Another pooped out night. Which is weird because I only worked a half day yesterday… got to sleep in to 10am. Right now, I feel like I could sleep for 100 hours and still not be rested.
I forgot to blog about my CT Scan, they moved me up a day. The scan itself isn’t really anything to talk about, but they kept me sitting there waiting for over an hour, which wasn’t fun. They wanted me to stick around for preliminary results, but they knew it was going to take a while, so they offered to call me. When they did, the lady talked so fast that I don’t really know what she said. There was something about sinus wall and thickening mucus. She said that my ENT would call me about full results.
Not much orange on this post… at least we got a couple of inches of snow.
I completely pooped out last night.
After I got home from work, Alisha and I decided to get out of the house for a few hours. We went to the Foertsch’s new apartment here in our neighborhood to check on the place and water the plants (for the 2nd time), since they were both out of town. We weren’t sure what to do for dinner, and then we remembered that we have said for over a year that next time we can’t decide where to go, we would go to Schlafy Bottleworks in Maplewood. We actually remembered!! The place was good… I would recommend it.
We then went to Wal-Mart for because I really needed new gloves for work. I had heard a rumor that snow might be coming, and I would be real sad not to have gloves.
When we got home, I laid on the bed for a moment before I got ready for bed… and managed to fall asleep in within a few short moments. I should have known better, don’t lay down before getting ready for bed- it’s a recipe for disaster.
Short post tonight because I took some Tylenol PM cold and flu and I am about to hit the wall. I was feeling so much better, but it is starting to hit me again all of a sudden… that’s no fun.
What is fun? Watching Brett Favre lose. It took the Bears into overtime, but they were finally able to put the Vikings away and put their #2 seed in the playoffs into jeopardy! He played pretty poorly in the first half and in the overtime period, but played really well in the second half. I was fairly convinced that the Bears were going to blow it, but they pulled it off! There was nothing more exciting than the back to back sacks after a hurried throw to a O-lineman that caused a penalty on Mr. Favre.
I am kinda rambling here, but it was sweet. Here’s to a first round loss to the Vikes! (sorry Jeremiah).
Christmas #2 (or boxing day if you are from Australia or Canada)…
I just had to endure 5 hours of work to get there. It was super busy… should have only taken 3 hours, but that’s the way things go sometimes.
On my way to our Christmas celebration in Illinois, I realized that my last speeding ticket on my record just expired! It was 3 years ago on Christmas when I went to go meet my mom in Bloomington, IL (half-way point from her house to ours). See, Illinois hates me, stupid FIBs. There was a time that I couldn’t even cross the state line without getting a speeding ticket. I had 3 with a few months. I am so glad to be out from under that!!
Christmas family time was great. It is rare to get my STL family all together at the same time. I am so thankful when we are able to be together. It really makes me sad that we aren’t more often.
We typically do a secret santa gift exchange. This year we gave gifts to families/kids through World Vision in honor of another person in our family. Kelli bought 2 soccer balls in my honor for kids somewhere- I can’t remember where, but I thought it was awesome!
Merry Christmas!
It was a good pajama Christmas for me. We spent it with Alisha’s family and I somehow managed to stay in my pajamas all day long. It was nice. I took several naps throughout the day, watched a little Christmas Story and Elf, played Wii, and ate.
I made the holiday brekkie of choice (by the way, breakfast is now brekkie after my trip to Australia because I think it is great)- “Wafflitas”. It is my suped up rendition of waffles with loads of special extra ingredients.
Overall, it was a great holiday. Now it’s time to fall asleep to to a dose of Nyquil… good night!
Merry Christmas eve!
Today we only worked until 3, which was nice. We weren’t too terribly busy, so I let everyone go home early (by 1 or so). I figured they had been there by themselves enough recently, it was nice to take my turn.
I did go to the ENT doctor in the morning. He looked in both ears and said…
Dr: Well, you are good to go.
Me: Ok, I guess that means I am alright.
Dr: If I punched you in the arm, would it hurt?
Me: Should I get a second opinion?
Dr: Of course it would hurt.
Me: You do look strong.
Dr: It would hurt immediately because I am strong, and also later because you would bruise.
Me: Should I start running now?
Dr: Your ears are essentially bruised, they will be fine within a month.
Me: Cool, please don’t hit me.
But he is going to have me get a CT scan on my sinuses next week to see what is going on with them.
Christmas eve eve… and I am doing my darndest to not get sick. I think I am losing.
I could be worse off though. Today Alisha had to drive her sister to the hospital while they were out doing Christmas errands. Angie is staying there overnight to get some more fluids and drugs and should be able to go home tomorrow.
