Side Effects

Difficulty controlling emotion
Difficulty in maintaining train of thought
Weight gain
Facial swelling
Depression, mania, psychosis, or other psychiatric symptoms
Unusual fatigue or weakness
Mental confusion / indecisiveness
Blurred vision
Abdominal pain
Peptic ulcer
Infections
Painful hips or shoulders
Steroid-induced osteoporosis
Stretch marks
Osteonecrosis
Long-term migraines
Insomnia
Severe joint pain
Cataracts or glaucoma
Anxiety
Stomach pain or bloating
Severe swelling
Mouth sores or dry mouth
Nervousness
Acne
Rash
Increased appetite
Hyperactivity
Frequent urination
Diarrhea
Leg pain/cramps
Sensitive teeth

These are all side effects of prednisone. Guess what I got prescribed today. I went to my appointment with the Martha Clay, the RN that I was referred to after being diagnosed with granuloma mastitis. This time I gave myself plenty of time to get down there, arriving 45 minutes before my check in time which was a half hour before my actually appointment. So I bought myself a sub because I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch, then waited around for a very long time. I got back to the exam room and was asked about my records, which is when I realized I had left them in the my car....which was at home because I had taken Justin's car. ARGH. So she read through the pathology report, felt me up, and then left so I could get dressed. She came back to talk to me about my options. Option 1 was to wait and see if this would go away. Chances were miniscule this was going to happen. More likely, she said was going to happen would be the tissue would start to deteriorate, and I could get fistulas through the skin so the granuloma could drain out in the form of pus (???!!??). This would be painful and icky. Option 2 was to take massive amounts of prednisone, an immunosuppressive steroid that would probably cause the inflammation to go away but had a laundry list of side effects that are very common. Option 3 was to take methotrexate, a drug that is used to treat autoimmune disorders, as well as cancer, multiple sclerosis, and to induce abortions. This would most definitely take care of the granuloma, but she would have to refer me to a rheumatologist to get a prescription and I could have to get regular liver function tests to make sure I wasn't killing my liver.

Since driving to get my blood drawn every day isn't really an option, and I didn't really want to see pus leaking fistulas on my boob, I went with option 2. Which means I get to be on a powerful drug that will make my insomnia worse, my depression and anxiety very apparent, and put stress on my already screwy glucose levels. Woot.

I forgot to mention that somehow I lost the parking time stamp ticket and was frantically ripping my car apart when I was supposed to pay. Fortunately, the very kind parking attendant took me at my word and just charged me for the time I was supposedly parked.

Today I:
Survived downtown to be poked by yet another person who is only interested in me for my body.
Returned books to the library.
Went to Costco to fill a prescription.

Damn you Pinterest!

So it's probably no secret that I (like the rest of the female, and some of the male, population) am addicted to Pinterest. However, I love the websites Pinstrocity, CraftFail, and PinterestFail. Not all pins are winners, obviously. So I'm starting a series called "Damn you Pinterest" which is my personal experiences with my pinterest finds.

The Pin: "How to Whiten Your Teeth Cheaply with Hydrogen Peroxide as a Mouthwash... I like this version better. Rinse first (don't dilute) and then brush teeth."

The Verdict: This actually worked! But not as quickly as sometimes stated.. I've been doing it for probably a couple of months. When I started, I brushed in on my teeth with Q-tips a couple of times a day, but eventually got brave enough to rinse my mouth with it. I don't know if too many years of kim chi stained my teeth too badly to work quickly but it was about 2 weeks before I noticed it was working at all, and now 2 months in, my teeth are now a couple of shades lighter, but still not white. I'm doubtful about the claims of being healthier for your gums and preventing cavities, but 3% peroxide isn't going to hurt you unless you drink it. Don't drink it.

The Pin: "Transport cupcakes in disposable cups"

The Verdict: Cute and definitely transport friendly, but then getting the cupcake out later is a PITA. Not bad if you don't mind frosting on your hands later.

The Pin: "Make your own 50-hour candles for less than 2 dollars a piece."

The Verdict: This tutorial was pretty easy to follow, but making candles isn't exactly rocket science. However, the cost and the time claims were pretty week. I had a hard time find soy wax as cheaply as he was claiming, and the start up costs of getting the jars and the tabs were much steeper. I used larger jars (peach jars from Costco) that I already had, the cost was about $27 for just the wax and wicks (I had leftover wicks and tabs though). Then Justin and I started to burn one, and it burned pretty well, but it seemed like it was going to burn through much faster than the 150 hours my jar size was supposed be able to last.

The Pin: "This naughty Bloomin' Onion Bread has cheese stuffed in every crack and is cut just like the Bloomin' Onion from Outback. My family loved this but really it's enough to feed a small army. It's a fun way to serve bread because everyone can just pull off a piece of cheesy onion bread. This would be a great appetizer or bread for a meal."

The Verdict: This was pretty good, but a pain to make. Cutting the bread was difficult, the sliced cheese wouldn't stay put and then it was A LOT of bread and it wasn't very tasty the next day. My solution would be to use grated cheese and it use dinner rolls, perfect for one person's serving.

The Pin: "Toss with olive oil, and salt. Coat a microwave-safe plate with spray oil, then spread a single layer of potatoes on the plate. Nuke, turn the potatoes over, and nuke again. That’s it. As they come off the hot plate and start to cool, they will crisp up even more. Indeed, they were still crispy the next day, too."

The Verdict: Justin and I tried this twice. Both times it was a big, fat FAIL. They came out soggy or burned and none in between. We tried various potato types, microwavable plates, and times. We found a perfectly flat plate worked the best, the yukon gold potatoes worked a little better, and a longer initial nuking and shorter second one. But none turned out very well.

Anyway, I'll post more of these later, or possibly lose interest like most things I do.

Today I:

Scrubbed out my washing machine

Cleaned my oven (started yesterday) which I'm pretty sure has never been cleaned

Went to the grocery store

When body isn't trying to actively kill me

it keeps busy making sure I don't get too comfortable. Since Justin has the immune system of an ox and Liam has a flu shot, that left Alana and I to get the flu this week. I was an evil mommy and still sent Alana to school (she wasn't that bad until Thursday and there wasn't school today). So when I haven't had things that I really needed to do, I've been crawling into my bed and dozing while Liam plays with Lego bricks in the living room.

Today the kids didn't have school so Justin and I took the kids over to the cheap theater because Brave was playing. Since Liam has forever been traumatized by Queen Victoria, he spent the first half hour saying audibly, "I need to go out." When I refused to take him out, he would fake cry for a few seconds to the delight of the other patrons (hey, it was a matinee on Friday at a second rate theater and there were only about five other people). When that didn't work, he actually would watch mesmerized until something scary happened. I loved the movie, but it was a lot more sinister than I was expecting and Liam did NOT like the bears. Any of them. We had to take him out of the theater twice for the scary bits, but I stood my ground that we had to stay until the end. One, Liam needed to see the mom turn back into a human or he would forever think the mom was stuck as a bear and two, he needed to learn that not all movies were scary (even the short at the beginning freaked him out. Seriously, it was about the moon). So we held out and after the movie, he was all smiles and giggles. ARGH, kid, ARGH.

This week (from Tuesday onwards) I:

Took Alana to speech therapy
Got to the district offices to donate software
Got my blood drawn
Sat with my sister-in-law for two sewing sessions
Went to the library
Carved pumpkins with the kids, or the kids started to help me, lost interest and then stole some capri-sun while I worked, covered in pumpkin guts.
Picked up my medical records from the breast center and made an appointment with the next RN for treatment (seriously, why doesn't anyone pick up a phone at a doctor's office anymore?!?)

It's not cancer

Someone page Doctor House for me. Mostly because I want to meet Hugh Laurie.

So I got a call this afternoon from the very sweet RN at the breast clinic, who much have brow beat the pathologist into rushing my sample because it was done a day earlier than it was supposed to. First thing she did was assure me that it was not cancer. She informed it was something called a granulomatous mastitis, which was just a fancy name for a lump in the breast (ummmm, no kidding, Sherlock). She referred me to yet another clinic downtown where I'd talk to another RN to see about treatment/surgery. They are going to have to do more tests to see if the cause is bacterial or fungal, then put me on a round of steroids to see if it'll shrink the granuloma. If not, then it'll have to be removed. So yay, not cancer, and boo, more testing.

So like the genius that I am, I googled granulomatous mastitis. Wikipedia informed me that it was caused by a variety of things including TUBERCULOSIS. Ummmm, I'm not sure that I ever got my DTAP. I also kind of failed a TB test about seven years (had to get them yearly working in a hospital). Okay, I didn't really fail, but I didn't pass. Closest thing that the doctor could figure out was that I was allergic to the test. Both of them because they tried two different types. But no, I don't have TB. I think.

If it seems like I've had a ton of medical pseudo-crises, um, I sort have. I've had so far: an abnormal pap smear, pre-eclampsia, a couple undetermined TB tests, and now a granuloma. And I'm only 27. Seriously universe?

So now I get to try to contact another clinic that never answers their phone. I also get to contact my original doctor that I saw last Tuesday, who very kindly called this morning to see how I was doing. She told me that my thyroid result was slightly abnormal, but probably not enough to cause problems. So I have to go back for more blood testing, possible an ultrasound of ovaries, and pharmacological sampling. Yay, fun!

Today I:

Took both kids to speech therapy
Too many loads of laundry
Mended some shirts. Just call me Laura Ingalls.

Never start an land war in Asia either

I have learned today, in addition to the rule "never go to Costco on a Saturday", never go to an Asian grocery story the day before the Moon Festival. I was looking for moon cakes, but also needed some bonito flakes. I walked up and down the aisles for about a half hour and I FINALLY found it. I was about ready to give up, chaulking it up to one of two things: either this store was just too big, or the rest Asia still hadn't forgiven the Japanese.

Today I:

Taught ballet at the YMCA
Went to Survived Costco and the Asian market

Remind me not to play Russian Roulette

So today was the ultrasound for the lump on my breast. It had stopped hurting and had gone down to about the quarter of size it was on Tuesday. I was just hoping that it was a cyst and it was going away, or would go away with aspiration. I got to my appointment without any panicking and checked in with a very sweet, very old, very incompetent receptionist. After checking, I was lead into a changing room, told to take off my top clothing and put on a gown that thankfully wrapped around the front and then led into another waiting room.

The ultrasound tech came pretty quickly to collect me and I went into the ultrasound room. She had me take off the gown, lie on a triangular piece of foam so I was lying kind of an angle. The last ultrasound that I had was to see what sex Alana was, but the procedure was exactly the same. It hurt a little as she pushed the transducer around, but for the most part, I wasn't too worried until she frowned and told me she had to get the radiologist. Another woman came in and pushed the transducer in even harder, asking me how long it'd been hurting, when I'd noticed the lump, when I'd had my last period. I answered them and said that the doctor I'd seen on Tuesday thought it was a breast cyst. She looked at me and said, "Well, it's not a cyst." She explained that they could see irregularities in the lump and that they would have to do a mammogram and a biopsy.

I got dressed and went back to the waiting room. The nurse collected me and off I went to the mammography room. It was the most painful thing I've ever done. Then I went back to the waiting room and was collected by the LPN who kindly sat down with me and explained how the biopsy was going to work, what to expect during and afterwards. She also told me the chances of it coming back abnormal was only about 20%. I went back to the waiting room and waited a little bit because they were trying to contact the insurance company to get a prior authorization for the biopsy.

