Are you a bank robber?

I was super tired this week so I was relieved when I got in to see the endocrinologist. But then he told me that there was nothing wrong me. Everything was normal and that I was even closer to being hyperthyroid than hypothyroid. I said, “Why don’t I have all the energy I had when I was hyperthyroid before?” He said, “I don’t know.” And that was that. I pressed a little bit further about checking my pituitary or adrenal glands or something. He relented and wrote out a blood test prescription but I know he did it only because I was pushing. At this point, the information is probably not useful to him but more so to my naturopath. So I will go see her to see what is going on. I am thankful for doctors who do not solely rely on a number from a blood test.

Yesterday I worked from home and Brian called me and said, “I’m going to the hospital.” I thought he was going to tell me that Ty had to go to the hospital but he then said he was in an ambulance and they were heading to the hospital. WHAT? Brian had chest pains for about 2 – 3 hours and finally mentioned it to someone at work and they are really safety conscious—so they called the ambulance. Brian was embarrassed by the whole thing but I’m glad he did it because I think we were too slow to react with Jack when he had jaundice and I decided then that we should not be conservative with our health in the future. This turned out to be good advice when Ty got a fever when he was 6 days old—I rushed him to the ER at 3 AM and he was in the ICU on a respirator for a week. That was the absolutely worst week of my entire life. Now normally I would feel panicked about getting a call like this from Brian and I was worried but there was a part of me that couldn’t believe that someone who can hike from the South Rim to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and back again has a heart problem. So I met him down at the hospital and he was talking to the doctor. They did some tests but couldn’t find anything. He will need to follow up with his primary care doctor. So it’s inconclusive… maybe stress, maybe too much coffee, maybe muscular… but probably not his heart. The funny thing is that the doctor asked him how often he exercised (every day) and for how long (4 minutes) thanks to the ROM machine. He wrote down the URL to check it out for himself!

I mentioned before that we were changing Jack’s day care/preschool. It is brand new and starts May 1. They had an open house on Tuesday night so I took Jack there. The rooms have wood floors and lamps and are very homey. All the toys and activities are laid out all the time. Jack had a great time drawing and painting and didn’t move when I told him I was going into the other room to talk to his teacher. I met all the teachers and they seem really great. I got a good vibe from the place so that made me very happy. And then I couldn’t drag Jack out of there! He didn’t want to leave. So I am hoping that this will be a fairly easy transition although I know he will miss his friends.

We were outside on Saturday for a birthday party and Ty was wearing pants and I kept him in the shade. The next day I noticed one of his legs was sunburned, like a bright red. I felt like a horrible mom that I would let him get sunburned although it didn’t make sense that he got sunburned because he was wearing pants and wasn’t in direct sunlight. After several days it didn’t get better. And he started to get spots and even a little blister on his lips. By then I was worried and had myself convinced that he had hand, foot and mouth disease. After reading about his symptoms in a book, Brian announced that Ty had shingles. I thought that was funny because I thought only older people got that and only after they had the chicken pox. What was on his face seemed like it was caused by the excessive drooling from teething but it didn’t explain the weird burn on his lower leg. I was ready to take him to the doctor on Wednesday when I noticed he was crawling on one leg and bringing the other leg forward. The leg he was crawling on was the leg that was all red! A ha! That explained everything. He was a little chafed on that leg from crawling. What a relief.

Here is a short email from my brother. I don’t know about you but this kind of thing doesn’t seem to happen to me very often. “On my way to work I got pulled over by the sheriffs department because I matched the description of a robber, white male, black helmet with clear shield. They even had the victim drive by to ID me and she said it wasn't me. I was only 10 minutes late to work and had called my supervisor and told him I would be late and he laughed.”