Sunday, March 31, 2013

Happy Easter!

We had a little easter egg hunt this morning in the backyard.  Jude took the egg hunting very seriously and did such a good job gathering up all of the eggs in his Easter bucket.  Happy Easter everyone!





Too bad the dog is photo bombing in the background










Friday, March 29, 2013

Surgery on Tuesday?

Well S and I met with the surgeon yesterday to talk about treatment for my herniated disc.  He went over the MRI with us and even with no medical training you could tell there was something wrong.  He also had me do a few tests- bend this way, walk over here, etc. that I thought were pretty pointless considering he could see on the MRI how bad things were and knew how much pain it put me in to do these tests.  But oh well, I have found that people do not know how to deal with people who are in pain.  There is just no accommodation at all.  For example, for my most recent appointment at my Pain Specialist I knew that sometimes there can be a bit of a wait to see a doctor and that the waiting room doesn’t have any couches or anything you could lay down on and wait.  And as it brings me to tears even on Percocct to sit or stand for more than a minute, literally, I knew that this wasn’t going to be good. So I called the day before to see if they could some how accommodate me with having some place ready for me to lay down and wait to see the doctor.  And this request just blew their minds, they didn’t have any idea how they could possibly make that happen for me, even when I told them, look it is either you find something for me or I just lay down on the floor of the lobby and weird everyone out.  Finally the solution that I came up with is for S to go in and check me in and I stay in the car laying down until she calls me to tell me they are ready for me.  Geez, it is a freaking Pain Specialist, am I really in more pain then anyone else they ever see?  Must be.   Same thing at the Spinal Specialist, S goes and checks me in while I stay in the car.  They get a room ready for me so I come in and they want me to take my picture and sign a Hippa paper.  There is a tiny couch in there and so I lay down.  The lady calls me up but there is an old man doing whatever at the desk and I have to wait for him to finish, with tears in my eyes.  Really?  You couldn’t let me lay down for 2 minutes longer and call me up when you are really ready for me.  Made me so mad.

Anyway, back to the surgeon.  He said that surgery was pretty much my only option at this point, which we knew going into the appointment.  The operation will take about two hours, I’ll be in recovery for about two hours and then I’ll be able to go home that same day.  Crazy.  And it sounds like afterwards I will feel some immediate pain relief and  within a week or two be pretty darn normal, just taking it easy so I don’t hurt myself.  And we are possibly doing the surgery as soon as Tuesday of next week.  But we won’t know for sure until Monday because of the offices and such being closed for Good Friday.  I hope we can do Tuesday, I’m going crazy just sitting here.  I miss being able to take showers, sleep through the night, pick up and hold my baby, cook dinner, all of the little stuff.  I want to be better so badly.  Fingers crossed that this happens soon and that it is the answer I hope it will be.
-Liz

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Best Part

A close friend of mine told me yesterday that her and her husband were going to start trying to get pregnant soon.  And we talked about all sorts of baby stuff how annoying strangers are when you are pregnant and how terribly judgemental other parents can be, stuff like that.  And she asked me what’s the best part of being a parent.  All I could come up with on the spot is snuggling, but there is so much more that is the best part.  Here is by no means an exhaustive list:
-When I first saw Jude’s tiny perfect face and all of time stood still
-How when Jude was a little baby he liked to nuzzle his little face right under your chin so he could have his nose pressed up against your throat
-How sometimes when he is crying I can go over and pick him up and he immediately stops because me holding him just makes everything better
-When he sleeps he looks so peaceful that it makes me wish we had a video monitor so I could just watch him sleep all of the time
-Jude loves to make us laugh.  His new thing is to come over to me and press his cute little face against my arm and make fart noises on it.  And it cracks us up and he gets this proud smile and wants to do it over and over again because he loves making us laugh and be happy.
-How one day when I was sad and crying he came over to me (I was laying on the floor) and lays down next to me and tucked his little body into my arms.  And he was so sweet to me, coming over and putting his hand on my face and trying to make silly faces to cheer me up, which is amazing to me that a 10 month old (at the time) could be so perceptive of someone elses emotions.
-How we have trained him to go “Ah” after each drink he takes of something and how he will now do it in the middle of eating a bottle or even after taking a drink of something he doesn’t like he will make a sour face but still go “Ah”
-I love how he laughs when you tickle his legs and how every night before bed we have bottle book time and then S bounces him all around the bed crazy like, making him laugh and shout with glee to get all of his sillies out.
-How totally wild his hair was when he was a baby
-Really pretty much all of it is the best part.  I’m totally in love with my little boy and the family that we have created.  There is nothing like the happiness that we have found.
-Liz









