Health Fitness and Beauty

Contest Winners

April 1, 2006 by Tricia

I didn’t have as many entries to the Pupsickle contest as I thought I would. Several people left lovely comments, but few entered, so I have decided to reward all who choose to play the game.

Runner Up- Suki wins 25 credits
2nd place winner – Writewingnut wins 50 credits
1st place winner – Swibiruntn wins 100 credits

Enjoy your winnings! Too bad it isn’t cash, eh?

____________________________________________________

Mini-Update on my injury (see last post if you need to catch up!):

I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would when I got up Friday morning. Perhaps it was because my jaw was relatively still while I slept or maybe I still had some pain killers running through my system. The latter is most likely as I dosed myself very well before I finally went to bed.

Throughout the day my jaw and chin became more painful, and I also noticed other aches and pains that weren’t making themselves known Thursday night. My left thigh, left shoulder and my abdomen all hurt too. I get a lot of pain if I try to raise my left arm to shoulder level.

Oh and I was confused when I wrote the last post! Actually I was confused even when I was in the hospital. I kept telling everyone that my left jaw and ear hurt worse than the other side. Well, duh, it’s the right side I kept pointing to and cradling. I hope the Dr. and x-ray tech realized that I meant the right side was the worse of the two and didn’t think that I was just demonstrating the pain of my left jaw by pointing to and touching the right.

My RIGHT ear really hurts, or maybe it’s my jaw where it joins the skull- the Temporal mandibular joint. If I move my jaw side to side, try to make my upper and lower teeth touch, push my chin in or out it hurts the most in that area. Oh and I sneezed three times on Friday and almost screamed in pain each time. My ear or something very close to it pops loudly and painfully when I sneeze. My ear still has the full congested feeling too, even though my hearing on that side seems normal. If this doesn’t calm down over the weekend I’m going to have to get it checked out.

Flat on my face

March 31, 2006 by Tricia

Or rather, I fell flat on my chinny chin chin!

I wrote out the whole story on Odd Planet if you’d like to go and read about my accident. It’s kind of humorous, so if you’d like a bit of a laugh at my expense go read the whole story.

The semi-short version is that I was walking with my husband and I either got dizzy or tripped and after a short useless attempt at keeping myself upright I used my chin as a landing pad. On a cement sidewalk!

My husband got me to the hospital pretty fast when he saw the big gapping hole in my chin, and when I told him that I had heard quite a crack when I landed. I wasn’t sure if I had broken my jaw it was hurting so bad. We had a small pit stop at home before we went to the hospital so that I could change my coat since the one I was wearing at the time was covered in blood, and so that I could get an ice pack on my face.

The hospital we went to is the one that I work at, in fact I had to visit the ER where I work. Very embarrassing!

To keep this on the short side I ended up with several stitches in my lower chin after the doctor told me that the wound was right to my chin bone. I must have popped not only the skin but the tissues below it on impact. The doctor also told me that it will take several months to fully heal. It’s bad!

I also had several x-rays of my jaw since it was aching even worse by the time the stitches were finished. The left side is the worst, and the pain goes right into my ear. The x-rays looked good to the doctor, but a radiologist will check them out tomorrow to be sure that there aren’t any small fractures.

At the very least I expect that I’ll be in pain for a few days and end up with a lot of bruising. I haven’t looked at my face since we got home a couple of hours ago, but when I feel my chin it feels like it’s all puffed out. Picture a profile view of a witch with her chin extended and jutting out and that’s what my chin feels like to me right now.

My niece, the first, who happens to have been born when I was 12, is getting married near the end of April. The doctor told me that my scar will be very bad around that time because scars are usually very red and raised after about 4 or 5 weeks of healing. Lovely! Just in time for the wedding. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. I really could have broken my jaw and ended up attending her wedding with a wired jaw or something like that.

I’m sitting here in a lot of pain right now. I really hit the ground hard! My neck, my jaw, and the sides of my head hurt. The freezing is also starting to come out of my wound too so that’s talking to me as well.

I haven’t eaten yet so I’m going to go try to suck some soup through my stiff jaw and then try to sooth my aches and pains with an ice pack. I still can’t believe I did this to myself. I’ve told you before that I’m a klutz. Well here’s the proof! Thankfully I’m usually a bit more resilient than I was tonight.

