Feels like summer!!
Summer is my favorite time of year. All 3 of the other seasons make me depressed, tired, anti-social, and the anything-below-80-degree-weather makes my bones hurt. Winter clothes make me feel claustrophobic, and it annoys me when most of my sisters are in GREAT moods in the winter. I have no idea how 50 degrees (ie, freezing) can be at all appealing. Last month, when the first warm day hit, I wanted to sing and party. Like magic, I was immediately in a better mood, I had a ton of energy, and just felt a lot happier. Seriously...be my friend in the summer. I'm really nice for several months in a row.
Good things happen in the summer: No school, family vacations, spontaneous road trips, flowy skirts, flipflops, swimming, rain, Sonic happy hour, daylight savings time (!!!!!), church picnics, and sun tans. Seriously, what's not to LOVE?
Call your local congressman and tell them to make daylight savings time our standard time. I mean, come on, is there even one good thing about looking out the window at 5pm in the winter and seeing a pitch black sky? It's no wonder depression and suicide go up in the winter--they've taken away the sun! I say, put it back. Is there one bad thing about looking outside at 9pm in the summer and still being able to see everything? The world would be a better place if we would all get a little more sun.
This summer has been/will be a busy one for us! Early next month, I'll be starting a nurse aid course that will enable me to get a really nice, steady job in a hospital this fall. It's a 3 week course, and at the end I'll take the state exam, and then I could immediately start a job at any hospital. The nursing shortage is so great right now that you can basically just pick which floor to work on and what kind of hours you work. They're that desperate for people to work. I will hopefully cash in on that desperation and get a job at a hospital very close to our house, and my first choices for floors are labor & delivery or newborn ICU. I eventually would like to go into midwifery, so it would be nice to start there and get a feel for things. Taking this course will be helpful in several ways: 1) I will get a job that I think I will be good at and think I will enjoy, 2) I will be able to make sure that I can do that kind of work even in my weakened physical state, and 3) I will be able to get references from RNs that will boost my chances of being accepted into clinicals at the nursing school. So I'll take this course, and if the Lord wants me to continue in this nursing track, I know everything will fall into place.
I told you a few weeks ago about the nerve blocks that my neurologist gave me in March. I was seriously shocked that they actually helped! I mean, I don't mean to sound like a pessimist, but I thought this would be just another thing to check off the list of things we've tried. In the few days/weeks after the injections, I began to feel slightly better each day. The constant pain in my head/neck actually lessened a bit, but the biggest difference was in my energy/stamina/tiredness levels. If you're around a lot, you know how bad I get after an hour or two of doing *anything*. But with these shots, I was able to keep going all day without feeling like I needed someone to shoot me. And the best benefit: I cut my pain med doses down by a third! That is huge, people. Huge.
Anyway, the last 2-3 weeks have been terrible again--the shots have worn off now. :( Back to normal doses of meds, back to banging myself against walls to try to relieve the pressure pain, back to...everything. But my doctor said it's been a suffienct amount of time and he's going to re-do the shots this Wednesday morning at 8am. Awesome. So I'm looking forward to better days next week!
Shelley and I are trying to convince Mom and Dad to get us a second piano. Every big, musical family has more than one piano, right?? Maybe not, but that doesn't matter. We have these awesome 4 hands/2 piano duet books that are sitting on our music shelves, collecting massive amounts of dust. And we love to write/arrange duets ourselves, but we can't do it on one piano! One of our favorite things to do is to match up classical pieces with hymns or praise songs with the same chord structures. Then we arrange them so that we can play them at the same time, on 2 pianos. Think of all the fun we could have if we just had....one more piano. Mom said that to do that, we'd have get rid of the couch in the green living room. Y'all don't mind sitting on the floor when you come over, do you? Didn't think so. ;)
Well, here's to a great 90degree summer! Smile!
5/24/09
4/12/09
5th verse drama
You know how there are only 2 real Easter hymns, right? What's the most popular Easter hymn in the US? "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" I have played this on Easter Sunday for, I think, 5 years in a row now. You would think that a church pianist would have enough of a brain to remember how to play it, right? Yeah....right.
