New Jersey Pays Dividends

Today - Friday - with morning temperatures cresting 80 at 7 am, I felt that an iced coffee treat was in order.  It’s hot and sticky with humidity, I’ve worked every day this week, and I have a massive poison ivy rash on my chest, creeping up my neck in an alarming fashion.  I think we can all agree that I deserve an iced coffee to go with the prednisone I scored to treat the rash.  

The Dunkin’ Donuts nearest my house had a line out to the street and no space to turn in, park, and actually walk outside.  I took a pass.  Lest you fret, there are no less than three Dunkin’ Donuts along the path of my 8 mile drive to work.  Dunkin’ number 2 was also crazy busy.  Dunkin’ number 3 isn’t a drive-thru (I’m from California and I believe that a drive-thru is among my Constitutionally guaranteed rights), but it does have a giant parking lot.  The 3 miles to it gave me the time to consider whether my need was so great that I would actually exit the vehicle.  

It was.  

Reader, there was no line inside.  It was as if the New Jersey Gods were smiling upon me.

Leaves of Three I, Apparently, Did Not Let Be

My backyard is awash in volumes of poison ivy.  I know what it looks like and I take care.  Not always perfect care, because every summer I get a touch of poison ivy rash.  Usually, it itches uncomfortably but within a week, the rash has dried and I am feeling much better.  

Emphasis on usually.

Sometimes, it doesn’t get better and I need a few days of prednisone to clean things up.

And then there is my most recent exposure.  I knew my ankle had been brushed by poison ivy on Sunday, August 25th when I cut the grass and did some trimming of bushes in the yard.  I washed the spot and moved on.  Four days later, a rash emerged on my left arm.  And then all along my waistline.

A spot emerged on my face and neck.  

And then my chest.  

My ankle was a mess.

By Labor Day weekend, I was a walking itchy and scratchy advert.  And new breakouts kept appearing.  I took myself to the doctor and got some prednisone, first a shot and then six days worth of pills that would gradually taper off.  I also got a steroid cream to use.  At once, my symptoms began to ease.

But now, here at the end of the taper off, I am still getting new outbreaks.  Clearly the exposure was more than my ankle.  In fact, T saw a patch in the front yard where I had been trimming that I didn’t see at the time.  In all fairness to me, we’ve never had poison ivy in the front yard.  In all fairness to poison ivy, I have sometimes taken a cavalier attitude toward its presence.  

My last prednisone pill will be taken tomorrow.  At this rate, I’ve the notion that by Tuesday I am going to remain a very unwilling poison ivy subscriber, this time headed for round 2 of steroids.  Will I ever learn?

That’s a rhetorical question.

Damaged Finger Update

Nearly three weeks out from the fingernail incident of 2019, things are looking pretty good.  

All of my nails have been close-trimmed since the event and I’m pleased to report that even at my advanced age, my fingernails grow quickly.  Other than a thick stripe of white where the knife struck pay dirt, my middle finger (key when you live in Jersey) is poised to make a solid comeback.

Here is where I vow to be careful with knives and other sharp objects moving forward. Blah, blah, blah.

Posting Has Been Light….

And I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about that.  It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say.  Far from it……but I damaged a key typing finger earlier last week and so my hands have been quiet even as my mouth has been yammering.  It all started on Tuesday, when I made tacos for JT and a couple of his friends.  

In the course of chopping jalapeños for salsa, I got a little careless with a very sharp knife and cut off a portion of my fingernail.

A significant portion.  

In hindsight, I’m lucky that I pulled back fast enough to save my fingertip.  But I cut off a third of my fingernail on my middle left finger.  It hurt in the moment, of course, and I bled like a stuck pig.  But once T and I got the bleeding to stop, it was merely the inconvenience of a bandaged finger and the fact that jostling it caused pain that slowed up my typing.  Things are better now (the finger doesn’t hurt and the fingernail is growing back) and I’ve got a lot to say.

