A New Year, A New Hope

Ah, a new year. So many fresh possibilites! So much to look forward to!

This blog entry is NOT about that; not one iota. So if you don't want to hear a bunch of bitching, skip this entry. Seriously.

So HW's surgery went well. Very well, in fact. Aside from bruising that makes it look like the surgeon punched him while he was under, it looks fabulous! I don't even think it will leave a scar. And aside from his tummy's unhappy response to the pain meds, he would have recovered even more quickly. Suffice to say, within 48 hours, he went to Tylenol solely. Percocet ain't for an empty stomach.

With that said, I bet you're thinking "while HW was down for the count, MPM did some serious damage on other items around the house so that when he's ready to go again, things will be very far along!" Right. Oh, how you know me.

What I didn't know, as I sat typing on 12/12/12, was that I was starting to suffer from salmonella poisoning.

For those uneducated about salmonella, it appears that there are several types. One can get the "run-of-the-mill" type, which goes through your system and out all orifices, with great fever and speed, in between 3 to 7 days. It's pretty bad. Bad enough that any diagnosed case of salmonella has to get reported to the county health department and researched for common patterns in the population. That's nothing to sneeze about. But luckily it does resolved itself, on its own, eventually.

However, and this is addressed to the solely media-educated, there's worse types, going from what I had, all the way to Typhoid Mary fame. Luckily, I was not Typhoid MPM.

After the 6th day of not keeping anything down, ingesting anything, and day-long visits to the toilet (resulting in many Words with Friends games, finished books, and lots of magazine articles, but NO shopping, Christmas cookie-baking, birthday activities, or renovations), I finally went to the doc. We didn't know if it was an allergic reaction to a medication, a food, or something "mechanically wrong" with me. We got me off all meds, took blood, we did x-rays. All came back fine. Then did some cultures. Had to wait over my birthday and then 3 days after Christmas before finally hearing the diagnosis. By that time, I was on 2.5 weeks of this and had lost a respectable 6 pounds. Finally, it was determined what it was, and I got on Cipro. Apparently, some of these buggers just won't go without help. I'm on day 6 of Cipro and starting to feel a bit more normal now. Not normal. Just a bit more normal.

I have a whole new respect for salmonella. You don't have to have a fever, you don't have to have vomiting. But you can definitely eject everything out of your system, with little to no warning, and with a great deal of abdominal cramping and discomfort that keeps you awake, for days and days and days. At one point, I wondered if it was like this being a new mom--labor pains and no sleep, but no benefit of a baby to make the rest of the crap worth it (no pun intended).

Warning: Harsh comments a-coming:

And just for the record, and a bit of a soap-box griping session: if someone you know has been diagnosed with it, DO NOT ASK them if they have eaten undercooked eggs or chicken. My response from here on will be "if I'd just known not to lick all the eggs in the carton and then not take a chicken juice bath before I got sick . . ." Honestly, it's a complete insult to the person suffering from it. Everyone knows that's the "media's reason" for it, but there are a million sources of it, including scooping cat litter, or getting it from raw broccoli or spinach. If you yourself had been offered undercooked chicken or raw eggs, would you knowingly have eaten them? Then why would the person you're asking have been that stupid on purpose? I'm just sayin'.

Needless to say, between that, and trying (and mostly failing) to take care of HW during his recovery at the exact same time (poor guy--he's SUCH a trooper!), and my birthday (on which I was sick) and Christmas (on which I was sick), and New Year's (finally getting better), I've gotten absolutely NOTHING done. December mostly sucked. A raw egg. And chicken juice.

This weekend is supposed to be better weather (no rain), so maybe I'll get the countertop sanded and started with tung oil. Unless there's a cholera outbreak I'm missing.