Brain Injury Rehab

This summer I did so well with keeping up with my posts, mainly because I had no life and had hours to spare with nothing to do other than to spit words at my readers. Then school started and life as I knew it was brutally taken away. Not because I'm 'Super Teacher' and work on schoolwork at all hours once I get home from work, but because my brain is a mushy pile of gooey nonsense when I'm finally able to sit down and take a breath. Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be school teachers.

 

When I finally wrapped my head around some topics that were legitimate enough to write about last week, my organized, chaotic life tilted on its axis even more when Mike's mom had a stroke Tuesday. I love y'all, but I love her more. I had to clock out from my day job as a teacher and my night job as a writer and clock in as a nurse. Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be nurses, either. I spent everyday at MCV (except Monday, or something like that, considering I don't even know what today is...) until she came home yesterday and I'm snuggly nestled in at her condo until she's cleared to be on her own. Or until Mike drags me home. Her community is the closest thing to a Floridian retirement home I can get. All the women are ages 65 and older and all the men are gay. And then there's me--and weirdly, I fit in perfectly. It's like a jolly 'ol episode of the Golden Girls, except it's the modernized version, and the only Golden Girls around here are the 2 gay couples in the condo across the driveway. I. love. it!

 

You'll be happy to know that not only am I a certified doctor of gynecology and fertility, I'm also now a neurologist and can explain the effects of a Transient Ischemic Attack in complete detail. Who goes to medical school for decades when you can get all the information you need from Google in ten minutes? I mean, the doctors at the hospital in South Hill diagnosed my MIL with "low magnesium" and gave her fluids...meanwhile, she doesn't know who she is, where she's at, has slurred speech, and her face is droopy. C'mon man. My 10 year old students could have diagnosed her better than they did. (And no, I will not apologize to anyone who I just offended by mentioning the incredibly ignorant doctor/experience we dealt with last week. However, I will state that the CMH ER nurses went above and beyond to give her the best care!)  

 

Since we did have sense to get her to the best care we knew in the short amount of time we had, we moved her very quickly to Richmond and even though her status was a roller coaster for several hours, she improved very rapidly and eventually ended up in the "Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit".

 

Did you know that if your brain becomes injured--from any internal or external source--you can go to rehab to fix yourself? I'd like to think 'internal' brain injuries come from the way your body handles something. I'd like to think 'external' brain injuries come from being surrounded by stupid people, or from your job. Had I known such a place existed, I would have checked myself into it years ago. (Namely around the time I decided to go into public education). There were people in the unit who didn't know who they were, who were perpetually angry, who were mentally unstable, and even thought they were somebody else. Also, these people don't stay in their assigned rooms in the unit. Oh no. They wander up and down the halls and make visitors of other brain injury patients feel extremely awkward.

 

My thoughts were, "you mean to tell me there's a place I can go to where I get to be whiny and pissed for hours at a time, and it's OKAY because I have an injured brain?" Or, "you mean to tell me there's a place I can go to where I can pretend to be somebody else for days at a time, all the while knowing exactly who I am and fake out people around me because I'm tired of being me?" UGH! Why didn't you people tell me of this magical place before now?! I guess to others a place of this nature would be considered a psych ward, annnnnnd it kinda was. One guy wore boxing gloves 24/7 (for unknown reasons) and another lady had horrible Turret's and screamed the F-bomb sporadically. And I don't mean the F-word that curly-haired people like myself use (aka FRIZZY). Another guy asked me "you gotta jacket on?" every time I passed him--which was like 7 times a day. I always wore shorts and a t-shirt, so unless 'jacket' is a code word for something else, I was assuredly surrounding by N-U-T-S.

 

In the midst of all this insanity (did I mention last week was the FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL?!?!), I started my period. Which was my third cycle since my last fertility appointment. Which meant I was supposed to call my doctor to in for "the next step". You'd think I would've called the day I started last week but frankly, I'm tired of waiting for "the next step". It will be 2 years this October since my first miscarriage. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of feeling the twinge that let's me know I better get ready because the cramps are coming.  I'm tired of getting my hopes up around every 26th day of my cycle because I'm having symptoms only to be let down when I realize it's only PMS. I'm tired of recording temperatures and days and flow and ovulation and I'm tired of avoiding Facebook because if I see another baby-related post, I may just flip my lid. People have been so kind to me and they always have the same advice--"be patient" or "it will happen" or "don't stress". You're right. I know it will happen. I'm just so tired of dealing with the pain that comes along with what we're going through on top of everything else we're going through. At the end of every day, I erase the stress from my job. I erase anything that causes me worry, yet I still carry the weight of not only the question of 'WHEN we will get pregnant?' but the question "will we even be able to keep it?"  We've both suffered long enough from this and I think we are way past due for some GOOD karma, dammit.

 

People are always dealing with bones they keep locked in their closets. This is my only bone. These past few weeks have been utterly INSANE for the people around me--whether with my family, my friends, or with my coworkers. I ask you...is all the stress you're dealing with really worth it? I think you should be allowed to carry around your 1 bone.  That's it. Choose the one that's really worth worrying over and throw the rest of them to the dogs. If not, then perhaps you shall find yourself at Brain Injury Rehab. And thankfully, they have large rooms...so I'm sure you can take a friend with you when you go.

 

 

Luke, I am your father.

Today was the first day back to work for teachers and I'll go ahead and save you from hearing me moan and groan about it paragraph after paragraph by wrapping it up with one short phrase: O.M.G.

Most would think being a lazy, overeating, oversleeping, procrastinator would reach sort of a limit after a few years but I'm hear to tell you, this lazy, overeating, oversleeping, procrastinator goes above and beyond to earn that description when you give her several weeks off with no set goals to accomplish. I mean, is it wrong of me to think it's WAY too much of a task that my supervisors expect me to get up before 10am? Or expect me to wear actual make-up? Or expect me to wear a bra? Because I'm pretty sure none of the three things I just listed happened to me simultaneously since June 8th. But I did get up before 10:00 today and I did wear full-blown make-up and I did wear a bra...even though it was my flimsiest one and was a baby-step up from what an average 11-year-old girl would wear.

Aside from the excitement of a new year starting (because I'm positive somebody out there is oozing excitement, just not me. Not yet, anyway.) it was nice to see all the people I work with. I can't say it at school because it would be inappropriate, but we are the shit, in case you didn't already know. Convocation, is when alllllllll the teachers in one county get together and...do stuff. Listen, I said I got up before 10:00 but I didn't say I was alert. Anyway, there were hundreds of thousands of people (or something like that) at our building today and I'd estimate that I saw about 100 pregnant women. While at the beach this summer in every restaurant we went to, I'm pretty sure every third random woman we saw was pregnant. And they all had like 4 small kids running around them and they looked exhausted and we almost decided to check into a clinic so I could go back on birth control. I also have to be grateful that God knew what he was doing this past miscarriage because I'm Captain Cranky Pants when I'm hot and GEEZ, LOUISE--I could NOT handle being pregnant during the summer. Well, I could probably handle it but for the sake and well-being of my peers, be thankful I'm not.

 

Our doctor's set goal for us was to be pregnant by September 1. I have about 10 more days left in this cycle to find out if I am or not. If not, we go back to the fertility clinic for whatever the next step is. I turn 28 in September and while I still consider that young, my other half is 10 years older than me...so his biological clock is ticking, hehehe. If you are a religious person, I'd appreciate all prayers for a SUCCESSFUL pregnancy beginning in late September (so I'll have all next summer to whatever it is you do with newborns) and if you could add in "a GIRL, with Kristin's hair, Mike's brain's, and let Mike allow Kristin to pick the name so they don't have a kid with the name LUCAS strictly so the first words their child hears is not 'LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER'"...that'd be fabulous. Thank you in advance.

 

Have you ever had a particular food item that you were obsessed with that abruptly stopped being produced and went away from every store you had access to? I grew up with a fire chief daddy who worked 24 on, 24 off. This meant that many times, Mama would make stuff quick and easy for supper when Daddy was working. One of the things I grew up living off of was Armour Beef Stew. It was a short, fat, little can of stew on the bottom shelf of the 'soup aisle' and it was pretty much my favorite. For whatever reason, when I was in high school, it suddenly stopped showing up in stores. Over the course of a few weeks, I talked to store managers and they suggested I contact the company because if it wasn't in demand, they would stock the stores. One phone call and one sternly written letter later...Armour Beef Stew was back and I've NE-VER had a problem finding it since.

 

It's no secret that chips are my Achilles heel. If I could pick one food to live off of for the rest of my life, I'd pick chips. But not just ANY chip...Lay's Tangy Carolina BBQ. Hello, My Name Is Kristin and I am OBSESSED with Lay's Tangy Carolina BBQ chips. The past few years, the only thing I looked forward to when I got off work was coming home and snacking on TCB's. That is, up until a few months ago I decided to go cold-turkey from my addiction for about a month. You all know how the duration of my diets go, so about a month after that, I went to the store to get a bag. Huh. They were out. I went across town to the other store. HUH. They were out too. I went to Wal-Mart. OH HELL NO, WHERE ARE MY CHIPS?! It has been since May and I can NOT find a single bag of these things anywhere. I have been to every grocery store, every sketchy convenience store, and every supercenter from here to the bottom of the Outer Banks searching for this one type. I can't find them ANYWHERE! I was finally patient enough to ask a grocery store manager a few weeks ago and he didn't know anything about it. Which leads me to my almost-arrest attack and assault situation from this past weekend.

