Joooooseph

His name is to be pronounced with an extended 'O' and an Irish accent, Far and Away style. This baby was the opposite of his sister from the moment he was birthed in that he plays happily by himself, you don't even have to look at him to make him smile, and I heard him fuss maybe a combined total of thirty minutes during the entire ten days I spent with him. Corinne snapped these pictures when he and I serendipitously were dressed in perfectly coordinating outfits.







"Don't throw up!"


Lots more to come.

Ada Sandwich

I'm back from my Idaho trip and I'm a little daunted by the amount of catching up I have to do. My niece Ada's 3rd birthday was on my last day there, though, and Corinne's waiting to see the pictures I took, so I figured that would be the best place to start.

Don't let that face fool you. This kid is Corinne's payback for her own willful, volatile childhood. My mom calls her a 'tempest in a teapot,' but I wasn't feeling so generous when I told Ada during a particularly long, loud, and inescapable car-tantrum that she had caused my uterus to shrivel up, turn to ash, and blow out the window.

Fortunately, the fitful:happy ratio with Ada is about 20:80, and when she's not throwing dirt in her mom's face during a meltdown she is pure, enchanting, incandescent joy. I flew out of Idaho Falls early yesterday morning and went straight to work from the airport, so it wasn't until last night that I was finally able to plug in my memory card and iPhone and reminisce and smile and laugh and make Jon admire every picture and video, and it was JUST like that thing where you give birth then you forget the pain because MY HEAVENS that is a beautiful child.

For the record, this happened after the car-tantrum and my uterus regenerated:

Happy birthday you wonderful, passionate, beautiful, contrary, radiant little 3-year-old typhoon. Miss you already.

DUMP

The best news is that I'm flying to Idaho on Friday for over a week! The second best news is that I'm done wearing my heart monitor!! I pulled the last sticky patches off tonight (still nursing the resulting wounds) and packed the whole thing up in a box to mail back. I'm unfettered, unshackled, FREE!!  I won't know until my follow-up appointment after my trip whether or not the doctor got the info he needs, but I had a couple of little episodes near the end so I'm hopeful.

Anyway, I figured if I didn't dump all my screenshots and pictures before I go to Idaho, they might never make it onto the blog. Sad but true. Okay go.

I wish I'd thought of this in time for the original post, but I didn't:

Jon drew this and it made me laugh:

Me = Green, Jon = White

 

I do not know this dog. But this picture makes me indescribably happy and I couldn't even really tell you why:

THERE WAS A HABOOB. That's a fancy, foreign word for a disgusting dust storm. 

Looking South

Looking North

Next, a bunch of pictures and a video of my dog.

Sooooooooo sleeeeeepyyyyy

You can spare 15 seconds for this video of Penny slipping and falling into the pool:

Last, a picture of her leaping into the water:

............kthxbai.

ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!111

Your heart is at risk of spontaneously combusting. One of Jon's Facebook friends, Lindsay Peterson, posted a bunch of pictures of the fawn and baby raccoon she's raising (!!!) on her farm in Welling, Alberta, and she gave me permission to share the joy. WAIT TIL YOU SEE THE LAST ONE.

It's as Easy as 1, 2, 3

It is very simple. Quit making cakes like this:

and creating snacks like this:

and throwing birthday parties like this:

source

(I should clarify that if you are crafty, or a baker, and you truly derive great joy out of spending hours painstakingly creating Hello Kitty cake pops that will be eaten in a single bite, then that's awesome and I'm glad you have an outlet. It doesn't make you a better mom than anyone else, but if you love it, great. But do not ever complain that you are stressed over getting the decorations ready in time for Mayzleigh's first birthday party if it resembles the above extravaganza in even the smallest way, or indicate a desire to simplify your life whilst crafting your child's snack into a scene from Beauty and the Beast. And above all, don't do it just so you can take a picture to display online. It seems like before the one-upmanship platform of mommy blogs came along, a whole lot fewer kids were getting three-tiered ombre fondant cakes for their birthdays, is what I'm saying. I'm not a mom yet, but I'm taking an early stand against making my life unnecessarily complicated for online bragging rights. That's all.)

kthxbai :)

SLC Moms Talk Baby Names with Hilariously Awful Results

One of my Twitter followers, @squeegeebecks, sent me a link to this Facebook page for a community of moms in Salt Lake City. She thought I'd be interested in the discussions on their timeline about favorite baby names AND SHE WAS RIGHT. Don't you even worry about it, I read all 400 some odd replies to find the best (read: worst) ones. I obviously filtered out the hundreds of Tambrees and Kaysons and went straight for the repugnantly bad.