The hymnal that we use in our church has tons of hymns where there are too many verses to fit on one page, so they put the first 4-6 inside the score on one page, and then the last verse(s) are put annoyingly on the next page w/out music. Believe me, when you're playing piano, or any instrument, it's annoying. I am the QUEEN of forgetting the last verse and ending after the 4th verse with a great big embarrassing AMEN on the piano while the congregation is busy singing the 5th verse. Oh my goodness...how many times have I done that?? Too many.
Ok, so that was useless information. In our hymnal, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" has 5 verses, 4 of which are inside the score and the last is on the next page. The first Easter our church celebrated, I was playing this hymn and skipped the last verse. I had no idea the last verse was elsewhere and didn't know what in the world everyone was singing...were they making it up? Ok, well, stupid me, I'll write a great big star there on the page so next year I'll remember.
2nd Easter: I make the "last" verse really big and octavey, slow down on the last line and there we go, it's done. Wait, they're still singing. Dang it. Where am I? Where am I? Ok, I come back in halfway through the verse and at the end, I look around to see if anyone's staring at me. Great, only my sisters. I take a different colored pen than last time and draw 3 big, huge, arrows from the main page to the next verse. Surely next year I will get a grip and see that.
3rd Easter: Same thing, different year. Only this time, when everybody starts singing the 5th verse and I'm lost again, I start freaking out in my mind going, "Great, 3rd year in a row, I'm an idiot. Now what do I do? Do I start playing and look like a moron or do I let them keep singing a capella and let them think this was planned? Oh, I don't know!" Ok, I start playing anyway. So embarrassing. I take another pen and draw colorful circles and stars around the 5th verse. My hymnal is starting to look ridiculous.
4th Easter (last year): Of course, in keeping with tradition, I forget the last verse. What was I thinking? This time though, I don't start playing again. I let them end it a capella and hope no one notices. Yeah, whatever. My sisters are glaring at me because they remember. I take a sharpie and write 5TH VERSE NEXT PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5th Easter (Today): 5th time's a charm, right? Ok, this time, things were going to be different. No longer is it just me playing piano all by my lonesome, but I have a cute little "ensemble" backing me up now. At practice last week, we were going through the Sunday lineup and we really wanted to get everything perfect because it was Easter. Before we practiced this hymn, I turned around on the bench and explained to everyone my plight (or curse) from the years before. I beseeched them, in the name of God, not to forget the last verse. I showed them my hymnal with all the ridiculous colorful markings and told them to do what they had to do to make sure we played that verse. We practiced it perfectly, all 5 verses sounded beautiful and we were ready to go. At church this morning, 2 hours before service started, we did it again...gorgeous. I was feelin' good. Ok, the moment of truth...first hymn of the service, here we go.... 4 verses down, none to go..... oh man. There they go, singing the 5th verse without me. And did the viola or the violin or the guitar or the keyboard or the flute forget to play? Nope. Just me. Where did I come from???
I don't know what's wrong with me. My hymnal is so marked up on that page that you can barely tell what hymn it is. But do I see the colorful decorations? No I don't. I just see music with those 4 stinkin' verses.
Maybe next year I'll hire out a pianist to play just that hymn for me.
Excuse me, would you like to play 5 verses of Christ the Lord is Risen Today on Easter Sunday at a church you've never been to before? You're hired.
The hymnal that we use in our church has tons of hymns where there are too many verses to fit on one page, so they put the first 4-6 inside the score on one page, and then the last verse(s) are put annoyingly on the next page w/out music. Believe me, when you're playing piano, or any instrument, it's annoying. I am the QUEEN of forgetting the last verse and ending after the 4th verse with a great big embarrassing AMEN on the piano while the congregation is busy singing the 5th verse. Oh my goodness...how many times have I done that?? Too many.
Ok, so that was useless information. In our hymnal, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" has 5 verses, 4 of which are inside the score and the last is on the next page. The first Easter our church celebrated, I was playing this hymn and skipped the last verse. I had no idea the last verse was elsewhere and didn't know what in the world everyone was singing...were they making it up? Ok, well, stupid me, I'll write a great big star there on the page so next year I'll remember.
