Fixin' Supper

You’ve been warned by the title, mmk? I don’t write about myself all that much, I don’t think, so if you aren’t into that sort of thing, come back next time.

In my whole life, I’ve just never been that hung up on what other people think. [OK, no need to shout, "Obviously!" from the peanut gallery.] I try not to take myself too seriously and I don’t take you all that seriously, either. I’m more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than almost anything else. Every once in a while, I think to put on some makeup. At 37, I have a rapidly growing amount of gray hair and it’s not occurred to me to color it. You get the point.

So about 5 years ago, I started developing rosacea. Well, that’s not really true. I think I’ve been developing it since about when I was born. I’m very fair and freckled and I’ve always blushed easily. I blush when I’m NOT embarrassed or drinking, a fact I find quite annoying, never mind when I am. So, given what I was just saying earlier, you’d think the fact that my face gets red…and can sometimes stay red much of the day…wouldn’t be a big deal for me, emotionally.

But it’s here that I met my limits. I have given up trying to evaluate the roots of this vanity: Is it that I’ve always been complimented on my skin, so that I developed some pride in it, as if I had anything to do with what kind of skin I have? Or is it that it’s changed the way I see myself? Well, regardless.

Here’s the kicker: I was so worried about what would happen to my skin while I was pregnant, since I wouldn’t be using the topical medicine that really seemed to have helped [though not eliminated] the rosacea. Yet my skin just got better and better. And then I realized: Pregnant. Practically no alcohol for 8 months. [Baby arrived early.]

Alcohol is a known trigger for rosacea, but so are lots of other things. I’d never been able to conclusively identify anything beyond alcohol that really set mine off, and now I’m thinking, maybe that IS the only significant trigger I have.

Back to the vanity part: I’m seriously considering not drinking anymore, just so my skin will stay like this. I’m not a big drinker anyway–unless there’s a big party or family event, I’m unlikely to have more than a couple of glasses with dinner, a couple of nights a week. But apparently that was enough to really screw up my skin.

Vanity number 2: I’ve never been really, terribly overweight, but I haven’t been skinny in years. Until I was about 30, I was definitely skinny. My metabolism downshifted dramatically around 25, before I ever got pregnant the first time, but I exercised enough and ate just well enough that I still wore a size 4 or 6, back before they super-sized all the women’s clothes sizes. [Seriously? That was marketing genius.]

For my 30th birthday present from the universe, I developed rheumatoid arthritis. Put an immediate and final halt to my running career. I’m incredibly fortunate; my RA has been in remission for 3 or 4 years now, with just mild lasting damage to my knees, which frankly, could have as much to do with the gymnastics, cheerleading and running I did for years.

But let me clue you in about what happens when you suddenly stop exercising at the age of 30: You won’t be wearing a size 4 anymore. Once my RA was under control and in remission, I tried any number of times to get back in my exercise routine. I ran into issue after issue: Child care. [I was a single mom to 1 and then 2 kids for about 7 years total.] Regular work schedule. Volunteer commitments.

I think the real issue is that I’ve never found anything I loved as much as running, though. I was never a distance girl, but the runner’s high is a real thing and it will drive you out the door when it’s too cold, too wet and too hot to even think about sitting on the porch, never mind pounding the pavement. Can you tell I crave it to this day?

Still, I wasn’t horribly overweight. My cholesterol was fine. I was in reasonable shape for someone who exercised just sporadically. And I was fine with myself. For several years.

And then I got pregnant. And from the split-second I started to show [at about 6 weeks, to my mind], I was ready to be skinny again. I have no idea why being pregnant triggered that in me. I didn’t just want to not be pregnant and back to my old self; I wanted to be back to my old old self, skinny.

A month after the baby arrived, I’m almost back at my old, pre-baby self. And I haven’t really worked at it yet. But the weight loss and changes to my body have slowed down a lot, and it’s obvious that getting back to my old old self will take some work. I am about to embark on a quest to find something I can like to do, if not love as much as running.

Last week was pretty eventful here at Fixin’ Supper. A week ago, the baby decided to show up almost a month early. [No, we have no idea where she got that from. Clearly, even being punctual isn't a habit around here, never mind early. If it's genetic, it's certainly recessive.]

And all that was fine, really — no one likes the last month of pregnancy anyway — until we learned that the double-whammy of showing up more than 3 weeks early and having been exposed to Pitocin during delivery [because my water broke -- they really want the baby out within 12 hours if possible -- so, Pitocin if your contractions aren't moving along fast enough] made her all the more likely to spike a high bilirubin level. Which she did, and then had to spend 24 hours in the phototherapy box, and to date has had at least 6 heel sticks to check her blood level. We’re hoping the last one will be tomorrow morning — and all signs look good on that front.

That just wasn’t enough for us. We like to do things in a big way. So, Friday night, as we were waiting for both our dads to arrive in town, Ashby decided to go and develop a fairly scary allergy to pomegranate seeds.

He’d been wanting to try them again for some time. The 9yo has a friend who brings them to school for lunch fairly often, and we’d just been discussing them at the house — how they were the trendy food, and supposed to be so good for you, and we really needed to try some, etc. Ashby had had some years ago but didn’t quite remember what they were like. So, when he ran by the store recently, he picked some up to try.

All I can say is, thank heavens he didn’t try them one of the two nights he was home alone this week with the 3yo while the baby and I were still at the hospital.

Late Friday afternoon, he sat down and had a few for a snack. Then I had him hold the baby while I was busy with something. I came back in the room a few minutes later, and he mentioned sneezing. Whereupon I snatched the baby out of his hands and said, “I’ve been freaking out about swine flu all week and here YOU are, sneezing on the baby???” So he gets up and says not only that, but now his head feels stuffy and maybe he’ll take a shower. I sent him out of the room with a warning that I was now serious about having him spend the night with his dad in Hopkinsville.

While he was in the shower, he developed a horrifying hacking cough. He emerged not 10 minutes later with his eyes nearly swollen shut.

At which point I hollered for my mother — thank goodness she was here! — and the two of them hopped in the car and headed for an urgent care place. They gave him epinephrine which stopped the reaction, but he didn’t improve. So they hustled him off to Baptist in an ambulance.

Meanwhile, I’m having to get the play-by-play from my mom via cell phone, because Ashby really couldn’t talk at this point. Breathe, just enough. Talk, no.

So, then he got more epinephrine, some steroids, and still didn’t get better. They were going to admit him overnight to the ICU! for more epinephrine and continuous monitoring, but they didn’t have a bed, so he spent the night in the ER. Somewhere in there, his dad arrived to stay with him, my mom came home, and things settled down.

The whole time he was gone, I couldn’t talk to him — first because he couldn’t talk, and then because they didn’t have cell phone reception in the area of the hospital where they were. So, I sat home worrying about him and feeling bad for saying I was going to send him to Hopkinsville for his “cold.”

He came home Saturday morning and seems back to normal now, thank goodness. We’re crossing our fingers for an uneventful week of late-night feedings and the usual chaos, with no additional medical emergencies.