Sick of Being Sick, Tired of Being Tired

I've been sick on and off (definitely more on than off) for the past year and a half. The pain has been so bad sometimes this week... I was not a happy camper. I think I have a better attitude about it since listening to Brother Richards' talk in General Conference last month. It's true that pain brings humility, and it also brings gratitude in a roundabout way: when you're feeling good, it's easy to be grateful for that because you have the memory of not feeling good fresh in your mind. Opposition.

So although it's been a rough week, I'm feeling hopeful. A friend from church called me earlier this week to check in with me, since I wasn't there last Sunday. She thought I should see an allergist, in case I have food allergies, and she gave me the name of her son's allergist. I have an appointment with him later this month, which I am looking forward to. Even if I don't have food allergies, I think I do have other allergies, because I'm always sniffly/coughy, and I have awful dark, yellow circles around my eyes.

People are so funny. I generally do not say anything when I feel sick, and the only people who know are three people at church, three people at work, my sister, and Laynie. My principal and assistant principal knew but I think they assumed I got better when I had my gallbladder removed. I'm not a big whiner. And I would never tell people all of the symptoms, because I don't want them to think I can't do my job or something. When people find out I'm sick (which doesn't really describe it, but whatever), they always want to advise me on what they think it is. People think it's whatever they have heard of or have experienced themselves. I don't mind hearing their theories, though, because I know they're trying to help.

Since I can't change it, I'm now focusing on what I need to learn from this experience. That has been really positive.

Sometimes it's scary and overwhelming. I guess when I think about it, that's how I feel, but I don't think about it a lot. Mostly I focus on compensating, like saving my energy during evenings and weekends. And I've tried some elimination and challenge dietary changes, which gives me a purpose, even if it doesn't help much.

I'm gearing up for another round of "Let the doctors poke and prod, ignore most of what I say, and find nothing." I've been off doctors for a few months, so it's probably time. I have the new allergy guy, and I got a GI recommendation from my boss, who has Crohn's. She's a discriminating GI consumer, so hopefully her recommendation is good. I want to find a new internist/GP. Laynie's family doctor seemed pretty with it, although she was a really strange person. I have a GI doctor who I think is a really good doctor... if your symptoms fit his research interests. He's into Barrett's esophagus and stomach problems. I became less interesting to him when he concluded that my GERD is due to a plain, old, run-of-the-mill hiatal hernia, and when my biopsies showed no signs of Barrett's. Too bad, because he is a brilliant guy, and I want brain power on my problem!

GI is a part of it, the only part that anyone knows. I get a lot of stomach cramping, and sometimes I'll have diarrhea for a day or several days, for no apparent reason. And the surgeon removed several lower abdominal lesions, which he speculated were to due to inflammation/infection unrelated to my poor, tired gallbladder, which had given up the ghost by that point. But there's more.

What's up with limb weakness, abnormally high muscle tension (torso), tingling, and a feeling that I need to MOVE my limbs. I think it might be what they call "restless leg syndrome," but sometimes it's my arms--like right now. I've had a few times where I had a problem with my left hip, that it's weak and hurts when I try to use my leg. I literally cannot support myself. One time it happened just after I entered a preschool classroom, and I had to stand there, balancing on my right leg, because I could not bear weight with the left. Luckily the class was in circle time, so it was not abnormal just to stand there watching them. It happens more often when I'm sitting and go to stand up, and my body says, "Surprise! I've been saving this for you.. You can't stand, silly!" It's not like this happens frequently, but I doubt it's normal to happen at all. I just go ahead and stand with my right leg, and I gently stretch the bad hip. That helps. Or I can wait for it to go away.

I am loath to admit that I have cognitive symptoms, like word retrieval issues, losing my train of thought, and confusion. I know that everyone experiences going into a room only to forget why you're there. But there are days or weeks that it happens to me frequently, then I'm fine for weeks or months. And have you ever suddenly not known where you are? Not just forgotten where you're going but not even known where you are. I'm not sure if that's normal or not. It happened to the title character in Still Alice (a book I highly recommend), and she ended up having Alzheimer's. When it later happened to me, of course I thought about that book, but I don't think I fit the profile for Alzheimer's. Whew. But the description in the book was right on the money.