2nd Easter: I make the "last" verse really big and octavey, slow down on the last line and there we go, it's done. Wait, they're still singing. Dang it. Where am I? Where am I? Ok, I come back in halfway through the verse and at the end, I look around to see if anyone's staring at me. Great, only my sisters. I take a different colored pen than last time and draw 3 big, huge, arrows from the main page to the next verse. Surely next year I will get a grip and see that.
3rd Easter: Same thing, different year. Only this time, when everybody starts singing the 5th verse and I'm lost again, I start freaking out in my mind going, "Great, 3rd year in a row, I'm an idiot. Now what do I do? Do I start playing and look like a moron or do I let them keep singing a capella and let them think this was planned? Oh, I don't know!" Ok, I start playing anyway. So embarrassing. I take another pen and draw colorful circles and stars around the 5th verse. My hymnal is starting to look ridiculous.
4th Easter (last year): Of course, in keeping with tradition, I forget the last verse. What was I thinking? This time though, I don't start playing again. I let them end it a capella and hope no one notices. Yeah, whatever. My sisters are glaring at me because they remember. I take a sharpie and write 5TH VERSE NEXT PAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5th Easter (Today): 5th time's a charm, right? Ok, this time, things were going to be different. No longer is it just me playing piano all by my lonesome, but I have a cute little "ensemble" backing me up now. At practice last week, we were going through the Sunday lineup and we really wanted to get everything perfect because it was Easter. Before we practiced this hymn, I turned around on the bench and explained to everyone my plight (or curse) from the years before. I beseeched them, in the name of God, not to forget the last verse. I showed them my hymnal with all the ridiculous colorful markings and told them to do what they had to do to make sure we played that verse. We practiced it perfectly, all 5 verses sounded beautiful and we were ready to go. At church this morning, 2 hours before service started, we did it again...gorgeous. I was feelin' good. Ok, the moment of truth...first hymn of the service, here we go.... 4 verses down, none to go..... oh man. There they go, singing the 5th verse without me. And did the viola or the violin or the guitar or the keyboard or the flute forget to play? Nope. Just me. Where did I come from???
I don't know what's wrong with me. My hymnal is so marked up on that page that you can barely tell what hymn it is. But do I see the colorful decorations? No I don't. I just see music with those 4 stinkin' verses.
Maybe next year I'll hire out a pianist to play just that hymn for me.
Excuse me, would you like to play 5 verses of Christ the Lord is Risen Today on Easter Sunday at a church you've never been to before? You're hired.
3/26/09
no barking
Time to blog, time to blog.
I'm trying not to feel guilty about never blogging. It will help me blog more often if I feel less guilty. Maybe I'll try that...tomorrow.
Our semester is more than halfway over. That is so nice to think about. I do not like being school because someone is forcing me. Especially this semester, I don't want to be there, I don't care about my classes, I see it as the last thing I should be spending my time on right now. But because the government is making me do it and because we've already payed for it, I go. And I can't wait till it's over...
I've been to lots of appointments at the hospital in the last month. A few with pain management/anesthesia and a few with neurology. I love finally having doctors that work together instead of acting like they're the only physician in the world.
My neurologist got a hold of the films from the upright MRI I had done. There actually was some millimeter differences between that one and the old MRIs. This is good because he was able to see that my brain actually is dropping when gravity hits it (hence more pain when I'm sitting or standing). So that's the good news.
The bad news is that I'm still not a candidate for surgery. He said that most people with the same symptoms/pain that I have will lie in bed for months or years, waiting for this brain surgery. The surgeons have no problem slicing their skulls open because they are probably giving them a new lease on life. My docs said that although they've never seen someone with the mental toughness I have to be able to fight the pain and pretend like I'm normal, it's actually backfired because now I have a lot to lose. They won't even think about wheeling me into an OR because they think the risks outweigh the possible benefits at this point.
That was disappointing. But I trust that they know the surgery and its limitations better than I do, so I let myself be upset for about 10 minutes, then I forced myself to get over it. I asked them, "So I'm not a candidate for surgery...what AM I a candidate for?"
Answer: Symptomatic control. Great. Isn't that what we've been doing? Pretty much. They said we could try some nerve blocks at the base of my skull. They may or may not work, but we might as well try.