Beak Report: Nine Week Update

The other day, one of my classes of 6th graders asked me what a nose job was and I reminded them that I had in fact had a nose job in the fall.  They had forgotten that fact and promptly gathered round to check out my snagglesnout.  “It looks good,” C solemnly announced.  I think that he is correct.  Nine weeks out, things are looking pretty good.

 There is just a bit of swelling remaining and in profile you can see the line of the repair.

This is a much better outcome than a collapsed nostril and I am grateful that it all worked out.

Beak Report

The adventure with my nose started on November 12th, with the first ill-advised surgery.  The day that my stitches came out, on November 27th, my swollen nose looked like this.

Having the stitches out didn't hurt but the pushing and prodding involved left my nose a little sensitive for the next few days.  I am under orders to keep the wound line slathered in bacitracin, so I still have a greasy beak.  But the swelling has diminished and it's looking better every day.  This picture was made on Monday, December 2nd.

And here is Wednesday the 3rd of December.

JT made this picture of me yesterday.

I'm just a tad over two-weeks post surgery and the doctor assures me that it's healing up just as he wishes.  I check in with him in four months for any final touch ups.  And my commitment to sunscreen is stronger than ever.

Real Life Conversations with JT: That Blows edition

The backstory:  For years, JT could not blow his nose.  No matter how hard I tried, the skill escaped him.  By the time he was 10, he figured it out but not before multiple episodes of heartache and frustration.  I learned how to blow my nose a long time ago but my recent nose surgery left me unable to blow my nose.  I found it annoying.

Mama:  Oh my God, I wish I cold just blow my damned nose.

JT (calm and disinterested):  Why?  I couldn't blow mine for years and I survived quite nicely.

Obviously, this is a first-world problem and I should just suck it up.

Worst Selfies Ever

My go-round with the Mohs Procedure on my nose left a nasty scab and, worst than that, the prospect of a significant scar and a nostril so deformed that it might eventually collapse.  That seemed like a bad idea so I consulted a plastic surgeon.  Last Friday, I had a little plastic surgery.

And by a little, I mean that there are 12 stitches and it looks horrid.  This was as promised by the plastic surgeon, who told me before we began, "It's going to look a whole lot worse before it looks better.  But it will look better."

Sounds like fun!  I started with a divot on my nose scabbed over and unpleasant looking.  In this picture, you can see that my nostrils are no longer an even match, so I was confident that the surgery was warranted.

The surgical process required a sedative and then a lot of numbing.  It lasted for about 90 minutes and I don't remember much, though I do remember the pre-surgery pregnancy test.  When T and I sought to re-assure the nurse that I couldn't possibly be pregnant, she explained to us that they run a pregnancy test for all women who are eligible to be pregnant, "12 year olds, lesbians, widows…..it doesn't matter.  There was at least one immaculate conception!"

As if the world doesn't have enough problems, there is a prospect that a profane 46 year old lesbian would be the mama to the second coming?  Frightening.  I passed the pregnancy test and then T and I repeated the nurse's line all weekend long.   

The first day after surgery featured plenty of swelling and some oozing along the line of stitches, seen here coated in Bacitracin, per the doctor's requirement.

On the morning of day 4, it's looking and feeling better, though I am hardly a glamour girl.

It looks far worse than it feels; the discomfort is controlled with ibuprofen.  So I am taking this nose with me to work this morning.  No doubt the middle schoolers will have some rich comments.  Stitches come out on Wednesday and I expect that soon enough I will forget these few weeks.  Though I think we can safely conclude that my commitment to sunscreen will be on-going.

The Beak

Later on this morning I have the plastic surgery that will fix my nose.  Despite the many jokes that I am seeking a Michael Jackson-like appearance, I just want to return to normal.  I would also like to reach an eventual goal of not having a bandage on my nose all the dang time.

