just stay on empty back roads and be extra extra careful. By the time we got home, I was nauseous, my head was pounding, and I couldn't see straight. I called another mom in our carpool and asked her to do afternoon pick up because I just shouldn't be driving. I took the opportunity to lie down and promptly fell asleep for 30 minutes. By about 5:30 last night, I was starting to feel a bit better, although pretty wiped out. This morning I seem to be fine again.

It was a horrible nightmare! On the positive side - it made me more grateful for my vision, and that I haven't had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of my face permanently. I guess life could be worse - right? Gotta run - it's back to school night, so I need to going!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow - sounds like you had a terrible day. I'm things are better now.