Meet Ba-chan

Auntie Mary's house

Went to Auntie Mary and Uncle Frank's house in Davis. Cousin Doug and Amy were there with their kids. Sophia had a grand ol' time playing train with Josaiah.

Ardenwood

Went to Ardenwood Farms in Fremont with Gma. Mom is Hitler the Summer Vacation Organizing Nazi. She is determined that we are going to have an action filled vacation and we are going to have fun if it kills her! It was hot and the tour guide lady for the farmhouse was old and dont touch anything type of person, if Sophia even looked
too closely at the old spoons she tensed up. She was creakier than the old floor boards! But checking out the animals was fun. The docents let the kids gather eggs, watch the feeding of the horse, cows etc and the kids can help give hay to the sheep. Of course there was the crazy mom that had her kid dressed frillier than an easter egg, mega expensive cannon digital camera out and shoo'd away all the other kids out her her kids picture. And of course the little girl was getting irritable because she couldnt play or get dirty and just had to pose. Im sure the mom thought her kid was gonna have the modeling career she missed out on. Reality check lady, your did aint that cute, you'd better pray for a cute grand kid in 25 years. Luckily Sophia is too young to notice and it just flew over her head! The thought has crossed my mind to see if Sophia could do some modeling but I dont want to end up like that lady nor do I want to be so unaware of people sending me dirty looks that my big ol' camera lens and my kids head is ruining everyone's good time at the farm.

