FYI

I've decided the Diet Dr. Pepper isn't as good as regular Dr. Pepper. Just an FYI.

Books

This was my library at school. Picture this only more beautiful and in your own home...it's enough to make you swoon....sorta.

B is for BOOKS. I love books. My favorite store is Barnes and Noble. I love all books. Old books, new books, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, biography, history. I love them all. I get excited when I walk into a book store or the library. Patrick hoards music and CDs...i hoard books. Someday I am going to have a beautiful library in my home. It's going to have floor to ceiling, built in bookshelves in a deep dark wood. On one end there will be a huge fireplace with a great mantle and overstuffed reading chairs on a huge soft, plush carpet that covers the hard wood floors. On the opposite end of the room there will be a huge floor to bay-type window with a bench along the bottom and long curtains on either side. It will over look the huge backyard that is lined with huge trees, so I can sit and watch the snow fall in the winter and listen to the rain in the spring and summer (this means that i'll need to move somewhere that it rains and snows frequently). In front of the window facing the room will be a massive old oak desk. I'll sit here and work on whatever academic research i may be pursuing at the time because, of course, i'll marry rich so i won't have to work and i can be the eternal student. This will be my sanctuary from the world and it will be lined with books. Books, books and more books!

I know, i'm a nerd.

HALLELUJAH!

HALLELUJAH! We heard from the leasing agent at the Cottonwood Apartments....ready...ready...? we were approved!!!!! The apartment is ours! We just need to make an appointment to go sign the lease before October 1st. They said there weren't any problems and that we were the ideal tenants. YAY!!!!

A is for ANTSY, AUNT, APARTMENT, ANTICIPATION

Annie started this on her blog and i'm sure you're all surprised that it's taken me this long to start it on my own. Well, this just goes to show that i'm not as predictable as you all may think. :P Actually, the real reason is, I couldn't think of anything that started with the letter "A" but then for whatever reason last night I thought a of slew of good "A" words that are relevant to me right now. So...here we go.....

A is for Aunt. I love being an aunt. I love my nieces and nephews. It melts my heart when Aidan says, "I lubbo you tons!" I know Aidan the best simply because I spend the most time with him. That's what happens when you live in close proximity for the past year. I've babysat him on countless occasions and he is such a sweet boy


Chas has the sweetest smile that takes up his entire face! He's getting pretty good at walking and he's actually pretty fast for a kid his size. You think he's going down and he catches himself and he's off in the other direction.


Lauren and Logan are a hoot! They have so much energy and are always on the go. I can't believe they're as old as they are. And now they have a new sister, Sienna Christine. Pretty soon we'll add little Emily Ann to the bunch and bring the total to 3 nephews and 3 nieces!

A is also for ANTSY/ANTICIPATION. I am excited for what the future holds for me right now, which brings me to another A...APARTMENT!!!! Yay! The long Anticipated, blessed event is going to finally happen! I put in an application for an apartment yesterday with Sarah Stevens. It's a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment on the third floor, with vaulted ceilings and a wood burning fireplace. The complex has a new work out facility, pool, hot tub and tennis court. I'm antsy because they're processing our application today and we should know by tomorrow (hopefully) if we got the apartment or not. The current tenants move out Oct. 1 and it'll be available for us to move in on the 8th. Very excited. AND Sara Hoberman is going to come visit in October too. I can't wait to see her and this time, she'll be staying in my own apartment! YAY!

A picture is worth a thousand words...

This is how I feel today.

