Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Back to the Blog

I knew I hadn't written in my blog for awhile, but I didn't realize it had been almost three weeks! This is good news...I've neglected my blogging because I've been feeling well enough to be engaged in other pursuits and have used my writing time for earning some much-needed extra money. So, how about a quick re-cap of the highs and lows of the past three weeks?

A definite high - we enjoyed one last camping weekend this season with a wonderful trip to one of our favorite parks (a beautiful place with the unlikely name of Turkey Swamp). The weather was nice, we hiked and geocached, and enjoyed just getting away from the phone, TV, computers, etc.

Then, a series of relative lows (though, in perspective, nothing horrible)...a $2000 repair bill for my aging VW, an electric surge burning out our washing machine and requiring a new one (the same week as the VW), and yet another sinus infection for Craig. Then a big one...

Two Fridays ago, with Ken out of town, I let the boys have a friend sleep over, and we ended up in the ER until 2 am. It was a freak accident (not so unusual for Craig) - in trying to clear off the bed in the dark, Craig tripped and hit his head on the nightstand. I heard a piercing scream, ran down the hall, and found my sweet little boy covered in blood. Pretty gruesome. He got 16 stitches, and Ken got yet another phone call as he returned home that he should meet us at the children's hospital. Believe it or not, this was the third time Ken has returned from a trip and had to meet me or the kids at the ER (and he doesn't even travel very often!). Our little Frankenstein is healing nicely now and had his stitches taken out last week. That makes four head injuries in his scant eight years.

Finally, we had the usual holiday frenzy. We flew to Oklahoma last week to spend Thanksgiving with Ken's parents. Our nephew and his family joined us from Texas, and we had a wonderful time. I was dreading the flights, but it all went well. I made a special effort to intake lots of salt and keep my blood pressure up, and I fared much better than on previous flights.

I've really been feeling good this past month and hoping it will last!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So wonderful to hear that you are feeling well! I'm sorry about the disasters (my dishwasher died last night), especially poor Craig. Some kids just end up in the emergency room a lot. Take care of yourself through the holidays! It's always a challenging time for me.

Mary Anne said...

I'm happy to hear you have been feeling better! May it continue for a long time.

Michelle said...

Well, I've gotten behind on my blog reading so this worked out well for me! And since the reason you've been away from blogging sounds like it was a good one, well, yay! :)

Oh, btw, when I was a little older than Craig (9-12) I was in the ER a lot too. Right around 11 was when I started getting what was mild CFIDS until it turned into full blown CFIDS after surgery when I was 26.

I'm curious, is he hypermobile? I remember reading that Peter Rowe discovered recently that about 60% of his patients were.

Hmm...just realized that might sound scary... :(

Sue Jackson said...

Hi, Michelle -

Yup, Craig has hypermobile joints. And, yes, it was scary when I first read Dr.Rowe's research into the connection with CFIDS. There doesn't seem to be anything to do about it at this point, but I do worry that this characteristic puts Craig at risk for more severe CFIDS down the road. He's been much better this past month, since starting Florinef, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Sue