Almost-Easter!

 Happy almost-easter!

 And Passover! Not quite sure what the Passover animal mascot is, so... 

We did celebrate Passover Seder this year, after all. I assumed we wouldn't. Andrew is away this week and next (stopping by for Easter before taking off again - Yes, the cat is getting bathed in that narrow window, damnit).

 He talked about maybe doing something in California with his relatives while he was out there, and I just assumed he'd drive up to his mom's on Thursday evening so he could fly back from there on Friday. 

At bedtime on Tuesday, Allan got a text message from her father asking if she'd like to read The Four Questions for Passover (e.g. "would we like to zoom participate in the Seder). I didn't really notice it until the next morning when Allan said, "yes!!!!!!"

The Four Questions are part of the reading you do for Passover. Allan, being the child, is supposed to ask the 4 important questions. She also has to find the affikomen (matza, nummy) and generally be cute. 

And she was all in for the whole Seder experience. 

Seder plate: Assemble! 

I did have matza at least, as I've historically bought that in bulk and seem to always have some around. I did not have anything else on the Seder plate, so we ended up substituting PB&J for Charoset (usually apple, nuts and wine in some variation of spices - I acknowledge that peanuts are not nuts, but... work with me here), horseradish mustard for the bitter herb, raspberries for the beet that's a vegetarian substitute for a shank bone, frozen parsley for parsley (sweet), cooked broccoli for the second bitter herb, and I did manage to medium boil some egg for the roasted egg. 

Most egregiously, we had sparking water with purple food dye for the wine.

Allan was not impressed but finally accepted because it's not like she wanted to run to the grocery store or anything. 

It worked out. We couldn't really hear each other, but Allan insisted on reading all the Songs in the Haggadah - she was quite dramatic. 

And we got to bed at a reasonable time. Which is good, because man we've been off!

So, yes, last week I made my biennial trek to the ER. That was meant to be tongue in cheek, but I think it's actually generally about the right pacing. Since 2016 I've been to the ER 4 times for chesty things and 2 times for the splinter I got in my leg. So, I pretty well average about every-two-years.

 First time it was a super low heart rate and almost no blood pressure probably due to dehydration (during one of our worse smoke events and before we had air conditioning or air purifiers). The other times it's been variations on chest pain - once during covid, once after a series of SVTs that had wigged me out and our most recent one that remains an enigma. 

 It's rare I don't have some chest pain and it varies a lot by day. So, what feels emergent is a little mercurial. Basically, whenever there's a really unfamiliar variation that doesn't seem specifically tied to how I move or impacted by tons of reflux meds, I figure it's better to get it checked than not. 

Side note: I hate talking about these incidents because I feel simultaneously: (1) embarrassed because I'm not dead, so what a fussy drama-queen baby, and (2) afraid of being pitied or having other people get hyped up by it in a way that makes me feel my own mortality or generally kind of pitiable. Ultimately it's a mix of annoying and funny until I say otherwise, just like most of life!

It really wasn't so scary. More banal and exhausting and annoying. Those lights, the noise, and the complete inability of any ER medical staff to give me an iv without mangling my for days... No thank you!

Allan stayed with me for a few hours and was amazing. She was doubtless stressed out but also entertained that my nurse was apparently Nurse Dee (chickadee dee dee) and entertained by the various X-rays and imaging test centers we were escorted to. I also had had the hindsight to bring her phone and a couple of chargers. Ain't my first rodeo here. 

When she left, she gave me her "steller's jay worry stone" (a nice rock that she'd painted up like a steller's joy of course). Which I thought was awfully sweet. And I'm deeply relieved I didn't manage to lose it in my sleepless stupor. 

Luckily, Allan was escorted away by her best friend and her staggeringly awesome family to her first sleepover. This turned out to be fantastic for her and has - so far - taken over the narrative (thank god, because my last ER visit a few years ago was the source of a ton of anxiety for about a year after, and I still feel super guilty about ruining our Friday evening).  

Meanwhile, I mostly sat around overstimulated and annoyed waiting for various tests and whatnot to run, then eventually got a Lyft home.