So last week my sweet friend Emily took me to the hospital and helped me get some nerves blocked. It was a fairly quick procedure...just about 8 shots to the back of my head. He shot some cocktail of lidocaine, steroids, and pain killers into my head to numb up the nerves that may or may not be aggravating the pain. He said that it might take up to 3 weeks to notice a difference and that if it helped, the shots could last up to 6 months. Well, 3 days later, I could already tell a difference in the amount of pain I was having. For a few days after that, the pain level decreased every day. Now it's kind of leveled out, but over all, I think the pain has been decreased by about 40%. :) That is good news, people.
Other goings on: We're 6 days away from officially starting the next kids musical at our church. The girls and I have been working on it for several weeks now, but we'll start rehearsals with the kids next Wednesday. So far we've gotten a lot of the hard work out of the way. We've picked the musical, rewritten the script to make it work for our church, written out about 100 lists, and oh, we did a final head count of the kids we'll have. We have 57 kids ages 4-15 signed up to be a part of this. If you know how big (or small) our little church is, you should be laughing by now. The last two musicals we did, we had a total of 26 kids, I think. I freaked out a little in my head when I saw that number 57. I told my 2 organizationally-challenged younger sisters that we are going to have to be very organized about this. I think they freaked out a little in their heads when I said the word "organized".
To help ourselves think that we're keeping a good handle on all the kids, we made a big, colorful poster of the Musical Rules. Here's a few of the rules Beth and Shelley came up with:
Obey your directors (and helpers too)!
Say your lines loud and clear!
Sing--don't yell!
Always face your audience!
Be quiet off stage!
Don't make CJ call your parents!
No barking!
Do your best!
Well, I have towels to fold and a thunderstorm to watch, so I'll leave it at that. Until next month... :)
I'm trying not to feel guilty about never blogging. It will help me blog more often if I feel less guilty. Maybe I'll try that...tomorrow.
Our semester is more than halfway over. That is so nice to think about. I do not like being school because someone is forcing me. Especially this semester, I don't want to be there, I don't care about my classes, I see it as the last thing I should be spending my time on right now. But because the government is making me do it and because we've already payed for it, I go. And I can't wait till it's over...
I've been to lots of appointments at the hospital in the last month. A few with pain management/anesthesia and a few with neurology. I love finally having doctors that work together instead of acting like they're the only physician in the world.
My neurologist got a hold of the films from the upright MRI I had done. There actually was some millimeter differences between that one and the old MRIs. This is good because he was able to see that my brain actually is dropping when gravity hits it (hence more pain when I'm sitting or standing). So that's the good news.
The bad news is that I'm still not a candidate for surgery. He said that most people with the same symptoms/pain that I have will lie in bed for months or years, waiting for this brain surgery. The surgeons have no problem slicing their skulls open because they are probably giving them a new lease on life. My docs said that although they've never seen someone with the mental toughness I have to be able to fight the pain and pretend like I'm normal, it's actually backfired because now I have a lot to lose. They won't even think about wheeling me into an OR because they think the risks outweigh the possible benefits at this point.
That was disappointing. But I trust that they know the surgery and its limitations better than I do, so I let myself be upset for about 10 minutes, then I forced myself to get over it. I asked them, "So I'm not a candidate for surgery...what AM I a candidate for?"
Answer: Symptomatic control. Great. Isn't that what we've been doing? Pretty much. They said we could try some nerve blocks at the base of my skull. They may or may not work, but we might as well try.
So last week my sweet friend Emily took me to the hospital and helped me get some nerves blocked. It was a fairly quick procedure...just about 8 shots to the back of my head. He shot some cocktail of lidocaine, steroids, and pain killers into my head to numb up the nerves that may or may not be aggravating the pain. He said that it might take up to 3 weeks to notice a difference and that if it helped, the shots could last up to 6 months. Well, 3 days later, I could already tell a difference in the amount of pain I was having. For a few days after that, the pain level decreased every day. Now it's kind of leveled out, but over all, I think the pain has been decreased by about 40%. :) That is good news, people.
