Or, y’know, not. Or maybe it should be me who is sedated, to cope with everything…

Yesterday we noticed that Jack had some blood in his urine. Oh joy. As the day went on, he started acting a bit lethargic, not his usual, energetic self. (Earlier in the day he was fine, as he was in the pic at right) This morning he wasn’t even interested in giving kisses. The blood thing kept happening, and just like a human with a UTI, it happened frequently, and was the first time he ever had an accident in the house, and then it happened several times.

So, after we went to coop, I came back and we took Jack to the vet. He isn’t running a temp, but from what we described, he thinks Jack is passing bladder stones. So, he needs to do bloodwork and then sedate him for an ultrasound to see how serious the problem is. It felt very wrong to leave Jack with the vet.

I know he’s a dog, not a human. But I just can’t cope with much more. So everybody please think good thoughts and send “you’re OK” vibes to Jack? We really love him, and he’s our ball-fetching, loud snuggle bug.

There are days moments when my daughters frustrate me. There are times when I want to send them to their grandparents for the next few years hours. There are times when I think about duct taping their mouths shut encouraging them to play the “quiet game”. They are very active, loud, exuberant girls, and there are times when I wish they would all just lay on the couch and relax for a few days hours.

When my health stuff is acting up, and I’m achy, hurting, whiny, and tired I don’t really want to deal with their energy levels and their joyful noises, I get annoyed easily. It’s not easy to parent in an ideal way when you have a chronic illness, especially one that includes fatigue and pain. It’s easy to wish that I had quiet kids when I’m in need of quiet.

I spent two days in the past 2 weeks helping out my friend in person, bringing her food & wine, listening, and helping her brainstorm. (I spent a lot more time on the phone with her and brainstorming on my own, too) While I was there, I saw her son hanging out on the couch, as he has done for the past month. All day. Her son has always been an active, engaging kid who will still snuggle and do quiet things, but not all the time. Seeing her son sick and so quiet was so hard for us, and I can’t imagine how hard it is for her.

Nothing is going to change my kids into Stepford-kids, and I would be lying if I said I will never wish them quiet ever again, but something changed for me last week. My heart is aching for my friend’s son, as well as for my friend. As much as I hate being sick and trying to parent, I am exceedingly grateful that I am the one who is sick here, not my kids. It is hard to be sick and parent, but it is heartbreaking to be a parent of a sick kid.

I’m trying to help my friend (bring food, wine, and a listening ear and people will love you!), help her son, but there is so much I can’t do and can’t control. It makes me hug the girls extra tightly. When i can get them to stop moving, that is! Sometimes it’s really good to have quiet story time at least once a day!

The evil headache is back. Plus there’s very damp weather.

This has been a very whiny moaning weekend. I’m hoping Monday is a vast improvement.

After reading so much Garfield, I can’t quite believe I’m looking forward to a Monday!

Weekend Math:
3 kids + 3 dogs + 1 cat + 1 husband + 1 headache + 1 achy body = 1 difficult Rachel, feel sorry for those who have to live with me!

The neurologist from the Big Hospital called with the results from the vampire-style skin biopsy. I have small fiber neuropathy, which is, of course, Rare. So rare, in fact, that the Local Neurologist had said that it wasn’t possible. I’m glad I took the advice of my Good Friend Sue and pursued a neurologist in Boston.

I have the osteo arthritis and now Small Fiber Neuropathy quantifiable diagnoses. The “fuzzy” diagnoses of Chronic Lyme and Fibromyalgia are ones that people can debate. It’s nice to have a diagnosis that isn’t questionable. Invisible pain is hard to explain and justify.

However, now we need to research Small Fiber Neuropathy, and make more doctor’s appointments. How severe is it? What can happen? Is there any option besides treating symptoms? Will it go away when the Lyme is gone?

More questions with more answers. Rare condition? check. This is starting to feel normal. How many rare conditions can one person have? I wonder if there’s a World Record for that!

Rachel’s tip for balancing illness and parenting:

• If you have a fever & sore throat, don’t  throw a hissy fit and yell at your children.  Firstly, because they are probably not as annoying as your sick butt thinks they are.  Plus, if you yell with a sore throat, it will just hurt more and for longer.
• Try to get sick over a weekend so your spouse can help out with parenting. If that doesn’t work, then just keep calling your spouse at work to whine.  Alternately, if your throat hurts, IM your spouse with your current temperature reading.
• It’s good timing to receive 2 boxes of books from Amazon right before a weekend when you’re under doctor’s orders to put your feet up!

Another random tip or two:

• Hitting refresh over and over doesn’t make an email you are awaiting come any faster.
• It is good form to acknowledge when your dog alerts you to a car (or truck, or person, or seagull..) passes your house. It is poor form to sulk when the FedEx or UPS folks deliver a package to your neighbors but not to you.

Life’s just chugging along here.  The evil migraine/headaches are starting to ease up, so there should be more book reviews posted in the next few days.  There’s, um, a bit of a book backlog.

I spent the past month looking forward to today - going to Boston all ah-lone! I don’t remember the last time that happened. It was really fun to get a copy of Boston Now, and grab the commuter rail. Even cooler to find one of my book reviews in the paper… B stayed home from work today with the girls, and I took the train into Boston. (We’ll skip the part where I took the Green Line in the wrong direction…)

I met my lovely friend Sue, and we had coffee and looked at the Complete Idiot’s Guide books vs the Dummy’s books. We decided we like the CIG books better - for one thing, they use better fonts. For another thing, they pull the tips off to the side in a box, rather than putting an icon in the margin next to the regular text. We also thought the text in the CIG book wasn’t as dumbed-down, and we liked how the lists were bulleted or numbered - if you have a top 10 list, they should have numbers next to them! (Plus, they’re the ones with my book proposal…)

Then we went to the hospital and I got shot up with lidocaine and had two 3 mm holes punched in my leg just above my ankle. Lidocaine burns! Ow. When we were applying pressure to stop the bleeding, the two little bleeding holes reminded me of all my favorite vampire books. I’d rather have a vampire bite than a skin biopsy myself.

I got a doctor’s order to rest & elevate my foot, so we went to look at more books, I geekily pointed to all the new fiction I had read and reviewed, and then I got on the train to go home.

My great luck with the Green line continued - there was an electrical fire that shut down the trains, so a trip that should’ve taken about 30 minutes took about 3 times that. We left the bookstore at about 4:30, and I didn’t get home until 8:15. The trip didn’t really allow me to rest & put up my foot. Ah well.

I think I need to rest tomorrow after all that excitement today. The vampire bite needs to be under a clear bandage for the next week, and watch for bleeding and/or infections. We’ll find out if my nerves are all normal in a month to six weeks. Next medical stuff is Lyme doctor in Boston on Wednesday.

I’m hoping to do another train-into-Boston-alone trip on March 3 to see Felicia! I’ll end up with an autographed copy of her book! (and maybe have some sushi…)

I recently clicked over to a blog I had never read before, Believer in Balance. This mom has just discovered that her daughter has a peanut allergy. I remember feeling overwhelmed at first, so if you live with food allergies, please go offer her some support and tips!  Check out the other great information at the Food Allergy Carnival!

When you first discover a food allergy/Celiac disease, it is so hard to cope with the realization that your child is the 1 in a 1:100 possibility.

We have several of those 1:100 condition here, and each diagnosis took a lot of emotional and practical adjustment. Your heart breaks a bit for the things your child can’t do, and while we all learn to cope, it’s still hard. I can adapt almost any food so my kids can eat it, but that doesn’t always make life easier. There’s a lot of prep work that goes into living with kids who have food allergies, which can turn a simple birthday party into a challenge. Additionally, there’s so much emotion tied to food, visits with grandparents and other relatives can be difficult to navigate.

