Well, I can't blog my married life here! That'd be ridiculous.

I know I've been slacking. But I have been blogging, just not here. Kyle and I set up a joint blog: If we had a marriage, these would be its thoughts. It's already got a few posts on it, but there were some technical issues I needed to get sorted out before I could send everybody over there. Anyway, enjoy!

Disclaimer: there will apparently be a fair amount of nerdiness on the new blog. But Kyle's a nerd, so it's okay. (He likes to post about computer hacks he works out and that sort of thing.) Anyway, feel free to skip those posts if you're not interested—I usually do. ;)

Getting married: it's tricky! (Part Four)

Saturday afternoon, we went back to Cromwell, where we spent the weekend with Kyle's family. We had a good time, and we even got to go to the beach Sunday evening! I got to squidge my toes in the sand, and wade in the water, and just enjoy the beachiness of it all. (I haven't been to a beach in, oh, probably 12 years, so it was way cool.) We walked about forever (several nuffs, anyway), down to the jetty and back to the car. But it was still fun.

And now we're up to today: Monday! The day before the wedding! And it's been at least as crazy as the rest of this trip has been. Kyle, Josh, and I left Kyle's house at 11:15 this morning. First stop: Walmart, in search of one of those big, classy black umbrellas. We wanted one in case it's raining tomorrow (Have I mentioned the weather? It's been raining for weeks here, and it's not shown any signs of stopping.), so we can still do some pictures of Kyle and me under the umbrella. This stop was unsuccessful. The closest we could find was a big black one with rainbow-colored polka dots. I wasn't really feeling it. (Don't worry, Kyle's sister Erin found one later one.)

Second stop: David's Bridal, to pick up my dress. We had planned to pick the dress up just after 11, but we didn't get there until 12:15. I go back to alterations to pick it up, and after giving the girl my receipt, she heads back behind the curtain. I can't understand anything I'm hearing, but the tones of voice are not good. She rushes back out front, then comes back to tell me that my dress hasn't been touched. Yes, I left it with them on Thursday with the understanding that I would pick it up today. Yes, I had paid for it. But no, it's not done. Not at all. But they'll start on it right away. That's cool; this wasn't time-sensitive. Oh wait! Yes it was. We were on our way out of town! To get married! And my dress wasn't ready!! But that's cool. Estimates ranged from 20 minutes to an hour. I went out and told Kyle, and my face must have looked worse than I thought, because he just wrapped me in a hug and said it would be okay. Which, of course, it would. But I was severely annoyed. And hungry, so we went to McDonald's for lunch. And when we got back, it was ready to go. So really, it didn't end up being a huge deal. But it sure stressed me out for a bit there.

Third stop: Belmont Town Hall, to pick up the marriage license. This time, things were okay, direction-wise. We'd borrowed Kyle's parents' power inverter, so things were charged. Of course, there were still the rain and the psycho intersections to deal with, but it wasn't too bad. Except the part where we almost died, which was less than awesome. This intersection had a straight only lane and a straight/right turn lane. We were in the straight/right turn lane, intending to go straight through the intersection. (It was actually one of those screwy intersections, so "straight" was really "leftish," but yeah.) Well, mid-intersection, a car to our left decided it needed to turn right. This would have put that car squarely into our side, but Kyle saved us with some evasive maneuvering. This rattled us all a bit, but we eventually got to the Town Hall. We walked in, and the lady came up with our application saying that there was a question and she had tried to call us. At this point, my heart almost stopped. I mean, really. Could nothing go right for us? But it was only a tiny thing (she wanted to verify the unusual spelling of Kyle's mom's name), and we were good to go. We exited the building, license in hand, feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

I think it's right around this point that Kyle hypothesized that the powers that be are not trying to actually derail or ruin the wedding; they merely want us both stressed to breaking point. Or just shy of it. If that's the case, they're doing a pretty good job.

I don't think anything else not-quite-catastrophic happened today. We got to the hotel that Kyle and his family are staying at tonight (also where the luncheon is tomorrow) and got him and Josh settled in. After Kyle's family arrived, we all headed over to a delightful little candy shop nearby for some fun. Kyle and I didn't buy anything (we weren't really feeling the sweets at that point), but we may well return tomorrow after the luncheon. After that, we came back to my family's hotel for dinner and such (they're separated by about 25 minutes). We finally settled on Chinese for dinner, followed by Cold Stone for dessert. Kyle got some finishing touches put on his thesis, and he and Josh headed back to their hotel. I should already be in bed, but I've been doing my nails and such. I think it's finally time, though. So g'night y'all; next time you hear from me, I'll be married!

Getting married: it's tricky! (Part Three Point Five)

I can't believe I forgot: Friday night, the fire alarms went off in our hotel. (The Johnsons and Dickersons were both at the same hotel, but on different floors.) I was awakened by this horrible screeching at 2:30 am, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. I went out of my room and found my parents, and we decided that yes, we really were going to evacuate the building. (Not that we really had a choice: the noise was awful!) We threw on some clothes and went down the hall to the other suite, which was housing my brothers and Jenny. We rousted them (Colton, who's going to be a firefighter, required special treatment: I stood there smacking him on the leg and telling him to get up for several minutes before he woke up--not sure how this is gonna work out for his career...) and headed downstairs and out of the building.

Once outside, I called Kyle (it was a big building, and I didn't know which side he and his parents had ended up on). I was greeted with a very groggy "Hello?". "Are you outside yet?" "No. [pause] Is that the fire alarm?" I laughed. "Yes. Yes it is. That horrible screeching noise that has most of us in pain, and those super-bright flashing lights are, in fact, the fire alarm. Get dressed and come outside." I couldn't believe he was sleeping through it. Granted, he was very tired. But still. Apparently, I'm going to be in charge of getting us out of burning buildings in the future.

(Of course, there wasn't actually a fire, and we were allowed back into the building in half an hour or so.)

Getting married: it's tricky! (Part Three)

We stayed with Kyle's family in Connecticut for a few days, then he and I drove up to Boston area on Friday. The plan was to stay in Boston Friday night, then head back to CT Saturday afternoon. We had a few small errands to run, but no worries, right?

First on the list: drop my dress off at David's Bridal near Kyle's house. I called a week or two ago to see if they'd be able to take care of my dress: it needed to be steamed, spot cleaned (some parts of the hem got dirty while taking bridals), and a small spot on the front was coming unstitched, so it needed fixing. No big, right? Right. They'll have it ready on Monday when they open at 11 am, perfect for us to pick up on our way back to Boston. Lovely.

Second: apply for a marriage license. Massachussets requires that both parties apply in person, and there's a 3-day waiting period. (This was a large part of the reason we came out here a week in advance.) Now, when we got in the car, we discovered that Kyle's power inverter wouldn't fit up against the cigarette lighter in the car. Sadly, his toy (which has GPS) had a low battery and needed charging. So we figured we'd just leave it off until we got close to Boston, since Kyle knew how to get up to that area. As we got close to Boston, I pulled it out and turned it on. I couldn't get the maps to display, and the GPS wouldn't find us. We finally realized we'd need help, so I called Dad for directions. He looked a route up online for us, but by this time, we were in downtown Boston. Did I mention it was raining? It was pouring. Dad verified that we'd have to turn around, which we eventually managed. Of course, we'd had to pay a toll on the way into Boston, and we now had to pay another one coming out. Dad eventually nagivated us to the Town Hall, but it was insane. Boston has some crazy intersections, and the road we were on wasn't usually labeled (only cross streets). My favorite nutty thing was all the side roads that were named one thing on the left and another on the right. The weather really wasn't helping at all: Dad kept telling us to go north or some such, but it was about noon and totally cloudy. We had no idea what direction anything was. Oh, and I kept losing Dad. But after many u-turns, we eventually made it, and we successfully put in our application. Yay!

