I finally heard from the doctor today after almost three months of waiting, becoming increasingly frustrated, and calling with no return phone call. Apparently the doctor that sent me to this specialist that does not think I'm worth his time has not heard from him either. However the slides from my biopsy in April made it to Northwestern and back to Glenbrook hospitals weeks ago....
As I sit here writing this right now, my daily dose of Prednisone has been lowered from 40mg to 30mg! Thankfully I'm getting weaned off the roids starting tonight. It seems like I've been on it such a long time, and my doctor on the phone today was concerned about the prolonged use of the Prednisone but also doesn't want to risk hurting my liver any more than it already is.
I'm going up to the North Shore Thursday afternoon to get blood work done and get more answers. Hopefully by then my doc will have been able to get in touch with this guy from Northwestern and we can finally figure out if I'm going to need a liver in 10 years or if it's just Sarcoidosis. Either way I just want some freaking answers already!
I was told to expect nothing but good things out of Northwestern, and my Father swears by them but I seriously have a hard time seeing them as the best, when I can't even get in touch with a guy who is supposed to look things over and tell me what's wrong. I need answers now and he scheduled me to see him again in MAY. MAY of 2009. Makes no sense to me whatsoever. Thanks Northwestern for nothing, I want to go somewhere else!
This Historic Day
What a day! I got to watch the first Black man be sworn in as President of these United States! Even though I was watching a television and was sitting thousands of miles away from our capital i still felt honored to be witnessing such a historic event-and with such a noble and great man to boot. Granted it is a little early to be passing this kind of judgment but I can't help it. I have such a good feeling about President Obama-things are better already just having Bush out of Washington. Yes I know things are not going to change over night and he has a lot to deal with, break through and accomplish. But seriously after watching the debates, how he handled his campaign, and just listening to the man speak I seriously believe we're better off today than we were yesterday. Tomorrow is going to be interesting with our President's foreign policy announcements among other things. Imagine, having a President who is comfortable being President! Someone at the helm of this country who can form actual sentences and pronounce words properly! We now have a President who does not have his fingers in big oil! WOW! WHAT A CONCEPT!
ALSO: Anyone who says George Bush was a great leader should just quit right now. There is no way anyone can sit and say he did a good job as a leader. He had the lowest approval ratings in the history of our country on his way out and while in office. Seriously. GIVE IT A REST. And don't even try to compare President Obama with former President Bush. There is no possible comparison so again, give it a rest.
The next year, heck the next couple of months, are going to be interesting for sure and I am so excited that this all happened at a time in my life where I actually have the sense to focus in on current events. What a time to be a college kid! :)
In other news my Dearest has a paid internship lined up for the Spring at Concordia College in the archives there! I am SO excited and happy for her. Things are starting to line up splendidly for Jessie! Now we just gotta get her to call the number........ lol. I'm glad I was able to go with her and support her with this whole thing too :) It makes me feel good to give her support after all she has done/does for me.
Oh and by the way PETA... I will not call my fish "sea kittens" sorry. AND changing the name of an animal to something like "sea kitten" is ridiculous in so many ways. No one is going to call them sea kittens people. Let's try a less cutsie more mature approach to things...... please?
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ALSO: Anyone who says George Bush was a great leader should just quit right now. There is no way anyone can sit and say he did a good job as a leader. He had the lowest approval ratings in the history of our country on his way out and while in office. Seriously. GIVE IT A REST. And don't even try to compare President Obama with former President Bush. There is no possible comparison so again, give it a rest.
The next year, heck the next couple of months, are going to be interesting for sure and I am so excited that this all happened at a time in my life where I actually have the sense to focus in on current events. What a time to be a college kid! :)
In other news my Dearest has a paid internship lined up for the Spring at Concordia College in the archives there! I am SO excited and happy for her. Things are starting to line up splendidly for Jessie! Now we just gotta get her to call the number........ lol. I'm glad I was able to go with her and support her with this whole thing too :) It makes me feel good to give her support after all she has done/does for me.
Oh and by the way PETA... I will not call my fish "sea kittens" sorry. AND changing the name of an animal to something like "sea kitten" is ridiculous in so many ways. No one is going to call them sea kittens people. Let's try a less cutsie more mature approach to things...... please?
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Another Week Down
Feeling a little better today as this chest cold slowly moves out of my system. If I'm not feeling much better by Tuesday I'm going to hit the wellness center at school for sure and get on an antibiotic. Being on the Prednisone means my immune system is almost completely suppressed and causes me to get sick extremely easily.
I called the liver specialist I'm working with on Monday to check about my liver slides and get my options from him and he has yet to call me back. I think I may have mentioned this in my previous post but I need to rant a little more about it. I'm giving him another week and then I'm calling my G.I. Specialist in the hopes he can deal with this guy and get some answers. A month is a long enough time to wait I think, maybe it's just me.
We already have our midterm for J-Term this Tuesday but it looks pretty straightforward and easy. Percussion tech is an amazing class! I am having so much fun banging on drums and getting to know Sara Duran and other peeps a little more :)
Jessie has found her grad school already and is incredibly excited to continue her education and get in to the field she's interested in. I'm excited for her too! I'm glad that she has found something she can be happy doing for the rest of her life, or at least the next 20 years or so. We did a test drive out to the place she's interviewing for an internship today so that she can get her bearings a little around the area and Tuesday I'm going to ride shotgun and go with her to the interview just in case she gets a little turned around she won't be alone and lost in River Forest.
Well it's time to start cooking some Lasagna! More to come later possibly.
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I called the liver specialist I'm working with on Monday to check about my liver slides and get my options from him and he has yet to call me back. I think I may have mentioned this in my previous post but I need to rant a little more about it. I'm giving him another week and then I'm calling my G.I. Specialist in the hopes he can deal with this guy and get some answers. A month is a long enough time to wait I think, maybe it's just me.
We already have our midterm for J-Term this Tuesday but it looks pretty straightforward and easy. Percussion tech is an amazing class! I am having so much fun banging on drums and getting to know Sara Duran and other peeps a little more :)
Jessie has found her grad school already and is incredibly excited to continue her education and get in to the field she's interested in. I'm excited for her too! I'm glad that she has found something she can be happy doing for the rest of her life, or at least the next 20 years or so. We did a test drive out to the place she's interviewing for an internship today so that she can get her bearings a little around the area and Tuesday I'm going to ride shotgun and go with her to the interview just in case she gets a little turned around she won't be alone and lost in River Forest.
Well it's time to start cooking some Lasagna! More to come later possibly.
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So Much Snow
The first week of J-Term has come and gone, and I have to admit that it went by pretty quickly. Percussion Tech is an awesome class, and not only is it a blast bang on drums for 3 hours 4 days a week, I'm learning a lot about the musicianship behind good drumming. I have to admit that I've always considered percussionists to have the more or less easy job of an ensemble. I could always recognize that certain skills were needed in order to play percussion, but I always figured if one had a good internal beat and could time things properly percussion playing was easy. I was wrong. Dead wrong. The minute things you have to pay attention to just playing a practice pad with your sticks is unbelievable at times, especially when trying to pull a continuous drum roll off. One week in and I have a new found respect and interest for percussion playing-I can't wait to see what the rest of J-Term brings.
One of my favorite places to eat has closed their doors for good. La Bahia was a restaurant literally right next door to the office I work in and on December 28th they closed. I just found out about this today holding off my lunch until 2 when they were supposed to open for Saturday business. This is a sad day for sure, their food was incredibly delicious. :(
One more week and still no word from any of my doctors, which is causing me to have shaky faith at the moment. On the one hand I feel like they are holding out on me because the news is so bad they don't want to break it to me. On the other hand there's still that little part of me that feels like they know what's going on and it's not that big a deal so they're putting off calling me. Either way I just want some answers, please. I'm starting to go stir crazy not knowing what exactly is going on with my liver and the rest of me, the prednisone is becoming tiresome to say the least, and my crohns is starting to flare up for the first time in 2 months. I am so sick of my body, as I'm sure the rest of us with chronic illness or any illness are at some point. I'm amazed the human race has survived this long just based on the fact the human body is so flawed and so inefficient. Let's exclude the needless wars, massacres, genocides, crusades and all other forms of self annihilation we've undertaken over the centuries. Focusing in on just the human body itself I have to wonder how it even functions at all. If you think about it everything, absolutely every, at some point passes through your digestive tract. The place where you absorb nutrients to fuel the rest of your body. Your sinuses are allowed to fill up with snot to the point they become impacted. Cancer forms in places and people that should never even have to think about it. The muscles in your body are not all made out of smooth tissue causing them to wear out incredibly quickly. Why not make all of our muscles out of smooth tissue, or partly smooth tissue? We only use what 10% of our total brain? Seriously? I just don't see how something so flawed and so poorly designed can function at all.
I apologize for all the negativity today but in my defense I am freaking out. Why have they not called? Why? You'd think the thousands of dollars they get for seeing me even once would make them care just a little bit more....oh wait. I just want it all to be over already. I want to know what I'm dealing with so I CAN deal with it. I don't think it's too much to ask. Have I called them? No, I haven't. Every time I've decided to something else has come up and my mind has strayed from it. So yes, some of this is my fault and I should be more proactive about it. But at the same time I'm paying THEM and I think they should care just a little bit more.
On the brighter side of things, yesterday was a great day. Jess and I cooked chicken fajitas and made guacamole and salsa from scratch. It turned out to be a pretty decent meal with plenty of salsa and guac left over. We played some Scrabble and talked and just enjoyed each other's company like we often do on a Friday night. She seriously is one in a million, my rock, my source of reason and strength. Talking about our future both individual and ours together gave me feelings of excitement. She's found a place that is looking for an apprentice like person to work with in an archive, which is exactly what she wants to be doing later on down the road. I am so excited both for her and for myself thinking that in a very short amount of time I'll finally be out on my own and teaching-doing what I love 5 days a week.
As I sit here waiting for my lunch to be delivered and an answer on if I get an extra 8 hours pay this coming week, I can't help but think about my Dad. Working at O'Hare he often gets asked to stay for overtime digging signs out of the snow on the taxiways. I worry about him every time he's on the airfield, taxiway or not. Hell I worry about him every time he's out there regardless. Even though currently he's in the terminal working, operating a lift and getting in and out of tight spaces can be just as dangerous as any place else, and 16 hours of work most of which is in the cold and never ending snow has gotta suck big time. Sure over time is always great and appreciated but still, it's gotta suck. This time though he won't have to drive anyone home in the blizzard-which was my bad last time.
end of line.
One of my favorite places to eat has closed their doors for good. La Bahia was a restaurant literally right next door to the office I work in and on December 28th they closed. I just found out about this today holding off my lunch until 2 when they were supposed to open for Saturday business. This is a sad day for sure, their food was incredibly delicious. :(
One more week and still no word from any of my doctors, which is causing me to have shaky faith at the moment. On the one hand I feel like they are holding out on me because the news is so bad they don't want to break it to me. On the other hand there's still that little part of me that feels like they know what's going on and it's not that big a deal so they're putting off calling me. Either way I just want some answers, please. I'm starting to go stir crazy not knowing what exactly is going on with my liver and the rest of me, the prednisone is becoming tiresome to say the least, and my crohns is starting to flare up for the first time in 2 months. I am so sick of my body, as I'm sure the rest of us with chronic illness or any illness are at some point. I'm amazed the human race has survived this long just based on the fact the human body is so flawed and so inefficient. Let's exclude the needless wars, massacres, genocides, crusades and all other forms of self annihilation we've undertaken over the centuries. Focusing in on just the human body itself I have to wonder how it even functions at all. If you think about it everything, absolutely every, at some point passes through your digestive tract. The place where you absorb nutrients to fuel the rest of your body. Your sinuses are allowed to fill up with snot to the point they become impacted. Cancer forms in places and people that should never even have to think about it. The muscles in your body are not all made out of smooth tissue causing them to wear out incredibly quickly. Why not make all of our muscles out of smooth tissue, or partly smooth tissue? We only use what 10% of our total brain? Seriously? I just don't see how something so flawed and so poorly designed can function at all.
I apologize for all the negativity today but in my defense I am freaking out. Why have they not called? Why? You'd think the thousands of dollars they get for seeing me even once would make them care just a little bit more....oh wait. I just want it all to be over already. I want to know what I'm dealing with so I CAN deal with it. I don't think it's too much to ask. Have I called them? No, I haven't. Every time I've decided to something else has come up and my mind has strayed from it. So yes, some of this is my fault and I should be more proactive about it. But at the same time I'm paying THEM and I think they should care just a little bit more.
On the brighter side of things, yesterday was a great day. Jess and I cooked chicken fajitas and made guacamole and salsa from scratch. It turned out to be a pretty decent meal with plenty of salsa and guac left over. We played some Scrabble and talked and just enjoyed each other's company like we often do on a Friday night. She seriously is one in a million, my rock, my source of reason and strength. Talking about our future both individual and ours together gave me feelings of excitement. She's found a place that is looking for an apprentice like person to work with in an archive, which is exactly what she wants to be doing later on down the road. I am so excited both for her and for myself thinking that in a very short amount of time I'll finally be out on my own and teaching-doing what I love 5 days a week.
As I sit here waiting for my lunch to be delivered and an answer on if I get an extra 8 hours pay this coming week, I can't help but think about my Dad. Working at O'Hare he often gets asked to stay for overtime digging signs out of the snow on the taxiways. I worry about him every time he's on the airfield, taxiway or not. Hell I worry about him every time he's out there regardless. Even though currently he's in the terminal working, operating a lift and getting in and out of tight spaces can be just as dangerous as any place else, and 16 hours of work most of which is in the cold and never ending snow has gotta suck big time. Sure over time is always great and appreciated but still, it's gotta suck. This time though he won't have to drive anyone home in the blizzard-which was my bad last time.
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Back to School
These past three weeks have gone by in a blur as time spent doing what I want to do often does. Monday marks the start of J-term, which is not too bad considering I only have one class 4 days a week for 3 hours a day for the next four weeks. I'm taking percussion tech and I've heard it's an awesome class and I am definitely looking forward to it. Being able to see Jessie every day is an amazing thought as well, I do miss having her in my day to day life.
Thankfully this years holiday's and break went by without too much drama, screaming, yelling, cussing, throwing things- basically nothing usual. It was nice to have a quiet and relaxing Christmas (for the most part) and aside from being sick as a dog the past couple of days New Year's eve and day were filled with painting, games with the brother, chats with the dearest and relaxation-which I can never complain about.
Monday after lunch I'm going to start making phone calls and getting to the bottom of my liver problems. I also need to see a GP about these persistent headaches and general congestion that just does not seem to go away no matter what I do. The strongest OTC decongestant I can find does absolutely nothing to tame my sinuses so another doctors appointment aside from my liver/crohns is definitely in the near future. I'm so sick and tired of feeling awful all the time and J-term seems like the ideal time to get the reigns on all of this.
My airbrush continues to be awesome, and the more I use it the better I'm getting at controlling it and making it do what I want. The only downside to moving back to school is having to wait till the weekend to use it-a sacrifice I think I can handle until May :) I started working on painting my laptop and it didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped-so I'm going to strip it down again and start over once I get some more paint. I didn't clear coat it or finish it in any way so the paint rubs off pretty easily. I need to take the keyboard and inside cover apart to get this to work, a task I'm not looking forward to but the finish product should look pretty sweet. I plan on repainting a black base coat and then putting the neon orange over it giving it a carbon-fiber look on the inside around the touch pad and keyboard. The top cover is going to get another coat of base black, with orange carbon fiber around the boarder and in the center I'm not sure quite what I want to do yet. Definitely a mural of some sort-the original plan was to make a lightning bolt streaking across it. Maybe streak lighting across the whole top of the laptop? There is an accent piece that I can't get off that would break the lighting up-hmmm decisions decisions.....
So now I have a question for those of you who are kind enough to read through all my nonsense: How do you tell someone you love, someone that has done wonders for you-she's not only alienated you but your brother as well and makes us both want to never come around again? It's so hard to watch and listen to my brother take flack that is sort of merited but blown way out of proportion. And for me I'm just sick and tired of busting my ass and getting both "you're a wonderful kid and a hard worker" but then getting slapped across the face at the same time. It's confusing, irritating, and getting to the point where I just can't do it anymore-I can't risk the stress with my health and I just straight up don't have time to babysit and deal with someone who should be acting her age. Something is going on emotionally with her, and it's obvious there's a void she is trying to fill, but in doing so she's pushed me, my brother and some others away. So here's my question: do we confront her, do I tell her these things knowing full well it's just going to blow up in my face and become my fault somehow? Or do I just let it ride and walk on eggshells for the next two to three years until I can finally put a ton of distance between me and said person? I just don't know what to do, to be honest. This seems like it may be a simple situation, but I just can't get my head around that right now-I hate when things blow up in my face that I could have prevented. But at the same time I've always been one to just plow through situations, both good and bad, and not hesitate or try to skirt around them...... Ugh I just need to get back in school.
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Thankfully this years holiday's and break went by without too much drama, screaming, yelling, cussing, throwing things- basically nothing usual. It was nice to have a quiet and relaxing Christmas (for the most part) and aside from being sick as a dog the past couple of days New Year's eve and day were filled with painting, games with the brother, chats with the dearest and relaxation-which I can never complain about.
Monday after lunch I'm going to start making phone calls and getting to the bottom of my liver problems. I also need to see a GP about these persistent headaches and general congestion that just does not seem to go away no matter what I do. The strongest OTC decongestant I can find does absolutely nothing to tame my sinuses so another doctors appointment aside from my liver/crohns is definitely in the near future. I'm so sick and tired of feeling awful all the time and J-term seems like the ideal time to get the reigns on all of this.
My airbrush continues to be awesome, and the more I use it the better I'm getting at controlling it and making it do what I want. The only downside to moving back to school is having to wait till the weekend to use it-a sacrifice I think I can handle until May :) I started working on painting my laptop and it didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped-so I'm going to strip it down again and start over once I get some more paint. I didn't clear coat it or finish it in any way so the paint rubs off pretty easily. I need to take the keyboard and inside cover apart to get this to work, a task I'm not looking forward to but the finish product should look pretty sweet. I plan on repainting a black base coat and then putting the neon orange over it giving it a carbon-fiber look on the inside around the touch pad and keyboard. The top cover is going to get another coat of base black, with orange carbon fiber around the boarder and in the center I'm not sure quite what I want to do yet. Definitely a mural of some sort-the original plan was to make a lightning bolt streaking across it. Maybe streak lighting across the whole top of the laptop? There is an accent piece that I can't get off that would break the lighting up-hmmm decisions decisions.....
So now I have a question for those of you who are kind enough to read through all my nonsense: How do you tell someone you love, someone that has done wonders for you-she's not only alienated you but your brother as well and makes us both want to never come around again? It's so hard to watch and listen to my brother take flack that is sort of merited but blown way out of proportion. And for me I'm just sick and tired of busting my ass and getting both "you're a wonderful kid and a hard worker" but then getting slapped across the face at the same time. It's confusing, irritating, and getting to the point where I just can't do it anymore-I can't risk the stress with my health and I just straight up don't have time to babysit and deal with someone who should be acting her age. Something is going on emotionally with her, and it's obvious there's a void she is trying to fill, but in doing so she's pushed me, my brother and some others away. So here's my question: do we confront her, do I tell her these things knowing full well it's just going to blow up in my face and become my fault somehow? Or do I just let it ride and walk on eggshells for the next two to three years until I can finally put a ton of distance between me and said person? I just don't know what to do, to be honest. This seems like it may be a simple situation, but I just can't get my head around that right now-I hate when things blow up in my face that I could have prevented. But at the same time I've always been one to just plow through situations, both good and bad, and not hesitate or try to skirt around them...... Ugh I just need to get back in school.
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