Just like all things that have happened this year, it just gets better and better, well in our case, worse and worse. I was battling a sinus infection. It would get better, than worse, then better, then....well you get the idea. I finally found something online that seemed to be able to eradicate it. I started the protocol. In one day the ear pain and post nasal drip disappeared. It was a ten day treatment plan. However four days in was when I ate the egg whites. That was bad, really bad. It laid me flat for three days. In those three days I only took one or two pills a day instead of the 4 I was supposed to take. After the three days I was nauseous. I was assuming it was a left over effect of the egg white episode. Each day I was eating less and less, until the third day when I couldn't eat anything due to the very site or mention of food making me ill to my stomach. We had a theory of what was going on, but now, looking back I think it was just a coincidence. Basically my sinus infection got out of control. You have to understand that I don't get the typical sinus infection symptoms, which is why I didn't catch on to what was happening earlier. By now I am totally weak, my heart pounding with any movement, and a bunch of really odd sensations. Last night I figured out what was going on, not until I almost went to the ER. Yes, the ER at 2 AM. But there was a life saver sitting in our kitchen. Jeremiah has this powdered sports drink. I think of it as his fancy-dancy sports drink. Me being the very supportive helpmeet (cough, choke, sputter) that I am I questioned him as to why he needed such a fancy-dancy sports drink. I mean what did they use before sports drinks? Hmm, yeah, very supportive (rolling my eyes at myself!). Well, that sports drink saved my life. In all seriousness I don't recall having ever been sick to the point of thinking I was going to die. Last night, I seriously thought I was going to keel over. No I'm not being dramatic. It was very scary. I prayed, and soon after the thought of "electrolytes" popped into my head. I thought, how am I going to send Jeremiah to the store at 2 AM when I was seriously afraid I was going to keel over any moment? AHHH, the fancy-dancy sports drink. He got up to make me a quart of it. I sat in bed and took two big sips every 10 minutes. Drinking it all at once would have not given my body the time to absorb it, and also I was afraid of putting it in my tummy may make me vomit. It was one, VERY, VERY long hour. It took about an hour before I felt the change. I was able to fall asleep. I woke up about an hour or two later and did another round of the drink. It totally saved me from an ER trip. Don't get me wrong I would have gone had the drink not worked, but how in the world do we handle Jeremiah driving me to the ER, with kiddos at home at 2AM? Yeah, not a pretty thought. I wasn't the one to call the doctors this morning, but Jeremiah got him to send in a prescription without an appointment. It's only for amoxacillin. I am hoping that since I haven't had antibiotics in six years that this will work just fine. The sports drink is most certainly not on the diet. But it was that, or.....And taking a round of antibiotics is certainly not going to help with my gut. But there really wasn't any other options.
I am still very weak. I had a baked potato last night, again not on the diet, but, it really, really hit the spot. I didn't get sick on it either. For now, the diet is out for me (with in reason, I don't plan on eating cake or anything like that). I have a baby who still gets 90% of his food from me. I know my supply has gone down, and it's due to the illness, not the diet. But now my body is fighting to keep up my milk supply, which takes the nutrients from me, as I try to heal. So I have to find a way to get a bunch of food into me. I lost 4 pounds in four days. This is NOT good. It's going to take me a few days to regain my strength. Everyone else is still on the diet. We don't plan on abandoning it, but for me, temporarily I need to get food into me. And I seriously get very ill to my stomach with the mere site, smell or thought of chicken of beef. I'd go with a salad, but the fibre would be too much, and I need calories that a salad won't be able to provide. So far I've had a baked potato and some tomato soup. I've kept it down. I used some instant potatoes, and didn't feel too good afterwards. So I'll have to take the time to bake one the next time.
Things here have been a bit chaotic as you can imagine. Thankfully, after explaining to the girls how sick I am and that I really can't get up to do anything, they picked up the slack and took care of the things needing to be dealt with. I am hoping that by the weekend I will be well enough to get on with life.
Jed had his first speech therapy session. It went well. Jeremiah was able to take him, as I can't drive right now. The therapist said that he talked much better than what she was expecting. So I suppose that means he has made some progress over the summer. She would have gotten her information from his last therapist. We are in the process of finding a private therapist close to the girl's science class. That would save us from making two separate trips a week.
