Past, Present, Future

I was thinking about the past year, as most people do around this time, and I realized that I had a pretty damn good year. I went to London and Germany, I didn't get massively depressed, I recovered from two surgeries (and escaped relatively unscathed financially ), and I got to watch lots and lots of bad Korean television. I even improved my Korean so much I felt comfortable talking to one of the moms of Liam's classmate who just emigrated last year from Korea. She speaks terrible English and I speak terrible Korean, so our conversations are half English, half Korean and a lot of frantic searching through dictionaries.

The present is not being quite as fun. My Ob/Gyn finally got sick of my multitude of health problems and turned me over to a GP in her group. This GP looked through my bloodwork: I was anemic (from a test taken the day after my surgery- no shit, Sherlock); my HgA1C looked okay, but was edging into diabetic territory; my cholesterol was fine, but my lipids were low when my triglycerides were high- also another indication of diabetes.

GP: "You have to lose weight."

Me: "Well, that was blunt. Not that I don't disagree with you."

GP: "You also have to give up carbs."

Me: "You know I'm Korean, right?"

So these past two weeks (why did it have to be the week before Christmas?) I've been feeling deprived and cranky. The first day I was throwing up from blood sugar dips and spikes, and the second day I was so hungry and tired, I did nothing but lay around all day. By the third day, I felt a little better. I contemplated where I'd rather eat carbs and be fat and happy but probably die early, or not eat carbs, be skinny and hangry, and probably have starve to death anyway. I want my funeral food to be nothing but potato products. Any low carb recipes sent my way would be greatly appreciated. I currently have a Pinterest board named "Doctor stole my rice."

The future is looking up though. I'm thinking of ditching the kids on my brother and Mindy (sorry guys!) and going to Seoul. Next year I turn 30 (which I will do with the least amount of grace possible- you have been warned) and it would be nice to be back where it all started. Or at least in the same corner of the world. My to-do list for Seoul is about a mile long and Justin is starting to question if I've scheduled any time for sleep. Sleep is for the weak!

Goals for 2015:

Learn to adult. I don't know what this means, but I think I fail at adulting. I need to start dressing age appropriately (whatever that means), getting regular haircuts so I don't look like an escapee from a cult, and learned to take care of my skin/wear make-up. I've been incredibly lucky up until now, but I think that's running out as I see sun damage starting to show and lines appearing out of nowhere.

Eat more fish.

Seriously, that's it. 2015, bring it on!

Ah yes, I remember now

I now remember why Korean drives me up a wall.

도, 또, 더. 도 (do) means also, though in my Seoul accent I pronounce this as doo; 또 (ddo) means again; and 더 (deo) means more. Three almost homonyms that mean similar things. Seriously?

Fun Korean word of the day: 금발의 (geum bal ui) which I think literally means "cloth of gold."

I'm still kickin'

Today marks the 2 year anniversary of my diagnosis with Idiopathic Granuloma Mastitis. The reason I will always remember this day is because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and there's a certain amount of irony there. I became VERY aware of not having breast cancer.

A few people have asked how I am, and the answer is, I feel pretty damn good. Much better than December. The surgeon prescribed some pretty heavy anti-nausea meds, which are also anti-psychotics, so killing two birds with one stone? I also felt like the acetaminophen was doing a lot more than the hydromorphone, so I stopped taking that a week after my surgery. The drains came out yesterday so I'm done with that forever and I can now sleep on my side again. Today I realized I can lift my arms above my head, with very little noticeable loss of range of motion. Compared a week and one day in December, I'm practically back to normal.

I still get tired, and sleeping is still difficult. I can only eat about a cup of food at a time and I'm not much of a snacker. That means I still feel a little nauseated every so often. Justin has been a rock star though and all I have to do is ask, and he immediately presents me with sandwiches, soup, ramyun, etc.

The surgery went "almost perfectly" according to the surgical PA. She made the mistake of telling me this while I was trying to come out of anesthesia, and apparently I get sarcastic when I'm drugged because I kept haranguing her about the "almost." She was very good-natured about it.

Now I just have to heal for the three to six months. I will then have revision surgery, which will be minimal. I still plan on having a 3D tattoo, but I can't find anyone around here that I like. The closest I've found is in San Francisco. Weekend getaway?

T -1 Day

So here we are the night before I get sliced 'n diced, though I hope not by Ronco. My house is relatively clean, the laundry is almost done, the sheets are new and I'm about to hop in the shower for one of two scrub downs I have to do. I can no longer eat, but fortunately I'm full of spaghetti and indifference to food.

I'll probably be off the airwaves for a while. Either that or I'll be tweeting on drugs. Either way works for me, though I'm sure it will be less fun for you.

I'd like to say farewell to my little pot belly. We met when I got pregnant with Liam, and while it's been fun, I'm still evicting you from your current address. Hopefully, you'll be much more happier in your new accommodations and and won't want to leave.

Since this post is turning out to be a lot weirder than I intended it to be, I'll sign off. I would appreciate any links to entertaining time-wasting sites in the comments. I'll have plenty of time on my hands to kill.

En Pointe

Remember when I was in London and I was super excite to see this?:

I used to wear Freed pointe shoes, particularly the maker that marked with a crown. They were perfect and I was DEVASTATED when the shank broke on my first pair. I found this mini documentary of the Freed factory and the narrator's uncle was the crown maker. It's cool to watch and makes me very nostalgic. As soon as I lose these last 20 lbs, I hope I'm back on pointe.