 

I went to Food Lion and noticed a Frito Lay truck in the parking lot. The rest of my list of actual needed groceries forgotten, I high-tailed it across the parking lot to the truck. No driver. I went in the store, (and be very thankful that no small children or elderly persons was harmed in the process), and jogged across the aisles in search of a guy in a Frito Lay shirt that would be my saving grace. I made it to the milk aisle at the end of the store and turned around, only to catch the tail-end of a guy toting a Sun Chips box on his shoulder going towards the exit. I flew--I literally do not recall my feet touching the floor--to the doors and back out into the parking lot. How the police were not called by the employees is beyond me. I bustled over to the truck, but no guy!! I'm starting to sweat by this point. I scoured the parking lot and think to myself, "Ain't no way in hell am I letting this man leave without some answers". He must've gone back in the store because I've circled the truck but no sight of the man. I headed BACK in again and low and behold, the guy was standing in front of a chip display with a huge box on his shoulders. Not thinking, I immediately rushed to him and managed to get out an "EXCUSE ME!" I must've ignored all socially acceptable 'personal space' rules because he jumped and the box of chips shook. Luckily, he saved the contents and turned towards me, with a not-too-pleasant glare. I said, word-for-word, "I have been looking for my favorite chips in the whole world, Tangy Carolina BBQ, and I haven't been able to find them. Can you PAH-LEESE tell me they haven't been discontinued? I will KISS YOUR FACE if you can get them back here for me!" And yes, this was rushed because I couldn't breathe and more importantly, it was said OUT LOUD.

 

In a nutshell, homeboy recovered from his crazy-lady attack and promised to work hard for said kiss on the face. He doesn't think they stopped making them, just stopped production for our area, yada yada yada. He is taking my complaint to whoever will listen to him because they were, get this, HIS favorite too. If your world has been off-kilter because of the absence of these chips like mine has been, have no fear. I won't go down without a fight, Frito Lay. Just call a little ol' company called "Armour" and drop my name...I expect I'll have my chips and all will be right with the world in the very near future.

Big Macs & Tampons

So I've been called out (several times!) on missing a post last week. Forgive me. I was vacationing for the second time this summer at the beach. Don't be jealous...we only had like 2 full days out of 7 that were actually SUNNY. But a rainy day at the beach is better than any other day anywhere else.

You are probably intrigued by the title of today's post. And rightfully so. I'm sure your mind is grossing itself out, trying to somehow connect the two random items I've listed...and coming up with nothing short of something nauseating. Let me sidetrack you for a moment. This post is about firsts. Firsts are cemented into our brains, whether they are horrifying or slightly insignificant or off-the-radar, tingly moments in time that will make you remember everything about them in ridiculous detail.

First concert. (Michael Bolton, baby)

First celebrity crush. (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, card-carrying fan club member!)

First kiss. (who I will not name because I'm positive he's a closet Kristin Connection fan)

First car. (1999 white Mercury Cougar)

First TIME. (night AFTER junior prom. Didn't want to be totally cliché)

First job. (Victoria Public Library, summer assistant)

First alcoholic beverage. (Brandy, straight...summer of 6th grade from a Disney
                                                                                             Pocahontas glass)
FIRST grade teacher. (Sally McLaughlin)

First time your spouse said the 3 little words. (During an argument while the FIRST  
                                      Pirates of the Caribbean movie played in the background)

These are just a smidgen of the list of firsts that I so vividly remember from years ago. While most of them are slightly insignificant, (basically all except for the '3 little words' first and the Michael Bolton concert), there are 2 things missing from my list that I just recently experienced within the last two weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, I am twenty seven years old and within the last 14 days, I JUST ate my first Big Mac from McDonald's and *successfully* wore my first tampon. (Although not simultaneously). If you weren't connected to me before, then get ready to be...

The week before vacation in my house basically means we save every penny and eat dust in preparation for all the money we know we're going to spend while away. This particular week, I was in full PMS mode. After eating boiled hotdogs and macaroni and cheese for the third night in a row, Mike & I decided we'd just get fast food. This is the point in the story where you're probably judging me and my continuous battle with weight-loss by the garbage I tossed into my body the last two weeks. Judge away; the first step is admitting the problem and I long ago admitted I have an intimate relationship with the word 'chunky'.

Because we not only gamble with our cholesterol levels at McDonalds, we like to play Monopoly when it comes around. We were both looking up playing items on the menu and I said out loud, "The only sandwich I see with game pieces is the Big Mac. I've never had one before." **Cue crickets**

Since Mike thought I was the only person on the planet NOT to have eaten a Big Mac before, we decided to spend the few extra dollars and pop my Big Mac cherry. Here is my conclusion:

1. Sit at a table when eating a Big Mac.
2. Before you take it out of the box, smush it down with the palm of your hand so you're able to bite into it at one time.
3. After about the third bite, you will realize that everything and it's mama is coming out the back bun furthest away from your face. You're going to have to reconstruct.
4. If you aren't used to a hamburger that size, you probably won't finish it. However, if you do finish it, don't look at the nutritional information.
5. If you're a nosey ass like me, look up the nutritional information. It's a 550 calorie cheeseburger with 29 grams of fat and like 90000000000 mg's of sodium.
6. Call yourself a fatty when you finish the burger, but go ahead and finish the fries that came with it. Wouldn't want to waste anything.

And now for what you've really been waiting for. It's no secret in my family that I had never used a tampon before and I'm a all-pad, all-the-way, kinda girl. I've spent every summer since I can remember at our pool and using the earache excuse gets old after about the third month. Rewind to last week...our beach vacation and the arrival of Aunt Flo on the second day. Because not all the women in my family are total babies like myself, one of them had quite the stash of supplies, aka tampons in every shape, size, and color (or 'flavors' as one of the boys said when he saw the clear bag with all the assorted treats inside).

It's not that I've never tried using a tampon before. I think I was 13 and I remember, CLEARLY, being in the bathroom with my leg propped up on the toilet and hollering to my mama on the other side of the door, "I DON'T KNOW WHICH HOLE TO PUT IT IN!" Hence, the first and last time I ever tried. Also, my middle school health/gym teacher told us the story about some girl having to have emergency surgery because she went like 7 days without changing it and it got stuck and ewwwwwwwwwwwwww I can't even finish the story. That's basically the psychological reasoning behind my decision to stick strictly to pads.

Because I didn't want to punish myself the entire week by not being able to swim in our pool nor the ocean, I got a tampon from the stash and announced that I was heading into the bathroom with it. Of course, because my family is awesome (or insane), they followed me.

I'm sitting in the bathroom and I unwrap the lime green paper. I'm thinking it could easily pass as Laffy Taffy. After several unsuccessful attempts, I hear a whisper through the door. "Is everything going okay?" "NO!" I replied. Every time I shove it up into the great beyond, it's painful. So that's what I tell them. My cousin says to hold on. My aunt starts giving me words of encouragement. "You can do it!" she says. "I'm so proud of you!" I hear.

I yank it back down and I hear my cousin back at the door. She's going to give me the step-by-step. Unwrap. Check. Shove til it stops. Check. Push the plastic til it pops out. WHAT? Christ on a cracker. I had no idea just the cotton part stayed there. I thought the whole plastic thing stayed there. BAM. We're done. No wonder I had so many issues. They should really teach this process to girls in school. I'm almost 30 and didn't know how to work one.

After yells of excitement and a round of applause from outside the door, I do a hundred string-siting checks and head to the pool. Slowly.

As  I awkwardly enter the pool area, another cousin (this one a boy) yells, "She's a WOMAN now!" I ease myself into the shallow part and all I can picture in my head is a clear pitcher of water with a packet of red Kool-Aid being dumped into it. Please God, let this thing stay in.  I stay in the pool for about 30 minutes until I psych myself out and retreat to my lounge chair. The rest of the week gets easier and easier though.

Here is my conclusion:
1. Do not leave the plastic part of a tampon inside of you. It's a cool rocket toy, if you think about it. This way, you can countdown from 10 if it's awkward for you while inserting.
2. Never divulge private information to your family members. No good can come from it.
3. Wear what is comfortable to you. Don't let a tampon be your stick in the mud.
4. If wearing a tampon, it's best not to sneeze. Ever.

Again, 'd like to end this with just a small statement. Ladies and gentlemen, I am twenty seven years old and within the last 14 days, I've eaten a Big Mac and I've become a woman. Although, perhaps I should rightly rename this post with my preferences from now on, "Nuggets and Maxi Pads".