We have been able to keep up with schooling. I think we will only be behind on one reading, which can be done over the weekend. Jeremiah said he will do the younger girls' reading this evening. I can't read for long as I seriously get worn out from it. The older girls can do their own reading.
I am very grateful for Jeremiah's help during this time. He's had to do the cooking. He is really committed to this diet, and working hard to see that we succeed. I am very thankful for that. We went into stage 5 this week. With shopping day tomorrow we will try some more foods. When I get over this infection and off the antibiotics I will not redo intro, I plan on joining everyone on the full GAPS, which is where they should all be when I'm done with my meds.
Off to put a potato in the oven :-)
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Just a quick post
I've been missing in action for several reasons. Number 1: We've been sick, sick, AND sick. Number 2: Due to all the sickness we jumped right into the GAPS diet, we are now on day 5. We have had lots of small issues, and a bit of a biggie issue with one child. I actually started a new blog to write about our experience on the diet, just haven't gotten it up yet.
If anyone has been reading here long enough then you know this has been a trying year for us. Lots of big things happening (broken bones, appendicitis, surgery, etc.), and that we have been quite sick. It seems that a lot of our problem (the sickness at least) may be coming from black mold that we have in the house. Spraying it with a special solution, and putting borax down has really seemed to help everyone with their sickness. So I was breathing a sigh of relief that everyone's horrid ailments may be on the mend, and maybe, JUST maybe things might quiet down around here. Well, relatively speaking, because the whole die off effect from the diet really brings out the worst in everyone. So you can imagine my audible sigh when Flannery came up to me with some 'bug bites'. However most of them are all around her neck, hairline, and behind her ears. A few are on her torso, and one on her arm. I am even afraid to type out what it may be, but I will try.....chi....chi....chick....alright already! Chicken pox. Now I could be totally wrong. But most of my kids had a low grade fever and a sore throat, and doing this diet they should have been very, very hungry, BUT they weren't. All signs of the pox. Only time will tell. If it is the pox, I will be happy as that way I don't have to worry about what to do when they get to be teens. However, Moira is 12. I do believe that we actually gave Isabella the vaccine when she was two. But she's had some bumps over the past few days, that had blisters on them, but they were on her fingers. Who know at this point. But clearly suspicious.
Must go to bed and try to sleep. I don't relish the notion of 7 itchy bodies. I should know in day or two if it is, as they will have spread. I would say to pray that it's not the pox, but again I would rather they had natural immunity. So please pray that if it is that they all get a mild case, and we make it through with our sanity intact :-)
If anyone has been reading here long enough then you know this has been a trying year for us. Lots of big things happening (broken bones, appendicitis, surgery, etc.), and that we have been quite sick. It seems that a lot of our problem (the sickness at least) may be coming from black mold that we have in the house. Spraying it with a special solution, and putting borax down has really seemed to help everyone with their sickness. So I was breathing a sigh of relief that everyone's horrid ailments may be on the mend, and maybe, JUST maybe things might quiet down around here. Well, relatively speaking, because the whole die off effect from the diet really brings out the worst in everyone. So you can imagine my audible sigh when Flannery came up to me with some 'bug bites'. However most of them are all around her neck, hairline, and behind her ears. A few are on her torso, and one on her arm. I am even afraid to type out what it may be, but I will try.....chi....chi....chick....alright already! Chicken pox. Now I could be totally wrong. But most of my kids had a low grade fever and a sore throat, and doing this diet they should have been very, very hungry, BUT they weren't. All signs of the pox. Only time will tell. If it is the pox, I will be happy as that way I don't have to worry about what to do when they get to be teens. However, Moira is 12. I do believe that we actually gave Isabella the vaccine when she was two. But she's had some bumps over the past few days, that had blisters on them, but they were on her fingers. Who know at this point. But clearly suspicious.
Must go to bed and try to sleep. I don't relish the notion of 7 itchy bodies. I should know in day or two if it is, as they will have spread. I would say to pray that it's not the pox, but again I would rather they had natural immunity. So please pray that if it is that they all get a mild case, and we make it through with our sanity intact :-)
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Weird stuff
I have about three posts that have been in draft mode for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to upload some pictures to our computer and decided to put up a post. I decided to start with this draft as it was pretty weird stuff. After the weird stuff I pick up with the 'today' stuff.
Some weird things have been happening around here. I mean, weird. Like bats falling out of the sky and a sunfish hanging out on the ground, behind our van (still alive). Last week Isabella went out to do the evening milking. She started to pound on the window, telling us to get dad to get the bat that fell out of the sky. Bat? Oh, I know we have bats, I see them all the time flying in the evening sky. She was afraid that the chickens would think the bat was food. I told her to stay far away. Jeremiah went out there to scope out the situation. He decided to get the bat into a bucket. It was moving a bit, so he knew it wasn't dead. Imagine his surprise when the batS started flying around under the bucket. He managed to get the bucket up with a screen for a lid. Two bats. We kept them until the next day, when they were almost half drowned, since it rained in the middle of the night. Jeremiah let them go in the woods. I think they climbed up one of our trees. Very interesting indeed!
Yesterday Jeremiah went outside to get some stuff from the van. We hadn't brought in all our stuff from Isabella's pool party the night before as we were so tired. He comes in the house saying there is a sunfish, still alive, on the ground behind our van! A fish? Seriously? My guess is that a heron was flying by with it in it's mouth and dropped it, or a cat decided to leave us a present. It was a large fish though. He put it in a bucket of water, and walked down to our neighboors pond to let it go.
I told you it was weird. Not only have we had weird stuff, but a bunch of other unpleasant things have been happening around. I was in a really, really bad funk yesterday because of it all. It's a culmination of things really, not any one incident. The biggest bummer is that my Mom will be leaving us tomorrow. It has been wonderful to have her here. I guess things really got to me when the baby woke up the night before. It was about bed time for me anyways, so I figured I'd go in to nurse him, but had to brush my teeth first. I asked my Mom if she could rock the baby until I was ready, otherwise he would cry. Not that crying is horrible, but I've had too many experiences of him waking up too much from the crying that he won't go back to sleep for some two hours later. So she started rocking him. She decided to continue to rock him after I got into bed. I guess it hit me hard seeing her rocking him and singing to him quietly, knowing that she wouldn't get to do this again for him (well, once she leaves). So I was depressed about my Mom leaving. On top of it all we've been sick. A tummy bug hit half the household. A really, REALLY bad tummy bug. Like 5 days long tummy bug. Oh, and the van door decided to break and our oven doesn't work right now (the range top still works) and there was something else, but I can't remember right now. I've decided to find a cave and hole up there until this storm passes. Ugh.
Finding a cave would mean driving, of which is pretty difficult for me to do at the present moment. So I'm stuck here, in all this mess (for once not a true actual mess!). I really don't like dreading a new day, wondering what mess awaits for me. We have seriously only had a total of four weeks of no 'stuff' ALL this year. We are only a day away from September. That means a whole long nine months of junk (with the exception of the birth of the baby :-)), leaving us with still three months to go. Three months is a long time for more junk to happen. Ok, enough junky stuff.
We started school yesterday. It's almost 2 o'clock the next day and we haven't started school yet. That is the freedom of homeschooling. I have been up very early with a fussy baby for days now so I went back to bed when he went down for his morning nap. Ah, I feel better. I'll have to write about our schooling and get some pictures. I can say this though. I'm loving the reading, but the girls were starting to think they were going to die of hard work with all the paying attention and thinking they had to do. Ha! I'm so very glad we started up some reading and math a month ago. Otherwise I am sure their wee brains would have burst on the first day of school!! Well, at least they would have thought so.
Here are some pictures from the past month:
Some weird things have been happening around here. I mean, weird. Like bats falling out of the sky and a sunfish hanging out on the ground, behind our van (still alive). Last week Isabella went out to do the evening milking. She started to pound on the window, telling us to get dad to get the bat that fell out of the sky. Bat? Oh, I know we have bats, I see them all the time flying in the evening sky. She was afraid that the chickens would think the bat was food. I told her to stay far away. Jeremiah went out there to scope out the situation. He decided to get the bat into a bucket. It was moving a bit, so he knew it wasn't dead. Imagine his surprise when the batS started flying around under the bucket. He managed to get the bucket up with a screen for a lid. Two bats. We kept them until the next day, when they were almost half drowned, since it rained in the middle of the night. Jeremiah let them go in the woods. I think they climbed up one of our trees. Very interesting indeed!