Other goings on: We're 6 days away from officially starting the next kids musical at our church. The girls and I have been working on it for several weeks now, but we'll start rehearsals with the kids next Wednesday. So far we've gotten a lot of the hard work out of the way. We've picked the musical, rewritten the script to make it work for our church, written out about 100 lists, and oh, we did a final head count of the kids we'll have. We have 57 kids ages 4-15 signed up to be a part of this. If you know how big (or small) our little church is, you should be laughing by now. The last two musicals we did, we had a total of 26 kids, I think. I freaked out a little in my head when I saw that number 57. I told my 2 organizationally-challenged younger sisters that we are going to have to be very organized about this. I think they freaked out a little in their heads when I said the word "organized".
To help ourselves think that we're keeping a good handle on all the kids, we made a big, colorful poster of the Musical Rules. Here's a few of the rules Beth and Shelley came up with:
Obey your directors (and helpers too)!
Say your lines loud and clear!
Sing--don't yell!
Always face your audience!
Be quiet off stage!
Don't make CJ call your parents!
No barking!
Do your best!
Well, I have towels to fold and a thunderstorm to watch, so I'll leave it at that. Until next month... :)
2/2/09
catch up
I'm so sorry for the lack of posts. It definitely does not mean that nothing interesting has happened around here... it just means that too MUCH has happened and that doesn't leave me much time to blog. To catch you up, here are a few things that have happened/are happening:
>One of our fish jumped out of the tank in beth's and my room and died on our carpet. We found him later, dry and gross (all 9 inches of him) lying beside the tank and looking very...dead. We didn't want to touch him, so Dad threw him in the burn pit in the backyard (where all the dead mice are...he'll be in good company).
>I got my first traffic ticket...for having my headlights too bright. But this is the ridiculous part: When the guy pulled me over, he told me that it was because I had my brights on. I told him that I turned them off as soon as I saw his headlights coming toward me. (You know, like you're supposed to do when a car is coming toward you.) He said, "Yeah, you turned them off alright...when you saw that I was a cop!" How in the world can you tell if two bright headlights coming your way is a cop or not?? It's ridiculous. So I got a ticket even though I did the right thing.
>The girls and I started school about 3 weeks ago. This is the first semester that I've actually liked all of my professors. Hopefully that will make the semester fly by!
>The Slaughters are moving back to SA in 13 days! They have a house ready for them here, Dave has a job ready for him the day after they get here, and there's a city full of people waiting for them to drive in. This will make 8 out of 9 Warren kids living in SA, so now we're trying to figure out a way to get Caleb and Annie down here!
>We're in the newborn stages of planning another kids' musical for our church. I've directed 2 so far, and now we're beginning a 3rd. The first part is usually the hardest: Picking a musical, figuring out how to make it work with the amount of kids we have, lining up who will help us make it happen and assigning jobs, ordering the script and doing the necessary re-writes, choreographing the songs, and then casting the musical. After that it's just rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals, and those aren't so hard. Our goal is to get these preliminary things finished within 4 weeks so we can hopefully start rehearsals in 6 weeks. And that should keep us busy for a while!
>I had my vertical MRI a few days ago. The test went really well...I just sat there and watched TV while they scanned me and it was over within about 2 hours. They printed the films for me to take home and I left with about 150 images of my brain. I looked at them when I got home and there were only about 10 pictures where I could see anything significant. On those 10 pictures, you can definitely tell that my brain is a lot lower than it should be and you can see the very bottom of my brain looking very squashed. My doctor hasn't seen the films yet... I'm supposed to take them in to him in a couple of weeks. He'll decide from there what he wants to do and I'll let you know what that is when I know.
I do have excellent intentions about blogging every day but life really gets in my way. Hopefully I'll make it back here before another 2 months go by... :)
>One of our fish jumped out of the tank in beth's and my room and died on our carpet. We found him later, dry and gross (all 9 inches of him) lying beside the tank and looking very...dead. We didn't want to touch him, so Dad threw him in the burn pit in the backyard (where all the dead mice are...he'll be in good company).
>I got my first traffic ticket...for having my headlights too bright. But this is the ridiculous part: When the guy pulled me over, he told me that it was because I had my brights on. I told him that I turned them off as soon as I saw his headlights coming toward me. (You know, like you're supposed to do when a car is coming toward you.) He said, "Yeah, you turned them off alright...when you saw that I was a cop!" How in the world can you tell if two bright headlights coming your way is a cop or not?? It's ridiculous. So I got a ticket even though I did the right thing.
