Have you ever wondered (Handy Manny)..........?

Why doesn’t anyone pay Kelly for the stuff they take from her store? Manny just asks for it and Kelly just hands it out.And for that matter, why doesn’t ANYBODY pay for anything? I mean I’ve never seen Mrs. Portillo pay for the repairs Manny makes.

Why isn’t there a husband to Manny’s sister and a father to her child?In fact why aren’t there any partners at all for Abuelito, Kelly, Manny, Manny’s Sister or the Chinese or Indian families? There’s always just one parent with a kid??

Why don’t strangers freak out when tools talk to them?

How in the hell does Manny know how to fix everything from a stove, to a fire truck light bar to an elevator? I mean seriously do you WANT him fixing the elevator – something that can plummet to the earth from several stories up?

Where does Manny live, in the back of his shop?

Where does everyone pay the bills? I’ve never seen anything but the Mayor’s office.

Do the tools co-sleep in Manny’s bed?

Has anyone ever noticed just how much of an asshat Mr. Lopart is? He's always rude to Manny yet Manny fixes his screw ups all the frickin' time!

The Tools love eating but where the hell do they poop from?

Does anybody ever get laid in Sheetrock hills?

Does Kelly ever grab Manny behind the paint shelves and ask him if he wants to “hit this?”

Yes I've lost my mind with singleparenthood............

On Thursday I hit the breaking point of a culmination of a lot of things. Mentally, physically and spiritually I have had enough and am struggling. After a lousy day at work on my way to get Oz I had to pull over and cried uncontrollably for 20 minutes. I felt so sad, overwhelmed and without hope. Throw in a few dark thoughts and I basically scared the shit out of myself. I went home that night and promised myself that if I still felt this way the next morning I'd call someone.....I did and I did.

I called my non-biological sister. She's a sister by adaption not adoption but I've become a member of her family when hers were abusive shits and she formed her own family. I knew that if I exposed it all, said it all, without abridging or editing anything that she wold not freak out. I didn't need a state of panic I needed a rock.....A Christina if you saw the last episode of Grey's.

First, just talking outloud, even the dark stuff made a thousand pound weight feel more like 20 lbs. I've taken on too much this deployment and something has got to go. I'm working fulltime, my work is trying to suspend me for taking a stupid form someone marked out the word "homosexual" on with whiteout, I've got a full course load for grad school, the husband's deployed, I'm a single parent, my kid is a toddler, my FRG is not very active and I have no family around to lean on physically. My sister wondered how it took me 5 months into the deployment before I reached my limit.

We worked out some things like she's coming to visit in May, the MIL is coming in April and I am to ask my parents or my brother to come out in June. Either they can babysit or I get a sitter and at least one night while they are here I am to go and do something, anything that I want to do. I also need to evaluate my feelings once a week and if after a few weeks or a month if I still feel sad, hopeless or overwhelmed I am to get my arse to a doc and look at being seen for depression.

I'm also setting up a time line to resign from work. After I finish writing up my response to my proposed suspension and I get what ever it is I am railroaded into I am either finding a new job or resigning. Right now my income pays for home improvements and the last of grad school. I just bought a new fence and have one last semester of school to pay for. After those two things are paid off if I haven't found a new job I'm giving a single finger salute to work and resigning. Money won't be free flowing like it is now, but we can survive with just one income.

Unfortunately I may lose my mind since I enjoy working when I don't work in an office of asshats. I like the adult conversation that I get from working with customers and such. I also worry because Oz loves it at daycare. He loves the kids, his vocab is off the charts (minus mommy teaching him the f-bomb) and really enjoys his teacher. I'm hoping to find a job somewhere else so I don't have to quit the big picture just get out of the nuthouse.

Anyways, I feel like I can at least breath now. I have a plan of attack, a plan of what to do should these feelings not go away and am reaching out to my family and friends for support which they are happy to give. I can't wait until June which is pretty much my cutoff date for leaving the nuthouse. So there is a light at the end of tunnel, thank God for my sister.

Sums things up at the moment...

What a difference

I'm not a parenting genius. I've made mistakes (my kid says the FBomb no thanks to my roof being torn up and me seeing it). But I have noticed that I'm getting better each day and that I'm getting fairly good at observing.

One of my observations today was that Oz was being a little terd more and more throughout the day. He was also a little more on the whiney side. These aren't normal for him. Yes he tortures the dog for what ever unknown reason I can't get worked out yet but towards me he's a very loving and friendly little guy. So being a terd, whiney and hanging out on my lap for more than 20 minutes is a bad sign.

So throughout the day I've been checking his temp. Nothing major, normal mostly with a little spike around 1800 to 99.9 degrees. I just kept pushing the fluids and gave him some Tylenol. Around 1830 while sitting in my lap watchin for the umpteen time a Handy Manny episode and eating grapes Oz proceeds to vomit - everywhere. He got me, himself, his hair, the lazyboy, the turkish carpet, the kitchen floor, the kitchen sink (I put him in the sink while he finished) and the kitchen counter. Grapes the second time around smells horrible...ewwwwie. Of course you know the house keeper came today so everything was clean.

I bite the bullet and strip the boy but he starts freaking in the sink. Half dressed and shivering (mainly from the scare of vomiting) now I drag him upstairs to the bath. He was so happy to see that bathtub. I strip him the rest of the way and plop him into the tub. I strip myself and run to get new clothes for me since I was leaving him more than an arms reach from me in a tub with water. He played for a bit and I wiped him down to get off the stink.

He was a light eater today so eventhough I was so proud that he'd been bottle free for over two weeks now, I handed him a bottle with a Pedialyte and grape juice mix. The grape juice cuts the salty taste. Wouldn't you know that puking was the perfect thing for him? Yeah his temp went down, his head didn't feel warm anymore and he was all about playing. I wish I had paid attention to the signs a bit earlier and maybe I could have stopped feeding him grapes.

Seriously I am done with this deployment. I am frustrated at being home alone with all this good stuff happens to just me. I've got some work issues too that are compounding my feelings of not being able to hack it right now - but they are so messy and personal that I don't want to talk about it.

Progress...on both counts

We are finally past the 33% mark for my donut of misery! Yes, only 66% more to go on this deployment. *Insert Snoopy dance here*

All my blood work is back and it all checked out. I don't have a blood disorder, at least not at the moment. I am supposed to get tested again in 6 months. If it checks out clear, then I shouldn't have to worry. That's good news for me, I can stop worrying about cancer. Yes I know just about everything symptom wise can be tracked back to some form of cancer, but the blood disorder they were concerned about has a risk of morphing into leukemia and you have a 19 month old - it puts the scare to you.

So two counts of good news!

linear programming sucks eggs

I started on Wednessday setting up my linear programming equation for a project due Sunday (look Ma, no procrastinating). I spent 2 hours Wed, 2 Thur and last night I spent 4 hours trying find the error in my formula that making the equation unsovlable. I finally found it and now I need to tweak two fields because I'm not sure if my variable is right.

I am so happy I used my head and started early on this! It sucks by the way, math I really never ever want to use after the end of this semester.

Little Update

Alrighty had an ear check and there's no infection! There's a little fluid she said but nothing that should cause him to get all bent over it. She put in for a referral for a hearing test so we can at least see if there are any issues there. I ended up using a decongestant the Omnicef doc perscribed for me for the last few days, just at night to keep his stuffy nose at bay. Looks like the little cold is over and I can stop giving it to him.

So no tubes yet but a hearing test which will be a good indicator if anything needs to be done.

Sanity wherefore art thou?

So all that not sleeping through the night may be based upon one thing - ear fluid. Not the wrong temp, not hunger but that we can't get the fluid out of little man's ears. Since 26 Dec 08 Oz has been on Amoxi, Augmenten and Omnicef. He just finsihed the Omni on Friday. Come Sunday he started waking up in the middle of the night again. The Peds NP we saw last started talking tubes and I started running fast in the other direction.

I'm leary about tubes for a few reasons:

1) Its surgery on an 18 month old.

2) Military Medical has done me wrong quite a few times that I am EXTREMELY gunshy, about letting someon hack into my kid's ear drums.

3) He's so close to 2 where the ear canal (yeah I can say the right word but can't spell it) will start to naturally drop and reduce infections until the ears reach their proper place at around age 4.

4) I don't wanna make this decision by myself

I'm also really tired and loopy over the waking up 3-4 times a night. I'm sure its killing Oz too, but I'm supposed to be the sane one and I feel that sanity slipping between school, work and lack of sleep. I noticed I'm getting more impatient with Oz too and that's not fair - not really. He's waking because his ears are bugging him and its his only form of communication. I'm not a meanie, I know why this is happening but I'm just sooooo tired that I cry for no reason at times. I just want to fix it, to fix him and give him his nights back and probably his days too where he's not being bothered by his ears.

I'm going to go ahead and ask about the consult with the ENT Dept tomorrow while I take him back into the Peds NP. I'd like to try one more thing (well exhaust all possible treatements) before going to surgery. I've read and some have mentioned a long round of antibiotics, like taking bactrim for 6 weeks to see if we finally can't kill off what ever is growing in there.

As for tonight we are running the humidifier (like normal), he took his zyrtec (like normal), no bottle but a sippy for that final drink, sitting up for the final drink and I elevated the one side of the crib (not like he doesnt just turn the other frickin way though). I also tried a granola treatment of place drops of a perioxcide/water mixture and dribbled a few drops in his ear. Its supposed to help clear the infection and relieve the pressure. If I thought he'd hold still we have the uber cool German puppy that has cherry pits in his belly. You microwave the cherry pits and its a warm comrpess. I also read that placing a warm bag of salt (cherry pit puppy equiv) helps to sooth and draw out the fluid so that's where the cherry puppy comes in.

Anyways I sort of feel like tubes are the devil but more and more people say they are heavenly so I don't really know. I just know that something has to happen to help this poor kid get his ears straight and fix his sleeping through the night deal.

Of course not

So after falling asleep in the patient room, I get woken up to an apology from the doc. The lab techs/ nurses are R'Tarded as I like to call it and for some reason failed to draw blood for ALL the tests. They pulled the two special ones that required me to come in on a certain day of the week.

Anyways we spoke about the two tests she took and they are looking promising. One is called the Jack test. It looks for a gene mutation and research has found that statistically 87% of those that test positive for the mutation have a blood disorder. This test was negative for me - so that's looking good.

We also talked about what research I have done about this. I stuck to the "good" sites like John Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic. But they had conflicting information about PV turning into acute leukemia. One site blames it on certain drugs being used, the other says that its really rare to turn into leukemia at all. Doc 2 here follows the theory that if you have a blood disorder your marrow is "malignant" or broken to begin with or it would function properly. Therefore the risk of a secondary illness is there and shouldn't be discounted. She also believes in starting at the lowest level of treatment first BEFORE pulling out the big guns or using drugs. So at least I know I'm not going to get pumped full of drugs any time soon.

Anyways so another 2 weeks I get to wait for the remaining tests. Although the Jack test is really helpful, and I don't relish the idea of someone sticking a long hollow rod into my hipbone, I would like to discuss with here exactly how conclusive this test is to see if having a final answer is worth the pain.

Personal Freakout

So anyone that's read my blog, knows that biologically I am just not normal. I have a divot in my cervix, my uterus is tilted, I spit sutures after almost every surgery, my appendix fooled everyone into thinking I had a ovarian cyst because it swelled up and covered my ovary and now I probably have a blood disorder.

One hematologist says polycythemia Vera the second went broad on me and said myeloproliferative disorder. Basically in either situation your body produces too much of one blood part - usually the red cells. The first hematologist really seemed so happy go lucky about this and I assume it was because I was pregnant at the time. Two weeks ago when I went to see the second doc in order to follow up like I was supposed to she said the main test for this (if the blood tests don't work) is a bone marrow biopsy. Okay so I guess doc 1 didn't want to freak out the pregnant lady but geesh he could have warned me.

I see the doc 2 here on Friday with my blood test results. I hate going to see hematologists because they are always at oncology clinics. You get the weirdest looks there too being young and in a cancer clinic Anyways if the blood test doesn't rule in or out what doc 2 thinks then we go for the biopsy.

We were shooting the breeze about our stupid overcrowded clinic on post today and I mentioned my potential blood disorder. This is where my freak out happened one lady from the NAF office said that her aunt has polycythemia and was basically told she will end up with leukemia at some point soon. She's been treated for it for 32 years now, just diagnosed about 2 years after her son's birth. I'm not even 40 and now there's a potential for leukemia? So of course I google tonight on the myeloproliferative disorder and see that depending upon what kind of treatment or it running amok undiagnosed for a few years does have a higher to high risk of it turning into leukemia. She basically really scared the crap out of me.

Of course I'm single parenting right now, have no one to really bounce this off of and I started to bawl and cry and cry tonight - Mostly while snuggling Oz while rocking ni-night. I really need this appointment on Friday to go well or at least have her give me the current statistics of how often leukemia develops in patients with PV. It hits me so square in the face to see how having a child changes the way you look at things. I want to watch my son get married, grow up all of that and there's this potential for it to not happen. Yes I know I could get ran over too and don't freak out but still - I'm a worrywart...always have been, always will be.

Anyways I'm just venting my fears, I don't like this idea, leukemia, cancer, all of it just makes me want to run away from it all and live on an island where I can somehow manage to leave all health conditions back on the mainland.