We’ve been living with food restrictions for about 9 years now. For folks who are new to food allergies, I’d suggest visiting my recipes (of course), which are all allergy friendly. I’d also suggest visiting the The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, there are wonderful books and helpful cards to carry around for checking ingredients grocery shopping. (Their focus is on the top 8 allergens, so not as great a resource for unusual allergies) For personal support, tips, tricks, resources and stories, the folks at Kids With Food Allergies are incredibly helpful and empathetic, and they have some great recipes. You might also want to download this guide to anaphylaxis, as well - keep yourself informed! If you are receiving a Celiac Disease diagnosis, the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness has a lot of information.

We have found two books especially helpful for our family and friends, in addition to the FAAN books.

• Bagels, Buddy, and Me, a wonderful book about Celiac Disease which we reviewed here.
• The Peanut-free Cafe, a great story about peanut allergy which we reviewed here.

If I could give just a few tips to a parent of a child newly diagnosed with a food allergy/intolerance/celiac disease/etc it would be:

• Don’t be shy. Be the parent who asks others to accommodate your child. They may be mildly inconvenienced for a few hours out of their day/week/year, but it’s important for your child. I’ve tried “compromises”, and they either blew up in my face, or my kids got sick. Neither one was pretty. Stick to your guns - keep your kid safe.
• Read every label. And then read it again. Perhaps one last time? Too often product ingredients change (one of the girls’ favorite potato chips now have dairy) or a store’s supplier has changed (the roasted chickens at our store are from a new company which adds dairy) or you might miss a word (when reading “cocoa butter, butter”; I’ve missed the second “butter”).
• Climb every mountain! Or, call every company. The food allergy labeling laws have made life a bit easier, but I’m still skittish about “natural flavors”, unless I know the company’s stance on labeling or if I have called the company for that item.
• Better safe than sorry. If a food’s ingredients are unclear, it’s best to pass up the treat. My kids might miss out on several treats that are labeled “naturally flavored”, but there are plenty of other treats around! They know if they can’t have something, they’ll get something great later.

(At the top left, you can see my girls eating a store-bought pizza! Amy’s Kitchen is now making a larger line of gluten-free and dairy-free products, which is wonderful. Many of their products are free of other allergens as well. More companies are making allergy-friendly foods, which is a good thing for everyone! It’s great for relatives to be able to buy something to have at the house for visiting kiddos with allergies.)

I have a bunch of books in my “to review” stack right now.

As much as I love my current “fun” book (American Gods: A Novel), I want to get back to the review books - there are some really great ones coming up! I just got a copy of a book that isn’t even in book form yet!!! It’s still in the Kinkos-style binding. Swoon… I realize that being paid cash for book reviews is lovely, but being paid in books is lovely, too!

I’m also listening to the audiobook for Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel, written and read by Vanna Bonta. What a fascinating concept!  It would take too long to explain, so this’ll have a lovely review posted later.  Audiobooks take longer for me to listen to than books take for me to read!

Apropos of nothing at all (though it’s harder to read, review, and concentrate when I’ve got a bad headache), I need these blinding headaches to stop, they’ve been happening for over a week now. Sharp shooting pain out of nowhere, and it stays for hours, despite my pain meds. Much worse when I’m moving. There are two major possibilities: 1) now that I’m not pregnant or lactating, I am getting migraines again; 2) Cutting down the Valium (muscle relaxers) is causing muscle spasms and pain in my neck, which is causing the headaches. Now to get the doctors to figure out which one it is… Feh, it’s not like I need any more doctor visits.

Last week we had fevers and tummy bugs in BG and MG. LG was coming through unscathed. Everyone seemed healthy on Sunday, so I sent them off for a visit and overnight with my parents. The snowstorm yesterday meant they couldn’t return until today. While it was lovely to have some quiet, we missed them a lot.

