Tag Archives: sickness

Weekend Recap: Parental Ailments & Toddler Head Planks

You know how you can make awesome plans for the upcoming weekend only to have them fall out of place for one reason or another? That pretty much happened to us this past weekend.

Not like we had a full agenda lined up, we just planned on being in good health to tackle our backyard project and continue with my Squat Every Day routine. Well, an infected and inflamed eye for Going Mom and some sort of sharp pain (thinking rotator cuff tear) in my right shoulder kinda wiped the whole “in good health” part of our weekend out.

My poor wife has been battling her eye infection for several days and it has only gotten worse. I think, but we’re not entirely certain yet, that it’s on its way to getting better, but only time will tell. It’s driving her, and therefore me, crazy, and I wish I could do something to rid her eye of the crap.

For me, I’m sure my OCD habit to exercise with heavy weights almost daily helps my shoulder pain not one bit, but I keep going anyway. We had a lot of rain which made the ground nice and soft (very muddy), so I did what I could in the backyard by shoveling dirt and moving it out with a wheelbarrow. Yeah, all “smart” moves when you’re nursing an injured shoulder.

I’m hesitant to go to the doctor because, one, sometimes all symptoms disappear when I do, and two, making Avery go to the doc with me after her having to go not long ago would be traumatic for the poor girl. Again, time will tell, and then I’ll tell you here on the blog. I know you’re all concerned, right? 🙂

Speaking of, the one person not ailing this weekend was our growing girl, so that’s a plus!

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With a painful eye, Kelley still took some excellent shots of Avery while cleaning all around the house. We aren’t idle people, so even when we’re sick/hurt, we still find stuff to do. The house is much cleaner as a result.

Avery “helped” Mommy clean and rearrange things all over the house this weekend and she hardly wanted anything to do with me. I’d ask her one question and she’d run away whining to Kelley. Meh, I know it’s just a phase. Besides, I was able to get a lot of cooking done for my two beautiful girls without having to worry about tripping over a quiet toddler in the kitchen. Cooking parents, you know what I’m talking about.

Butternut Squash and Kale Fritatta=Winning
Butternut Squash and Kale Fritatta = Winning

She has become great at working out with Mommy and Daddy, and the newest exercise seems to be the plank. Luckily, she’s not doing that in the kitchen, yet, but a more advanced version using her head and rocking chair.

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I don’t know about you, but that would hurt my neck amongst other things and I’m proud of her feats. She knows she strong too. How strong you ask? Well…

We never taught her to pump her fist like that, but it’s only right that she does it to show her strength. Right?

Not much outside playtime happened as a result of the rainy weather, and poor Avery didn’t exactly understand.

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But getting to spend time with Mommy seemed to make her forget about outside. As is apparent….

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Now we’re back to the beginning of another week, but Kelley will be taking off to stay home as I go to the National At-Home Dads Convention from Thursday to Sunday. I’m excited, a lot, but I know I’ll miss my two girls back home and will be eager to see them on Sunday.

I have a little food prep to do so my wife can enjoy my excellent cooking (yeah, I’m biased) while I’m away. I feel this week, short as it may be, will still drag on.

Do you still find things to do when you should really just be resting?

Do you like going to conventions? Any ones in particular if so?

Guess What Ass Won’t Let Me Run A Half-Marathon

I’ve been talking about running the Mother’s Day half-marathon that was delayed to the weekend after Mother’s Day for a while now. You know, the one that got rained/lightninged (word?) out so I indoor rowed the 13.1 miles in our garage before kicking off the Mother’s Day celebration.

Although the forecast is calling for more crappy rain through next Sunday, when the race was rescheduled, I doubt it will be anything severe enough to be cancelled again. But I already know my running in the race is cancelled because of some ass. Can you guess who or what I’m talking about?

Yeah, it’s MY ass!

Disclosure: Some details (words, not pictures) may be too graphic for those faint of heart. Consider this your warning before you continue reading.

Starting around last weekend, I noticed a little lump on the inner part of my butt (hey, it happens), and waived it off as a result of the sweaty workout I did the other day where I was completely drenched in sweat. I figured it was just little painless infection that I will just keep clean and dry and it will go away, no biggie.

WRONG!

It only got worse and eventually became so painful every step I took made me squint and sitting down just wasn’t happening. Even after Going Mom made a calming epsom salt bath for me the day before, it was no match for the infection that was already at DEFCON 1 status.

By Tuesday night, after tossing and turning with no sleep, I finally caved at 3 am and had to find an urgent care or ER facility immediately. Luckily Sadly, there’s plenty of those all over (just like fast food chains….correlation?) and I only had to drive 5 miles. That, by the way, was the most awkward drive ever since I had my butt lifted off the seat the entire time.

From what I read on Dr. Google, I expected to go in, have a doctor make an incision to drain the pus/fluid, and I’d get back in time for my wife to go to work. Once again, I was wrong. I knew it right after having two people look at my ass and gasp as they said “Oh, that’s bad”. Thanks for the comfort, doctor and nurse. Bam, I was tagged.

 

One thing was for sure, they had to get the infection drained and under control quickly since staph (especially MRSA which is what we think it is) is a force to be reckoned with. After the nurse stuck me 5 times (not kidding) on my right arm to start an IV, she had to have someone else come and use my left arm instead. He got it after the second time.

