The Po Show

Needled

It's kind of sad when you get blase about having a needle stuck into your cervical spine, but I really wasn't a bit concerned about having another epidural yesterday. As before, I was most concerned about the logistics, asking Tessa's friend's mom if she could take her after school, making sure Ross could come home early to make sure someone was here for Matthew's bus. And I was really worried about my nose running during the procedure, since I've had a cold for a week and my nose has been pouring like a faucet and I couldn't take any meds the day of the procedure. The thought of being face-down on the OR table, lying perfectly motionless for half an hour, with my nose dripping was just really gross.

Well, true to form, everything I'd worried about was fine and the procedure itself really sucked. Not that it was more painful or anything, but it was very unpleasant. First of all, I couldn't get comfortable on the pillows under my chest; they felt too high and were kind of choking my throat. They tried to adjust them but it never did feel okay. Then the nurse put a nasal oxygen cannula into my nose, which they didn't do last time. As they prepped me, I started to feel like I couldn't breathe. I think this might go back to my experiences during my labor with Matthew, when they kept forcing me to wear an oxygen mask and I absolutely could not breathe during the contractions. I asked to take it out and they taped it next to my face instead, which was better but I still felt like I couldn't breathe. Then the doctor started the actual epidural, and I could feel a panic attack coming on. I started to get into a feedback loop of feeling the panic rise, but knowing that I *absolutely, positively COULD NOT move*, which fed the panic more.

"You're doing great," the nurse said, with that rising inflection that suggests that you are about to not be doing so great. "Don't move your head." So I fought the panic, shoved it down as hard as I could, listened to my heart rate bleep faster, forced myself to breathe. Luckily my spine doctor is a freaking rock star, and he finished up really quickly. "30 seconds," he assured me, then deftly whipped his hands around and said, "Okay, needle out!"

Boy, as soon as he said that, I started to shake like crazy. "You did great," the nurse told me, and I sort of chuckled uneasily. "No, really, you did!" Well, I didn't jump off the table or anything, so I guess I do get points for that, but it was so much harder compared to the last time, when I didn't move a muscle the entire time and it was a total cake walk.

I think part of the problem was that last time, the procedure was in the early afternoon, so the doctor told me that I could have breakfast but no lunch. This time, I was going in in the late morning, and I was told to fast from the night before. Me and fasting, we don't get along so well. So I think I was having blood sugar issues on top of the PTSD flashbacks from the oxygen tube. After they brought me to recovery and I had toast and juice (and two cups of coffee), I felt a lot better.

So now we wait and see again if this epidural does the trick. It took about 3 days last time for me to feel some relief. Plus this time I have the added bonus of not getting on a plane for 6 hours a week later, which pretty much negated the benefits of the last needling.

My New Babies

Ohhhh myyyyy, so much I could have written, here on my first post after returning back to NY and the blogosphere. So much about the summer, and how the kids did, and thoughts on Matthew turning 12, and lots about the back to school process. But sadly I have been afflicted with an initially mysterious ailment that has, in the past day or so, revealed itself to be nothing more than an icky viral whatever. But I've felt not great, I've been very busy putting our lives back in order, and thus have not gotten back to posting.

But now I must tell you about my latest obsession: my new prides and joys. They don't look a thing like me, but I have worried over them and cared incessantly for them and stared at them in fascination for over a week now.

They are aquasaurs. They are actually Triops longicaudatus, little water-dwelling creatures that have been around, basically unchanged, since before the dinosaurs. Now they are merchandised by an educational toy manufacturer for kids (and dubbed Aquasaurs, since Triops longicaudatus doesn't trip off the tongue quite as readily) in a kit that includes a plastic tank, dried eggs, and food for the little beasts. Tessa saw the kit at TRU and immediately wanted it. Unbeknownst to me, she got online later and put it on her Amazon wish list, so she received her beloved aquasaurs for her birthday. Naturally we couldn't hatch them at Grandma's house, so we waited till we got home and set up the tank last Thursday.

The eggs were suppose to hatch within 1-2 days, but by the end of the 2nd day there didn't seem to be anything going on. On the 3rd day, I was ready to call it a bust, and Tessa was ready to try again with more eggs, when I saw a tiny little spot of something hovering in the water. The aquasaur hatchings are **tiny**, like a speck, and they flit around in the water with little jerky motions. So it looked like one freaking aquasaur had hatched (about 50 eggs were in the packet, and we were instructed to put in half the packet).

I watched, sitting on the floor in front of the tank, for days, for long minutes at a time, as the little speck grew into a feathery swimming thing. It grew more, and developed discernible, itty bitty, legs and eyes and tail. And then I realized that there was a new little speck flitting around, so it seemed that a new egg had hatched, days after it was supposed to.

I worried that the water was too cold for the tiny population to thrive, so I started putting a heating pad up against the tank. This was evidently the right thing to do, for more tiny little specks joined the party. So now, nine days after starting this whole affair, there is one largish aquasaur (about half an inch long and looking like the picture on the box, which Tessa named Moonstone), a little feathery swimming one (named Bella), and about six little specks of various size (the largest one is named Jade, and the other tiny ones have gone unnamed by Tessa. I call them the scoot-scoots, since that's the motion they make through the water). We were supposed to start cleaning the tank on the eighth day by scooping out half the water and replacing it (oh, did I mention that we can only use spring water for everything the aquasaurs come in contact? And that on the first day, I didn't know that, so I had to empty about a million little half pint bottles of water into the tank, since that was the only spring water we had on hand). But I'm afraid to scoop out any water, for fear of scooping up some of the scoot-scoots.

So me and my dizzy head have been sitting on the cold tile of the dining room floor (the tank is set up on Tessa's art table, an old coffee table), staring endlessly at the little aquasaurs, trying to count them, trying to see if they are growing, hoping that they are not dead. I am lavishing buckets of care on them, removing bits of food from the water's surface when it starts to spoil, checking for murkiness in the water, examining the water temperature a hundred times a day, worrying about their well-being.

I've heard of women redirecting their baby lust into caring for a dog or a cat, but I may be the first overly maternal caregiver to water bugs.