Being Sick SUCKS

Holy man, let me tell you guys, being sick SUCKS. It's hard to get a good night's sleep, difficult to get up in the morning with your perfectly wide-awake child, and the worst part is keeping yourself up and motivated to do things you know need to be done. Even washing the dishes feels nearly impossible when sick.

And it's all thanks to this little thing here:

I have never been sick so much in my life since Isabelle started going to daycare and now she happily brings home every bit of germs and sickness that she can and spews it everywhere either by coughing all over things, or in my face, or by putting her mouth all over the stuff that we touch all the time. On the bright side... I SHOULD (in theory) become a healthier person with her strengthening my immune system. On the other hand, I still have this cough that I haven't been able to get rid of since... I don't really remember anymore, it's been more months than I can think of. I just can't seem to stop coughing ALL THE TIME. Now there's probably something to do with "Kyle needs to drink more healthy liquid water with no sugar in it..." Or.... Uhh..... No, that's probably something to do with it. IT'S A WORK IN PROGRESS!

If that wasn't bad enough, in all the kerfuffle my wife got sick as well. Now, Carley getting sick is something that happens from time to time and I'm quite used to taking care of her including the additional requests when she's not feeling well, but something about this sickness was a little bit different than usual. I just couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew something wasn't quite right... is it true that she's really just that cranky and annoyed with everyone only because she's sick?

As it turns out we were hit with the unexpected inconvenience of Carley's doctor being away during the time when she needed to go in to renew her prescription for Concerta. If you don't know what Concerta is, it's a slow-release medication for ADHD which really helps her focus and not hate everybody. So because the doctor was away, we couldn't get her prescription renewed which meant she had to do without her medication for a week. Something we didn't expect which never occurred to use as a possibility is that she went through some withdrawal. As it turns out, taking Concerta daily doesn't make you think much about it other than notice how much it helps with day-to-day life, but quitting it cold-turkey actually causes a withdrawal period which would be similar (though likely not as bad) as quitting something like heroin so suddenly. Insane, right?

So needless to say, dear little Isabelle was happy as a clam the past week or so, Carley got sick and went through withdrawal which made her tired and want to stay in bed but also get out of the house because she couldn't stand anybody (while also needing to go out for a walk due to excessive energy levels), and I just held on to sanity while being sick and having to cater to the demands of two ladies who were so very in need... oh, and of course the dogs still needed to go out and in and out and in and out and in and out and in all day long again. No rest for the weary as they say.

Anywhos, now that I'm pretty sure I'm over the majority of being so very sick, and now that I've finished watching the Netflix show "Strong," I'm feeling much like I should start getting back into producing blog posts and new content to keep you all entertained. I have so much in my brain brain BRAIN, that I want to get out there and share with you all!

Keep an eye out for more stuff coming up very soon! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Jaw Surgery Adventure - The Aftermath =8=

We entered an empty hospital bright and early in the morning and mentally prepared ourselves for the upcoming surgery. Carley did pretty well coming up to the surgery and didn't seem all to agitated even while we were in the waiting room right beforehand outside the surgery area. We were given a patient number so that I could wait in the waiting room and see what point she was at in her surgery. I didn't pay too much attention to it as I figured everything would go well and didn't have anywhere to go anyways. As it turns out, the chairs in the waiting room are wonderfully comfy... so much so that I was able to fall asleep and have a good nap while I was waiting for the procedure to be completed.

The doctor / surgeon woke me up once the operation was complete and I promptly made my way to the post-surgery observation unit. Carley was wheeled in and given a place and set up for her stay for the night. My first impression of seeing Carley was one of "Oh my goodness, what have they done to her?" She had a couple ice packs tied around her head so there was one on each side of her jaw and there were elastics keeping her jaw shut so she couldn't move her mouth.

At this point, the nurses then came in and started going through everything she would need to know including how to feed herself with her syringe, how to use the mouthwash every morning and night, and how to press the button to get some morphine into her system if she were ever in pain at all. The recovery in the observation ward wasn't too interesting other than a lot of sleeping and water drinking and whatnot. There was a point where the morphine ran out and was replaced with another container of morphine... but Carley thought it was replaced with Tylenol, so she proceeded to use quite a bit of it. This led to the nurses and doctor being unsure whether or not she should be leaving the following day as they weren't sure if she would be able to handle the pain after the large amount of morphine she took throughout the night.

We did manage to get ourselves home the following day after surgery. The following days included a lot of switching ice packs around the freezer and managing all of Carley's medication for pain and antibiotics. The only real bump in the road we hit was that the hospital seemed to get Naproxen and Dilauded mixed up and told us everything was available in Moose Jaw except Dilauded. So we got to Moose Jaw and found that they didn't have Naproxen which was a bit of an issue because Carley's face and neck at this point was slowly expanding into a balloon and she was having issues breathing because of this. We got through the first night using Children's Advil and got some Naproxen from a different drug store the next morning.

What has been the hardest part about this process so far? I would say... the pain has been manageable for her, so that wouldn't be the hardest. Probably the really most difficult thing has been the food... or lack of. As it turns out, Carley isn't terribly interested in only having liquids every day and it really is pretty hard to make liquids interesting to eat. As a result, Carley has lost quite a bit of weight in the past two weeks... around 20 lbs I believe.

Well, tomorrow is now the big day when the elastics SHOULD be removed and she can start eating soft foods once again. Wish us luck and find out soon what's on the menu and how the recovery is going. ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa