Moving in the direction of normal

First, I am happy to say that Jeff continues to improve. Most of the time he actually seems perfectly normal, and has no symptoms other than a little bit of pain sometimes, and getting winded a bit more easily. This comes with its own challenges, as he forgets that he has to take it easy, and I have to remind him not to do things. He is not allowed to exercise at the moment, possibly for the next six months, and that is quite a difficult prospect for him. It is expected that he will make a full recovery, but recovery from a pulmonary embolism is a long slow process. He has to take blood thinners for the next six months, and wait for the clot to slowly dissolve and reabsorb. There are apparently no other treatments (anything that would remove the clot more quickly is much more risky).

When I look at the statistics, it's a bit scary – about a third of people who have pulmonary embolism die within the first twenty-four hours. After it is detected and treatment begins, the risk of death drops significantly, but it is difficult to find statistics that accurately predict risk. The best statistic we have found is that between 3% and 8% of people with treated pulmonary embolism end up dying. However, as Jeff continually points out to me, this includes people with all kinds of compromised health including COPD, cancer, recent surgery, and other serious risk factors. So it is likely that Jeff's risk of having something serious happen at this point is low, but that doesn't keep me from worrying about it, at least sometimes. I have made a rule, which Jeff is electing to follow, that he can't be anywhere alone without checking in at least every fifteen minutes. I figure that this way if there is some serious event, at least it won't be too long before help is called.

But, as I said, most of the time Jeff seems pretty normal at this point. Although we didn't spend Christmas with my family as we had planned, we did have a nice Christmas just the two of us. Jeff was even able to surprise me by filling our stockings – he went for a short trip to the store, and managed to stop at a candy store very quickly.

Because he was so fast at the candy store, he thought he was buying a box of assorted Jelly Belly jelly beans, but was in fact buying a box of Bean Boozled Jelly Bellys, which have normal flavors as well as very nasty flavors that look identical to the normal flavors. Here is Jeff tasting a jellybean flavored like skunk spray:

After that, it was necessary to cut open and sniff each jellybean before eating it:

We opened our presents from each other,

and Jeff got me handmade bowls, specifically for ice cream. It's a good thing I had made some peppermint ice cream (with candy cane pieces) for Christmas, because it was perfect for trying out the new bowls: 

This afternoon I leave for Eugene, and will get in around midnight. I am ambivalent about leaving Jeff, and sad that he will not be able to make the trip with me, but I am sure that he will be fine (being looked after by friends in town who he will be staying with until his brother arrives from Calgary to be with him) and it will be good for me to spend some time in Oregon. So for those of you in Oregon, I can't wait to see you soon!

Bad time, better time

The past couple of days have been crazy, and in not at all what we expected to be dealing with at the moment. We were looking forward to our trip to Oregon, which we were to leave for on Monday. However, all that has changed.

On Tuesday Jeff was having severe abdominal pain, which at first he thought was some kind of muscular pain from sleeping poorly, but which got worse throughout the day leading him to think it was something else. At 7 PM he went to the doctor (our doctor's office has excellent extended hours), and then was sent immediately to the emergency room. After many tests, they finally figured out late Wednesday afternoon that he has a pulmonary embolism. This is much more serious than anything I imagined, even as we were in the ER waiting for a diagnosis. It is a mystery how it came to be that he has it, because he has no known risk factors and there was no evidence of him having had a clot in his leg (which is usually where a clot in the lungs comes from).

Jeff on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after getting a diagnosis

He has improved a lot each day since then, and yesterday afternoon he was allowed to go home.

Jeff at home with his "cat nurses" as he calls them. This picture is slightly misleading, as Jeff was only briefly dressed in jeans, and got into pajamas pretty quickly after this.

 Last night's sleep was a little bit difficult at first, but we were both able to sleep reasonably well. Today, Jeff seems just about normal, playing video games and watching movies, though he is not allowed to exert himself. That means I get concerned when he does anything, like grating cheese to help make dinner, but he was told before discharge that he is allowed to do household activities as tolerated. I may be slightly overprotective, but in general my experience with people who have pulmonary embolism is not good (an understatement). When I worked at Harborview in Seattle, pulmonary embolism was pretty synonymous with sudden death, so I think I have a right to be protective and careful. However, other than an inability to cough properly and related phlegmy throat, just looking at Jeff he seems totally fine, which is reassuring.

