Whatever I Feel Like

We had a quiet weekend for the most part. I’m still adjusting to the meds I’m on, and my shoulder has been in a good deal of pain, so I wanted to just take it easy. I went to a meeting yesterday morning and got a pedicure and eyebrow/lip wax on my way home. See my pretty feet? I love the French look.

Rob, Grace, and I took a nap in the afternoon and then my parents came up – we all went out to eat at The Outback sans Connor. He is just too cool to be seen with the family now, ya know. After dinner we came back to our house and watched Mission Impossible 3 and that was all she wrote for Saturday. Today was a particularly lazy day for me. I did give Grace a shower, though. That’s always good for a laugh. The way I do it is I get naked and just bring her into the shower stall with me. It’s just easier.

I did get to the mall to buy some candles and Wallflowers at Bath & Body Works, and then I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things. I swear, we spend more money on food in this house. I guess it’s par for the course now that the boys are getting older, but dang. Now we’re watching John From Cincinnati and I’m doing laundry. Soon I’ll be headed to bed so I can get up tomorrow and start the work week all over again.

You know, it’s nice to have relaxing, uneventful weekends, but somehow it seems like the weekends are longer when we actually do something and get out of the house. Maybe next weekend.

I was able to bring my x-rays home from the orthopedist yesterday. And lucky for you, I took pictures of them to show you. You can see my calcium deposit pretty clear in one of the pictures. I was really surprised at how thin my bones are – I look like I could snap in two very easily. Rob said I better make sure I stock up on the calcium! What’s funny is all the years I called myself big-boned. Um, not so much, as it turns out. See?

I’m back from the orthopedic specialist and I have a diagnosis! Calcific tendonitis, which is a fancy word for calcium deposit in my shoulder. The course of treatment is a week of steroids – if that doesn’t help, then we’ll go to a cortizone injection, and as a last resort, surgery to remove the calcium.

I hope I don’t have any adverse reaction to the steroids. I’ve never taken them before, but it seems like you always hear horror stories about them. Speaking of adverse reactions, my body is not taking kindly to my new rhinitis medications. I’m taking Astelin and Nasonex (both nasal sprays) and the Astelin leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth for a couple of hours and (I think) has given me a headache. I also just feel drugged and out of it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to continue with the meds if I continue to react like this.

A diagnosis about my shoulder is good, though. I’m excited about that and glad there’s an end in sight to the pain. It’s been hurting something fierce today.

I decided last week that I want to stop thinking and talking about getting some exercise in and just start doing it already. This week I’ve done a good job at keeping my promise to myself. It helps that our schedule has changed since the kids are out of school and going to camp now – which means Grace is cooped up in the laundry room for more hours than she is used to. Translation: the dog needs to get walked so she gets rid of some of her energy and doesn’t drive us all completely insane every night.

I’ve been loving the Gmaps Pedometer site to keep track of how far I’m walking every night. The first night I did 1.5 miles, the second night was 1.75 and last night was almost 2 miles. Woot! Tonight I have a doctor’s appointment at 7:30, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to get one in, but hopefully someone will walk Grace so she’s not completely bonkers.

I also bought an exercise ball because there were some good exercises I saw in Glamour that I want to try. I used to have an exercise ball and was all ready to do the exercises… but my ball mysteriously disappeared. Rob and Connor both said, on separate occasions, “Didn’t that thing pop?” Ummm. Not that I knew of, but they obviously know something I don’t! Heh. I need to try those exercises out soon. I want to firm this body up!

Today has turned out to be a much better day than yesterday. Although, considering how crappy yesterday was, this was not a big accomplishment. Nevertheless, I’m feeling much more myself after taking some suggestions from my sponsor yesterday.

I’m headed to the orthopedic specialist tonight. I hope he has an answer for me instead of sending me off to physical therapy or something that he hopes will make it better. After tonight’s appointment, barring there are no more prescriptions to fill, I will have spent $195 this week on co-pays and prescriptions. Isn’t that insane? The medical benefits at my job suck, obviously. I still don’t know how much of my x-ray cost they will cover, so this week could end up being even more expensive than originally thought. Bah.

I took my new nasal sprays this morning and I’ve been able to breathe and I haven’t had any “foggy head” syndrome today. The only thing is, the one leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth that lasted for a couple of hours. Didn’t like that side-effect much. Speaking of side-effects – I noticed one of the ones listed was “weight gain”. I’ve seen this listed as a side effect for other medications, too, and it’s always made me curious. How does a medication cause you to gain weight? Do you retain water? Does the medication have calories in it? Or does the medication just make you more hungry than normal, thus you eat more? If that is the case (which I suspect it is), then shouldn’t the real side effect be “increases appetite”? Someone want to clue me in on this one?