Last Day

Well no aching head for three days! So some combination of the remedies seems to have worked. (Knocking on wood here!) Honestly, three days is the longest I've been pain-free in ages. And I didn't need a nap yesterday, which also may indicate that pastures are getting greener. Yay for being almost 18 weeks.

However, just to prove I am a complete dork I did throw out my neck. I was sitting at the computer and got up and boom, I could no longer move it more than about about 20 degrees on either side. I had to go to work at my part-time job and was in agony the whole day. I hope they don't track my Internet usage because I spent at least an hour Googling "cervical spine" and "chiropractor neck" and other random combinations. I thought I had slipped a disk or something it was so awful, I debated the E.R. (it really was that bad) for half a second, but then more Googling revealed there would be little they could do except tell me to rest.

I decided not to do chiro since it's too expensive in this city and I don't think I am covered for it. So I iced it and the next day headed to my trusty RMT who did something that made it feel a whole lot better. The degree of improvement indicates to me that it was most likely muscular. Yes, I am the queen of bizarre ailments.

Strangely, I remember being on a trip with my brother once where the same thing happened to his neck - we have similar builds, except his is obviously broader and bigger; but we're both kind of small boned with long necks. (I'm making us sound like poultry.) My brother did end up going to the E.R. because he was in so much pain, but they didn't do much for him as they seemed to think the mysterious spinal pain was just an attempt to get painkillers.

He was supposed to drive us on the next leg of our vacation - we were taking two cars somewhere - can't recall where. But the lack of neck movement meant he couldn't, so we got to take the train which was lovely! It was an old one with wooden seats. So far my neck injury has had no such silver lining, but I can hope.

Anyway, in non-neck news, tonight is my very last class of law school! Feels kind of sad, but also not yet sinking in. I am giving a presentation - the topic is corporatisation of pregnancy and birth. Yeah, I have a one-track mind these days - thank goodness for seminars that let me run with it.

Aching Head

What a delicious weekend - and I still have one little day.

I have been having the most atrocious headaches lately though - and they have been completely keeping me from doing anything schoolwise, which does make me a little anxious. Tylenol just isn't cutting it! Nor are warm baths, sleep-ins, massages, naps in the middle of the day. Blah - it's horrid.

I'm trying a B-complex as I took one at the start of my pregnancy and didn't have any headaches then - I ran out and didn't keep taking it since I figured my prenatal was giving me what I needed. And I may do a mini-cleanse of cutting out sugar and white flour and some of the baddies. I just need to be conscious that I continue to get enough calories while doing this, as I must admit, a large portion of my daily intake comes from bagels and muffins and other things. Also, I am trying to exercise a bit more as the one time I didn't have a headache yesterday was while walking in the park, and the one day I didn't have it was the day I went for a run in the a.m.

Anyhow, if you have naturopathic headache suggestions, please do send them to me - I'm totally at my wit's end and have even found myself staring longingly at the medicine cabinet where my migraine meds are - so frustrating to know that just one would nip it in the bud so nicely.

Bye Kitty

This is turning into depresso-blog, when it really shouldn't be, as so many of my days are happy. But today is a genuinely sad day, as we decided to put our cat down. People use the expression "putting to sleep" but I can't really say it was like that.

The cat, as you may recall, was diagnosed with pretty advanced GI-tract lymphoma a few weeks ago. The vet wasn't sure how long she had. She did last a while on her prednisone, and even seemed to get temporarily better. But in the past two weeks she stopped eating again, and got even more lethargic and thin. We had to forcefeed her with a syringe to get her to eat anything, yet she asked for her food every night and a.m. It was quite heartbreaking.

I thought about doing it last weekend and then postponed, and then when she seemed worse off this week I decided to do it today, when D could come with me. I called yesterday to make the appointment. She was actually relatively perky yesterday, which made me question things, and even worked up some enthusiasm to eat some cooked chicken on her own. We had a cuddle and she purred, but she spent the night lying on the bathroom floor, a place she usually avoids. In fact, she never lay on the floor before getting sick.

*WARNING - the paragraph below may be slightly disturbing for some. But I just feel I need to get it out of my head, and this might help.

We took her in - she did not like being put in her cage, and yowled. The vet said she had lost another kilo, or about a third of her already tiny body weight, bringing her to 2.4 kg, or just over 5 lb. The vet gave her a sedative, which made her drool, and lick her lips, but seemed to paralyse her. Her eyes were huge and looking at me. He had trouble finding a vein in her tiny paws, but when he did it was all over in seconds. Her tongue lolled out and she was completely, utterly still. D and I were just amazed at how dead she looked. Her eyes glossed over and she twitched a bit. The vet and his assistant left so we could weep over her. Well, so D could weep and I could sob. I don't think I've ever seen D cry before. She just looked so still, her paws curled unnaturally.

I don't think it was the wrong time - I think she probably could have lasted longer, but also, that she was in a lot of pain. She moved so slowly. I also don't think that cats are like us, that they long for just one more day, despite all the pain they're in. But the whole experience, despite a very kind vet, was a little more traumatic than I expected. We had assumed she would just look like she was sleeping, which was what my mum said happened to my dog. But she didn't.

