illness and a CT scan

I thought I'd give a little something on this, because there are several people that read this blog that I want to tell about this but I keep having issues that keep me from getting to the phone or able to e-mail them.

For the last few months, I've had a few health issues. It started in late March when I thought my allergies were acting up again. My nose was all plugged and I had trouble breathing and I was really dizzy with some mild head pain. After having a lot of trouble with it at Melissa's birthday party, I decided to try and make time to go to the doctor. Meaning, 6 weeks after it started I ended up at the doctor's office. If I had gone in immediately, it would have been a simple sinus infection. But because I had waited, it had spread to all my sinuses on the left side of my head, into my left ear, my eye was starting to swell shut, and it was causing pain up into my head above my left temple. I was given a high dose of penicillin (1000mg twice daily) and vicodin for the pain. After a few days I was starting to feel a little better so I figured all was getting better and I'd be fine.

On Memorial Day, however, things took a different turn. Since the infection had started, I started having migraines so bad that my left eye wouldn't want to open, and when I could force it to open it was droopy. Anyway, on Memorial Day I had a new turn of symptoms. We had gotten a new computer the day before, and I had gone out to get a desk for the computer to sit on that morning. I was in our room, assembling the desk, when I started fumbling things and having trouble keeping hold of screws and the hex wrench. Then I started getting dizzy, and my heart started beating irregularly. I stopped working on the desk for a bit to rest and try to get my head together again, and I noticed a funny thing with my vision. I had this cool zig-zag of flashing lights going across my upper right visual area, and above/ouside it I had really cloudy vision that faded to black while the vision on m other side of it was perfectly fine. I went to tell Scott about it, and started stumbling the entire way from our room to the living room where he was. When I tried to tell him, my words just wouldn't come easily at all, and I fumbled a lot trying to explain it to him. He decided to get pizza for supper that night to give me a break from cooking so I could rest, and while he was gone the funny vision stuff stopped and I got real heavy feeling, so I decided to lay down on the sofa. I closed my eyes, and felt my breathing slowing down and my heart pounding like it was jumping out of my chest. I felt myself sinking deeper into myself, and thought "it would be so easy to just go to sleep for a hundred years, I think I'm dying now" I felt no fear or concern, just peace and warmth. The girls kept climbing on me and smacking at me, talking to me, and just being pests so I forced myself to get up instead of going to sleep like I wanted so badly to do. About 2 hours after it all started, it was over and I was sort of back to normal.

I went to the doctor the next morning, and she said that it was my sugar and asthma acting up at just the right moment, and that my heart pounding was axiety because I have too many kids. She put me on Lexapro and sent me on my merry way. I took her pills, even though I knew she was wrong about the anxiety. When I went in to see her my right arm wasn't working right and my right leg was dragging, plus I was having some trouble coming up with the words and my head hurt so much. The pills she gave me made my head pain so much worse that even with the vicodin it was a 5 on a 1-10 pain scale, and I couldn't function. So I ended up back in her office, and she said it wasn't the Lexapro causing the problems and to just give it some time to start working well. I didn't take it for a few days and then tried it again, with the exact same thing happening again, so I threw away the pills. I also decided to get a second opinion with a different doctor.

My appointment for that second opinion was yesterday, and he was very concerned with all that has happened the last few months to me (especially the last couple weeks) and ordered a CT scan with contrast of my brain and sinuses. I was called today by the center doing the scan, and my appointment is tomorrow at 2:45pm for registration before my scan at 3:15. He is worried that I didn't just have sugar issues like my doctor said, that it was a type of stroke known as a TIA. He is especially concerned because I am still having issues with words not coming to me when I speak and type, forgetting things (like going to the Sonlight forums to read one of the boards, thinking halfway down the first page that I want to start a discussion about having a pet bunny, and then forgetting what I wanted to post about by the time I get scrolled back up to the top of the page), and my leg is still dragging a bit and I'm having trouble still with getting my right arm and hand to move and work the way I want. The pain in my head is less intense, and today I actually woke up for the first time with no pain at all and I still have no pain after 10 hours.

