Laminin

This is kind of long, but I encourage you to watch it. It's really really really really neat.

3 weeks later...

I thought perhaps all my readers out there (the very few there are), would like to see what I have to do twice a day for the next 4 weeks (and have been doing for the last 3). I got a water pick, and have to make up this solution with salt and baking powder to mix in it a gallon at a time, and then have to clean out each side of my nose with a quart each, twice a day. I go through about a gallon a day.

See that attachment with the red dot that's on the pole? Yeah, that WHOLE thing will go up and into my nose....all the way to the tip. It's not the most pleasant feeling in the world. I can feel the water going into my cheek and squirting around in there. It's SO weird!

Here's a picture of me in the process....



If it looks uncomfortable, that's cause it is! My eyes cross staring into that sink for so long. But on a better note, the doctor told me Monday that I'm doing a great job of cleaning it out. I don't go back to see him for 2 more weeks.

On a bad note, I'm sick again. Yep. Started with a little cough Tuesday, and by yesterday I had a horrible sore throat, snotty nose, still coughing, and had fever too. The doctor called me in an allergy medicine, but today I'm even worse. I stayed home from work today, I need to go back tomorrow. I called the doctor's office when I got up, but I slept too late, and they were closed. The answering service gave me the number of the doctor on call, so I called him, but they said since he was still seeing his patients, I had to wait and call back after 5pm so their answering service could page him. It's getting VERY annoying. I feel like pooh.

That's about all that's going on with me...how is everyone else out there?

Would you rather your children grow up in Uganda or America?

Written by Anne Jackson on April 3, 2008 – 6:59 am

that was one of the questions david kuo asked at our dinner with leadership development students while we were in uganda. a man who is ugandan, a father, a pastor, and leader answered without hesitation,

“uganda.”

some of us seemed a little shocked. america. it’s the land of opportunity. it’s safe. you can get medical attention. at least three meals a day.

“exactly,” the man said. “you know where your next meal is coming from. you have jobs. paychecks. in uganda, you may not know where your next meal comes from. you have no money. you have nothing to depend upon but God. and i would rather have my children rely on God more than i would want them to be distracted by everything else.”

i have been contemplating the things upon which i have dependence. my job? absolutely. my paycheck? yes. my car. what’s in my fridge. other people.

when one of those things gets murky or muddy or falls apart, it’s easy for me to fall apart, too. i am distracted by them, sometimes (and probably more frequently than i’d care to admit) more often than not.

where does my help come from?

i am distracted from dependence on god.

in a culture of over-abundance and luxury, how can we remedy this?

You should really talk to your daugheter...

I've seen this before on my friend's site, but it could stand to be spread around. I don't have the best body image around, and I don't know of anyone who does, but it still wouldn't hurt to have our young girls exposed to this message.

4/9/08

I tried going back to work yesterday. I lasted a whole hour. An hour! I was proud of myself. Not. Last week my supervisor had told me when I came back I could do sort of a limited work load. Of course when I got to work yesterday, he wasn't there. So I was thrown back into the normal (which can be quite heavy at times) work flow. I asked if I could take it easy, and they cut down a little of it, but not a lot. I went to talk to the other supervisors to ask about leaving early, and they said that no one was scheduled off for that day, so I asked if I could just leave then, and they said sure. So, home I went. I stayed on the couch the whole night too.

Today was better. I'm still here, and it's 30 minutes until the end of my shift. Yay me! I'm starting to feel a little punkish, but I can always take a pain pill and go to bed in 30 minutes.

Not much else to write about...what's going on with everyone else?

Getting there...

Today was my first post-op appointment. I was so dreading it because I've heard horror stories about getting the packings taken out. They'd already told me to take a pain pill about 3o minutes before I got there, so I made sure I did. Dad took me because he didn't have to be at his office until like 10 or something.

Ran into a friend in the waiting room. He had basically the same surgery I did, and on the same day! Mine was before his. Mine took about an hour or a little more, and his took over 3 hours. He had polyps and gunk in his sinuses, even the ones in his forehead. I felt so bad for him.

Anyway, they took me back and he said he'd be real gentle, so I was grateful for that. Some of the stories I've heard told of doctors who said they'd count to 3 and then on 2 yanked both sides out at the same time. Anyway, about 5 minutes before, the nurse sprayed some numbing spray to help with the pain. I'm not sure how it would've felt without it, so I'm glad she did that. He gently pulled each string, and slowly but surely they came out. There was so much pressure built up in my head that was released after he did that! It did hurt, but not nearly what I thought it would be. Actually, the painful part came after that. It was still numb (sort of), so he took a big ole long suction tube and sucked out a TON of junk that I couldn't get to. Now that hurt. He'd hit a spot that wasn't completely numb, or just hit a spot in general (you know how sensitive your sinuses are) and I'd jump and he'd say "I'm sorry, but you have to be still, I'm real close to your eye." Wow, gee thanks man!

So I feel a lot better today. I still have some pressure, just from him being all in there today and it probably swelling back up after all that. Tonight I start the water pick cleansing. I've heard it's actually refreshing to get everything cleaned out.

But I've gone from this:
(nevermind the kleenex, you'd do it too if you had a constant drip, esp. having to spray every 20 min)



...to this:

I'm still alive!

I'm still a little out of it, so forgive me if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I promise I'll post a more coherent blog at a later date.

So turns out I didn't have a cyst at all in my sinus. Dr. Dugas told them that it was just mucus that had built up that couldn't come out on it's own. So here's what they pulled out of me (not for the faint at heart, so I'll post the link and not the actual picture).

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m38/amiejanette/005-1.jpg

And as far as I know the septum part went alright. I sure do feel sore, so I know there are some incisions and stuff up in there. The most annoying thing is that I'm really stuffy so I can't breathe through my nose hardly at all. Until Monday, every 20 minutes (except during the night) I have to squirt 4 sprays of Ocean Water in each side. Now THAT gets old really fast. And then on Monday, he's going to rip my brains out. See those strings taped on my nose? They're attached to the packings that are in my cheeks. Yes, cheeks. They told me to take a pain pill about 30 minutes before my appt on Monday, but I doubt very seriously that's going to help.

This was taken not long after we got home yesterday. Poor pitiful me huh.