The Rest of the Story...

Maybe I should quit telling people I blog, and just admit that what I really do is rant. Because looking over that last post, well, I might have been venting a bit. But I had to cut it off (because the client was waiting and all) so I think it sounded worse than it was meant to sound. Because I never got around to the POINT of all the ranting and that was to tell you about how my HEALTH has suffered from all the stress I’m feeling.

And even though I vowed early on (to myself) to NEVER blog about my weight or my menopause issues, I feel that you will never fully understand my actions and behavior without some mention of these pesky issues now and again. And now is one of those times. Because I’m pretty sure that my reaction to the whole basketball-Nutcracker-Christmas party thing wouldn’t have been so drastic had it not been for the menopause thing. I hope not anyway.

Because here’s what happened. Right around the time things were heating up with all of those stress-inducing activities, I started waking up with hives. At first just a few, but with each morning, they became progressively worse. Until last Wednesday when I woke up with a swollen eye and lip and neck and pretty much looked like someone you’d never want around your young children. So I go to the doctor, actually Dave takes me because I’m feeling pretty sick. And they give me a steroid shot, and I decide to do that passing out thing I do so well but haven’t done in so many years that it kind of scared me. And at one point I think the doctor and his crew of nurses had me in a wheelchair tilted back so that my head was below my body and they were doing blood pressure read outs that sounded so low that I’m pretty sure I might have been clinically dead. But that part is a bit fuzzy now, and not really important anyway.

What’s important is that Dave is over there telling them that I do this ALL THE TIME. Which totally is not true. I mean, yes, I used to be a fainter. But I haven’t fainted for YEARS now. Literally. So when I finally recovered, I challenged Dave to remember the last time I passed out and he couldn’t remember, so I really don’t think he should have led all those medical people to believe I’m just some flake who can’t bear the pain of a little steroid shot. Not to mention that he also told them all about my fake heart attack from last summer. Which obviously isn’t a subject I like to talk about either. So naturally, I’ve told him I will never let him accompany me to the doctor’s office again.

And anyway, the happy ending is that I’ve been hive-free for the last week or so, thanks to good drugs, but I am keeping an Epipen close at hand just in case. The night I got home from the hospital...yes, they put me in for monitoring and to give me fluids, which must be what they do when someone passes out after a shot...anyway, I sat all of my children down and made them listen while I instructed them on administering the Epipen in case I went into anaphylactic shock. And they all listened obediently and appeared to be eager to jab that thing into my thigh if need be. Which I’m not TOO worried about. But a couple of days later, David asked me where I kept the Epipen, and this was right after I’d grounded him from ALL SCREENS for a week, because he pushed his sister to the ground trying to get to the computer one night. So without even trying to disguise my suspicion, I asked him why he wanted to know the whereabouts of the Epipen, but he just said in case we were alone someday and I started having trouble breathing...and I guess I’ll take that at face value.

I have other tales to tell...including a report on Rachel’s 17th birthday and other scintillating (brilliant and exciting) happenings in our lives...but I have to work now.

For lunch today, I had some of Dave’s fat-free chicken tortilla (like) soup, which might have been quite tasty had it not been for the lack of certain ingredients which would have disqualified it as a fat-free soup. If you know what I mean.