I’ve learned that, even though you might be a quadriplegic, you will still feel miserable after abdominal surgery.

I have learned that I should definitely NOT take a nap before making sure I’ve filled any prescriptions sent home from the hospital for Tom.

I am still aware that sleeping in a hospital sucks. No matter how comfortable they attempt to make the patient and guests feel, sleep is a luxury.

I’ve been told that Tom could still achieve 6 pack abs, if he worked on it. This is something that I didn’t know to be possible after abdominal surgery.

I’ve learned through google that it takes approximately 6 weeks to recover completely from this surgery. Information that might of been useful to know before hand…

I’ve realized that, even though I really do love my job, its much harder to appreciate when dealing with lack of sleep and being overly busy.

I’ve found out that no matter what I pack to bring to the hospital to entertain myself, I rarely am satisfied with my selection and wished I had brought something else.

I’m reminded that doctors don’t care if you’re completely asleep when they come in during rounds. They’ll still talk to you and give you vital information, whether or not you’ll really retain it. The sooner they’ve seen all their patients in the hospital, the sooner they can move on with their busy day at the office.

I’ve learned that once out of ten times smoking a cigarette on a non-smoking hospital campus will result in someone asking you to put out your cigarette. And, if you hide in your van, they don’t bother you.

I’ve noticed that hospital room doors are loud, and feel that should be changed immediately. No nurse can peek her head into your room without making a noise that will jar you awake.

I am not sure that the nurses are aware how quiet their knock on the door is, though. Most of the time, I barely heard them knocking… Give the door a nice hard thunk, would ya?

I’ve found that I have no issue perusing through cabinets and drawers at hospitals if I’m looking for a drinking straw, tape or a wash cloth. And, if there is no door to a room, it must be an all access area, right?

And, lastly, I’m again reminded that hospital pillows suck big butt, and need serious improvement. You’d think with the ability to put a man on the moon, we’d be able to create a hospital pillow that is actually… oh, I dunno, pillow-like?

In some respects, I’m very much a girly girl.

I love a good pair of shoes (although I rarely get to buy any).

I enjoy a nice mani/pedi when I happen to stumble into a surplus of change.

I like good smelly’s, like lotions and sprays and whatnot.

Yet, in other aspects, I’m so not a girly girl.

I can barely put my hair in a ponytail.  Anything more advanced than that, and I’m completely clueless.  Blow drying my hair with a circle brush is near impossible – my hands just don’t know how to do those motions!

I wear make up only on special occasions, or when I’m crazy super bored.  Like, crazy super bored. And, I don’t understand most concepts regarding make up.  If there isn’t a diagram, or a video tutorial, learning it does not compute.

So, with my sister getting engaged, and knowing money doesn’t grow on trees, I’ve decided to try to improve on the girly girl qualities that I’m slacking on.

I bought some hair spray and some mousse.  I don’t know what I do with these items, but they’re now in my arsenal.  Maybe one day I’ll try playing with them.  I’ll make sure to get some before and after pictures (and maybe some during photos too) of that whole event.  I’m positive it’ll be very entertaining.

Today, though, I worked on my eyeshadow skills.  I’m trying to get more comfortable with a multi-color application.

Thankfully, Covergirl has helped girls like me by not only writing clearly on the package that, ‘Hey, this color pallet is perfect for brown eyes’, but there is also a diagram on the back explaining exactly where and how to apply these shades.  If only the rest of make up products had diagrams on the backs of them, I might be good to go!

Anyway – I thought I’d show you my experiment on my eyes.  I know you’re interested.

(PS – Any pointers, positive or negative remarks are appreciated.  I’m learning here!)

more…

I know that a lot of people are struggling financially since the whole economic system sucks right now.  But, we were cutting it close before everything started going downhill for everyone else.  Needless to say, its been hard.  Some months are harder than others.

Sometimes I avoid the phone calls from collectors – they gotta know that caller ID hinders their ability to talk to a real person.  Rarely I answer the calls and basically ask them how to get blood out of a stone.

Sometimes it works out for the better – like my Discover card;  I’ve got a payment plan worked out with their collections department which is a smaller amount than the original monthly bill.  Sometimes, when I do answer the phone, by the time I’m done talking I want to scream.

I know I’m to blame for some of this.  I’ve not been notorious for keeping a beautiful checkbook register… or even keeping a messy checkbook register.  I’m very guilty of relying on my no-where-close-to-perfect checkbook register in my head only, and checking my online banking only once in a while.  Honestly, I used to be pretty good at this game… I rarely had trouble keeping things in the black.  Of course, there used to be a little more money in the account to play with… not oodles, mind you, but enough that a minor miscalculation wouldn’t of pushed me over the edge into the red.

Here recently, I’ve bounced some checks.  Only one was bounced knowingly, sadly.  Most happened because my ‘perfect recall’ of my balance (which is never ‘perfect’, mind you) is less than what is really in the bank – my mind has yet to make the adjustment for the lesser amount of money being deposited, I’ve decided.  Whether or not that is true doesn’t matter to me.

Why did I allow myself to go through this mess for several months before finally breaking out a brand new check register, literally just yesterday, and recommit myself to doing banking the old fashion way… that has worked for most people for eons now.

I’m making sure to collect my receipts from my debit card, and transferring them into my register.  Okay, okay… I’ve only done it once.  But, I’ve only used my debit card once since I’ve turned over this new leaf.

I’m ready to start taking charge of my financial life again.  I’m ready to make sure I know where I’m at every moment of every day with my money.  I’m ready to see the scary numbers dwindle downward, and wait (hopefully somewhat patiently) to see the numbers go up again.

I’m ready to have my phone stop ringing, and not because its been disconnected.

It’ll take a little time to get completely caught up.  Hopefully with my tax return, which is not very big at all, I’ll be able to turn the corner.

If not, I’ll keep chugging away at it.  Its not like the amount of money that is owed just disappears, yanno.  Sadly.

The ceiling fan in our bedroom broke not too long ago.

This was frustrating on several levels.  One being that the ceiling fan was fairly new.  Secondly, the fan is remote controlled.

Remote controls = easier life for Tom and Sheila.

With the remote, Tom can turn the fan on and off throughout the time he’s in bed and regulate his own temperature level.  Mucho easier than having to make Sheila get up several times through the night to adjust the fan levels.

Anyhow – at first we thought maybe just the battery in the remote had died.  So, I went to the grocery store to buy a battery.  But, of course its some crazy type of battery that not just any grocery store would carry… So, I have to stop by another store to find the flipping battery.  Go figure, when I get home and install the new battery, that doesn’t fix the fan.

No.  That would of been waaaay to easy.

So, we sit back and stare at the fan.  I google the fan to see if it has any known issues, with no real luck.  We contemplate the next step.

And we think, and we think… we don’t have the money to replace the fan.  We don’t have the funds to buy any replacement parts.  We don’t even know what to look at to see if it needs to be replaced.

Finally, Tom and I ask TNR to check out the fan and see if he notices any issues with it.  He looks it up and down, without taking it apart, and doesn’t see anything noticeably wrong with it.

He stares at it, and stares at it.  Tom stares.  I stare.

TNR walks over to the wall, and flips the light switch to the ‘on’ position.

Uhm.

Yeah.

Amazingly, the fan works now.  Someone had turned the switch off.  I don’t know who did it… since the fan is worked by remote, we never flip the switch anymore.

Go figure, huh?  We all felt incredibly stupid to the fact that none of us thought to check the switch sooner.

But, at least it was a cheap fix!

I’ve been thinking about how to describe SCI difficulties with bowels without becoming too graphic.  Honestly, I don’t know if there’s a way.  I personally don’t have a problem with being graphic to explain these details.  Yet, I feel that Tom would… and, truly, I wouldn’t blame him at the least.

That being said, I don’t believe I’ll go into the ‘step by step’ regarding bowel issues with a SCI.  I’ll just say that there is a routine involving a suppository that must be kept in order to avoid accidents.

The process that Tom and I go through has been nicknamed ‘Red Circle Night’ because I mark the scheduled days on the calendar with a red circle.  We also call it ‘Program’.

The act of ‘Red Circle Night’ is not enjoyable for Tom in any way.  He hates it.  With all of his being.  Actually, I don’t like it either.

I recall when Tom was in rehab down in Columbia, when the need came about for me to learn how to manage Tom’s program, I literally cried.  I was so upset that I was going to have to take on this task, knowing that Tom’s (and my) dignity was going to have to be set aside during these time periods.

Tom’s program lasts two hours on the nights we have it scheduled.  Its not a hands on process throughout those two hours.  Its a lot of timed intervals, watching the clock, and waiting.

We’ve just decided to change our previous schedule.  We used to do this process every third night.  Now we’ve decided to give a set schedule of Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday a whirl and see how it works out.

Not that you’re super interested, but I’ll keep you posted.

