My first 26 things project

This is one of my 101 in 1001 list things to do.  It is a photography project for sh1ft.org where they give you 26 things to photograph and then you submit it back to their site.  Here is my submission:

 

Neighbor

Unfamiliar

 

Mess

Information

 

Change

   

everything

Company

Twin

Warning

Odd

Decadent

In the distance

crowded

 

eyes

 

 

Green

Entrance

Cross

Sunset

Leftovers

Different

big things

frozen (fresh frozen plasma)

line up

tube

 

bed

 

 

in season

Wordless Thursday

 

What happens when 3 year old twins are left alone for 5 minutes

LEEP procedure

The biopsy results came back (see this post) and I have CIN 2.  This bought me a LEEP procedure.   It wasn’t  much different from my prospective than the colposcopy really.  Except that the cervical numbing  agent came in the form of a shot in the cervix instead of a spray…..OUCH!!!

The whole thing was pretty funny actually.  My doctor has a pretty dry sense of humor and usually also just tells it like it is.  For this reason we haven’t always gotten along so well.  In the past, he’s pissed me off more than once and now that I’m done having kids I had actually left him to have my primary (who is also women’s health) just do all my annual girlie stuff.  Let me tell you how much ribbing I’ve gotten for that!!  But lately we are getting along quite well.  We have finally come into a place where our personalities are meshing well.

So, here I am on the table for the second time this month awaiting a somewhat unpleasant procedure that could have potentially bad news.  This time anticipating a shot in the cervix so a bit more nervous.  He and I are chatting a little as he is preparing things and then the nurse and I start talking.  I can’t even remember what she and I are talking about just that I am paying particular attention to her.  All the sudden I get this HUGE pinch down there!!  I whip my head around to him and say “what the f? Could you have at least warned me?”  He starts laughing and says “well I figued you were so attentitive to your conversation you wouldn’t even notice.”  As he’s saying that he sticks me again!!!  I yell at him again and ask if that’s all the pain he’s gonna cause me and he says yes but that at anytime I should start feeling tachycardic (my heart would start racing).  It had about 10 seconds before he said it.  So I roll my eyes I tell him that he’s killing me!!  He just laughs.

Then I’m all numb and it’s time for him to do the actual LEEP procedure.  It uses this tiny knife with a loop at the end. Then they pass electric current thru it to cut out the abnormal areas.  They try and get all the abnormal areas out so that your are free of precancerous tissue.  It’s then sent to the lab to be analyzed to make sure they got it all.

Well this is my time for payback!!  I’m totally numb down there but he doesn’t need to know that!!!  Tee hee hee.  He goes in with the knife and starts cutting.   As soon as he does I yell “Ouch”!!  He jumps back and says “What happened” and I innocently say “nothing I’m fine but I got you didn’t I”!!!  The nurse about fell on the floor laughing.  She could barely contain herself.  Neither could I!  He didn’t think it was quite so funny since it was at his expense!  But I then said now we are even for not warning me about the shot.  He agreed and we moved on with the nurse and I still chuckling!!

He cut out my two areas (though made sure to show me that there were 3 pieces of tissue in the jar instead of 2 because of my little joke at which point I laughed again!!) and results should be in in a week.  Though I probably won’t get them until my next appointment in a month when I see him again to make sure all is healing well up there.

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

This week I:

Didn’t tell my husband that I was going to stay up to watch Lost and promise him I wouldn’t fall asleep on the couch.  I promised that I would come to bed at a reasonable hour so I didn’t show up in bed at 4am and the next morning when he didn’t notice I didn’t act like all was normal….not me.  I’m a good wife.

Didn’t spend too much time on facebook.  I’m not a facebook addict….not me.

Didn’t come up with about 3 good stories to update on my nursing blog and then not add them…..not me.  I always keep my blogs going and up to date.

Didn’t turn my cleaning the closet project into an all day project instead of the several hour project it could have been…..not me.  I mean come on, the dust was getting to me and I DO have a fairly moderate dust allergy.

Didn’t stop doing my food journal on The Daily Plate cuz I got too lazy to go each meal and update it…not me.  I’m NOT a lazy person.

Didn’t pick up my son later than usual from daycare one day this week and have to take him to school instead of letting him ride the bus cuz I was tired….not me.  Not like I’m tired and iron deficient or something.