In the meantime, I'm up early so that I can get in some extra worry time.  I can't eat or drink and that means I am without my customary cup of coffee  So in addition to fretting about the IV (I dislike that process immensely, especially the medical tape to hold down the line…..yes, I'm weird) I have some time to regret the fact that there is no coffee in my life this morning.  Oh, the headache I shall have.

All of these troubles are very first world, so the indulgence will end shortly.  Before and after photos will be available next week.  Here we go….

In Which My Dignity Takes a Hit

Tuesday's surgical proceeding has left me with an unpleasant scrap of gauze and tape on my nose.  I'm under orders to leave the wound covered until a plastic surgeon sees it and develops a plan.  This is rather a challenge to my personal dignity.  Basically, I'm a Middle School Assistant Principal making it incredibly easy for every kid in the school to make fun of me.

Super.

The day of the procedure I was in the doctor's office awaiting the pathology results of the second surgical scrape, with a bloody bandaid on my nose.  A small child looked at me and said, "what happened to your nose?"  So I pretty much knew how my next day at school would play out.  

I took the challenge head on and wrote a quiz question on the board for each of my classes:

Ms. Sassafras has a bandage on her nose because:

a.  she picked it too much.

b.  she got in a fight.

c.  she should have used sunscreen when she was a kid.

We had a nice conversation about sunscreen and the importance of using it.  Then we agreed* that we would all pretend that I didn't have a scrap of gauze and medical tape on my nose, though I will look this way for several more days, perhaps more. 

Awesome.

*Note: by "agreed" I mean I insisted.

Stereotype

I grew up in California and my sister and I spent days in the pool, never with any sunscreen because we were the brown-as-a-berry type girls.  Also, it was the 1970s.  In my adulthood, I have reaped the rewards of this lifestyle in the form of the occasional spot of skin cancer.  It's the basal cell type; inconvenient and unattractive but not really dangerous.

This summer, I had a spot scraped off my nose.  The resulting pathology showed that the margins were still funky.  This spot would require a Mohs procedure, which is as much fun as it sounds.  I underwent that procedure on Tuesday of this week.  An 8 mm chunk on the surface of my nose is gone (as is the skin cancer).

Having casually assumed that everything would be just fine (the first scrape healed beautifully), I was rather horrified at this development.  A plastic surgeon is in order.  Conveniently, I live in New Jersey, and we are awash in cosmetic surgery opportunities.  And so I'm seeing a guy next week and now I've become a New Jersey stereotype: a woman of a certain age with a plastic surgeon's number on her phone.  I'll let you know when it goes to speed dial.

Head Strong

Later this month, JT will turn 13.  Being the mama of a soon-to-be 13 year old has been a real challenge and so I imagine that being the mama of an actual 13 year old will be a nightmare test.

Case in point is the current state of the boy's head: concussed.  Monday, while he was in gym class, JT fell and received a concussion for his troubles.  He had been on the gym monkey bars in the amazing workout space and, determined to take on a physical challenge, he swung to skip a bar and missed.  The result was a crash 8 feet downward broken only by his left hand and his head hitting the forgiving surface.  Quite frankly, I'm grateful that all he got was a concussion.  

As a woman whose girlhood physical confidence hovered around zero, I find JT's physical confidence amazing.  He runs and jumps and climbs and tries most any physical challenge.  He's not generally reckless, though he is an adolescent boy and so a certain amount of reckless swagger does go with the territory.  Just one day after the big spill, he's eager to jump on the monkey bars again, which I respect, even if it scares the daylights out of me.

That boy of mine is going to wear me out.

On Wisdom

On Monday, after enduring five years of discomfort, I finally made the jump and consented to having my last wisdom tooth removed.  The first two and I had parted ways when I was 10 years old in a procedure that featured the removal of 7 other teeth (yes, for a total of 9) and left me forever reluctant to see a dentist, let alone a dental surgeon, again.