Pupsickle Contest

March 25, 2006 by Tricia

It wasn’t hard to pick my latest renter Pupsickle. Erin lives in the land of the midnight sun and I enjoy reading about life in her beautiful frozen land. If you look through her site you’ll find some great pictures of Alaska’s ice sculpture contest, her dancing dog, vacation pictures and so much more. I like the way Erin writes about life. I particularly enjoyed one of her recent posts “Things I know for sure” . It’s humorous, and I’m sure we can all related to a few of the items on her list.

Contest:

I’ll give you a little incentive to visit Erin’s site, although I think that when many of you get there and actually start reading her site you won’t really need the push.

Visit Pupsickle and then send me an e-mail telling me what vegetable she loves to torture her husband with, and your bl0gmad user name. My e-mail can be found in the upper left hand column under “about me”.

**Hint** read her post titled: Update (March 21, 06)

On Friday March 31st, I will put all the names of those who have entered, and given the correct answer, into a hat and randomly select THREE winners.

If you are not already a member of bl0gmad please click on one of the links above and go register. You’ll get a lot of hits to your site and will likely get some regular readers as a result of joining the site so it’s a win win situation.

Thank you for all of the comments on my last post. I believe it’s a site record! Just to be clear though- I love writing and I have been enjoying the bl0gging format and it’s ease of use. As one of my commenters put it- it’s “the peripheral side of blogging” that got to me. I know visitors and regular readers will eventually come even if I don’t surf my brains out at all the traffic sites. it’ll just take a lot longer.

I just got a little bit down because I’ve been spending so much time doing the “peripheral” activities that it started to take away from my enjoyment of actually writing new posts for my site. I too have found some great sites while surfing on the various traffic engines and I wouldn’t have found them if I hadn’t have been surfing. There are pro’s and con’s to everything and I suppose yesterday I was seeing and feeling more of the negative side, perhaps more than I ever had before.

I’ve also been feeling absolutely horrid the past three or four days and that has got me more than a little down. BTW it takes a LOT to get me down. As my few regular readers might know I have Crohn’s disease which is an inflammatory bowel disease. It’s painful, life changing, occasionally embarrassing, and sometimes life threatening, and on top of that it’s name sucks!

I’ve been in so much pain of the last few days that I’ve taken more pain medicine than I ever have in the past. Mind you, thanks to my doctors stupidity I’ve only had pain medicine available to me for the last two months but that’s another rant.

Anyway- I think I have another partial bowel obstruction. I’m a nurse- I know the signs, and I’ve experienced it several times in the past so I’m pretty sure that’s what is going on. I also know from both my work and my past experience that unless it gets really bad or becomes a total blockage that if I were in the hospital they would mainly pump be full of I.V. fluids, perhaps up the meds I’m already taking and just keep an eye on me. I might be being both a stupid nurse and a stupid patient right now but I am NOT going to the hospital. Not yet. If it gets worse I definitely will. It’s just two blocks away.

One pro of having this problem- perfect way to lose weight. I’m living on water and broth right now. One con- PAIN!

I’m mainly only telling you guys this because:

1. it helps explain my mindset from yesterday a little bit better.

2. There is a chance that I might have to go to the hospital and if I do I will likely be admitted. This could delay the contest that I’ve just started. Don’t worry- I’ll draw names when I return if that happens. But it won’t – right?

3. This is my bl0g and while I really don’t want to make it a Crohn’s or “living with pain” bl0g, I am going to talk about what I’m going through on occasion mostly because this disorder has become my life in the last year and a half. In fact I just got put off work for another four months as a result of what I’m going through. So every once in a while I’m likely going to bring it up.

Ok, enough of that! Check back late this afternoon or sometime this evening. I made an interesting discovery Friday evening and I’d like to share it with my readers.

Spring Resolutions

March 21, 2006 by Tricia

I don’t get out much.Yes – I just came to that realization. I went to the doctors yesterday and I was sitting there trying to think when I last stepped outside my house and I think it was for my last doctors appointment about a week and a half ago. Pathetic isn’t it?

You’d think I was an old lady from what I just said above wouldn’t you? NOT. I just have a belly ache that won’t go away. I’m starting to feel like this is my theme song:

“She put the lime in the coconut, she drank ’em both up (3x)
Put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up,
and said, Doctor, ain’t there nothin’ I can take,
I said Doctor, to relieve this bellyache,
I said Doctor, ain’t there nothin’ I can take,
I said Doctor, to relieve this bellyache”

Actually, just listening to that song makes me feel better. Maybe I should either play it all day, or trying putting the lime in the coconut and drink it all up? I’d probably end up adding some rum if I did the lime and coconut though. Wouldn’t you?