 

Until next week……Good tidings and God Bless.  Now go visit MckMama’s blog and read others’ Not Me Monday confessions.  Happy reading!!

101 in 1001 updates

I have crossed a few things off my 101 in 1001 list.  This past fall the kids and I went to a corn maze #88.  It was loads of fun.  They do one at a farm near us each fall and I’ve always wanted to go.  This year we finally did.  Here is a pic of it:

 

Corn maze

The other thing I completed was a train ride #95.  We did the North Pole Express with the kids.  They loved it.  Here is a pic of that: 

 

North Pole Express

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next thing I’m working on is one of the projects for shift one.  To see the project go here.

The third thing I crossed off is #10 getting in touch with an old friend.  I recently joined one of the social networking sites and was able to get in touch with an old friend from middle school.  She had moved and we had kept in touch for a few years and then lost touch like kids do.  But I was so excited to be able to find her again!

I would like to be able to cross off giving blood next month when I go to Boston Children’s with my daughter but I think having iron deficient anemia will prevent me from being able to do that unfortunately.  Oh well, maybe the next time we have to go now that we are luckily on the 4-6 month recheck schedule.

I have a diagnosis finally!

I had a follow up appointment with my endocrinologist today for my hyperthyroidism.  We were discussing how my symptoms had come back.  The double vision, shortness of breath with any exertion, muscle weakness, etc.  See this post for more on that.  Luckily it’s not nearly as bad as it was when I started this blog. 

During the appointment we talked about that I’m not anemic but that after I gave a unit of blood when my daughter had surgery back in July I never seemed to make it back.  I actually jokingly told her that!!  I had remembered that she had told me at my visit several weeks later that my counts had dropped a little and I had told her it was no big deal as I had given blood.  You should make that back in 6 weeks though and I never did.  At that point she asked if we had ever checked my iron levels. 

She thumbed thru some pages in the labs section of my chart and found that she had checked them.  Then she got quiet.  I knew it wouldn’t be good from there.  And it wasn’t………for two reasons:  1) they were checked about 6 months prior and 2) they were not good results.  Now let’s talk about each of those.

She was quite embarassed that these bad results had been sitting in my chart for so long.  She went on to try and quickly explain how it could happen etc.  She knew all that I had been thru with the massive work up and how horrible I had been feeling etc.  AND that I had never gotten an answer.  That doctor after doctor had basically told me that they could find nothing wrong.  You can imagine how she thought I would be feeling.  However, I am a nurse….I work in the medical field and understand how papers, results, labs, etc get misfiled everyday.  I totally understood.  And you also have to understand that not only is she my doctor but she is MY FRIEND.  We usually spend most of my appointments talking about our families or work.  Then in the last 5 minutes we cram the entire appointment in!!  I wouldn’t change this for the world.  She gives me the best care of any of my doctors.  For those of you still wondering HOW it happened it went like this………my thyroid labs come back the same day whereas the iron studies take longer.  All the labs sit in a pile awaiting her signature to be filed in my chart.  She signs them as they come in.  What most likely happened is that she signed the thyroid ones and then the iron ones came in.  Someone saw her signature and just filed them.  She never even saw the iron ones.  Happens in doctor’s offices everyday……….moral of the story……no news isn’t always good news!!! 

As to #2…the results:  My ferritin (the most accurate for gauging your iron stores) was 7.  That is quite low, severely low actually.  And it could account for all my symptoms that I’ve mentioned on this blog before.  All the symptoms that they were blaming on me possibly having myasthenia gravis.  Imagine that.  Something as simple as iron deficiency and I had the million dollar work up for myasthenia gravis!  My thyroid doc wantes me treated with iron right away but knows it isn’t her speciality she forwarded all this to my primary doctor.  I’m waiting on word from them as to what I do next.  I’m hoping some iron is in my future!!

Colposcopy time

If you remember from this post or this post I had an abnormal Pap smear.  The next step was to have another one in a few months.  Well that one was even more abnormal.  So here I am just after having a colposcopy.  This is where the GYN goes up with a microscope and looks for the abnormal areas and takes as much as (s)he can out for biopsy.  I had 2 such areas.  Results should be back in about a week.