Clay in Congress

This just struck me really funny. I was looking at some of the headlines on Google News yesterday morning and came across this article:


In case you missed it, the headline doesn't exactly go with the picture! The funnier thing is, this morning the Google headlines still had that picture associated with that article! Does Clay Aiken really have something to do with Congress, or PR-inside.com need to work on their editing just a tad?

Happy Birthday, Brother!

Today is a very important day because it's the b-day of my one and only brother! Happy birthday, Eric! I know I tend to talk about my brother a lot, but that's only because I'm super proud of him. He's an ultra-smart, ultra-talented, ultra-funny and ultra-fun guy, and I love him very much!

If you've read my blog before there's probably not a lot I can tell you about my bro that you don't already know. He's my only sibling, which I think makes me more attached to him than some sisters might be to their brothers. As a child I followed him and his friends around and always wanted to be doing what they were doing, so needless to say I made a lot of forts, played with lots of Star Wars action figures, and pushed around a lot of Hot Wheels! I thought he was pretty awesome then, and I think he's pretty awesome now!

Eric is exactly two years and one month older than I am, which meant that for a very short time when we were about 11 and 13, I was almost as tall as he was (girls hit that growth spurt sooner than boys, you know). A few times people asked us if we were twins, and while I took that as a compliment, it nearly sent my brother through the roof. However, I now know exactly how he felt, because several times in the last few years when people have met my brother they've asked which one of us is older, which is certainly not a compliment to me! He looks way too good for his age!

Since Eric lives in Los Angeles, we don't get to see each other very often, so I'm really looking forward to our upcoming trip to our dad's house in Ohio where we can spend a long weekend hanging out together. We have tons of fun when we're together and he always makes me laugh. I'm so excited to see him!

Happy Birthday, Big Brother! I hope you have a wonderful day!

Missing In Action

A few of you may have noticed that I haven't blogged very much in the last few days. I guess you could say I've kind of been missing in action. Probably a more accurate description would be M.A.A.--missing any action. For the last 5 days I've spent the majority of my time laying in bed with the laptop. I've had a lot of time of my hands, but for a number of reasons I couldn't bring myself to write about the physically and emotionally painful reason I've been laying here. Tomorrow I'm going to try heading back to the real world, so I supposed it's time I shared the story of what has sidelined me the last several days. It's a long story, so those of you in for the long haul might want to go get some caffeine at this point! :)

As most of you know, for the last couple of years I've been fighting a bulging disc in my lower back, which has caused me nerve pain in my back, rear, legs and feet (commonly referred to as sciatica), primarily when sitting. This is rather unfortunate since my job involves a lot of time in a chair. From time to time I've blogged about the condition, mostly to chronicle the ridiculous number of treatment options I've attempted trying to get some relief from the pain. For those of you keeping score at home, the list includes traditional chiropractic, ice packs, months of complete inactivity, a heel lift, nerve stimulation, an inversion table, physical therapy, large quantities of ibuprofen, massage therapy, homeopathic muscle relaxers, muscle stimulation, traction therapy, heating pads, acupuncture, auricular therapy, two different homeopathic anti-inflammatories, and Active Release Technique from a different chiropractor along with core strengthening and stretching. While this last treatment did improve my muscle spasms and range of motion, there was no noticeable improvement in the nerve pain. Apparently the bulging disc has been pushing on those nerves for so long the inflammation just wouldn't go away, so my chiropractor recommended that I get an epidural steroid injection, which is what my regular doctor recommended over six months ago. At the end of June, I finally took that step and scheduled the epidural for July 12, which was the soonest the anesthesiologist could get me in.

So here's where this week's story begins. Ironically, the morning of July 4, just over a week before my scheduled epidural, I had just walked the dogs and was doing my regular exercises on our Weider CrossBow in the basement. After doing some inner/outer thigh work, I sat down on the bench in the "butterfly stretch" like I would on any other day. I heard no strange popping noises and felt no unusual pain, but when I went to stand up I realized there was a big problem. I couldn't stand or take a step without feeling like someone was stabbing me in the left side of my lower back. Not only was it terribly painful, but it was terribly scary as well. I'd never felt pain like it before and was scared to move for fear of feeling it again.

I spent much of the day laying down with an icepack or my TENS unit (nerve stimulator). Walking was extremely painful, so it was definitely slow going when I tried to go anywhere! Thursday morning, I joined Chad for Grandma's return trip to Salina, with the hope that a chiropractic adjustment from Chad's dad would improve the problem. Unfortunately, the problem seemed to be a little bigger than one adjustment could fix, and upon our arrival home I wasn't really feeling any better. Chad called my doctor, who prescribed Lortab for the pain (which is acetaminophen with Hydrocodone) as well as a muscle relaxer, to help the spasms that are happening in response to the pain. Up to this point I'd been very reluctant to try narcotics for my back problem, but Thursday night I was so thankful for the prescription I cried tears of joy after two days of crying tears of sorrow!

On Friday morning Chad took me to see my doctor, and she also prescribed Prednisone to try and combat some of the inflammation that is causing the pain. The Prednisone was supposed to make me hyper and irritable, but aside from not sleeping much, I don't think the side effects have been bad at all. The Lortab has definitely eased my discomfort, but I can't take the full dosage because it makes me sick to my stomach and really lightheaded. That's probably a good thing from the standpoint of avoiding dependence issues!

So the doctor's thought is that either the disc which was already bulging just bulged out farther or ruptured altogether, but it doesn't really matter which is the case, because really the treatment is the same for both: lots of rest, ice, Prednisone, and ultimately the epidural, which will shoot cortisone directly into my spine. I'm doing lots of laying around, alternating ice packs and heating pads, and things have improved immensely since Wednesday. Those first couple of days were very depressing and felt very hopeless, but today I'm starting to feel like someday I'll be back to normal again!