They concluded it wasn't heart burn because a dose of famotidine didn't help. Incidentally, this is pretty hilarious given I take double that dose on a daily basis (and was due for my second dose at about that time) and still have regular flare ups. I assure you, with the stress of being in the ER, I was having heartburn just fine with their little Famotidine. But still, it probably wasn't that exactly, cuz I could tell when that kicked in and it hits a little differently. 

That aside, they did a lot of testing and concluded my lungs and my heart didn't seem in immanent doom, so they booted me. The official ER call was probably costochondritis. Having felt it ebb and move around back into the slipped disc in my back, I think it was probably some really nasty referred pain from said injury, which is still super pissed off at me probably from the gardening episode last week.

That said, my d-dimer was super high which is weird (and bought me an extra few hours at the ER waiting for the requisite CT scan). Nobody at the ER seemed to care since the Angio was clear and "everyone pops false positives on this damned test, so you're fine, stay off google" but I dunno.

 In fairness, they mangled my arm getting that sample. In my recovery, I've counted 5 puncture wounds, three in the upper arm that I assume occurred when they first took blood but failed to set up an IV. The other two where they finally got it in. So, that might have had a play.

It, sigh, requires further investigation, so I can't just pretend all this never fucking happened, which I would rather like to do. The internet alternately says it's either sepsis or cancer (sorry, ER), OR that it's meaningless and you can stub your toe and get astronomically high d-Dimers, and since COVID everyone is popping 5 million out of a reference range of zero. So that's... fun. My doctor of course isn't available until mid-April. So I guess we'll see how that plays out. 

As somebody who has had like more biopsies of more areas of my body than I can count... My body makes no sense. Sometimes I fantasize about the really off test that finally leads us to figuring out what's really wrong with me and then leads to a cure, but you know sometimes "normal" is still better.

If you want to sympathize with me, just lie and say I'm funny. I am funny to myself... and Allan much of the time, so I gotta hold onto that as she enters the runway for her teen years!

Aaaaaaanyways, due to her sleepover, Allan had a bit of a muddled schedule. She was apparently up super late playing with her friend and then was woken up quite early by her friend's sister the next morning. She didn't seem to mind from what I can tell. She came home with armfuls of stickers and activity books, having read me several books that her friend had owned and otherwise just thrilled with this apparently Allan-paradise she'd been slipped into. 

It was like 10 when we got back home. That seemed way too late to offer her Vyvanse (a stimulant that inevitably causes insomnia if she takes it later than about 6:30 a.m.), so we skipped it. The next morning, she reasonably needed to sleep in, and I was not inclined to interrupt. So, we skipped it again. 

Fortunately, Allan is not remotely unhappy when she skips her Vyvanse. Going without turns her fairly feral these days. Laughing and giggling fits pretty much all day long, with a shock-ton of hyperactivity and zero ability to track the passage of time. Not really a harkening back to the days of Allan-pre-vyvanse and I suspect it's more of the brain chemistry re-shuffling itself, but she enjoys it in the short term anyways.

 On Monday, we decided to give her half her dose of Vyvanse (her usual weekend dose), since going from none to full dose always makes her super grumpy (probably because the passage of time is super annoying a lot of the time). She then fell back asleep for another long time. And conked out again on Tuesday after being perfectly awake for a good hour. Being alive is exhausting. She was then perfectly normal and ready to frolic despite being off of her generally sacrosanct routine!

We even did geography. Our way. Which is to pick a state, talk about it a bit and then talk a lot more about birds that live in that state!

We finally got back into a rhythm on Wednesday (which is a relief since she has morning classes and the like on Wednesday) and seem to be back in line finally this weekend!

Needless to say, staying up late on Wednesday didn't seem very appealing. As it was, she refused her pre-bed shower on the grounds that she didn't get enough transition time between Passover and bedtime. 

The rest of the week has been pretty regular, as much as these things ever are. Sort of. We cancelled one appointment on Friday because the person she works with was off and substitutes are not ok. Instead we took our Cornell duck class and this turned into several hours of drawing swans and geese and grebes. A smattering of academic work did ensue before a return to goose drawings and crow walks. 

Good enough! Let's just get this Easter thing going already!

Today's projects include painting hardboiled chicken eggs to look like other bird eggs or bird plumages (the specifics are negotiable) and creating an Easter nest for the Easter bunny to leave the Easter Crow's eggs in (her name is Crowleanna and she's albino, by the way). 

On we go!!!