Tragic Sandwich

Category: Health and Fitness

  • What Doesn’t Kill You

    Ginger of Ramble, Ramble has more writing prompts this week. I couldn’t choose, and they seem to go together, so here you are:

    Prompt 1: What are your sick day must haves? Do you want certain foods, shows, clothes, drinks? What makes you feel better when you feel crummy?

    Couch, pillows, TV, fleece blankets, PJs, Wicket. Basically, all the soft things.

    I don't know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.

    Prompt 2: What’s the sickest you’ve ever been?

    Nearly every story about the sickest I’ve ever been includes vomit. Lots of vomit. So I think we should skip those stories, and I think you will agree.

    The obvious exceptions are the time I had pneumonia (at an out-of-town conference! that required plane travel!) and the time I had swine flu. Ah, swine flu. Good times.

    One Friday in late February 2009,* I had a D&C for my second miscarriage, which (like miscarriages 1, 3, and 4) did not happen without some help. On Sunday, I was supposed to get together with a couple of friends to watch the Oscars. Because of my surgery, they kindly came to my house and brought all the food.

    We snarked the Red Carpet so viciously that at one point Mr. Sandwich had to come inside to see what we were shrieking about (one of the hosts had done something so unfortunate to her face that she was trying not to appear on camera, but since she was the host, she kind of had to). The ceremony began. The snarking continued.

    After a couple of hours, I started to feel under the weather. I thought, “What I really want to do is go lie down, but if I do that, my friends will feel that they have to leave. And I’m totally fine with them staying, I just need to lie down.”

    But since I didn’t want them to go, I stayed put in the recliner.

    After another hour, I thought, “What is this? I’m so sore and achy. Wait. Is this the flu? It’s been a while, but I think this is what the flu feels like.”

    By the time the show was over and everybody went home, I felt as if the inside of my skin was being sanded. This is not a good feeling.

    The next day I had a follow-up appointment with my OB-GYN; from his office, we went to our primary care doctor. As the morning progressed, Mr. Sandwich started to feel achy.

    The primary care physician prescribed antivirals for both of us, and we headed off to the drug store.

    Which could only fill one prescription of antivirals.

    Back home, we swathed the couch in microfleece throws (because the perfectly fine upholstery was too rough for feverish skin) and settled in.

    Oh, and while this was going on? I was borderline hemorraghing from the D&C. (You do not want to know.)

    Both the flu and the bleeding went on for most of the week. We spent much of it on the couch, looking sadly at each other and saying, “I’m really sorry I can’t take care of you, but I feel so sick.” And the other one would say, “Please don’t worry about it, because I feel that sick, too.”

    We also learned that, even with the blinds closed, the afternoon sun cast so much glare on our TV screen that we couldn’t really see it. And since TV was the only form of distraction we could manage (books are so heavy), we kind of needed to see it.

    Mr. Sandwich draped the windows in more microfleece throws. Fortunately, we have a lot of them.

    And those antivirals? We felt no different at all for taking them. They didn’t seem to help in the slightest. The fever, aches, chills, and clamminess persisted in spite of the drugs. (We still got the second prescription, and we each took all of them that we were supposed to. In case you were wondering.)

    But on the other hand, we didn’t die. So there’s that. Because people do die of swine flu.

    And after we were well, we replaced the window coverings with wooden blinds.

    So I guess you could say that we were so sick, we redecorated.

    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.
    See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.

    *Sources say that the first reported U.S. cases were in late March. But given the severity of our symptoms and the speed of their onset, we are pretty sure that we ran into it at the hospital, before doctors knew about the outbreak.

  • Swimming to Mommy

    I love the water. My mother loved the water. And, as it turns out, Baguette loves the water. We started taking her to swimming lessons last fall.

    When she turned 3, the Y would have had her switch from a parent-child class to an instructor-led class, with no parents in the water. Baguette would not have done that. So we took a break until the city pool opened, and we started going there. Baguette loved it. And, we quickly realized, the joy of the pool made her want to talk. She talked more, and more clearly, and more enthusiastically on the days when she went to the pool.

    Mr. Sandwich started taking her every day. And she put it all together.

    DCIM100SPORT

    DCIM100SPORT

    DCIM100SPORT

    DCIM100SPORT

    DCIM111SPORT

    DCIM111SPORT

    DCIM111SPORT

    DCIM100SPORT

    She can kick, she can reach, she can hold her breath for about 15 feet. She smiles and claps underwater as she swims. And after each pass, she’ll tell us what she’s going to do next: “Swimming to Mommy!” “Swimming to Daddy!” “Swimming to steps!”