And then there's the exhaustion. Sometimes I'm so tired when I get home from work, I can't do anything but lay there. That's pretty much guaranteed to happen on days when I work my regular job and take a freelance interpreting job in the evening. Even thinking about doing anything when I feel that way is enough to make me cry. I feel like such a weenie. It's not like I'm out on a construction site all day! My job is mentally and emotionally draining (try interacting all day with people who need you precisely because they can't interact with people), but I really don't think I should be that tired. It's not all the time. And maybe food plays into it, because there are times I'm too busy to eat properly.

The tough thing is that I don't even know that my problems are related. I wonder if the GI stuff is separate from the rest of it.

I'm so glad [next to] no one reads my blog. It's so helpful for me to process.

OK, I'm formulating a plan. I have the allergist appointment. I'm going to make an appointment with my nurse practitioner (give her one last chance--she did order the right tests to identify the gallbladder problem, after all). I'm going to make an appointment with my boss's GI doctor. And I think I'll make an appointment with Laynie's weirdo doctor. When it comes to doctors, I'll take intelligence over good social skills any day, and I think she's intelligent.

Sometimes I feel like I need to get a medical degree to solve my problems!

Listening Therapy Videos

Laynie recorded some listening therapy we did over the weekend.

First is the Ling 6 sound check. The sounds mm, ah, ee, oo, ss, and sh cover all of the frequencies of speech, so they should be checked before you practice listening. Probably should be checked every day. The point is for Laynie to hear them (like raising your hand when you hear a beep), but she can usually tell what they are, which is great.

In the next clip, Laynie is listening and saying the words she hears. She chose these ten common words, and we have been practicing them off and on for a few weeks.

Next is a list of words that has groups of words beginning with the same letter. Laynie might have the choices "pan, pail, Pete, pitch" and have to say which one she heard. It's not too hard, except that she hasn't heard the words before (or not anytime recently)--that makes it harder. She has to use her phonics knowledge and her listening skills to figure out which word I'm saying.

The last activity is me reading a book to Laynie and pointing out things that I see on each page. I don't think she's really listening to me read, because she's thinking about what I'm going to ask her to point to or say. Most people haven't really heard Laynie talk, but I can tell you that her speech has definitely improved. I should look for an old video of Laynie talking before implants, so you can see the difference. It's just amazing that she can imitate just using her hearing, without visual cues. In these videos, you can see Laynie using strategies, including narrowing down the choices by sound, focusing on one word at a time, and saying what she thinks she hears to check if she's right. So here is the train book. Oh, I split up the videos because someone (ahem) got distracted by a bird on the balcony and wasted some time. ;)

Laynie Is Making Great Progress

My spring break is this week, so I got to go to Laynie's auditory rehab session yesterday. She is doing so well!

Last week the therapist, K, told her that she is done with closed sets, because she is doing so well with them. K has been giving Laynie lists of words or sentences and saying them with her mouth covered. Even with lists of 16 words or 10 sentences, Laynie has been getting 100% right with only a few repetitions. It's too easy for her!

Laynie has been doing one open set task every week, the WASP list (sounds, syllables, and simple words that cover all of the sounds of English). K says something, mouth covered, and Laynie repeats it. This was pretty hard at first, but Laynie just finished the first list of 25 sounds/words, and she's on to the next list. She is really improving with being able to say what she hears. She uses some strategies that K and I have taught her, as well as a "cheat sheet" that K made for her during therapy showing groups of sounds that are similar, to narrow down her guesses to the right kinds of sounds. Sometimes her brain knows the sound and doesn't tell her what it means--she can say it but not know what she's saying. She is doing just amazing with this task. It's the same one K initially thought would be too hard for Laynie even to attempt, which she almost didn't include in the original assessment.

Yesterday Laynie did all open set tasks, which is what she will be doing in rehab from now on. She did the whole first WASP list, and she learned five new sounds/words from the next list. She whipped through them! Then she did a new task, which K warned would be much harder. She was going to say a short sentence and Laynie would repeat it. Or at least try to figure out how many words were in the sentence--whatever she could do.