But it was nice being out yesterday. My husband and I made an outing of it and got some groceries done and stopped to get some food for the turtles. No- I’m not going to tell you what we bought for the turtles- it will gross you out.

I sat in the car while my husband popped into the store. The radio was playing a run of David Bowie songs. I forgot how much I like David Bowie. They were playing China girl while I waited. Kind of ironic since I was sitting in Toronto’s little china town in the East end at that time.

That’s what I should do to make myself feel better, play music all day. But of course if I play music all day I’d eventually end up dancing to a song or two. Might as well set up a webcam if I’m going to do that and be like the Daily Dancer. Yep, I could give all my visitors a daily dance. Of course since I’m a girl some of you would probably want to see a different kind of dance than what the Daily Dancer does.

Anyway, I’m glad that Spring is finally here! That should make me feel better too. I can’t wait for my garden to really start waking up. Naturally, as it starts to wake up I’ll have to get out and there and do some work, but I enjoy that.

I’m also going to try to get out for a walk everyday now that spring has arrived. Murphy’s Law dictates that as I sit her typing out this post it’s -8 Celsius. Brrrr. I think I’ll wait until the afternoon when it’s bound to be warmer.

Oh, I think I have a way to solve some of my upcoming money woes! No- I’m still not going to do that kind of dance! I’d need to put a lot of rum in the coconut to end up doing that! Get your minds out of the gutter will you?

A few people that my husband and I work with rent out a room in their house to students coming in from other Countries to study English or other courses. Sometimes the student stays in your home for as little as one week, or two weeks. I think the longest is one month. One agency pays $750 for boarding a student in your home for a month. I believe you have to provide one or two home cooked meals a day along with the room. No problem. We have a three bedroom house, and right now there is just the two of us. Our co-workers who do this say that the students are barely ever home. If that’s true we’d still have a lot of privacy. I think we are going to try it out. At least it’s short term and if we don’t like it we don’t have to do it again.

I’d like to thank everyone who has commented on my new theme. I’m very happy with it. The color is a nice spring – like color isn’t it?

Gurgles and growls

March 19, 2006 by Tricia

Does your body ever make noises that make you wonder just what the heck is going on? No … I’m not talking about gas!

In my case I’m talking about my stomach and upper digestive tract. Every time I take a drink of something I can hear it- very loudly, gurgle it’s way down to my stomach. Then it errrrps and eorrrrs for a while. Same kind of thing happens when I eat. It’s not your normal stomach growls- like when you are hungry.

It’s almost like my abdomen is talking. Talking very very loudly! This goes on for hours- pretty much from the time I get up in the morning and take my first meal until well after the last meal of the day. Grrrrrrr, urpppp, eoooooooooow. It’s like I have a baby dinosaur in my tummy, or at least the sounds it makes is what I imagine a baby dinosaur would make.

It’s probably happening because my insides are inflamed and narrowed … but it’s so loud! My husband can hear it from across the room. I’m not embarrassed by it … well, a little when I’m at work and taking care of a patient. I just tell them I’m hungry, even though it does not sound like hunger growls. Mostly I find it amusing. It’s as if my stomach is having a conversation with me.

So- does your body make noises that you either find amusing or that you find very embarrassing? (again NOT gas!)

And finally-

Lydia tagged me!

The rules:

List seven songs you’re into right now. No matter the genre, whether [or not] they have words, or even if they’re any good, they must be songs you’re really enjoying right now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs, then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Ok. None of these are current songs. I haven’t been listening to the radio lately, but I have been listening to my CD’s, mp3’s, and my husband practicing song after song on his guitars …. so here goes:

Beautiful Day – U2
Daniel – Fuel
Seven Nation Army – White Stripes
Outside – Staind
Psycho Killer -Talking Heads
Lunatic Fringe – Tom Cochrane
Seasons in the Sun – Terry Jacks

Now, to tag 7 people? Hmmmm I’m still kind of new to the blogging world and don’t know that many of you yet. Forgive me if you don’t like being tagged? Please?

Pajama Mama

Pupsickle

Vandelay Industries

Taste the World

Whatchu Tawkin Bout

PlusUltra

Echo Mixed Nuts

The sites above are all very good sites. Visit them and see if they played the tag game. 🙂

Contest Winners

Flat on my face

Pupsickle Contest

Spring Resolutions

Gurgles and growls

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