Girls Just Wanna Have Fun or Why It's Hard to Fight With a Nail Tech While in Big Foam Flip Flops

I could totally bore you with reasons on why I have not blogged in ELEVEN days but I have not one valid, good reason that would make you forgive me for being gone so long.

But I will hope that you love me enough to overlook my small blogging vacation if I promise to get off my lazy, tv watching, catching up with my DVR'd episodes of Greys Anatomy (and OMG they're totally killing off Izzy!), guzzling water by the gallon, reading with my kid, eating out with my sister, getting a pedi, and working overtime ass.

There, I feel better.

For the Mr. T update, I was worked all the way up to 100 mg but I talked my doctor today into letting me go back down to 50 mg. I really felt great at 50 mg and felt like it was controlling my headaches and migraines better at that dose. It was also controlling my appetite better also. I'm down 11 pounds by the way. I'm now allergic to lemon pie, lemon yogurt, sausage, jelly, ham, bottled ranch dressing, cake mix and boxed pudding mix. I think it has more to do with some preservative that those things have in it that Mr T is causing some allergic reaction to rather then the things themselves but at any rate, I can no longer have them at all!

Last weekend my sister and I went and had a pedi together at a new salon. Our normal salon was too busy to fit us in and since my older nephew was watching our younger kids, and we didn't want to make him wait 3 hours while we had our toes done, we went to a new salon closer
to home. The new place was much nicer, much cleaner, and there were MEN working there!

Men with bulging muscles and tight shirts and.... Oh sorry.... Where was I?

Oh ya... The pedicure... The whole pedi went really nice. Until we went up to pay. Now, at our old place we normally pay $20 for our pedi (no matter what you had done to your toes as far as color or design, etc) and then of course we tip the nail gal on top of that. This new place was nicer and they told us it was $25 for the pedi. Then we went up to pay. They charged us extra for every single thing. The white tip on my toes. The flower on my toes. The extra design that I didn't ask for. The little purple jewel that the lady put in the middle of the flower on my toe.

THAT I DIDN'T ASK FOR!

Now you may be wondering why I didn't stop her if she was doing things I didn't ask for? First of all, don't be so judgemental. lol For two, I wasn't really paying attention because I was visiting with my sister and we're obnoxious and loud and all we do is laugh and carry on when we're together. You know those 2 girls you see places who are always laughing hysterically and making fun of everyone and everything around them and can't keep a straight face? That would be me and my sister. We are 2 peas in a pod. We are the girls you hate being around in a quiet place like a movie theater or a library or something because we couldn't stay quiet for ten minutes if our lives depended on it.

So we go up to pay and the lady is all, "That is 3 dollahs for white tip and 3 dollahs for design and 2 dollahs for jewel" and on she went. What a rip off! Of course, it is the ONE splurge I do for myself. I hate to go clothes shopping or shoes shopping so I don't spend money on stuff like that. I did get some new clothes a few weeks ago but that's only because Mr. Man forced me to go for my bday. I don't enjoy wandering for hours, trying on clothes. I am soooo not girly that way! I hate shopping. There I said it! I've been masquerading behind all this pink for so long but I can no longer pretend to be girly!

So did I argue with the lady that she never said there would be extra charges for everything she did? No, I didn't. I didn't feel like a confrontation. I do like to speak my mind (and everyone knows I do!) but not that day. I paid my bill, tipped her, smiled and walked away.

I guess I didn't feel very big in my big, fat, green, foam flip flops.

Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

I didn't have time to post on my blog last night even though me and my laptop were very cozy on the couch. I was looking at different blog layouts trying to find something cute for everyone's upcoming visit from SITS (which I found out will be postponed until next Friday). I didn't get enough beauty sleep last night because I was up late browsing sites for so long so yes, as a matter of fact, I DO look like a used wash rag today. What's your point? Lol

I thought since Thursdays are usually slow at work, I could do my post from there today but came in only to find that my computer died a quick and painful death taking with it most of my photos! (What's that you say? Maybe it was karma trying to tell me that I should be working at work and not doing something personal? Oh ya! Like you're so perfect?!? Like you neeeeeveeerrrrrr play a little solitaire during those long 8 hours each work day? Or stalk old boyfriends on Facebook? Or catch up on your blog reader? Ya, I'm sure you don't... If we all didn't screw off at work a little bit, we would all have to start drinking at 6 in the morning just to get thru the day! Ok, so sometimes I do that too... Don't judge me! Oh, and if the person reading this is someone I work for, this blog post is completely fabricated for entertainment purposes only. I totally give 110% at work every day. True story )

There's a new IT person at work. She is very sweet, and quiet, and, I'm pretty sure, fresh out of school. My email was acting up yesterday, not sending anything out that I was trying to send, and she tried to "fix" it last night which started making all these errors pop up as I was leaving and now nothing is working. I'm not blaming her. I'm just sayin... Now my computer has gone to that big web in the sky, taking some very precious memories of mine with it!

For my Mr. T update: Since Monday the heart burn has continued to be horrible and I still feel like my insides are going to melt and slide out my body and puddle at my feet. (The new Tums Quik Pak Instant dissolve powder paks are my new bff's! Think they'll sponsor me for something lol?) I'm still getting bad tingling in my hands and feet that goes away as long as I'm guzzling water. To say that I'm drinking lots of water would be an understatement. Let's just say that there could be a MAJOR drought in Utah this summer which would rest squarely on my shoulders. And I can only drink tap water which I never could stand before. All the bottle water I've tried this past week tastes awful! How is it that the tap water tastes good and the bottled water tastes like its full of minerals and lead? I've spent more time peeing this past week then I think I have the last 31 years of my life! That was probably TMI but I told you I needed to share
everything lol. I was told to make sure to drink at least one or two sports drinks a day as well to keep my electrolytes and all that in balance since they can get all out of whack when you're drinking this much agua. Yes, that was Spanish my friends. Ok, maybe not. Is it agua or aqua? No, aqua is a color right? See, my brain is a little fuzzy. Ok, I promise not to attempt any more Spanish here in the future lol.

Let's see, what else do I need to tell you about? I've continued to be a klutz, no news flash there. Oh, something I forgot to mention before, that I noticed has been there since Mr T started hanging around, is that my tongue always feels raw. You know that feeling you get on your tongue when you scorch it biting into something that's wayyyy too hot still? And you burn all the taste buds off? The top of my tongue feels that way and now so does the tip. And I noticed 2 days
ago that there are a few spots on my gums and on the inside of my mouth that feel warmer then the rest and also kind of raw. Have you ever bit the inside of your mouth? Or maybe your cheek? And it gets that raw feeling right before you get a sore or a cut from it? That's how it feels! So weird! There's no cuts or sores, it just feels like there is ABOUT to be one.

Today I started taking 50 mgs a day. I'm supposed to take 25 in the morning and 25 at night but because of the sleeplessness, I took all 50 this morning. The copper taste was back in my mouth and I totally bit the tip of my tongue twice about an hour ago while chewing gum and talking to a girl I work with. Yes, I'm very coordinated that way, and it was extremely classy. I never thought I would be too dumb to talk and chew gum at the same time but alas, that time has arrived! Ugh.

Anyways, I'm going to end this post (finally right?).

Oh, and this coming Sunday, March 8th, is my 32nd bday! If you must send gifts, please send cash since Mr Man says I have too many purses and that's the only thing I'm wanting lol

Have a great day everyone!

My New Lovah, Mr T... Strong & Scary but Without the Gold Chains

It's 3 a.m....

It's 3 a.m. and I'm up.

AGAIN.

Like I was last night.

And the night before that!

This new Topamax I'm taking has a ton of different side effects. For some people it makes them fall on their face exhausted all the time. Like they're sleep walking through their days. For others, it wires them and makes them wide awake. ALL THE TIME. I seem to have fallen into this second category.

I thought it would be good to keep tabs of this journey with my new lover Mr T, not only for my benefit, and the benefit of my new doctor who will need all the gory and boring details, but also because I'm finding there's a ton of information online about this drug. Most of it is EXTREMELY SCARY and horrific, little of it is very helpful and personal. So I figured maybe someone else can benefit by reading about this. If not, go read someone else's blog would ya? lol

No, I'm kidding.

STAY!

Seriously! Stay. It was a joke.

Let me begin first with a disclaimer...

***I am not a doctor. This blog is in no way meant to be used as medical advice. Always, always, always consult your own physician about your own use of this medication and my story here is just that, my own story and experience. Do not use my story as a basis or direction for your own medical use of Topamax. There are many different reasons why patients can be prescribed this medication and because of that, there are also many different dosages and instructions you can be given to follow based on your own personal medical history. If you have questions on your dosage and side effects, please speak to your own physician.***

There, I feel better. Now back to my entry...

So, if you haven't read previous entries, I am taking Mr T to hopefully help with migraines, chronic headaches and chronic pain from my fibromyalgia. My new doctor, bless her heart, thinks it may help me and I'm crossing my fingers and toes in that same vain.

My instructions are as follows:

For week 1 I am supposed to take 25 mg at bedtime.
Week 2, 25 mg in the morning and again at bedtime.
Week 3, 25 mg in the morning and 50 mg at bedtime.
Week 4, 50 mg in the morning and again at bedtime.

Day 1, which was Thursday night, I took the first 25 mg pill 5 minutes after the pharmacy handed my prescription to me. I had 3 seizures when I was pregnant with B and when I was in the hospital being evaluated to see why I was having seizures out of nowhere, since I'd never had one before, they shot me up with 2 different anti seizure medications that I ended up being allergic to. I was supposed to take Mr T at bedtime but because of my past history with anti seizure meds, I was afraid of having a huge allergic reaction to it and, oh I don't know, suffocating in my sleep or something. So that's why I took it right away, while I was still lucid and aware of everything.

Within about 35 minutes I had a horrible coppery, metallic taste rush into my mouth. I think I mentioned it in my last post. It was like I put a whole bunch of pennies in my mouth to suck on. The Coke I had been drinking started tasting like metal and was very tingly on my tongue, almost painful actually. I had to make cookies for a potluck at work the next day and Mr Man said I was acting very goofy and wired and energetic. (He kept calling me "Mrs Topamax" which I found hysterical for some reason. I must have been high lol)

I was in a really good mood, laughing and joking with him and B but my brain was kind of skipping beats here and there. I had to read the recipe about 20 times because I couldn't focus on it and what ingredients I had already put in the bowl. I needed to find the pastry blender that
Mr Man had put away when he cleaned the kitchen the last time I used it. It wasn't in the drawer I keep all my baking supplies in and for the life of me I could not think of the name of the damn thing.

Now, forgetting the names of items is not something new for me. I have fibro. It's an everyday occurrence and Mr Man is used to it but this was different. With fibro it's usually a complete blank. I can't think of what the thing is AT ALL. It's like someone takes an eraser and just wiped out that little memory card that's filed away in my brain that holds that item. Then later on, it comes back. This was different in that it was on the tip of my tongue. I kept trying to explain it to Mr Man over and over and over again. I was miming it with my hand, trying to make the shape of it. Telling him you make pie crusts with it and it smooshes the flour and the butter or shortening together until it looks like peas. Unfortunately, I think I even tried calling it that "knuckle looking thing!" What the hell is that all about? How do you get knuckle when talking about the pastry blender? It was pretty comical. Mr Man just kept laughing at me even though I was getting frustrated.

I had no problems falling asleep that night but I was awake by 3am. I woke up with RLS (Restless Legs) and got up to take some Mirapex I'm prescribed for it. By the time I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen for water, the restless, jittery feeling had spread from head to toe. I took the Mirapex still, hoping for some relief. I started shaking with really, really bad chills. If you know me at all, you know that I am ALWAYS hot. I live in Utah which is nipply cold in the winter. I could be outdoors, in shorts and flip flops, in the middle of January and still be wishing for a breeze of some kind. So, I knew something was wrong if I was freezing. I couldn't hold still, I was shaking and jittery and felt like I needed to jump out of my skin. I paced the house for about 2 hours before snuggling up to Mr Man again for the warmth and falling asleep for half an hour. Then I was up again, wired and jittery and wide awake again. BUT....

For the first time in 17 YEARS, I WAS HEADACHE FREE!!!!!!! It was funny because I remember standing there talking to Mr Man as he was walking out the door to leave for work, about how awful my boss had been about some comment he'd made a couple of days before, when it dawned on me why I was so happy! I didn't have a headache! It's been so long since I haven't had one that I couldn't even remember what that was like. It was wonderful.

He had made me toast and poured me coffee before he left for work as he always does in the morning, because he's so sweet and he knows how rough mornings always are for me. I had zero appetite. The site of the toast and just the thought of eating it actually made me want to gag a little. I think I drank about half the coffee, which thankfully tasted like it normally does. But then he left for work and I sat on the couch to relax for a minute. And I felt like someone had just pulled the plug on my happy mood. It was very odd. One minute I was fine and the next minute, I was very melancholy and sad and depressed. I almost felt flat, if there's even such a way to feel flat. I can't explain it very well but it kind of scared me a little. Then just like that, it was gone.

Now, I also started my period at this same time which could be why I might have been having the elated feelings and the feelings of flatness and melancholy although I will say that I am not a big PMS kind of person. With my period I am emotional in that I cry at commercials and songs and stories but I never get depressed feelings or feelings of elation like I did that morning. Maybe it was Mr T, maybe not, maybe Mr T just intensified that? I dunno.

I remained headache free until around 11:30 am Friday morning, which is actually about the same time I seemed to get my appetite back too. That's probably when Mr T left my body from the previous nights dose. I had lunch but couldn't eat much of anything. It all tasted the same but still couldn't have anything with carbonation. Still tasted like fizzy metal. I drank a lot of water all day Friday so I didn't notice any tingling feelings at all.

Day 2, Friday night, I took the dose at bedtime and had the same coppery taste in my mouth. I didn't have the same elated, happy feeling as before. The only memorable thing that happened really was that I tripped going up the stairs! Twice. On the same trip. Actually, on the same step. I know this med can affect coordination which is the only reason I'm mentioning it. Jittery/restless feeling was only in my legs. Started having tingling in my hands and feet but as I drank more water, that went away.

I was not headache free today (Saturday) though. I had a horrible pounding headache which could have been from the lack of sleep from the night before. I had fallen asleep snuggling with B putting him to bed. Woke up at midnight and was awake until I think 3:30 am when I was finally able to fall asleep, and then was up by 9 am because of the dog and cat wanting attention. Did not have much appetite at all. Went out to breakfast with my sister and the kids and had about 6 bites of my food. Ate 3 chicken strips for lunch and that was it. Tried drinking lots today though to keep other side effects at bay.

Today, Day 3, Saturday, I thought I would outsmart Mr T a bit and take half the 25 mg dose around 3:00 pm to see if that would help a little with the sleeplessness. Unfortunately, it did not! (As you can tell since it was 3 AM when I started this post and it's now 5 am!!!) After I took half the dose, I had no appetite. I did have tingling, which I've read is my body letting me know I need hydration since Mr T does dehydrate your body very quickly. So as long as I was drinking water or Powerade, that stayed at bay.

I took the 2nd half of my 25 mg dose around 7:30 tonight I think. Because I'm not hungry in the least little bit, I forgot about making dinner. I was promptly reminded though by my hungry family. When they started giving me fish eye and drooling, I decided to make dinner. I made it through cooking the chicken just fine but when I went to drain the pasta, I dropped the pot of pasta, complete with the boiling water as I was trying to drain it. Splashing boiling water all over my hands. Now, not only did I do it once, but as soon as I tried to lift the pan up again to finish draining it, I dropped it a second time! That is when I hollered for Mr Man to come finish the job since I had burned both hands really bad. I'm ok now but they were bright red tonight.

Other then that clumsy act, I have extremely bad heartburn and I'm kind of nauseated. I also have this weird feeling like there's something stuck in the pit of my stomach. Like a knot or something. You know that feeling you get when you're really nervous or really stressed and you have this feeling down deep in your stomach? That's what it feels like all the time now. But I'm thinking it has more to do with Mr T then with any of my life's stresses right now. I don't know. Also, I'm still extremely emotional, crying at EVERYTHING! Today I cried at about 7 different commercials on TV, cried at a story a friend told me, cried at a blog I read and cried at a song I heard. Which is a lot more then I normally cry around this time!

I think that might be it for the wrap up of days 1-3 of Mr T. I'll try to keep this updated daily with more information on how this is going. I've noticed a lot more hits to my blog now that I'm talking about Mr T and Topamax. Hopefully this will be helpful and beneficial to some of you. Please feel free to leave me comments! I welcome them!

Topamax Just May Do THIS Body Good....

Last Wednesday my mother in law had major surgery to try and remove as much of the cancer as the surgeons hoped they could. The 3 hour surgery ended up lasting almost 6 hours but turned out pretty good. I was there even though she still isn't speaking to me. When the surgery was over and the surgeon came out to find us to tell us how it went, they said there was some problems with her blood not clotting correctly so they had to put her in ICU until she was out of the woods.

All of us got to go in together and see her as she was waking up from the surgery. She must have thought she was dying because she was saying goodbye to everyone, telling everyone she loved them and to take care of each other. It was very emotional and heart wrenching. Everyone was huddled around her bedside and I felt so removed from the scene as if I were watching a movie, far away from the reality of it all. I remember hearing the beeping of the machines in the ICU and the nurses speaking in the hall and watching the lines moving on the screen of her machine, but still felt a million miles away. I was instantly transported to the aunts I've lost to cancer and how that scene seemed so surreal and strangely familiar all at the same time. I was a little dizzy with the sense of deja vu that had washed over me and I hung back, letting the rest of the family talk to her. Assure her that the surgery turned out better then we had hoped for and that the surgeons were able to remove most of the cancer they could see.

Everyone had filed out one by one to let her get rest. Only Mr Man and I were still in the room and I quietly walked up to the bed and my mother in law turns her head and looks right at me, for the first time in a month now, and says...

"Where's my Cass?"

Cass, or Cassandra, is my beautiful, sweet new sister in law who my mother in law adores. She has welcomed her into the family in a way that she never has with me. Not in the beginning, not after a few years, not even now, 8 years later.

I just looked at her for a minute, dumb founded that even in her extremely drugged state, she still wouldn't speak to me or want anything to do with me. So I left the room and got Cassandra for her again, who had already been there and spoken to her and told her goodbye for the night. I spent the next few minutes out in the hall while they spoke and Jason said goodbye to his mom.

And I, of course, buried it deep inside, kept my mouth shut, and pouted all the way home. But whatever. It's who I am.

She's still in the hospital but she's out of the ICU. She was doing really well, had the staples taken out and was starting to eat again when they found out she was completely infected with MRSA so now we're not sure what will happen and when she'll be coming home.

On to other news... My new doctor has started me on Topamax for my migraines and chronic headaches. It has a horrid list of scary side effects as long as my leg but I was willing to try anything if it would stop the headaches and migraines. I've suffered from constant headaches since I was a teenager. Probably since I was 15 or 16. I wake up with them, eat with them, sleep with them. Some wives can tell their husbands, "Not tonight dear, I have a headache!" Never works for me. Mr Man would never get any if that were the case! lol

I don't know what it's like anymore to not have head pain going on. I filled the prescription last night and took the first pill on the way home from Walmart. Within 30 minutes I had this coppery taste rush into my mouth like I'd stuck a handful of pennies in there or it had filled up with blood. The Coke I was drinking then tasted like metal and I couldn't drink anymore. It made me jittery and woke me up at 3 AM this morning shaking with chills, freezing my ass off, and wide awake. I felt like I wanted to jump out of my skin, it was that bad. BUT, for the first time in YEARS, I was headache free! All of those side effects may actually be worth it if I can get rid of the damn headaches!

Oh, and one last bonus is that it completely kills your appetite for some people and you lose loads of weight. It does seem to have that effect on me. I'd be completely ok with losing lots of weight lol! Wouldn't that be great right before summer???