The Rollercoaster...

Well day 4-and I'll say....
 Well it's definately better than day one I guess.  It's just a total rollercoaster.  Good hours and bad hours.  There are times when I'm moving around (well as much as I can)  or doing the CPM machine-where I'm like-ok this is doable.  I'm getting along just fine.  And then I hit a couple hours later and it's a totally different story.  It's when the back hurting, the butt hurting, the nausea, the feeling like crap-just wears you down.  And no musical mix at the moment can fix it. 

And it's exhausting!  I dread going to the bathroom because I know what effort it will take to get there and back, besides having to lower myself to the toilet and back up!  And it's so frustrating!  Just completely annoying and frustrating.  Not being able to do simple things for yourself.  Where minor things, like an achy throat or upset stomach, are just magnified by the fact that almost every muscle in your body is tired.  I thought being tired was just me being lazy-but I had no idea what a toll it is on the complete psyche-mental, physical, emotional.  It's full fledged.  And I've had friends and family there-and that's good and appreciated.  But I'm on my own a lot which just gives me time to think about all the crappy stuff like this. 

I'm just tired. I'm just exhausted.  I'm just spent and it all makes me over emotional.  It sucks really.

Home from the hospital.

Well hello world!  Looks like I made it through!  Actually i don't think i would've minded sleeping a bit more-waking up was NOT fun!  And it was the part I was thinking was going to be the worst-so that's not too surprising. But it hurt like a mother lover!

And so getting ready for bed.  That was an adventure too!  It just took me forever-and i don't know wehre to put all of this stuff!  The CPM machine-the cooler!  everything has cords and is big!  I just want to be able to walk without the crutches!  I don't want to rush myself-but i'm already tired of being so dag gone needy!

And going to the bathroom is a big pain in the ass.  Cause getting underwear down enough over the stupid brace that comes up so high! It'll be comical when it doesn't hurt.  It really will-I mean I almost laugh at it now.  And it's a little more annoying when you have to pee really badly!  They didn't prepare me for that part. I mean I guess I could've figured it out if I would've thought of it long enough-but I didn't.  Thought of a bunch of other useless stuff.  But when it came to going to the bathroom and how to rearrange my room so i could fit everything by the bed-those weren't in the packet Rita gave me.  :(   And really these are the things that end up mattering when you get home.  I mean when's the last time you had to figure out how to pee?  I will say it comes in handy to have some loose wide skirts though.  Especially the ones that can go over your head.  No bending trying to get your broke ass foot (well it's not really broke but since it doesn't really move that far on its own right now), into shorts.  Which i don't recommend-skirts are the way to go!
 
I'm starting to see double now-so the pain pill must be kicking in. Gnite everyone!

Genius

So i enabled the genius function in my Itunes. And so far I kinda like it.  It plays music that I don't hear a lot and forgot that I have.  So in that sense it's nice.  On my list of things to do while layed up is to go through and delete all the music I do not want.  There's a lot of it.  The majority of my memory on my computer is probably music.

Tomorrow is the big day. Surgery day.  Tons of fun.  Can't wait.  Really I can.  I really want to walk and squat like a normal person again.  But other than that I could wait a while for this.  It's just so much stress and it's not worth it.  It really isn't.  Especially when I could have socialized health care if I'd be born in Canada.  Oh well!  Short term-i'm just trying to hydrate myself as much as possible until midnight so they can find a vein in me tomorrow.  ugh needles.  I hate needles.  I wish I could listen to music during this whole thing-that would totally ease my mind. I'd relax and let them prod me as much as they wanted to-with the right music i can almost block out anything.  I'll have to ask my doctor if he listens to music while he works-that would be awesome.

Took the parents around a bit today.  I even got them on a train to go downtown.  Crazy i know-but they did it.  We saw a bit of the zoo and walked around my hood a bit.  Tomorrow they get to see my store before the surgery.  Because, of course, i can't go too long without going to a Barnes and Noble.  I guess it's nice to like where you work and be proud of the company you work for.  Not everyone has that.  And as much as I complain, it's hard to see myself anywhere else for a while. 