Monsy!!!! I hope I don't need to tell any of my readers why that's a shockingly dreadful name. Think anatomically.

(This is the same woman above with a daughter named Cabella Hunter.) 

 (Holding out hope that this is a joke, but the woman above is naming her baby Riot, so....who knows.)

And finally someone speaking some sense:

Ultimate Awkward Family Photo

Yikes. So Jon's sister Caylee was taking pictures of Jon's other sister Kelsey's family, and this happened :\

The flag on the back really completes it, you know?

Fun with Proboscises

When cornbread muffins go delightfully wrong:

 

 

Sacking the Tach: Part 3 of ?

This series is still ongoing, because my heart isn't fixed yet. You know that thing where your car is making a weird noise, but as soon as you bring it to the mechanic, it quits? That was basically what happened to me. The doctor was unable to force my heart into a prolonged tach attack while I was on the table despite shooting adrenaline into it for three hours, so he wasn't able to definitively pinpoint exactly where the issue is. Apparently this happens to 20% of patients - information that would have been useful to me three days ago. As it was, I didn't even know that was a possibility and subsequently spent the next hour crying, the tears running down the sides of my face and pooling in my ears. Now I'm back to wearing the dreaded monitor. The doctor narrowed the issue down enough that he's confident he can work off the information provided by the monitor if I have a long enough episode in the next couple of weeks. He also supplied me with hypoallergenic sticky pads since the entire operating staff collectively gasped and jumped backwards when they saw the rashes, blisters, and scabs all over my abdomen.

The good news is that I met my out-of-pocket insurance maximum for the year, so the next time I have it done, it'll be free. If we can catch a definitive episode on my monitor, I can be back on the table in a matter of weeks.

Now! The fun part. Documenting the entire process. I'm mostly doing this for the benefit of strangers who are scouring the internet for blog posts detailing personal experiences with cardiac catheter ablation (I certainly scoured).

We arrived at the hospital at 10:30, even though my procedure wasn't until 2. The doctor ordered an echocardiogram to take place that morning to ensure that there wasn't an underlying issue. My mom and I checked in and made ourselves comfy in the waiting room while Jon handled the parking of the Jeep. Long story short, he locked the keys in the car and missed my echo whilst dealing with the repercussions. Jon never does stuff like that, so I knew he was really apprehensive about the procedure. I was feeling shockingly calm, so thanks to everyone who prayed or sent good vibes my way. The majority of the day, I was mostly worried about A) witnessing someone throw up (people are always doing that in hospitals) and B) whether or not the dog sitter would remember to lock the door after she fed Penny. The true fear didn't set in until I was actually on the operating table, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The echocardiogram (ultrasound) was SO COOL. I saw every chamber of my heart and every valve. I was fascinated. The ultrasound tech was a little jabby in a tender place and just when I was starting to feel nauseated, she mercifully moved the handpiece all the way down to my abdomen. I asked if she was looking at my "second heart", and she didn't catch the humor. ("Oh, well, some of our organs come in pairs, like the kidneys and the lungs, but we only have one heart. One heart and one brain.") I wanted to take a picture of the screen with my phone so you guys could see it, but she wasn't sure if that was allowed.

From the echo, we went to the outpatient waiting area. The email from the scheduler had said, "After the  echo, you'll be prepped for your ablation at 2 PM" so we weren't exactly sure if my ablation was at two, or if I'd be prepped at two. We settled in for a long wait, but after only about ten minutes my name was called.

I went back into the prep area by myself. It was a large space with probably ten "rooms" sectioned off by curtains. I had to give a pee sample, which no one told me about beforehand (luckily I didn't have time to seek out a bathroom while I was in the outpatient waiting room), then I changed into my gown. A nurse took about eight vials of blood for testing and when she was done and I finally peeped over, my IV was in! I had no idea. At some point she also ran an EKG.

Jon and my mom were allowed back at that point. We chatted for I guess about an hour. I'd caught glimpses of my doctor in the hallway throughout the day, but when he walked into the prep room my stomach started to tighten. My turn.

He went over the risks of the procedure, blah blah blah, here's Frank, he'll be taking you back. Frank!! Frank was the best. After the doctor walked out, Frank reiterated some of the more important points, told Jon and my mom that he'd be coming out every hour or so to keep them posted, and said that once they find the problem area, they'll "burn the hell out of it"!!!!!!!! It caused me more joy than you can even imagine - that was what I'd written, word for word, in my first Sacking the Tach blog post. I love Frank.

He wheeled me back and let Jon and my mom peep into the operating room ("cath lab"). We all hugged (well, not Frank), and they left.

Everything started happening really fast once I was in there. Introductions, moving me to the table, putting huge sticky pads all over my front and back, giving me oxygen, binding my wrists, putting the blood pressure cuff on (it measured every five minutes during the procedure). The room was so freezing cold and I was so nervous and feeling out of control that I started shaking violently. They brought me heating pads for my chest and legs which helped a lot, but my teeth were chattering during the procedure. Frank gave me the first round of sedative, and they got to work numbing my poor groin.

I was more awake than I thought I'd be. I was aware of everything around me. An assistant gave me so many numbing shots that I asked how many more there were. I remember the doctor explaining he was putting the catheter IV into my vein. A few minutes later, I suspected from the motion of his hands that he was threading the wires in, so I asked if that's what he was doing. Yep. About a minute later, I was stabbed from the inside of my vein somewhere inside my abdomen when one of the wires veered off course and I about jolted right off the table. That was the worst part of the entire thing. The doctor apologized profusely, and after that I didn't feel any more pains. But I doubt I'll ever forget that feeling. If I think about it too long, it makes me sick to my stomach.

I gave in to the sedative at that point, though like I said, I was always aware of where I was. Sometimes I'd close my eyes and dream, but I was dreaming about what was happening at that moment. When I became interested in what was going on, I'd just open my eyes and be totally alert. My heart raced and raced, revving like an engine. I chattered myself awake once, and at one point the doctor asked me to hold still - I guess I kept turning my head to watch the screen as they did the electrophysiology study.

After three hours of trying to force a tach attack with adrenaline, the doctor called it quits. They pulled the wires out and put pressure on my leg for a while before taping it up and transferring me from the operating table to the gurney. Frank, sweet Frank, wheeled me to the recovery area, collecting Jon and my mom along the way. She sponged the tears out of my ears. Frank asked me what I wanted to eat - my first food in 20 hours. My mom fed me, since I had to lay completely still for three hours after the procedure. I wasn't even allowed to lift my head. Someone came in every fifteen minutes to check my bandage.

Eventually I was moved to a private room WITH A TV. Once the three hours were up, a nurse came in to help me to stand. She started with me wiggling my feet for a few minutes, then bringing my knees up. My right leg was completely dead, so it was a while before I could swing my legs over the side and sit. Once I felt okay sitting, the nurse encouraged me to stand. As I labored to my feet, she said, "Let me know immediately if you feel a 'pop' or if whaa whaa whaaaa" she lost me at 'pop.' All the blood rushing to my puncture wound, my groin throbbing, and the idea of my vein popping....I very nearly threw up. That was the second worst part of the entire experience (after the vein stab). I ended up back in bed for a while longer before I was ready to attempt it again.

We came home that night and I've been camping on our mattress, strategically placed in the living room, ever since. For the first half of the day yesterday I mostly just slept (my heart did a lot of work on Friday!!) and occasionally hobbled to the bathroom. After 24 hours, I was allowed to take the bandage off. A puncture wound, seven needle marks from the anesthetic, a small bruise, and what looks like a couple of burns were all I had to show for my ridiculously gimpy walk. IT'S A SENSITIVE AREA, OKAY?? Today, though, I feel tons better and we even went to dinner at my aunt's house. I'm planning on going to work tomorrow.