I'm tired of being sick, tired of not knowing what is wrong with me. I want so badly to just have my life back to how it was last year. I want answers, I want to know what is wrong and get it fixed as best we can. I don't know how all this will affect our decision to homeschool, but at this point we are still pushing forward with plans to continue at home. I can't imagine trying to juggle 2 kids in public school while going through a bunch of health problems and procedures and only God knows what else right now. I only know that we are supposed to homeschool, and the Lord will provide us with the ability to do it even through all this struggle with my health. Please, if you read my blog, say a prayer for my family. And if you feel compelled to, feel free to pass a link along to anyone else that may pray for us as we go through this trial.

Its funny though, on Monday I'm hoping to start a summer-long unit study of our body with some materials I borrowed from a friend of mine. I may be able to incorporate some of these tests I'm going through as material for helping teach this unit to the girls in a gentle way to help them better understand their bodies and what is going on with me. Only time will tell if I do that though. For now though, I'm going to just publish this and go make some chicken tacos for tonight's supper, and hope that I don't get too dizzy to finish supper.

started today

We had a bunch of stuff happen yesterday (translation: mommy ended up taking some vicodin and was knocked stupid after the stuff happened) so we didn't get to start summer term. So we started today. The girls did a few pages each in their HWT books, and then Lydia did some pages in a counting workbook while Melissa and I started on her Kumon telling time workbook together. After we did that, I read 2 stories from core P3/4 to them. We are going to read the entire core once through this summer, and then when we finish we'll move into P4/5 and do it the same way before we do core K.The first treasury we are reading through is Eloise Wilkins, we read the first two stories. They were a little young for Melissa and Lydia, but they loved the pictures and they got into the stories anyway. Kimmy had a blast listening to the stories because she is 3, the age they intend the core to be for. Now they are watching tv and resting (I hope they are resting a bit at least) so I'm taking some time at the computer.

I didn't think Melissa would get so excited to do schoolwork since she finished public just last week, but she's stoked that we are doing school at home now instead of waiting. I want to get her to read to me in a bit, so I'll get out the Fun Tales (Sonlight lang. arts K readers) and have her read the first one to me. We're going to do one of the books every day until they are done, and then the following Monday she'll start LA 1. I'm wanting to build her confidence before I jump into LA with her, so she doesn't refuse to do the work even though I know she can do it easily already. Also, next week I'm going to do a unit study on our bodies and nutrition for science. We're starting with just the basics for now though, once we get science added in and we are doing it daily then I'll add in a little world geography study (we'll do a "world tour" this summer, we'll learn the continents and oceans and talk about some of the famous places on each continent, then when we start our world history we'll add in the countries we study during the year under each continent, we'll have a binder for each girl to show what she's learned all year, and hopefully every year we can add to our world tour using a different color cardstock and paper each year to tell what we did each school year)

Not too exciting really, but its given me a LOT of confidence in my ability to actually do this. I hope every day of lessons goes this smoothly, although I already know that it won't go as well as it did today since we are pretty much just reviewing things the girls already know (and helping solidify Melissa's ability to tell time, after we do time we'll start on money)

anxious little boogers!

Well, I figured it would happen but hoped it wouldn't. I set us up a start date of June 22nd for summer "term" to start our school year off gently. I have ALL our supplies already, I'm just looking through them and becoming familiar with what we are doing. So, this is my summer plans for us:

core P3/4 at their desire
human body/ nutrition unit study (with a notebook for each girl)
Kumon time and money workbooks for Melissa
dollar store workbooks for both girls
finish HWT K with Melissa

Not much right? We're just keeping up our current levels of math and reading with the workbooks, and writing level with Melissa in HWT. I don't have grand plans for the summer, we're going to read and fine-tune Melissa's weak spots while learning about nutrition and our body. Well, Melissa and Lydia both asked me if they can start lessons tomorrow instead of waiting. LOL I guess having that stack of supplies for this fall has them excited to get going with it already. So, we're going to do just that, we'll start tomorrow and work through the workbooks, and when they are done we'll move into the curriculum for each subject (HWT cursive for Melissa, Sonlight LA K and 1 starts this fall PERIOD, and Miquon orange when they finish their dollar store workbooks) I can't believe I let them talk me into starting earlier than I wanted to. lol

Guess that happens when you decide to homeschool......................

