Shelby Cass’s Weblog

I added Wall*E into my subject just because Court and I got to see it twice before it hit the theaters and just think it is adorable.

So, braces.  I don’t have them.  But I do have a retainer which has me investing in large quantities of denture cleaner.  Alas, my back left teeth still do not touch, so Dr. Quo added a couple “buttons” and I now wear a rubber band waaaay back there.  I look gooood putting it on.  Buttons are really just brackets.  I had issues with them, but I got over it.  It’s a bit of maneavering to get the retainer on OVER the buttons, but I pretend it’s a puzzle and that I am challenging my pre frontal cortex.  I so smart.

Sleep.  I’ve slept better.  But then again, I’ve slept much worse for years before now so you would think that I could be grateful for the sleep I get…and I am!  Believe me!  But I’ve been getting tired.  And Monday was the last straw.  First of all, the reason I got diagnosed at all was because Courtland kept saying he was so tired and he didn’t know why.  So I started noticing that although he thinks he’s a heavy sleeper (and he LOOKS like a heavy sleeper when he’s asleep), he actually wakes up a little every time I woke up and moved. You know how you can tell someone is just in light and not deep sleep if they move?  Well, I would wake up, move, and then he would move.  So I moved into a different room and after about a week, lo and behold, he was far less sleepy.  Over the past few months we have been getting more and more tired and blamed it on everything.  The cold, the heat, the noise, the silence, the cats, and had resorted to blaming all the smoke in the area from California being on fire.  I suspected bad things because I started having bad dreams (you know, shot in the gut, left to bleed to death, car stolen, the usual) and woke up snoring a few times (sooo attractive), and on Monday morning driving into work I was so sad to realise that I really wanted to pull over to the side of the road and take a nap.  It just would feel so good!  So I called Dr. Li and they got in me in to see him.

Of course seeing Dr. Li just makes the whole world disappear and it’s just me and him and my stupid jaw…did I metnion we were in a fight?  I saw him a few weeks ago for a follow up (I know, I know, should I have mentioned my fatigue then?  Shush.  I figured he’d just tell me I was fat - using different words) and the FIRST thing he said as he burst into the room was “When’s the wedding?”  WTF?  Well, we moved past that random topic and chit chatted about stuff, then on his way out he said “Maybe he’s looking for a younger model.”  Okay.  WAR.  I told the entire office.  But when I went in last week all miserable and tired he poked his head in the door and said “Are we still fighting?” and I decided it wasn’t worth it to be mad at him. So I said no.  And then we back to normal and he stuck things up my nose and peered into my throat and said he needed another sleep study.  I asked what that would show and he said he wanted to know if I still had some apnea and if so, then he wanted to figure out how to get rid of it.  Really?  There may be other options before turning into Gonzo every night for the rest of my life?  He said yes, for startes, you still have your tonsils.  *gulp*  I don’t know how I feel about any of this.  Maybe it was the heat cold cats smoke and I don’t have any sleep apnea and this is all just a false alarm in my wanna be drama queen life.  We shall see.

For now I am going to go take a shower and mentally prepare myself for the wonderful gluing of electrodes to my entire scalp and please oh please do not let them put that tube down my nose into my throat.  Sleep well out there!

I’m so glad I wrote about the sleep apnea surgery I had…because I keep learning every day that it helps people…even in the littlest ways. Like, just letting them know someone’s been there, done that… The other day I received a comment on a very old post from a guy about to have the same MMA/GA I had who, it turns out, works down the street from where I live. He asked if I would mind meeting him for lunch sometime, so of course I said yes. I mean, I kind of had to. He caught all my Morrissey references. Did you?

So, we met at Luna’s…I never say no to Mexican food, and well, John is awesome…and I am so excited for him. Not because he’s getting surged (though it’s by the amazing Dr. Li so I’m not at all worried), but that he’s going to start his healing journey soon…and I look forward to hearing or reading all about it. We talked about the “chin bonus” of the surgery, but overall, we just talked about life with sleep apnea and the things that will most likely change when it fades into the background. John is also a mashup king and had made me 2 discs of his faves. Super score!

I did take a picture…and I can look at it on my camera, but my computer no likee, so you no see. Sorry. I’ll check with John and if he’s cool with it, I’ll mention his blog next entry. He’s writing his blog in letters to mom format which I think is awesome. (If only my mom would get online EVER. Court and I gave her my old computer but so far I think it’s probably being used as a stool for her to sit on.)