I think my body tolerated it all pretty well. From how I understand it, the EP study is the hardest, most tiring part, and all I needed was a good night's sleep and a long nap afterwards. All in all, the procedure AND the recovery weren't nearly as bad as I was expecting. I'll definitely be less terrified next time.

kthxbai

------------------------------
See also:
Part 1 of ?
Part 2 of ?
Part 4 of ?
Part 5 of FIVE!!!
Hearpdate
Stuff I Distinctly Remember Saying During the Operation
The last post about my heart (I promise this time)

See you on the other side

No time to blog properly because my mom's here. Tomorrow's the big day. I'm sure I won't be blogging for a bit, but follow along on my Twitter if you're into that sort of thing.

Thanks for the well wishes! 

Sacking the Tach: Part 2 of ?

Oh, this? This thing bulging under my shirt? Just a heart monitor. Don’t mind those wires, usually they’re tucked down my pants but they must have worked their way out somehow. Yes, that’s a neck strap that says “LifeWatch” on BOTH SIDES. Sometimes I wear the monitor on an extra sticky patch stuck to my abdomen instead of on the telltale neck strap, but I don’t really like doing that ever since the leads started to do THIS to me(!!!!):

:(

PS -The first TACH ATTACK!! I’ve had since wearing the monitor was yesterday, right when my friend was showing me a picture of the cupcakes topped with giant chocolate penises that she made for a bachelorette party. We laughed for an hour. Of all the moments to have heart palpitations...

------------------

See also:
Part 1 of ?
Part 3 of ?
Part 4 of ?
Part 5 of FIVE!!!
Hearpdate
Stuff I Distinctly Remember Saying During the Operation
The last post about my heart (I promise this time)

Sacking the Tach: Part 1 of ?

The short story: My nice doctor will be making my heart go from this:

To this:

on Friday, June 29th.



The long story: I developed and was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia six years ago. Doctors call it SVT for short, but I call it super-tacky because it’s more fun. It’s an arrhythmia that causes my heart to misbehave. Most often, I experience a sustained racing or irregular heart rate that comes and goes as quickly as flipping a light switch, but sometimes it feels like my heart does a split-second backflip. Other times it feels like my heart quit beating until I check my pulse and feel a faint, rapid fluttering. I got so used to it that it started to feel normal – that it seemed weird when I’d go a few weeks without having one. Sidenote- would you believe that I only JUST YESTERDAY invented the perfect expression for these episodes?? TACH ATTACK! As in, “I’m having a tach attack!” Now I only get a couple weeks’ use out of it :( Anyway, I could always control the tach attacks by using these little maneuvers my doctor taught me – either pushing on my eyeball or massaging my carotid artery. (There’s a third technique, too, which requires you to “bear down as though pushing out a BM,” but I, obviously, wasn’t a fan of that one.)

In the last several months, though, things with my heart have become less predictable. A few weeks ago I had a racing heart episode that lasted more than an hour, despite all my maneuvers (yes…ALL). I’ve suddenly blacked out and ended up on the floor twice (once in public!), and had an incident in a movie theater where I started to black out before my heart even started to skippety skip. I didn’t end up on the floor that time (sweet tender mercy - think of the years-old gummy soda spills), but I was sufficiently freaked out. What if that happened while I was driving?? If I know one thing for sure, it’s that no one wants to be that guy that plows his car through a farmer’s market.

It took about an hour of Google searching to even figure out what type of doctor I needed to see. Super-tacky is caused by a rogue electrical pathway in the heart – the atria and ventricles communicate with each other through electrical impulses but sometimes there’s a connection where one shouldn’t be. That’s where TACH ATTACK!!s come from – a misfired electrical current from one part of the heart to another. Subsequently, I made an appointment with a cardiac electrophysiologist and last Friday was my first appointment.

I was so nervous OH MY GOSH I WAS SO NERVOUS!!! I learned, on WebMD six years ago, about an operation (I’ma call it a ‘procedure’ from here on out) they can do to fix it and I’ve been living in fear of that thing ever since. I knew deep down that when I told my doctor about these incidents where I blacked out that he would schedule me for this procedure. And he did.

Before I explain what will be done, though, just know that I am so, so, so thankful that he went this route instead of the other options. As nervous as I am for the procedure, worse outcomes would be A) going on medication for the rest of my life, or B) having a pacemaker put in. Instead, I’ll be getting what’s called an “ablation” which is a cure, not just a treatment, and is 90% successful. It’s safe with minimal risks and my doctor does them all the time. I’ll only spend one night in the hospital and since I’m having it done on a Friday, I should be good to go back to work the following Monday or Tuesday. But just thinking about what he’ll do makes me go all shaky and queasy.

