my latest illness

last Tuesday: "hey blake - look at this weird bump thing in my armpit. it's like there's a little pea under my skin. what do you think it is? hmmm... I think it just broke."
Wednesday: my arm starts turning red, puffy, itchy, and hot.
Thursday: call the doctor, make an appt for Friday.
Friday: doctor: "yep, it's probably a clogged sweat gland or something like that that got infected. we need you on antibiotics ASAP. we'll start an IV for a big dose now, take these pills (4x/day)." they draw on my arm where it's red and puffy which now goes down to my elbow. "if it spreads outside this line, go to urgent care tomorrow and get more IV antibiotics"
Saturday: the top half of my body is red and itchy. not as puffy, but definitely red - I look like I just got back from hawaii. I go to urgent care. urgent care says the redness is not from the original infection, but is instead an allergic reaction to the antibiotics they gave me for the infection. interestingly, I've had these antibiotics once before, and broke out in a rash then too although it was more delayed last time, perhaps because I didn't get them in IV form last time. they also say the original infection site doesn't look good, so they slice me open and drain everything out.
side note: you know those 7 month pictures? yah, that's what we did saturday morning. but I'd also been having a lot of fever/chill issues, and I let blake take my temp when the babies went down for a nap. it was 101 so he was trying to get me to go to urgent care. I told him to take it again. 102. so fine, I went. blake and danielle stayed at home w/ the babies, and that's when those st patricks day shots were taken. however, at the point that they were going to slice me open, blake came to join me and danielle stayed with the kiddos until 5 pm, when my mom, grandma, and brother came to take over baby-duty.
anyways, back at urgent care, they wanted to give me a new IV antibiotic. this one ("vanco") however, has a known side-effect where, if it's given too fast, turns you red - the symptom is called redman. they usually administer it over an hour, but since I was already red, they decided to give my dose over an hour and a half. well... a little over an hour into it, they decided I was redder and had gotten redman anyways. so then we spent about an hour on just saline, flushing it through my system, and then they slowed it down to the 3-hour pace (although fortunately I'd had most of the dose already, so that part only took about another hour).
all in all, it was only 7 hours at urgent care :) we came home with some more antibiotics, as well as benadryl, and vicodin and orders to dump all my milk. they're like, do you know how to pump? oh yes, said I...

I've been back to the doc on Monday and Thursday of this week to have my wound repacked. it's a nice little hole, so they fill it with gauze and then they have to keep taking out the gauze and putting clean gauze back in, hopefully it fills in and they put less and less gauze in each time. but they've already told me I'll have to come in twice next week at least, and then maybe after that I get to be sewn up.
I'm off the vicodin and benadryl now, so it's just the antibiotics. unfortunately, I still have to pump and dump. 15 days of pumping and dumping. i think that is the worst part of it all. okay, but now two amusing things to cheer up the end of this post.
1) on sunday before the dedication I did something very clever. I couldn't shower with my fresh little wound, but my hair was dirty. also, I couldn't drive, as I was still on the vicodin, and blake couldn't drive me anywhere without also packing up the babies (and they were asleep when I came up with this brilliant plan). So I walked to supercuts, and - for just $5 - they washed my hair! they don't blow-dry there (who knows why) so I came home and did half my head that I could reach with my good arm, and then blake did the rest. I felt very clever.
2) I gained 10 lbs. 10 POUNDS! between Friday, when I went to the doc, and Monday when I was back at the same office. the doc said don't worry, it's all swollen water weight, you'll pee it out. and I would guess that I mostly have by now. but I still think that's pretty impressive. I didn't even gain that much that fast for my pregnancy.

that's my latest bit of fun. here's a pic of after the dedication which shows my arm all wrapped up (it's actually wrapped up mostly so that the ink where they drew on my arm doesn't transfer to the white sweater I borrowed from brianne to cover up my weird-looking-ness. but then i got too hot (gotta love hot flash fevers)

kaylee cracks me up in this picture. she seems to be trying to escape and slip out of blake's arms.