Poison Ivy and Parasites

Two weeks ago, my stomach started cutting flips and nausea struck and the like. Simultaneously, poison ivy grew in massive patches down my arms, on my belly, on my face.

Neither improved for a week. I started getting really weak, losing weight, feeling like the world was collapsing. Ten days passed. No improvement. To just check, even though I was sure it wasn't the case, I took a pregnancy test. Of course that would not explain the horrible case of poison ivy, but maybe the nausea.

I am definitely not pregnant. I went to the doctor. She didn't have a lot of answers. I must of looked pretty rough because she wanted to do a CT scan. We decided that perhaps we should not jump straight to that. I called around for some advice. Several suggested Ghiardia. So I had the proper tests run. Yep. Ghiardia.

It feels good to have a diagnosis and some antibiotics. We are having to do some serious timing of meds and pumping and dumping for William, but much better than hospital stays or something more serious.

Ironically, at the same time, four years ago we were moving into life in Athens. I had the exact horrible poison ivy reaction and George Wilder had salmonella! Hmmmm.

I'm thinking there is a welcome wagon that comes with bread and cheese and wine and flowers is there not?

We have been swimming a good bit in the local lake and I think that I was pretty worn down from the move, and making bubbles for William in that water wasn't the best idea. Lesson learned.

It is nice to feel better and eat some food and not have such a heavy head. My mom was here visiting and it could not have been at a better time. She kept us fed and clean! Thanks Mom!

Off to rest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Cattle Are Lowing

Image
We’d waited since February for her to calf. By November 20th, all eyes stayed on mama cow - Trahlyta. Her due date was close and we were more than ready. The waiting wrung our patience.  October was wet and boggy and Trahlyta looked sick. We discovered rotting flesh in her foot. Foot rot set in from standing on soggy ground day after day. George and the children tended to her around the clock as they cleaned out oozing infected sore and cared for her hooves. We’ve had her since she was a few days old. The children raised her. She’s part of our family. And, she’s our first cow to calf. She held the keys to our own dairy supply and to our tender hearts as we watched her stay under the weather. All we could do was wait and make sure she stayed healthy and it wasn’t as easy as we expected. But now, her hooves were healthy and her belly was swollen and we were waiting.  On the morning of the 24th, I rushed to the window at the first day light. Down by the creek, I saw Trahlyta and a red cal
Read more

Love Them. Feed Them. Talk To Them. The Rest Is Icing On The Cake.

Image
We've been homeschooling for ten years. At LEAST once a week I think that homeschooling is the worst possible thing on the planet. I look at my kids and think, "I've got nothin'!" It is scary. It is hard. How many hundreds of times have I called my extremely patient husband and yelled, literally screamed into the phone, "I CAN'T DO THIS!" There was a day, in the middle of a lesson that wasn't going well at all, that I walked out the back door, walked to the pool, jumped in fully clothed and yelled as loud as I could under the water. I got back out of the pool, calmly walked inside, changed my clothes and continued with the day feeling much relieved. George, my husband and biggest cheerleader - also a major part of our homeschooling life, is diligent to walk me off the cliff of homeschool despair. When I feel like I am failing our children, he offers me this morsel... Before I give you his advice, I would like to mention at this poi
Read more

Mother's Day Garden Rescue

Image
At 5 a.m. this morning, I felt a cold breeze brush across my forehead from the window above me. Immediately I remembered we didn’t cover the tomatoes. Or the squash. Or the basil. Or any of the fragile life tender green and growing. Growing because we planted it and because we watered it and because we want it to feed us and because our family has spent countless hours prepping soil, dragging water, and watching the weather closer than the Weather Channel.  There have been five other nights that we remembered to cover the plants in preparation for a coming storm or freeze. We’d already been up in the middle of the night rushing to protect it all as the winds whipped at us. We had found every last bucket and canister and jar that would cover our precious starts. Most of our work felt in vain because we hadn’t had a frost or a wild storm actually do enough damage for the shelters to make a difference... Truth -- I was frustrated because we had covered all the plants the nigh
Read more