Beautiful View from the bed.

If I have to lay with my leg elevated all day...
At least I have a nice view!
The weather is beautiful right now! My favorite weather is when you don't have to have the ac/heat on and all the windows and blinds can be open. All that sunshine and fresh air is good for my soul. :)
Last night my Visiting Teacher, Brenda, sent us pizza complete with bread sticks and Sprite. We appreciated her compassion and willingness to help. It's not that we couldn't have just ordered our own pizza but somehow it always tastes better when it's sent with the love of a friend!Today was Flower's first full day of preschool. She had a great day. She also brought home her cute pirate hat from Tuesday.



I'm so excited to see what she brings home each day. Today she also brought home the snack bag. That means next Tuesday she gets to bring the snack plus a show and tell item. She will also be the shiznit in class that day being the line leader and teacher helper. I'm looking forward to that day for her.

I am feeling slightly better today. It's all very strange though. Tuesday after it happened my ankle was swollen on the top and on the side of the foot. Now it's swollen under the ankle and to the back. My stomach still hurts very bad. My right arm from hand to shoulder is next in line. I also find new bruises each day. :) Thanks for all the well wishes through blog comments, texts, emails and phone calls! I really appreciate the love!
Today I ventured out of the house to take Flower to preschool with KG and then go to breakfast with him. I was gone for an hour and a half and that's about all I could do. My ankle throbbed when I got home at 10:00 and it's still throbbing. It was nice to have a morning date with KG though. :) KG finished with the jury panel yesterday. When he got home he took Flower for a ride since she didn't get much stimulation yesterday. I was also craving broccoli so they made a stop at the store. They brought me home a huge rose and Flower brought it in to me. She went running back into the living yelling at KG, "I gave it to mommy and it made her so happy!" :) She is so sweet.

Lovely Day with Flower

I just love this photo from last Monday! Although it has nothing to do with today since she just couldn't fall asleep during her nap time, I wanted to share. Somehow Flower and I slept in till 10:00 am! It's the first full night of sleep I've had since I got sick even though I've been better for a couple of days now. The night hallucinations were out of control. I wonder if the antibiotics make it worse. Coincidentally I forgot to take it yesterday and last night I slept with no night terrors! Seriously weird stuff. One night in particular there was floating cloaked shadows having a party in my room. I woke up, saw them in my room, said to have fun and just try to be quiet and went back to sleep fully thinking there were cloaked ghosts having a party in my room! And I wasn't bothered by that. Now the many spider ones I had on the other hand, those are the ones that kept me awake. Uggh.
Anyway back to today. I had a wonderful nights sleep, other then when Flower woke me up at 5:30 am to join in bed but then we didn't wake up until 10:00. She had swimming lessons at 11:15. Once again she pushed herself past her fears and was so proud of herself and so was I. She went completely under water, like head fully covered, all by herself twice! It was so fun to watch her try and try, so determined! I swear she tried at least 20 times, not doing anything else the teacher was telling her to do because she was determined to get past her fear! I got teary eyed when she did it!
After that we went to the Distribution Center. Have I ever mentioned how much I love NEW underwear? Well I do. LOVE them. All crisp, white and fresh. I can hardly wait to put on a new pair tomorrow! Ah, the simple things.
From there we took some movies back to Redbox. Then we went to lunch at Blimpie. This is my favorite lunch spot. I feel like it's healthy and Flower and I share a 6" meal. We get the same each time. A 6" ham and swiss on wheat with lettuce, oil and vinegar, light on the brown mustard. We each eat half. Plus a bag of Baked Lays to share, a pickle spear and a pink lemonade, sometimes a water instead. Pretty good right? And it's the perfect amount of food.
After that we walked to Blockbuster to return two movies and get another free one.
I know I've mentioned this before but I love free movies. We pay $14 a month for our online Blockbuster account. And that's all we pay for movies all month. Between that and all the free movies we get at Redbox, we get 23 movies a month minimum! Not bad huh?!
Next we had to go to my doctor for a physical for the adoption paper work. Good news....I'm not dieing! He declared me healthy enough to adopt and signed his stamp of approval. Yay! KG had his appointment later today as well. When I went to the office to go to work he took Flower swimming so she could show him all her new moves. Then he went to karate, we came home and made dinner and that's all she wrote! :) Well almost...in there somewhere I found a solution to the ankle brace debacle. I found a great place to make me a custom one. Kris has all the connections I'm tellin' ya! Almost every doctor we both go to now is because she referred us and they are fantastic, plus they happen to be in our insurance network! And I was completely stoked to find out this ankle brace is 100% covered under the insurance! Halle-freakin-lujah! Neither of us has been to as many doctors through our entire 8 years of marriage than we already have this year! Yuck. Soooo, next week I should be on the right track with that. I also had an interesting conversation with our social worker today. Life is good.