K said, "I saw him." Laynie said, "I saw cat." K and I nearly fell out of our chairs! After we had recovered and K said the sentence again, emphasizing the last word, Laynie said, "I saw hat." She heard the /h/. Of course then she started trying to guess, thinking of all the H words she knows instead of really listening. When she got back to listening, she got the whole sentence right. Wow.

Then K added a word to the sentence: "I saw him yesterday." They worked on strategies like first focusing on how many syllables, then on a specific syllable, then on the beginning of that syllable, etc. Laynie got the word. K added another word: "I saw him yesterday afternoon." Using the same strategies, Laynie got it.

Then her hour was up! K explained that they will do another open set task in their next session, where K will show Laynie a sentence with a word or phrase missing, and Laynie will listen and fill in the blank. I'm sure she will do a great job.

Aren't you impressed?

I'm working on uploading some videos to YouTube of Laynie and me doing some listening therapy over the weekend. Hopefully I can add a blog post with those videos soon.

Mister Personality

One of the deaf high school students coordinated a deaf/hard of hearing ice skating trip, inviting the teachers, interpreters, and d/hh students throughout the county. It was surprisingly well-attended! There were two kids that the d/hh program head and I had targeted as really needing to attend: one because the parents need to see that talking and signing are not mutually exclusive; the other because the poor kid has no friends. He gets along great with everybody at school, but he's basically hidden away at home, playing video games and watching television. I think it's a combination of a cultural thing (acute embarrassment at disability) and being the only "kid" in the family--brothers are 17 and 18. He's 8.

Both of these kids came! I don't know how much success was had with the adorable little guy who desperately needs sign language (he has an unrepaired cleft palate and can't talk), because I was out on the ice with the 8-year-old. I was so happy that his oldest brother and his mother brought him. I think I've seen mom's face twice in the last two years. They are an overworked, poverty-level family--she doesn't have the luxury of taking off work to volunteer in the classroom or attend IEP meetings. But she is such a sweet person. Laynie got to chat with her a little, which I was happy about. She can see that sign language doesn't make you a bad person. Yeah, pretty much all of the elementary kids' families need this lesson. By middle school they start to accept the idea, and by high school they couldn't care less how their kid communicates as long as they will become a tax-paying citizen at some point.

So Laynie and my sister, Katie, who also signs, came to the little event. Katie hung with the teenagers or with me. I was kind of glued to little man, who at first was terrified, then clingy, then confident--but wouldn't let go of his stabilizer device. It was a metal, walker-looking thing that looks like this picture I found online:

But the kid was fast using that thing! As he began to get comfortable, he started chatting with the deaf students I passed, and with his interpreter, who was one of the few brave adults to get on the ice. I guess I should give little man a name. Let's go with Macarius.

Macarius is a great implant user, although he hasn't had them very long, just since he turned 7. But the noise level at the skating rink made it difficult for hearing people to communicate--you had to lean in to hear people. The hearing teachers were signing to each other to support speech (and of course to be polite). But luckily Macarius also signs, because the school district kind of put down its foot at not signing with a 6-year-old who knew five words.

He got quite the schooling in the basics of deaf cultural communication:

-Repeatedly signing someone's name sign does not get their attention.

-Vocalizing does not get their attention.

-Yeah, you have to wave your hand and get your little body in front of them so they'll see you.

-Just presenting your name sign is not enough. Everyone is going to ask you to fingerspell your name.

-And they're going to fingerspell their names. Get ready for normal speed fingerspelling, because they see an 8-year-old--they don't know you've only been signing for two years. And you learned from hearing. Sorry.

-If you want a turn in conversation, get those arms up when you see a pause. Nobody's going to say, "Macarius, what do you think?"

-"You have cochlear implants too!" is a conversation killer.

-Facial expressions will get you far.

Macarius had a bit of a crush on the d/hh program head's college-aged (I think) daughter. At one point, he told me to go on ahead, he was going to wait for her. Ouch! He loved racing with the college girl's hockey-player boyfriend.

He kept asking me HOW?? as I was skating.

Watching the deaf teenagers try to communicate with him was a rude awakening for me. He couldn't understand much of what they said. "Do you go to a school for the deaf or mainstream school?" Right, like he knows what mainstream means. I modeled answers for him to imitate when needed, and I think they thought he was dumb. Again, two years of learning language! He just doesn't know much. He did learn a new sign and English word while he was there: hockey.

Mom spent the first hour fretting at the sidelines, trying to get Macarius to wear his jacket over his fleece sweatshirt. Of course he was way too cool for that, and he told his mother that the heaviness of the coat would make him fall. (Same kid who argued that he doesn't like to do homework while the moon is out--could you tell?) It honestly is not cold at all when you're skating--I wore a light fleece and no gloves and was fine. Laynie had explained this to Macarius' mom using gestures, and she understood--but you can't keep a worried mom down. Finally I took pity on her and showed Macarius that I had on a tee shirt and fleece. "See? Two. You how many?" He immediately put on his coat. Mom thanked me profusely, nearly crying with relief.

During a Zamboni break (he watched the ice become smooth and said, "Oh, no, now I'm going to fall!"), I made him talk to the cleft palate kid. Just to show that the kids in our program talk. I fingerspelled the other kid's name, and Macarius spoke it aloud.. correctly. It's a weird name, but Macarius is my little phonics champ. Boo-yah. He tried to say hi and stuff. But the other kid was pretty boring for Macarius, since he doesn't communicate, so Macarius went off to stalk the college girl.

When Macarius' mom told him it was time to go (before everyone else was leaving), he was NOT a happy campter. But the Zamboni came out five minutes later and I called it a day, which mollified him. Mom and Brother were trying to get me to meet them at the rink again, because the child obviously had a great time, and they could see that he has a natural talent for skating. He could have ditched the stabilizer thing 30 minutes in.

I told them maybe I'd go skating with them again (how could I just outright say no?), and Macarius suggested tomorrow. Or March 31. Haha. I told him March 31 is a Thursday, and he has private AVT on Thursdays. Older brother suggested next Saturday. Oh, boy.

Another Listening Update

Wow, this is my 200th post. I thought I'd lose interest long before 200 posts.

Laynie has gone to auditory therapy twice now, and I got to go along on her second visit (it was while I was recovering from the kidney stone incident).

I like her therapist, Kristen. She is so positive, and she really "gets" deaf people. And did I say she is so positive?

Classic Kristen: "Mistakes are wonderful! I just love that you had the opportunity to listen to your choice and what I said and decide for yourself. Didn't that help you so much?"

I don't want you to get the wrong picture: she's not all valley, peppy, bubble-person positive. She's urban, hipster positive. Picture this: 50ish, haircut resembling the nasty (yet chic) queen on V, with chunky glasses and gold hoop earrings. She seriously cracks me up.

The positive vibe somehow communicates "I'm totally confident that you are going to succeed eventually, yet I'm pleasantly surprised by every little bit of progress along the way." That's just the antidote for a person who thinks slow means forever and forever means never.

They spent an hour doing two tasks--nice, slow pace. Laynie listened and repeated sounds and words. Yes, she can do it! Wowie! She can make her voice go higher and lower, louder and softer, matching what Kristen did (hiding her face behind a screen--no lipreading). She needed repetition, of course, because she is just learning. Laynie remembered three of the words she had done before: I/eye, be/bee, and shoe. Then she listened to sentences of about seven to eight words, with a group of five sentences as choices, and she pointed to the one that Kristen said. She did a great job with that, too, with not many repetitions. After doing each sentence several times, Kristen covered up the sentences and asked Laynie just to listen. She got the first one right away! She got the rest with just a few repetitions.

The tasks were standard issue auditory therapy, but I think having a good teacher makes all the difference in the world. I loved her approach and want to emulate her positive-even-through-difficulty attitude. And although none of the activities are things we haven't or couldn't do at home, just the fact that she has an appointment and drives to the clinic for the express purpose of working on listening skills makes a difference--she's very vocal after therapy sessions and comes home wanting to practice more.