Yesterday Jeremiah went outside to get some stuff from the van. We hadn't brought in all our stuff from Isabella's pool party the night before as we were so tired. He comes in the house saying there is a sunfish, still alive, on the ground behind our van! A fish? Seriously? My guess is that a heron was flying by with it in it's mouth and dropped it, or a cat decided to leave us a present. It was a large fish though. He put it in a bucket of water, and walked down to our neighboors pond to let it go.
I told you it was weird. Not only have we had weird stuff, but a bunch of other unpleasant things have been happening around. I was in a really, really bad funk yesterday because of it all. It's a culmination of things really, not any one incident. The biggest bummer is that my Mom will be leaving us tomorrow. It has been wonderful to have her here. I guess things really got to me when the baby woke up the night before. It was about bed time for me anyways, so I figured I'd go in to nurse him, but had to brush my teeth first. I asked my Mom if she could rock the baby until I was ready, otherwise he would cry. Not that crying is horrible, but I've had too many experiences of him waking up too much from the crying that he won't go back to sleep for some two hours later. So she started rocking him. She decided to continue to rock him after I got into bed. I guess it hit me hard seeing her rocking him and singing to him quietly, knowing that she wouldn't get to do this again for him (well, once she leaves). So I was depressed about my Mom leaving. On top of it all we've been sick. A tummy bug hit half the household. A really, REALLY bad tummy bug. Like 5 days long tummy bug. Oh, and the van door decided to break and our oven doesn't work right now (the range top still works) and there was something else, but I can't remember right now. I've decided to find a cave and hole up there until this storm passes. Ugh.
Finding a cave would mean driving, of which is pretty difficult for me to do at the present moment. So I'm stuck here, in all this mess (for once not a true actual mess!). I really don't like dreading a new day, wondering what mess awaits for me. We have seriously only had a total of four weeks of no 'stuff' ALL this year. We are only a day away from September. That means a whole long nine months of junk (with the exception of the birth of the baby :-)), leaving us with still three months to go. Three months is a long time for more junk to happen. Ok, enough junky stuff.
We started school yesterday. It's almost 2 o'clock the next day and we haven't started school yet. That is the freedom of homeschooling. I have been up very early with a fussy baby for days now so I went back to bed when he went down for his morning nap. Ah, I feel better. I'll have to write about our schooling and get some pictures. I can say this though. I'm loving the reading, but the girls were starting to think they were going to die of hard work with all the paying attention and thinking they had to do. Ha! I'm so very glad we started up some reading and math a month ago. Otherwise I am sure their wee brains would have burst on the first day of school!! Well, at least they would have thought so.
Here are some pictures from the past month:
I know they look dead, but they were very much alive! Bats, in one of our 5 gallon buckets. One such bucket is now only outside worthy. The first time we used it we put a huge black snake in it, to relocate it. Black snakes are great to have around, unless of course they get big enough to eat your chicken eggs. I have this "thing" about reusing any implement that was used for outside purposes. I suppose you would too if you have seen our outside!! Ew!
All in the name of science. Here Jeremiah donned some work gloves to pick up one of the bats. I had all the kids *inside* incase one of them escaped.
Isabella's birthday dinner. She requested chicken alfredo. My mom said that Sam's Club had a great alfredo, and she was right :-) Yum! We made sure to have plenty of the red stuff (cranberry sauce) on hand.
The birthday girl showing off her new set of earrings and neclace.
Me, um making a funny face about my picture being taken during dinner :-)
I'm sure you can all guess what this is! Isabella's favorite color...orange.
Some of us were rather excited to dig into the cake!
It's the Squish Miester.
The boys at Bella's pool party. We had a cook out afterwards.
It was too hot to decorate the cake ahead of time, as the frosting would have melted. So everyone there got a chance to help with the cake decorating. That is one decked out cake!!
Some random pictures around the house. The kids love to pull the baby around in made up "carraiges". Here they even outfitted the baby with some music. Well, in this shot he just has on some earphones. But they have put their MP3 players on for him to listen to. He really enjoys that. As a wee babe, one of the ways we would be able to calm him down during a car ride was for him to listen to music on an MP3 player (our van radio doesn't work).
Jonah, our resident ham.
He's also our resident super hero!
Look who's pulling himself up to standing! He can now crawl properly. This of course opens a new chapter in our lives.....baby control! He climbs up on the tread mill, and pulls up on everything!! But he hasn't learned to hold on. That combo is really *bad*. Poor baby has a few red marks to show for it.
Regardless, he's pretty happy with his new view point on life :-)
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