Afterwards, I opened up the carrier and said, come on girl, get in. I think for one horrified moment D thought I might actually try to bring home her limp body, but I said, "No, it's just, her spirit might want to come home with us."

We'll pick up her ashes in a few days. At first it seemed a hokey thing to do, but then I realised, I think I need that closure. We'll probably scatter them somewhere eventually, but for now, I want to feel like she's home with us again.

Boo

Damn - I have the flu. I thought my flu shot had protected me, but it's here in classic form, nausea, vomiting, low-grade fever, sore throat, dry cough, aches and pains.

I hate being sick and pregnant - just one more thing to worry about.

I wish I could think of something intelligent but my mind is mush.

The Good and the Bad

I had a wonderful Valentine's Day. We made dinner together (well, mostly I lay on the sofa feeling nauseous, but I did make the sauce). Then we watched a silly but amusing movie. And we lay in bed talking, which is always nice.

I am over the worst of my worries, I think. I realise that I can worry about miscarriage, and then in the second trimester I will worry about umbilical cord accidents, and then I will worry about labour, and then I will worry about Sudden Infant Death and then I will worry about leaving my kid with strangers at daycare and basically I will be worrying for the next 50 years. I remind myself that it's only productive to worry about things I can control. Easier said than done, but I'm working on it with some successs.

We had very sad, and shocking news this morning. I took my cat in yesterday as she hadn't eaten in a few days. Both my cats have a variety of weird health issues, but none of them ever turn out to be that serious, though they are often expensive. However, the vet did seem a bit grave and kept her overnight. I got the call this afternoon and there wasn't much detail, but when I called back he broke the news - cancer. She's a young cat, only six and half, so I was shocked. She has a tumour the size of golfball in her GI tract.

There are options of chemo and surgery but those would likely be very expensive and only give her a few more months since it is a lymphatic cancer. So we will do some steroids and she may last a few weeks, or maybe only days. I feel terrible that I didn't notice earlier - it's so obvious to me now when I feel her fragile spine - it's spiking up through her skin. She has lost 20% of her body weight since last April, but she is a fluffy cat and I admit, I didn't notice it. I don't know how I missed it, but I did.

My biggest worry is that I am going away in 10 days and will be gone for 5 days. I'm terrified something will happen while I'm gone. I hope that it happens after - or before, as terrible as that sounds.

She's a weird little cat, very shy and anxious, but she loves to cuddle at night and purrs like a champ. She's curled up now in her favourite spot in the bookshelf.

Worries

I have felt awful for the last few days. I think my stomach moved to another planet. And even though I swore I wouldn't be one of those women who uses pregnancy as an excuse to turn into a "raging bitch" (those were my very smug words on Thursday), in the past 24 hours there have been tears for no reason, demands that D get me food I'm craving, and a general on-the-edge feeling.

I belong to this forum where pregnant women talk, and it seems like every day we lose one to miscarriage. That worries me, especially as they are often farther along than me. One of them said, post-miscarriage, that the embryo's heart rate had been too low at her first ultrasound; it was 117 at six and a half weeks and her doctor said that it was a cause for concern. Well ours was only in the low 120s! And we were seven weeks - is that too low for seven weeks?

Also, I read that the gestational sac should be a perfect sphere, but on the ultrasound print-off mine is this weird pancake shape with a dip in it. I hope it's just because she was pushing me in order to get a nice pic without the yolk sac in it (yes, there's a yolk in there... isn't that bizarre?)

Saturday, D asked me if I had any feelings that things might go wrong. I said it was a terrible question, and he said it was just because so far everything had seemed "tickety-boo" (yes he used that word) and he wanted to make sure that's what I thought too. I said, no, no major worries - everything is wonderful! Everything will be fine! And then I started worrying. That night I dreamt I was bleeding.

Lazy Saturday

It's been a gorgeously sunny day, no hats or mitts needed. We walked down to the beach and watched the dogs play in the surf.

The apartment is a disaster, as usual. It feels like a constant battle - one I'm losing. We had the bathroom ripped out last week. The previous owners did their own tiling and though it was pretty nice looking, they did a crap job and the tiles started popping off leaving patches of puffy whipped cream-like drywall. Because they tiled floor to ceiling we had to replace the walls of the whole bathroom, since we couldn't match it. It's mostly back together but we still have to paint and sand and seal. Our bathroom stuff is crammed across the hall.

The kitchen cupboard is open and I see a thousand boxes of tea tumbling all over each other. What I wouldn't give for just a little more space. We need to paint, but that will be another long painful process as we have nowhere to put things while a specific area gets painted.

Also D is sick. Being the loving wife I am I went out and bought Vitamin C and Cold-FX and and lozenges, but the bedroom floor is littered with small white balls of kleenex. I am praying I don't get it as I already feel tired and sick enough! And there'll be no Tylenol Cold or Cold FX for me.