Meanwhile, as I am sitting around reading and reviewing books at my house, the sick fairy was visiting LG at her grandparents house. The same fever and stomach bug hit her, and she didn’t want to play in the snow. This morning, though, she woke up with a reddish puffy face that didn’t get less puffy with Benadryl.

After a visit with the nice doctor, she’s been diagnosed with cellulitis (skin infection), and is on antibiotics. We’re a bit freaked out by cellulitis, because that is what MG had when she was 3 1/2 and was hospitalized for 5 days on IV antibiotics after a dog bite. Apparently it’s a skin infection, and could be from staph or strep. We want to make sure she gets better, having a kid in the hospital was no fun! MG is busy telling LG that even if the medicine doesn’t taste good, it’s much better than shots!

Food allergies complicate everything - we ended up having to go to the compounding pharmacy to pick up her medicine because that antibiotic only came in strawberry flavor. Thankfully we have a compounding pharmacy in town that has completely artificial flavors. And yes, I do see the humor in someone who tries to eat organic and likes all natural products to be excited about artificial flavors! Anything can hide in “natural flavors”, though - it’s a very loose definition.

We’re hoping we can make the sick fairy leave here soon - we’ve been stuck inside for too long! Maybe the cool air will kill the germs? I really want to air out the house. Or bomb it with Lysol! The only ones still standing from this bug are me and B. I’m hoping B’s hardy constitution will save him. Perhaps being on 2 antibiotics will help me… but I know from far too much experience that antibiotics won’t do anything for a virus.

I received an email from the folks who created The Business of Being Born, and clicked over to the site. There’s a beautiful trailer, and I was cautiously hopeful.

My initial perspective was cynical - why would a celebrity like Ricki Lake choose to make a movie about birth? And if she is a person who has the means to buy good medical treatment, would her movie speak to the rest of us? As it turns out, Ricki Lake had a hospital birth for her first child, and a homebirth for her second. That made me stop and look at the documentary again. When I looked at the list of participants, I saw famed midwife Ina May Gaskin. That’s when my cynical thoughts really slowed down. Now I wish that there was a nearby Community Screening or Theatrical Release! (Which is closer to me - Nantucket or NYC?)

I had one traditional, medicated hospital birth, and then two midwife-assisted birth center births. When I was pregnant with #3 (aka LG), my husband and I weighed our options. I wanted a homebirth, he wanted to make sure I had a good midwife. We lived close to a hospital in case of an emergency, so it seemed like a good option. Unfortunately, my husband became unemployed while I was pregnant, so we could only work with practitioners who accepted the state medical insurance. Thankfully, the birth center was one of those practitioners. I had no interest in returning to a traditional hospital birth, but we didn’t have the funds to pay a homebirth midwife, either.

There were so many contrasts between my medical birth and my midwife-assisted births. With a medical birth, I dealt with whichever nurse was on call at that time, and I was alternately ignored and given too much attention (aka technology). With a midwife-assisted birth, the midwife was there the whole time helping, supporting, and chatting with me. While I wish I could have had a homebirth, the birth centers allowed me to labor in a tub or shower, have some snacks and drinks, and hold my baby before she had any kind of bathing or weighing. Those early moments are so precious, and I felt more powerful than exhausted at the end of MG’s and LG’s births!

My memories of each birth are a bit foggy, and unfortunately the server crash and hard drive crashes wiped out their birth stories. However, this quote from The Business of Being Born rang true for me and my experience in the hospital with BG:

Medical decisions are being made for legal and monetary reasons, not because they are good for the mother or the baby

I used to work with a lot of moms and newborns, and this quote also rang true for myself the moms I know:

Nothing compares to the privilege of giving life and the responsibility of that. Nothing.

There is a peace that comes from a birth that is not overly managed, and that peace leaves the mother and baby in a better physical and emotional state. Non-medicated, non-interventionist labors and deliveries can be time-consuming, whereas a planned c-section can be completed in 20-30 min.

I hope I can see the movie in the near future and write review!