Finale of the Ankle saga

I haven't updated yet because it ended up being much more complicated then anticipated so I thought I'd just wait till I knew what was wrong.
Last I wrote...I had my initial appointment. They took x-rays. Nothing was broken. She played with my ankle and discovered what I thought was swelling or just fat was a mass. She sent me to the MRI. Then came the post "MRI's suck".
From there, my doc read the MRI and it wasn't what she thought. There is some arthritis but that wouldn't explain the amount of pain I was feeling or the kind of pain. She thought I had a couple of tears in the ligament that went from the ankle to the foot, the radiologist did not. She was uncomfortable with a few things and wanted a third opinion. She had me see the main doc in their practice who specializes in feet and ankles. That appointment was Tuesday. He was super nice and cute. He looked at the x-rays, agreed with first doc. Then he played with my ankle. As soon as he touched the spot on my foot I've been complaining about he said he thought I might have a fracture in my pinky lesser metatarsal. Unfortunately, the x-rays focused on the ankle and stopped just short of being able to see where he thought it was. He said I need an x-ray but we'd focus first on the ankle. So, he is just as baffled. He said he is seeing things that he only sees in patients 50-70 years old. He asked if perhaps I had rheumatoid arthritis when I was young or it ran in my family. My sister was diagnosed when she was 12. He wasn't convinced that was my problem. He said maybe I had it for a short time and it went away. He says I have a ganglion cyst on the ligament closest to the ankle(which is the mass). He's 85% sure the problem lies not in my ankle but the something or other right underneath it. I believe he called it the calcaneofibular ligament which lies under the tendon as well and under the cyst. So both ligaments are affected with something different. He said it's not tendinitis. I'm glad he knows everything it's not. I'd like to know everything it is. Sooooo, he shot up my ankle with Cortisone as well as a numbing something or other in it. The numbing agent is a diagnostic tool. He shot it where he thinks most of the pain is coming from. If, within the next 6-12 hours , I am pain free, that means they numbed the spot where the pain was and we've pin pointed the problem. The cortisone will kick in a couple of days later and I'll be good to go for a while. Wellll....that shot hurt like hell and I wanted to kick him in the head. Then I could barely walk out of there. My foot (where he thinks there is a fracture) hurt so bad and my Achilles felt like it was going to snap. It made everything very tight! I don't really think I felt anything go numb. I was at a pain level 4 when I went in. It continually climbed for the rest of the night. I finally called them after 5 hours. I attempted to go to work only making it a half hour and then came home, woke KG, filled him in and CRIED! The nurse left a message that said all the fluid put in likely pushed up against everything else and aggravated it. So if something was actually numb in there, I didn't know about it due to the pain the fluid was causing. I laid in bed most of the night with ice and tears. The pain level was easily a 12 at best. Thankfully by the next morning it was back to a 4 and felt the same as when I 'd gone in. I put a phone call into the nurse to find out the next step. She didn't get back to me until last night, Thursday. We scheduled an appointment for this morning, Friday, and here's where it stands. I have issues with both ligaments. The one has the cyst. The cyst hurts, especially when pressure is applied. This limits the shoes I can wear. The ligament under that is arthritic. The cyst sits on it. Both have a tear. Here is the part that is crappy. The only thing that can be done is a fusion surgery. I would lose all movement side to side and some lateral. I would still have most up and down. We are all uncomfortable with that for obvious reasons. And he has rarely done that surgery on someone as young as me, again, only doing those on people in their 70's. If I had it this young, I would most certainly need another surgery in 20's and then one again. I just don't think I'm ready for that surgery so now it's a game of managing the pain until I can't take it any longer. However, the downside of that is it will likely cause further damage. Ughh.
The cortisone had finally kicked in and it seems to be helping with the throbbing which is a relief. It hurts the same if I step wrong, go up or down the stairs, or step on anything slightly uneven like a pebble. The throbbing and burning is a huge relief though so I'll take it.
Today was so frustrating because they attempted to fit me with a brace that they want worn as often as I can handle and definitely on hikes, camping, uneven ground. That was a disaster and I cried for at least an hour after. Don't want to talk about it.
So anyway, he threw out all kinds of words. Hell if I know what they mean. And I'm sure I've screwed up the translation somewhere! But that's where it stands from my understanding.
Basically nothing was accomplished other then I'm frustrated and feeling really down. :( I'm just trying to get myself motivated to finish an Etsy order, get my crap together to go camping AND be excited about it and go to work.
(Oh and because of the degree of damage for not having significant injuries, he's thinking possible degenerative issues which can be found through a blood test. That would also mean it could happen in other joints. Uggh. Not doing that yet.)