I lost wisdom tooth number 3 in 2001 when I was living in Nebraska.  Other than the fact that I drove myself home after the procedure, I don't have any memories of the removal.  On Monday the last tooth and I finally parted ways.  It had been aching for years and I had delayed removal based on the ill-advised theory that the pain you know is worse than the pain you don't.  The impetus to finally have the tooth extracted was the on-going discomfort it caused and the fact that it was a hulking behemoth of a tooth intent on destroying other teeth in the neighborhood……not a good arrangement, my dentist assured me.

Though I knew it had to go, I was terrified.  No one likes dental surgery - least of all me - and in my case fear of the surgery was compounded by the fact that the procedure would require me to be down for the count, however temporary.  I've an irrational fear of being temporarily disabled, a fear magnified when I became a single mama.  I know that I can ask others for help, and I sometimes do, but I much prefer a world in which I am functioning.

Enter T, whose presence in my life persuaded me that being temporarily out of commission wasn't a disaster.  She drove me to the surgery (ignoring my appeals that we instead go shopping at the Tractor Supply Store), carried me home afterward, and served me the soft and bland cuisine the newly wisdom-toothless are permitted to enjoy.  In short, she made a difficult procedure utterly endurable, allowing me to face my fears and laugh at myself in the process.

That's a tall order.  Out of the experience, I've learned a few more lessons in pursuit of the age-old wisdom that a burden shared is a burden halved.  I've been reminded of the power of laughter and sympathy and why it is that two is more powerful than one.  The tooth is gone.  And better yet, I gained a lot in the process.

Extra Credit

Last week, when it was clear that JT had broken his thumb (it's a tiny fracture on the growth plate) he wanted to be sure that he received credit for the break.  Apparently there is some giant ledger in kid-ville, one that tracks broken bones, and he wanted to be sure to get his name marked down.  Twice, thank you very damned much.

Assured that he did, in fact, receive his credit, he nursed his swollen left thumb and went on with his business.  Last Friday, we finally had the appointment with the orthopedist (and it says a lot about me that I have a pediatric orthopedist on the speed dial).  She looked at the thumb, looked at the x-ray, ran Thumbelina through some thumb bending exercises and pronounced the dreaded words: this thumb needs a cast.

It's on for three weeks.  The arm must be bagged up for bathing (though JT did pledge to skip showering if that was more convenient); it's a pain to put on his winter coat, and shoe tying once again requires assistance.  It itches and will no doubt smell dreadful before this is all over.

 All things considered, we know that it could be worse.  But we'd still like some extra credit.

Earning Full Credit

When JT was 7, he broke his leg.  It was a rough start to the second grade, but he mended well and by December he was back to running around like a regular boy.   And though it consumed us at the time, weeks and weeks go by without a remembrance of that once-broken leg entering my consciousness.  That's a good thing.  Still, it's not every kid who broke his leg while riding his bike and JT occasionally tells the story of his broken leg, usually to great dramatic effect.

On Wednesday, while he was playing outside in the snow, he took a tumble, got his finger caught in his lacrosse stick and came inside with an urgent announcement, "I need some ice for my finger."  The injured digit is his left thumb.  It swelled quickly and a bruise began to form.  I took him to the doctor that afternoon.  JT could move his thumb and make a fist and the doctor said, "Ehhhh.  It's probably fine."  We went home to a regimen of icepacks and ibuprofen. 

Yesterday, I took him to the doctor again; this time I asked for an x-ray.  He has full movement in his thumb (in fact, he never lost it) but the swelling and bruising had continued.  I was confident that he was fine (his constant motion and non-stop chatter certainly implied as much) but an x-ray was the only way to be sure.

And, in fact, the thumb has a very slight fracture.  Officially, it's a "Salter II fracture of the dorsal medial aspect of the proximal phalange."  Those of us without a medical degree would say he's got a fracture in his finger.  The Salter II aspect means that it's at the growth plate.  Frankly, I think it's a little cheeky of the thumb-bone to have a growth plate, but it does mean a visit to the pediatric orthopedist next week.

