OhmiGARSH I'm bored!

Well, not really. See, now the girls have officially moved in (FINALLY!) and Hubby has started to work 4 days a week (14-hour shifts) at the store in Seminole to make us some extra money since I can't go back to work until I get a release.  So to pass those extra moments, I've been trying to hone my literary skills and read some good books. I found a list of "classic" novels throughout our history and got 3 of them, and they are so incredibly BORING! I got quite a few BETTER suggestions from my friends for book choices, so I'll be returning to the library quite soon.  Also I've been finding new recipes to try out and playing a couple computer games. I'm keeping the computer games to a minimum to avoid getting sucked into hours and hours on the computer. After all, it's just as bad as being in front of the TV all day and I'd rather be spending time with my sweet girls any day.

As for the "diet," lets just say that a low-sodium diet is not as easy as I thought! Mostly because I'm a salt-o-holic!  I'd take a bag of chips over a sweet treat any day!  Which inevitably lead to the need (along with the serious, life-altering heart condition) for the low-sodium diet!  For the most part, it's not the worst TASTING diet, I will admit to that. After the first week you get used to how the food is actually supposed to taste and you start to use other spices instead of just heaping on the salt and it actually makes you more daring in the kitchen. Plus, it makes you hyper-aware of just how salty some foods are made, especially at fast food joints and other restaurants. For instance, the Hubbs and I went out on a "date" (baby Sophia crashed, but she literally crashed halfway through so it turned out to still be quite nice) to Genghis Grill the other day, and for those of you who don't know, I'll explain: you are given a bowl by your waitress and you go up to a buffet with all raw ingredients. You pick your protein (beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, crab, tofu...etc) then you pick your veggies (broccoli, zucchini and squash, spinach and so many more I can't even remember) and you pick a seasoning and sauce. By not ADDING anything that had salt in the title or salt by itself, I managed to keep the dish from being overly salty. Still probably in all too much sodium to qualify as a good meal for my specific requirements but I was still quite proud and, most importantly, satisfied. So that's my general rule of thumb, just don't ADD any additional salt to anything I make and to get the lower and reduced sodium ingredients when available. Rinsing any canned veggies or beans that I use also cuts the sodium content in those ingredients.

My family also has a running tradition to get together and have breakfast once a week. Usually this consists of breakfast burritos but during my last pregnancy I had gestational diabetes so we branched out a bit to find some healthier breakfast bites. And since the G.D. went away after Sophia was born, we have stuck pretty well to having a healthier option available at MOST of our breakfasts.  This past week was probably one of the best recipes we have had yet.  My good friend in Utah, Kerry, introduced me to this co-op called Bountiful Baskets.  Basically you pay like $15 and you get a laundry basket full of fresh produce, 50% veggies and 50% fruits.  This past week we got mangoes in our basket. None of us have used mangoes on a regular basis....or ever, really, so we were looking for yummy recipes to use them in. We ran across this recipe from Pinterest:

http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/strawberry-mango-jicama-salad-recipe/

It was fantastic! We didn't add the cilantro because we aren't huge fans, however we did add a touch of chili powder.  I was skeptical at this, but the chili brought out the sweetness in all of the fruits (if jicama is a fruit??) and made it quite delightful.

So that has been one thing keeping me from loosing my mind while I'm stuck being useless for the next 4 weeks.  We'll be making a quinoa mac & cheese soon that seems interesting! I'm hoping my picky eaters (David and Penny) will at least give it a shot.

As for those crazy kiddos, they're wonderful!! Sophia had her first illness; she had double ear infections and RSV, which was super scary. Mostly just because we had to give her breathing treatments, which I didn't handle (emotionally) very well. I've gotten a pretty good poker face for all scary "mommy" things, or at least I hope I have. But luckily she didn't develop croup or pneumonia and made quite an amazing recovery.  Thank GOODNESS!

Today has been a wonderfully miserable weather day and, as most moms know, this weather is like Ambien to kids so it's been AWESOME! We're gonna sit down to a warm cup of something now!

Two-Week Anniversary

Still doing pretty good!  I did have to make an appointment to see my Cardiologist because I was gaining weight (all water weight) which isn't good, so she put me on a diuretic. That's been pretty awesome, the pounds have been shedding like crazy, so that's made me happy!  I knew there was no possible way to have gained like 17 lbs in a week, but it's always reassuring to know it's all water weight!  I'm still a little too uncomfortable to sleep all the way through the night, but if I miss my medication doses the morning is awful so it's a vicious cycle.  However, I'm two weeks into recovery so I know I'm getting close to feeling back to normal, at least I hope.  

