Adventure Overview

I've been out of the hospital for a week and a day now, so I guess it's about time I got some blogging done! I've been planning it out in my head for quite a while now, but I've just been too dang tired to do anything about it. So here goes!

Tianna and Kyle have already blogged about this, so I'm gonna let their posts cover the general storyline. Tianna didn't blog 'til I got home, so she has one huge post you can read. Or, for more of a play-by-play, you can see Kyle's posts for 1/13, 1/15, 1/16, 1/17, 1/21, 1/24, and 1/26 (poor guy was spending all his time at the hospital with me, so the posts get signigicantly shorter as he got more and more exhausted). So that should cover the basic storyline, and I figured I'd just add my personal thoughts and reflections on the whole thing, rather than retelling exactly what has already been told twice.

I started just writing out all the stuff I wanted to say, but it got really long really fast. So I've decided to break it up into several posts, just to make life simpler. So this first post is just an overview. I'll add my thoughts in upcoming posts. But first...

...A Quick Summary:

• 1/3 (Sat.): got a sore throat
• 1/6 (Tues.): went to Urgent Care, where they verified that it wasn't strep and sent me home
• 1/12 (Mon.): went back to Urgent Care, had a CT done, and was eventually admitted at UVRMC for emergency surgery to drain an abscess in my neck
• 1/13 (Tues.): got out of ICU
• 1/15 (Thurs.): had a second emergency surgery b/c the infection had spread into my chest cavity (yes, instead of going to the symphony!)
• 1/20 (Tues.): got out of ICU again
• 1/26 (Mon.): came home, after exactly 2 weeks in the hospital

Inventory, after the second surgery:

• 3 drainage tubes in my neck, one in my left side, and 3 in my right side
  
• a tube down my mouth for the ventilator and another tube up my nose and down into my stomach (for the record, I don't recommend either of these; they were miserable)
• a catheter
• a central line (the creation of which felt like they were grinding something into my collarbone—not fun) (a couple of days later, they took out the central line and added a PICC line instead)
• 2 IV's (one in my arm and one in my wrist), which were hooked up to all kinds of things
• a telemetry device of some kind (a box attached to several (6?) stickies all over me to track my heart rate and such)
• (if I was braver, I'd post a picture; the number of tubes and wires and machines is quite impressive) [Edit: I gave in to peer pressure and created this post.]
  

Now that I'm home and healing, I have:

• 2 incisions on my neck, each about 2.5" long (I'm accepting submissions for the awesomest explanation! my current favs are a saber-tooth tiger attack and/or a voice transplant)
• 4 holes from chest tubes, 1 on the left and 3 on the right
• 1 incision on my left back, about 1.5", from the VATS
• 1 incision on my right back, a good 6" long, from the thoracotomy (this is the one that really hurts!)
• a giant numb patch on my right ribcage, about 6" wide (from my sternum to my side) and 4" tall

The First FAIL of the New Year

Last night, I was over at Kyle's, and we eventually decided to have breakfast for dinner (one of my favorites, by the way). So we scrambled up some eggs with cheese and ham and also decided to make waffles. Using Bisquick, so it's nice and easy, right? (Those of you who know me well will already be able to see where this is going.) Kyle did the eggs while I mixed up the waffle batter. Followed the instructions, easy peasy. It came time to pour it into the waffle maker, and I had to admit to Kyle that I'd never made waffles before, so I didn't know how much to put in. He came over to help and started ladling the batter in. I say "ladle" because it was very thin, like unto soup. Which fact Kyle noticed but did nothing about, for the record. He just filled up the waffle iron and closed it. A while later, I noticed that a bunch of batter had overflowed onto the counter as it cooked, and I mocked Kyle for making a mess. I should not have been so hasty. When we opened the iron, this is what we found: 

So, it was a bit of a mess. Which required a bit of time to clean up. Don't worry, though: Kyle was very snotty the whole time. Jerkface. Kept making fun of me, even though he knows I'm no chef. Then he took it upon himself to fix my mess by thickening the batter, which actually worked out quite well. Though he's not nearly as amazing as he should have been for the amount of mocking I had to endure; he made waffle wedges instead of full waffles.

Though, to be fair, by the end, he'd gotten the hang of it.

In any case, it was an adventure. Which only took half an hour to cleanup. But, for future reference, waffle wedges dipped in syrup are really quite tasty.

It's a good thing I love crowds so much!

So I'm in Dallas, right? I checked the weather forecast for while I was gonna be here, and the average temp is supposed to be in the 60's. So I brought my jacket (not my coat), which is pretty normal for Christmas in Texas. You just don't need anything heavier. Now, there was a cold front scheduled to come in Sunday and Monday, but I figured that's when I'd wear the jacket. (It's not as if I need it for 60-degree weather.)

The cold front came in a wee bit early, but no worries. (The temperature dropped 30 degrees Saturday afternoon. It was crazy.) So I wore the jacket to church on Sunday, as it was really quite cold. I also left the jacket at church on Sunday. [rolls eyes] I realized at the end of Relief Society that I no longer had my jacket with me, but by then there was another ward having sacrament meeting in the chapel, where I left it.