The small things

As you might have noticed, it's been a bad couple of months. And it looks like be a bad couple weeks before my surgery, and then it's just going to be hell after that.

But I'm trying not to focus on that. After fighting tooth and nail with the school district Alana is finally in the placement I think she belongs. Her teacher is nice and seem extremely competent, and mercifully, not the same teacher Liam had last year. However, he does report every "meltdown" that Alana has like he's tallying them up against some unknown numerical threshold that will force her back into the ILS program at a different school. I say meltdown in quotes because meltdowns at home are rare and short, but the report at school is that meltdowns are 15+ minutes and daily (this was last school year, and I have to point out, she was sick all the time, deaf, and an unsettled home life after my surgery). I am worried about the competency of Liam's teacher as Liam had a meltdown at school, making me wonder if she even read the IEP. Sigh. If I knew that I could do it and it wouldn't make me homicidal, I'd home school the kids because I felt Liam learned more at the after school program he was in, and the two months I started to drill him when I noticed the school year was half over and he still wasn't reading!

But I'm trying not to focus on that either. Tonight Liam and I had the first fight in what I am will be a reoccurring theme through out our lives. I've been learning more and more Korean and Liam had a slight identity crisis when he realized. So some of the past 6 months has been explaining that Mommy is Korean, and so she will always do some stuff different because she didn't grow up in the US. At dinner (Chuseok!) he was struggling with the chopsticks. Weirdly, Alana is proficient at chopsticks and LOVES kimchi. I told Liam to keep trying until he got so frustrated he screamed at me that I wouldn't understand, I was Korean and he was American. Thanks kid. I tell Justin I worry about raising American kids, because I had some weird childhood and there's always going to be a disconnect there. Anyway, dagger to my heart and a son that needs some serious cultural lessons in the future.

But I'm trying not to focus on that as well. Today after school, I got a call that the occupational therapy Alana was supposed to have this afternoon got cancelled, so I head home. I turned a corner a street away from our house when Liam excitedly pointed out "GOATS!" Goats? Sure enough, there were goats by the side of the road. I parked the car at the house, threw some rice cakes at the kids (see, Liam, you still are getting a Korean childhood) and we walked back around the corner.

Yup, goats. 11 of them.

They belong to a very quiet, soft spoken guy that the city hires to clear out plant growth in various parts of the city. There were several different breeds, but only 1 adult and 1 juvenile male. The rest were female. He very sweetly brought out some peanuts for the kids to feed to the goats. After the peanuts were gone, Alana continued to feed them dandelions. 

The white one was Phineas, the adult male and it seemed the leader as he knew what's what. Here he was packing them up into the back of his astro-van (seriously) and Phineas lead the way. 

I learned that all goats have horns, even the females, but sometimes you don't see them because they're cut off as babies.  Also, goats will eat nearly everything including blackberry brambles. This herd only had one milk producing goat, but she had a kid, so they just let him nurse instead of milking her. I'm glad that OT got cancelled so we could so to an impromptu petting zoo and then go home and play with magnets (thanks Gwyn!) I hope I don't forget the small things. They may be the only things to keep me sane.

26 days

I really meant to write this two days ago so it could be some zombie related post, but I forgot. I've never seen 28 Days Later anyway.

In 26 days, I will be drugged, cut up, sewn up, and then rise from the dead. I'm sure I've explained this before. This surgery will be my DIEP flap, which will take skin, fat, fascia and blood vessels from my stomach, and be shaped into two breasts that will be, um, installed where my old ones used to be. The two flaps will then be reconnected to blood vessels under my ribs. Some surgeons try to get the vessels between the ribs, other will resect a small part of the breast bone cartilage. I don't know which one my doc will do. I will then be left with a new belly button (they cut a new hole for it; I kid you now), a 2 foot long scar on my stomach (and here's me being grateful I avoided a cesarean- ha) and two smaller football-shaped scars on my fake boobs, or foobs as most people who have gone through this call them.

Still with me? Not freaking out? Well, if you're not, you're doing better than I am. If you were to ask me how many times a day I think about this, it's easily 10+ times. Most thought are innocuous enough, such as "Oh, I must get this before Sept 22" or "I have to get that taken care of." But in the last week, I past the less than one month mark, which made it seem real and I freaked. Every day I'm very much aware of how many more days are left and how little time I still have to do things in. And so much to do. Kids start school next week. Liam's birthday. Dentist and doctors appointments for the kids. Doctor's appointments for me.

And then I descend into depression of what can REALLY go wrong. The flaps could fail. Or even more likely, only one flap could fail and then I'll be left lopsided. At least right now, despite being flatter than a weird shaped pancake, I'm even and I don't even mind too much. Granted, I haven't worn a dress since last December, but I'm vaguely satisfied. Even worse, this surgery isn't without fatality risks. Am I even willing to even risk death just so I can fill out a blouse again?

Sigh. Repeat the last two paragraphs about a million times an hour, and that's my mental state right now.

The one thing I'm not going to be able to avoid is pain and discomfort. The recovery for this one is even worse than a mastectomy because the nerves for the stomach aren't cut. Because a major section of skin is cut out the belly, standing upright isn't possible for a few weeks. And again, arm movement is restricted while the chest tries to heal. But yay drugs!

Anyway, thanks for letting me get that off my chest (HA!). Please forgive any mental and emotional meltdowns for the next little bit.