We spent most of that evening with my family, which was nice. I hadn't seen any of them since Christmas, so it was really fun to just hang around and talk. Chance and Rachael, I miss you both. But aren't you glad I have this blog, so you can still hear me whine and complain? ;)

Getting married: it's tricky! (Part Two)

Kyle and I flew out of SLC last Wednesday, June 17th. Kyle was going to go to campus that morning to do some work on his thesis, and then his roommate, Aaron, was going to drive us up to the airport. They were to arrive at my house around 11:45 am, so I got up around 10 and promptly drugged myself up. In addition to waking up with a headache, I was sick. As I mentioned briefly in my last post, Kyle had been sick with a bad cold, and I caught it. By this time, he was mostly recovered, but I was just barely hitting the worst of it, so I required both excedrin and sudafed before I felt even remotely human again. Tianna was gracious enough to make me some breakfast, which helped a lot.

Fortunately, I was mostly alive by the time Kyle called me at 10:30. He needed the number of a tow company and a ride. His car had started making this horrendous screeching noise after he got onto campus, so he had to have it towed to the dealership (in Orem). So I threw on some clothes and went to get him. We followed the tow truck to the dealership and got the car checked in there, then I drove him back to his house, then drove back to mine. He and Aaron came and got me around 12:15, and we made it to the airport just fine after that. It was a lot of stress, though.

Everything else that day went pretty smoothly. Well, except the painful part. Remember the cold I mentioned? I was miserable, and as doped up on sudafed as I could manage. I couldn't even be excited about flying to Connecticut, I was in such bad shape. A piece of advice: if at all possible, do NOT fly when you have a bad head cold. I didn't have any problem at all until the descent, when I experienced stabbing pains in my sinuses. It was horrible: I was in tears, and extremely grateful to have Kyle next to me. During the descent to Chicago, the pain was at the back of my head, just above my neck. I thought that was bad, but coming into Hartford, it was above my right eye. This was actually much worse, and I was very glad that we were almost done flying. Our luggage arrived intact, though, so I felt like we had successfully crossed some major hurdles.

Getting married: it's tricky! (Part One)

We're going to start this story a few days ago. Travel back in time with me to one week ago, Monday, June 15th. I had one major task for this day: ship my wedding dress to Kyle's parents' house in Connecticut. We figured this would be simpler and safer than trying to get in on the plane with us. I mean, shipping a package is fairly straightforward, yes? Well. I left the house in Orem at 11:00 am, heading to U-Haul in Provo to buy a box. A big one! I waited in line for 20 minutes before even getting any help, but I bought my big box (the largest non-wardrobe box they had) and took it out to the car. Where it wouldn't fit. I will just preface this by saying that I hadn't been sleeping well, and I had a sore throat (which has turned out to just be the cold that Kyle had had, which is what I figured, but I'm still slightly paranoid about sore throats, so it raised my stress level a bit). And I could not get that box into my car. Not in the trunk, not into the back seat. I finally had to actually form it into a box and set it on the passenger's seat, where it blocked my view out the window and the edges rubbed my right arm raw every time I shifted gears.

I made it over to Kyle's lab on campus, though, where he was going to join me for the trip to the post office. Of course, when I got there, there was a minivan blocking the lane, just waiting to pick someone up and not about to move so as to not block traffic. The parking spots were all full anyway, and Kyle now had nowhere to sit in the car. I had started crying in sheer frustration by the time he came out. (Yes, I know it was pathetic. But like I said, I was tired and stressed.) But Kyle managed to get the box fenagled into the car trunk and we headed over to the post office.

When we arrived, we headed inside to actually package the thing. As it turns out, that big dress, even still in the garment bag, folds up into just a tiny bundle. (Okay, maybe not tiny, but waaaay smaller than I had anticipated.) My box was comparatively ginormous. But none of the boxes there at the post office looked big enough in the right directions, so we set about filling in the empty space. I ran over to Kyle's house for the packing supplies remaining from my move to Orem. There was a box of bubble wrap, along with two partial bags of peanuts. I took them back (almost getting killed on my way back into the parking lot), and we managed to fill the rest of the box. We go up to the counter to mail it, and the guy (who was very nice) informed us that there would be an additional charge for it being so large. Also, another additional charge for it being so large and so light at the same time. [sigh] He suggested we cut the box down by an inch to avoid the size charge. Well, I'm standing there and looking at the box that had contained the bubble wrap and wondering if the dress will fit in it. So we get out of line and return to the packing area, where we cut open the box we'd so carefully taped up. And yes, the dress fit basically perfectly into the bubble wrap box. So we packed that box up and returned to the counter.

The charge was now significantly less, and we got it mailed off alright this time. Of course, we now had a large box and a bunch of packing peanuts to stash somewhere...

I finally got back home at 1:30 pm. It took me 2.5 hours to mail that dress. What a nightmare!

Last weekend didn't quite go as planned.

I've been meaning to blog last weekend for...well, since last weekend. Sorry for the delay! I've been busy. :(

I was scheduled to have my bridals taken on Saturday. A good friend of mine was doing them, and although I was not looking forward to having even more pictures taken of me in the least little bit, I was looking forward to seeing her. I had an appointment with my hairstylist that morning, and she was gonna do something with my hair. Tianna and Kyle had both agreed to come along for the photo shoot (I always need people to help me smile, and I'm especially pictured-out lately, so it was very necessary).

Thursday evening, I went by Wilson Diamonds to get my ring re-plated. They do this for free for the first year, and I thought it'd be nice to have the ring all shiny for pictures. Now, from the things that had been said when this process was discussed, both Kyle and I thought this was something they did there in the store while you waited. Not so much. The girl said the earliest she could have it back was Monday. I told her nevermind, I needed to have it on Saturday. Then she said she could get it back by Friday. (Still haven't sorted this time thing out, but whatevs.) So that was fine. She said it'd be ready by 6:00 on Friday, and I hadn't heard from them yet at that time. So I called them, a bit nervous that they didn't actually have it back from the goldsmith. But they did! The girl said I was two down on her list of calls to make. So I was able to go and pick it up without a problem. Phew!

Friday afternoon, I got a phone call from the salon saying that my stylist wasn't going to be in Saturday morning. This confused me, since I'd made the appointment specifically with her. I know her, trust her, and she knows my hair. But it seems that she took a last-minute trip out of town, so I agreed to use a different stylist. This made me rather nervous, but whatever, right? Especially since not only would she be styling it for my bridals, but she'd be cutting it. Well, just a trim really, but still. A strange woman cutting my hair 2.5 weeks before my wedding. I was, as I said, a wee bit nervous.

Also Friday afternoon, Tianna decided to have her baby! This was completely unexpected, but the midwife at her afternoon appointment said her amniotic fluid was low, and she needed to go ahead and have that baby. So she and BJ reported to the hospital Friday evening, and she actually gave birth Saturday night. Needless to say, she wasn't able to go with me Saturday afternoon. (I think she did it on purpose, either to avoid my whining about having my picture taken OR simply because she clearly wants nothing to do with my wedding.) But little Kessa's dang cute, so that almost makes up for it.

Saturday morning, I went to the salon, and the girl who did my hair was great. She trimmed it up nice, then curled it and pulled it back. There was much hairspray involved, since my hair doesn't like to hold a curl. But it looked very nice. Of course, my veil got pinned into it, so I did all the following driving around with a veil in. Which didn't take too long to start pulling and giving me a headache. But I am apparently amazing and managed to get my dress on over my head and by myself without pulling it out. Yep. Amazing.

Kyle and I picked up Jessy and we drove up to Memory Grove Park in SLC (that's where we got engaged, so we thought it'd be cool to do these up there). It was very pretty and Jessy was great, so my only nervousness about these turning out is that I was the subject.

But it really wasn't a tortuous experience; Kyle and Jessy both made it fun and enjoyable. I was really glad they were both there. And that we're not at all concerned about Kyle seeing me in my dress before the wedding, since he's done that twice now.


Tangent: I'm apparently going to be doing my own hair now for the wedding. I called around, but I can't for the life of me find a salon near the temple that wants to do my hair at 7 am. Go figure. It shouldn't be too bad, since I'm going for a very simple do. The tricky part will be that I kinda want my hair curled, and I can't do that. So it looks like I'll spend the next several days learning. Good times.

...

So I'm at work, right? Scanning a book into Kofax (which just means that the software is loading scans from a source folder). Well, it's been running for like 3 hours, so I pull that window back up to check it. Yep, still running. How many pages is that monster, anyway? Let's check the source folder. So I pull up an explorer window and check it out. Now, why on earth is that book sorting to the end of the list? Oh, because instead of being named with just a number like the others, it's got TN- on the front of it. That's just silly. Let's fix it! So I rename the folder. Huh. Now there's an error over on my Kofax window. Something about it can't find the file it's trying to scan. Go figure.

This is when I laugh and wonder why on earth people come to me for help. I'm clearly a doofus.

Inventory

Left hand:

• slices on index and middle fingers, per the previous post
• blood blister on thumb from when I opened the window

Right hand:

• bruise on the back from the inside lip of the washer
• bruise on index finger from when my chair fell on it
  

Left leg:

• cut on shinbone from shaving 4 days ago
  
• cut on ankle from shaving 3 days ago
  

Right leg:

• BIG cut on knee from shaving 3 days ago (it actually required bandaging to stop the bleeding)
  
• BIG cut on shinbone from shaving yesterday (and I was being so dang careful, too!) (and this one also required bandaging, which is just lame)
  

I'm pretty torn up right now, and it's largely from shaving. Normally, this isn't an issue. (Kyle says that if I cut myself bad enough to require stitches, we're gonna have to re-evaluate my technique, but I swear it's not me!) I'm currently blaming the cheap razors I bought in a fit of "I refuse to pay that much for stupid razor blades!" t'other day. Not because I'm not klutzy enough for anything; let's be honest, I am. But how does a person manage to slice up both their shinbones while shaving? It's the flattest, simplest part of the leg!

Honestly, I feel like most people must live life with some sort of force field around them, protecting them from all the minor bumps, hurts, and cuts I suffer on a regular basis. Over the last week or so, though, it seems that my non-functioning force field has gotten angry and is now pulling me toward danger. Not cool, force field.

Good Times

Last night, Kyle and I went to see As You Like It at the Hale Center Theater here in Orem. It's actually just down the street from home, and I'd mentioned a couple of times, driving by, that I love that play. Not dropping hints, I swear; but well, "I am a woman...when I think, I must speak!" Anyway, Kyle surprised me with tickets a couple of weeks ago, and last night was finally the night!

It was nice outside, so we just walked the 2.5 blocks to the theater. This is a very small, in-the-round theater, and our seats were right down front. On the stage, as it were, so we couldn't stretch out our legs for fear of tripping the cast. But it was great to be in such an intimate venue, and the play was wonderfully done. (I'll admit, I haven't actually read this play, but I have seen the movie (I know, I know), and I loved it.) Kyle said it took him a couple of scenes for his brain to switch over to Shakespearean English, but then he enjoyed it, too. Really, it was one of the awesomer things I've done this year. So entertaining. I keep remembering bits of it (like how they rang a little bell to show that characters had fallen in love) and laughing to myself. Brilliant.

Totally Unrelated P.S. I picked up my shower pouf this morning, and it unraveled.

For the record, I CAN cook.

I just made these:
And they're delicious. (They're coffee cake muffins, by the way.)

Summertime Catastrophe

Yesterday, we decided to celebrate the summerness that's come our way, so Tianna, BJ, Kyle, and had a very tasty outdoor dinner of grilled hamburgers (turns out, Kyle's a grillmaster!), corn on the cob, and angel food cake with Cool Whip and strawberries (obviously, I abstained from the strawberries: sick). But it was really nice outside, and we had a lot fun.

I told BJ that if he ate his corn in a spiral, I'd blog it, so here it is:
Now, you're probably all wondering about the catastrophe part. It's like this: Kyle doesn't own a cheese slicer (we were at his house). So I was slicing cheese for the burgers with a real knife and my fingers, which were pressing down on the blade, slipped off the end and got butchered. My left middle finger got the bulk of it with a nasty slice near the fingernail that bled like Charles Dickens. It actually rather freaked me out, 'cuz it was a lot of blood. Also, it really hurt. I finally got it reasonably cleaned up and was heading back out front to Kyle (he was grilling out on the front porch, and I needed his sympathy!) when I realized that the blood I had earlier washed off my index finger wasn't from the middle finger: I cut my index finger, too. Bother. So I headed back in for more cleaning and bandaging. And to take off the original bandage that had soaked completely through (I ended up just wrapping it in a paper towel and holding it tightly until the bleeding mostly stopped, then re-bandaging it).

Later last night, I wanted to change the band-aids and add some Neosporin, but I couldn't get the old band-aids off, as the material had somehow fused with itself and my skin. This was extra unforunate, as every time I pulled the bandage, it pulled on the wound and hurt. Kyle had to cut them off with a pair of scissors. All in all, the injury part of the evening was not fun. But we also played a rousing game of Pandemic, which was cool.

All Better!!!

I just got back from a follow-up appointment with Dr. Gibb (the ENT surgeon). He said everything looks good, and he marked the previous diagnoses "resolved" in my chart! I don't have to go back unless something goes wrong. I'm pretty excited about this.

This doesn't mean I'm actually fully recovered, though. But I'm getting stronger and better all the time! I'm really happy right now. :D

So Dang Tired

I am exhausted. My hands have been cut and scraped to shreds, and my back is killing me. Today was Moving Day, and it about did me in. For me, the emotional ride actually started yesterday. I got up and started working, and everybody and their dog wanted something from me now. Of course, everything that was wanted required the same software, so I could only do one thing at a time. When my computers were working. Which they often weren't. On top of all that work drama, I was needing to spend the day packing, so I was quite stressed.

Please keep in mind that my emotional fortitude has been sapped by 5 days of migraines. Even when I wasn't in pain, my nerves were severely frayed, so when stuff started piling up, I lost it pretty quickly. Not to mention that although I've impressed myself with the level of strength and energy I've recovered, I'm still quite a bit down from pre-hospital levels, as well as not sleeping well all week, so I've been physically tired as well.

But I managed to get a fair amount of packing done yesterday, and Kyle's roommate was kind enough to use his truck to transport my bookcases, desk, and big chair. He even helped bring the 10 boxes of books up the 3 flights of stairs to the condo. (I was pathetically useless when it came to lifting even moderately heavy boxes.)