Sunday, March 24, 2013

An Inappropriate Question- Day 1 of Daycare

With my current state of being I can’t take care of Jude.  Either my variety of pills have kicked in and while I’m not in much pain I’m either asleep or half way asleep, or my pills haven’t kicked in yet and I’m clenching my teeth in pain counting the minutes.  Even on the good stuff I haven’t gotten out of bed today (it’s 4pm) yet other than one time to pee and that’s not because I don’t have things I’d like to do.  So obviously I can’t take care of a curious 13 month old.  So we have spent the last three weeks with a good friend watching Jude and I while we looked for a more long term solution.  S toured a daycare nearby and not only was it too expensive, she came home crying at that thought of Jude being some place like that.  And while I’m sure if we had the money and the time that there are lots of better day cares out there, we decided to look into an in home daycare to see what we could find.  Jude isn’t used to being on a very set schedule, he is a picky eater and needs a lot of attention and cuddling.  Also S works about an hour away from our house and so we needed some place where she could pick him up at 7pm, which I was very surprised to find was a nearly impossible time, both the big day cares and the in home day cares around us were very strict on a 6pm cut off time.  So after looking and looking and emailing we found a perfect fit for us.

He is going to an amazing in home daycare that is just a mile or so away from our house.  Right now the daycare is just him and the 15 month old son of the lady who runs it.  She might at the most take on one other kid in their age range but right now it is just the two of them.  And so far we are all such a good fit that I think we will end up being friends even after we don’t need Jude in daycare.  She also cloth diapers her son, she feeds them organic veggies and fruit that she gets each week from the farmer’s market, she texts me pictures of them playing and updates all through the day, and seems to genuinely care for Jude.  Another cool thing is that Jude will learn sign language because her son is deaf and they are teaching him to sign.  So far he knows about 50 words which blows Jude’s 4 words (dog, cat, uh oh, and sometimes mama) out of the water.  Oh and did I mention it is all SO much cheaper than traditional daycare?  Score.

A very funny thing happened though when S went to pick Jude up from his first day.  She was talking to Julia (the daycare lady) about the boys and their day when Julia asked if there was something different about Jude’s pen.is because even though both boys are uncircumcised, his looks different.  And I guess they figured out it was because we don’t pull back Jude’s foreskin yet and they do.  But what was funny was S said to her, ‘Yeah, Liz and I were talking about how we were curious to see Bryce’s pen.is because he is circumcised and we wondered if it looked very different.  And then we babysat for him and it was totally different.”  And this is funny because S forgot that Julia’s husband’s name is Bryce, but S was talking about one of Jude’s baby friends.  So Julia for a minute totally thought that S and I had been discussing her husband’s pen.is and wanting to see it!  She was so embarrassed and turned bright red until she realized S was talking about a baby and not her husband.  So funny.  And what is also funny is that Julia was like, “Well for a second I thought, maybe he would show them, just for educational purposes if they were really that curious.”  Um, no thank you!

Random cute Jude photos as I haven’t posted any in a bit:



-Liz

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Our Story- Part 5- The End!

Get caught up- check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here if you haven’t already!

S and I had a lot of fun living together that first month.  S had the smalled duplex, the only door inside her whole place was the bathroom door.  It was probably only 250 sq feet, but we were so happy.  We didn’t care that we were literally Uhaul lesbians and we didn’t care what anyone thought, we only had eyes for each other.  And that was great because I can only imagine what life would have been like if a few days into it we decided that we weren’t really that into each other.  

That next month I was able to move into my apartment with my BFF, but it wasn’t often that I stayed there.  S and I were pretty much glued at the hip and spent 90% of our time together.  I was still a bit of a drunken mess and on more than one occasion caused a scene with her friends.  One time I actually got into a fight with one of her friends a this little local pub called the Library.  I ended up throwing a handful of ice at him and somehow it hit him right in the middle of his face.  He yelled at me and I stormed out of the bar, leaving S’s friends shocked and uncomfortable.  Needless to say, several of her friends thought I was crazy and that it was time for S to move on.  I guess she saw something in me they couldn’t see, because she loved me anyway, despite my antics.

