Thursday, July 17, 2008

What? No baby?

I was in the hospital on Tuesday night, it was the big reveal in this novel length illness I've been working through. Okay, probably not novel length but much much longer than I'd like... sort of like It by Stephen King - by the time your three-quarters of the way through you start to wonder if it'll ever end!

Anyhow, back to my story. So I'm in a hospital bed, cold, shaking, fevered, getting an IV (one of my biggest fears) and cramping like nobodys business - remind you of anything? Yep, the whole thing left me wondering, " What? All this and no baby?" See, I'm of an age where most of my recent hospital stays have resulted in a new mouth to feed. The smells and sounds of the ER really brought me back to when my sprouts were born.

John my radiologist was feeling witty that night. I found his banter  hilarious, assuming by hilarious you mean if I had a fork I would have stuck it in his jugular. Yes, I know, not very Christian but if you'd been there you would understand.

John wheels me back to the CT Scan and goes through the spiel about how it's a contrast CT Scan and he'll be administering the iodine intravenously. Fine. Then he looks at my arm and does a double take, "Where's your IV?"

" Back in the room with my fluids and morphine." I quip.

So he says, " Ah, don't worry. I'm pretty sure they showed me how to do this in school. I can probably get an IV in for you."

I'm petrified. Head nurses have taken four or more tries to thread a tube in my vein. I think they taught me how to do this isn't okay.

So he says he's going to give me a practice poke to see how wobbly my veins are. POKE! I want him to suffer. And then he perks up and says, " There you go. You're IVs in." I nearly fainted with relief.

He went on to tell me how he might have gone right through the other side of the vein and the fluid might start to fill my arm and cause terrible pain. Then he asked, " How lucky are you feeling tonight? Ummm.... I'm in the ER! How lucky do you think?

Anyhow. All's well that ends well and I was so glad to be home.

Huge love to Jason and Estela for getting out of bed and driving a town over to take care of the boys. You guys are awesome.

Since I'm recuperating I have been trying to tackle sedentary tasks. Day One I cut out a stack of embellishments and journaling spots that I had bought off of Etsy. They are by MariekeVDesign and you buy the PDF and print as many as you like. I bought:



Here's her Etsy Shop and her Flickr gallery.

Then I read homeschool books, planned curriculum, finished The Book Thief (possibly my favorite book of all time, read it!), Omnivores Dilemma, Hanging by a Thread and I think another book I'm forgetting.

Today I was feeling slightly better and I managed to sit down and take photos to spruce up my Etsy shop. I staged the pics to look a little better than on the floor in the middle of the night and took lots of close-ups of the details that make home made cards special. Hopefully this recovering trend will continue into tomorrow and I can finish the other half.

Chris is gone for two more days and then I'll have a shoulder to lean on again. The timing is rough for him to be so busy but that's how things go.

Looking forward to creating something as soon as I feel a tick better.

Nicole

13 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey there, Nikki! It's Karen from farflung Oregon. =3 Yikes, it's been so long since I've talked to you. :( And I see that quite a bit's been happening with you over that time. So how are you feeling? How are the kidlets these days? And of course, how's the writing going?

I'm sorry to hear that rateyourwriting.com closed. When did that take place?

*so many hugs* I miss you, hon! Hope life is well!

LaurieStar said...

Hey Nikki! Thanks for the invite. I enjoyed your email and have bookmarked your site. I'm sorry to hear about your trip to the ER - that's no fun. But I look forward to seeing more of your work posted up here since I've always been a big fan! :)

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Karen:

RYW hasn't officially closed yet, it'll go dark at the end of the month. It's been gasping it's last breath for some time now and I decided to let it go.

Kids are great - T is 12! Can you believe it? I'm doing good too and Chris loves his job here in UT.

Did you know I think about you often? I use the journal you gave me to record health stuff as well as the bookmark. It always brings to mind your friendship.

Did you change jobs? Homes? Any men in your life? What's new?

