Seafood diet

So the increased appetite side effect kicked in today. I was in the grocery store when I felt the need to try to buy and eat EVERYTHING. I tried to buy my weight in sushi, seafood, and pot noodles. Most of the fish went into cioppino tonight and the sushi was devoured for lunch along with a grilled cheese. I'm hoping that I won't weigh a thousand pounds before this course of prednisone is over. Fortunately, I talked my doctor into prescribing metformin for me (which is going to be a long term medication) which will off set any appetite issues. I can't start it for another day because she wanted me to be on the prednisone for a week to make sure there weren't any bad side effects. In the mean time, a can of olives is a perfectly valid bedtime snack, right guys?

Today I:

Took both kids to speech therapy
Washed all of Alana's bedding
Grocery store
Made some kick-ass cioppino

Good news/bad news

So the good news is that the prednisone is obviously working since my lump is shrinking quickly. The bad news is that I've had a consistent and sometimes very painful ache in my lower back which makes me immediately freak out about kidney failure brought on by the prednisone. And of course it has to be the weekend so I can't call the nurse.

Today I:

Sewing with Mindy
Lunch with Mindy and my mom
Laundry (three loads so far)
Cleaned my counters, glass top, and floors. Then cooked dinner and realized you can't tell I did anything today.

10/10

Today I:

Sewing with Mindy
Grocery store
Parent's night for the kids's school

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.