A Belated Cheers

Long lost friends! Remem­ber when I wrote a heart­felt intro­duc­tion to my new busi­ness, released my web­site to the blo­gos­phere, and then dis­ap­peared off the face of the earth?

Yea, sor­ry about that.

Truth be told, it has been an inter­est­ing cou­ple of weeks.

(“Inter­est­ing” is clear­ly a code word for extra­or­di­nar­i­ly med­ical­ly ridicu­lous. Duh.)

Ya see, instead of cel­e­brat­ing the release of my busi­ness with green juice cock­tails and spark­ly shoes, I cel­e­brat­ed with a night in the emer­gency room and a saline drip. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, this grand cel­e­bra­tion coin­cid­ed with Mr. Restart­ing My Hard Dri­ve’s 30^th birthday…and noth­ing says par­ty time quite like ring­ing in your big birth­day on the hor­ri­bly uncom­fort­able plas­tic chairs in the ER (Yes, I’m accept­ing nom­i­na­tions for Wife of the Year 2013).

My tribe at Mayo thought I had an infec­tion in my bone mar­row biop­sy sites. The ER deter­mined that I had a virus. Two and a half weeks of a high fever lat­er, it was deter­mined that I actu­al­ly had a sinus infec­tion and pneu­mo­nia. Details.

In the midst of all of this res­pi­ra­to­ry love­li­ness, I “treat­ed” myself to my very first MRSA scare (check that pup­py off the buck­et list!). Turns out I don’t have MRSA, I’m just aller­gic to my feed­ing tube.

Yep. The one I’ve had for years.

I mean, why not?

So when life hands you fake-MRSA, pneu­mo­nia and a sinus infec­tion, you are sup­posed to rest. A lot. (Ya know, the whole lungs are com­pro­mised but you need them to breathe thing).

But if, hypo­thet­i­cal­ly of course, your lev­els from your non-exis­tent thy­roid decide to sky­rock­et up at the same time as said infec­tions, let me assure you that there will be no rest­ing. Yes, there is a rea­son it is called hyperthy­roidism.

Pure­ly hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, of course.

(But just so we’re clear, I’m still baf­fled that an organ that I no longer pos­sess can turn me into an insom­ni­ac robot. A robot with frizzy hair. Because the organ I no longer pos­sess can also change my hair tex­ture. Clearly.)

On the plus side, my file cab­i­net has nev­er been so organized.

Need­less to say, recov­ery was a wee-bit delayed and may or may not have tak­en more than one round of gluten-dairy-yel­low dye-sul­fa-peni­cillin-free antibi­otics. Short of los­ing my mind, I did what any­one would do to save their sanity.

I cleared my sched­ule and got out of dodge.

For a week, I dis­ap­peared with my fam­i­ly to the Pocono Moun­tains in Pennsylvania…the home of my cher­ished year­ly fam­i­ly vaca­tion for the past 30 years (34 years for Ma and Pa!). I replaced doc­tor’s appoint­ments with bike rides and dis­abil­i­ty paper­work with long naps. I played cards with my hub­by and read three books and even got my par­ents to start their day with green juice shots.

I slowed down. I breathed (thank you antibi­otics!). It was glorious.

I rec­om­mend a good dose of “escape from real­i­ty” for any ail­ment. Except beware of that whole “have to come home even­tu­al­ly” thing. It’s a dagger.

But now that I’m home, and no longer an emphy­semic robot, I’d like to final­ly raise a prover­bial glass of green juice — to sum­mer,  to hair elas­tics, the dawn of a new med­ical month, and most impor­tant­ly to you. Thank you for allow­ing me to share my new adven­ture with your unpar­al­leled love and support.

Cheers to health and hap­pi­ness, my friends!