Anyway, today, I didn't work at all. I still had most of my stuff to pack and move, and I was originally planning on checking out of my house at 4 pm. (Yeah, right. That was pretty quickly moved back to 8:30 pm.) So I get up this morning, and I'm properly daunted by the task ahead of me. But I get going, and it's all moving along fine. Until I take down the curtains in my bedroom to reveal a spider's nest. I ran out to the living room and my computer, shaking violently all the while. I got online and freaked out to Kyle. And Tianna. And a coworker who had made the mistake of trying to encourage me. I couldn't go back in my room, I told them. Not possible. And then I started to hyperventilate. There was just too much to do! I'd already been packing for a couple of hours, and you couldn't even tell. And now my room was off-limits. Annaleise (the coworker) pointed out that I was bigger than a spider. Which was, of course, completely irrelevant, but it was a nice try. She reminded me that I had almost died, but managed to beat that nasty stuff, so a simple spider's nest shouldn't be a problem for me. "Mere spiders," she said, "quake at the sight of the jolly red giant." This actually made me feel marginally better. But what if there were BABIES?!! I couldn't do it. Kyle told me to work in the kitchen; he'd be over soon. Bless him.

Kyle arrived, expecting, apparently, a nest the size of his fist. When he saw the actual nest, about an inch long and a half an inch wide, he laughed. Long and hard. (Mind you, he still didn't wanna touch it, either.) Anyway, while we were in the living room discussing it, I noticed a man in my front yard; somebody from the city. Apparently checking the water meter or some such. Then he came up the driveway to the power box, and Kyle decided he must be checking that meter, too. Then the power switched off. "Why would you do that?!" I screamed. (Not actually at the dude; he was outside. It was directed more toward the universe at large, I think.) Kyle reminded me that I had asked for the utilities to be shut off today. Which was true. I just hadn't expected it to happen at 11 am. So now I had no power and no water. (This very efficiently killed Kyle's plan to just vacuum up the nest (which I had disagreed with anyway, on the grounds that then the nest would just stick up against the filter [shudder]). He managed to find a can of Raid, though, which took care of it.) I'd had bedding in the dryer. I'd planned to put more in the wash, though that plan had been derailed by the spider's nest, as I was gonna put those curtains in, too. I also had dirty dishes I now couldn't wash. And food in the fridge. I couldn't help it; I started to cry again. Not actually sobbing, but tears running down my cheeks. Kyle laughed at me again. Well, first he hugged me and convinced me it was gonna be okay. Then he laughed. (He'll likely deny it, but there was definite chuckling.)

It only took 3 trips out here today (filling up both of our cars each time) to get my stuff here. Towards the end there, daylight became an issue. Rather, its absence. Even though it was still fairly light outside at 8:30 pm, it was quite dark in the house. Fortunately, my manager brought a flashlight when she came to check me out, and she was kind enough to stand there with it while Kyle and I emptied out the fridge. (Yeah, we should've done that during the first load, right after the power was turned off. But we didn't. Result: very soft ice cream. But I think it's all okay. I just hope the pizza rolls haven't been ruined!)

Anyway, I'm totally beat, and I'm going to bed. With any luck, the exhaustion will help me sleep better than I have been doing this week. Oh, but that reminds me! Today's the first day since Saturday that I haven't had a migraine. That made me very happy.

Other thing that makes me unspeakably happy: I will be moving again in two months. (That's not the cool part; moving is lame.) The cool part is that on that occasion, there shall be MOVERS. Who will pack and lift heavy boxes for us! Kyle and I perhaps reminded ourselves of this several times today.

And now, for reals, going to bed. And not setting an alarm. Bwa ha ha...

Surrealism

I realized yesterday that I have been out of the hospital for just over 3 months. Exciting! Can I just point out that my life right now is nothing I would have expected, say, 4 months ago? 4 months ago it was December, and I'd only been dating Kyle for like a month. I had a job, and that was basically my life. Pretty boring. Since then, I've almost died, spent 2 weeks in the hospital, had more of doctors than I can stand, and gotten engaged. I'm moving in with T and BJ this week until I get married in June. Then I'm moving to California! Are we sure this is really my life?

Home Again

The trip back to Provo was pretty humdrum. We got a really late start (actually, we got fairly late starts every day, but we weren't about to set alarms, now, were we?) and didn't leave Mike's until 1:30 pm. So this is a pretty pointless post, since nothing particularly adventurous happened, but I thought I'd put up some more pictures. If nothing else, I had to post one of the weird power towers in Nevada......and some crazy fog......and some cool clouds.
We got home about 3 am local time, so it was a very long trip and we were both exhausted. But we made it, and we're both happy about the way the whole trip went.

Doin' the Touristy Thing

Although we were done house-hunting, Kyle and I decided to stay in California for one more day and go into San Francisco. I'd never been, and it was very fun. There was a lot of stuff we didn't get to do, but we'll get to go back after we move.

One thing I really wanted to do was go to the beach. I've never been to a Pacific coast beach, so I thought it'd be fun. We were directed to Shoreline Park, near Google, but it turned out to be nowhere near the shore. We did drive around the Googleplex, though.

Next stop: the Golden Gate Bridge. This was super cool. We drove across it, and I took tons of pictures with a lot of window glare. The good ones came after we'd reached the other side and got out at the viewpoint:
It was really cold and windy (despite the temperature being in the 90's out in Sunnyvale and Livermore for the last two days), and we were glad we'd left our jackets in the car. We were still in shorts, though, so it was quite chilly. And the wind had a lot of fun with my hair. It was out of control. But we decided to walk back out to the middle of the bridge, which was rather longer than I'd expected.
And by the time we got back again, my hair was...well, see for yourself:It actually only took 10 minutes to brush out, though, which was far less time than I'd expected.

It was really sunny while we were out on the bridge, but as we were getting ready to go back over, there was a bunch of fog rolling in:
We drove down Lombard Street next, which is out-of-control hilly. And down Crooked Street, which we found by accident. It was totally insane, and Kyle's mad at me for not getting a video while he was driving down. But look at this picture:Yeah. It was nuts.

Lessee...we also found Coit Tower, which is basically just a really tall tower overlooking the bay. We didn't go up it, but there was still a good view from its base. And then we headed over to Ghirardelli Square, which I'd never heard of, which Kyle thought was a crime. We saw some trolleys, but didn't ride because, well, it was freezing. That's one of the things on our list to do when we go back. Kyle wanted a hot fudge sundae at the Ghirardelli shop, but it was, again, freezing. So we opted for hot chocolate instead. I got caramel sea salt hot chocolate, and it was quite tasty. Though the salt was a little weird.
After that, we headed back to the house. We grabbed Panda for dinner (had to make sure it still tasted good in California!) and watched a movie before turning in.

Pretty!

We spent Monday looking at the apartment complexes Kyle had found that had good ratings. Unfortunately, neither of them will know their availability for July until the end of May, so we were only able to get as far as filling out applications. If they have room for us, they'll call us. Both places looked quite nice, though, and we decided we'd be happy in either one. Hopefully at least one will have room for us, though, b/c we weren't able to find anything else we liked.

