Out With the Old........

How were your holidays?  Mine are a bit of a blurr.

It all started with John surprising me by coming home a week early and just showing up at Sam's hockey game at the Santa Anna Star Center!  I was watching the Mustang's practice, turned my head, and there was John!  Moments earlier I'd been talking to him from what i thought was southern Illinois!!  Maggie had known for a few weeks of his real plans! She kept that secret soooo well, even had me convinced she was shopping with her friends when she was picking him up at the airport.  I love those kinds of surprises cause its usually me keeping the secret from everybody else.

December 19th I had sudden severe low back pain that wouldn't ease up with anything.  It felt through the hips like it feels moments before your baby is born.  And since I've given birth eight times naturally, I KNOW that pain!  After four hours, I went to the ER where I was diagnosed as having sciatica due to stress which had brought on an "anxiety attack". (Anyone would be suffering from anxiety after 7 hours of that searing pain with no relief.)  The doctor told me to reduce my stress, just relax and I'd feel better.  He did give me a shot and sent me home.

Fast forward, My trusty family doctor knew immediately what was probably going on when I saw him about 11 days later.  I kept falling so it took me awhile to be steady enough even with a walker to get to him. MRI confirmed our suspicions.  The disc between my L3 and L4 had ruptured and was was putting a lot of pressure on my sciatic nerve, and cutting off some of the blood flow to my leg.  To fix that, I'll be having low back surgery on Wednesday to clean it all up.  I do look forward to having feeling in my leg again and hopefully control over my knee. 

It sounds crazy, but it has also affected my ability to think and remember short term things!!  They say that will improve once the pressure is off the spinal cord also. I'm talking about things like, my kids telling me about Christmas....what we ate, what we did, etc.  I'm even finding out about people who came to the house, I got up and talked to, but have no memory of. Getting the fridge ready for my absence, I found what appeared to be split pea soup.  Maggie said that yes, she'd made some and we'd all eaten it.  I commented that it was too bad I'd missed out on it.  She laughed and told me that I had eaten it and thoroughly enjoyed it!!  Phew!!!  She cooked quite a few things that I loved but have absolutely no memory of.  Bless her heart!!  So life these days is exciting as I learn all sorts of things from the past four weeks. Other things are as clear as day.

David and his fiance, Elise, came on New years Eve to visit a week. I loved having extra people milling about, and laughing.  While they were here, we took off one morning for White Sands Nat(don't remember the rest) where The six kids sledded on the sand and I laughed and laughed.

A couple of days later, they all went to Tent Rocks and climbed to the top....I stayed home.  Then that weekend we went to Taos for a hockey tournament and a visit to the Taos Gorge Bridge. But you know what??  Somehow on the trip home from Alamagordo, NM where White Sands is, my camera fell out of the van so no pics of anything else from me.  


I've even managed to create a few cards, just have no way to photograph them for you.....yet.It was just a point a shoot Cannon, but it sure is missed. 


I hope I haven't bored you to death!!  Hopefully I'll get some artsy stuff on here soon......my kid's phones are "smart" so we'll see just how smart they can be;D