Pizza Hut Book It program

I used to do this every year in school when I was young enough, and I loved getting my coupon each month to have pizza with my daddy. Well, this year we did Book It with Melissa and she didn't do too well, she only earned one coupon all year. So, we are going to try again, and I just signed her and Lydia both up for the program for the 2009-2010 school year. Registrations are now open, here's a link for homeschoolers:

www.bookitprogram.com/enrollment/homeschool.asp

I can't wait to do Book It! with these two, and I'm willing to bet they turn it into a contest to see who can earn her coupon first each month LOL If they do end up doing that, I'll make it a contest that the girl who goes the highest past the monthly goal gets to pick who takes them.

approved and box day

OK I'm taking a good moment right now to post. I've been sick for a couple months now, battling a major infection in my head. We thought we had it licked but its flaring back up again, and causing me a lot of problems and pain. This is that moment where the painkillers are kicked in but I'm not stupid yet, I just hope its long enough for me to finish.

Today's mail was a big day for me. I have been expecting a package from FedEx for our last workbooks that I ordered on Sunday. Well, it arrived, and I'm having trouble keeping Lydia away from the workbooks LOL Melissa is going to be stoked when she gets home in about an hour. Also, the USPS had a letter for me that I didn't expect quite so soon. I got my approval letter for Melissa to be withdrawn and homeschooled this upcoming school year. We are OFFICIAL now.

And now I go lay back down until my dad gets here so I can get Melissa from school. Hopefully the pretty colors are gone by then lol

My last materials shipped today!

Yesterday, I placed an order for math for Melissa and Lydia (we'll be doing Miquon math this year with both girls) and ETC 1 and the first pre-ETC book to finish off that part of their LA programs, and I checked my inbox to see that Sonlight has already shipped my order and gave me a tracking number for it. I *should* be having a box day on Friday if I calculated correctly, as shipping info isn't uploaded to FedEx online as of when I checked an hour ago. Perfect timing too, as Melissa's last day of public school (for the rest of her life!) is on Thursday so we can celebrate our kickoff to being a homeschool family again with an official box day. (only a homeschooler can understand that kind of excitement LOL) I am so looking forward to sharing with my girls a math program that inspired me as a child to love math and do so well with it as I did, and I have a feeling that we will have a *very* hard time waiting until our official summer start date of June 22nd LOL

And tomorrow morning, I'm going to a thrift store to pick up 4 school desks for the girls to have in our school area for seatwork. I have a feeling that doing this will give them that feeling of readlly doing schoolwork, and encourage them to work harder at staying on task so that we can get things done faster. And it will eliminate the issue of "she's in my space mom! she's elbowing me! she's pushing my papers/book!" that we would have with using the dining room table instead lol If each kid has her own desk for schoolwork, it will be easier to split them the heck up to avoid this little bit of bickering. I'll just have to deal with them throwing stuff at each other instead.

And coming soon hopefully will be a blog for Melissa! I'm going to have her do her LA written work on a blog, typing up her stories and such there. At first I'll be typing them for her since I'm a trained secretary with a killer typing speed (I'm trained to type as I hear it spoken, I average around 80wpm when I'm really moving but stick around 45 on a normal day) but eventually she'll move on to typing it all up on her own. So, that is to come in late June, when it arrives I'll post you a link to check out her creativity. I have a feeling we will all see a lot of great creative works from her, she has a wonderful ability to make up stories with great detail.