We spent some time both Monday and Tuesday just looking around the area. Kyle had already scouted it out, of course, but I hadn't. Out by Livermore, and especially between Livermore (where Kyle's job is) and the Mountain House area (where we're going to be looking for a house), there are tons of hills. And it's quite green. I really enjoyed the wind turbines. So fun!
Downtown Livermore has a bunch of fun stores and fountains and such. Anybody know what this flower is? It was growing on several trellises, and I really liked it:
There are also bunches of vineyards out there (apparently, Livermore was CA's first wine area), which makes for cool scenery, too:
Oh, and there were tons of wildlfowers growing around the highways (though I didn't get any pics of those). But here's one more picture of the countryside:

Voyage to CA

I already posted some about the trip out to CA, but here's a wee bit more. With pictures!

I found a ghost town labeled on Kyle's map, so we decided to go visit it. Of course, we never found any such thing. We did, however, find a fully operational mine. Wikipedia later explained to us that the old town was covered by the tailings of the new mine. Oh well. Our first hint that this town was no longer ghostie:We, of course, kept going. But we turned around before we got to the guard checkpoint thingie. It was not, however a wasted trip. On our way back to the highway, we passed this most excellent sign:Awesome.

This was my first trip to California, so I had to document my first view of it:It was a lot more tree-y than I had expected. And especially after several hours of Nevada, it was very lush and green-looking. Beautiful. And sunset as we were driving down into the valley was gorgeous:Let's see...we got to Kyle's brother's house at about 10 pm, making actual drive-time about 13 hours. We were exhausted, so we grabbed dinner and then turned in for the night.

Are they high-altitude cows? Do they require more water?

I'm writing this from sunny California, my future home! In case anyone was wondering, Kyle and I made it in just fine. Adventures and pictures from the trip will be forthcoming (just not this morning). We got to Kyle's brother (Mike)'s house about 10:00 pm, then went to In 'N Out for dinner. Very tasty. We came back to the house and I spent the remainder of the evening trying to dodge the webcam Mike has in his living room. I hate cameras! But it's lovely here, all green and gorgeous. And 80 degrees outside!

Things that brought home to me that I was nowhere I was familiar with:

1. Humid air. Kyle turned the a/c to just air and we got a big shot of humidity. I actually coughed and choked a few times (just a little bit) before my body adjusted to breathing wet air.
2. Fog. We saw a big patch of it just off the road, and I was all sorts of thrown by it. I haven't seen fog since we lived in St. Louis, and I was so floored I kept asking really intelligent questions like "Where did it come from?"
3. Palm trees. We came down out of the mountains and around Sacramento during sunset, which was beautiful. But the palm-tree-shaped silhouettes were unexpected.

I won't lie; I freaked out a teeny tiny bit. It really hit me hard that I wasn't just visiting, but moving here, and I don't know this place. It's still unclear how, but Kyle noticed I was upset, and he reminded me that I wasn't going to be moving here alone. That helped a lot.

We've had a bit of a slow start today, but we'll eventually get going and on to the main event: finding somewhere to live in July. Kyle found a few apartment complexes online that we're gonna check out. (The current plan is to rent an apartment for 6 months or so while we find a house. That'll give us more time to get together a down payment and figure out financing and such, as well as finding somewhere we really love.)

Now, however, it's time for a shower. More stories to follow!

Issues

Apparently, I have trust issues. I went in to work last week in Orem and got this error message when I tried to login:I'm sure there's a technical explanation for what that means, but I thought it was hilarious. Seriously? The trust relationship failed?! Awesome.

Anyway, I had tech support come fix it. Something about my user profile going rogue and needing to be reset. Which, of course, meant that I had to set everything back up again. Brilliant.

Today, I asked Annaleise to enable remote access on my new SLC machine. She tried to login and got the same error! At least my lack of trust is consistent, regardless of machine or location, right?

A Dress Shopping Extravaganza!

We went shopping for a wedding dress yesterday. The goal was to hit up several shops and mainly just get an idea for what I liked and would want, not to buy one. We only ended up going to Alysse's and David's before we were hungry and tired and I got a migraine, but we met our goals. And yes, I picked one, but I'm saving it for the end!

We started off at Alysse's, and the party included me, Kyle, Tianna, and Josh (Kyle's roommate who's going into fashion design and is basically our wedding consultant), as well as Kyle's sister Mollie for part of it. (Kyle's sisters were horrified that he was going along, but as most of you know, I detest shopping, and I needed him there to keep me sane. Plus, I wanted his input, which he mostly refused to give, saying he wanted me to get the dress I wanted, not the one he wanted. Still, I was glad he was there.) This was the first dress:We all really liked the general cut and shape of the thing, but it seemed a bit simplistic.

This next dress is one that Josh decided I needed to try on. Tianna told him I would hate it, but he said I needed to try it anyway. The consultant working with me made it very clear that this was Josh's pick:As you can see, the thing was ridiculous. But it was fun to try on, anyway. :D

This next dress was the second-favorite from Alysse's. It's just very pretty:I loved the wrapping and the beadwork—nothing ostentatious, but very elegant.

Somewhere in here, a veil got put on me, and it was very weird. (Sorry, no pics from Alysse's with a veil, but most of the ones from David's have them.) I guess that before that, it just felt like shopping for an unusually beautiful dress. As soon as I saw myself in a veil, though, it really hit me that this was for a wedding dress. I actually hadn't necessarily been planning on wearing a veil, but I think I'll have to now. The effect was amazing.

I know you can't really see the front of this dress in this pic, but what I really loved about it was the back anyway—check out all those buttons! Snazzy:
Okay, this dress was the favorite from Alysse's. (I don't think the picture does it justice.) Still quite simple, but really beautiful:
So so far, this was the dress to beat. With that in mind, we headed over to David's, stopping first to drop Josh off at home. Mollie had already left, so it was now just T, Kyle, and me. One of the first questions I got asked at David's was if I was gonna want sleeves (unlike Alysse's, David's is a national chain that doesn't cater to us weird modesty fanatics). Fortunately, they realize where they're located and make appropriate provisions. They had cute little bolero jackets to try on, and she explained that it's a very common alteration for them to take one of those, fit it, and make it match the dress (replicating beadwork, etc.) so it looks nice. I've never been a big fan of the bolero, but I can see how it could very easily work very well with some of these dresses.

This was the first dress I tried on there, and it was very pretty:Some of the beadwork seemed at bit much, though, and I just wasn't sold.

And now we go out of order, so I can save the best for last. On this next picture, you can't see the front, which was really quite pretty. But, again, the really awesome part was the back:
After we'd tried on a few dresses, I asked my consultant if she could bring me something "big and floofy." Not for serious, mind you, just because I wanted to try one on. And boy, did she come through for me:T couldn't even take a picture for at least 3 minutes because she was laughing so hard. Kyle about died. And you can't tell in this picture, but there are even rhinestones on the skirt! The silly thing even had a train. Seriously, she came into the dressing room with her arms just overflowing in tulle. It basically took up the entire dressing room. That ridiculous skirt just kept going and going... It was a great stress reliever, though. We all laughed ourselves silly.

And now, what we've all been waiting for, the dress I actually chose:I didn't think I would like it, because of the colors: it's ivory, with a champagne overlay. I never really pictured what my wedding dress would look like before, but I had always figured it would be white, y'know? But the longer I stood in this dress, the more I loved it. It's just so dang gorgeous! And there are so many things I loved about it: the way the ribbon came together in the front, the beadwork, even the color contrast. And I think the jacket works great with it, even before the alterations that will make it even better.