Both my chiropractor and my doctor had high hopes that the epidural would help my pain prior to this episode, because at that time what was causing me the most pain was the nerves going down my rear and legs while I was sitting. The epidural was supposed to calm that nerve inflammation. Now, the bulk of my pain is to the left of the disc on the way to my hip, which might be either from a severe bulge, or in the case of a ruptured disc, from a piece of the disc actually sitting on that nerve. Sometimes the disc will rupture and just leak out the gelatinous material inside, which pushes on the nerves for a while but then dissipates. Sometimes when it ruptures there is a piece of the harder outside of the disc that lands on a nerve. If the epidural doesn't help at all, then it's likely that this is what has happened, but they will do another MRI in that case to be sure. If that is the problem, there really isn't any other option except surgery, since they obviously have to get that piece of the disc off the nerve. Anyway, we won't really know until about a week after the epidural if it actually works or not, which is a real bummer because I don't want to have to wait that long!

So I guess that's the whole scoop. Each day there is definite improvement, so hopefully by tomorrow I'll be able to go back to work at least part of the day. Honestly, I'm not worried as much about work as about the other activities in my future that are looking questionable at this point. I'm already missing two softball games today and one tomorrow, and while there's only one more game I'll miss this season, I honestly don't know if it's feasible for me to play in the fall season that starts in early August. I just can't really tell if the problem is actually improving or just getting covered up by all the medication. While I'm also saddened that I won't be able to jump around and dance at Wednesday's Old 97s concert (although I still anticipate going), my biggest concern is the Breast Cancer 3-Day. While I will obviously do everything in my power to participate, I'm slightly nervous about starting training in a couple of weeks. Thankfully, walking is a very low impact activity, but walking over 450 miles in 16 weeks will obviously take it's toll. Your prayers for a quick recovery are definitely appreciated!

Fourth Festivities

In keeping with our family tradition, this 4th of July holiday was marked by a visit from Chad's grandmother Margie from Salina. Chad had a meeting in Smolan on Monday night, so it worked out perfectly for him to stay the night with Grandma and bring her back to Lawrence the next day. She and Chad played cards in the afternoon, and on Tuesday night we took her out to the softball fields to watch Chad's double header. Both games were very exciting battles against the best team in their league, and the second game even went into extra innings.

On Wednesday we were able to sleep in a little, which was a great way to start a vacation day. Chad and Grandma played some more cards, and then early in the afternoon Mom and Cliff came over from Topeka to do some holiday hanging as well. We were forced into the basement for a little while because of the tornado sirens, so we watched a little TV before coming back upstairs to watch the rain. Mom brought her famous squash blossoms, which she fried up to perfection for a decadent appetizer in the early evening. Later Chad grilled us turkey brats, served with his famous homemade mustard. We followed up dinner with some angel food cake topped with strawberries and whipped cream.

Mom and Cliff had to head home after dinner, since Mom had to commute to Emporia early in the morning. Grandma and Chad and I, along with Celtic and Hope, crawled into the car and headed over to Baldwin City, a tiny town about 30 minutes away. Our friends had suggested this was a good place to watch fireworks for Grandma, since we could pull right up into the parking lot of the high school where the display is launched, and Grandma wouldn't have to do any walking at all. Even though we got there just minutes before the show started, it was really the perfect location for us. We sat our chairs right outside the car so Grandma only had to take about two steps before sitting down to enjoy the show! Not only that, but the show was less than 100 yards from us, which meant the fireworks were almost directly overhead. It was a little bit loud, especially for Hope, who chose to stay in the car (I stayed there with her to offer some comfort), but it was really awesome for the rest of us to be that close! Since Baldwin is such a small town, it wasn't an especially long show, which I thought was actually kind of nice since I think fireworks tend to get kind of monotonous. This was the perfect length and the perfect distance. Grandma said it was the best fireworks show she'd ever seen! I can't believe I forgot to bring the camera!

Thursday morning we drove Grandma back to Salina and stopped briefly to visit Chad's parents while were there. While it was a really quick visit with Grandma, we had a really nice time and were very thankful that we were able to continue our 4th of July tradition!

Rainy Race Results

On Saturday night, my dear husband ran in the Summer Sizzler, a 5K race at Johnson County Community College. He had only run one other 5K in his adult life, which was last summer at the Race for the Cure in Kansas City. For that race, he ran regularly for a few weeks beforehand, but he didn't do any serious training. This time he trained for about 7 weeks, running 3 times a week and doing lots of longer runs (5 and 6 miles) and also some speed work. His goal was to run the 3.1 miles in under 7 minutes per mile. Saturday night, all of his hard work finally paid off!

For a while we weren't really sure if the race would be held at all, because after almost 3 days of solid rain, it rained all morning and afternoon on Saturday as well. Late in the afternoon, the thunderstorms started to break up a little, and although we hit a few sprinkles on the way to KC, the rain had stopped by the time we arrived. There was a bit of a strong wind, but we couldn't complain because the temperature was unseasonably cool. I actually needed a jacket by the time the sun went down!

The race started right at dusk, so pictures were a little difficult, but I managed to get a shot of Chad at the beginning and right before the finish line. His official time: 21:25. He finished 23rd overall out of 127 people and 5th in his age division out of 16 people. Most importantly, he reached his goal of running under 7 minute miles, averaging about a 6:53 mile! It was very exciting and I was a very proud wife! Check out the complete set of pictures if you're interested!