    Our girl has found her element.

    All photos by Mr. Sandwich.

  • Fine Dining at Bargain Prices

    You know that thing? The one where the people you love make your eyes roll extra hard?

    Yesterday afternoon, my father-in-law calls to ask if we want to join them for dinner. “It’s too hot to eat here,” he says, “So we can go out.”

    To Burger King.

    Because they have coupons.

    Mr. Sandwich’s family is made up entirely of fitness nuts. His dad will comment on someone’s BMI and speculate on their resultant health at the drop of a hat. He once told me that he likes to offer ice cream bars as dessert, because a guest is less likely to ask for seconds.

    At the same time, a coupon is a coupon. As Mr. Sandwich says, “My father has always had an appetite for a deal.”

    Since we in fact have nothing planned for dinner, we take Baguette to the pool and then head across town (Again, we have been invited across town. To Burger King.) I call to let them know we’re en route, and Mr. Sandwich’s mother is delighted. She calls to Mr. Sandwich’s father to get out from under the car, which he is fixing.

    Also, she hangs up just as I say, “We’ll meet you there.” So I call her back a few minutes later, and that turns out to be a good move, because she is startled that we are not coming by the house and then all driving over together.

    I do not want to get Baguette in and out of the car an additional time. We say we will meet them at Burger King, and she tells me the intersection and says, “It’s next to the Subway and across from the McDonald’s.”

    She also instructs me, “Don’t order until we get there. We have the coupons.”

    McDonald’s is about two miles from their house, and is where they get “Senior Coffee” after their morning run. (My in-laws are in their late 70s and win their age divisions in races, so of course they run to McDonald’s).

    McDonald’s is also home to the Big ‘n’ Tasty, which, as my father-in-law is fond of saying, is “just as good as In-n-Out.”

    NO. NO, IT IS NOT.

    We pull into the parking lot, and agree that while we may be waiting to order, we are not waiting to order for Baguette, who is the most likely of us to start screaming when she gets hungry. She screams, “Fash! Faaaaaash!” This means “hungry,” except for when it means something else, and I don’t know why either of those things is the case.

    So we order chicken nuggets, fries, and milk for Baguette, who in short order bumps her milk and spills it on her fries, but thankfully is not upset by this turn of events, possibly because there are chicken nuggets to be had.

    The woman at the counter says, “Is that all?” I answer, “We’re waiting for my in-laws” and think better of adding, “They have coupons!” because the woman at the counter seems very nice, and it’s not her fault that my in-laws are, um, extra quirky. So while I probably had a completely insane expression on my face, at least I didn’t say anything that went along with that.

    I feel even better about it when my in-laws arrive, and it turns out that they are regulars at this Burger King. Apparently there is more than one place to go for Senior Coffee, and they come here so often that the staff gives them gifts.

    Fortunately my father-in-law realizes that he cannot reasonably require us to confine our choices to the remaining unused coupons in his coupon book, and we order food that we suppose we’ll be okay with, because neither of us particularly likes Burger King, with or without coupons.

    And it was, just as we anticipated, totally mediocre. It wasn’t bad–although I didn’t feel good afterward–it was just meh.

    But it did remind me that I never wrote the final post about my Cheeseburger Challenge. So let me just skip to the end: Burger King has an edible small cheeseburger. Del Taco, a late entrant, turns out to do reasonably well (although theirs is priced a little higher). The winner, such as it is–and just as I thought it would be–is Wendy’s.

    Based on how icky I felt after last night’s meal, though (and not just last night’s, but the last several fast-food meals), I think my next fast-food adventures will focus on a Salad Challenge.

    I just need to come up with a better name for it.

  • Little Talks

    Mr. Sandwich wrote this on Monday, and we both wanted to share it here.

    Last week we got the news we had been both expecting and dreading. Baguette was formally diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This was not a complete surprise, we had been looking at symptoms and ‘benchmarks’ to one degree or another for at least a year. There was speech therapy, there were visits with the principal at daycare about her behavior and class integration issues, of potty training, and the need for her to have further help. To the friends I’ve talked about it with, I have likened it to a punch that you can see coming. You can brace for it, but you’re still going to feel it.

    So now we have a doctor’s diagnosis. We have a downloaded packet of steps to follow and paths to pursue. As I read my packet I see that I can expect to go through the stages of grief, which I don’t know if I am, or I don’t know if I started months ago when it became so clear that Baguette was different from her peers. I’ve talked with friends whose children are affected too. I’ve felt at alternating times that I am dizzy and steady, even keeled and bowled over. Today Baguette bowled me over, and I haven’t quite gotten up yet.

    I picked her up from daycare late and was rushing to the pool. We’ve noticed how she seems to respond positively to the water, both with speech and behavior and for the past several weeks I’ve been trying to get her into the pool every day. When I buckled her into the carseat she asked for her Sesame Street CD like she always does, but that was in the other car, so all I could do was turn on the radio for the 3-minute drive to the park pool. Of Monsters and Men’s “Little Talks” was playing on the radio and we heard most of that by the time we hit the parking lot. I was running late, and we would only have 12 minutes worth of swimming so I was hustling as fast as I could. As I scooped up Baguette, she was reciting to me. She frequently recites, she doesn’t speak directly, she reiterates whole passages, whole verses of books and songs she knows and keeps as her friends and repeats them to me and Mommy and the World. While I was initially distracted as I fast-marched through the parking lot, she reached out and grabbed my face to turn me towards her and I heard clearly what she was reciting.

    “Listen word I say. Hey. Scream sound same. Hey. Truth vary. Ship carry. Safe shore.”

    She was repeating to me the lyrics she had heard on the radio just moments before. She’s heard that song played before, but not recently, and even if she did I’m not sure I’d expect any three-year-old to mimic lyrics like that. For a brief moment I was struck dumbfounded in the parking lot, trapped between wanting to laugh and congratulate her on her razor-sharp retention and cry over the fact that she couldn’t tell me things other little girls can. The fact that the lyrics are about a woman whose mind is at war with her and the man who still loves her despite this is just the brass wrapped around these particular knuckles. I didn’t have time to process the moment completely. She had started singing “The Farmer in the Dell” and time was ticking away. We only had a few minutes to get in the pool and that was the reason why we were there, for her benefit, not mine.

    Hours have passed now and I can’t shake that refrain she recited to me. I can’t help but think that she was trying to tell me how the wheels in her mind were turning, how she needed me to communicate to her, how she hears the world. “Don’t listen to a word I say. (Hey) The screams all sound the same. (Hey) Though the Truth may vary, this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.” That song will never be the same for me. Nothing will ever be the same.

  • Diagnosis: Person

    A hundred years ago–okay, in January–I wrote about our efforts to help Baguette with her speech delay. I was going to write more. I didn’t, really.

    It’s not that I was avoiding the subject, it’s that I didn’t really know what to say about it.

    Since January, we’ve eliminated the idea of thrice-weekly occupational therapy appointments; while she does have some sensory-seeking characteristics, we don’t see indicators of the Sensory Processing Disorder that the therapist suspected.

    We’ve tried–and failed–to get Baguette’s hearing tested (she would not cooperate with the protocol). We’ve also determined that if Baguette really had a hearing problem, she wouldn’t hear as well as she does, and she wouldn’t be able to memorize what she hears as well as she does. So we’ll probably try the testing again at some point, but we don’t think it’s a priority.

    We had an in-network evaluation with a speech therapist, who recommended twice-weekly sessions that were denied by the insurance company. This is both infuriating and not a big deal, because we were happy with our speech therapist and could not have gotten Baguette to the location that the insurance company would have insisted on.

    We’ve continued–mostly, Mr. Sandwich has continued–her twice-weekly speech therapy and music therapy sessions. Once a week the speech therapist comes to school, and once a week Baguette goes to the therapist’s office.

    We’ve hired a “shadow,” who helps Baguette with classroom activities, encourages her to look at and speak to her classmates, reinforces the activities introduces by the speech therapist, and tries and tries and tries to help her with potty training.

    And we went to a developmental pediatrician. He talked to us and observed Baguette for an hour, and sent us home with a form for us and a form for the teacher and a request to take video of Baguette in class, to see how she interacts with other children.

    At the first meeting, he said that he couldn’t yet diagnose her with Autism Spectrum Disorder, but he saw things that might indicate it. At the second meeting–last week–he did issue that diagnosis.

    This is not a surprise to me. My reading to date has been admittedly spotty, but it seems to fit. And there are a lot of things that now connect–the sleep challenges, the picky eating, etc.

    But at the same time, I recognize that a lot of those things are also simply Baguette. She is a happy, funny, intense, independent, adventurous, STUBBORN little girl who chooses whether to comply. And she has autism.

