Delirity

You know how we all have our ailments? Well, mine are my chronic sinus issues, hypothyroidism (fairly under the radar these days unless it’s what’s been making me tired – though I’m more likely to blame issue #1), and an incredible ability to get blisters and infections on my feet and hands. I can live with all of them, but certainly they get to me sometimes and recently I’ve been thinking about two of them…

I’ve been very diligent recently about rinsing my nose everyday since the beginning of the year (except for that week when Jesse had surgery). Despite that fact, I’ve had lovely sinus pressure for about a month. I definitely don’t have an infection – I just have pressure that comes and goes for no apparent reason. Lovely. To help with this, Jesse is looking around for a naturopath in our area with expertise in sinus issues. I’ve also been doing some research online and ordered Sinus Survival from the library – most of what I’m coming up with is (of course) that I need to cut out sugar, dairy, refined carbohydrates and caffeine and up the amount of veggies (though we already eat a lot of those). I’ve needed to do this anyway (and tried a bit this year) since I know I feel better energy-wise when I do this, but the first month or so is always very challenging. I’m hoping that since this may be what makes my head stop hurting that I’ll find the motivation and energy to stick with it.

One thing I have been quite successful with this year so far has been running. Today I ran for 45 minutes – 4.15 miles! It’s unheard of for me and I’m very very excited. The new Nike+ definitely helps, but the most important part of the equation is that I recently broke down and spent almost $10 for a pair of socks. The trick is that these socks stay put and help me to not get blisters on the bottoms of my feet from running. It’s amazing… so amazing that I’m trying out a few more types of socks that seem well loved by runners. I’m still not really comfortable paying that much for socks, but I figure they’ll last me quite a while and help encourage me to keep running further and faster!

After the lotion incident last month I spent a fair amount of time on the web learning about non-toxic, good for sensitive skin soaps, detergents and household cleaners. We now use:

• Charlie’s Soap for laundry detergent
• Biokleen Automatic Dish Powder
• Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap (Peppermint) for doing dishes (and when we run out of hand soap this will be it too)
• Mrs. Meyer’s All Purpose Cleaner (Geranium)
• A microfiber cleaning mitt once our swiffer dusters are gone

I’ve been using Aveeno & shea butter as lotions. And of course, since we want our bodies to be non-toxic too, we’ve been eating a lot more veggies and have purchased a share of fruit/veggies from Dancing Roots Farm for this year.

I’m hoping that these changes will all be positive for us. Every time I buy something for the household now I look to see how many ingredients it has and if they’re things I recognize. While it took me a little while to figure out what to buy (and it’ll probably take more time to decide if we really like these specific things), I’m thinking that these changes are easy to sustain and will probably even save us money in the long run.

It’s funny because as we’re making these changes I’m also thinking about other ways of simplifying our lives. For example, we’re way too addicted to tv – so we’re going back to 1 hour per night. We’ve managed to get reading back into our lives, but there are other things that we still need to work on. Tonight we had dinner at the table (yay!) and then played cards for a bit afterwards. It’s nice to be able to spend the time interacting with each other, not just sitting next to each other. Once Jesse’s hip is healed (in the next few months!) I’m looking forward to doing a little more exploring in the area (bike rides along the Columbia, hiking to Multnomah Falls, picking berries at “the farm”).

I see good things ahead.

On Wednesday I took Jesse to OHSU to have arthroscopic hip surgery. We knew he had a labral tear in his hip, but apparently the tear was worse than they had seen on the MRI (thank goodness we opted to have the surgery!). The tear made it so that a flap of cartilage was getting caught in the joint when Jesse did certain things. The doctor said that the extra flap was cut off, and the excess bone (on both sides of the joint) that caused the tear/flap to form was ground down and he should feel good for many many years to come.

Jesse stayed overnight at the hospital (just a precaution) and I was told he’d be ready to go home probably quite a while before the standard 11 am discharge time. I got myself to the hospital around 9:30 only to find out that he had been up and down the hall on his crutches, but then had an episode of vasovagal syncope (this occured after they flushed his iv). He never actually passed out, but apparently he lost his vision for a bit and his blood pressure wasn’t back to normal until right around the time we left… at 2 pm.  Why did it take us until 2? Maybe it was because we had to wait for a pain pump prescription. Maybe it was because we had to wait for a  continuous passive motion machine  that we could take home.

We’re home now (well, actually we’re at Jesse’s parents’ place since they don’t have stairs, but close enough) and Jesse is recovering really well. He hardly has any pain and has been using his CPM faithfully for 8 hours a day. The nerve block in his leg is even almost gone and he’s able to stand without his crutches. Because of all this good behavior today we were rewarded with snow! It’s literally been snowing since we woke up at 7:45 this morning. Good thing I went to the store yesterday… too bad I forgot eggs. =) We may have a more creative breakfast tomorrow.