This has been a stressful week. I have not felt up to writing blog entries for a while. On Wednesday when temperatures plummeted and we had some snow, we discovered that our furnace was broken. We were without heat until Thursday afternoon, when the repair man was able to replace the heat exchanger that had a crack in it. We made it through ok, but this incident helped us to remember to be thankful for things we often take for granted.
Cohen, Brinley, and Tristan have been struggling with chest colds for a couple of weeks now. ‘Course the cold temps didn’t help but they seem to be getting over it. After about 10 days of taking muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory (naproxen) to cope with the severe headaches I’ve been having, I was glad to report to my doctor that the medication had helped. This vindicated his diagnosis, that the headaches are caused by muscle tension. He said that many people who think they have migraines actually have headaches caused by muscle tension. The pain profile from muscle tension headaches is apparently indistinguishable from that of migraines. Anyway, my doctor prescribed physical therapy for 4-6 weeks and I had two sessions already. In addition to the therapy sessions I am supposed to do exercises three times a day. I think this treatment is helping.
On Tuesday a.m., Michele discovered that our dog, Maddie, had gotten ahold of an avocado pit and appeared to have eaten half of it. She noticed that Maddie had thrown up and decided to look up information about the situation on the Internet. She discovered that avocado pits are toxic to dogs, so we called a vet and asked for advice. The vet urged us to get her to the clinic as soon as possible. $160 later we thankfully found out that she was ok. It was a pretty stressful day for Michele since she had to go by herself with all three little kids, who were quite sick and crabby to boot.
Last night as I was going to the bus to start my commute home from work, I felt in my coat pocket and realized that I had lost my monthly train and bus pass (an expensive loss). I had to run back to my office to get enough money for the train and bus fares and in the meantime, missed the connecting bus. Unfortunately by the time I got to the Metra station, all trains outbound from Chicago were running up to 45 minutes late due to signal problems. I left work shortly after 5p and didn’t get home ’til after 7p.
