Sunday, November 16, 2008

For Missy :)

I'm back!


Sorry it has been so long. I haven't even done Not Me! Monday's. Shame on me. But, I have been busy... you know, the usual, work, school, horse. I have seriously neglected getting things done for myself and blogging has been on the bottom of my 'to-do' list although I enjoy it, by the time I get time to sit down and blog, i'm crossed-eyed tired. I promise that is a condition. I've been in it.

This is my FAVORITE time of the year. The leaves falling, the cold weather, the holidays. I love to decorate for Christmas. As soon as Christmas trees are sold, i'm one of the first people to purchase one, this year I plan on doing it the day of Thanksgiving if I can find a good Christmas tree!


If you don't remember I will be having my surgery this Thursday, November 20th. Time is unknown right now, but i'm actually not nervous about it. My only concern is who the heck is gonna take care of my horse? My mama will be in town for a week so that will help out immensely. This will be my 5th surgery on this year (or 4th, I can't remember) The doctor said that his is my last option as far as hearing improvements go and that the next step would be hearing aids. I will try the external hearing aids for as long as I can if this surgery doesn't help, and then move on to the Baha should I need to when I get older. But for now, I am praying that this will be the best surgery yet, and that I will finally achieve 'normal' hearing. I am taking 2 weeks off work, won't be able to lift anything over 10 pounds for a month or three and won't be able to ride Tuff for atleast a month. No sneezing from my nose, no drinking from straws, no water in the ear, no activities that will injure my head. There goes that boxing match I was hoping to enter next week. ....I am praying for a great surgery with no side effects, fast healing time, and no nausea because I usually lose my dinner from the night before when I get home from the hospital. Also pray for the surgeon to have some steady hands! This was actually the first thing I looked at when I met him was his hands and they were steady as a rock. Also help me pray that this will be the LAST surgery. No more!


Tuff is doing better, last week was rough, but now he's better. His leg flared up a little last week due to some 'neglect' i guess you could say by one of the caretakers at the barn, not intentional of course, but his 'boots' were left on him for almost 36 hours when their max wear time is 6 hours...then that same week I left him out all night to see if he can handle normal turnout...well-he couldn't obviously, so in the stall he lived for 2 days with wraps on his leg, and lots of cold hosing and linament. He's doing good now, but 1 step forward and 2 steps back is becoming a familiar slogan with his progress. Now we're on a good path. He has become the alpha horse in his little 'herd' of boys, and he bosses them all around. I have no idea why he has suddenly become the bully, but it's very obnoxious to watch. Horses will be horses and there is nothing I can do aside from keep him locked in his stall, but it makes me extremely nervous to watch because afterall, this IS how he was injured in the first place, fighting over rank in his herd. Some days I just say a prayer outloud for the Lord to keep him safe in his pasture so I won't have to deal with this again. Thankfully there are great ladies at the barn that know their stuff about lameness/healing injuries and they have offered me their opinions and have helped me thus far with his recovery. Thanks ladies!


I have worked the last 4 weekends in a row so I haven't had time to post info about a fabulous weekend Uriah and I had in October...Kelby and Averie came down (my sister-in-law and neice) and we went to the DC zoo and to the barn to visit Tuff where Averie fell in love with horses. Giving people the 'horse bug'-hey it's what I do. Here are some very cute pictures of their visit.




(11/21/08)
*updated...i never got to finish this post, but had hoped to get it done before my surgery. I had my surgery yesterday and now i'm feeling a little under the weather to continue posting pictures from their visit.
My surgery didn't go as expected...first I didn't even have surgery until 330 yesterday afternoon, yeah, so no food/liquids since midnight the night before. I wake up with some pain and since i'm allergic to hydrocodeine ...it makes me all kinds of nauseas...the nice people in recovery gave me a LOT of morhphine....too much actually so I could barely wake up and they decided to admit me last night, I just got home from the hospital around 10am this morning while it snowed the whole way home....i've just been sleeping alot, and trying to stay comfy which is difficult since I fall asleep naturally on my left side and that is pretty much a no go these days.
So the surgery.....the plan was to take out the prosthetic bone that slipped and repair it....unfortunately it was nothing like this and the actual diagnosis was an unplanned one, the doctor nor I had talked about what to do if this happened and so he just simply did a few things in the ear and closed up without doing much to repair my hearing...

When the Dr. went in he found that the prosthetic bone hadn't really slipped that much, but had actually punctured my eardrum and there was alot of inflammation...on top of that the prosthetic ear bone is attached to a 'foot plate' that is the 'last door' to my inner ear...well this footplate is fused and non helpful in the pathway for vibrations ...the option would be to drill a hole through this footplate and stick the stapes *my prosthetic inside this hole with the tip of it 'poking' through my footplate into my inner ear, thus achieving better hearing. This is of course risky and there is a 1 percent chance I coul lose my hearing altogether, a 7 percent chance that it wouldn't work at all, and a 92 percent chance that it would be helpful...the other 2 options are external hearing aids, or the baha. if you aren't sure what the baha is, see the previous post describing this...i personally feel like surgeries aren't for me at this point...but I am of course miserable from this one, so ask me in about a month whether or not i want to do another surgery...an external regular hearing aid is sounding pretty good right now. I also have otosclerosis...i was going to provide a link for you guys to read about it, but googling it just now the first one that popped up seemed easy enough to find and read.
i will come back sometime and go into more detail when i'm not so drugged and uncomfortable.
have a good night
lindsay

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