Transconfusion

I cant believe it. Not again...we were stupid, we should have gone in for a check-up after, but i guess we were in a rush to get back to cali and our priorities all got mixed up. Anyways I didnt complete the miscarriage, luckily my parents keep up on my kaiser payments. for the first time, they actually came in handy. I went into the drs because i still wasnt feeling good...lo and behold I still didnt miscarry. So I got 3 options, a) wait for nature to take its course (which it didnt last time, and i wasnt about to spend another 6 months in misery like last time), b) 4 pills ( not inserted orally) to kick start the process to get going or c) d and c. Option a) was def out, option c) well it was close to the holidays, I just got home, and I really didnt want to hang in the hospital if I didnt have to so I opted for b). Within the next 24 hours I should start to feel some cramping and heavy blood loss, passing clumps and wahla, c'est fini. So I go home and within the next 1/2 hour I start feeling sick. Within the first hour I have nasty...and when I say nasty, doubling over, sweating like a pig, comes in waves, nasty cramps. And running with the oceanic analogies, the blood...ugh it was like a horror film. I had enough to redo the prom scene from Carrie each trip to the bathroom, which was fairly often. Plus my mom was out, my dad was in the backyard (which is a mile long) and basically I was on my own. Not that my dad would have been much good for advice anyways. And apparently my mom wasnt much good either...I sat in bed staring at the ceiling waiting for each pain wave to come and rush over me and send me running, nay doubling over to the bathroom. It got so I couldnt even stand. My sheets were soaked with sweat (me who doesnt even buy deodorant, because I dont sweat enough to own any). The staring at the ceiling in anticipation was almost as bad as having the cramps. I knew it was coming and there was nothing to do about it. All the time I'm thinking, should I call the hospital, am I just being dramatic? I got up at went to my parents room, which has a tv. It totally grosses me out to be in their bed..its a hygiene thing, germophobe thing, but TV for the distraction, and a closer bathroom. About 20 seconds after I get there, my mom comes home and kicks me out. My neurotic antics come from her. 'If you're really sick, you should stay in your own bed, when I'm sick I stay in my bed, I dont like to come out and move around." I try to explain about the pain, the tv, the blood, the distraction from when im not in the bathroom. Of course I must sound like Charlie Brown's teacher to her...wah wah waah wah wah wah wah wahh waahh. I can here her, Atilla the Cleaning lady in my room, re-doing my sheets spraying my room until the cloud of lysol creeps down the hallway, into their room and around the corner into the bathroom. All I can do is groan. None of this is helping the pain subside. In fact its just getting worse and worse and the bleeding is getting heavier and heavier. My legs are getting heavier and heavier, each step to the bathroom is like walking in deep powdery snow. Plus I'm running, trying to get my pants down before the wave crescendos. And of course on the last trip, the timing is all of and I bleed all over the 70s white toilet, walls and shower bathroom and the 80's teal green carpet in the sink area. That really irks my mom. Good Lord, the woman can see nothing else but what is putting her out of her comfort zone. And so at this point im transferred, nay kicked out- back to my own room to wallow in my pain in silence and out of sight, coverd by the cloud of lysol disinfectant. And then she makes my Dad clean up the mess. Poor guy - and its girl stuff too. What a sport. He actually asked me if I was okay and was there anything he could do for me. My mom is now stripping their bed of the sheets, that I didnt even use, I was just sitting on the top under my own blankets. Cue cloud of lysol smell and sound. Just to rub it in my mom's face I said to call the dr and ask if it was supposed to be this bad, with no signs of slowing down. I mean I did need medical advice and urgently, but now I was going to try and make my mom feel bad that her neuroticisms shouldnt have taken precedence over my horrible and obvious pain. She goes into panic mode, where's the phone number, who's your dr blah blah blah - a thousand questions. Just get my f'ing kaiser card and dial the damn number thats on the back for god's sake!!! The was out for a second and would have to call back, in the mean time the advice nurse says bad cramping and blood loss of about 4 pads per hour is normal. So while waiting mom goes out to the garage to dump the sheets she just stripped from my bed and hers into the washer to be disinfected, pouring all those chemicals in takes time, she was in there for what seemed like hours. My dad was back outside or something doing his thing. And of course another wave of pain came out-down time was getting increasingly shorter- I had to wait until it subsided a bit so I could run to the bathroom yet another time. By now Im cold sweating constantly, shivering from cold, my blood pressure drops with every arrival of pain and the pain is going from bad to worse and back down to bad again. So on the way to the bathroom, my legs give out, Im down on the ground, my breathing is shallow and short, Im cold and clammy...I'm trying to shout for help, but with no air coming into my lungs, no words come out. Im down for what seems like forever, and finally someone walks in the door. Once again my mom goes into panic mode...'What should I do? The dr is supposed to call back, she hasnt yet.' 'Mom, just call 911.' 'Should I do that? Is that what the dr said to do? Tom Tom just call 911.' Remember when I said I wouldnt have wished that first pain on my worse enemy?? Luckily for her I was in too much pain to get up and bitch slap her! So she's on the phone with 911 and I'm trying to get a sip of water, which they tell her not to let me do. And of course by the time the ambulance comes, the pain, the sweating, the bleeding etc are all starting to subside. Perhaps it was just all the excitement of it all, I've never ridden in an ambulance in the USA before. All the horrible things start to decrease enough to let me think 'Damn why didnt I paint my toe nails' while the the cute EMT hooked me up to all the sticky little tabby things to monitor god knows what. The EMT and the people at Kaiser Fremont were all sweet and nice and got to me right away! I often hear people complain about Kaiser, but I have nothing but praise for my experience. Mom jumped into the car, followed the ambulance and waited with me the whole time (redeeming herself for her neurotic freakazoid antics at home). We were waiting for my blood pressure to return to normal, and for me to rehydrate with the iv. But after about 2 bags, my bladder was full and I had to keep running to the bathroom, which meant waiting for the nurse to pass, unhooking a couple of wires from the EEG and scurrying over to the bathroom with the IV and bag of placebo on a hook trailing behind and trying to keep my ass from falling out the back of the too bit hospital garments. (I dont even remember how or when I changed my clothes). I was also stupid when I the dr asked me the first time if I wanted pain killers, I said I'd wait. Of course the window of opportunity passed and by the time I did want them I had to wait and wait and wait and wait and then I dont even remember if the guy ended up giving them to me. I did however ended up going up stairs for a d and c. And I was warned that I may have to have a blood transfusion because I had lost a lot of blood. A BLOOD WHAT?? Uh no thanks, remember the germaphobe thing. I requested that if at all possible to avoid it, not for ethical or religious reasons or anything. By this time it was about 11 pm. Mom accompanied me upstairs and then it was lights out for me, I dont remember anything after that except that it was dang cold in the operating room. I drifted in and out of consciousness and do remember someone watching over me and flipping out that I'm 37. She had to make sure they got it right on the charts. And then I remember getting rolled downstairs. And the night nurse being super nice. I was all paranoid about going to the bathroom and stuff because I of the bad experience in the Macedonio Melloni Hospital in Milan after I had Sophia. The nurses were all pissed off that they had to help me go pee and often. I wonder how those people choose their careers??? And it wasnt just one person it was all of them there! I felt guilty for having to pee, it was so Sybil...'Hold your water!' Luckily Kaiser must have a better screening process for their employees. And now I feel great. Why do I not get these things checked out right away, they fester, get angry, get out of control and then I have some long dramatic thing Ive got to blog about.