Happy New Year?

Welcome 2013! Today officially starts my January detox. Yesterday was my last hurrah, enjoying the full-butter spoils of our New Year’s Day roasted turkey with mashed potatoes and buttered organic carrots. I used the last of the leftover butter from Davinities in making our start of the year meal special, and sort of a “Dimanche Gras” getting the last of the rich and fat out of the fridge. We’d originally thought we’d do the turkey breast for Christmas, but didn’t get it thawed in time so we thawed it in time for our New Year’s Day feast. Now, the second day of 2013, I am committed to behaving!

I hope I’m not being too confusing. It’s just as a digi-scrapper I understand that when something starts and it’s just not right, the best thing to do is delete and start over. So, happy day after New Year’s Day.

Last time I posted it was the morning of New Year’s Eve. I did the Monday Quiz About Me and promised I’d be back with my goals and projects for 2013. I got as far as having it in a document to post and everything. And then that pause was hit on New Year’s Eve. Here is the very beginning of the original goals post:

As I am finishing up this post establishing my goals and projects for the New Year, I’m being attacked by my last demon of 2012; a cold. I don’t get colds often, so I’m a total baby about them. I think the cold that’s attacking me probably has to do with my bad mobility being even worse today. Add achy to my usual; weak. So a blah year is kicking me out its door with a congested chest, sore throaty and nasty body aches to go with the sinus headache. Oh bring on 2013!

The cold? Notsomuch a cold as I was one of many people at Bortrail the weekend before who got the flu! But as I was one of many who got it, I was the only one who has MS that got it. By dinnertime I was fevered with fever aches and so incredibly weak that I could barely move from the kitchen to the loveseat in the dining room, even with a walker. I knew I wasn’t going to make it to midnight. David was feeling the start of the same bug that was hitting many of us too.

I medicated up and snuggled up in blankets on the loveseat, barely touching the Chinese dinner David picked up for me on the way home to enjoy while he ate his steak. He fell asleep on the couch after dinner and I vaguely remember hearing him say “Happy New Year, Honey. I’m going upstairs.”

I awakened at 3AM feeling worse than ever. #What’s more, I didn’t have enough strength in my legs to get up. I was in full tears and aches mode. David tried to help me, by bringing chairs and things to help me boost myself while he pulled me, but short of picking me up, which is honestly beyond a single-person job, there was nothing he could do. So, our neighborhood was warmed in the wee hours of January 1 by the quiet glow of fire and rescue lights and I got to go for my first-ever ambulance ride!

Things blur a little for me at that point. I had on jeans and a t-shirt; no bra, no coat. David says I was getting IV saline; don’t remember that and I do kinda remember the shot in the hip, but I have no idea what it was for. But the bruising tells me it wasn’t my imagination that it happened. Ooh! I also got my first-ever catheter experience! It’s preferable to a bed-pan, but I still prefer handling that process on my own and in private. I also got to meet the MS doctor in Toledo that I was going to try to see a long time ago but the waiting list was 6 weeks+. He was in to do his morning visits with patients and I was the one he saw in ER. I’m also the one he admitted to the hospital to get over the flu and get physical therapy so I’d be strong enough to go home. Saturday evening I was strong enough to go home.

So, I’ve deleted the first 5 days of 2013, cutting the timeline off just before dinner on New Year’s Eve, and pasting at just before dinner Saturday. I announced “Happy New Year” at midnight and after 4 nights sleeping on my back, alone, not being able to roll over without help because for the first two days I was just too sick and too weak and for the next two the mattress was a twin and the type of foam-style that just sucks your body into it, I slept on my side, curled up with my warm hubby. Ah! Life had returned to normal again.

Now, the New Year’s turkey fest is cleaned up and the turkey breast carcass is in the fridge and ready to be soup. It was my first full day awake and now I’m pretty tired, but I’m almost back in the swing of “normal.” I’ll check-in for the Monday Quiz About Me and I’ll try the whole Monday thing again. I just wanted y’all to know why I haven’t visited blogs and answered questions from the December 31 MQAM, participated in any other firsts for the year, posted my goals and projects like I promised or even thanked my Secret Santa! I’m not a slacker or rude! I just had to delete most of the first week of 2013! But I’ll make up for it, promise!