    How much is autism, and how much is her personality? I’m not sure they can really be separated. But I do know that autism is not the only thing that makes her who she is. It is part of who she is, just as many things are.

    So as we now embark on the process of setting up an Applied Behavioral Analysis program for her, I want to pay close attention to what we’re actually working on: helping her develop skills that will give her greater flexibility in the world and throughout her life.

    But I also think she’s perfect just as she is, and I want her to be the Baguettiest Baguette she can possibly be.

  • Fruit-Full

    I feel bad about throwing away food. I want to eat more vegetables. Guess which one was happening? So we switched to the fruit-only box.

    box of organic fruit from local farms

    This week’s CSA box:

    • grapes
    • peaches
    • pluot
    • nectarines
    • apples

    And while the jury’s still out on grapes, we already know that Baguette loves stone fruits and apples. But I have to admit, I do miss the waxed cardboard box that we used to get.

  • Apparently I Lack Imagination

    It’s been weeks since I posted. I have photos from our vacation earlier this month. (Didn’t know we went on vacation? Quite possibly that’s because I haven’t posted in weeks.) Well, technically Mr. Sandwich has the photos. I haven’t managed to transfer them from his computer to mine.

    And there have been things I’ve wanted to blog about, but I can’t remember them. Maybe that’s because Baguette has been going through a growth spurt, which means that none of us has been sleeping.

    So I need a writing prompt. Ginger from Ramble Ramble to the rescue!

    She’s been providing a pair of writing prompts for several weeks. And usually I look at them and think, “Oh, I could blog about that.” And then I don’t. But this week’s prompts both appeal to me.

    Prompt 1: In another life, what career/job would you have, and why?

    Prompt 2: Give us your top 10 favorite movies of all time.

    Today I’ll do #1, because, well, it’s the first one.

    When I was a kid, I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up:

    • archaeologist
    • lawyer
    • neurosurgeon (mostly I just said that to get people off my back about career plans)
    • nurse
    • mom
    • brick layer

    The easy answer is that I’d be a writer, and a successful one (hey, it’s my alternate reality I’m imagining). I’d have taken the path I saw for myself in high school, pursued journalism, written some nonfiction under my own name, and written some fiction under a pseudonym. Or I’d have turned to magazines rather than newspapers, and I’d be a freelance writer with the aforementioned nonfiction and fiction.

    But I really didn’t like the person I was when I was a reporter–even a high school reporter–and I have discovered that I don’t really like freelancing. I’m not geared to work for myself; I prefer to work for a company or organization of one sort or another. I like the steady paychecks. I like not having to build a client base or die. I like the health benefits (Seriously, I once had the following internal monologue upon seeing a picture of the mountains in eastern Kazakhstan: I would love to be able to backpack there. I wonder if I could get to that level of backpacking. But I’d wind up with a sinus infection. Where would I get antibiotics? I’m really not Backpacking-in-Kazakhstan Girl.)

    So I’d probably be an editor, quite possibly in magazines. Considering how much I have always loved reading them, I’m not sure why I didn’t pursue this as a career path. After I got my master’s degree, I applied for a kazillion jobs (college admissions counselor, CIA analyst) in a bazillion fields (education, government, publishing, historical research) all around the world (rural Virginia, Philadelphia, the United Arab Emirates). I don’t think a single one of those jobs was at a magazine.

    In this life, I spent 13 years as an in-house and freelance (see? I even tried it) editor. My current job is not editorial, but I’m still asked to do a lot of editing.

    Yes, I know I’m out of control with the parentheses on this post, and my use of italics is erratic at best here, but this is the way my brain is working today. Bear with me.

    So I guess in whatever life I’d have, I’d have something akin to this career.

    Oh, hey, the mom part turned out to be true, too. Nice.

  • When Organs Attack

    The Bloggess is having gallstone attacks, so she’s writing about it, as she does. Her post reminds me of my own gallbladder story, which oddly is not about my own gallbladder. (In fact, it’s barely about anyone’s gallbladder.) Which is what I do. Read other people’s posts and think, “Hey, that reminds me of a story!” Although I think that’s about 2/3 of what blogging is.

    First things first: Get well soon, Jenny!

    So during my senior year in college, I went to a wedding. My favorite cousin (he must be, because he tells me he is) was marrying his awesome girlfriend (she is awesome; I could see that the first time I met her, and my cousin didn’t need to tell me). They had one of the most fun weddings I’ve been to–and I’ve been to a lot of weddings–and at the reception there was shrimp. Piles and piles of shrimp. So, you know, I ate a lot of it.