It has been decided

I have let my plans get side tracked by this stupid surgery. Before we knew what was going on, I was going to move to LA in November. There was no if and or buts about it. I was going to move. Now that's not really an option anymore. That sucks. I really wanted to move to LA. But there's no point in really lingering on it...it will only depress me. Moving on. I then decided that i would move out and get a place of my own. I mention this to my parents and my dad thinks that Pat and I should get a place together. Pat would be easy to live with but he has a very small geographical area that he wants to live in plus he has very limited funds. It was going to be me paying about as much as i would for a one bedroom, in an area that i didn't particularly want to be in and then Pat chipping in a couple of hundred dollars. That didn't really seem very fair to me and really, it's not the best idea for Pat to move out right now. His school schedule is so demanding that he really can't work very much during the school year, even working for my dad. Then I got sick and all plans to move out were put on hold. My parents don't want me to move out before the surgery but who knows when that's actually going to happen. We're still just trying to get an appointment with the neurosurgeon. I can't wait any more. I'm going to crack. The huge house that we all live in seems to shrink every day. I've got a small little area of my own in the basement, no natural sunlight, it's crowded and cramped. For a house that big it seems mighty small. And it's only going to get smaller.

Annie's baby is due in the middle of september and once she comes it's going to be a whole different world. It's going to be crazy and stressful for everyone. For completely selfish reasons i want to move out so i don't have to deal with stressed out, cranky, sleep deprived family members. And it will help if there is one less person around so people can spread out a bit more. I've been calling around on my lunch break to see what's available and there really isn't anything available until October but 2 bedrooms. So i'm trying to con Sarah into moving in with me. :-) There's a nice 2 bedroom available Sept. 15th on about 47th South and 900th East. If it doesn't work for her then i'll find something else, but it would be fun to live with sarah and these are pretty nice little apartments. We'll have to see but it's been decided. I'm done waiting for the perfect circumstances...they don't exist. I'm just going to do it.

Theme song

For anyone that really knows me, knows that this song was written for me. It's my new theme song. It makes me happy.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=4934270


I put on some new shoes on and suddenly everything is right!
I put on some new shoes on and everybody is smiling.

Hello new shoes! Bye-bye blues!

I'm running late and I don't need no excuse to wear my brand new shoes.

The silver lining

I met my future husband this morning. After almost getting in two accidents, neither of which were my fault (people really need to learn how to read. A two way stop means that the intersecting road does not stop.), I had a doctor's appointment. I know, something new and different for me. I had to get some blood drawn and there he was, my future husband.

I was worried I was going to get Brittney or whatever her name is that couldn't count and couldn't draw my blood from last time. But no. Fate was kind this time and it was Dallin that called my name. Not only was he good looking with a great smile, He's pre-med at the U of U. A biology Major, Russian minor. Grew up in St. George. Went on a mission to the Ukraine. Likes to travel and is going back to the Ukraine and Russia next year. Likes to read. His favorite author is Alexandre Dumas. He recently finished Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen and he is now reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. He plays the piano, although according to him, not very well. He has at least two sisters. One older, one younger And I learned all this while we were chatting it up for the 5 minutes he was poking me in the arm. That's the way people should draw blood. A little flirting for a little blood. Seems like a nice trade, don't you think?

Wouldn't it be ironic if i married a doctor...seeing as how i love them so much already?

Random Rant

I need to do a little venting. I'm not obsessing over this but i just need to say it and get it out there.

Okay, so as you all know, lately I've been put through the ringer. When it all comes down to it, it really isn't that big of a deal. yeah, it sucked and it hurt and i'm frustrated with it but i'm healthy (relatively) and feeling much better. I survived so when I say what i'm going to say it's not in a "oh woe is me! my life is so horrible" kind of way. It's in a, i'm sort of irritated and upset, sort of way. Before any of the procedures or hospital stays happened I had dinner with a "good' friend. (I say "good" because it seems like we're good friends but when you really examine the relationship it's more of a one way street) The entire evening, from the moment he picked me up until he dropped me off was spent talking about him and his life. We didn't even talk about general, generic topics. It was all about him. There was a slight lull in the conversation so I took the opportunity to tell him what was going on and what the future had in store for me. It took about 2 minutes and then there was a slight pause, silence and it was back to him.

I haven't heard from him since. I got one text message asking how my interview at Google went but nothing else. So here's the real rub...it's not that he hasn't called to see how i'm doing or emailed or asked one of our mutual friends. That's to be expected. I'm used to him acting that way. As sad and as wrong as that is...i'm used to it. I honestly didn't expect a whole lot more from him. What really irritates me and upsets me is the fact that i still care that he hasn't called or texted or emailed. It still hurts that he doesn't seem to care or can't show any interest in anything besides himself and his life. I'm not mad at him...not really. I'm mad at myself for letting him get to me. Why do i let him get to me? I don't need him. And I really don't want to want him but i can't stop myself from hoping that he'll show me that he cares about what happens to me, in whatever small way that is. But the fact of the matter is I do. I do care and that's what angers me.

Becuase I'm me and my body hates me

After the trauma of thursday, my body has still been trying to recover and just heal. Should be a fairly simply process, yes? We must remember who we are dealing with here. Normal people, yes. Healing from such a "simple" procedure should have been a fairly simply process. I was feeling pretty good and i went about my business saturday sunday. Went to work on Monday and I started to feel crappy and sort of feverish. As the day went on my right side started to hurt more and more. Every time i got up from my desk it felt like my insides were being ripped apart. I ended up going home a little early. As the night went on the pain just got worse and worse. I had been taking advil all day and my mom gave me half a lortab around 9:00 and i went to bed. I didn't sleep the entire night...well that's not entirely true. I think I sort of dozed off for about an hour around 3am. I got up the next morning and the pain just continued to get worse. Since it was on the right side and it was in the same general area of where the doctor had been digging around we're thinking something is just bruised or he may have nicked something, so we call the doctor and he says to come in and he'll take a look. We get there and they wheel me in in a wheel chair. We sit in the depressingly small radiology waiting room for the doctor to come and talk to us. He takes me back to an examination room and does his poking and pushing, causing much pain, and decides that it doesn't have anything to do with the procedure he had done and that i should go to the ER-he's thinking appendicitis. We get over there and they start an IV and give me some morphine...such a wonderful drug. They draw some blood and the do a CT scan to take a look at my appendix. The CT scan comes back and wouldn't you know it...? it's NOT appendicitis. Even though it looks like appendicitis, feels like appendicitis and sounds like appendicitis, really...it's not appendicitis. Apparently if it looks like a duck, walks and like duck and quacks like a duck...sometimes in my reality, it's a hyena. The doctors are, of course, baffled, and have no idea what's wrong. They decide it's an OBGYN problem. So they do a pelvic exam. unpleasant on a good day- now add in the fact that you're in extreme pain in the pelvic area, you're tired because you haven't slept in about 4 days, you're hungry because you haven't eaten since about 5pm the previous day and it is now almost 6pm AND the fact that your doctor is a scrawny balding guy that gives you the slight ebe-jee-bees. So they do the pelvic exam, causing excruciating pain and embarrassment. They decide to call in the OBGYN oncall in the ER to take a look at my CT scan because something was "amiss". So we wait about an hour for the doctor show up. She does, yet another, excruciatingly painful pelvic exam and then before she can tell us anything really she was to wait for the lab results to come back and she gets called away to deliver several babies. So it's about 10:00 and we still haven't seen the doctor again, i've had to hobble back and forth to the bathroom, climbing in and out of bed, again causing excruciating pain every time i move. She finally comes back and they have decided that it's some sort of infection and they're going to admit me to the hospital for the night to give me antibiotics through an IV and keep me for observation. So my parents go home and i get put into a bed upstairs sharing a room with a woman that had been in an accident on her moped. No, i am not making this up. It was actually pretty serious and doctors kept coming in all night, turning lights on and rolling her out on her bed several times to get xrays done, ct scans done what have you. When she wasn't being scanned or tested for something she's either hacking and coughing or on her cell phone with someone from her family. She's from Pocatello, Idaho and was driven to the U of U hospital in an ambulance because they would be able to do her surgery. That combined with the fact that every two hours someone would come in and wake me up to take my vital signs, it was a miracle that i was able to sleep at all. Several doctors come in through out the night to introduce themselves and get the "story" from me. By the time i leave the hospital i have answered the same questions and told the same story at least 10 times. I wake up this morning after having a temp of about 102 most of the night in gross sweaty sheets and the same hospital gown and feeling rather disgusting because i haven't showered since monday (it is now wednesday parade of doctors starts early. The entire OBGYN "team" has been assigned to my case and all put one of them are young, attractive guys. Because obviously with my luck, nothing else would have been acceptable. They still don't know much else besides the fact that I have some sort of infection in the general area of my lower right abdomen/pelvic area. So they keep me for the day and do an ultrasound and keep me on antibiotics. I'm feeling so much better and i can actually walk around with wanting to die. But because it's a hospital and it's me that is problem.

i'm stuck sitting in a hospital bed with the hacking roommate that is on the phone all day with her family. The doctors finally come in around 6:00, they still don't know what exactly happened other than I had/have an infection of some sort and they still don't know why exactly. So I go home and i have my own little pharmacy of antibiotics and painkillers.

So let's count...in the past week i have spent three days in the hospital. I've missed 4 days of work. and i have yet another hospital stay to look forward to in the coming months. I could react to this in one of two ways...i could lose it and have a melt down or i can laugh. i choose to laugh. laughing is far more pleasant than crying, although i probably will cry at least once at some point before this whole ordeal is over, and that doesn't count the times i've already cried.

Monsoon Season

Last Thursday I had a Petrosal Sinus Sampling. I went in there thinking it would be about an par with getting regular labs done...probably a bit more unpleasant than most but not terribly painful or laborious. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was as pleasant as it sounds.

This is what they say about it on Pituitary.org: This test is not always required, but in many cases, it is the best way to separate pituitary from ectopic causes of Cushing’s syndrome. Samples of blood are drawn from the petrosal sinuses, veins which drain the pituitary, by introducing catheters through a vein in the upper thigh/groin region, with local anesthesia and mild sedation. X-rays are used to confirm the correct position of the catheters. Often CRH, the hormone which causes the pituitary to secrete ACTH, is given during this test to improve diagnostic accuracy. Levels of ACTH in the petrosal sinuses are measured and compared with ACTH levels in a forearm vein. ACTH levels higher in the petrosal sinuses than in the forearm vein indicate the presence of a pituitary adenoma; similar levels suggest ectopic ACTH syndrome.

Sounds simple enough, no? We should know by now that when it comes to medical matters, nothing is ever simple. Going in I really had no idea what was going to happen. I thought they were going to go through my nose...seems like the most direct route to the pituitary. I could have been more wrong. They went through my ephemeral vein in my leg. The inserted catheters on either side of my groin area into the ephemeral vein and snaked it up through my kidney, through my heart and up to the jugular artery in my throat. Apparently everything from the brain drains down through the jugular artery. So they took 27 test tube samples. 27 different samples. Still, doesn't sound too horrific...unpleasant yes, horrific not so much. But you're forgetting who we're talking about here. This is me. When it comes to medical issues, nothing is every simple and nothing goes the way it should. So they "sedate" me. I was supposed to be heavily sedated but not out so much that they couldn't wake me easily. I was basically completely lucid through the entire procedure. I pretty much heard every word, felt every pinch. The "procedure" was supposed to last about 3 hours...it took them 2 hours longer. Why you ask? Because it's me and my anatomy is pretty screwy. The vein is supposed to sit beside the artery...but not me...no...my vein sits on top of my artery so they couldn't find it. They spent about an hour digging around in my lower right abdomen trying to find this vein until they called in the vascular radiologist with her uber ultrasound machine to find the vein. I've been laying on this table for about an hour when i hear the doctor (the chief of radiology) say, we still haven't gotten the vein, let's call in the vascular radiologist. AN HOUR!!!! All this time I thought they had been doing whatever it was they needed to do. So they get her in there and they eventually get the vein and once they had the uber ultrasound they didn't have any problem with the left side.

And let me remind you, i'm completely lucid through this whole thing. I can feel the blood stream down my right side and pool in my hand. Occasionally they give me more sedative which makes my nose itch..doesn't put me out just makes my nose itch to the point i'm ready to scream and i can't move my hand because i'm under a sterile cloth and they've got needles and catheters running through my major organs...you don't want to mess with that. So the nurse would occasionally itch my nose and i'd get sleepy for about 10 minutes until the sedative sort of wore off. They finally get the catheter up to my sinus cavity and start taking the samples. And every time they take a sample i can hear and feel a sucking noise. It doesn't really hurt it's just sort of gross. At this point i've been splayed out on this table completely naked in a room full of men with tubes and needles protruding from my body for about 4 hours. In my head i'm just thinking i want to go home, i want to go home - just get me out of here and let me go home and i start to cry. Not hard but there are tears and i start to shake. As they're taking the catheters out, not a very pleasant experience, they give me some more medication to stop me from shaking and help with the headache. I don't know what they gave me exactly...i think it was benadhryl (sp?) and a steroid but whatever it was my body did not like it. I started to shake even more and my legs and arms felt like they were swelling and i got pins and needles all over like i've never had before. I got nauseous and felt like i was going to throw up, what i'm not sure. I hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours. and my heart started to race and i couldn't catch my breath. They got the panicked doctor voice going on asking me what was wrong...and of course i couldn't coherently tell them what was going on but it passed in a few minutes. They finished pulling the catheters out and start to clean me up because i was basically covered in my own blood. They move me over to a gurney and push me out into the hall to wait to go up to short term recovery.

I'm sitting in the hall and i start to cry again. I'm still sort of shaking and i just want to go home. My right side is hurting and when i tell them this they act surprised. I'm just like...duh...what do you expect?! You were digging around in there for how long?! The nurse comes out and tells my mom that i'll probably be pretty sleepy because of all the meds they gave me...nope...i'm hardly sleepy at all. I wish i was. just sleep through all of this. And the meds were supposed to give me short term amnesia so i wouldn't remember any of it. No...i remember it all. I get up to short term recovery and i'm still bleeding and they have to clean me up again and they can't let me go until i've stopped bleeding. Eventually i do and they let me go home. They roll me out in a wheelchair and i can barely stand up. Driving home every single pot hole and bump in the road makes my body scream. And i get to go through this again in a couple of weeks...? we're HOPING that i have to have surgery. What is wrong with us?!

I'm still feeling pretty sore. I'm terrified of what the next one is going to be like. If they say it's going to be easy and recovery isn't so bad, there's no way i'm going to believe them. All I have to say is they had better put me out completely. Non of this "sedating" me...not knock.me.out. I don't want to remember or feel anything.

And this is what i have to look forward to....(again from pituitary.org)

Several therapies are available to treat the ACTH-secreting pituitary adenomas of Cushing’s disease. The most widely used treatment is surgical removal of the tumor, known as transsphenoidal adenomectomy. Using a special microscope and very fine instruments, the surgeon approaches the pituitary gland through a nostril or an opening made below the upper lip. Because this is an extremely delicate procedure, patients are often referred to centers specializing in this type of surgery. The success, or cure, rate of this procedure is over 80 percent when performed by a surgeon with extensive experience. If surgery fails, or only produces a temporary cure, surgery can be repeated, often with good results. After curative pituitary surgery, the production of ACTH drops two levels below normal. This is a natural, but temporary, drop in ACTH production, and patients are given a synthetic form of cortisol (such as hydrocortisone or prednisone). Most patients can stop this replacement therapy in less than a year. For patients in whom transsphenoidal surgery has failed or who are not suitable candidates for surgery, radiotherapy is another possible treatment. Radiation to the pituitary gland is given over a 6-week period, with improvement occurring in 40%—50% percent of adults and up to 80 percent of children. It may take several months or years before patients feel better from radiation treatment alone. However, the combination of radiation and the drug mitotane (Lysodren) can help speed recovery. Mitotane suppresses cortisol production and lowers plasma patients. Other drugs used alone or in combination to control the production of excess cortisol are aminoglutethimide, metyrapone, trilostane and ketoconazole. Each has its own side effects that doctors consider when prescribing therapy for individual patients.

I am not a happy camper right now.

Smarmy marmy

you have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.