Down With Pain

I haven't been very active on the computer lately for two reasons:

(1) We experienced a motherboard crash this weekend. FH was up all night last night trying to get the computer in workable condition so that I could have my online job interview for a tutoring job.

(2) As of yesterday's visit to the emergency room, I have been diagnosed with an interesting condition called "costochondritis." Basically it's a pain in the butt, only it's in the chest instead. ;) Seriously, it's an utterly benign and totally untreatable severe pain in the chest, caused by inflammation in the cartilage. This inflammation is caused (in this case) by severe episodes of coughing and puking, the former brought on by a cold/bronchial infection, the latter by the normal symptoms of early pregnancy. I told my doctor about it, and when it got very much worse, he sent me to the ER to have it properly diagnosed. They gave me an EKG and some Lortabs and sent me home. The Lortabs don't help, by the way. I took one last night and still couldn't sleep for the pain. And I can't take any during the day, because you can't drive while on the meds, and since nobody wanted to carpool with The New Girl On The Block, I have to drive kids to and from school in the morning, mid-day, and afternoon.

I do all right as long as I'm sitting up or standing and moving around very gently... which, being a mother of three, lasts all of thirty seconds before I have to bend over or reach out to catch a falling toddler, or lay down to combat the fatigue of pregnancy. I have to be very careful not to cough, laugh, hiccup, sneeze, or breathe deeply. Sneezing is the worst; it makes me pine for the pain of labor contractions, which at least lets up for whole minutes at a time. In fact, if given a choice between this pain and the pain of squeezing a full-grown baby out through my nether regions, I'd choose the latter, because childbirth would only last for a few hours, then I'd sit on a rubber doughnut for a couple of days, and that would be the end of it. This pain has gone on for a week already and it's likely to go on for the remainder of the pregnancy and possibly after that as well. I've spent three of the last seven days in bed with pain.

It looks like it's going to be this way for quite some time, folks, so I'm afraid you can't expect very much blogging from me in the future.