Today, Dad went back over to the church (he has a key) to look for it (Mom has a key to the library, where the lost and found is located). It's nowhere to be found. So now I need a new jacket, as it's below freezing. (I've actually wanted one for a while, but couldn't really justify it when I had a perfectly good one. Now, however, I don't!) So it looks like I'm going shopping. With all the crazy holiday shoppers! That'll be a good time. :(

Santa FAIL

My mom just went back to her room to do some wrapping. She came back out all confused. "Your father is weird," she says. "He wrapped everything. Labeled it from Mom and Dad. Santa isn't coming to our house this year." We all had a good laugh. See, in our house, Santa gifts don't get wrapped; they're just stacked under our stockings. But now, if they wanted to unwrap them, they'd need to identify which ones are which things, so they don't have to then re-wrap stuff. 

So, yes. Santa apparently looked down on the Johnson clan (which will be all assembled this Christmas) and said "no ways!"

I know everybody's favorite stories are the ones in which I am an idiot.

Story setup: Yesterday evening found me on campus, printing up programs for today's sacrament meeting. Well, Kyle was also on campus, in his lab, so I decided to pop over and visit. when we left, he offered to drive me back to my car, since he was parked in the grad parking garage right by his building and I was parked clear across the snowy, icy campus by the law building. (I had already almost died getting to his lab in the first place!) So he dropped me off at my car and we agreed to meet back at my house. 

Actual story: I get in my car, start it up, and assess my options. I could back out of my spot, but, due to the layout of the lot, that would require making a fairly tight turn on the previously mentioned ice and snow in order to get back in the direction I actually wanted to go. Clearly, the better plan of action is to just pull through the empty spot in front of me. I mean, really; why wouldn't I do that? Well, a bump, thud, scrape, and a crunch later, I learned why. I had, for unknown reasons, failed to notice the parking block (apparently, that's what they're called!) in front of me, and now I was stuck. I tried reversing back over it, but my car wasn't going for it. And I didn't dare try to go any further forward over it. So I called Kyle. "Hep! Hep! I'm an idiotic girl who trashed her car and needs help from a manly man." [rolls eyes] I hate confirming stereotypes. Oh well.

Kyle arrives back on the scene and just walks up to my car laughing. He was spared a good smacking by the fact that I was also laughing. After all, it was funny. In a very pathetic way. Like when I recently kneed myself in the face. If I couldn't laugh at myself...well, I'd do a lot more crying, that's for dang sure. He couldn't sort out how I managed to do this; he'd pictured snow piled up on one side of the block that I had used as a ramp to get over. There was, in fact, no such anything. Just the parking block, which I had somehow monster-trucked right over. 

I had not yet, at this point, gotten out of my car to assess the damage. Turns out that I only got one wheel over (the front right one). T'other had driven smoothly forward through the space between blocks. We develop a plan: the clearance on my car is high enough (barely) that I can maneuver a bit, and the space between blocks seems large enough that I should be able to get back through it. (Fortunately, the spots around me are empty, so I have plenty of space.) Just as this plan is being implemented, a big ol' SUV tries to pull into the space in front of me. "They can't DO that!" I yell, and Kyle waves them off. But the driver, nice man that he is, gets out to assist in the helping of the damsel in distress. (Clearly, this is two-knight distress.) So he joins in instruction-giving, which is of dubious helpfulness. I'm pretty sure that I kept turning the wrong way because when he said "go left," he meant something other than what I understood "go left" to actually mean. Anyway, we eventually got things sorted out, and my car was saved! 

...about half an hour later, my heart rate came back down to normal. :)

Just one more way in which my knees hurt me...

So I'm over at Kyle's, and a bunch of us are watching a movie, right? Kyle and I are on a couch, and I'm sorta curled up, with my feet on the couch next to me and my knees up. I don't even remember what, but something happened in the movie, and I jumped. A lot. In fact, I kneed myself in the face. My left knee barely missed my glasses--went straight to the cheekbone instead. Which, let me assure you, hurt. A lot. Of course, it was also hilarious, so I was laughing hysterically for a coupla minutes. I think most everyone else was just horrified. Personally, I'm just hoping it doesn't bruise...

I still don't know where the original ended up. Perhaps it actually ran away?

On Monday, I came in to work to discover that my nice chair had been stolen. I was very annoyed, but it was really just one in a number of things making Monday a nightmare. I casually asked the missionaries when I next went out there if they had stolen my chair (just kidding, because they already have nice chairs). Sis. Hendrix was absolutely furious that somebody had taken my chair. It's so rude! One of our super-nice elders stole me back a chair while I was fixing something for Sis. Hendrix (he wouldn't tell me where he got it from). And when I got here on Tuesday, there were signs posted: "DON'T STEAL CHAIRS!!!"

I love our missionaries. :D