They’ll make incisions on both sides of my groin and feed ….I don’t even know, lasers? all the way up my femoral vein into my heart. Then they use electrical impulses to force my heart into a TACH ATTACK!! so that they can map where the arrhythmia is coming from and burn the hell out of the problem area (you’re allowed to swear when preparing for your heart to be burned). I actually didn’t realize until a couple of days ago that they literally cauterized it, I just thought that they used electricity to gently redirect it. Silly me. I’ll be lightly sedated for all of it – they don’t like people to be in too deep of a sleep or else the heart doesn’t react to the electrical impulses, and then they can’t map the issue, and then they just sliced up your femoral vein and fed lasers into your heart for nothing.

So that’s what’s going down in two weeks. My mom’s flying in to keep me company/hold my hand, and my excitement to see her almost equals my terror of the impending hospital visit. We’ll watch lots of movies while I convalesce (“Probably not funny movies, though” –my mom).

In conclusion, on Friday my doctor sent me home with a heart monitor. He’s hoping to catch a TACH ATTACK!! before the procedure just to have as much information as possible beforehand. I’ll be wearing it, and baggy clothes to work, for the next two weeks. He instructed me to hook it all up right when I got home, then call the 1-800 number to activate the service. I showered, per instructions, dutifully laid out the manual, snapped the little connectors together, stressed over the exact placement of each sticky patch, then called the number only to be told that I wasn’t in the system because the office forgot to tell them I had it!!!!!!!1 They were closed by then and I’d have to wait until Monday.

This was my reaction, as I angrily pulled the wires and sticky patches off:

See also:
Part 2 of ?
Part 3 of ?
Part 4 of ?
Part 5 of FIVE!!!
Hearpdate
Stuff I Distinctly Remember Saying During the Operation
The last post about my heart (I promise this time)

Texts out of Context: Episode IX

[Brief explanation and all previous installments here.]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell her hello! In her good ear, of course.

Did you add a pickle

Thanks for knowing everything!

Proverbially yes

I’ve decided that my baby is built like a can o beans.

Goin to yobar

You better cause I have nice kneecaps

Omg. Jon’s pants.

Dogs are a ridiculous chore

I’m stumped on that yogurt trivia question…you better give me another clue!

Me neith

Dad called me Anthony in a text and I said at least it wasn’t as bad as Jerry.

Duh! I’ve been looking for girl scouts like a kidnapper lately and I would even accept free dog poo because I love anything free so much. Probably.

I started a random game and sort of panicked when I saw it. It was a wallet.

It is crazy outside.
Penny hates it.
Got hailed on.
It hurt real bad.

Haha gessie.

I did not sleep well and I am all farty and bloated dot com

How’s your job (yob) treating you these days??

That container you brought home smells like a gym bag, woof

Yarp

Exactly. We already call it the dump bathroom. Will improve our marriage.

Is your super-tacky acting up?

Get this – my dad almost wore a tie that had tiny “u’s” and tiny screws on it. He thought it was just a pattern, not that he’d be implying screw you to everyone he talked to. [I know this is 'texts out of context', but this one is exponentially funnier if you know that her dad is an LDS area authority.]

I have not made a real spelling error since nineteen eighty six.

His pants fell down.

[Aaaaaaand my favorite in this installment...]



Why the eff am I getting emails from the church book store

Photo Dump

First up, two things I screenshotted from Facebook:

A picture of my niece Ada with accompanying comment from one of my sister's friends...

And this stranger's reaction to my cousin's status update:

Next, a heads up that when given the option, I will always draw an animal, regardless of point value:

Why aren't you playing me, btw? jessiejensen

Next, a picture I took outside of my aunt's house. THIS CAR IS PARKED!!!!! I've never wanted to leave a "You park like an a-hole" fake ticket under someone's windshield wiper more:

Next, I spent upwards of fifteen minutes yesterday taking still frames from a video of Penny biting water. This is the best one, side by side with an old picture of me getting trashed by a wave for good measure:

Last, this: