My Plans for the Long Weekend

These last couple days I've had an irate client, worked a couple of 12 hour days, and had injections in the butt. I think I'll have a couple of 12 hour naps now.

Feeling Low

About a month ago, a had a whole bunch of blood work taken. The nurse had called and said that my vitamin D levels were low and my doctor would like me to take supplements.

A couple weeks ago, I started feeling nauseated everyday. But two weeks of daily nausea was getting a little ridiculous (No, I am not pregnant!).

So on Thursday, I called Telehealth Ontario. It's a 24 hour health hotline and you get to talk to a nurse for advice. The nurse asked my a million questions then concluded the phone call with "I think you should see your doctor within the next couple of the days." Well that was a lot of help.

I already had a follow up appointment scheduled at the beginning of September, but she recommended I go sooner.

I called the doctor's office and was told to come in Saturday morning when he was doing the drop-in clinic. On Friday though, I was feeling a little better and decided not to go. But on Saturday morning, the nausea was back so I went in.

I explained my symptoms to the doctor. He asked me if I was still taking the vitamin D supplements. I told him I was but I didn't think it was making a difference. He said that my levels were pretty low so it's going to take a long time before I see a difference.

Then he flipped through the rest of my results. He said my iron was incredibly low and explained the numbers to me in order for me to get a perspective of how low.

41-100 the lab considers acceptable iron levels.
18 is considered iron deficient.
80 is where my doctor likes to see iron levels at.
My iron level is at 12.

Since my iron levels are so low, I am exhausted to the point of nausea. That explains my 12 hour nap last week (see previous post).

I had two options.
1. Take oral pills but it takes 3-6 months before there's a difference. T
2. Get needles in my butt, they hurt, my butt will be sore, and it may leave permanent marks on my skin however it will take only 2 weeks for it to make a difference.

Since I didn't want to feel crappy for another 3-6 months and my levels were that low, I picked the shots in the butt. So now I have to go to the doctor's office 2-3 times a week for the next 4-5 weeks so the nurse could prick me with a needle and I can live with a sore, polka-dotted butt. But at least I won't feel so tired and nauseated anymore.

Sheldon sees this as a good thing because it means we can eat lots of meat. I say that just because I have to eat more red meat doesn't mean we can afford for the whole family to eat steaks every night. Nice try, Sheldon, but you'll still have to eat your veggies too.

Naptime

This week I've been tired to the point of nausea so on Friday, I treated myself to a nap after supper. What was supposed to be a one hour nap turned out to be a 12 hour nap! I remembered Aidan crawling in bed beside me at about 9pm but after that, I was dead to the world. Next thing I knew, my alarm was telling me it was 6am. I was rested enough that I could have climbed out of bed then but hey, it was Saturday...why force it?

Ants, and butterflies, and racoons, oh my!

Every summer, we visit a different campground in order to see the best that Ottawa has to offer. Since Sheldon's work has attached a leash to him this year (we'll call this leash "Blackberry"), I decided we should camp closer to home this year...Lac Philippe in Gatineau Park. Being so close to the city ensures that he gets some kind of reception although at times, he had to stand on a large rock in order to keep the reception (oh and I'd like to dispute Rogers' "No Dropped Calls" claim, if I may). Although it's supposed to be close to home, it took us a couple of hours to get to the campground on account of lousy directions from Google Maps. Nevertheless, we got there 30 min. before they locked the gates.


Now this leash that Sheldon has attached to his hip has become quite an inconvenience in our lives, so much so that we didn't do much while camping this weekend. Sheldon didn't sleep much either because it kept going off (apparently servers and broken A/C units don't make a good combination). Anyways, the boys were left to entertain themselves a lot.

One activity that proved to be popular (so popular that a movie was made about it) was ant bullying. This activity started innocently enough, crouching down and observing these hard working creatures as they carry away the crumbs from our campsite. Connor even let them crawl onto his arm so he can get a closer look.

Then the game evolved into poking at ant hills with sticks. The game evolved again into spitting on the ants, and eventually picking them up and tearing appendages off. The worse came when they started to throw them into the fire. I had to put a stop to that right away. I had visions of my boys upgrading to small animals and then seeing their faces on television years from now, wanted for...well, you get the idea.

Since we were camping so close to home and we were stuck for activities (reported cases of swimmers itch at the lake), we decided to drive into the city for the ward picnic. Hats off from one activities leader to another...Gail did a great job organizing this event. There was a western theme, complete with bales of hay, "covered wagon" races, and a vegetable relay. Paul tried to prevent our team from winning by stealing vegetables from our team but we won anyways...both times. The event even included an impromptu water fight. The best moment had to be the tug-o-war. Somebody on our team had the brilliant plan during the second try to let go of the rope when the whistle blew. We laughed so hard seeing the other team fall after the first tug! Too bad nobody had a video camera handy at the time.




Brendan was really lucky and caught a butterfly during the picnic. It stayed in his hand for a very long time too. Great for pictures.
















Finally, no camping weekend is complete without unexpected visitors of a woodland species. A co-worker of mine informed me that Gatineau Park is filled with precocious raccoons. They are not scared of campers at all. He also told me that there are have been sightings of Big Foot too, although I wasn't too sure about that one. Sure enough though, last night we were visited by a small group of raccoons. They came up to about 4-5 feet away from me. Then they scurried away and tried coming back to our campsite from another direction. We tried to take pictures of them but they didn't turn out at all. But here is a picture that Sheldon took of Connor and I after.

I do believe I saw Big Foot as well, jogging one morning past our campsite. Although where he got an mp3 player, I'm not sure. But I definitely saw him...quite a hairy fellow I might say. But alas, like all the other Big Foot witnesses, I have no proof. I didn't have quick access to the camera when I saw him.

In the end, it was a very quiet camping trip. I would say relaxing but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case for Sheldon and his leash. I am happy to be home, trying to catch up on laundry, and lounging in my pajamas. The perfect way to end a long weekend. Actually, the perfect way is to get out of cooking dinner tonight. Hmmmm, I wonder if I can talk Sheldon into ordering out?