June 21, 2011 – Write From Karen

When I picked Jazz up from summer school today (remember, he has personal finance in the morning and P.E. in the afternoon – NOT the best class to have when you feel like your toes are going to fall off), and he said today was the first day that he didn’t feel the agonizing pressure on his toes that has crippled him these past several days.

Praise God! I’ve been praying really hard for God to heal him – it’s been a ROUGH week for Jazz.

He was actually walking normally to the car today. I can’t help but wonder if the Epsom salt soak helped with the pressure. We haven’t been doing the soaks because the salt has just about killed Jazz this past week, which is probably good, salt is healing, but I just couldn’t bear to see him in so much ADDITIONAL pain, so I didn’t push the issue.

Anyway, we went to the followup visit with the podiatrist this afternoon. His toes look gross, but the doctor said he’s seen much worse at this stage. He was concerned about all of the pain that Jazz has been feeling. Though his toes would still feel sensitive at this stage, he said they shouldn’t be hurting him as much as they have been and that that was a sign they were infected.

He prescribed a different antibiotic and we’ve made another followup appointment in two weeks – WHICH, hopefully, will be the last time we have to see him because HOPEFULLY, the infection will be cleared up by then and he should be feeling much better by then.

I hope.

The doctor did use some tweezers to pluck out some dead skin (string of built-up puss? I didn’t catch what that was, exactly), and Jazz nearly came unglued when he touched the tweezers to his toe. Again, the doctor said he shouldn’t have been so sensitive and that it was the infection that was causing so much pain.

I blame myself. I take total responsibility for Jazz’s pain. Why? Because I should have stuck with the initial antibiotics that the clinic prescribed. I also should have stuck with the soaks. If I had done those two things, Jazz probably wouldn’t have been in so much pain this past week.

I dropped the mom ball. I not only dropped it, it rolled under the couch and got stuck under there.

*SIGH*

The antibiotics knocked him out. They made him so drowsy that he couldn’t keep his eyes open at school, which was terrible timing because it was finals week and he sort of needed to stay awake for those. That’s why we didn’t finish the medicine. But still, I should have worked around his school schedule and given them to him, regardless. It’s my fault that this has gone on for so long.

I feel so bad for the kid. It’s bad enough to see your kid in pain, it’s worse when you realize that you actually contributed to that pain.

At any rate, we finally figured out that ibuprofen works better for him than Tylenol, so I guess that’s a plus.

A small plus.

So here we are. Taking an oral antibiotic and when the infection gets knocked out, then we’ll have to treat his toes to an anti-fungal ointment for … God only knows how long.

Jazz was actually in pretty good spirits today. I think he was just so relieved to have a break from the pressure that he was giddy. I told him on the way home today that he now had a “story” to share with people. “Remember when I was 16-years old and had to have my toenails removed? Yeah. That sucked.”

I also told him that this kind of thing, only makes a person stronger. It builds character. I know he doesn’t want to hear that from me right now, but at some point, he’ll get what I’m saying.

We ALL have stories, unfortunately.

WARNING – WARNING!

Home video ahead!

Proceed at your own risk.

BYOP (Bring your own pillow)

I’ll supply the drool bibs.

Okay. I’m getting this digitizing process down and it’s going a lot faster than I anticipated. So far, so good. *knock on wood* I’m currently on tape four and I’m BORED OUT OF MY MIND. Seriously. I could never make it as a videographer because I literally have HOURS of film of people eating.

What the …??

I didn’t eat back then to stay skinny, so I think I was wishful thinking – fantasy calories are just as good as the real thing? Right?

Now? *pfft* Pass the buffet, friend.

Anyway … there may not be as many snippets as I had hoped because truly, I can barely stomach watching all of this footage; I would never dream of putting you all through that torment. I mean, I like to consider myself a brutal-sort of blogger, but even I have limits.

This first video is our first anniversary. We gifted ourselves our first video camera and we took a video of us taking a bite of the first tier of our wedding cake saved from our wedding. You can watch the results.

