Instead, the receptionist looked at me and without cracking a smile she asked "What is your secret?" I must have looked confused. She said, "Your children are the most well-behaved and quiet children that have ever come into this lab." I was afraid she was being sarcastic until she offered the kids a snack and pulled out her personal box of crackers and gave a pack to each child. I was still in disbelief but I politely thanked her and thanked the kids for being so good in the hospital.
I left the lab smiling and feeling grateful that Ms. Receptionist had never seen my children in my kitchen fighting over the last cookie or sucker punching each other over a stolen toy in my living room. Yes, they sure do know how to behave in public though!
I returned home and was enjoying my day, despite the constant spinning, until the babies woke up from their nap. In a span of 60 seconds, my phone rang, visitors arrived on our doorstep, and Nathan awoke from his nap covered in poop and diaperless. Suddenly, I was snapped back into reality.
And this is what keeps me humble...
See that? That brown substance smeared across my dress?It's poop.
'Nuff said.
In addition to being Mother's Day, yesterday was also Jason's birthday. Since I couldn't bake him a cake or tease him in person, I settled for shipping him a cake. Yes, amazingly, you can ship a cake overseas to a war zone and it actually arrives fresh and edible! Jason enjoyed his cake and I'm sure everybody laughed at the picture I had put on the top of it. It's a picture of Jason with his half dozen children. What could be funnier?
Jason is doing well and the countdown until his homecoming has begun. We're still counting months, but eventually we'll be counting weeks, then days. The end is in sight!A few weeks ago an Iraqi brought Jason and his coworkers a gift. It's a sweet, little kitten! And the cutest part is that they (not Jason) named her Leila! My kids got a kick out of that.
Finally, thank you all for the input about my whole spinning fiasco. Yes, I'm still spinning. And to make things even more exciting I now have tingling and numbness in my hands, arms, legs, feet, neck, scalp, and spine, as well as tingling around my right eye. Today I started having electrical pulses traveling up and down my back and I headed back to the hospital. This is starting to get scary!
Another examination revealed little new information. My lab results showed no obvious clues. My thyroid is fine, no B12 deficiency, no anemia, no diabetes, and nothing out of the ordinary. My ears look fine and the doctor doesn't think I'm even suffering from vertigo because I have no nystagmus (pupils moving side to side) and no nausea or vomiting. He does not think it could be anxiety. He doesn't think it's a peripheral disorder and is pretty certain it's a central disorder, so he referred me to a neurologist. He told me that the symptoms may or may not go away and that a diagnosis make take weeks, or even months. In the meantime, his suggestions were to have family come and help me since I shouldn't be driving. Ha! I tried to explain my situation and request a rush on that neuro consult, but to no avail. They told me to call on Friday to see if I can schedule an appointment but it will be a few weeks before they'll see me.
I'm not sure what to think. I have no idea what's wrong and I just know that something is not right. Yesterday I briefly lost motor coordination and had no control over my hands because of the numbness. How could this not be urgent? How can a mother of 6 children just live like this for weeks? Ugh. I hate the system sometimes.
Tomorrow my mom will get the results of her biopsy. And then I have to remember to be humble. My problems are small potatoes compared to the possibility of breast cancer. I'll save my complaints for later.
Keeping me humble, see?
