Update

We are healthier than we were last week---not well, per se, but healthier. The pain in my right ear is greatly reduced from the stabbing, burning, throbbing feeling I had for days, but it is still persistent. I am praying that the full course of antibiotics will wipe it out.

Our nurse practitioner called this morning to check on us, which was so kind. She said that if my hearing was still significantly impaired and the pain remained by Thursday, I should contact the clinic to get an appointment with an ENT. Fingers are crossed that improvement will occur, and this won't be necessary.

My mom and dad have EJ up in Kenosha so that we can heal and I can finish my school work. We miss her, but she's having a blast. The day my dad came to pick my mom and EJ up, she went around the room stuffing random items---toys, books, pieces of Kleenex---into a small gift bag, stating, "Nana, I have to pack! Papa has to pack my bag in the car!"

I have a gigantic paper due tomorrow, and I am seriously behind on it. I have worked as hard as I can to get it done, but after a few hours of sitting in front of the screen, the nagging pain in my ear becomes too much, and I have to take my pain killers/knock-out drops. It's miserable. I don't know how I'm going to finish.

I also have a presentation due on Wednesday, based on readings that I have not been able to finish. Argh. I wish I could just go to bed and rest.

While I realize that it is not my fault that I am sick, or that I have been sick for so long, I keep searching for a lesson in all of this. I have joked that I am going to go vegan and start meditation to clean all the garbage up out of my body, and while I am certainly kidding, I do feel like all this illness is really showing me how weak and worn-out my body is.

I don't eat as well as I should, I don't sleep adequately, I don't take time for reflection or prayer like I used to, and exercise is a luxury, not a regular activity. Between parenting and school and work and keeping the house, as well as trying to make sure that my husband is able to keep up his own work, I have no time left. We live so on the margins of time and resources, this illness has knocked everything off-kilter and out-of-control. In my attempt to juggle everything without ceasing, I have found myself with my daughter at my folks' house, behind in my schoolwork, unable to work for the past two weeks, and in a house that is not tidy. Everything has fallen apart, and I am in physical pain as I see it come to pieces.

My health has become the last priority on my agenda, and this ever-present illness has shown me that I have to bump up my commitment to my own well-being considerably. Something has got to change. School will still be demanding for both me and my husband, and raising a toddler is no small feat, but I must create a schedule, carve out more time for self-care, and develop a better support system to help us meet our immediate needs as a family. If not, an episode like this sickness could return, and I cannot bear to be this ill for this long again.

That's all I have time for, but I wanted to post because I realize that my last postings were pretty dire, and there has been no update. I hope to be released from pain and work soon, and when I am, I promise to return with charming parenting anecdotes or pictures of the wee one.

Happy Valentine's Day

Here are a couple of shots taken at our friends' daughter's birthday party this weekend. They had a family friend who is a professional photographer come, set up a mini-studio in the back of the kitchen, and take photos of all the dressed up tots. At the end of the party, we all got a framed photo of our kids, fresh from the corner print shop.

These happen to be perfect for Valentine's Day, given EJ's dress. My favorite one is her surprise look, but judge for yourself.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Some Say It With Flowers

Some couples exchange flowers, cards, and chocolates. Others take romantic get-aways. But this year, Mike and I have exchanged a Valentine's Day gift a few days early that stays with you all day long, a constant presence in your mind.

Double ear infections.

That's right! The capper to our stint of ever-present illness, as diagnosed today by my favorite nurse practitioner as she looked into my right ear and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" is severe double ear infections. In five minutes, she had looked in all four of our ears, and was writing out prescriptions. Mike's left ear classifies as a minor infection, but the other three between us are severe, with my right ear being "l'oreille de resistance."

We are now on two antibiotics: antibiotic eardrops, and 10 days of giant, horse-pill oral antibiotics. For lucky me, there is also Tylenol-3 (Mike is allergic to codeine, poor guy).