Laynie has made a big leap by learning to repeat what she hears. The next step is realizing what she is saying, what the words she is repeating are. Remembering what the words sound like. Hearing the same words over and over is the key, which Kristen said as well. So Laynie chose ten words to learn this week: help, want, hungry, thirsty, food, computer, bed, store, clean, shower. She is doing a great job with them!

Laynie's favorite thing lately is whispering. I think it must have been about four years ago that I explained what whispering is (she sort of had an idea of what it was, but not exactly), but now that she's an implanted girl and can hear it, she loves it. Sometimes she'll whisper from across the room, probably to test my hearingness. It's funny to play with sound, right?

So the gist of the listening update is: Laynie is doing great, and I heart Kristen. So glad Laynie got the perfect therapist for her. Kristen feels like Laynie is just about to climb up to the next rung of the listening ladder: comprehension. That rung is spaced pretty far from the one below it. But she will do it. She's only had her implants (well, the first one) for two years, and the first year was a mess of mapping issues (struggling to get them programmed right). The audiologist said she'll take at least 5-7 years to reach her potential and might continue to improve long after that.

Speaking of the audiologist... I love him, but maybe she needs to switch. She was getting an eye blink with some sounds, which could mean too much stimulation overall or a problem with a certain electrode. It might mean that some electricity is learning the cochlea, where it's supposed to be, and stimulating the nearby facial nerve. The audiologist just globally decreased the power on both ears, which made things quieter, which she did not want. The problem is that it's hard to find an audiologist who knows how to program Laynie's brand. She has Med-El, which I guess you could say is kind of like the Apple of cochlear implant brands... think pre-iPod Apple. Okay, so it's more stable and user-friendly, and the quality might be higher... but it's not on most people's radar, and good luck finding programs for it. Med-El has a fantastic track record (no "oops we accidentally put out YET ANOTHER BAD IMPLANT that went down in a blaze of glory or maybe killed a few kids" like AB or paying off doctors like Cochlear), and the company has been wonderful with the few minor technical problems Laynie has had, but it sure is a pain to find an audiologist who can map it.

There's a fantastic audiologist at GBMC that a lot of deaf people go to, whom they bring their deaf children to.. but she only maps Cochlear and AB. Maybe she'd be willing to learn? I did hear of a good audiologist who maps Med-El, who is down at the University of Maryland. There's another guy at Hopkins who specializes in mapping adults, but it's kind of awkward to switch to someone in-house. And her current audiologist signs, which is a bonus--not fluently but enough to get by if I couldn't go with her. (Sure she could get an interpreter, but that's a crapshoot.) And of course I have to admit that Laynie is probably a very difficult patient to map, just because she doesn't know what things are supposed to sound like and can't provide very good feedback yet. Who's to say that the current audiologist didn't do the right thing by turning everything down? I'd like to see him spending more time with her and figuring out problems, though. I guess I'll just close this little digression by saying that I don't envy Laynie her decision of which audiologist.

And I'll close this whole post by reiterating that I'm so proud of Laynie for the work she is putting in. Oh, I forgot: the other day she recognized that her dad answered the phone not by his linguistic style but by his deeper voice. She is doing great!

A Wee Pioneer

I had a fun new adventure! Yesterday morning, I woke up at 2:00 because of pain.. sort of generalized back pain and sciatic nerve pain down both legs. Too hazy with sleep to recognize exactly what I was feeling. I went to the bathroom, trying to decide if it was really back or abdominal pain. The two can be confusing in the middle of the night... or I'm pain-impaired. I went back to bed but couldn't sleep. At 2:30, I gave up, took some ibuprofen, and sat down at the computer to play a game.

My back/stomach started feeling better! But by then I was wide awake. I kept playing on the computer.

Around 4:00, the pain came back, as well as strong urges to use the bathroom. Oh brother. I had already taken 600 mg of ibuprofen. Whatever, I took 400 more. Ran a bath.. Lay flat on my back.. Tried sitting.. Walking.. I was not a happy camper. And then, around 4:30, someone stuck me in the back with a knife.