We had been dating pretty happily for about six months when I ruined it all.  Since dating S I hadn’t seen much of my BFF (or my new apartment) at all and decided one night that I needed some time away from her and that I was going to hang out with Brandon and stay the night at my place.  It turned out that Brandon was also hanging out that night with sorority girl, his cousin.  

Sorority girl and I hadn’t really seen each other other than in passing here and there since our big screaming break up.  It was also a surprise because she had dropped out of school and was living with her parents about an hour and half away, which meant that if she was in town then she was spending the night.  I was uncomfortable and predictably started drinking, and so did she.  Brandon had to go somewhere for a little bit and in her drunken state confessed that she was still in love with me.  And one thing led to another and we ended up spending the night together.

It was a huge mistake and something I don’t think I’ll ever stop regretting.  I went back to S’s the next morning and didn’t know what to do.  But within the week, I couldn’t keep it in and I told S what happened and we broke up.  I didn’t deserve to be with her after what I had done and I knew it, so I ended it.

And just like that, sorority girl and I were back together.  Only things were different this time, in some ways good, but not so much in most ways.  Our break up had really messed her up, like I said, she had dropped out of school, moved in with her parents and was on massive amounts of anti anxiety meds and such.  She was a bit of a zombie at times.  And she was just desperate to keep me happy and  somehow all of that combined made her just the shell of the person I had once loved.  There was no future with her and once again she was lying to her parents about where she was going, who she was with because they couldn’t accept the gay thing and she couldn’t handle not having them in her life.  We dated again for probably six months.  I didn’t see S at all and I realized I missed her.

The details are a bit fuzzy to me now, but I know that sorority girl went over spring break or something like that with her parents to Disney World and that I took that time apart to contact S.  I remember going over to her place, wearing my cutest outfit and just kicking myself for having ever hurt her.  It took some convincing, but by the end of the week S and I were back together and once sorority girl was back in town I broke things off with her.  And that was the end of all of drama in S’s and mine relationship.  We have been together happily ever since.

Obviously I wish that things had happened differently, that I had never cheated on S and that I hadn’t turned around and done the same thing to sorority girl.  I broke a lot of hearts and I treated two people who I loved very badly.  But, now that S and I have been together for what will be 11 years in August and married for 5 years in June with our beautiful baby boy Jude, I can’t regret any of it too much because it lead me here.

And now some random pictures to reward you for reading this long post!









Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Bad Blogger

Sorry that it is taking so long to get Part 5 of our story out.  It is the last installment and I promise to get it put up by Friday at the latest, hopefully tomorrow.  I’ve been busy these last few days.  My mom came into town to visit, which was awesome as always.  Normally when she is here we go crazy, shopping all over town and going out to eat, drinking Mexican Martinis, watching movies, etc.  But this time as I can hardly dress myself, was different, but it was still so nice.  She took such good care of me and Jude, making meals, cleaning the house, she even cleaned out, vacuumed and washed my car!  It was really nice and I think it was also a good break for S where she wasn’t in charge of having to do everything.

Also, on Monday we met with my doctor, the pain specialist, to review my MRI and see what options I have.  The MRI does not look good, I have a very significant bulge on I think it is either my L4 or L5 (can’t remember) that is clearly putting tons of pressure against the nerves that run down my right leg.  So the only option now that they know what is going on is to do surgery and remove some of the herniated disc.  So I meet with the surgeon next Thursday and could be doing the actual procedure as early as next Friday.  I’m trying to look at all of this as a positive, now they believe me about the insane pain and so I actually got some strong pain killers to help with that and it’s good that they can see what is wrong and try to fix it.  I don’t know what I would do if the MRI came back with nothing unusual on it.  And as much as I don’t want to be cut into, I would do this surgery tonight if it were possible, I can’t do this any longer.  The road to recovery is now within sight!
-Liz

Friday, March 15, 2013

Our Story- Part 4

Get caught up- check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 here if you haven’t already!

After our night together I let S know that I’d like to see her again but she tells me it will be awhile because she is really busy.  I thought that maybe she wasn’t into me but the reality was she was working two jobs for the summer and literally had no time.  Sorority girl calls me and chats with me like nothing ever happened, like we never broke up and I’m confused and get off the phone with her quickly, not wanting to see her or talk to her yet.

Back at work things are fine with S, but work is busy and I just can’t read what she is feeling/thinking.  I know I want to see her again but I’m not sure if I should ask her out or what I should do.  So in an effort to see her again outside of work I decide to throw a party.

What I fail to realize is that throwing a party is a major mistake.  Sorority girl by this time is tired of me ignoring her, so an hour or so before the party is supposed to start she shows up, having no idea that I’m having a party.  But pretty soon people start showing up and I keep trying to get her to leave.  S shows up and is really confused to see sorority girl there with me, but plays it cool.  There are way too many people at my apartment and sorority girl gets pissed because she has figured out something is going on.  She pulls me outside to talk.

And of course our talk turns into a scream fight once I finally come clean with her and tell her that I’ve slept with someone else.  She is outraged because in her mind we werent’t really broken up, but on a break and she is ready to get back together.  But I’m not, I’m done with being jerked around, having my feelings smashed every other week and I just want her to leave.

In the middle of our fight one of our friends comes outside to tell us that the police are here.  Shit.  We are on the side of the apartment and so we can’t see the front where the police are. They got a noise complaint about the party.  And I am suddenly so exhausted from all of this that I just tell my friend to turn everything off and have everyone go home.

Sorority girl and I keep fighting and then once everyone is gone, go inside and fight some more.  At one point she is so upset that she starts throwing up.  I don’t know what to do.  I just want her to leave and I just want S to come back.  She leaves and I call S and leave a super sad message for her and go to bed.

The next morning S shows up, having gotten my sad message, and she brings cartoons and candy to cheer me up.  And it was exactly the right thing, exactly what I needed.  I explain to her what happened with sorority girl and tell her that I really like her and want to see more of her.  And to my shock, she says she feels the same way.

Of course sorority girl isn’t done yet and over the next few weeks writes me long love letters, leaves flowers in my car, calls a thousand times, but it is all too little too late.

S and I want to take things slow, after all I’ve only been out of my last serious relationship for 5 days at this point, but we literally end up being Uhaul lesbians.  My roommate/BFF Brandon and I are supposed to move apartments in three weeks when we find out that our new apartment isn’t going to be ready on time, that we will have a month gap where we will be homeless.  And even though it’s totally crazy, S lets me move in with her for that month after only dating three weeks.  Brandon actually ends up moving in with sorority girl for the month, which sounds weird considering our break up.  But there is something I haven’t mentioned yet, sorority girl and my BFF are cousins.  That was totally awesome when we were together, and totally the worst now that we are broken up.  So we all just avoid each other for the month.

Living with S for that month goes great and we get much more serious than we probably should have but we can’t help it, we are falling in love and it is such a rush.

But that is not where this story ends…. to be continued.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Our Story- Part 3

If you missed them, check out part 1 and part 2.

Alright so when we left off I had just confessed my break up and the resulting troubled times that had followed to S and then smoothly invited her over to have drinks.  And while it may sound silly, this is the boldest move I had ever made with a girl at this point in my life.  Before this moment I was used to slowly seducing “straight” girls, so this was a scary moment.  And when she said, yeah, sure I can be over at 10, I almost wet my pants.  Now I had to put my money where my mouth was.  In my nervousness I invited a few other coworkers over so it wouldn’t be so weird.
Just another old picture of me.  I need to get some old ones of S soon!

Ten rolls around and I am nervously cleaning my apartment when everyone shows up.  It’s me, S, two female coworkers and some random guy that one of them brought over.  Everyone starts drinking heavily and it isn’t long before things get heated.  I think we might have played spin the bottle because I have vague memories of kissing other people, but I’m not sure.  I do know that at one point we all start dancing and S grabs me and kisses me hard, surprising me.

Well one thing leads to another, many things happen which I don’t think belong on this blog, and then it is the end of the night.  S and I are laying in my bed and I get up to put on some music.  My go to sad bedtime music at the time was Sarah Mclachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.  So I put that on and we snuggle, falling asleep.

What I didn’t know was that S had been dating after her break up from her serious ex and that since then she hadn’t ever slept at another girls house, always preferring to go home instead, so it was kind of crazy for her to spend the night that night.  And what I also didn’t know what that Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was one of her all time favorite Cd's and that she took it as a sign that she should stay.

The next day she heads home and I am blown away by what all has happened.  Keep in mind that at this point it has only been 3-4 days since sorority girl and I broke up.  And speaking of sorority girl, she makes an appearance just a day or two later… to be continued.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Our Story- Part 2

Here is the link back to Part 1 if you missed it.

Ok so when we left off I was back to dating my sorority girlfriend and S and I had gotten jobs together.