Mom is here to care for us, which could not have come too soon. I woke up like a shot last night at around 2:00 a.m. with excruciating ear pain, and could not sleep for almost 3 hours, at which point, through sobs, I took every drug I could find that I didn't think would interact (tylenol, advil, and benadryl) and declared, "Mike, if I overdose, I'm sorry, but I can't take the pain anymore."

This coming from the girl who toughed out birth and a c-section with an occasional Tylenol-3 and some ibuprofen.

Along with her sympathy and the prescriptions, our nurse gave me her pager number and said that if I'm not significantly better in the next 48 hours, I need to contact her so I can see an ENT immediately. My right ear, the one that made me cry last night, is apparently in pretty bad shape. We want to avoid eardrum rupture.

Oh yes, we do.

Because I will take drops and swallow pills with my sweetie for Valentine's Day, but I will not accept the gift of a broken eardrum. I want some chocolate truffles, instead.

Fever

Mike woke up this morning with a fever or 102 degrees. I can't hear out of my right ear. EJ is watching HOURS of television.

Isn't this fun?

Wish It Weren't So

I don't have much to report except that I am still quite ill. The chest congestion is breaking up, thankfully, but the sinus infection seems to be worse, not better. The pain in my ear on Saturday night radiated all down my neck and literally felt like I was being stabbed by a hot knife. I took some of the pain killers prescribed for my back injury, which is really saying something---I didn't even take anything that strong following my c-section.

I appreciate all the words of encouragement coming to me from all you friends out there. I can't imagine this blog is very entertaining or enjoyable to read these days---I certainly don't want to be a chronicler of sickness indefinitely, but there isn't much more to report out. This illness is becoming increasingly disruptive and depressing. I cannot get even basic work done for school, and the further I fall behind, the more I feel hopeless. I had to call in a sub for my job this weekend, because the idea of teaching three music classes in a row just overwhelmed me. I love teaching those classes, but I knew I wouldn't make it through.

Thankfully, I got out a bit this weekend, despite everything. On Friday, I went to a presentation for school, and got to see some friends for a bit. It cheered me up. I scared the living daylights out of the person sitting next to me at the presentation---I actually saw her pouring vitamin C powder into her drink. I can't blame her---at one point a friend motioned to me that she'd picked up a piece of my lung from the floor and wanted to return it.

Yesterday, EJ and I went to Pebbles' birthday party. Mike had to stay home because he had a fever, but I took some cold medicine and braved the freezing cold so that my daughter could attend the fancy dress party that she had been excited about all week. I really enjoyed myself, too, despite the way I was feeling---it was a lovely party with a great crowd of friends and family. I just pray I didn't bring a plague to all of them, too.

Notice the theme of this entry? A little down? What can I say? I'm down. My mom is coming this week for a few days to help me and the hubby get some rest and get back on track, and I am truly grateful. She's like some kind of angel, swooping in to relieve us. I guess that, once you are a mom, you always want to help your kid get well. And, as her kid, I can honestly say that I want nothing more than my mommy at this point.

Six Weeks to the Day

The day after Christmas, I knew that I was really getting the viral crud that Mike had been hit with earlier in the month. December 26th was exactly six weeks ago, to the day, and as I've blogged about incessantly, I have not been able to really get better.

Last night, I coughed so hard that I only slept about an hour and a half, even while hopped up on Nyquil. Today, I was like some kind of crazed, sick zombie, and guess what? Ice, snow, and wind made it impossible for me to get the kid to the babysitting co-op this morning. I called the student clinic and literally begged them to see me in the next few days, knowing that much more of this illness coupled with winter storm shut-in status would push me over the edge.

They fit me in for a visit at 1:20 p.m., and my angelic husband (who has an appointment tomorrow at the student clinic at 7:45 a.m. for the same stuff) trudged home to watch the kiddo so I could go. I walked through the treachery that was our winter storm down to campus, having missed the bus by a few minutes. The sidewalks were bizarre---a dusting of snow over a layer of crusty, slippery ice that broke with the slightest pressure and left the walker stepping into a one inch pool of freezing cold water. From the sky, there was not rain or snow falling, but little pieces of ice---that may officially be hail, but I would describe it as a hail/snow hybrid. Whatever you call it, it was disgusting, wet, and frigid. My feet were drenched by the time I got there, my scarf and hat were encrusted with ice, and I was so exhausted, I fell asleep in the exam room before the nurse arrived.

They quite mercifully fit me in with my favorite nurse practitioner, the lady that helped me on my very first day in Chicago. It was November 2004, and I was six weeks into my pregnancy, having only found out a week or so before that we were expecting, and Mike and I had to sign the papers to purchase our home. When I awoke that morning, I was bleeding and terrified. Along with Mike, my parents, and the ultrasound tech that later confirmed that the baby was doing well, this nurse made what had started out as a horrible day much, much more bearable. She became pregnant only a few months later, so whenever I have an appointment with her we catch up about our kids, compare notes, etc. I even brought her a stash of extra diapers that EJ had outgrown as well as some great baby toys when she first had her son---she's really that cool.

Enough tangent, though. I saw this fine healer today, and I told her how I had been ill since Christmas. I then mentioned how I had come in after being miserably sick for three weeks, only to see a doc who told me, "the literature shows that waiting out a sinus infection for 2 weeks has the same effect as taking antibiotics in the long-run, so I'm going to recommend rest, water, and a decongestant." I HATE taking antibiotics, but I had already been sick for three weeks, and my head was killing me. My nurse gave me that understanding look that says, "I can't badmouth a colleague, but you have to be kidding me," then said, diplomatically, "It sounds like that advice came from someone who doesn't care for a toddler all day."

See, she's cool.

She listened to my lungs and my cough, checked my sinuses, and declared the following quite simply:

"Your lungs are definitely diminished. You are a very sick lady. Severe bronchitis, which we'll treat as bacterial bronchitis with antibiotics, and a sinus infection. Would you like some cough suppressant for the evenings so you can really sleep? It has codeine, so I don't recommend it for daytime."

So, so cool.

I'm off to bed, with codeine, ready to dream happy, psychedelic tales of health and well-being, or at the least, arctic quests.

Classy

I am currently kicking myself for staying home tonight. I have a Tuesday night class up in Evanston, and aside from the fact that I am a giant geek and I love going to class, I hate missing material (I'm a major auditory learner) and seeing my colleagues (I'm a major extrovert). I decided to stay here because of a winter weather warning that scared the crud out of me. As I look out the window, there is no evil snow or ice or sleet falling that I can see, and I am irritated.

I usually don't scare easily about weather, but last Tuesday, I scoffed at a similar winter weather warning, and I ended up having the most harrowing drive of my life on my way back from class. The temperature had fallen so quickly that I had to sit warming up my car for 20 minutes in order for the ice on the inside to defrost. It was like sitting in some kind of frozen tomb, with the sound of the wind haunting on all sides. As the windows slowly cleared, all I could see was white whipping in front of my eyes. Thankfully, a cell phone call from Mike helped to calm me, which was good, because my 45 minute commute became an hour and forty minutes, and at times, I literally could not see a single thing in front of me---it was complete white-out. Making matters worse, my windshield wipers were so frozen they wouldn't scrape across the windows except at the top and the bottom of the blades, and about 30 minutes into the drive, I had to attempt to pull over to chip frozen ice drops from my window.

With that in mind, I listened to the warning tonight, and I missed class for nothing. Argh.

Speaking of class, let me tell you what a classy mom I am. When I got EJ up from her nap today, I noticed a whole line of wispy cobwebs along the top of her (very high) window frame. I went to get the tall dusting wand, and the following exchange took place:

Me: EJ, there are cobwebs up here! I can't believe I didn't see them before. I've got to clean them up.

EJ: I LOVE cobwebs! I just love them, Momma, I do!

Me: Well, you're in luck, kiddo. You picked the right house and the right parents if you like cobwebs. I've got dirty floors for you, too.