I will post more of an update in a couple of days, but I just wanted to let everyone know what has been going on, and that things are getting better. Jeff will not be doing any traveling for the holidays, but I will be making a shorter trip, after Christmas, and Jeff's brother will be coming here to stay with Jeff while I am gone. I will be arriving in Eugene late at night on December 28, and will depart from Portland on January 3 in the afternoon as previously planned. For anyone who has tried to make plans with us, maybe send me a new email with your availability if you think it might be possible to get together, though with this shortened trip it may be harder to squeeze in visits.

Two very full weeks

Last time I posted was two weeks ago, and it has been a very full and busy two weeks since then. I rushed to get all my work done by Thursday, December 4, and then that afternoon we drove three hours to Saskatoon so that I could attend an awards evening put on by the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation. I did not receive an award, but was in the program as a recent grant recipient, and had to make a poster describing my research to a lay audience and stand at it and talk to people for a good chunk of the evening. This is not my favorite kind of thing to do, though Jeff says I'm pretty good at it despite my dislike. Then we drove back three hours to Regina that night, getting in late, so that we could catch our flight the next morning to Calgary. That week was rather exhausting.

We had our early Christmas in Calgary with Jeff's siblings and their families. It was a fun time of visiting, eating, playing some games, and spending lots of time with babies. Unfortunately, people were sick, naps didn't align with one another, and parents were not getting lots of sleep. However, all this had the effect of forcing quite a bit of rest and down time, which I think I greatly needed.

Jeff's sister's partner and their sixteen-month-old, and Jeff's brother's wife and their three-month-old

 We came home the night of December 9, and the remaining three weekdays last week were spent hard at work. All except for Friday morning, when I had a doctors appointment and took the rest of the morning to bake some cookies. Thursday evening we had a retirement party to go to, Friday evening was a Christmas gathering for people (and their families) who attend a research meeting that Jeff is part of, which is what I baked the cookies for. On Saturday afternoon was a birthday party for our friends' one-year-old, and much of Saturday was spent doing work. So between work and all these social events, this has been somewhat of an exhausting week!

It has also been a bit odd weatherwise. The real shock is that most of last week was spent with highs above freezing, which has meant lots of melting. There is very little snow left, and grass is even peeking through in some places. It's making things all brown and yucky looking, which we normally don't have until spring (as much as I can say what is normal here after being here for a little over two years). Today the hype was just below freezing, and this afternoon it started to snow a bit making things look a bit more fresh and white. I never thought that I would say this, but I sort of wish that it would drop below freezing, stay there, and snow a fair bit, because it makes winter much prettier!

This upcoming week I have a lot to get done at work– grades to submit for one class, papers to grade for my graduate class, end of year documents related to annual performance review to submit, a manuscript to review, and a manuscript to edit and submit for review. Also, I have to prepare for teaching next semester, help my honours student get her data collection up and running, and probably a few other things that I am not thinking of right now. That is the neutral to stressful news. The happy and relaxing news is that I have only one meeting scheduled over the next week, I can do quite a bit of this work from home, I don't think it will spill into the evenings, and it should all be done by this coming Friday. Then, a free weekend, and then on Monday, December 22 we leave for Oregon where we will spend twelve days. I plan for that time to be completely work free, and I expect to immerse myself completely into the holidays (funny note from Dragon speech recognition software – it typed hostilities instead of holidays, and when I went to fix it it suggested hot ladies).

Until then, I will do my best to relax into the Christmas spirit at home with Jeff, my kitties, and our Christmas tree :-)

Pushing my way into the holiday season

It seems that the weather is always news here – this week it snowed a lot, and yesterday and today have been supercold. This morning it was around -40°C/F (Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same at -40°) with the wind chill. Jeff decided to go running anyway, but was fully decked out in winter gear including the goggles that my brother got him for his birthday, and the Road Noise speaker vest that he got last Christmas. He looks a little bit like an alien, but that's okay.

Work has continued to be very busy, and both yesterday and today I have had to spend a good amount of time working. However, this Friday we leave for a five-day trip to Calgary where we will be celebrating an early Christmas with Jeff's siblings and their families. I do not plan to do any work during that time, and have warned all my students (undergraduates, honours students, graduate students) that I am on vacation during that time and won't respond to them. So as busy as things are, there is a very lovely light at the end of an increasingly short tunnel.