I mean, I couldn't see the knife, but it was definitely there, in the right side of my back. It surprised me. I tried the bath thing and kept running to the bathroom without much luck. I just assume everything is a bowel problem, because for me, it usually is.

The pain got better. It had been an 8 but went down to maybe a 5. About half an hour later, it hit again, this time worse. Tears sprang to my eyes. I emailed my home teacher (it wasn't even 5:30 am, so I didn't want to call) to ask for a blessing on his way to work.

The pain started coming in ever-more-frequent waves, going down to a 7 and up to a 9. For me, gallbladder pain is a 10, and it wasn't quite there. But it was bad!

Laynie woke up around 6:20 to find me cowering on the bathroom floor. She told me to CALL our home teacher. I texted him as I took more ibuprofen. He got back to me pretty quickly, and I got my blessing before 8:00. Ugh, it wasn't what I wanted. I fully expected to be healed, but no: "slowly subside," "due time," "trust medical system." Doctors? Not my cup of tea.

There are about a million hospitals within half an hour of here, and my home teacher said he liked GBMC when his wife gave birth there. I had a not-so-enjoyable experience at Johns Hopkins (waiting five hours in excruciating gallbladder pain before a doctor even laid eyes on me, leaving the next day without answers), so I didn't think I wanted to go there. Northwest, 10 minutes away? I wouldn't leave my car in the parking lot--probably come back to no radio or tires. I decided to give GBMC a try.

I got right in! Score! I went straight to triage, right back to the actual ER, and saw a doctor within 20 minutes. Oh, yeah. I was loving it, although the waves of pain (still 9 at worst, 7 at best) were coming every 10 minutes. But I thought the end was in sight. The doctor immediately ordered dilaudid and something for nausea. The nurse tried to get blood but I was too dehydrated--managed to start an IV at least. I really didn't care what they did, as long as I got pain medicine SOON. They ended up giving me two doses of dilaudid, because the first one didn't do anything.

The dilaudid helped for a little while, but it seemed to wear off within an hour. Then my pain was ranging 8-10. Yup, 10. It was actually worse than gallbladder pain, although it didn't have quite the staying power. At least it was coming in waves and not being continually excruciating.

They gave me more dilaudid. I guess it helped. I had a CT scan of my abdomen and chest. Abdomen for obvious reasons (the pain was in the right side of my back, sort of near my waist), chest because I had pain when the doctor pushed on the right side of it--different pain than the other one. And some test was elevated that could mean a pulmonary embolism. Again, I didn't really care what they did, as long as they made the pain go away, so I said fine, scan my whole body if you want. Radiation shmadiation.

After I got back from CT, my pain was back up at 10. Laynie flagged down the nurse, and she stopped at the door to say, "I'm obviously in the middle of something; you're going to have to wait." Aaaah! I was in agony. I answered email and gave instructions for an IEP meeting I was missing--tried to distract myself. Mostly I held Laynie's arm and cried. The nurse came back in a while with a percocet pill.

Later (by now it was after noon) the doctor came in to say that I had a kidney stone in my right ureter. Great. I sort of thought that was what it was. Despite not having a family history of it, I knew there was a wee pioneer blazing trails through my unsuspecting innards. What else is going to cause single-sided pain in that area? On with it, make the pain go away. I was thinking that they should just put you under general anesthesia to pass kidney stones...

The doctor ordered toradol (anti-inflammatory and pain med) and flomax (old men with prostate problems medicine--relaxes the urinary system or something, less spasming as the stone goes through). And more nausea medicine, because I was pukey by that time. Still had pain fluctuating between 8 and 10.

Well, something started to work.. or maybe it was the combination of everything: dilaudid, percocet, toradol, and flomax. Suddenly my pain was fluctuating between 6 and 7. Beautiful. They kicked me out. Gave me some funnel sieves to pee in and sent me on my way.

Around 2:30, Laynie drove me home. She hit the cement base of a pole trying to navigate the tight ER circle. Poor Laynie. I screamed when the impact happened and freaked her out. I couldn't really be mad though--I cracked her front bumper when her car was pretty new, failing to a short sign in the little road around UVSC. And sadly this impact was not the first damage to my less-than-9-month-old car. The roofers dropped a canister and dinged the hood. The bumper was abraded, but I don't care, because it's plastic and won't rust. Poor little Bug, though.

