Where the heck has the time gone?

It has been forever since I last posted here.  Shame on me.  I am a bad blogger.  I have a hard time getting on the computer at night to update this but hopefully that will change soon. 

First an update on Princess Ivi…

The shoulder pain that was believed to be an unhealed broken rib was actually a tumor.  Thankfully it is benign but it still causes pain and nerve problems.  Unfortunately, the surgery is pretty high-risk so we have decided to leave it for now and see how things progress. 

Her 8th grade graduation is June 10th then it is on to high school.  She has already registered.  She is going to be taking JROTC and Tennis as her electives this year.  Hopefully, the shoulder doesn’t cause too many problems.

Her graduation dress is all picked out and so are the shoes.  She is very excited.

She has an end-of-the-year trip to Islands of Adventure on June 1st.  She is looking forward to that as well.

There are no summer plans yet but hopefully, we will come up with something soon.

An update on me…

There is not much to report in my life.  I haven’t knitted in months (since March, I think) but I did start a new project on Sunday, a case for Princess Ivi’s phone.  I should be done tonight. 

I have been reading like a fiend lately and can’t seem to read and knit at the same time.  Imagine that!

Princess Ivi’s psychiatrist has told me that we need to move out of Mom’s house.  Preferably, within a month.  He thinks that will help a lot with making Princess Ivi feel settled.  Makes sense to me so I am starting to look for a place.

Sadly, it is not just blogging and knitting that I have been neglecting.  I have also been neglecting reading my email and Google reader items.  I have over 1000 unread knitting reader posts and over 600 unread knitting emails.  Oops.  I also haven’t been logging onto Ravelry lately either. 

Gotta change that…

10 Easter Traditions

1.    Sheep cake on coconut grass (green dyed coconut).

2.    Chocolate rabbits.  Mine usually including some kind of peanut butter.

3.    Easter egg hunts which include finding and re-hiding the eggs multiple times until either the children or the parents collapse in exhaustion.

4.    Church.

5.    Plastic eggs.

6.    Big family dinners.

7.    Being teased by my family members with the story of the time I insisted I had seen a 6 foot tall Easter Bunny wearing a straw hat with his ears sticking through and a purple vest and carrying a big Easter basket.  (If you must know, I was NINE at the time and of course, if asked now, I would still insist that I saw the Easter Bunny.)

8.    New Easter duds for church, or just whatever.

9.    Buying the first pair of flop-flops for the season.

10.  Driving to the beach. 

Dear Doctor, Please stop PRACTICING medicine and fix my daughter

We learned in January that the shoulder pain Princess Ivi was having under her right shoulder blade was actually a non-healing broken first rib.  (For those of you not familiar, the first rib is under the shoulder blade.)  It is an uncommon bone to break but does happen in athletes, usually with fatigue. 

I can pinpoint exactly when the original injury occurred, April 2008. 

Princess Ivi was playing soccer and during a throw in, she overexerted herself in an effort to throw the ball as far down field as she could.  Within seconds, she was grasping her shoulder and left the game.

Her primary care physician diagnosed her with a pulled muscle under her shoulder blade and referred us to the Sports Medicine doctor in 4 weeks.  During those four weeks, my stubborn child refused to rest and take it easy, instead carrying her baby cousin and the baby next door and running and playing like any kid would do.  After a few weeks and increased pain, I took her and made the doctor put her in a sling. 

The trip to the Sports Medicine doctor was frustrating since they just checked her range of motion and said she was fine. 

She has had tenseness in her shoulder since this incident but we chalked it up to the muscle being different since the injury and also to stress since most of us get tense in the shoulders when we are stressed. 

However, in January, the pain in her shoulder got so bad she could barely move her arm, with radiating pain down her arm and across her back. 

I took her to her primary care doctor who did an x-ray and MRI.  The MRI showed nothing but the x-ray showed, to our surprise, a non-healing broken first rib under her shoulder blade. 

The doctor’s suggestion at that time was to wait 2 to 3 months and then redo the x-rays and if it still wasn’t healing, she would do the referral to an orthopedist. 

