Sick. Again. Boo.

I used to get strep infections about every other month. Super painful wouldn't respond to normal anti-biotics strep infections. My doctor finally told me that I needed to get my tonsils out or I was just going to keep getting them.

Sunday night my throat started hurting. That's usually the sign that I'm going to get a cold in the next 24 hours or so. This morning my throat was still hurting and it was getting worse. I went to the local drop-in health clinic to see if I had managed to get a strep infection regardless of my tonsilless status.

It turns out I do not have strep, but I am running a fever and have some sort of probably viral infection. The doctor doesn't know what it is, but he gave me a scrip for antibiotics and said if it doesn't clear up in the next few days, fill the prescription.

I want to know why we have the technology to make an invisibility cloak/Romulan cloaking device (choose your flavor of geek) but still can't identify what is living in my throat.

The reason for the long absence

The morning of the 28th, about 2:00am, I woke up coughing and could feeling something weird in my mouth. I went in to the bathroom and spit up a large mouthful of blood. I yelled for my husband and he came running as I continued to spit up mouthfuls of blood. He got on the phone with my surgeon, and we spent the next two hours trying to get the bleeding to stop. It would stop temporarily, but if I did so much as roll over in bed, it would start again. Finally, about 4:30, we called a friend to come over and sit with our son while we headed to the emergency room. After being poked and prodded by the ER physician, it was determined that I had a "small arterial bleed" and would need emergency surgery to cauterize the artery.

In to surgery I went, the anaesthesiologist applied pressure to my throat as I went under so I wouldn't vomit up the blood that was in my stomach, and a minor surgery later, I emerged cauterized and stitched.

I have never looked so white in my life as I did when I got home later that day from the hospital. I don't know how to quantify the amount of blood I lost, but two weeks later I am still a little anemic and lightheaded at times. It was an incredibly traumatic experience. Geekboy had to give me a blessing that night because I was so scared of going back to bed. I knew that if I fell asleep I would bleed out and die in my sleep. Cooper was very clingy that day because he woke up and his parents were unexpectedly gone. So my husband gave me an incredibly powerful blessing of comfort and healing, and then all three of us piled into our bed and went to sleep. We all needed to be together that night.

I've spent the last week and a bit in pre-semester meetings. I've met with my tenure committee. I did a conference presentation that rocked (and I'm not the one who said that) and prepping for the new semester. It starts tomorrow.

My vacation wasn't very restful. Maybe I'll relax over Christmas.

Things I probably should try to do while on pain medication

1. Go on Etsy (says my thither.)
2. Try to learn how to knit lace.
3. Juggle knives.
4. Use heavy machinery.

So, ummmmm, now what do I do?

Now, with 100% less tonsils

I shall be surviving on yogurt, juice and applesauce for the next few days. I'm trying to think of other soft foods to eat that aren't going to irritate my throat.

My poor summer

I had a huge list of things I was going to do on summer break, but now it has turned into strep throat central and I have to have my tonsils out and meetings for "new" faculty start three weeks before the semester so my summer break is kind of in disarray.

So, now I'm just kind of wondering what I should do with the bits and pieces of my summer break. I could just stay in bed and do nothing, but to keep me from doing that, I hereby pledge to post one thing I did each day, beyond, you know, eat cold cereal and shower. Just to keep me from totally wasting the parts of summer that I do have.