Then I was told to sit and wait a few hours as the surgeon who was on call made it over to operate on my butt. That will never sound right………ever.

They gave me morphine which helped negate the pain a little, but I still couldn’t lay on my back without looking like a deformed squirrel trying to crack open an acorn. I passed time between watching the time and a WPT tournament in Montreal.

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I tried sleeping, “butt” that wasn’t happening. Note the time was almost 6:30 am then. It wasn’t until 7:40 until the surgeon finally made it in. I know the world doesn’t revolve around my ass, but I have a right to complain anyway, right?

The guy who showed up had long gray hair in a ponytail and was wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt. That made me grateful I didn’t have a motorcycle to ride home on; OUCH! He was actually very nice and upfront with me, which I appreciated.

All he did was numb the area and worked to drain the infection. Holy hell that was the worst pain ever, and that’s with another dose of morphine! There I was, flat on my stomach and gripping the bed rails as two guys worked on getting crap out of my ass. A new life low had just hit.

Ten painful minutes later I was putting my shorts on over my gauze-stuffed butt and waited for a friend to come pick me up. He drove me home and took Kelley back to my car and she picked up my prescriptions. 2 antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine. I hate pain killers, but after suffering through the day, I did take one last night. I’m not officially a hypocrite. Damn you, ass!

Kelley ended up staying home all day and her work was completely understanding, so that was nice. She helped and tried to get me to stay still, but it was bad enough that the doctor told me to back off of exercise for a few days and definitely NO running.

“So I can’t run 13.1 miles on Sunday, huh?” I asked.

“No.” was the only reply.

And there you have it, I’m typing this with gauze still in my crack (no, not the same from the hospital) and pain radiating there as well. Hopefully the swelling will be down soon and the culture they are running on the drained fluid shows that they gave me the right antibiotics to knock this crap out of my system.

Back in 2011, I had a bad case of MRSA while on vacation in Colorado, so I guess this is the bacteria flaring up in my body again. I’ll keep you updated on my road to a hopeful recovery. I know everyone’s concerned. 🙂

Just be glad I didn’t share any pictures of the thing! I told Kelley I’m still going to run 13.1 miles around our home once I’m better, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Have you ever dealt with staph and/or MRSA?

Did I gross you out at all or as a parent, are you used to gross things? Throwing poop, maybe?

Making A Rash Decision and Duct Tape Diapering

Guess we celebrated Avery’s recovery too soon. No more fever, but she started to develop a rash on her lower belly. It was good to see she was back to being active, but her eating was and still is not up to par.

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Despite what it looks like in the picture, Avery was not scratching at or even acknowledging her spreading rash. But, Going Mom did enough worrying for the both of them and was worriedly searching Dr. Google for an answer.

Since it was the weekend and the rash didn’t seem severe enough to act immediately, I said we should just wait until Monday and reassess then. My wife, still showing signs of concern, as any loving mother would, agreed to give it time. Meanwhile, she used several forms of home remedies/treatments in hopes the rash would suddenly disappear.

Coconut oil and her homemade solution of essential oils to diffuse may or may not of helped, but her rash was hardly visible by Monday. Phew! Kelley took off from work and neither of us wanted to spend her day off going to the doctor for our poor daughter’s rash. It had already been a long, stressful week for Avery, and an impromptu visit to the doc would only add to it!

In other news, Avery started undoing her cloth diaper again. This happened a few months ago and we used packaging tape as the solution. The tape sucked and fell off easily, so we’ve upgraded to duct tape which seems to work much better.

duct tape cloth diaper
So it’s come to this…..

Or so we thought…..

duct tape cloth diaper
Here, Mom, you might want this.

Apparently you have to duct tape all around or Avery will simply just pull the tape right off. Smart girl.  Now she gets duct tape full circle around her cloth diaper.

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Like any toddler, she doesn’t make it easy, but handing her the roll helps keep her still long enough just to make sure everything’s secure.

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Once she’s all wrapped up, she then likes to get down to rap.

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Okay, not really rap, but that’s the only thing that would work for my corny dad pun/joke. So sue me! Actually,please don’t. 🙂

Besides the mystery rash and finicky eating, we had a great family weekend together. Even though Avery didn’t have a fever, I think it was best we didn’t bring her to our friend’s kids’ 2 year old birthday party since she hasn’t been 100% quite yet and we didn’t know whether the rash would spread or not. Instead, we enjoyed playtime and coffee during the day, and a lot of The Walking Dead after Avery’s bedtime.

Seriously, we are hooked for the long haul and almost to season 4 at this point. It’s bad when we set a limit of 2 episodes and end up watching 2 more. The crazy life of parents with a toddler, huh? That said, I enjoy having a good show to get into with my wife, and it’s nice to stay off of the computer and watch something good with her instead.

Really quick before I wrap things up, I went on an hour long run in my new Soft Star Shoes Dash RunAmocs with a bullhide leather sole and find these better than my Moc3’s I reviewed previously. I’ll have a full review of the Dash RunAmocs eventually, but will be running a half-marathon in them on Mother’s Day before publishing anything. Until then, I’ll keep wearing my Soft Stars and Avery will wear hers as we exercise and play together each day!

soft star shoes

Has your kid ever had a mystery rash that didn’t seem to bother them but looked bad?

Any other kind of rash?

What do you think about taping your toddler’s diaper to keep them from undoing it?