Also noted today, while EJ and I had lunch together after a make-up music class (she had a fever this weekend and couldn't attend) at our favorite local eatery:

Me: Let's get your utensils out.

EJ: Those are mytensils.

Me: They are your utensils, that's right.

EJ: I have metensils.

Me: Ahh...YOUtensils. Got it.

EJ: May I have the tensils now?

Okay, We're Sick Again, But Let's Move On

We will mend, we will get healthy, I declare it into being! HEALTH, HEALTH, HEALTH, HEALTH...please join me in my new mantra.

The stats are these: EJ is feeling better, with a lingering cough but no fever, I have a mild fever and a bad cough and runny nose, and Mike is just starting to peek in his sickness---I have no idea if he is feverish, but when I talk to him on the phone, he sounds like death and keeps saying, "Kori, I feel SO TERRIBLE." Good times.

In spite of all this illness, I am trying to maintain a positive attitude. This is particularly important, as I feel that EJ is about to drop her afternoon nap, and I need all the mental fortitude I can get once my afternoon study/chill/clean/think for myself for five minutes without being interrupted time comes to an end. In discussing this with the hubby over the weekend, I actually blurted out, "It's my favorite time of the day!"

Yikes.

He did NOT understand how my favorite time of day could be when our sweet, loving, precocious, always entertaining daughter was asleep. I certainly couldn't like my job very much if I looked forward to her nap so gleefully.

Hmmm....

Needless to say, after additional discussion, he understood my point of view. It didn't hurt that, as he was in the process of making us a fabulous Super Bowl dinner last night (Chicken Mamou, our big game day tradition), EJ kept trying to "help him" in the kitchen. You really don't want toddler help when you are chopping particularly strong onions, or cutting up raw chicken thighs, or going in and out of the hot oven to carefully turn over steaming hot chicken. My argument about loving her nap was simply this: take that feeling of interruption, increase the time period from 2 hours to 8 hours, then try to "negotiate" with her for the time you need, and it is easy to understand my trepidation about naptime coming to a close.

Of course, I love taking care of our kid. She is all the wonderful things I mentioned, and she charms me a lot even when she's naughty. For example, lately she's been sneaking into the fridge and digging into the butter. It looks like a little mouse has been in there, except for the clear fingernail marks. I caught her in the act today, and she was so matter of fact about it, saying, "Momma, I needed some butter to eat, so I came and got some." I mean, really, how can you get angry at a 3-footer for clawing at cold butter as a secret snack? I'd do it if I wasn't a) an adult and b) overweight. She's got Wisconsin genes, after all.

Back to my work, during what may be one of the last naps on the horizon...

Late Morning Outlook

Kid's fever: 100.2 (basically holding steady); thankfully, she is much more alert and happy today (read: she is smiling and playing and being naughty, in equal measure), so I am feeling very thankful.

Weather conditions: Car still in the parking lot---we're not going anywhere fast.

Groceries: Arrived only one hour late, with our favorite driver, Neo, looking shell-shocked due to a near-miss accident on I-94; I gave him a big tip.

Immune system: Swollen glands still swollen, but I am ready to dose myself silly with vitamin C.

Exciting turn of events: Received an email that we made it through the first round of interviews for resident head positions at U of C, which is thrilling (more on this job later, as things pan out).

Mommy attitude: Slightly more hopeful, feeling like today could turn around, not going to bet the farm quite yet.

I'll check back in this evening---who knows what could have happened by then?

Morning Outlook

Kid's fever: 100.5 (down from last night).

Weather conditions: Car trapped in parking lot snowdrift, neighbor stuck in (and blocking) alley, roads impassable, snow still coming down.

Groceries: To be delivered by Peapod, now running 3-4 hours late; should have enough mac and cheese to last until delivery, but not much else.

Immune system: Actively fighting off EJ's new cold, with left gland so swollen it is hard to swallow.

Mommy attitude: Poor with a side of exhaustion.

I'm hoping for a happier afternoon. Fingers crossed.