The hardest thing has been accepting that there are things I can't do, especially when it comes to my girls.  Sophia does NOT like it when she reaches out for me and I don't pick her up.  Penny has been pretty good, though.  She asks to see my "owie" and each time she saw it before it was healed up she would say "aw, poor baby!" and kiss it better =)   She's been feeling sick (yet another ear infection!) so she's been even more of a drama queen.  That's been fun!  Still, she LOVED the snow we got this week!

My mom has been amazing.  We're definitely in a transition stage and learning how to live together again.  Hopefully by the time David and the girls move in we will be at a place where we can have some peace of mind instead of the constant stress.  But she has been such a big help, it's been great.  I can do VERY little around the house, which takes some patience. 

I saw my primary doctor earlier this week as well, just to check in with her and give her all the info about the surgery.  Nothing really exciting happened there, thank goodness.  I'm not sure I can handle another health scare!!

As for my extremely amazing husband, *sigh* there are no words!!  He has basically been a single parent since he came back from Houston, which is NOT easy!  We got to spend a weekend all together because of the snowstorm we had, but other than that he has done it all on his own while still trying to pack up the apartment before our lease is up on the 29th.  He deserves MAJOR kudos! 

It's Good To Be Home!

My last few days in the hospital went by pretty fast, surprisingly.  It was nice and stormy out all week and I had some great nurses (thanks again to Allison, Kurry, Max, Shirley, and Phillip) but one was just awful.  She came into my room during my physical therapy and shoved her way in between us, which was fine because we were just talking at the time. Then her beeper went off about 3 times and each time she stopped what she was doing and picked up my hospital room phone and tried calling about the page. I'm sure she was quite busy so I just ignored that. Her GOD-AWFUL perfume was a little harder to ignore, tho. You would think that someone who takes care of people that just had heart surgery wouldn't wear something that could possibly make someone have an allergy attack because I certainly did start coughing...LOUDLY.  Not exactly as painless as it normally is!  While all of these were mostly just annoyances, the real problem came later on when I had asked for a dose of morphine since the regular pain med wasn't cutting it. I had been through physical therapy, cardio therapy (which wasn't much different) and went for a nice walk around my floor and after just having surgery that was a pretty rough day and I had pushed myself just a little too far.  Instead of doing as most nurses usually do and understanding this (by the way, let me point out that I'm EXTREMELY on top of my doses and times for meds and try VERY hard to keep to a routine, so asking for an additional pain med meant I was HURTING) she tells me that they don't usually administer morphine for patients that don't have a chest tube anymore and that, basically, it was unnecessary.  I politely reminded her that while I may not have a chest tube I DID still just have my chest BROKEN and had a fairly active day.  She left in a huff and took a good hour to get back, at which time I'm literally bawling from the pain so my sister reported her to their nursing manager.  Luckily in the entire 4 days that I was in my own room this was the ONLY problem I had, the rest were terrific and very friendly. 

So then the day FINALLY comes, and I'm getting discharged from the hospital on Sunday afternoon.  I had just had a dose of my normal pain medicine that morning and noticed it was time for another, but figured we could just go and get the prescription filled and have it then. Since I'd stayed on top of my doses the last day and a half I was pretty comfortable and figured I'd rather get a head start to the drive.  That did NOT happen....

As most of you know, I work at Wal-mart as a pharmacy technician, so I should have prepared somewhat for what we went through but even on our WORST day at my pharmacy, we would NEVER have let this type of situation happen.  So since I can't walk for very long without getting pretty winded and uncomfortable, my wonderful sister runs into the pharmacy to get the drugs filled for me and I wait in the car. Since I'm familiar with the company's policies for picking up pain meds for other patients, I made sure all of my information was on the prescription and that my sister knew my date of birth, phone number and had HER drivers license.  But of course, as soon as the technician (MT) gets a look at the drug, he asks her for ALL of my information short of asking for her to recite my social security number and then tells her that if she doesn't have MY drivers license she cannot pick it up.  WRONG! So after a few minutes of my sister arguing with him and the pharmacist about this, the pharmacist says its fine and to go ahead with it. MT then tells my sister that it will be an hour (pretty typical for a busy Wal-mart) which she accepts and takes off to get the rest of the little things we had needed for the very LONG trip ahead of us.  She comes back after about 45 minutes and has a seat by the pharmacy.  When she's waited almost the entire hour she hops back in line and gets up to the register, where she is told that it hasn't even been dropped into the system yet and that it will be another 20 minutes.  She's obviously not very happy so the cashier passes the buck to the pharmacist again.  It takes awhile for her to even acknowledge my sister at which point she says "I don't even have that drug in stock." It's been a few minutes shy of 2 full hours now.  So my sister has had enough, informs the pharmacist that she, herself, is a physician and would like to prescribe something the pharmacy DOES have in stock since it's becoming an emergency situation (again, haven't had pain meds since the morning dose!).  The pharmacist kind of hesitates and acts like she thinks Amanda is joking, but Amanda gives her all of her physician and prescribing numbers so she allows Amanda to write it out and puts it into the system. 

