Blessed Relief

I'm almost scared to "say" this... terrified, actually...

I'm remarkably un-itchy right now. Have been for a day or so...

The prednisone seems to be the miracle cure I've been waiting for to rid me of this rash.

I would just like to know why I wasn't given this precious pill in the first place...

Why have I been left in misery to itch myself into deep purple bruises all over my legs?

Doctors are so irritating at times....

Now I have to go knock on every piece of wood in this house, because I've probably jinxed myself.

Oh, and I have not been taking the Ambien, so honestly, I don't know if it's the lack of Ambien that's cured me or the addition of Prednisone...

Rash

I hate when my body does things that it's not supposed to do. I'm just not good at handling change. I'm like, "You know... you HAVEN'T been doing this the first 29 1/2 years, so why the heck are you starting this crap with me now?!?!".

Maybe that's a little unrealistic, we do all grow and change, right? But I don't care.. change is not a friend of mine.... well, at least in most situations. I prefer most things to stay the same.

So, in December, when I was lying in bed watching my nightly episodes of Forensic Files and my elbow started itching... I thought it was just going to be an ordinary itch.... It would itch, I would scratch it, it would go away.

Oh no, it just could not be that simple. Before long, I realized that this little tiny bump that was itching on my elbow had turned into a little patch of tiny bumps. And they were itching more and more. So of course, I was scratching them! Well, the more I itched the scratch, the more little bumps that came and the more bumps that came, the more they ITCHED! So, before I knew it, I no longer had a patch of bumps, I had a patch of scabs from where I had itched the bumps to death!

Are you as tired of reading the words: itch, scratch, and bumps... as I am of typing them?

Ok, well, so, by the beginning of February (2 months into this ordeal) I had little itchy bumps on both my elbows. I went to my ob-gyn for my annual visit (the funnest thing EVER!) and he looked at them and gave me some steroid cream that should get rid of these pesky little bumps that he was now referring to as my rash. I hate that word... rash. It sounds so.... dirty....

I wanted to look at him and be like, "Okay, why has my body suddenly decided to break out in this rash??? I'm not hanging out with strippers, doing things I shouldn't be doing (sorry if you used to be a stripper, but well... anyway...), I'm sitting at home with my babies being a very good girl, if I must say so myself. So, why do I have a mysterious rash????

Anyway, this horrible thing has just progressively gotten worse and worse. And I am so stubborn and in extreme denial about the whole situation that I have blatantly refused to go to the doctor. I guess that I've just been thinking that I would wake up and it would magically be GONE one morning.

But, NOPE! It's just gotten worse... now, it's on my elbows, inside and out, on my knees, inside and out, on my ankles, AND on the OUTSIDE of my right calf!! Oh, that's gonna be pretty with summer coming about.

Whatever.

So, I went to the doctor today, finally, because I am at my wits end and completely miserable a good part of the day from scratching and itching.. itching and scratching.

He tells me he's not sure what it is, so he wants me to go see a Dermatologist. FANTASTIC! Let's get this diagnosis underway and get the itchy bumps off my body for good!

So, I go to the receptionist, she calls Dr. Thompson (the Dermatologist). He's booked up until MAY! You have GOT to be kidding me! So, she calls another doctor, who nobody's used, nobody referred him to me as a good doctor and he can get me in next week.

That's great and all. I hope he can figure this out, but I really am a bit nervous... nobody knew him. And why would Dr. Thompson be booked up until May something, and this doctor is available to see me next week?

Hmmm.. I don't know, but I sure hope he knows what he's doing!

By the way... did you know that Dermatologists do not take insurance? I have never heard of such! A doctor who doesn't take insurance! And the receptionist at my ob-gyn said that most Dermatologists don't. They just give you the paperwork and if you want to try to file it yourself you can. So, now I have to go to an unknown doctor and completely pay for it upfront, with no help from insurance.

I hate body malfunctions.

9 MONTHS!

Noah has officially been on earth as long as he was in my belly. Well, almost, anyway....

He was 9 months old last Sunday (the 15th) and his 9 month appointment was supposed to be last Monday, but when we went, he was so sick, running a fever, and cutting a tooth, so we just made that a sick appointment and yesterday we went back for the dreaded shot. UGH! I hate those so much!

Anyway...

He was 20 lbs. 3 oz. and I think 31 inches long... I could be a little off on that length... Emma was supposed to carry the papers for me to the car and when we got down the road, I asked her for them and she seemed to have no idea what papers I was talking about! grrrrr....

On another note.. This past weekend, his hair hanging in his eyes was driving me NUTS!!!!

So, I wet it....

And CUT IT!

No more huge curl wings on the sides of his head...

NO more 3 inch wisps ( not really, it just seemed that way) framing his hairline right by his shoulders....

He seems to like it.. :)

There's his little baby hair.... :(

He's growing up so fast. Makes me want another baby. :)

We Should be Quarantined and Other STUFF!

According to Tony, our whole family (well, the members that are currently present in the house, i.e. Me, Emma, Noah, and Marley) needs to be quarantined. Reason Being-- In the past month, we have suffered the following:

1. Emma waking up on a Saturday Night sometime around the middle of January.. let's just say the 10th (I'm pretty sure this is accurate, I just looked at a calendar)... throwing up her insides and a sky-high fever. This turned into a bad cold... and I woke up that Thursday morning with the same thing, only about ten times worse (thank GOD I got it to this extreme and not either of my children). I thought I was dying. It was so bad that I didn't blog for about two weeks **gasp!!** The dying part of this funk that I contracted from my little beauty lasted about two days, after I was done dying, I was just really sick for about two weeks... and even now, I still have congestion lingering from this funky funkness. Emma's all well, I'm happy to report.

2. I forgot to mention that the BEST.. oh, yes, BEST... part of this funkness was that we both had horrible sores in our noses with scabs so massive, they took up the entire area of our nostrils. Isn't that a nice visual?

3. Now, during this time, thank goodness, my little love muffin (Noah) steered clear of all our funky germs. Not sure how, he makes a point of sticking his tongue in my mouth during at least two or three kisses a day. However, he did randomly spike a few fevers and have a few snotty days throughout.

4. Sometime in January, I also started getting these little tiny, itchy bumps on my right elbow. I showed them to my doctor when I went in during my dying and he told me to just put cortizone on there.. I did that, it didn't help and only continued to get worse.. and I finally got some steroid cream today.

5. About two weeks ago, our dog, Marley, got beaten up by some wild animal in the woods behind our house to near death. I really wish I knew what did that to him. If you read my old blog on myspace, you may remember that it could have been anything from a wild dog to a coyote, a bobcat, or even a bear.. yes, we have bears back there.. but they've never appeared outside the woods...

6. Last week.. Noah's eye.. you all already read about that.... then this past weekend, he developed a little rash on the bottom of his belly that I took him BACK in for today after my appointment.

7. Then yesterday... I was sitting at my computer (of course... it was NAPTIME!!) and I heard the chime go off that signals me that one of the exterior doors has been opened. Well, since I wasn't expecting anyone, it alarmed me. So I stopped. "Mama??" I yelled out. No response. So, I got up from my seat and hobbled across the bonus room... my right foot was asleep and I was trying to wake it up to get ready to go down the stairs. No such luck. So, I start hobbling down the stairs. I had a really bad feeling about this, I could FEEL that something was about to happen, but I kept going.. I didn't know if there was an AXE MURDERER in my house with my baby sleeping down there, so I must go DEFEND my household... right??? Whatever, I would so scream, grab the baby and run... So, I kept hobbling.. two steps after the bad feeling.. my leg gave out, foot rolled to the side, and BAM! I SPRAINED MY ANKLE.

I almost passed out.

A wave of nausea rolled from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

My vision went black with little white flecks of snow spotting up sporadically in front of my eyes.

Emma was behind me and I went limp. She immediately jumped to my rescue. Thank goodness there was no Axe Murderer in my downstairs, because I was completely unable to fight anybody off.

She literally held me up as I regained my vision, gasped for breath, and grabbed a Ziploc and filled it full of ice for my now crippled ankle.

She was so sweet. She helped me to the couch and made sure the ice didn't fall off my leg. This is the end result... Isn't that egg on the side of my foot just so attractive? I really think so...

So, because of all of this, Tony told me today that he thinks we should just be quarantined for a while to prevent us from contracting any more funk or being involved in anymore catastrophes.

What do you think?


And today, I had my yearly appointment with my OB/GYN, so thank goodness school is not a mandatory activity for Emma at this stage. She went with me to help her handicapped mother out with the baby brother. Very good. She is the biggest helper... really, she is...

I had the hardest time cramming her feet into her shoes this morning, so upon leaving the doctor's office, we went to Shoe Carnival (where it's always buy one get one half off, that's what I'M talkin about!) and got some new kicks. She is in an 11 1/2!!! She's only four!! These things look like boats on her feet, but so super cute!


And she is so on top of her chores! In her daddy's absence, she takes out the trash AND she feeds the dog!

Now, this is the best.... Noah (8 1/2 month old NOAH) ate his first piece of pizza right by himself tonight... the WHOLE piece! I have pinched off little pieces for him in the past, but tonight he kept reaching for it, so finally I let him hold it and he just tore it UP!

Gosh, he's the cutest thing ever...

He looks so much older than 8 months to me here...

I think he's tired of me taking pictures of his messy face.... that is SUCH a Candace look he's giving me...

As a side note: I'm sure my cousin Carrie ( you remember, the super fab one) probably wishes I would get quarantined... without a phone.... I have to be verging on driving her INSANE with all my camera and editing questions... holy cow, they're just never-ending....

It's a Mystery

My sweet boy woke up yesterday morning with a swollen, red eye. It honestly looked like his pacifier had somehow gotten under his face while he was sleeping and had made a red mark, like can happen if you sleep on your hand or something, so all day long I kept expecting this redness to go away.

It never did.

Last night, it was just getting more and more red and more and more swollen, so I started to kinda freak out a little.

Luckily, our pediatrician's office always has a doctor on call 24 hours a day that you can call after hours. That's awesome, huh? So, anyway, I called the doctor on call and described Noah's eye to her. He didn't have a fever, it wasn't tender to the touch and it didn't feel hard at all, so she wasn't sure what to tell me except that it could be cellulitis, so I should call in the morning to make an appointment.

So, I called first thing this morning, made the appointment and went in.

The doctor we saw was also boggled. She said she didn't think it was infection because of it not being tender and she didn't think it was an alergy to our dog (who just recently became a house dog) because it wasn't accompanied by watery eyes or sneezing or any other allergy symptoms.

So, she checked his ears, eyes, nose, and throat.. all of those looked perfect.

Still no fever.

She's absolutely at a loss for what has all of a sudden happened to my child's eye.

And before you ask.... NO... he wasn't hit and he didn't fall on anything.

So, she gave me an anti-biotic and zyrtec, just in case it is an allergy or just in case it's an infection, even though it doesn't appear to be either. And if it gets worse, of course, I'm supposed to bring him in immediately and if it's not better by Friday, I'm to bring him back in.

Isn't this strange? Has anybody by chance had any experience with anything like this?

Poor little fella.. but isn't he super cute in his outfit? :)

"Okay, Mom, how many pictures of my black (red) eye do you need on record?"

He remains a happy camper no matter what...


She loves her boy so much. She is so worried about his eye, it just makes my heart melt. The first thing she said this morning when he got up was, "Awww... poor baby, your eye's still sick... Mommy, we HAVE GOT to take him to the doctor to get him well."