Aug
27
I had a check-up on Monday with our local doctor. I though you’d want to see what he was wearing (don’t mind the feet and arms).
Bright orange shirt, multicoloured polka-dotted pants.
Yes, this is normal.
Yes, he is a medical professional.
He’s also a pilot.
I’m not scared.
While I was heading out, who should I cross paths with but a dear friend, her husband, and their week-old baby boy! He was snoozing and looking very content in his…umm…thing that you carry babies around in.
I have a lot to learn before the X-man and I start procreating.
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Apr
21
Celebrating One Year Seizure-Free!
Filed Under health | 10 Comments
I did it!
It’s official. As of last weekend, I have been seizure-free for one year. You have no idea how good it feels. I’m going to get my license back! So I can drive my non-existent car! Yeah!
Quick catch-up: I have had epilepsy since I was 18 and randomly started having seizures. Since then, I have had a dozen or so major seizures in fun situations such as at work, in a movie theatre, and at a video game store. I’ve even disrupted family events like Easter dinner. But my family and friends are cool and they understand. The people in the movie theatre? Not so much. But that’s another story for another day.
Let me rewind 366 days and tell you the story of my most recent (hopefully last?) seizure.
D (then-boyfriend, now-fiance) and I were out shopping after work. He wanted to ’shoot the shit’ with some old co-workers of his at Future Shop, where he used to install sound systems into cars. He’s techy like that - I’m never going to have to program a piece of electronics again for the rest of my life. Which actually kind of sucks because I like figuring that stuff out. Oh well! Anyway, I wanted to hit up a shoe store or two and had a secret plan - to buy him a birthday gift at EB Games. We had just gotten a Wii and D wanted to download some old-school games. You can buy Wii points cards, so I was planning on getting one for him. Sadly, the store was sold out of points cards. I was the only person in the store besides the sales guys, so decided to try out a new game without risking the potential embarrassment of totally sucking. I started to play the new snowboarding game for Wii.
I wasn’t playing too badly until my head started buzzing…I was going into a seizure. It’s hard to explain how you know you’re going into a seizure - the best example I can give you is static. There’s a lot of static in your brain and you get tunnel vision. You start to lose focus. I tried to fight it off by stepping back and walking away from the game. I walked towards the counter to give back the Wii-mote, set it on the counter, and…blacked out.
I have to take a moment here to say that while at this store, I received possibly the best customer service you could ever ask for. The guys at EB Games knew exactly what to do. That, or the person they spoke to when they called 911 was a very good coach. When I regained conciousness, they had shifted me into the rescue position and had brought a chair over for me to sit in when I was ready. It was obvious that they were pretty freaked out (they kept their distance from me), but at the same time I was really embarrassed, so it all worked out.
The ambulance arrived a short while later. The EMS technicians (Emergency Medical Services - also, coincidentally, my future initials) wheeled in a stretcher and the big show started. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt as though the whole world was staring at you? That was me. I was conscious and able to walk so I insisted on walking out of the store myself. They sat me down in the back of the ambulance and started taking their notes. Eventually, they decided that I had better go to Emerg (ugh!) and started tucking me into the stretcher.
Then my phone rang. I had almost forgotten about D, who was completely oblivious to everything that had just gone down around the corner from where he was hanging out with his friends. He rushed over to me, kissed me on the cheek, and met me at the hospital. Have I mentioned how wonderful he is?
Thanks for celebrating with me! Now, I’m off to make cookies 
Apr
2
An Unfortunate Accident
Filed Under health | 9 Comments
On Monday I had to go somewhere I had not been in a while, the hospital. Scott was in a farming accident. Mom called me at work at around 4pm to tell me that Scott was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance and that he had got his fingers caught in an auger but he was fine.
She made it seem like nothing too bad had happened so I was worried but not too badly. But I quickly drove to the hospital, which is only about 3 minutes from where I work. When I got there all the paramedics talked to me first and explained what his fingers looked like and what they knew so far, they freaked me out a bit because they looked so worried! Then I got to see him. His fingers were bloody, he was shivering and he looked like he was in pain! And he was in pain.
So what happened? Scott was working at our barn, waiting for the trucker to come to ship our pigs (to market..). Since he had a bit of time he decided to try and fix the auger which had broken. It had a bolt stuck in it and so the flex auger was winding itself out of the tube that protects it.
He turned off the power that runs the auger, but because the coil was under so much pressure being pulled out there was no stopping it. Scott knew that once he got the bolt out of where it shouldn’t be that it would wind back in, but he did not anticipate how fast it would happen. And that is why he found himself lying on the ground, under a grain bin with his right hand fingers stuck in a flex auger, one of these, which is used to move feed:
Scary, no? Augers are very dangerous and cause many people to lose limbs (or worse) in farming accidents. Scott was lying in the rain on the ground, and being the fast thinker that he is used his left arm to grab his cell phone out of his right pocket and started dialing neighbors phone numbers, and 911. The neighbours came, the police came, the ambulance came, the fire trucks came and even the air ambulance came (but it could not land because it was too foggy out.) They took a while to get there though so Scott was freezing because it was raining out and was pretty cold. Long story short they finally they got his fingers out.
Scott is a lucky lucky man, his fingers are fine, well except for a broken knuckle on his middle finger and he has about 16 stitches on his middle and pinky fingers. He’s taking some time off work right now, hanging out at home.
Scott, putting on a brave face in the hospital bed. He wouldn’t let me take a picture of his bloody fingers.. so no pictures of that. Sorry!
Pretty colours in the hospital room.
Scottie, the brave boy this morning, at home.
Let this be a lesson to you all, never try to fix a flex auger by yourself, and take all safety precautions!
Check out these Farm Safety Sites if you are interested:
Farm Safety for Kids -As children my sisters and I attended many Farm Safety days in the area, they always teach children dangerous areas around the farm yard.
Mar
17
Ouch :(
Filed Under health | 6 Comments
I’m getting my wisdom teeth out in half an hour. Any wisdom teeth stories out there? Wish me luck!
[EDIT]
I’m back! My face is a lovely shape of swollen, and I was even awake for one of them coming out! I sooo wasn’t ready for going under for the second one, but let me tell you-a.maz.ing. If you want your body to feel super cool, then get your wisdom teeth out. ps. NOT condoning just getting them out for the high. Maybe I’ll post some pictures later to show. I even got to keep my teeth!
Photo by ericasimone
