The folly of getting comfortable

Just when you are feeling fantastic, and the Meniere's is the last thing on your mind, BAM!

You spin back into reality with a week long (still going) episode.

And the bitches at work start in on you for driving.

HELLOOOO Im not driving when Im in a full spin.

HELLOOOO Driving (or riding) makes me really wobbly for a while after I've been in the car a while  ie: my commute...

So Im wobbly.
So Im dizzy.
Im not in a full spin or I'd not be typing, hell I wouldn't even be at work I'd be barfing.

All this does is give the haters more ammo. More ammo to try to tell me how to live my life. More ammo to use to judge me....
My hearing is impaired right now so I can't hear your snotty comments.

HA!  There is that...

It gets better every day, but right now I feel pretty crappy and want to take a nap.

No, I want to play with my embroidery machine, but I feel too lousy for that....

Right now its 76 degrees in my office and Im about to freaking die... Oh yea, ya'll screwed with the a/c ten seconds after I said the cooler air felt better.


So screw off haters and judgers. My situation sucks enough without your comments.

You don't know the fear I have of the day when I can't work anymore. You have no idea what it means to me to be able to still wobble into work and sit behind a desk and work.  You have NO idea how bad our situation will be if I can't work.

You have no clue.

P.S.   Im jacking the a/c down while you are at lunch.

Dreams of the Other Me

Sometimes my dreams are filled with remembering who I was before I was me now.

Lately that's been a lot.  I remember the amazing time I had as a firefighter (not the bad stuff thank goodness) as I sleep. I do all the things I used to do, then I wake up.

Sometimes I wonder what things would have been had I not gotten sick. I try not to fill my mind with "what if's" but sometimes they seem to pour in in large volumes. I sit quietly at my desk and close my eyes. My mind wonders to another time and another place. Just as I start to drift away back into that dreamland, I snap away at the sound of the phone chirping.

Gotta shake it off and get back to constructive things. Im not there anymore and I will never go back. Its time to move on, I tell myself. Time to move on.

Temporarily (I hope) Deaf in my Left Ear

After the holidays, the flu and a thousand other things going on, I got a nasty cold. The nastiest cold I have ever gotten to be exact. One of the worst. Put me down for 4 days. It gave me a raging ear infection.

I'm working on a week with no hearing in my left ear. What?!

Yup. I woke up a week ago deaf in my left ear. As in I can't hear anything more than mumbles and a high pitched ringing that has replaced normal sound.

Hopefully it won't be permanent. Hopefully the antibiotics will correct this. Hopefully. But, as we all know, Meniere's is a hearing and balance disorder. So I might be like this a while.

It feels isolating, to be honest. I can't hear people coming in and out of my office, I can't use the phone on that ear, and I can not stand to listen to the radio in the car because its lopsided.  It sucks.

So lets hope the last two days of the antibiotics knocks this out so I don't have to keep saying "What?"

Refinishing a Sewing Machine

At some point in my childhood my mom taught me to sew on a treadle machine.  Then she got one, and then another.  I was given one when before she died and I never had room for it.  Then this summer I picked it up from my dad's.  Its mechanics were smooth, but it needed parts and was a bit worse for wear to be honest. So I decided to paint it.

The machine before.

Nickel plated under the grunge

Rusty Irons, but they are still smooth working

Her digits. These tell me where she was made and when. (Elizabethton, NJ Sometime between 1 SEP and 8 SEP 1925. She has 25,000 sisters

Pardon the crap in the garage.... her wheel is rusty too!

I wanted to paint her, but how should I go about it?  On the way to work, on that long, long drive I decided to paint her like a fire truck.
So I had to strip her down.

she's all naked

Then I used Rust-oleum self etching primer to prime her.  I closed off all the holes and taped off the workings. I did not paint her underbelly because I didn't want to disassemble her all the way...
Then I painted her with Rust-oleum Gloss Red.

I promise the light makes it look orange.  She IS red.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut decals out of goldleaf vinyl. And I applied it to the machine. Then I used diamond plate vinyl to trim her out. I bought some parts to replace what was missing too.

Then I clear coated her with Rust-oleum clear gloss.

Ta-da!!

Front of Machine

The wheel

The back

The face

I'll post the cabinet and irons after I finish them.  This gal really turned out.  I wonder what momma would have though.

You have GOT to be S**ting me...

The dentist visit I wrote about last time was bad, did you know it got worse.  Nerve damage.  Specifically Trigeminal Neuralgia, type 2 if I understand it correctly.  Unrelenting, God-awful pain 24/7.  The dentist said that was what was wrong, but I wound up with a referral to an endodontist, who said the tooth was good and referred me to the ENT, who gave me prednisone to no avail.  Then while at my GP for the blood pressure med I take, I told him about it.  And here we are.
600-800mg Advil every 6 hours and 100mg of neurontin.

Im hoping that this will ease up and go away, if not forever then for a really really really long time. It can. Otherwise Im in for hell for the rest of my life.  They call TN the suicide disease.  On a day I forgot my meds, I see why.

But seriously, a filling ruined my face.  You have got to be shitting me.

But it would seem it happens from time to time.


I won the crap lotto.  Why is it I can't win the powerball.....

Spinning From The Dentist and Other Medical Adventures...

There is no end to the suck that is Meniere's.  A dentist appointment, which normally sends me into a panic attack anyhow, set off my vertigo and left me with a horrible case of BPPV that lasted weeks.  To top it off, the magic didn't end there as I was enveloped in a horrific jaw pain that the dentist, an endodontist, and the ENT can't figure out.   Im still in pain with a few days of 800 mg advil and the last few days of prednisone left to go.  My family doc is going to see me this week and we get to have a chat about why I have to see him twice a year now for stable BP (this costs money you know) and what he recommends about the jaw.  Since TMJ isn't covered by our insurance, I have to pray he calls it something else or they will "retro" reject the other visits.

I already owe almost 1100.00 for the colonoscopy (thats after insurance), and who knows how much for the dental visits that keep me ready to scream. Or grind my teeth, which might be the problem anyhow.



What the heck are we even paying premiums for if we have to pay so much for everything anyhow?

Next time no filling, they are going to have to pull the tooth.

Yay we have insurance!  BOO that we can't afford to use it!

House Acquired. Mission Accomplished, sort of...

Its been a while since I posted.  We finally found a house that we adored.  It is perfect for us, well perfect in that it met both size and cost requirements.   Things are looking pretty good.  Then I went to the dentist, and then I had several vertigo attacks in a row.  Oh and then we found termites the inspector said weren't there.

So we acquired a house.  We are still in the "cant have kids yet but the clock is ticking" land.  Uncertainty has fallen upon me as the vertigo has returned once again.  It was triggered by dental work, and now Im dealing with BPPV.  Thats where head position triggers a short, but uncomfortable spin.  It makes lots of things difficult. Imagine not being able to look up or down for weeks. Yea, its like that.

So we have a house.  Whoot!!  

Im hoping that everything else settles down and the house is a blessing not a chore.

So my mission was to find a house, have a family and live happily ever after.  So part of the mission is accomplished.  We just need kids to complete the mission, right?