S and I worked at a restaurant near campus called The Hideaway.  It is a fancy pizza place that had just opened up and I worked there waiting tables and S worked in the kitchen and sometimes waited tables too.  We were friendly to each other and because everyone at the Hideaway all hung out together, we hung out a few times in a group as well.  But S still didn’t have a very high opinion of me, I was just another one of the stoner waitresses working there.  She told me later that she thought that I was cute, but that my roommate was cuter.  Thanks babe :).  This is a picture that was literally my picture that hung up at work on the big board of employees, it was a Polaroid, so that's the deal with the writing on it.  Oh and I had a tongue ring at the time.  Everyone else’s pictures were pretty serious, I’ve always been a bit silly.

Things were going really well with sorority girl, we spent pretty much every night together, either at her apartment or mine.  We were out to all of my friends and even a few of hers.  We both got Gap credit cards and dressed alike (which looking back on it now, what a weird thing to do).  We were so in love and having so much fun being young crazy college students.  I thought that it would never end, that we would grow old together.  Sorority girl was so happy that she decided she wanted to commit further and come out to her parents.  I was behind her on this, as coming out to my parents hadn’t been a big deal.  She went home for the weekend on her own and sat them down and told them she was in love with a woman and was gay.  They freaked out.  They cried and told her she was going to hell and that they were pulling her out of school and moving her back home (keep in mind she was a junior in college at this point), they were going to cut off her money for school and living (she had never really even had a job, they totally supported her) and all sorts of craziness.  Sorority girl is an only child and has always been very close to her parents.  She was devastated and shocked by their reaction.  She came home a mess and cried in her apartment bathroom for hours, refusing to come out.

I didn’t know what to do other than assure her that we would work things out.  We could get an apartment together, she could get a job and loans and it would all be fine, we would still be together and eventually her parents would come around.  She didn’t see it that way and we broke up, only to get back together a few days later.  She lied to her parents and told them things were over and tried to make that a reality by breaking up with me every few weeks.  And this continued all of the spring semester of my sophomore year, we’d break up for a few days over her not being able to handle things and then get back together.  It was awful and as a result I started drinking heavily, which didn’t help.

During all of this time S and her long term girlfriend broke up.  I heard around work that it was because she wanted to start dating men.  S actually confronted me about this gossip one day at work and set the record straight that yes they had broken up but that she was still into women.

Sorority girl and I finished the semester and my two best friends went out of town for part of the summer, one to Tennessee and one to Europe.  So I was all alone when we finally had our big final break up.  I couldn’t believe it and was in shock, though even I could see that this was for the best.  I was miserable with her and breaking up needed to happen.  I tried to move on as quickly as possible, I wanted to find someone new.  The drinking got worse, I started sleeping with a bottle of tequila in my bed and I started using my fake id to go out to the lesbian bar every night to be stupid.  Two nights after we broke up I was at the bar when while totally wasted made out on the dance floor with this scary 50 year old mullet wearing woman.  A friend had to drag me away and force me to go home before I did anything any stupider.

The next day at work I don’t know why, but I told S all about my sob story break up and about getting drunk at the bars to pick up random women.  S responded by telling me that she also did stupid things like make out with random women when she was drunk.  So of course I suggested that she come over to my place after work so we could have some drinks together.  Pretty smooth, eh?

To be continued...

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Our Story- Part 1

Everyone has been writing the most lovely “How did we meet/get together/Our story” blog posts and I have been really enjoying them, so I thought I’d write our little story out, too.

When S and I met for the first time, I was a bit of a mess.  It was 2001, my freshmen year of college, her sophomore year of college.  To understand why our first meeting wasn’t a big hit, you have to know a bit about us before this moment.

I came out very young, I was only 15 years old.  I had been “out” to my friends before that, and I think because of all of the jokes that we made about how there could be lesbians anywhere, even in my very house, that my mom caught on.  So one day we were in the living room when I was 15 and she just flat out asked me if I was gay.  And I was so surprised that a yes just slipped on out.  And luckily for me, it wasn’t a big deal to my parents.  They didn’t freak out and didn’t really bring it up again until I was much older.  At the time I’m sure they thought it was just a “phase” and not worth fighting about, that I’d grow out of it.  But despite being so sure of my sexuality at such an early age, I didn’t know any other lesbians, even living in a fairly large city, which probably had more to do with me being 15 then anything else.  So as a teenager, all of my dating consisted of “straight” girls who were experimenting or gay girls having their first gay relationship.  I was always dating someone and didn’t spend hardly any time being single until my freshmen year of college.  I had broken up with one of my “on again off again” girlfriends and spent most of my time partying pretty hard.  Here is a picture of me in my dorm freshmen year.