Despite being busy, I have managed a few fun things in the past week. First, my local library branch had a workshop on Wednesday night teaching how to arm-knit a scarf. I heard about arm knitting several months ago, and was intrigued by it then, so when I found out that this workshop was happening, it was free, and it was at a convenient time and location, there was no way I could not do it even if I was busy. It was lots of fun, and in less than two hours I have learned the technique and made a giant scarf. It's too big to actually wear, so I will probably undo it and make a smaller version.

On Saturday, we hosted our annual American Thanksgiving potluck. Jeff made a turkey, and I made a squash lasagna using this recipe. We had a slightly smaller group then we have had the past two years, but it was still a reasonable crowd with nine guests. The lasagna turned out to be really good, and was definitely better for hosting than the pumpkin ravioli or pumpkin gnocchi that we made in the two past years. Those have to be cooked right before you eat them, and involve lots of active kitchen time, whereas a lasagna can sit by itself in the oven and then sit on the counter for a while if it needs to before being eaten. I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that we substituted butternut squash for the kabocha squash (easier to find, and comes precut into cubes at Costco), and used a combination of Jarlsberg and mozzarella for the cheese (Safeway didn't have Gruyere), and made the squash purée a day ahead of time to spread out the work a bit. Oh, also we used fresh lasagna noodles instead of dried, and omitted the garlic. Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly, and I highly recommend trying it as it was delicious and everyone said so.

Today we got a Christmas tree, though we won't start decorating it until tomorrow. It is in a stand in the living room thawing out, and smells wonderfully Christmasy. Also, I just finished filling twelve of the twenty-four days in our wooden advent calendar with little things for Jeff, and later tonight he will fill the other twelve days with little things for me. Besides that, I also ordered a regular paper advent calendar complete with woodland animals living in buildings in a town, which we will also use and can bring with us when we are out of town. I am so ready for this horribly busy season to be over, and the holiday season to begin :-)

What it means to be busy

So first, I was wrong when I said it wouldn't get above freezing until March or April, because Friday and Saturday were like spring here – all the snow melted. However, everything is frozen again today and there is a light coating of snow, so I suppose it's back to normal. If you want one perspective on what the weather is like here, check out this rant. Apparently some people were offended (not as much by the language– though this probably shouldn't be played around children– as by the general negative sentiment toward Saskatchewan), but I find it extremely funny.

The last day of classes here is December 4, and then there is a two-week period of final exams. I feel like the next two weeks are ridiculously busy, and I have a little bit of trouble figuring out how I am actually going to accomplish everything I need to get done. I have a list with dates, prioritizing things and noting deadlines, and somehow if I work pretty solidly for the next little while I should be able to get the most important things done, but it is a bit overwhelming at times.

On the other hand, being this busy means that I am capable of being this busy. My capacity for doing things continues to improve, partly because I'm figuring out how to better manage my limitations, partly because Jeff has gotten into a rhythm with doing all the things he does because of my limitations, and partly because I am slowly continuing to get better. When I think of how things were a year ago, I can't really do a lot of things now that I couldn't then, but I am doing more of the things I can do.

For example, I am still part of the Regina Newcomers Club, and go to a couple of the social events held by the club each month. This is not different from one year ago. But now I am also a member of the executive committee for the club, coordinating membership and the new member nights. Volunteering in this capacity adds much more time and responsibility to my activities with this group.

Everything is kind of like that – instead of one graduate student I have two, instead of one honours student I have two, I am on a huge number of student thesis committees, I am on a university employment equity consultative committee, a committee with the Saskatchewan College of Psychologists, a departmental committee, I proposed a new psychotherapy skills group for graduate students and am heading that up, I am seeing a client as part of my teaching duties, the number of research projects I am involved in has increased exponentially since last December, and probably lots of other things that I'm not thinking of right now.

Two years ago, I was probably doing about a tenth of what I'm doing now. Even one year ago, I was doing probably 1/2 to 2/3 of what I'm doing now. And the thing is, I think probably even three years ago or five years ago, when I was perfectly able-bodied and had none of the limitations that I have now, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with the pace that I'm keeping now. I think that with all of my limitations I have had to learn to be more efficient in much of what I do, and where I'm limited in some arenas, I'm probably shifting energy and focus into places where I'm not limited.

This is my only explanation at the moment, and I hope it is a good enough way of thinking about things to prevent me from seriously crashing and burning in the next couple of weeks :-)