New Year's Resolutions

Well, it's day one of 2009. It's going to be a big year for me. Hopefully, there is a movie in my future, a change in career and a new degree to be proud of. There is so much I want to do this year - and my life is the better for it. Here are a few of those:

1. I want to run a half marathon before the year ends - which begins with actually being able to run.
2. I want to find direction and work toward a rewarding career.
3. I want to save $5,000 this year and pay off my credit card.
4. I want to make plans to travel and stick with it - even if it's just a weekend away.
5. I want to graduate with a 4.0.
6. I want to approach problems with an open mind and open heart and realize people make mistakes, including myself.
7. I want to blog more - at least once a week.

Cheers to 2009, my friends!

Text me.

Him: Can we make plans not in a text message?

Me: I like texting.

Him: Well maybe that's because I'm an adult and you're a child.

Me: Sometimes I can say something in a text that would take an hour of bullshitting to get out of a conversation on the phone.

That was the beginning of the annoyance I could hear in his voice.

Text messaging. Is there really an age where people began holding their conversations through their fingers rather than their ears and mouths? Is the birth year cut off 1982? What 27-year-old doesn't text? My DAD texts me to tell me he's in town. He turns 50 next week. Oy vey. Someone make me a drink. Or send me a text and we'll go get one.

Normally.

Normally, I am the Scrooge of weddings. I don't like going and watching a happy couple exchange vows that link them to each other 'til death do them part, but today, I turned over a new leaf when I attended the stellar wedding of my friend, Andrea. I guess it helps if you go with a cute boy who can dance (and when your knee feels well enough to do so).

*sigh*

Exhausted....

...only a 20-page paper, 15-minute presentation and 15-page final left. The end is (almost) near.

"This doesn't look like Grey's Anatomy..."

5:32 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 20
Mom and I woke up and finished packing up the things I would need for my five-day vacation to Deming, N.M., or as they call it "vacation for the stars..." I am anxious, thirsty and kind of ready to have this whole ordeal over with.

6:30 a.m.
We arrive at MountainView Surgery Center and I check in with Pam's friend, Selena, answering the basic questions, working out the insurance mess and signing the "I promise not to sue if I die" forms. Then, I go wait in the waiting room with a small girl and her family, as well as my mom before they call me into the surgery prep area.
As they call me and I go in, I notice there's another child in there. It doesn't take long before I ask why so many children and the super-nice, handpicked nurse (my aunt handpicked my surgery team, lol) told me that Nov. 20 was known as "Dental Day," the day that all the children whose parents have allowed them to eat candy and crap without making them brush and floss their teeth come in to be sedated and have crowns put in and teeth pulled in an effort to save teeth that have rotted out of their heads. They were playing Shrek 3 loud enough for me to enjoy it, so I didn't mind much.
The nurse asked me a boat load of questions before telling me to get undressed and put on the hospital-ordered gown, booties and super hot hair net, then climb onto the gurney that would wheel me into surgery. At this time, my mom and aunt had joined me while we were waiting for Dr. Lindsey to get there to answer any questions we had. We joked with the anesthesiologist as she asked me many of the same questions and told me that she would give me a sedative before they wheeled me into the operating room.

8 a.m.
Dr. Lindsey arrived and I made sure I didn't have any last minute questions. Thankfully, I was born to a nurse that knows what she's doing in any given situation, so I wasn't worried about when I woke up or how the knee should look, etc.
After he answered all of the questions I had, Dr. Skinner (the anesthesiologist) gave me the "happy" medicine and I kissed my family goodbye. The rest, it seems, I blacked out, but this is what I was told happened:
On my short jaunt to the operating room, I announced to Dr. Skinner that this hospital had very sexy men in it (see my previous post about the knee incident). She asked where she could find them and I proceeded to tell her that she could find them in the E.R. and to take me to the E.R. As we reached the operating room, I also told her, "This doesn't look like Grey's Anatomy." Embarrassing? Yes.

11 a.m.
I start to wake up in the recovery room, heavily sedated, but awake enough to realize there are three screaming F****** children in the not-so-private recovery stations. I'm not talking whimpering, soft spoken children...I'm talking give-me-a-gun-and-I'll-take-care-of-it screaming children. I actually stopped my recovery nurse to ask her if we could sedate them again and to "put it on my tab." That's not a lie.
These children were TERRIBLE. They actually needed three adults to hold down a 10-year-old screaming, writhing child so they could give him pain meds. I was furious and it didn't help that I was dealing with my own issues. Where's Shrek when you need him, dammit?