    The next morning, I made a lot of calls to my parents. A lot, because they weren’t home. So of course I, being just barely 21, had to leave obnoxious messages like, “What? You’re not sitting around waiting for me to call?”

    Turns out they were on the way home from the ER, where my mother had been diagnosed with gallstones. She was doing better, and surgery was going to be scheduled for a few weeks out.

    About two hours later, I went to the ER myself. Not for my gallbladder, but for my appendix. It took them all day to decide, but at some point they decided to admit me, and I had surgery the next morning.

    This was before the days of laparoscopy, so I got to spend four days in the hospital. Four days which cost more than four years of college. Good times.

    The day after my surgery, the doctor came by my room as I was making my way to the bathroom, and we had this exchange:

    Doctor: [sternly] Are you walking?
    Me: Just to the bathroom and back.
    Doctor: [still really stern] I want you to walk.
    Me: Okay.
    Doctor: [sticking with the stern thing, because apparently it works for him] I mean it. I want you to walk.
    Me: Okay.

    So I started to walk. He didn’t say how much to walk, but I figured that it would be further and more often than I wanted to. I decided that getting up every two hours and walking as much as I could would probably be close enough. I walked until I was halfway to tired, and then turned around and went back. Every time, I went farther (further? I never get those straight. But one of the uses in this paragraph has to be correct. I’m covering my bases.)

    After a day, one of the nurses said, a little tentatively, “Are you sure you’re supposed to be walking so much?”

    I said, “I don’t know. The doctor said to walk, but he didn’t say how much. Is it too much?”

    She shrugged and said, “Well, I’ve never seen anyone recover from open abdominal surgery this quickly, so I guess keep doing it.”

    Mind you, all of this was at the end of the academic quarter. Which meant that the next week, I had final exams. Thanks to the roommate who got me to the ER and stayed there all day until I was admitted, and then came back the day of my surgery and stayed there until I was awake, I got two of the four postponed.

    It was also right before my sorority formal, which I totally went to. Take that, open abdominal surgery.

  • Hey, Remember Me?

    Wow, it’s been a week and a half since I last posted anything. That’s a long time in Blog World.

    The reason is that I’ve been sick. I started feeling bad last Tuesday, and on Wednesday I had what was clearly a sinus infection, complete with monstrous headache. Naturally, I went to work.

    In the afternoon, I went to see my doctor, who said that, yes, I had a sinus infection, and did my right ear hurt? Because I also had an outer ear infection. So I walked away with prescriptions for an antibiotic and eardrops, and a sample of a nasal spray that kind of scares me–and requires pre-qualification for a lowered co-pay.

    Thursday I stayed home sick. I watched Thor. It was disappointing because it wasn’t even remotely better than I expected it to be. Also, it failed to explain much about Loki’s mindset in The Avengers, which was the whole reason I watched it. (Seriously, what is his deal? He clearly has power, but he gives up really easily a lot of the time. Is he just lazy? And what on earth happened to the quality of Kenneth Branagh’s directing? Because he started with the ability to do this.)

    Friday I went to work, and then at 11:30 I went home.

    Saturday, Baguette didn’t nap. On Sunday, she did, but then she played with the iPad too late in the evening (it turns out) and was up chattering and singing until after midnight. (Our recent adventures with the iPad are worth their own post.)

    Monday I went back to work and also got my doctor to call in a new prescription for antibiotics, because the first one wasn’t working that well. Certainly not as well as it should have been five days in. And by the end of the day my voice was so raspy, I wasn’t sure if I’d have one at all in the morning.

    But I did, mostly, and I can tell that the new antibiotic is slowly, slowly working better. Although I noticed a difference yesterday and today it seems to have plateaued, so I don’t know. It definitely isn’t fast enough.

    And all of this is why I haven’t been blogging. But I want to, so hopefully next time I’ll have something more interesting to say.

  • The Best Things In Life Are Free

    This week’s Monday Listicles? “10 things you love that are free.” Read on:

    1) Baguette’s kisses.
    2) Mr. Sandwich’s love for me and her.
    3) Snuggles with Wicket.
    4) Rain on the roof.
    5) Going for a walk and seeing our great neighbors.
    6) Opening the windows and letting fresh air blow through the house.
    7) Friday evenings, with the whole weekend ahead.
    8) A compliment to a stranger.
    9) Sun salutations.
    10) Conversation.