On the way home, I got this weird feeling. It's hard to describe. Definitely psychotic. My heart raced, heat rushed through my limbs, and I had the uncontrollable urge to hit myself in the face. So I did. I slapped the sides of my face, and I kept saying (signing), "Something is wrong, something is wrong." I didn't want to slap my face, so I wrung my hands, bumped my knuckles, finally clapped my hands. That was good--closer to normal. I just had to keep the rhythm. Bad trip? The feeling subsided within 15 minutes and didn't happen again.

That's why you don't do drugs, kids.

Well, my pain didn't go past maybe 8 the rest of the day. The worst was over. Well, not really--the worst was controlled by drugs. Laynie went out and got my percocet and flomax prescriptions filled. I was dizzy, getting nauseated every time I picked up my head. I tried to sleep but kept getting woken up by small noises. I passed the rest of the afternoon in a haze. I ate chicken soup broth and saltines for dinner. I traded emails with friends. I texted with my sister. I texted with my dad, who is a PA. I think he specializes in urology. He said it would stop hurting when the stone got to the bladder. The doctor had said that could take hours or days. One thing dad had said made me feel better: it wouldn't hurt coming out. I could now pee with confidence.

I fell asleep at 8:30, knocked out by the percs. I got up a few times during the night and took medicine, but I slept a lot. I woke up feeling better but hating the drug side effects more. Dizziness to the point of vertigo, which caused nausea. But there was no way I was taking a chance that the crazy pain would come back.

Around 11:00, I started passing sand flecked with dark stuff that I thought was blood. Now I don't think so. I think it was bits sheared off the stone, which passed around 12:30. Hooray! It was dark red, looked like little spheres stuck together. Dad was right: it did not hurt coming out. It was only 3 mm.

So now I have the little devil in a specimen cup, ready for my urology appointment on Tuesday. They will analyze it and let me know what kind of stone it is and what kinds of foods to avoid or vitamins to take or whatever.

If you are thinking about my previous blog post and scratching your head, yes, I passed the stone at 12:30 and got to work by 2:30 for a 3:00 meeting. Because I rock. And I'm crazy: I was soooo dizzy. Of course Laynie was my chauffeur.

My little inquisitive guy asked why he didn't have speech today. It's Thursday, after all, and Thursday is speech day! So life goes on.

"Interactive"

You know how four-year-olds go through the "why" phase? Why is the sky blue? Why do we have fingernails? Right, so one of my first graders is in that stage of language development.

I got a chance to chat with him after school, keeping him distracted during a meeting with his parent. He is always fun to chat with, and today was just like every time I talk with him... except that the assistant principal was listening. I don't think she has ever talked with him (well, she doesn't sign, and you kind of need to in order to have an effective conversation with him), and she was floored by how "interactive" he is.

What is that dark stuff in your teeth and how did it get there? (fillings)

Why does hair turn gray?

Does that mean you're a grandma? (yes, directed to me--guess I'll have to flesh out his concept of "grandma" meaning mother's mother, not just gray-haired woman)

How do lava lamps work?

Will it be dark at 6:00?

Why don't french fries make you grow tall?

Older brother has a big computer--is that because it ate a lot?

Do hot dogs count as meat?

And he informed me that he cannot drive because he cannot see over the steering wheel. And that he doesn't want to turn 9 because he really likes the number 8.

He made an impassioned plea for doing homework on the bus (his bus ride is like 45 minutes) instead of at home. He gets grumpy doing homework because he doesn't want to do it when the moon is in the sky. The moon means it's night time. Night is for sleeping. He asked me to explain that to his father.

Related to our gray hair conversation, he told me that his mother dyes her hair and asked me how much hair dye costs. (He's really interested in how much things cost.) Like $25? I told him it's about $10 if you want to do it at home. But it's more like $100 if you go to the salon. Palms slapped against his cheeks, he exclaimed, "One hundred!" then whispered, wide-eyed, "Oh my god."