Doc Appt, Surprise Fever, and Nashville Hot Chicken

It’s been a wild few days. Maddie is healing up nicely. I’ve been a little concerned and squeamish about it. She is pretty spunky and fast moving at times. She jumps up and down more than I’d like. I’ve kept her caged at night and with her cone on as I can tell it is starting to itch and twitch. The incision looked good this morning. It’s healing and no redness or oozing or anything. We still have two days of pain meds. That helps with pain and itching I’m sure.

Doc Appointment

My doc appointment was Friday morning. I went in with my 3 page list of things that have been going on. I told him look – there’s the WHOLE picture. I didn’t want to leave anything out in case it was important. But most of the symptoms are no big deal, not a life changer, and/or just something I live with and accept. But the bigger issues when they happen – my muscle issues, extreme fatigue, waking up hard to swallow or with TMJ – those things are more pressing. I don’t know if it’s a spine thing, an alignment thing, a degenerative thing, an auto immune thing but these things are happening. I told him for years I could combat it with nutrition and sleep, and the latter is often hard to do now because I’m uncomfortable. So I’ve not been able to control it and I’ve felt bad for the last 3 weeks.

So he seemed to think most of my symptoms were not MS but he said that some of them were, like the bizarre electrical buzzing in my right foot. He wanted to do blood work first. He did a LOT of blood work panels. I’ll get the results next week sometime through their portal. He did some initial resistance testing and said that my muscles were doing pretty good. So perhaps it is a feeling of weakness that I’m confusing with being my muscles. But I can’t lift what everyone else can and my legs can do steps well (esp my right knee). He thinks it’s because of the slight tear in my rotator cuff in my right arm on the lifting. He didn’t say this but my legs feeling heavy and weak could be a vitamin deficiency. And my right knee could be the culprit for the stairs thing. But I don’t want knee surgery. Not yet anyway.

He said we may need to do MRIs on my head and spine if the insurance will approve it. He said let’s see bloodwork first. Of course. The insurance company determines that you don’t get the care you need. They are not about “finding out” or “ruling out”. They only want you to get care if you are dying, in the process of dying, have flesh hanging off of you, are bleeding, or otherwise totally almost gone already. They’d rather throw meds at the symptoms and not use the big expensive equipment to find out what is wrong and treat the root of the cause before it gets worse. Our health care system is so screwed up. I trust my doctor but he can only do what they allow him to do.

Surprise Fever

I got my shingles shot. I knew I’d be at home Saturday in case it made me feel bad. And I felt pretty bad all day. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had to rest and felt pain and achy and eventually realized about 5 pm that I had a fever and that is why I felt so bad. It was 101.6 and after we ate, I went to bed and slept from 7:30 last night to 3:30 this morning. It’s 4:30 a.m. now as I’m doing this blog entry. And my temp is 98.2. So I’m sure the shingle virus was playing havoc with my system. My body, head, heart was raging as I woke up and fell back asleep last night. It was kind of scary. I had to tell my heart and body to slow down and I did breathing exercises. That seemed to work. It was so weird.

My lower back hurt all weekend. It was starting to hurt before the shot though, but this morning it seems better. Everything seems better. I do have a slight headache though, but it’s going away with coffee this morning. My nose is a bit stuffy. So hopefully it’s nothing else. If the fever comes back tonight as viruses do, it might be something different than the shot itself. But since I feel relatively ok this morning, I’m going to assume it was the shot and still go about our planned day today.

Hot Chicken

George went to McKaye’s bookstore on the other side of Nashville and brought back Hattie B’s for our dinner. That was a great thing to do. He made some ice tea too. It was really good. I may eat the other piece for breakfast. I could only eat one as it was a whole breast and wing together.

I had potato salad and theirs is so good. He also got me Mac and cheese. I had the medium.

After that, I went to bed. I did get a lot done yesterday in the morning and early afternoon. Got several loads of laundry done, vacuumed everywhere really good as Dexter is shedding right now. I winded the mirrors in the house and cleaned the fan blades in the kitchen, cleaned the kitchen. I emptied and rebooted the dishwasher and cleaned the counters. When I got tired I would watch a show or read. I just forwarded everything else to next weekend, lol. I did get my Amazon and Melaleuca orders in. Oh and I video’d or “vlogged” some yesterday – doing my make up and also unboxing my Thrive and Target orders. It was a good day except for the feeling bad but even then, it felt good to rest. Sometimes God has to make me sick to get me to rest more.

As it is I already can’t fit everything into my schedule. I’ve yet to find time to exercise properly. I cannot figure out what to eliminate in my life. I can’t quit work, I don’t want to quit church, I want to continue to blog and vlog. I have to do housework. I have a list of stuff that I keep forwarding Saturday to Saturday that never gets done. I don’t want to give up sleep as Lord knows I don’t get enough of that now. I have to take care of Mom.

Anyway, I’m going to close the blog. If you didn’t get to see Yesterday’s video, you can watch it here.

Thanks everyone. I hope you are having a lovely weekend. Today we have church, life group, grocery shopping, and then will come home and try to have a relaxing evening. But I do need to iron and pay Mom’s next bill. I have a PTO day coming soon and I moved some hard to get to items to that day. That is a ME day! Doing my stuff! Reaching my goals!