After the insurance was taken care of, the ultrasound tech and radiologist came and we all went back to the ultrasound room. They ultrasound the area, drew an outline around the transducer where it was clearest. They also ultrasound my lymph nodes in my arm pit. The radiologist noted that my lymph nodes were a bit swollen and if the biopsy came back abnormal, they might come back to biopsy a lymph node. The radiologist told me the painful part would be the needle for the local (LIES), which didn't really hurt at all. Unfortunately, they had to go under my nipple with the biopsy needle and the radiologist told me that since I'm still young, the breast tissue was really dense to go through. The anesthetic didn't spread far enough, and the biopsy needle hurt like a MOTHER. She also injected a minuscule piece of metal into the lump so that later mammograms would pay more attention to that area or if they have to remove the lump later, an x-ray will be able to pick it up. Afterwards, the poor ultrasound tech had to push down on my boob for 10 minutes to make sure I'd stopped bleeding. I had to have another mammogram after that to make sure that the metal insert had gone in correctly.

I went home after that, with a little bit of throbbing but nothing too bad. I'm not allowed to lift anything heavy or exert myself too much in case the needle location starts bleeding again. Unfortunately, whatever anesthetic they gave me wore off when I was in the grocery store, so I was kind of hunched over in pain checking out. I'm just on Tylenol because anything with aspirin has blood thinners. The result will come back on Tuesday.

I know that there's only a 1 in 5 chance that it will come back abnormal, but I'm not really liking even those odds. It was quite unusual that I would have a breast lump this young to begin with, and REALLY unusual that it would be anything other than a cyst. With these odds, maybe I should go to Vegas.

Today I:

Got stabbed in my breast. How would you put it?

Some days need a head...

So I can hit it in the face with a chair.

Today was one of those days that just kind of suck. On the plus side, the lump on my breast seems to have shrunk a little bit so it didn't hurt quite as badly today. On the negative side, when I called my doctor to tell her this and ask if I should get an ultrasound on Friday, I was told that the doctor had felt a hard lump in the cyst, which could indicate a tumour. Ugh.

I finally got rid of the extra crib we had. When Liam was about six months old, we bought the crib that I'd been stalking for about a year and a half. Then when Alana was born, I'd discovered that company that made the crib went out of the business. I searched the internet until I found one that looked exactly like it. But Alana decided that she like to sleep in the pack n play and she slept in there for 18 months until she could climb out (and Liam could climb in!). For about 6 months, we had a crib set up for her that she never slept in. However, Liam's crib was then recalled, so I had to lug it back to Babies R Us and buy a new one. I decided to get two matching cribs that we never set up as cribs but as two toddler beds. We took down the second crib and just stored it. We even moved it up here to Seattle. The kids are still sleeping on the second set of cribs that have been converted to double beds.

So I've been trying to decide what to do with this extra crib. I could sell it on craigslist, but the site is full of people trying to sell their cribs. Also, the person would have to come to our house to pick it up, and I'm always nervous of telling random strangers on the internet where we live. So I told the Relief Society secretary that I had a crib that I would like to give to someone who needed one. Unfortunately, good deeds never go unpunished when the secretary sent the news out in a mass email and I got two women emailing me back telling me they wanted it. So I was put in the uncomfortable position of trying to decide who had the greater need and "interviewing" these two women about their, um, financial positions. One woman already had a crib for her toddler, so I decided that the other woman needed it more. Argh, that was so not what I wanted to deal with. Since we had put the crib together and taken it apart, I was trying to find where I'd put the hardware. I was searched through boxes in the garage, office and our bedroom closet frantically, finally calling the woman to tell her that I couldn't find the hardware, but since it was standard sizes, she'd be able to get replacements at home depot. But then her husband and Justin were loading it into the truck, they heard a clink and found the hardware in a packet tied to the mattress support. Oops. Anyway, it's gone and now I can work on trying to clean out of the rest of the garage so we can park Justin's car in there as well.

After it was gone, I pulled out the gorm shelving from Ikea that I'd bought a year ago to put together so we could get the food storage off the floor. But in that year, Shelob had apparently made her home on it and a bunch of spiders came running out at me. I shriek and ran back into the house, yelling to Justin that Aragog and his kids were after me and he would have to put it together. Yeah, I'm a wuss.

So today I:

Cleared out several boxes in my quest for crib hardware
Cleaned out my closet in quest for crib hardware
Got rid of the crib
Started to put together some shelving.