Things for S were very different.  S didn’t realize she was gay until late into high school.  She dated boys, ran track, had a super Christian phase, did all of the normal good girl stuff.  After she realized she was gay, she didn’t come out until college, where she cut off all of her hair and tried to butch, she even started smoking because she thought it would help her pick up girls.  And it worked, she pretty much off the bat meet a nice girl and they shacked up in the dorms and later moved into an apartment together.

We met a party in the spring of 2001.  We had a mutual friend, a gay guy my best friend was dating, who was convinced that we would hit it off, even though I was a crazy mess and S was in a long term serious relationship with someone else.  Despite my insistence that I had no interest in meeting her unless she was single, he prevailed.  The party was a birthday party for a girl in the drama department.  S and the mutual friend were both theater majors and knew the girl.  I didn’t know her, but I did know that the party was going to have a margarita machine, so I was in.  We ran into S and her girlfriend in the kitchen of the house and I was already pretty drunk amongst other things, and I don’t think I even managed to say more than “Hi” before I wondered off.  Needless to say, she was unimpressed.  And I think she was further unimpressed when she went upstairs and found me making a “margarita angel” in the birthday girls bed (a margarita angel is just like a snow angel, it’s not an actual thing though, just something stupid I did) (I know, I was such a jerk and such a mess that it didn’t even occur to me that anyone would have a problem with this).  I’m pretty sure she left the party that night thinking, geez, I need to stay far away from Liz, she is trouble.  And she was right, she was totally right.

I think that S and I ran into each other a few times around campus after that, but I got back together with my high school girlfriend who was going to the same school and so I didn’t think much of it.  We were really serious, and it was my first real love, but it was a very hard relationship because she was a super closeted sorority girl (and is in fact married to a man now).  I was constantly being introduced as just a friend and literally hiding in closets if there was an unexpected knock at the door because she was that afraid of her parents finding out.  She did in the end come out to her parents (guess in the end she took that back?) and some friends, but we broke up several times in the process.

In the meantime, S and I started working together….. To be continued!

Sunday, March 3, 2013

A Little Better

Thanks for all of your sweet words and concern on my last post.  This last week has been really hard but I think that I’m seeing a tiny bit of improvement.  Last week I started a new medication that today is the first day I’m on a full dose of and it has helped a tiny bit with the pain.  Also, going to the chiropractor 4 times last week helped some too.  I’m still going to need a lot of help next week and honestly probably the week after that as well, but it feels good to have made progress, no matter how small.  But things didn’t work out entirely how I had planned…

I went on Wednesday to get my MRI done.  I filled out the mountain of paper work, stripped down to the little hospital gown and got onto the table to get it done.  Though I’m losing weight, I’m still a large lady and it was going to be a very tight fit. The tech got me about a third of the way in and then pulled me out to have me adjust and I freaked out.  Turns out I am claustrophobic, at least when it comes to be jammed into a tiny white tube.  I felt like I was being made into Liz toothpaste and that I would rather have been in a coffin.  Ugh, it was horrible.  So, I couldn’t go through with it, though the tech was really nice about it, I’m sure he deals with people freaking out all day long.  He said I might do better in an open MRI were I would have more room and not be totally enclosed.  I left a message with my doctor to have him request that I get an open MRI instead, so hopefully that will happen next week.  And I now plan to take a muscle relaxer before hand and to just close my eyes the whole time.

Physical therapy was a no go also.  I talked to my physical therapist and she felt more comfortable starting a program after my doctor reviews my MRI considering the amount of pain I’m in.  But I think instead next week I’m going to try to go to this pain relief yoga class.  I’ll try just about anything at this point.  Oh and to person who commented about doing acupuncture, I did try that for several weeks at first and even though I really enjoyed it, it didn’t really help at all.

I have to say through all of this I have an amazing wife and amazing friends.  S has taken such good care of me and Jude these last two weeks, doing all of the shopping, cooking, cleaning and general care that we need.  I know she is under a lot of stress and working much much harder than anyone should ever have to.  She is my rock and I couldn’t survive without her.  Love you my sweetness!
-Liz