The other day I thought of you. I bought the boys Japanese in Mangaland and Kanji De Manga - are you still into all things Japan?

So nice to reconnect :-)

Nicole

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Laurie:

So nice to find you again too. I was really concerned that with the close of SA we'd lose touch.

How are you? How's your craft business? Still selling card sets and such? Do you Etsy?

Have you found a new crafting home online? I hang out at The Scraproom and Willow Traders - my handle there is Perky Nihilist.

Great to "talk" again,
Nicole

Unknown said...

Hey Nicole! I have been feeling sad about the loss of SA too - and it seems everyone is going in different directions for their new 'online home'... Its great to see you blogging, you are so creative and expressive. (You have prompted me to breathe life into my own blog again...) Hope we'll keep in touch!

Nicole Maki said...

TARA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So glad we found each other again. SA closing has been hard on my net social life too. I hadn't been there a lot lately but it was awesome that it *was* there - YKWIM?

Those card boxes we all went in for are the most awesome thing ever. I've used all of mine. If you ever want someone to buy a bunch with you again just let me know.

How are you holding up? ((((HUG)))) I know it's been a rough few months. I can only imagine all you've been through.

Anonymous said...

The Book Thief has been on my need-to-read list forever! I'll move it up to the top if you liked it, though. :)

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Grrlpup:

You really should move it to the very top. The writing was so incredibly awesome. I read the book slowly so I could squeeze every drop from it and there were a lot of sections I read more than once just to savor the language.

Trenton is reading it next, I'll let you know if he likes it too.

Sonda T said...

OMGOSH!! What an ordeal! I'm so glad you are ok. And hey...those print out cut-outs are so cute. I need a better printer...either that or a really super great friend who will print them out for me and send them. hee hee ;) Hugs!
oh and ps...I see laurie star up there. Gotta say Hi to her too. :)

Angela said...

OMGoodness Nicole!
I don't know what I would have done if it were me in that situation at the ER. Glad it all worked out.

Love those journal tags. I will have to check it out.

{{{{HUGS}}}}

Nicole Maki said...

Hey Sonda:

I'd be happy to order the PDFs and print some for you. Just let me know which of the many cupcake pages you want and whether you want them on card stock or photo paper. It wouldn't be a problem at all.

I'm sort of okay - I have about a week of healing left to do and the pain is still a lot to handle. Stupid intestines. Whoever heard of an infection causing your appendix, pancreas, liver and kidneys to all can out at once. Ugh,

Nicole Maki said...

Thanks, Angela. You're so sweet.

The IV thing made for a good story but the several failing organs at once bit REALLY stressed me out. Fortunately it's starting to settle down a little.

I love that the journal spots are PDFs so I can print as many as I want. I've been resizing them so I have big and small ones as well as using a circle cutter which cuts off the scallops making some scalloped and some not. Very versatile.

Unknown said...

AWWW! *hugs* That warms me so much to hear you still enjoy that. ^___^ I also still have the little notebook you gave me that Christmas; has come in handy many a time for quick notes.

I did change jobs . . . finally! No more university work. No home yet, still renting and no man. Honestly, the man bit is more stress than I'd like right now. XD

I did go on a date with someone who said he hated to read. My brain sort of when "bzzt" at that. =3

I am still into Japanese things though I admit it's tapered some. I'm so behind in doing my translations. *shakes head* I canceled my cable a ways back so that's helped (sadly) to free up time but I seem to be reading *English* instead of Japanese. How odd? *grins*

Sounds like the fam is doing splendid. =3 Are you still home schooling? I'm still so impressed that you managed to do that on top of all else. ^___^

And of course, you're still writing, ye? Anything new on the horizon? Did you ever complete the edits and whatnot on that reality show story you were working on?

Oof, I hate to cut short, m'dear, it's very late and I should head off. Busy day tomorrow. *hugs again* Keep in touch!!

*hugs*