>The girls and I started school about 3 weeks ago. This is the first semester that I've actually liked all of my professors. Hopefully that will make the semester fly by!
>The Slaughters are moving back to SA in 13 days! They have a house ready for them here, Dave has a job ready for him the day after they get here, and there's a city full of people waiting for them to drive in. This will make 8 out of 9 Warren kids living in SA, so now we're trying to figure out a way to get Caleb and Annie down here!
>We're in the newborn stages of planning another kids' musical for our church. I've directed 2 so far, and now we're beginning a 3rd. The first part is usually the hardest: Picking a musical, figuring out how to make it work with the amount of kids we have, lining up who will help us make it happen and assigning jobs, ordering the script and doing the necessary re-writes, choreographing the songs, and then casting the musical. After that it's just rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals, and those aren't so hard. Our goal is to get these preliminary things finished within 4 weeks so we can hopefully start rehearsals in 6 weeks. And that should keep us busy for a while!
>I had my vertical MRI a few days ago. The test went really well...I just sat there and watched TV while they scanned me and it was over within about 2 hours. They printed the films for me to take home and I left with about 150 images of my brain. I looked at them when I got home and there were only about 10 pictures where I could see anything significant. On those 10 pictures, you can definitely tell that my brain is a lot lower than it should be and you can see the very bottom of my brain looking very squashed. My doctor hasn't seen the films yet... I'm supposed to take them in to him in a couple of weeks. He'll decide from there what he wants to do and I'll let you know what that is when I know.
I do have excellent intentions about blogging every day but life really gets in my way. Hopefully I'll make it back here before another 2 months go by... :)
12/1/08
still
Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.
To guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.
11/12/08
good news
The vertical MRI has been approved by Tricare! I just found out last night and I can't even tell you how excited I was. My doctors and I have been trying to get this for over 3 years and there's no telling what my super cool neurologist had to do to make this happen. Maybe I don't want to know... But anyway, we're all really happy and can't wait to see the results of this test. (I know, only a really big nerd like me would get excited about an MRI...you can laugh if you want.) So, praise the Lord with us and pray for a really good test. They say that I will get in before this month is over. :)
"hold onto your hope--it is a soul anchor!"
"hold onto your hope--it is a soul anchor!"
11/7/08
mice
Yes, I'm updating. :)
Mom and Dad have been in Hawaii for the better part of 2 weeks now and I have to say, we've handled ourselves quite nicely. Before they left, we overheard our friend Stephanie talking to someone else and saying that we probably wouldn't eat anything except Tuna Helper while our parents were gone because we would never really cook. So I, fueled by those words, have made dinner every single night, and none of it has come from a box. I even have pictures of our food somewhere, just so Steph will believe me. So we've been eating well, the girls and I haven't missed a day of school, the kids have been taken to all of their co-ops and activities and jobs on time, and because I'm a freak, we have kept the house clean. :)
We have been running around like crazy without our parents here and I feel like I've been in the car all week so I was really looking forward to going to bed tonight. As I was walking upstairs to go to bed, the boys and Jonathan (who is spending the night) yelled to me that they found a mouse in the closet by my room. We don't have traps and all our cats are dead. Great. Beth and I have sworn off sleeping for the night because, really, would you be able to sleep knowing a live mouse was running around and probably having tons of mouse babies in your closet? And what if the mouse's brother is living under my bed? Seriously, these are valid reasons not to sleep. So we're planning on staying downstairs until Dirk can come over tomorrow and neutralize the threat, if you know what I mean. You've heard us say that all bad things happen when Dad is gone....it's true.
I've had another neurology appointment and an MRI since I last blogged. So I got to see my MRI pictures at the appointment and, even when you have a messed up brain, I can't lie, it is very cool to see it on a computer and move it around every which way. Anyway, my brain was considerably lower than it was in the last MRI, which might explain why the pain, as a whole, has become worse since last year. The bottom part of my brain looked a little squashed and swollen but the top half looked fine. My doctor sent in the referral for the vertical MRI last week and we should be hearing within 10 days if it's been approved or not. If it's approved, I'll be able to get in right away and we'll go from there. If that test shows a considerable difference from the regular MRI (meaning, if my brain is even lower when I stand up), I'll be handed off to neurosurgery and we'll go the Chiari route. If the pictures look the same, I'll go back through the nuclear tests and we'll go with the CSF leak route. Lots of "ifs" there, but that's where we are right now.