Not being a quadriplegic, I can’t honestly say, but I would assume the worst part of a spinal cord injury would be the lack of bowel and bladder control.

I feel that if these two functions could be returned to those with a SCI, their quality of life would increase dramatically.

Without going into too many details, for Tom’s privacy, I will say that these two functions basically control his life.

Lets touch on bladder issues today. (Not that we’ve had any major bladder issues recently, mind you.)

We’ve been through multiple catheter issues, some that actually involve having to make a trip to the ER.  I don’t blame those in the medical community for thinking that we’re crazy when we call an ambulance if Tom’s catheter isn’t working correctly.  Very few people realize that, although the catheter issue itself isn’t life threatening, the reactions that Tom’s body has to the catheter not functioning could be very harmful.

Autonomic Dysreflexia, or AD, is something that most quadriplegics hope they never encounter.  The quick and simple analogy I use to explain AD is something like this:

Ya know when ya stub your toe, and it hurts?  When stubbing your toe, a signal goes up your leg, through the spinal cord, to your brain.  Your brain says, ‘way to go, slick, and cuz you’re stupid enough to stub your toe, I’m gunna send this signal back down there to make you realize you’re an idiot’.  When the signal goes back down to your toe, it quickly stops off at the heart and tells it to pump harder to get blood down to the stubbed toe – cuz as far as it knows, the toe has been cut off and it needs to heal pronto.  The signal finishes its trip down to the toe and you holler out in pain.  The blood makes it down to the toe, realizes it doesn’t really need to get there so quickly, and slows back down to normal.

Tom’s spinal cord is damaged, remember?  So, if Tom stubs his toe, the message makes it to his brain, but the message is in German and Tom’s brain doesn’t understand German.  Tom’s brain kinda freaks out.  It knows from the urgency of the German speak that there is a problem, but the brain isn’t quite sure where its at… or how bad it is.  So, the brain sends out messages to several areas below Tom’s injury level, hoping that it finds the spot that the German toe was trying to address.  The signal stops at the heart also, and tells the heart to get beating cuz there’s a problem somewhere.  Heart rate goes up.  Blood pressure goes up.  As soon as the signal finally gets to the toe, the brain reacts and slows down the heart again – since the toe isn’t missing or anything. Problem eventually solved.

Now, imagine your full bladder. You know, the one where you dance around until you get to the bathroom? Now, imagine the line to the bathroom is soooo long that you’re just not gunna be able to make it there. But, there is no other option available to relieve yourself. You’re miserable, right? If you hold it in too long, your blood pressure will actually rise because its trying to clue your body in, telling it that there’s a biiiig problem and you need to fix it now.

If Tom’s biiiiig problem doesn’t get fixed promptly, his blood pressure rises too. But, Tom’s blood pressure doesn’t have the same ‘mellow out’ switch that our bodies have – its been damaged from the SCI. Until whatever the situation is that made Tom’s blood pressure rise is resolved, his BP can continue to rise.

It is plausible to have a heart attack or stroke from high blood pressure.

Do you see the crazy issue here?

If Tom’s catheter is messed up so badly that we have to go to the ER, we are going because the situation needs to be resolved as quickly as possible so Tom’s blood pressure doesn’t start shooting through the roof, putting him at risk for a stroke or heart attack. All this could happen just because he couldn’t tinkle… strange, huh?

Tomorrow – we’ll attempt a socially acceptable post regarding bowels…

I gotta lot of crap.

Tons, I tell you.

Can I get rid of any of it?

No. (That’s the simple answer.)

So, I finally thought of an idea to help create a little extra space in my tiny little world.

Okay, I didn’t think up the idea. Otherwise, I’d be a millionaire. No, instead, I helped the inventor become a millionaire by buying this:

vacuum bag sucker thingee that makes things smaller to store

to make these easier to store:

heavy thick blankets that we love but take up too much room

and these too:

even more blankets, cuz we need 132091238 of them

So, you gotta cram your blankets into the bags, and then ya gotta find the hole, like so:

the hole to suck out all the air in the bag

And, then this happens:

you are now witnessing the sucking action

Finally, it ends up like this:

airless sucked bags - mucho smaller-o

Which, makes Sheila’s small little world a little more spacier. Okay, notsomuch. But, it did help with some of the storage issues I was having.

Final product?

130123098123 sucked up blankets

Now I wanna put everything into vacuum bags and suck all the air out!! Its entertaining, I promise you!

PS – Sponsored post? Really? Not at all. Not enough people read this blog for someone to pay me to post about this crap!