11:30 a.m.
The screaming kids were finally gone and my mom was in the recovery room with me. I was so so cold and the recovery nurse was awesome and gave me heated blankets...and not electric heated ones, but the kind you take out of an oven. I took my first dose of Vicodin with some crackers so my stomach wouldn't be upset, then she begins the discharge process.
Unbelievably, I am able to get myself from my bed to the wheelchair without much trouble. My leg was wrapped in the bandages with an ace bandage over them, all the way to my toes, which were bright orange from the disinfectant they used.
They wheeled me out to my mom's car, where I didn't have much trouble getting in and laying down, starting to feel a little queasy from the medicine.
Then my mom gave me my phone and I started to call people (I am sorry if you received one of these incoherent phone calls). I quickly fell asleep on the road back to Deming, where I would be spending the next few days in recovery mode.

1:30 p.m.
I wake up to my poor mother groaning with displeasure as we drive down Country Club Road on our way home. I turn over and ask her what's wrong and she says she is not feeling well, is sick to her stomach and is going down the road at an alarming rate.
We turn onto Needles Eye Road, our road, and she says "I'm sorry, baby. I have to stop." She opened the door and got violently ill. All I could do was rub her back and hand her napkins from the glove compartment. I felt so helpless to help her.
We finally pulled in the driveway, and miraculously, she is able to help me from the car and unload everything, making sure I am settled on the couch in the den, with my knee propped and water and snacks on hand.
Then, she asked me if I needed anything and went to bed. I didn't see her until the next day at 10 a.m.
My dad was stuck as my nurse and I had to call him because I was so hungry and craving a Schwann's pepperoni pizza that I know my parents keep stocked in the freezer for us kids. He came home, heated one up for me and handed me the remote to the television. I turned it on and accidentally turned it to the channel that makes the whole satellite stick and burn out. So, I was stuck without a TV. So, I went to sleep.

More to come...

I just can't get enough of...

...Jason Mraz's song "I'm Yours." Seriously. Can a song BE any better, even with all that radio play? I don't think so.

It's 11:11...

...and I am sitting at International Delights for the third time this week, working on things I need to finish before the big day in just TWO days. Surgery.

I have so much to do before then, including make time for people I want to see before everything happens and I am not as mobile as I like, including a 30-minute presentation on Realism and the Global War on Terror, a test in GOVT 502: Quantitative Research Methods, blood work, three more articles for the newspaper and four interviews to complete. Where will I find the time?

I am getting pretty nervous about the whole surgery thing. It consumes most of my thoughts and I feel like something is coming to an end just thinking about it. I'm not sure what that means except that for the past few weeks, my knee has felt better (not stellar) but better, and now I will go back to being virtually immobile, relying on pain meds to get me through the day.

Gah--I am just worried about it, I guess. So I guess that's it for the night. Time to go home and salvage a bit of sleep, if I can get it after four cups of coffee.

There are just some things you don't expect...

...but they sure do make you happy.

Five Weeks of Progress and Setbacks

It's been a while.
Five weeks, to be exact.
I know this because I check Jessica's blog roll on a regular basis and I have been watching my previous post sink lower and lower until it is sitting on the bottom of a few of my favorite blogs.
This is unacceptable...especially since I have had an INSANE five weeks to speak of.