I contacted the doctor on March 10 advising that we couldn’t wait for the referral, the pain was getting worse and it was harder for Princess Ivi to breath.  I requested the referral be done as soon as possible.

After many phone calls and raised voices (well, my voice anyway), we finally have the referral to the right  doctor which would be the surgery department.  The primary kept arguing that the INTERNET said for a non-healing first rib an orthopedist would need to be seen but the orthopedist in Gainesville said a pulmonologist would need to be seen. 

After a call to the primary doctor to explain and her nurse assuring me that she would speak directly to the office she was referring us to, they once again sent the referral to an orthopedist, this time in Jacksonville.  This new office advised that they never have treated and never will treat a broken rib and that needs to go to the surgery department.   This was, of course, very frustrating since the nurse assured me she would do it right and she didn’t. 

During the final call, when I raised my voice, the nurse said that the doctor was still worried about the shoulder.  WTF??? 

Now, if someone was suspected of having a torn muscle under the right shoulder blade, had pain in the shoulder blade area and then it was discovered that there was a broken rib UNDER the shoulder blade, wouldn’t common sense lead you to believe that the problem was the rib, not the shoulder blade?  Maybe it is just me but that seems really obvious.  

It took her primary care physician 16 days to do the referral.  The referral is now in place and Princess Ivi sees the surgery department on Friday.  Of course, she is in so much pain and is miserable that it cannot come fast enough for either of us. 

I don’t know how they will fix the rib.  I suspect surgery but we won’t know for sure until Friday and even then, they may want additional testing done.  I just hope that they don’t take too long, they can get it fixed and there is no long term nerve or arterial damage done (both of which are possible due to a non-healing broken first rib).

The questions I keep asking are was the break noticeable on the first x-ray done back in 2008 and should a referral for a child who is known to have asthma and an atrial septal defect really take 16 days when that child has complaints of difficulty breathing.   

I am trying to keep my cool but depending on what the doctors say on Friday, if we can make it that far without a trip to the ER, about whether the initial treatment was wrong, I may have to consider talking to a lawyer and/or filing complaints with the licensing boards for doctors in Massachusetts and in Florida. 

My poor baby is hurt and I want it fixed yesterday!!!

New Blogging Tool

I am testing out Windows Live Writer to see if it works to help me blog more and more regularly.  We’ll see.

If you want to find me, just follow the skin trail

Alright, I know that sounds really gross but it is a little joke we have around my house. The reason for that joke-psoriasis. I have it. Have had it since I was a teenager. It gets really bad or it is okay but it has never been just “gone” (except for a short period of time right after my daughter was born). Anyway, I flake a lot. I never have to worry about being kidnapped and them not be able to find a DNA sample because there will always be some of me lying around.

Obviously, having psoriasis is not something to joke about. It itches, it bleeds and cracks, and it is incredibly painful. It makes my hair fall out and makes it difficult to shave my legs or wear makeup.

I have been fighting the battle of the flakes for a long time and some stuff works and some stuff doesn’t. Believe me, I have tried creams, gels, sprays, lotions, home remedies, special shampoos and soaps, expensive prescriptions and cheap therapies. Nothing works or it doesn’t work for the long haul which I think is to be expected when dealing with a genetic condition like psoriasis.

This morning on the news there was a feature about Fit in Your Skin. It is a program, approved by the National Psoriasis Foundation, to incorporate healthy eating and exercise into your life in an effort to reduce the effects of psoriasis. Now I am not a believer that diet causes psoriasis because I have tried all sorts of “eating plans”, either adding stuff or eliminating stuff, and my psoriasis doesn’t go away.

With that said, I do recognize that in some cases, the better you take care of yourself, the better you will feel. And I was attracted to the idea that these exercises were made for people who suffer from inflammation due to psoriasis.

So I signed up for. In a few weeks, I will get a free exercise DVD and I will try it and see how it goes. There are some neat tools on the website too.

Fore more info on Fit in Your Skin check out there website: www.fitinyourskin.com

Fore more info on psoriasis go here: www.psoriasis.org