It was the first time Alisha has driven since August. She was successful, despite not really being in great shape herself. I’m so glad that they got there safely!
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Today I met a former employee for lunch because she wanted about my trip. She called me ahead of time to see if it would be ok if her dad joined us because he wanted to hear about the trip too. I had only met him twice before, so I was surprised that he was that interested. He has been to Australia a few times and loves it. He had actually lent us a travel guide to Sydney. Lunch was great! We shared a bunch of stories about our experiences there and it was a blast… I barely even talked to his daughter during lunch because we got so carried away!
Ok, time for bed!
Wow… the trip of a lifetime might take me a lifetime to recover from. Getting back on a sleep schedule is one thing… but add in going back to work and a wonky ear, and it makes for a spectacular day.
Today at work, I was up and about a lot more than I had been for the last few days. I really felt incredibly unbalanced all day long. Stupid ear… I had no idea what kind of powers it had other than hearing.
Don’t worry, Diane… I have an appointment already scheduled with a Ear/Nose/Throat doctor for Thursday morning.
Today wasn’t really too bad at work, other than being back at work. We were steady, but not overwhelmingly busy. I am really thankful to not have a full week of work this week or next week!
Highlight of the day was having lunch with Debbie, Kelli, Elle, and Paisley. Elle gave me the biggest hug to welcome me back, and then started asking me all about Kangaroos and their pouches. I assumed that she had seen the “Land Down Under” bit on the Sunday Night Blog, but she hadn’t… she was just curious about pouches. I showed her that segment and she laughed…
Me: Was that funny?
Elle: Yeah.
Me: Was that weird?
Elle: YEAH!!
She is smart.
Jet lag is rough. We slept until 4:30pm (that’s right, pm) on Sunday and then I stayed up until 7:30am (that’s right, am) this morning… only getting 2 hours of sleep. I forced myself to get up so that I wouldn’t sleep all through the day. I only took one nap- during Alisha’s new favorite movie… The Christmas Shoes (best nap ever).
So I went to the doctor today to get my ears checked out. He said that he saw a sack of blood behind my eardrum, but no apparent damage directly to the eardrum. He used 2 technical/medical words… one of them was barotrauma. I don’t know what the other word was. But he gave me a script for an antibiotic and instructed me to see a Ear/Nose/Throat Doctor within the next two weeks. I have been meaning to do this anyways because my sinuses have gotten pretty awful over the last few years.
So, the good news is that he didn’t see anything that would cause permanent damage… I’m just not allowed to fly or dive for the next 2 weeks. I have no plans to fly in the next few weeks, and fortunately STL isn’t a hotbed of SCUBA diving for me to be tempted to break the rules.
Speaking of rules… I’ve got to get up early tomorrow and shave my sweet beard so that I can go back to work. Bummer.
It took about 33 hours of travel… but we are finally back!
The flight from Sydney seemed to go by loads faster than the flight to Sydney. Which made us optimistic that we could catch an earlier flight to Milwaukee… so we determined that we were going to rush off the plane to get through customs as fast as possible.
It didn’t work out quite like we hoped… they wouldn’t open the door to the plane because border patrol wasn’t going to open up for another half hour. Just as the doors were about to be opened Alisha started feeling really bad, turned white, and passed out. I caught her. But wasn’t sure what to do with her after that because there was tons of people crowded all around. The chinese guy that sat on the aisle next to her had sat back down and was reluctant to move because that was “his seat”. Finally he got up and we laid Alisha down across the seats and the flight crew brought her oxygen, water, and cool cloths.
She came back quickly, but was pretty worn out. We got a wheelchair escort through the airport and really considered skipping the flight to Milwaukee, but the layover gave her enough time to rest up and help her be able to handle the rest of the day’s flights. This is Alisha sleeping on our carry-on luggage with a beach towel as a blanket (yeah, that is really her under there)…
As bad (and embarrassing for her) as it was that Alisha had this incident… she did great on the trip!
Before we left, she was getting a lot of IV fluids from her at home nurse and was generally feeling fairly marginal. It was really important for her that we make this trip… it really meant a lot to her to show me this country that she loves so much. On the flight to Australia, she admitted to me how rough she had been feeling recently and that she was sure that she would have to go to the hospital at least once or twice during the trip. At that point, I could tell how much it meant to her, no matter if there was some extra sacrifice.
The trip was great… I really couldn’t have asked for anything more (maybe a longer stay). Alisha showed me an incredible amount of amazing Aussie treasures. And more importantly, God really opened my eyes to some sorely needed and consistent themes- leaving me with some things to reflect on over the next few jet-lagged days.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a highlight video for the Sunday Night Movie… I’ve got a ton of pictures to share!!
