My Little Corner

I left Saturday morning to go to Bossier. It was good to see the family but I am worn out–physically from not getting good sleep and emotionally from the craziness that is my family right now. I drove back to Dallas this morning to make it to a meeting and forgot to call Mom and Dad when I got here. Big oops. My phone was on silent because I was in the meeting so imagine how freaked out they were when they hadn’t heard from me 2 and a half hours after I was supposed to arrive. That adding to already being stressed out and emotionally on empty was not a good combination. Now I’m exhausted all over again just thinking of what I put my parents through for those few hours. Unfortunately I don’t get another weekend to recover from my weekend; I have work to do tonight then school tomorrow–plus we’re having make-up class time from 5:45 to 7:45 tomorrow night. In the words of the Little Engine that Could: I think I can, I think I can!

My granddaddy is in the hospital due to what they think was a mild stroke. He’s in pretty good shape–cognitively knows exactly what’s going on (every time they take his blood pressure he tells them what it was the last time…and he’s right) but his left side is really weak. We’re all doing well; Mom went up on Tuesday night and Dad is leaving tomorrow. It’s still up in the air if I’ll be leaving on Saturday–today was my grandmother’s birthday so we had all been planning on being in Bossier and celebrating. For those of you who read my blog, just say a little prayer for my granddaddy and for my mom; she gets a lot of the responsibilities placed on her and it can be really tough (such as when she asks one of her brothers to stay the night in the hospital so she and Grandmother can sleep at home but then the brother takes his vacation time to go hunting). All in all, for being 91, it’s amazing how great Granddaddy is doing. But prayers always help.

Update time:

School’s going okay. It’s getting closer to the end of the semester so things are starting to get busy. I’m definitely looking forward to Christmas break. This semester has a lot of one certain prof/supervisor and so dealing with her on Monday mornings, all day Wednesdays, and Thursday afternoons can be tiring. Last night Amy and I went to dinner and a movie–my favorite Friday night activities. Today I spoke to a cochlear implant support group about assistive devices; it went well and the people were really nice. Sarah’s out of town this weekend so I ran some errands by myself this afternoon and tonight I’m doing one of my other favorite things–chillin’ and relaxin’ at my apartment.

I’m on my third box of 100 count tissues. Seriously, how much snot can one body produce?! I have not one but two fever blisters inside my nose because I’ve been blowing it so much. Oh and apparently I also have strep. Thank you to the germ-filled children that I work with. Good news: since I’ve been on the antibiotic, my throat hurts less and today when I woke up I didn’t feel completely gross. My head still kinda hurts and I’m still using lots of Kleenex but I think I’m getting better.

Going back to my recent post about being "in between" also applies to getting sick while one is in grad school. Thursday night was spent waking up almost every 2 hours because I couldn’t breathe through my nose. Friday morning I woke up and could breathe but couldn’t swallow because my throat was in so much pain. I thought that I might feel better as the day went on so I went to work and saw my patient and then went to class. Started to feel even worse in class and decided that I wouldn’t be able to make it the rest of the day. I felt like crap and just wanted to curl up in my bed. If I were working, I could just leave and call it a sick day. But I’m in school so I kinda have to go to class to learn and stuff. And I don’t agree with "if you’re well enough to come to class, you’re well enough to see patients." I can sit in class and feel like crap and be able to take notes. I can’t see patients, get close to their faces to look in their ears (cause I wasn’t sure if I were contagious at this point), and explain test results to them when it hurts to talk. So I stick it out and after 3 hours of class, find my afternoon supervisor to let her know I’m sick and I’m going home. I don’t get sick a whole lot and can generally "work through the pain" but I think that when my prof and my supervisor both squish up their faces and say "oh you don’t look good. are you okay?" that validates me going home and sleeping for 5 hours. Which is what I did. I woke up and didn’t feel like crap anymore but my throat was still hurting. I knew if I had stayed home I would have ended up falling asleep again and then not be able to sleep that night so I rode with Lauren out to Forney to watch Rachel’s husband’s band perform at the high school football game. It was fun and I found some cough drops that worked miracles on my throat (until the dissolved). Then we came home and I slept some more. Today I’ve been bouncing back and forth between feeling like crap and feeling okay but with a sore throat; so I’ve been doing laundry and watching season 2 of Veronica Mars and sneezing (which is killer on the throat) and taking Advil and every now and then coughing up some nasty looking stuff. I’m about to attempt to face the world and go to CVS (need more magical cough drops) and am debating on what food sounds good for dinner.