I saw hottie Dr. Steve yesterday and he polished up my theethses all nice and squeaky clean. He has a Shelby too. Have I mentioned that? Well, we all think it’s funny. They just had a baby (8 weeks ago) so I got to hear all about it. My teeth still don’t touch in the back on the left and I am really bummed about that, because I’m pretty sure it means more things attached to my teeth. grr arg.

This is more rambly than usual. Don’t know why. Guess the brain is here and there and occasionally pitches in a word or two.

I just got a picture today from some friends who had us over a little while ago. I think I might like it. What do you think? Here it is.

(taken by Sumul Shah )

I have been remiss…not an entry or even a squeak since the nuclear eggs incident. I guess I kind of assume…who wants to know? Then people ask. And then more people ask. And I feel bad for not posting to begin with…and then I think “Oh it’s been too long…” and blah blah blah…the end result is me under my covers hiding from the world like the scared procrastinator I am. So here. I give you: My Upper Endoscopy. (please, hold your applause)

The final frontier of GI specialist world (for now) was my upper endoscopy. That’s the one they did after the LOWER sigmoidoscopy and the “how long does it take your gamma ray eggs to evacuate?” test. The last was far easier in that 1. they “consciously” sedated me and 2. I didn’t have to eat or drink anything nasty to prep. Nope, the only prep was that I had to stop eating and drinking at midnight the night before the procedure to ensure an empty stomach. No problem.

At 5pm I was eating at Fresh Choice and by 5:30 I was done…so being that it takes 6 hours for the average stomach to empty (and the nuclear egg test had concluded that I was normal) and my procedure was 15 hours later, you can imagine my surprise (and my doctor’s when he discovered) when I woke up and my doctor said, “Your stomach wasn’t empty.”

eh?

“I found salad.”

I was about to say, “I ate at Fresh Choice!” but he beat me to it and said, “From Fresh Choice.”

I was stunned. How did he know? Did they brand their lettuce? Then I realised that conscious sedation thing meant he’d probably had that conversation with me at least twice by now. I just didn’t remember. A few days later I got a call from him (what is up with my doctors calling me to see how I am? When did this thing happen? Has the world gone nuts? How can I have the 3 doctors in the world who care enough to do that? I am NOT complaining) and he said he was really glad we did the upper endoscopy or we never would have known my stomach didn’t empty in 6 hours (since the eggs lied). NOT that anyone came to any conclusions, unfortunately. The prognosis is: Shelby, you do not have cancer or an ulcer or anything else we can test for right now. Nothing is swollen. Nothing is broken. You have nausea and that sucks. Eat small meals frequently. Take these drugs (prilosec, prevacid and reglan if it gets bad). Your side pain…well, maybe it’s the siamese twin you never had. Who the f knows. Nonetheless, I am managing. And I have no scopes in my immediate future (except the green stuff that helps prevent plaque).

On the braces front: I went to see Dr. Quo and told her I felt like my teeth didn’t touch in the back on my left and she unfortunately confirmed that and said my bite had slipped…So now I get the old school retainer (which I wouldn’t have minded having to begin with) and maybe some “buttons” in the back to pull my teeth together again. I think “buttons” are probably brackets on some teeth but not enough to call “braces”. You know how I missed those cheek spreaders. So they took a mold (peppermint flavor) and I looked like I had made out with a patch of wet cement, and I will see them again in 2-3 weeks when we will start working on my teeth again. OH! Did I mention my ortho sent out a calendar and it was all client pix and I made the back cover?! Yeah baby.

This should satisfy those Mochi-watchers out there.  She’s only 1.5 lbs lighter than Rira now.  Crazy belly baby.

Today I saw hot Doctor Steve my dentist (he has a Shelby too) and he filled Mr. Crapity sans big needles full of numbing drugs.  I mean really, I’m still numb on my gums, a little nerve action shouldn’t bother me.  Actually, I don’t like getting numbed, so unless the doc knows they are going to touch/expose the nerve, I go numbless…  There were actually 3 people (including me) today who declined drugs in the office.  So I guess they’re crazy too.

Off to Hawaii in 3 days.  Life sucks.  Again I ask…how on earth did I get friends like the ones I have?  I mean, loan me your house in Hawaii?  Yeah…I dreamed that.

Aloha!!!

Today was my ultrasound of my kidneys. They made me drink 24 oz. water 1 hour before pressing very very hard on my belleh…that’s just mean! Well, I found out that more fluid=more pain. So I’d like not to do that again, except that they keep telling me to push fluids. Blech.

