A small cross stitch...

Thanks to all who gave feedback on my blanket project.  I've decided to put it on hold until I get with my friend for her to weigh in on it again.  Comments helped me see some ideas I didn't think about, and also made me feel a little more confident of the colors I'm working with.  I appreciate it.

While I'm waiting to get back to the blanket, I gave myself permission to start a small cross stitch project I found in an older Just Cross Stitch magazine (February, 2015 to be exact).  

While Valentine's Day was the inspiration for picking this pattern to work on, I think the finished project will look fine through the spring and summer months displayed with other colorful small projects.  Do I have those other colorful projects done?  No...  But this may just inspire me to begin that collection.  😉

We're warming up here for the next week to temps in the 50's and 60's.  Anticipating the warm up, I bought some seeds a few days ago - with the thought that I might just get something planted this week.  We are also expecting a fair amount of rain in the upcoming days, but hopefully I can find a dry one to do some potting outside!  The idea of doing that in February just sounds incredible.

The 10 year window...

This short video stopped my mindless scrolling, and started me thinking...

My guess is it will be worth 2 1/2 minutes of your life, too.

A new project...

It's been a little bit since I've shared anything I've been working on because, frankly, having a desire to hand-craft has been hit or miss in recent weeks.  

That said, in early January I offered (and a friend accepted) for me to make a gift for her of a crocheted blanket.  I gave her free reign to tell me what colors she would like it in - with yarns that are available to me locally, that is.  

She had a vision...  An ombre blanket with shades of brown to beige.  Now shades of brown and beige aren't really my bent, but I also didn't think it was a bad idea.  So I gathered some options, and together we picked out shades of yarn that will hopefully fade nicely from dark to light, and make a respectable looking blanket. 

I started this before I landed in the hospital three weeks ago.  Up to that point, it took some trial and error to get the size right.  And I needed to decide from the outset how many colors I would use, and how big (tall) each color section would be.  I (thought I'd) finally settled on five colors, each approximately 14 inches tall, which would make a blanket around 72 inches long.  

And, I did some crochet tests with colors, and order of colors, and finally landed on the five colors I would use.  And wouldn't you know...  today, I'm once again second guessing the colors. and how many colors to use. 

Here are the options:

Five shades

Six shades

I hate all this waffling, especially after being sure (for most of a week) that five shades would be enough.  And an odd number always sounds good to me.  But when I see how large 14 inches is, and thinking this might look better with more shades, I think six shades is a respectable idea too.

Using six colors will mean ripping back and restarting the second shade earlier.  But that's a small price to pay if it looks better in the end.

Feel free to weigh in.  The colors above are pretty true (on my screen), but that second skein from the left is slightly darker  than it shows in the picture.  So it works best in the order I've placed these colors.

Once I make my final decision, I'm hoping I can knock this out in two or three weeks.  

~~~~~

On the health front, biopsies on the two most suspicious thyroid nodules has come back as benign.  What a relief that is.  I felt I was holding well onto the most likely scenario - which was that the nodules were benign.  But until I saw those words on a final report, I didn't fully realize how preoccupied I was with it all.  I'm happy to say I now feel free to kick to the curb the niggling worry that hung around in the back of my mind the past two weeks.  

I'm feeling good.  I'm movin' on.  

Thank you for prayers and encouragement.  

An Adventure, Part 3...

Sometime on Saturday afternoon I started hearing a faint noise that sounded sort of like a notification sound on a phone. My room was right across from the nurse's station, so during the day there was often activity and noise out there.  And there are all kinds of beeps and other noises going on, so I didn't think much about it the first few times I heard it. But finally, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe it was my phone.  I wondered if it was somewhere behind me where I couldn't see it, buried under something.  I was hooked up to too many thing to get up and start looking for myself.

When the nurse came in, I mentioned it to her.  She started looking through all my close-by things (that, by that time, I had already looked through).  Then she started looking through my current covers - which is probably when I mentioned my theory again - that my phone had probably gotten caught up in the bed linens of the gurney.

For some reason, this time it clicked for her!  She walked over to what was a linen hamper - which was about two arms length away from me the whole time.  Here, I thought it was a garbage bag!  With abandon, the nurse went bravely into the hamper, pulling out sheets and blankets, shaking everything trying to find my phone.  It was a funny and endearing sight.  Seeing her pull my phone out of the bottom of the bag was met with a cheer, and I declared her "Wonderful!"

In spite of my inauspicious beginning on the med/surge floor, the nursing and tech staff won me over from that point on.  Most of them looked too young to be nurses and techs, and all were tender and kind in their very different ways.  This began to be apparent to me as I started feeling better.  They were probably very kind to me in my sick hours, but I was too out of it to fully notice.

My home for 2 1/2 days...   See that blue thing in the background on the left.  That was the laundry hamper where my phone spent part of Saturday.

Okay... having dramatized enough of this hospital visit, I will wrap it up below.  

~~~~~

When one has an attack of acute pancreatitis (especially, if there is no infection present), the protocol is to give intravenous fluids, analgesics and to give the digestive system rest (i.e. starve the patient).  Not that I was interested in eating, but after about 12 hours of nothing to drink, I was excited to be offered ice chips. A few hours later, when they brought me chicken broth and frozen gelato, I savored very sip and swallow.  

Okay, nevermind the chicken broth was pretty tasteless, the important thing was it stayed down.  And the cold gelato only made me hurt a little.  Though, I was unsure how to parse out the different discomforts since I was on morphine.  Even on morphine, the pancreatic pain was still there, but by this time it merely felt "sore" or tender, instead of angrily gripping my whole middle.  The next meal was more broth and gelato (and jello if I wanted it, which I didn't), and the next meal... more of the same.  And the next day...  more of the same. 

By Sunday night, my stomach was gnawing with hunger, but the idea of eating still held no appeal.  After asking a number of times how long this process took, and getting no clear answer, I came to accept there is no clear answer.  

When a patient can tolerate clear liquids, s/he is moved to semi-solids (puddings, and I don't remember what else I was told).  Then, finally, the patient is given solids, and when s/he can tolerate solids, s/he can be discharged and finish recovering at home.  

The liquid diet went on through Monday morning, until the hospitalist's nurse came into my room, and started a conversation with me about going home.  As confusing as this was, physically, I knew I was capable of managing at home, and I would get better more quickly there.  So...  without actually saying we were skipping the middle step, that is what we did.  I was allowed to order something simple off the menu and eat solid food for the first time in 2 1/2 days. It might be worth mentioning, one of the reasons they wanted me to go home quicker than they were planning, was because flu patients were quickly filling up the floor, and they didn't want me catching it.  I didn't need the motivation, but that kicked me into high gear to order lunch, get packed, and be ready to leave as soon as they could make it happen. 

Nothing else dramatic happened in the few hours it took to eat, pack, and for them get my discharge orders completed.  It was cold - I think below zero outside - but I was so happy to be in the frigid air, set free from my hospital room.

Instructions were for me to slowly introduce new solids - preferably just one food group a week.  That seemed incredibly slow, and maybe it was too cautious, but I did my best to abide by that for the first week - and really through most of this past week. Up until just a couple of days ago food has made my innards hurt (some times more than other times), but one ibuprofen and one tylenol practically made me feel normal on those early days.  And as of this weekend, I've felt pretty good.

I hope I never have this happen to me again, and I'm prepared to never really understand why it did happen.  I have some suspicions that something autoimmune has been going on since summertime, and the high-dose flu shot I got four days prior to the attack may factor in.  And depending on what is determined about my thyroid, that could factor in (or not).

I'm trying to live by Matthew 6:34.  "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own." ~ Jesus (NASB)

Okay...  so, practically speaking, that means I'm going to refrain from writing here what I already know from an ultrasound done on Friday. Hopefully, I'll hear from a doctor early this week to learn next steps.  And maybe in another week or so, I'll be able to write with some knowledge about what's up with my thyroid.

Prayers are appreciated - of course, for best outcomes, but also for peace of heart and mind to prevail - both in the waiting and in the outcome.

I appreciate the thoughts and prayers and such kind comments on these posts.  I imagine most bloggers feel this way about their readers, but I definitely feel I have the best people imaginable following along here - willing to encourage and pray.  

Thank you so much.

It's funny how the town I've lived in for over 27 years, and a road I've driven at least a thousand times looks like a different world when viewed from a third-floor hospital room.

An Adventure, Part 2...

At the hospital, I was quickly deposited into an ER room.  Our local hospital has a very nice new ER, and coming in the ambulance entrance gave me a different view than last year when Greg went there for a kidney stone.

I assume I was given an IV right away, and fluids were started, but except for a very kind nurse who popped in fairly regularly, nothing at all happened for hours.  No pain relief.  No doctor.  I told Greg at one time I just wanted to go back home.  Which, of course, was ridiculous, but that was my state of mind as I waited and waited.   Around 2:30 a doctor popped into the room - apologizing that it took so long for him to get there.  I was just glad to see someone, and maybe get some answers finally - and pain relief.  After examining me, he said he suspected a kidney stone.  Really!  That wasn't on my radar at all - not that I had anything else on my radar, but this was not how I'd ever imagined a kidney stone feeling.  Mostly, I was relieved when he offered me some pain medicine, and said he was sending me for a CT scan.  

With a dose of morphine added to my IV, and the sharpness of the pain quickly smoothed off, I was much more relaxed as a tech rolled me down the hallways to the CT machine.  I still couldn't get a deep breath (I know because the machine told me a few times to take one), and it hurt to hoist myself onto and off the scan table, but the morphine made me not care so much.

Then it was back to my ER room to wait for nearly an hour and a half for the CT results. That was okay - I was feeling so much better.  All my previous agony was but a memory (for a little while).

It seems it was another couple of hours later when the doctor finally popped back into the room.  He had a sober look on his face, as he told me I had acute pancreatitis.  He expressed his surprise, as none of the typical causes of pancreatitis applied to me - no gallbladder, I don't drink alcohol, and my triglycerides were great last summer, and only slightly elevated right then - no doubt as a response to the pancreatitis.  "Idiopathic", he declared it.  This is the second time that word has been used for an unexplainable health issue over the last 6 months. I'm seriously beginning to dislike the word, but I'm also beginning to have a theory that these things could be connected, and how.  That is for another day, though...  maybe.

Then the doctor told me a nodule was found on my thyroid and it would have to be followed up on.  

I can't say I jumped to worry, exactly, but I took his sobered cue and became a bit overwhelmed at these two bits of information. He offered me a stronger pain medicine to follow the morphine.  "Dilaudid, would be better," I remember him saying.  I made a mental note for when I was next offered pain medicine.

Soon after he left the room the second time, they started making arrangements for me to be admitted to the hospital. I was told patients often spend up to a week in the hospital for acute pancreatitis, but the doctor told me his mother had spent a month hospitalized when she had it.  I seriously hoped that neither of those scenarios would be me, but knowing I was at least spending the rest of Saturday there, I gave Greg a list of things to pack up and bring to me on Saturday.  With nothing more for him to do, I sent my exhausted husband home around 6:00 am to get some sleep, with both of us imagining I'd soon be sleeping in a (slightly) more comfortable hospital bed upstairs.

Sometime during the next hour, I had a conversation with the nurse about taking Dilaudid the next time pain medicine was scheduled.  Morphine helped me not care so much about the pain, but if something could actually take the pain away and let me sleep, I was game.  A little while later, she came in with the shot.

I can't say I noticed any pain reduction before the nausea hit.  And right as the nausea started, someone came to collect me to take me to my room.  I was just starting to look for something to throw up into when she asked me if I wanted to take a wheel chair or the gurney I was on.  I told her I was sick and I didn't think I could possibly get off the gurney. Nevermind, the thought of anything with wheels nearly made me panic. I asked if I could have some anti-nausea medicine.  I don't remember what she said, but she was clearly on a mission and she started unhooking me from stuff, and getting my things ready to transport upstairs.  

I asked again, for some nausea medicine, and I might have been told they'd give me something upstairs.   When she started rolling the bed toward the door, I knew I was in trouble, and asked as firmly as I could muster, "Can I not be given nausea medicine down here?"  She went and got my nurse, and I was quickly given a shot, and I prayed that it would take effect quickly.

It seemed to help a little, and wanting to be cooperative, I probably too quickly said, "Okay, I think I can do this." and we were off.  With eyes, closed (which I don't know was a good idea), and me holding my head as we cruised down the halls, somehow I managed being backed into the elevator, riding the elevator 2 floors up, then being backed into my room, to only then begin retching.  Someone saw me and rushed to give me a skinny little sick sack, and I retched (mostly dry-heaved) until my gut was sore.  Or maybe it was my pancreas.  Everything hurt again.

I don't know why, but at some point in my adult life, I developed what I've come to refer to as a pathological fear of vomiting.  I'm sorry to talk about this. It's such a disgusting word.  It sounds as nasty as it is.  But somehow I made it off the gurney onto the edge of the hospital bed, and for the next approximately 4 hours, I sat there, feet on the floor, head in my hand, balancing the arm that held my head on the little hospital tray table, trying desperately not to be sick.  Every so often I found myself reaching for a fresh sick sack from the stack that had been left for me, and every half hour or so I retched my guts out. Not that I was aware of time. And I completely lost track of how many times I got sick.  The hours ticked by, and every so often a nurse or a tech would come in and check my vitals.  Or ask if I needed anything.  I feel like I asked for some more nausea medication, but none was forthcoming.  Those hours were a dark and cold blur, even after the sun rose.  It was around 11 am when I started to feel the nausea abate. The nurse (or tech - I wasn't in a frame of mind to recall who was who at that point yet) came in and finally with a bit clearer head I tried to have a conversation about whether or not I could have been given more anti-nausea medication in the night.  The nurse (or tech) told me I hadn't been there during the night - that I had only come up to the room around 7am.  Okay, yeah...  I understand.  Can we not get hung up on the details?  Having, by this time, been awake for more than 24 hours, and sick for close to half of that time, I was confused.  

Moments into what was feeling like a fruitless conversation, the hospitalist came into the room, and a little too cheerfully looked at me and pronounced that I didn't "look like a happy camper." 

Not a happy camper indeed!  For the past four hours I had been questioning the choice to come to this hospital - and I finally said it out loud. The hospitalist dropped his happy demeanor and tried to answer my question about the nausea medication.  I honestly, don't remember what the answer was.  I was exhausted, but at least I wasn't vomiting anymore.  I know I was still feeling motion sickness, though, as I remember asking the doctor (who seemed intent on moving around) if he could stand a bit more still.  It was nauseating trying to keep eye contact with him as he just sort of meandered around.  What a wreck I must have been. In that moment it seemed enough that I said something out loud that I had been running through my mind the previous four hours - and that I stated I didn't want anymore Dilauded.

Now, I'm not sure at what point I realized my phone was missing, but around this time, I began to express my concern about it, and suggested that it probably got swept up in the sheets and blankets that were on the gurney when I was transferred to the hospital room.  I was so sick when I got transferred, it was impossible for me to keep track of anything, other than were I placed my two feet, and sat my bum.  And those things didn't move much in the four hours after I planted them.

I was assured they would find my phone. I wanted to believe them, but imagining it was in the laundry room - somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, probably tumbling in the dryer by that time, I started adding the cost of a new phone to what I feared would end up being a very expensive taxi ride to the ER.

After the doctor left, I was given some morphine and something for nausea, and I finally laid back to sleep for a few hours on Saturday until Greg came with some things for me to freshen myself up with later in the afternoon.

I wasn't yet a "happy camper", but I wasn't sick to the point of (I don't think I need to keep saying the word).  Every small kindness shown me was greatly appreciated.  And things improved from that point on.

More in part 3...