Pardon the mushy kissing part but we were young and in love. (Sorry Kevin, not WERE, but ARE – ARE darling). Actually, we still do that, but now it’s even more gross because we’re old and wrinkled. We only do it in public to embarrass our teenage sons. SCORE.

Also? This was the one and only bite I had of my wedding cake. (Er. Wait a minute, maybe not). I was too nervous and worked up to eat any cake on our wedding day so … I’m really hoping it tasted better on THE day because it was like chewing cardboard that had been soaked in dog urine when we took this video.

Yum.

Here’s a picture of us with our entire wedding cake, if you’re interested. We’re munching on that top tier you see.

Did you notice anything weird about the Happy Anniversary sign that Kevin printed out on our state-of-the-art ZENITH computer and Epson dot-matrix printer? (You did indeed read that correctly. We’re old enough to have been around when computers were first becoming available to private citizens. And you only THOUGHT I was old, right?) For you sharp-eyed readers out there, a gold star if you noticed that “Anniversary” is missing an “R”. It say, “Happy AnniverSAY.” Hence the reason we say “Happy AnniverSAY” to each other every anniversary. Inside joke. Well, not so inside now, now that I’ve shared the joke with you all.

I will be honest and tell you that Kevin is quite horrified that I’m posting this for all the Internet to see. But as usual, I sweet talked him into letting me have my way so … don’t ruin it for me by making fun of it or anything or my marriage may not SEE year number 22. HA!

Some observations while watching these old movies:

I had BIG hair. No now, we can be honest. There is some footage where it’s literally standing on end. Why didn’t anyone tell me how stupid I looked?!? I mean, good grief. In fact, the next video I’m posting is me, in my hot rollers just to PROVE to you that I suffered all in the name of having awesome early 90’s hair.

Also? What is up with my high, squeaky, hillbilly voice? I had no idea I sounded like that and when I turned to Kevin, just now, my face a mask of petrified horror, and asked him if I still sounded like that, he said, “No. Thank God.”

Okay so I added the “thank God” part, but wow people. All that is missing are my overalls and missing teeth. (And I stopped wearing overalls shortly after having babies because WOW – that did not help disguise the post-baby fat AT ALL).

I have no idea why I have this weird fascination with the cake in this video. I keep picking at it, like I’m excavating for … treasure? Taste? Who knows. Actually, I remember picking through the cake and I think I thought the crusty icing was sort of fun to dig through. I was just as easily amused back then as I am now, it would appear.

And at the very end of the video, I dare to take one more bite. I think I was unwilling to accept the fact that it tasted so nasty the first time, so I was hoping that by taking a second bite, it might taste better.

It didn’t.

The candle in the video is the same candle that we used in our wedding. And yes, we both lit it during the ceremony to signify “unity.” Cheesy, but touching. I hung on to that candle for YEARS before it finally turned yellow and started to smell funny. Actually, we had stored it in a box in our attic and it was starting to melt from all the heat and getting candle wax everywhere.

Not one to be terribly sentimental, I tossed it.

This was taken in our first home, which we rented, which I found because Kevin was working so much in his new career (accounting), that he didn’t have time to look with me. I was shown this house, liked it so much that I called Kevin (from a land line, because we didn’t have cell phones back then *GASP*), and he said, “if you like it, I trust you, get it.” So I got it. We lived in that house for about two years. We moved into the house we own now when Dude was six months old. It was a great first house. VERY drafty, but very comfortable.

Also. I took a lot of video of Kevin’s youngest sister. I had (still do, actually) a girl crush on her and it’s painfully obvious in these old movies. I also noticed that she hardly ever acknowledged me while I was filming her. I bet she thought I was terribly irritating. Now that we’ve known each other for 20 + years, I’ll have to ask her if that annoyed her back then. lol

I love looking back on these old movies. It just brings up all sorts of tender feelings toward Kevin (not that I don’t STILL have tender feelings for him, but you know … did I just put my foot in my mouth?) and makes me thankful that we’ve had such a great life together. I’m truly blessed to have such a great man.