One would think (well, I was hoping) that with all this nausea and lack of appetite I would have squeaked a little closer to my OTT goal, but alas, I am still in the 149 range, though one morning I saw 147 and almost broke the scale jumping in excitement. So I guess that diet is on hold…or done with and the new one is called…Operation MMAniversary. So maybe one year after my date of surge (December 26, 2006) I will be the ALL NEW, ALL IMPROVED Super chomping and gleaming tooth action super hero I would have dreamed of being, if I could have had normal dreams. How’s that for a mouthful?

Speaking of a mouthful, I went to a movie yesterday called “Wrist Cutters. A Love Story” Okay yes, bad title…but AWESOME movie. And Tom Waites is in it, so…BONUS. I loved it…and you know what else I loved? POPCORN. A whole frikkin bag of it with MY NAME ON IT. I was shoving that stuff in and getting my hands all greasy and Courtland almost lost a finger trying to snag a kernel. Oh I was loving that. And then I flossed last night WITHOUT the stupid threader thingy…Heaven, I tell you. Absolute Heaven.

And just because I’m so excited to have slippy slidey teeth, I will show you again…

I’m going to make a time line…I am hoping to figure something out. It started in July of this year when I decided to go back on THE PILL. You know the one. Although there are millions of pills in the world, if you say you are on THE PILL, not many have to ask for clarification, unless they want to know “which one”. So, I warned Courtland…I am going to be nauseated and horrible for 3 months. And he said okay, and so it began.

The nausea. The uck. The horrible horrible uck. More than a few times Court said “maybe this wasn’t such a good idea” and I would say “I’ve done it this far, I may as well stick with it. Only 3 months…”

I guess I should add here that the reason I stopped the pill many years ago for health reasons. I had bad side effects and decided to detox for a while.

So, July began the trouble and August sucked. In September I began feeling the pain in my left flank inside. I passed a couple stones. I got pyelonephritis after insisting I had an infection and no one believed me until I produced blood in a cup. So they treated me for that. I still had nausea with eating and drinking, and the pain. Oh the pain. But as you know, the urologist I got told me I psychically predicted my kidney infection because that pain was completely unrelated.

I went a few days (the lst few days of your pill pack) without nausea and things were feeling better when I started my next pill pack and BOOM nausea. And that was the beginning of month 4 so I was OVER IT. And I stopped the pill. The nausea is less, but still there. The pain is definitely still there. What pain? Let me try to describe it: When I inhale I get a SHARP stabbing pain under my ribcage on the left towards the back. While inhaling, if I press on my side I can make it hurt more (wooo fun!) and when I toss and turn at night it wakes me up. I am unable to create the pain without flinching or making sad noises. The good news is it only hurts with inhaling and not exhaling, so only 50% of my day sucks.

In October I got a cold. It started in my throat and went into my chest. I got a cough. Sounded worse than it felt. The pain is not when I cough. It’s when I take in a deep breath.

It’s November. I worked all of 4 HOURS in September with all this stuff, and now it looks like November will be a money hemorrhage month too. I hope you don’t mind getting well wishes from me instead of gifts this holiday season! So anywho, I was at work on Monday when the pain stopped being just with inhaling, I couldn’t even pick anything up with my left hand without pain, so I went to urgent care on the advice of my doctor. I have never wanted surgery so badly. I seriously was praying for gallstones so they could rip the gallbladder out and be done with it already. So you can imagine my despair when the ultrasound came back clear (only a tiny polyp in the gallbaldder and a mildly swollen bile duct) and the chest xray showed nothing significant.

My doc has scheduled one more ultrasound of my kidneys this time for Monday and then wants to pass me to a GI specialist. She wants to get this solved before I get on a plane for Thanksgiving week in Hawaii. SO DO I. But what do I do if she hasn’t? Grr… If it was just pain, I would deal. I can deal with pain. But the nausea. And the lack of appetite. I don’t want FOOD?!?!? That’s just insane. And I just got my braces off!!! I should be celebrating with crap…but I am not. I am celebrating with bland food and ginger ale and lots of pills.

I just want an answer…and I want to be able to eat food…and enjoy it…and…okay I’m done complaining. Just wanted to vent a little because I know my posts are usually happy and positive but this has been eating at me for far too long. I’m getting super depressed…and I don’t even feel like eating to help myself! Stick a fork in. I’m done.

