Stop and smell the roses

We had such a nice weekend, spending time with Sara, Mark and Maya, webcaming with my mom, Doris, and sister Karilyn in Wisconsin, webcaming with Erin, Jack and Eli, and even going to an open house. It felt a little more "normal" than recent days. But there were signs that maybe things were not all good; tiredness, dizziness and some body aches, and then came the headaches. I was finished with steroids on Friday, and by Sunday I started to get the headaches I was warned about by my doctor. Yigh, yigh, yigh they are like lightening shooting out of the top of my head, but if I lay really still, not so bad. Moving causes lots of shooting pain, so I spend a lot of time lying down. Last night, I also got a fever, so I called the doctor on call and he said it wasn't high enough to be infection, so take 2 Tylenol and call in the morning! Literally! Well, I had already taken lots of Tylenol all day, as well as Tylenol PM, so I just went to bed. I slept ok and this morning the headache isn't too bad, so I plan on moving as little as possible and, you guessed it, taking Tylenol. I would rather not go back on the steroids and so I hope this ends soon.

It is hard to describe what my head feels like, but I once had a Tiny Tears doll that I adored, and I washed her hair and the top of her head came off. It was a bit of a shock to me; here was this chunk of rubber with hair coming out of it in my hand, and I probably cried, but I do remember that my dad did his best to glue it back on. Well, my head feels like the back is like that chunk of rubber, sort of like a tight cap, because it is numb and tingly, only I am pretty sure it won't come off. But I am more aware of the back of my head than ever before, so hence, I am reminded of Tiny Tears. I do think, however, that some Super Glue was somehow involved with the electrons that were attached to my head during surgery, because I have chunks of dried gunk that will not come out and they catch and snarl and that hurts. A couple of nights ago I thought I could carefully comb it out; well, I did comb some out, along with chunks of hair! So I asked Lauren to cut some of it out and he relunctantly did and I think that most of it is gone now.

So, today I will stop and smell the roses, as Maya did when Lauren and I took her for a walk on Sunday. We stopped and bent down a large rosebush branch at our friends the Garnetts, and Maya loved it. She sniffed and smelled, and a few petals fell on her lap, so she sniffed and smelled those petals all the way home, brought them in the house and sniffed some more! She and Grandpa danced to Momma Mia and life began to seem more normal. It really was such a nice weekend, and I will not let a few headaches take that away.