The Week in Review 2-17-2008

Ok, so this one is late but I'm hoping it's worth the wait. It was a busy week so hopefully I don't forget anything of importance.

Medically - Where to begin, where to begin... I had my fourth MRI on Friday. At first glance everything looks good but I won't have the official results until Wednesday or thereabouts. I continue to pray that I am right and the MRI looks good. :)

On Tuesday I took a cognitive test and the results were interesting to say the least. It is our first "non-MRI" proof that there is definitely something wrong with the right side of my brain. The numbers are humbling. This is the first physical sign of any neurological deficits and it's strange because it still doesn't hamper me in life. This is probably because my mind has adjusted to this over the years and because it wasn't a sudden decrease in this ability, it was never noticed. It was never there so there was never a decrease. It will be interesting watching these numbers as my life progresses in the world of brain tumors.

My bronchitis continues. It was getting better for several days and now it seems to be going backwards again. I will give it another few days and if it doesn't start recovering again soon, then I will go back in for more meds. Yes I will wait if I can because I know the next step is the steroid Prednisone and I'm not anxious to go on that again. I am not a fan of it even if it does take care of the bronchitis. In the meantime, I continue using my inhalers and hope that it has plateaued and will go back down.

My sinus infection seems to have cleared up so that is a good sign. My tooth also appears to be healing quite nicely so that can be put to bed soon. It still has a small area that hasn't started healing over yet but as long as I keep food out of that area, it doesn't bother me. I can't wait until I can eat on that side again. :)

Emotionally - I won't deny that the week was an emotionally draining one. I haven't typically gotten nervous about the MRIs but with the big question marks from the last one, I won't deny this one had me worried. I came through it with the help of some great friends, however, and soon we'll have the official results of it and I can put it completely behind me for another 8 weeks.

Mentally - I made some good progress this week. I was able to get some more important documents sorted out and I have been able to reconstruct most of my list of things I still need to do. I have also laid out some plans for the future and written out what I am willing and not willing to do. Some of these plans will be in the near future, others are lifelong plans. I'll share them as time moves along. Right now there are still a few big question marks that need to be answered before I start sharing them.

Physically - I'm feeling much better than I did last week and my energy level has been back to a normal. I have always had very defined energy patterns and I'm just fortunate that my illness coincided with my natural low and now (even though I'm still fighting it) my natural high is stronger than my illness. I am hoping this high remains through the week and I can get things caught back up from being down.

I haven't been able to work out since early part of January. (It's hard to do cardio exercises when you are struggling to breathe because you are coughing with every other breath.) I am hoping to slide back in to at least my strength training exercises this week. We'll see if I'm able to manage or not.

Family - Everyone seems to be doing ok. My son is over his bronchitis/sinus infection and is back to his normal self. John seems to be avoiding the worst of sinus season so I'm hoping he gets through the rest. He's had a few flareups but nothing requiring a doctor.

We did have a scary event not far from our house Friday night. A truck with six teenagers in it was in a crash and four were killed when the truck exploded. The accident occurred about 2-3 miles from my house. I believe details are still coming out about the crash but it has been tragic for the community. Please keep their families in your thoughts.

Play - I'm tempted to take this section out because really there isn't a whole lot to write about here that isn't constantly repeating. Because of my bronchitis, we haven't been dancing because the activity is too much. I haven't even been on Puzzle Pirates more than a few times over the past several weeks and that was more to keep my employment labor alive than anything. Tribal Wars has probably taken the most of my time but... well I've got some decisions to make on that game. There will be more on that once I finalize them.

Test - Well, because of the long absence from playing, I will be hopefully starting this over this week. I need to come up with a workable plan so that I'm not taking hours a night trying to do this. I think I may separate it out into two of the testing a day so that it takes six days to get through all of the tests. That should help me keep it all down to 10-15 minutes yet still get in my practice and find good patterns. I'll work it out and report next week on it.

Anyway, it was a busy week and I'm glad it is over. We will see if this week is as busy or if it is back to a calm week.