Had to check to make sure it wasn’t a dream.  Yeahoooooo!!!!!

Well Gollllyyyyy! So this is life post-braces. Bring out the gum!

Let me tell you a little story about my yesterday.

Walked into Dr. Quo’s Mid-Peninsula Orthodontics and saw my name on the big screen, hailing my soon to be un-braced status. Christina greeted me with her usual lovely smile, checked me in, and away I went…

Christina

There are many awesome women working with Dr. Quo, but only one lucky woman was going to get the honor of prying pieces of porcelain from my teeth. Turns out Jamie got Shelby detail.

BEFORE (ugh self portraits while lying in a dentist’s chair…I don’t advise this for your portfolio)

and….

drumroll….

Where’d they go?!?

Oh, you thought we were done.

NEVER. BWA-ha-ha-ha This is another self-portrait. I kept cracking Jamie up because she’d maneuver all this goop in my mouth and while waiting for it to set, I kept pointing the camera back at her.

Dr. Quo makes her first appearance on my blog! She calls everyone “my dear” and is full of awesome. Right before this picture was taken, the whole team got together with noise makers and screamed congratulations and gave me a bottle of the bubbly. Bubbly what? Martinelli’s of course. It’s chilling as we speak.

Today I saw my dentist Dr. Steve and found out I got one little cavity (I have named it crapity) on the back of one of my top teeth, but ooh how I love me some slippy slidey teeth!

It’s official. I have reached New and Improved Shelby Status! I have cool night breathing action and BONUS slippy teeth! Buy one, get one free! Limited quantity. Hurry now!

First food post-braces: See’s candy butterscotch lolly (no teeth used, but nummy just the same)

First action post-braces: FLOSS (without a stupid threader!)

Second action post-braces: Totally DISCO dance in front of the entire office.

Regarding my surgery here’s what I have noticed. I can now feel (that sounds weird, but it’s the only way I can describe it) the places that are numb. Turns out I have one spot on my lower lip still MIA and most of the fronts of my gums are on haitus in the sensitivity department. My teeth are SOOOPER wiggly but I can’t tell since there’s no feeling in my gums…but Dr. Steve had fun wiggling them around a little.

I now move into official post-post surgery status. And so it goes…

Dr. Quo said, and I believe, that my braces come off today. So here are the last pictures EVER taken of me with braces…(so far)

OUTTA HERE!!!!

Dreaming of slippery teeth…ahhhhhhhhhhhh

My birthday was 2 days ago and my scale showed 149…UNDER 150?!? Thrilled. Operation Turkey Trot now underway.

When I Saw Dr. Li, he was happy with my progress (in the weight loss department). He said, “Getting warm…” and I didn’t quite get it…so he raised his eyebrows in a PG-13 kind of way and said, “Keep going…to HOT.” I gufawed. Honestly. He doesn’t want to see me again until next year *sniff* so I guess he’s sick of my mug. One thing he did note was how incredibly wiggly my teeth are. He was a little concerned so took an x-ray to make sure the roots were not significantly shorter, and found that in fact they had not changed since before the surgery, which is great.

Went to Dr. Quo and found out…(sorry, but I have to yell here I’m so excited) MY BRACES ARE COMING OFF IN 4 WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippee!! *hop hop hop* *boing boing boing* WooooHooooooo!!!!!!

On Monday night my throat started to hurt…and got worse and worse. And Tuesday my throat hurt more. And Wednesday my throat hurt in a different way that was not a better way and I had to teach a class and went home immediately after. My friend Colleen had even decorated my desk all pink and frilly and I sat at it for all of 15 minutes total. Then I went home, had some Mrs. Grass’ chicken noodle soup (it’s all about that golden egg) and Court came home early from work and was all set to do whatever I wanted for my birthday dinner…and I was a lump and sadly had to tell him I was not hungry. I asked if I could take a raincheck for my birthday…and that doesn’t really work, so I think I have to wait until next year. It’s just not the same when you toast to your birthday that has already happened… By yesterday (Thursday) my sore throat had migrated and now I have a chest cold and icky icky cough. The weather is perfect for me to snuggle up with the kitties, drink hot tea, watch Smallville (he so cute) and make jewelry, so that is what I shall do. You can’t stop me.

My friend David brought cookies over last night from his mom for me. I told him if he loved me he wouldn’t have brought them all…because now I will eat them all. Yummmmerlicious. How many jumping jacks do you think I have to do per cookie? just let me know and I’ll start jumping.