On Oct. 22, I had the worst day of my life (and very karma-oriented). The only Wednesday soccer game of the season was that night and I normally have class, but instead I decided to take the night off and play soccer. The game started rather normally--we were losing, but I was having fun and getting some exercise. On no particular play, I planted my left foot to change directions, while pushing off of it to go the other way. The foot stayed planted and my knee went with my body. After hearing (and feeling) a resounding "POP," I doubled over.
I couldn't do anything but not breathe and lay there, sobbing. I was in the middle of the field, crying like a baby. I knew something big was wrong. I could feel it in my bones.
It took a long time to get myself to the point that I could even move. I was paralyzed. I couldn't move a single muscle. I had to be carried off the field...I couldn't even hop. I have never felt that level of pain in my life.
The only thing I could think was, "Please, no one call an ambulance. I can't afford an ambulance."
The woman watching from the sidelines said she heard the pop and knew it wasn't just sprained. She wrapped me up in a blanket, put some ice on my knee and sat with me, telling me to calm down and breathe while the rest of the team finished the game.
I didn't want to go to the hospital. I wanted to go home and cry... be a baby on my own terms, in the privacy of my own home. But I let her talk me into going to the emergency room, then called my brother to come meet me and drive my car.
Michelle helped me into my car and drove me to MountainView while my brother picked up my Aunt Pam and met me at the hospital emergency room. Meanwhile, my friend Bre was calling me and I answered, clearly shaken up. Being the great friend that I know and love, she met me at the hospital, blanket and magazines in hand. We waited there for an unreasonably long time, three hours, just to be treated like crap by the tech who talked to Bre like she was a child and who treated me like an idiot when I couldn't walk on the crutches properly.
*On a side note: People may argue that Grey's Anatomy creates a false sense of how hot doctors can be, but I assert that they speak the truth. In the ER that night, while I was looking like hell with mascara smeared on my cheeks, smelly jersey smell and looking like a hot mess, were three of the cutest guys I have come across in my years here in Las Cruces. All three tall, handsome, doctors...McDreamy, McSteamy and McSexy.
*End Side Note
McSexy looked at my knee, gave me some bull about it being a little loose, but couldn't get me in for an MRI because I wasn't "emergent." I was stuck with a knee immobilizing brace, crutches, an order for an MRI and a prescription for Vicodin. At 1 a.m., I limped out of the ER and into a waiting car, completely angry that I sat in the ER for nothing. By this time, I was doubting even myself on whether there was something actually wrong with me. I felt like I was just being a weenie, that it was simply a sprain and that all the struggle was just in my head.
Pam and Jono dropped me off at home, with my Vicodin, and tucked me into bed. I took a whole pill and fell into an uncomfortable sleep, setting my alarm for early since I was still having to get up and go to school to proctor an exam and the professor I assist was out of town.
I woke up with the alarm, incredulous that most of the night before had actually happened. I hobbled around my apartment quite awkwardly, and turned on the shower. I got undressed and gingerly got in, using the built-in handles that were conveniently placed inside the shower for moments such as this. As I stepped in under the warm water and lathered up my hair with shampoo, I felt faint. I fell out of the shower, onto the bathroom floor, hitting the right side of my chest on God knows what, tasting the soap that had dripped from my head onto my lips and thinking to myself, "You have to rinse off. Get up."
I picked myself up off the floor, giving myself a pep talk all the way up, with awkward movements, trying to avoid the debilitating pain in my knee. I stood upright, attempting to rinse my hair out so I could get out of the shower and get back in bed. Instead, I went down again, this time scraping my back on the corner of the vanity, holding the shower curtain in my hands and sobbing, again telling myself, "You can do it. Just get up."
I did, and felt a little better. I rinsed my hair out, turned the now cold shower off, then toweled off and hobbled to my bed and curled up. I called Pam, sobbing, as she tried to reassure me the best she could. I thought about the medicine I had taken and realized I took the pain pills on an empty stomach, which led to the episode in the shower. I grabbed a bag of gold fish, munching on them until I regained a sense of normalcy.
I got ready for class, waiting for Jono to pick me up. I went to class, proctored the exam and crutched my way upstairs, where I crumbled in a fit of exhaustion and complete depression over the entire situation. I was in pain, I was whiny, I was no fun to be around, so I called Jono and had him come pick me up to take me home. He bought be a burrito and dropped me off at my house, where I fell into a pain killer-induced sleep.
The next day, I underwent an MRI and on Monday, found out from a phenomenal Dr. Wayne Lindsey that I had torn my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) and damaged my miniscus. I would have to undergo surgery in the coming weeks, when the swelling went down, to have it repaired.
The surgery happens next Thursday, Nov. 20, and I have never been more nervous about anything in my life. It's not the surgery itself, because that's more procedural and they do these sort of things all the time. It's that I will be out of commission for days afterwards. Worse than hobbling around my apartment...this time there will be screws and cadaver ligaments involved, along with physical therapy and a recovery time of three to six months. So, the fear is not in being cut open, it's in being a normal, functioning adult after the big day.
Setbacks are sometimes the universe's way of saying, "Slow down. I'm in charge." Well, universe--you got me where you want me.

More than I can handle.

Sometimes I feel like I can't focus. It's not just the being too busy thing, it's the being too busy and not knowing when to say "no" thing. I can't help but think I could be doing so much more in any one area of my life. For example, when I am putting out a stellar section, talking to people and really getting things done at work, my school work seems to suffer. And when I am really getting my reading done and excelling in school, my section suffers. It's so hard to find a happy medium between the two.

I think this problem stems from the fact that I wasn't able to find a happy medium with the job before I started school and now that I am all the way into it, it's getting harder and harder to keep my head above water. Now, mid-terms are upon me and I am wondering how to balance class reading, writing for the paper and studying.

The obvious answer would be to give something up, but I am not willing to seek that answer at this point. I just need a bit more time in the day and everything will be fine. And maybe a little more drive.