For now, the recommended treatment is to continue the ice and ibuprofen.  JT had only one concern, which he blurted out to his doctor, "Does it count?"  By which he meant, "can I really call it a broken bone?"

Assured that it does in fact "count" the boy carried his injured thumb home.  Full credit for two broken bones over the course of his 10 years on earth.  If that doesn't impress his fellow middle-schoolers, I don't know what will.

Abscessed

On Sunday evening, JT reported that he had a sore spot in his mouth which made it uncomfortable for him to chew.  I looked inside his cavernous yaw, saw nothing to worry me (please note, I'm not a dental professional, a fact about to be made abundantly clear), and sent him on his way with an ibuprofen and instructions to floss his teeth more carefully.

On Monday night, still in some discomfort, he reported that the tooth had been hurting since Saturday.  This news, of course, arrived at 9 pm.  So we repeated the floss and ibuprofen drill, went to bed, and hoped for the best.

Tuesday morning, I asked him how his mouth felt.  But it was rather a moot question since his swollen chipmunk-style left cheek said it all.  Anyone up for a mid-day emergency dental visit?

By 11:30 am, the diagnosis was clear: two abscessed teeth on the left side of his mouth.  The remedy was equally clear, if a little upsetting: removal of the troubled teeth, plus a matching tooth on the other side of his mouth to preserve his bite.  All three teeth were babies scheduled for eviction anyway.  Dr. C just helped them to move out early.

Post-removal, JT took the afternoon off.  He nursed a large chocolate milkshake and played video games in the back of my classroom while I taught two of my American Government classes. 

The teeth went under the pillow last night.  Extracted teeth are much more valuable then teeth which fall out on their own, so the Tooth Fairy paid premium dollar for his ivories.  In fact, at this rate I think that I can look for a few more teeth being forcibly removed.   

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Let me begin by noting that all the occupants of Sassafras House are alive and well; none of us worse for the wear.

Those of you who grow faint of heart when hearing of blood should stop reading now.

Still reading? It was a busy day at our house yesterday. I had a full morning of working out, house cleaning, laundry and yard work. At 3:00, my chores complete, I headed up to the shower to clean up for a trip to my local grocery store.

And it was in the shower that trouble reared its head. Like many women of a certain age who have given birth, I've got my own pet varicose vein. I've had it for years and it's never been even a bit of problem. It's unsightly, but as a long time opponent of cosmetic surgery, I can live with it. Yesterday, it gave me trouble for the first time. I was shaving my legs, an activity that I do every day, when I nicked the varicose vein.

Let's just say that when you nick a vein like that, bleeding doesn't even begin to describe the unfolding drama in your shower. The vein literally spurted blood. Pools of it, everywhere I turned, gushing out with an impressive degree of pressure. It didn't hurt at all but it made a notable mess, like a slasher movie had just been made in my shower. And the application of pressure had no effect, as I immediately bled through layer after layer of thick, heavy towels.

My friend sb, who arrived just in the nick of time, agreed with me: a 9-1-1 call was in order. The emergency crew responded with speed and soon my bathroom and hallway was filled with local law enforcement and paramedics. They couldn't stem the tide either......and seemed suitably impressed that I hadn't yet passed out. To be fair, the combination of adrenaline and boundless horror of being found naked by strangers certainly took care of that. I was calm, cool, collected, and clothed by the time they arrived.

But I was bleeding like a stuck pig.

And so I took my first trip ever in an ambulance. I persuaded the EMTs to permit me to walk out of the house, but I was then loaded onto the gurney and got a ride with all the bells and whistles. An anxious JT stayed behind with sb and they did a terrific clean-up job while I was at the ER.

Within the hour, a magical clotting medicine was applied to my gusher of a leg, I got a tetanus shot, signed on the dotted line and was cut loose. JT and sb picked me up and carried me and my impressive new bandage home.

All I can say about the day is that I fittingly waited until all of my chores were complete before I staged my bloody drama. And when you think about it, that's just like me.