I don't imagine it'll be easy to sleep tonight.  As much as I'd like to think it will be-I'm not holding my breath.  If my parents weren't sleeping in the other room I'd question whether all of this was really happening. 
Well here's to going under and hoping i come up.

Turkeys will return..

Okay-so the wild turkeys and other fierce animals will return.  However, my creative juices (if we can call them that) are not flowing. 

Dena Jo is getting knee surgery.  Torn ACL torn meniscus.  tons of not fun.  So far I haven't had a break down.  I'm just waiting for that.  Been keeping it together though.  Which is a little rough.  And I know everyone keeps saying it's for the best, you'll be happy when it's all better, it's not that bad-this stuff has come so far in the years.  Blah blah blah.  I know I'm not having heart surgery here.  But I also know that I am a single white female alone in Chicago on a tight budget.  That's the stuff that sucks and worries me.  I've worked pretty hard on trying to maintain and stay on top of finances.  Improve my credit and all that jazz.  I'm just dreading yet another bill that I have to pay and don't always know where the money's coming from.  Or not where it's coming from but I guess it just mean that any sense of a social life is gone.  Ugh.

With my impending trip under the knife brings the first visit from the parents.  2 1/2 years and here they come.  So I'll be able to show off my sparsley furnished apartment and Northwestern Hospital.  And the hospital is downtown so they'll see a little of the city.  And we do have to drive past my current B&N store to get there.  Not a completely lost cause. 

The turkeys will have to wait

Today started out pretty good.  A little drowsy-but that's usual.

I saw my very first opera-Damnation of Faust.  Riff Raff from Rocky Horror made an appearance-so it made me feel a little more at home.  But it was really cool.  It was a modern interpretation so there were no long braided wigs or viking hats-but hey that's ok.  Lighting was pretty darn awesome.  As it was a dress rehearsal there were a few technical moments of interest for me.  So I loved it.
Then a trip to Garfield Park conservatory-pictures and video coming soon.  It was pretty and warm and smelled good!  And then I checked my voice mail...

Which I guess I should've done last night-or this morning-or well anytime before I did-cuz then I would've been able to call and get some more details-instead I was left with a voice mail and google.  Not a good combination.  The voice mail you ask?  It was the results from my MRI of my knee.  Yeppers-a voice mail.  So, apparently I have a ruptured ACL and torn maniscis something.  She had a name for the tear in the maniscis but I couldn't understand what she said.  Now for all I know this may not be too terrible-however the words surgery and surgeon were also in the voice mail.  And online it said when the ACL and manisicis both have damage-you should probably just have the damn surgery.  But i don't know if we're going with total ACL replacement or if they're just trimming some stuff or what. Thus my worried state. 

And thus why medical people should not leave you voice mails with this kind of information.  Or at least a little more clarification!  Cause now i just have google and key words and put that together and I'm looking at some pretty scary stuff.
And nothing really defines the difference of a rupture compared to a tear-or if there is a difference.  I don't know!  It's all meshed into one-which is why I'm confused worried and mad! 

Ugh.  I wanted to write the second installment of the Turkey blog.  But my creative juices are just not flowing at the moment.  This sucks. 

Wild Turkeys Attack! (and other fierce creatures that don't belong in a bookstore)

It was a chipper February morning.  The sun was out-and it wasn't too cold.  In your local Barnes and Noble things were probably very normal.  Story times, coffee brewing, customers browsing, booksellers zoning, music playing, etc.  All very normal and quiet.  Except for one particular Barnes and Noble...

Down in farthest depths of the downstairs portion of this Barnes and Noble, a music manager, we'll call him Bernie (names may be changed to protect the identities of the survivors), was merrily receiving in his new music and DVD product for the store.  He liked these quiet mornings, being so far from anyone else in the store; the music department was in the farthest, deepest corner of the store, sepatrated by a wall and plexi; the only opening being the single doorway at the northeast corner of the department. Anyways, Bernie is humming along to the Barbra Streisand instore play, going about his day to day business, unawares that today is going to be different than any other. 

Out on the bookfloor Merch Manager Dena Jo was assigning out tasks to booksellers Jerry, Millie, Ruby, Caramel and Patrick.  Endcaps needed to change, tables moved, customers shooed from areas that were awaiting events, etc.  Phaedra was dusting and straightening away in Health and Exercise.And Patrick was cleaning up after story time.  Everyone was clipping along, when all of a sudden a creepy silence came over the store, and hairs started to prickle on the back of necks.  Jerry, being uber sensitive to creepiness, looked up from his project (a Mountainous Animal Endcap-appropriately displayed in the main aisle of an urban city store).  He scanned the aisle with his eyes and nothing seemed amiss; so he walked toward the epicenter of the store, where there was customer service and stairways and escalators, and other signs customers wouldn't read.  As he approached he realized he wasn't imagining the silence, the Babs was just over, and as soon as he got the the customer service desk, Seal blasted through the overhead speakers. 

WIth a shake of his head and a chuckle to himself, Jerry pushed away the prickliness at his neck and stopped to take a good look at his second home.  A gorgeous store-2 stories, the size of a football field downstairs, and open atrium allowing hte second floor to look down at the epicenter.  And windows to let all of the sunshine in from the top floor.  As he scanned the line of windows, he thought he'd go see how Patt, the head cashier, was doing today and headed up the escalators towards cash wrap.  What he found was a most gruesome scene!  As he entered the door at the end of the row of cash registers, he turned to continue into the area, which, oddly, at the moment, had a dark red stain on the carpeting-and on the back shelves, books were sprayed with what appeared to be (and he would know from "other" experiences in his life) blood.  Blood all over everything!  And down at the very end of the line of 10 cash registers, where the gift wrap table was stationed, he saw, what was left of, the source of all of the blood.  Pieces, and I mean Pieces of Patt were scattered under and around the gift wrap table.  He knew it was Patt because of the pieces of his shoes, and khaki pants that he always wore, were slightly visible.  Apparently, whoever, or whatever did this had not taste for polo shirts and old leather shoes-because that was the majority of what Jerry could make out in all the blood. 

What Jerry did next we won't know-because all of a sudden a piercing scream was heard throughout the whole store-and our focus would, of course, follow that person, and Jerry will jump back in when he decided to join the living. To be continued...

The merits of frozen green beans...

Frozen vegetables as ice packs are handy.  I've used corn, peas, beans, and medley mix.  So far I'd have to say that the Jewel brand of frozen Cut Green Beans is the best.  Corn and peas tend to be too small and that too quickly-whereas the beans stay pretty frozen for a while and are a bigger bag.  They can wrap the knee a little better than the smaller vegetables.  So that is my recommendation when using frozen vegetables to ice limbs.

Also, General Hospital.  It's good to know that I can stay caught up just by seeing the previews.  So now that I've watched 2 episodes this week-I'm not lost.  The plot is easy to pick up and predict where it's going.  Jason is still hot.  The kids that were toddlers 3 years ago are now tweens and teens.  Luke-a GH staple is still around.  He comes and goes but it's ok.  And Jax!  My Aussie man is still lookin good!  Along with some new people that doesn't take too much to figure out who they are-I'm all caught up on General Hospital.

Ellen-I think there should be TV's in every place in America so that the country can stop when the Ellen Degeneres Show starts.  It should be the American Ciesta.  Dance a little, laugh a lot, and have a good time. 

Let me also give a shout out to the free ebooks available at bn.com.  mostly bad romance titles and things you've never heard of-or some Jane Austen classics.  So i've been getting my fill of Jane and Harlequin-cuz hey they're free!  It passes the time when I can't clean for hours or cook for hours-sad i know.  But standing that long will be saved for when I go back to work on Thursday. 

Tomorrow-looking forward to taxes online and some free netfix steaming movies.