When we finished shopping, I was really torn between the favorite from Alysse's and the one from David's. I thought the one from David's was prettier and more elegant, but it was also not white. And it required that I wear a floofy slip, which I had really been hoping to avoid (though it is the smallest of the floofy slips). Once I adjusted to the idea of a non-white dress, however, I realized I was really leaning toward the one from David's. So I called them back today, paid for it, and set up an appointment for my fitting. That's tomorrow, and we'll sort out exactly how to do the jacket (or, possibly, sleeves) then. In the meantime, I'm very pleased. Even if it doesn't look exactly how I had expected my dress to look, it makes me feel elegant and beautiful, which is exactly what I was looking for. :D

Call for addresses!

Before I can send out announcements, I need addresses! So if you haven't already, would you pretty pretty please go here and enter your mailing address for me? Thanks so much!

VIII: Pardon me if I get a bit teary-eyed and sappy...

Well, I've been out of the hospital for 8 weeks, and this is it: the final post in my Fun and Games with Almost Dying saga. And I think it's only fitting that it be a big thank you! I found myself, quite unexpectedly, in a situation that both scared and incapacitated me (to a degree I wouldn't have thought possible), and my friends and family came through for me.

Special thanks go to:

• Kyle, for staying with me through this entire mess, from my first trip to Urgent Care to my recurring followup visits. This whole thing would've been a lot scarier without you by my side.
• Tianna and BJ, for being there when I needed you. I knew I could depend on you to not only show up at the hospital but to help with everything from contacting my parents to bringing me my toothbrush, not to mention telling me endless (and repeated) stories, just so I could hear your voices. You're the best friends I could ask for.
• Mom, for taking care of me. It must've been as if I was a little girl again, dependent on you to cook my food and help me get dressed. I don't know what I would've done without you. Even aside from the physical help you rendered, it was just good to have you here. I needed my mother, and you came for me.
  

But many more people deserve thanks than just those four. I was overwhelmed by how many people were concerned about me. Thanks to all of you for the many prayers, fasts, visits, flowers, contributions, and cards. And to my work people, especially thank you for your patience! It was wonderful to know that everyone would support me not only in the crisis itself but also in a rather drawn-out recovery.

As I said, it's been two months since I came home, and I'm largely recovered. I still get tired easily, and from what I understand, that'll take several more months to get back to normal. And of course I still have many scars, but I'm back to doing just about everything I was doing before this whole fiasco. I no longer worry about "what if I never get better?" or anything like that. How could I? It turns out that my Heavenly Father has filled my life with people that love me, to a degree that I never understood or appreciated before. I could never repay all that I have been given, but I would not be doing as well as I am now without your support, and I offer my heartfelt thanks to you all.

[giggle & grin]

Yesterday started in typical Jess-has-an-exciting-day fashion: I woke up with a migraine. And don't you worry; I had it all day. It didn't go away until this morning. So I worked from home and did a lot of laying on the couch. Kyle came over with a beautiful bouquet of flowers Because It's Spring:We hung out for a bit, and then he made dinner. This was to celebrate My First Big Night Out Since Almost Dying: the symphony! Some of you may recall that Kyle had originally gotten tickets for us to see the Utah Symphony play Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in January. Those plans were ruined, as I was having my second surgery at that time. But he got them moved to Friday, which was an "Evening At the Pops." So I'd been looking forward to this date for months. Anyway, we had a very tasty dinner and got changed so we could go.

We were running a wee bit late, but we would've been fine. EXCEPT...I realized around about Pleasant Grove that we didn't have the tickets. I gasped and turned to Kyle with my hands over my mouth, which he immediately recognized as the international sign for "I'm a colossal idiot." "The tickets!" he said and promptly exited the highway so we could turn around and head back toward Provo. I managed to get BJ on the phone, and he agreed to pick them up and meet us near the highway. By the time we got them and were back on our way, it was 8:00 pm and the symphony was starting without us. We made good time, though (despite the very nice Highway Patrolman who only motioned at us to slow down instead of pulling us over (thanks, officer!)) and arrived at Abravanel Hall at 8:30. They were just about to go to intermission, so we waited about three minutes until the usher could seat us. We only missed the first three numbers, so it worked out alright. Anyway, she showed us to our seats, but we decided to chill by the wall until people got where they were going (intermission had just started). While we waited, Elder Oaks and his wife came and stood by Kyle. They were, of course, swarmed by people who wanted to meet him, which we didn't feel the need to do. But my favorite was the guy who asked if he was David O. McKay. "No," he said, "I'm Dallin Oaks." It was very funny.

We eventually sat down and the program started again. There were several jazz and swing numbers whose titles I didn't recognize but whose tunes I knew. They played a couple of Beatles songs (yes, Tyler: Beatles!) and finished up with a medley of baby-boomer songs like "YMCA" and "Puff the Magic Dragon," which we got to sing along with. All in all, it was a very fun show.

When we left the hall, Kyle led me out the wrong door. Those of you who know me well know that the fact that I noticed this is nothing short of bizarre. But I did! He said it was to avoid the crowds in the lobby. But once we got outside, he continued to lead me in the wrong direction. I decided to just go with it. Across the street, there was a horse-drawn carriage waiting. Kyle said, "I think this is our ride," and we climbed in. We rode up to Memory Grove Park, which is northeast of Temple Square (just east of the capitol building). At the top of the park, the driver asked if we wanted to get out and walk around a bit. Kyle said sure, we'd meet him back at the bottom of the park.

We crossed the bridge over the creek running down the park and followed the path through a bunch of war memorials. Up on the side of the hill, overlooking the rest of the park, was a memorial called the Meditation Chapel. Standing in front of it, Kyle got down on one knee, pulled out a ring, and asked me to marry him. "Absolutely!"
We finished our walk and climbed back in the carriage for the ride back to the car. When we got there, Kyle asked if I wanted to call my parents. "No," I said, "it's 11 pm here, so it's midnight there. They're in bed." For the record, this seems to have been a poor choice. I got yelled at for so long today because I didn't call them immediately. I waited fourteen hours to call them (Kyle had a presentation to give this morning, so I didn't get to call them until 1:00 pm). By all accounts, I am a thoughtless, callous woman with no consideration for the parents of an only daughter. Kyle, however, they approve. He may rank higher with them right now than I do.

Point is: I'm engaged! And very happy about it. And Kyle seems happy, so that's good, too. :D

Friday the 13th

I didn't even realize until after I got home on Friday and Kyle pointed it out to me that it was Friday the 13th, but that explained a lot. The day was basically dreadful.

• Jeri had me change the IP address on my computer in Orem, which I did from home via remote access. Of course, as soon as that change took place, it kicked me off the connection, thereby making it impossible for me to restart the silly thing. Jeri told me a method to "restart a computer remotely," but it later came to light that you had to be on the computer you were restarting. I fail to see how this is "remotely," and I ended up calling Elder Hendrix and getting him to go out and restart the silly thing for me.
• My computer started doing this really lame thing where it works for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and then freezes and dies. It requires a hard reboot, so this is all very difficult to do from home. Fortunately, I was planning on going in to the office anyway, so that made it slightly easier to deal with. Of course, I kept losing my work and having to restart processes that got interrupted by the crashing.
• Dawn called me in to look at something on one of the missionaries' computers. I just want to say now that I am NOT qualified to do tech support. Sadly, we don't have any tech support, so I end up doing quite a lot of it. But I maintain that it's not completely my fault if things go awry, as they did this time. In trying to create a shortcut to a file on this computer, Dawn had accidentally dragged an entire folder. Now, this should have just created a shortcut to the folder, but things were very wonky. The folder and all its files were showing up in the taskbar in a way that I had never seen before. But given what had been done, it still should have been a shortcut, so I took the plunge and deleted it. Of course, by the powers of whatever gods were trying to torment me, it wasn't a shortcut, and I deleted the folder. (The best we can figure is that the folder actually moved to that comp instead of either creating a shortcut or just copying.) We still haven't figured out what happened, but by the time I was done with it, that folder and all its hundreds of spreadsheets were gone. I called Jeri, but there was no recovering it, as it was not in the computer's recycle bin or in the server's. If this doesn't make sense to you, you're in good company. But it's true. (About here is where I started in with a full-blown migraine, by the way.) Fortunately, Jeri does daily backups of this folder, so the only things that were really lost were work from Friday. And since I was the only one in that folder, it didn't take too long to recreate what I needed. (Actually, the luckiest thing that happened all day was that my computer crashed while I had a massive spreadsheet open, so when I re-opened Excel, it recovered it and I was able to save a copy instead of recreating it, which would have taken a long time.)

I'm pretty sure Dawn thought I was more upset with her than I actually was because I get...not mean, but terse, I guess...when I'm in pain. And I was in a lot and trying to solve a huge problem of my own making at the same time. So even though I truly didn't blame her (how could I, when the only thing we know for sure is that I'm the one who deleted the folder?), there wasn't a lot of smiling going on.

I was so glad to get home, vent to Kyle, and relax. Fortunately, the rest of my day wasn't as cursed; I probably would have gone stark raving mad if it had been.

Tianna, you should be really grateful you didn't work on Friday, as you would have definitely gotten dragged into the madness.

All Better

I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Gibb for my sore throat scheduled for Wednesday, but he only wanted to see me if I was still doing poorly. Since I started feeling better as soon as the antibiotics kicked in on Thursday (the day after I saw him), I canceled it. But I was still nervous that as soon as I finished those I'd get worse again. BUT...

...I've now been off of the antibiotics for over 24 hours, and I still feel great. Fabulous! I'm officially not worried about this anymore. :D

VIIb: My Version of the Story, Week 2

Monday 1/19

I think this was the day they started trying to get me to sit up in a chair. Actually, first, they wanted me to get up and walk a bit. I only made it as far as the chair beside the bed, though. I was, however, able to sit there long enough to eat some meals. But I didn’t do any actual walking until I was out of ICU. The first time, I was still attached to a bunch of drains and tubes, so they had to load up a wheelchair with all sorts of things, including an oxygen tank. I then pushed that around while Kyle pushed the IV pole, I think. After a couple of days, though, I was down to few enough tubes that everything could be attached to the IV pole, allowing me to stand upright and push that, rather than hunching over to reach the wheelchair, which was nice. At first I could only manage one circuit around the nurse’s station, but I eventually got up to three.

Tuesday 1/20

I got moved out of ICU today, and it was also the only day I had a nurse I really disliked. Fortunately, she was the ICU nurse, so I only had to deal with her for a few hours, but she really bugged both me and Mom. She’d come in to check my dressings and not have any idea where the incisions were, stuff like that. I really don’t think she’d even looked at my chart, which doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence. But like I said, I got moved to a room on the 5^th floor that morning.

Unlike the ICU room, these rooms were tiny, and there was really only room for one visitor at a time (there was one comfy chair beside the bed). But with folding chairs from the hallway, we fit in more. Most of the time, Mom and Kyle were both there, and the comfy chair seemed to go to whoever was reading aloud at the time, though Kyle got it more often as he got sick. When T and BJ came to visit, though, it got really crowded. And if Michael was there, or when five or six girls from the RS came to visit, it was like clowns in a car. But I loved having people there—it was great to see and talk to people, even though I got really tired very quickly. And I had tons of flowers without really anywhere to put them. By this time, actually, my first set of flowers had mostly died, but I got more, especially after the second surgery, and they lived throughout my stay. We finally stashed most of them on a high shelf and on the bedside table, but they were pretty well crammed up there.

Wednesday 1/21

Today they removed the drains from my neck, as well as one of the chest tubes. Dr. Gibb came in and took the drains out, first snipping all the stitches (which was very uncomfortable, but not too painful). One of the drains just went straight through the front part of my neck, sticking out on both sides, and everyone agreed it looked really odd until he took it out (my neck had been all bandaged up, so it hadn’t been visible before). Then the nurse took out the chest tube, and that was really weird. She had me take some deep breaths, in, out, and then in and hold while she pulled it out. I never got used to the feeling of having great huge lengths of tube pulled out of me. It’s truly bizarre, and I don’t think I can describe it well, just because you don’t normally feel such things moving around on your insides. Which is as it should be.

Friday 1/23

Today, they took out the rest of my tubes, as well as taking me off the morphine. I’d been taking periodic doses of Darvocet, and I didn’t particularly like it; it made me a bit nauseous and feverish, but not as much as the other things we’d tried. So when it came time to lose the morphine, that’s what we switched to. They were these not-humongous-but-not-tiny-either bright pink pills, and I had the hardest time swallowing them. (I couldn’t figure out why, as I’m a real veteran at swallowing handfuls of pills at a time, but I later realized that my throat just wasn’t up for swallowing much. I shouldn’t have been surprised; I didn’t even have the lung capacity to drink out of a straw, but I sometimes forgot what an ordeal my body had been through.) For the most part, the pain that drove my need for pills was in my back, at that thoracotomy incision. They weren’t kidding when they said that would be painful and take a long time to heal.

Because my hematocrit was low, Dr. McCann said I may need a blood transfusion. But they didn’t want to do that, obviously, so they had me start taking iron supplements and folic acid, which were supposed to help my body build more red blood cells. Fortunately, they worked, and I didn’t ever need a transfusion.

The other really exciting thing was that I finally got to take a shower, now that I no longer had any tubes in me. I’d been having “baths” of a sort all along, of course (really, just getting wiped down with hot soapy washcloths), but my hair was absolutely disgusting by this point and I was thrilled that I was finally gonna get to wash it. They put some large pieces of plastic over my PICC line hookup and the bandages over the chest tube holes and I was good to go! I’d expected it to be somewhat difficult and awkward, as my mobility was drastically reduced (and I was right). I was shocked at how weak I was, though. I spent almost the whole time sitting on the stool in the shower, but I was completely worn out and shaky afterward. I got out and collapsed into a chair while Mom helped me get a gown on and brushed my hair. She dried it as best she could with a towel, and I stumbled into bed. It would actually be another couple of weeks before this got any easier.

Saturday 1/24

This was a horrible day, and it actually started Friday night. I didn’t have bad morphine withdrawals or anything, but now that Darvocet was my only pain med, I was taking lots more of it and it made me really sick. I was feverish feeling (though I didn’t have an actual temperature) and nauseous, and it just got worse as time went on. I woke up several times in the night (not unusual—I never slept well in the hospital), but this time from horrible nightmares and in a cold sweat. Seriously, my sheets and gown were soaked, and that’s just miserable. I also had this horrible-tasting phlegm in the back of my throat that wouldn’t go away, so I was constantly spitting into kleenexes, trying to get it out of my throat. Finally, around 4 am, I rolled over and hit a button on my remote, turning the TV on. Unfortunately, the only way to turn the TV off was to click through all the channels until you got to “off.” Realizing this, I figured I’d see if there was anything good on (this was the first and last time I’d had the TV on during my entire stay) to get my mind off the nightmares. I found a movie on Lifetime, but it didn’t really help: it was about this woman and her friend who were on trial for killing the first woman’s abusive husband. After a half hour or so, I decided to look for something a bit better and found Angel. This wasn’t exactly happy, either; I mean, it is about vampires and demons and such. But at least it was a lot less real-life. After a couple episodes of that, Charmed came on, which was much better and familiar to boot (T and I used to watch this silly show all the time). I eventually went back to sleep around 7 for a bit.

I was awakened a bit after 8 for breakfast, but I just left it on the tray. I was too tired and too nauseous to eat anything. Eventually, though (around 9 or so, I think), I decided I should eat. I took one bite of my scrambled eggs (the only thing that looked remotely appetizing) and promptly threw it up. And kept throwing up, despite not actually having anything in my stomach anymore. I paged for a nurse so I could get something for the nausea and also asked to talk to a doctor. I was so scared! We’d been talking about me going home in a few days, and here I was, feverish and vomiting. Worst of all, my throat was hurting and felt swollen, and that terrified me. Finally, the doctor came in. He reassured me that my blood work was clean and didn’t indicate any remaining or recurring infection. I was just fine. “But my throat hurts and is swollen!” I said. I think he got frustrated at this point. “Of course it is! We scraped your esophagus raw from your throat to your stomach! You were gonna die!” He encouraged me to be patient while my body recovered; it had, after all, been through a lot. I actually still remind myself of his words when I get frustrated with the pace of my recovery.

I’d called Mom soon after I threw up to see if she was going to be there soon. (I considered calling Kyle, but he’d been feeling not well the last few days, and I knew he needed his sleep.) Mom said she’d be there as soon as she could, and she got there shortly after I saw the doctor. I was given a dose of Phenergan for the nausea and spent much of the day sleeping on and off and generally being miserable. I stopped taking the Darvocet, and once it worked out of my system, I started to feel much better. I still wasn’t up for anything, though, and opted out of doing my breathing when the respiratory therapists came in or going walking.

We now had a tough time figuring out what to do about my pain, especially given the bad reactions I’d had to both Percocet and Lortab earlier. We found that Toradol (the dr. said it’s basically a massive dose of Motrin) did a decent job of reducing the pain to where it wasn’t so bad. The unfortunate part was that it wore off before I was able to have another dose, so when I got really desperate, they gave me supplemental morphine.

Kyle was also miserable. I think he got there around 10 or 11, but just sat down by the foot of my bed and laid his head down. He’d been feeling slightly off for a few days (mostly just really tired), but his throat was getting more and more sore and he was feeling really sick. He stayed for about 20 minutes before giving in and going back home for a few hours to get some more sleep. (Several days after I went home, he went to the doctor and was told he had mono.)

Sunday 1/25

Today I finished up with my antibiotics and they took out that PICC line, which left me completely unconnected to any sort of machinery for the first time in almost two weeks. They also removed the last of my bandages, so I was clear of those, too. I’d been on three different antibiotics (they just rotated them on the IV) ever since I got there, and it turns out that they were contributing a fair amount to my general feelings of “not good.” This had actually been suspected for quite some time, but there was no way they were gonna take me off them. The point is that I started feeling even better than I had been, which was nice. And when Kyle helped me walk around the nursing station, I didn’t even have to push an IV pole! It was wonderful.

In our discussions with the doctors about me going home on Monday or Tuesday, Mom convinced me to try the Lortab again. We were fresh out of options for pain control once I left the hospital, but I was still going to need something more than just ibuprofen. In hopes that my original bad reactions had been a factor of all the other drugs I was on/had recently taken, I decided to give it another shot. It worked great—no hallucinations or fever or anything! This had been a major concern for my going home, but now it was taken care of.

Monday 1/26

I was well and truly terrified at the idea of going home, and I was still uneasy when Dr. McCann came in this morning and told me that my white count had stayed down, even after we stopped the antibiotics, and I was free to go home if I wanted. He also gave me the option of staying another day if I felt like that was necessary. I was torn and didn’t know what to do, so I asked him what he would do in my place. His instant response was that he’d go home, where it would be much more comfortable and no nurses to harass him with their constant vitals-checking. I decided to be brave and take the plunge, and they got started on my discharge paperwork. I texted Kyle (and T and Michael) that it was the day for going home (he hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet) and he came up to help.

Before I left, though, I had bunches of questions for Dr. McCann. For most of my stay in the hospital, I was too out of it/tired/in pain to really care what was being done to me. Doctors and nurses came in and said “we need to do this” or “take this medicine” and I said “okay.” I didn’t have the energy to even wonder why, let alone ask questions. This is very out of character for me, though, and when I started feeling better, I wanted to know more, so I asked Dr. McCann all kinds of questions. He said they finally identified the bacteria as fusobacterium, though they still had no idea how any of this started. (The best I can figure out is that my original sore throat was probably just a normal, viral sore throat, like the dr. at Urgent Care said, but then my throat got irritated or something, allowing the bacteria in to cause problems.) He said that he had only given me a 50% chance of living (Dr. Gibb had earlier said 75%). In his entire career, he’d seen three similar cases. One patient was young and had survived. The other two were older (he didn’t say how much older) and hadn’t made it, so he mostly attributes my survival to my youth. By this point, I’d heard from a few people that I had been very close to death, but I didn’t understand how exactly that would have happened, so he explained. With an infection as large as I had, they had actually been waiting for it to get into my bloodstream (that’s why all the rush when I first arrived at the hospital). With it progressed as far as it had, they just expected it to happen. But it didn’t, fortunately, because that means I would have gotten septic, which tends to kill off your organs and then you.

Anyway, we eventually got all my stuff and me wheeled downstairs. I rode home with Kyle b/c I think my car (which Mom had driven) is lower to the ground, so it’d be easier to get in and out of his. It was great to be outside and see stuff again, even if it was very-familiar Provo. But it snowed! Just for me! So that was also gorgeous. When we got home, I settled onto the couch while Mom and Kyle put stuff away and whatnot. I actually got out my computer for the first time in weeks (I’d had it at the hospital and used it for music, but nothing else) and chatted with some people. But that actually wore me out pretty quickly, and it was weird how my fingers had forgotten how to type. Even their strength was way down, and they got tired very quickly. So I wasn’t online long, just long enough to say “Hey y’all! I’m home! Be excited!”.

Mom went grocery shopping and picked up a bunch of stuff, and we quickly settled into a routine that involved me sleeping a lot on the couch, Mom cooking wonderfully delicious meals that tempted even my nonexistent appetite, and both her and Kyle continuing to read to me. Mom also bought me some nasty probiotics to help restore the good bacteria that had all been killed off by the antibiotics. (She actually attributes my increased appetite to this, but I’m not so sure.) All I know is that it was dreadful. It came in little bottles and was similar, in consistency, to runny yogurt. The smell was awful—like milk that had been left on the counter for a week or two. And it had chunks in it. Now, they sold fruit-flavored versions, but Mom knows I hate fruit, so she got the plain kind. And it was foul. I could only take one or two teeny swallows before I started gagging. The bottles were small, though, and I survived. Fortunately, Mom had a brainwave and added strawberry syrup to it the next day, which helped loads (she added lots). (I could now get half of it down before I gagged.) I still dreaded that stuff every day, though. At least I only had to take it for a week.