School is fine so far, except for all the super liberal professors. I'm in a new psych class and have some hilarious stories about my new prof, so I think I'll have to start a new psych-o series again. I'll be finished at this school by next semester (only 3 classes left!!) and then I'll try to work my way into clinicals. On my one spare day, I'm teaching 2 Latin classes to the kids in our homeschool group. Both classes are doing a whole lot better than I expected, and my younger class recited their first Latin prayer on Reformation day! I was so excited for them. The older class is really giving me a workout and I have to study and prepare way more than I thought I would. They say you learn the most when you have to teach, and that's certainly true for me. And despite my nephews calling me a "Latin Slavedriver" for daring to give them translation homework, I think everyone's having a good time.
Beth and I will now watch re-runs of The Office until we either crash on the couches or until it's time to "wake up" and get ready for co-op. I hope the mouse suffocates and dies in that closet! I know that's mean, but really, I do.
Mom and Dad have been in Hawaii for the better part of 2 weeks now and I have to say, we've handled ourselves quite nicely. Before they left, we overheard our friend Stephanie talking to someone else and saying that we probably wouldn't eat anything except Tuna Helper while our parents were gone because we would never really cook. So I, fueled by those words, have made dinner every single night, and none of it has come from a box. I even have pictures of our food somewhere, just so Steph will believe me. So we've been eating well, the girls and I haven't missed a day of school, the kids have been taken to all of their co-ops and activities and jobs on time, and because I'm a freak, we have kept the house clean. :)
We have been running around like crazy without our parents here and I feel like I've been in the car all week so I was really looking forward to going to bed tonight. As I was walking upstairs to go to bed, the boys and Jonathan (who is spending the night) yelled to me that they found a mouse in the closet by my room. We don't have traps and all our cats are dead. Great. Beth and I have sworn off sleeping for the night because, really, would you be able to sleep knowing a live mouse was running around and probably having tons of mouse babies in your closet? And what if the mouse's brother is living under my bed? Seriously, these are valid reasons not to sleep. So we're planning on staying downstairs until Dirk can come over tomorrow and neutralize the threat, if you know what I mean. You've heard us say that all bad things happen when Dad is gone....it's true.
I've had another neurology appointment and an MRI since I last blogged. So I got to see my MRI pictures at the appointment and, even when you have a messed up brain, I can't lie, it is very cool to see it on a computer and move it around every which way. Anyway, my brain was considerably lower than it was in the last MRI, which might explain why the pain, as a whole, has become worse since last year. The bottom part of my brain looked a little squashed and swollen but the top half looked fine. My doctor sent in the referral for the vertical MRI last week and we should be hearing within 10 days if it's been approved or not. If it's approved, I'll be able to get in right away and we'll go from there. If that test shows a considerable difference from the regular MRI (meaning, if my brain is even lower when I stand up), I'll be handed off to neurosurgery and we'll go the Chiari route. If the pictures look the same, I'll go back through the nuclear tests and we'll go with the CSF leak route. Lots of "ifs" there, but that's where we are right now.
School is fine so far, except for all the super liberal professors. I'm in a new psych class and have some hilarious stories about my new prof, so I think I'll have to start a new psych-o series again. I'll be finished at this school by next semester (only 3 classes left!!) and then I'll try to work my way into clinicals. On my one spare day, I'm teaching 2 Latin classes to the kids in our homeschool group. Both classes are doing a whole lot better than I expected, and my younger class recited their first Latin prayer on Reformation day! I was so excited for them. The older class is really giving me a workout and I have to study and prepare way more than I thought I would. They say you learn the most when you have to teach, and that's certainly true for me. And despite my nephews calling me a "Latin Slavedriver" for daring to give them translation homework, I think everyone's having a good time.
Beth and I will now watch re-runs of The Office until we either crash on the couches or until it's time to "wake up" and get ready for co-op. I hope the mouse suffocates and dies in that closet! I know that's mean, but really, I do.
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