I think at this point, she (Caroline) just doesn't want to do it because she tells my sister that she isn't listed in their system.  I'm of course assuming that she hadn't even bothered searching the Wal-Mart database because if she HAD she would have easily found my sister.  So Amanda calls in a doctor favor to the physician who had overseen my treatment in the hospital when I'd had Sophia (ironically, the one who was responsible for them discovering my heart condition in the first place!) and she called the medicine in for me.  But now Caroline tells my sister that it's closing time and she's not getting the prescription pulled up because there are other prescriptions in front of it...I'm surprised my sister didn't have a stroke at this point, but she angrily told the pharmacist to do whatever she needed to do to get this medicine filled, either transfer it or move it up in the queue, SOMETHING because I've been sitting in the car for almost THREE hours now without any medicine and is miserable. 

Now, the lovely cashier (Shaw Denae) jumps in and says "She's MISERABLE after only three hours without her medicine?? Yeah right!" Amanda tells her "She just had her *insert F-bomb here* chest cracked and had open heart surgery on TUESDAY, so YES she is miserable!"  And instead of stepping away and realizing she'd said a really shitty thing, this cashier says "Sounds like YOU care more about her medicine than she does!" I'm not really sure what words were exchanged at this point, but I know what I myself WOULD have said, so it's good I was in the car and, indeed, miserable.  But big sis came through big time and got the medications finally. 

So we wound up leaving Houston at like 7:30 and only made it to Gatesville before we were ready to call it a night.  The drive was absolutely HORRIBLE.  Every bump in the road jostled my entire body and I had to ride in the back seat of my sister's little Suzuki, so there was no possible way to get comfortable.  Plus, between all the jostling and the good 9 hours without meds yesterday, I got to play catch-up with the pain again. 

However, today I'm feeling pretty great!  It's amazing how walking in the house made me instantly feel better!  Plus I had some balloons from my Hubby and a fruit bouquet here to welcome me home, not to mention some fantastic (and VERY gentle) hugs from Penny and some kisses from Sophia.  It's been so great seeing how much both of them have grown since I've been gone and seeing how much they missed their Momma!  Since we're still in the process of packing up the apartment, David is taking the girls back there with him at night which is hard but proved to be a very good idea. 

So, even though it's difficult to get around at times and frustrating to not be able to do a LOT, I'm happy to be home and healing and look VERY forward to the next few weeks, even months.  This year is going to be AWESOME!  I got several pictures the first day I could of my scar but, given the location, it's a bit too revealing for me to be comfortable with.  But I wore a tank top today and got a good shot of the first 3-4 inches (it extends about another 2-3 inches below) that I thought I would share!

It's actually a LOT skinnier than I had imagined and a little shorter, too.  As you can see, it's healing VERY nicely (with the exception of the lovely yellow bruises everywhere) and may not even be that noticeable!

Alive and kicking!

Surgery went very well! Once again I was greatly impressed with Dr. Ott's skill level. The surgery I had typically takes about 6+ hours with a good hour to an hour and a half (I believe) on the bypass pump, which can be dangerous so the less time you are on the bypass pump the better. Dr. Ott was done in about 3 1/2 hours and he only needed me on the bypass pump for 21 minutes. The man is DAYUM fast, and very good. I'm doing pretty well, like the doctors have all said each day is substantially better than the next. Although they took me off the pain pump when they moved me to my nice private room (thanks, Dr. Sister!) so I shed a few tears over that. Overall I have had really fantastic nurses (shoutout to Famila, Caroline, Cheyenne, Mari and Brandi!!) and have a newfound respect for their job after some of the post-op patients we endured together. I'm away from the ICU now but so far like this nurse (Allison) too! Takes a special person to do their job!! Also my room has an awesome view of some of the medical buildings and hospitals, and I do not mean that sarcastically! The medical center here is HUGE with over ten hospitals in the area, it's truly amazing. And it's nice and gloomy out just like I like it! Okay well I'm going to spend some quality time with my sis now and try to take it easy. Wish me a pain-free night! Love you all so much and appreciate every bit of support. Those prayers certainly paid off, I was told I am healing perfectly!