Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Posted on May 21, 2011 - by Ashley Jackson

The State of My Third Molars

It’s  been a little over a week since I had my wisdom teeth out (hence the lack of posting–I’ve been busy freaking out/being stoned on percocet/catching up with work). My jaw still aches off and on–it’s been hurting a bit this morning, no doubt helped by my lunch of fries and a chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A–but the pain was never as bad as I thought it was going to be. In fact, while I can’t say that I’d like to repeat the experience, I’d be a lot calmer about it the second time around.

Fortunately, I have no more wisdom teeth left to remove. Ha ha!

The worst part was when the local started wearing off in the car on the way home, hours before it was supposed to, and really, that was upsetting more because I knew it was going to hurt a lot worse if I didn’t get some pain meds than because of the actual pain. I ended up taking an extra day off work, and I’ve been sitting at my desk with my jaw cradled in an ice pack, but really, it hasn’t been that bad. I attribute much of my pretty awesome recovery to the skills of the oral surgeon–Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Basic provided ONE option for an oral surgeon in Raleigh, and I’m glad that option was Dr. Gaines. ‘Cause if I have to have someone dinking around in my mouth with a knife, I want it to be the chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Rex Hospital. Also, my mom stayed with me for a few days and kept track of all my medications and made me eat and took my dog out.  That helped a lot, too.

Of course, part of my speedy recovery is due to my bad-ass self. Who was talking on the way home from her surgery? That’s right, me. (Wait, that wasn’t a good idea?)

—

I had an appointment about my blood pressure on May 2 and had the follow-up this past Tuesday. Being able to sleep + being on metoprolol was tanking my blood pressure (and by tanking I mean it was 100s/70s–this is tanking in comparison to what it used to be), and I was getting lightheaded a lot. So after an appointment with my PA, I went down to a half-dose of the BP meds, and now my blood pressure is around 117/76. (Of course, it wasn’t at my follow-up appointment, thanks to all the ibuprofen I’m taking for my jaw.) My pulse is still averaging 107 no matter what I’m on, which is disappointing. I’m also a little sad to be on BP meds in my mid-20s–I know it might just be the way it is, but it’s still a little disheartening. I’ve decided to spend the summer focusing on seriously improving my diet in the hopes that by doing so, I can drop some (more) weight and maybe that will bring my blood pressure down even more. There’s no doubt that I eat a lot better now than I used to, and I’ll even venture that I eat better than most Americans (this past week’s soft-fast-food binge aside), but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

I’m now going to lay on my bed with my netbook and an ice pack.

And no, I’m not posting post-surgery pictures of my huge swollen face online.

Posted on March 9, 2011 - by Ashley Jackson

There is No Food in this Post

It’s been a long couple of weeks since I last posted…been busy at work and trying to (and mostly succeeding in) sticking to a regular schedule to see how it affects my sleep. The answer is: not much. I took  3 mg of melatonin at 8PM or so for two weeks, then bumped it up to 6 mg for the last week. I switched one of my meds to the morning even though doing that makes me queasy. I read for an hour every night before bed (except for two nights when I played trivia and didn’t get home until 10:30, and one night when I stayed up until 9PM to watch an episode of Criminal Minds). I tried to keep the lights low in the evening, rarely used my netbook in bed, and tried to remain as chill as possible when I couldn’t sleep.

And the result is? Not much improvement. I’ve been able to get an extra hour or so of sleep every night because the melatonin is helping me fall asleep, but then I go right back to waking up every hour, and being up most of the night several nights a week. Yesterday was my second appointment with the sleep doctor and she prescribed me some meds that I picked up at the pharmacy today. I really really really x 1000 hope they work, because it’s getting to the point where I’m having to take sick leave from work during the weeks when I get very little sleep because I can’t function for a full work day. And also because I’m afraid I’m going to drive my car into someone else’s.

In happier news: I’ve been getting a lot of reading done. I finished American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, and The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen. The first was looooong and kind of boring at times, but mostly interesting. Wouldn’t say it was terrific, though. The Man in the High Castle was weird–I’m not sure Philip Dick’s sci-fi is my style. But I really loved The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers–it was pretty fantastic. I finished it in less than 24 hours. In fact, I went to the library yesterday after my doctor’s appointment (the library was right down the road and I had to take a lunch break anyway) and got Thomas Mullen’s other novel, which I think is called The Last Town on Earth. I also picked up George W. Bush’s Decision Points. But right now I’m about 100 pages away from finishing Kathryn Stockett’s The  Help, which everyone seemed to be raving about last year. I’m really enjoying it–I’m hoping I can finish it tonight  after I do my chores and before I head to Durham to play trivia; otherwise, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happens…

Speaking of chores–this may be the longest stretch of time ever that my living space has been clean. And by living space, I don’t just mean my 1050 square foot apartment–I’m including college dorm rooms and childhood bedrooms. I’m not saying everything perfectly neat; there are clothes piled on the dog crate and a couple of dirty dishes in the sink–but for the past couple of weeks I’ve managed, with the help of lists, to keep my apartment clean enough so that if I wanted to have company, I would barely have to do anything before I felt comfortable inviting them over. And I’ve even skipped some of the chores I’m supposed to do some days, too.

Better get to it so I can try to finish my book…

Posted on August 30, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Nothin’ Could Be Finer Than–HEY LOOK A SQUIRREL!

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled blogcast to present some extreme cuteness. It’s like cute overload without the kitty l33tspeak, y’all.

But also, it might be a little sad.

I will warn those of you who, like me, pretend to be bad-ass but are marshmallows on the inside when it comes to helpless baby h’aminals that these pictures might make you start blubbering. I warned you.

I slept in this morning, as I often do on Mondays (and other days ending in “day”), and when I took Heath out around 8AM he started acting weird. He really wanted to go over to a certain part of the lawn. Really, really bad. Like the way he does when there’s a rabbit or a squirrel. So I walked over there with him, and he immediately ran over to…

…a baby chupacabra!

No? Well, it did take me a minute to figure out that this was a baby squirrel, largely because there was a dog standing over it. I thought it was dead, but as Heath and I looked on out of morbid curiosity, I realized it was breathing every few seconds with big, gasping breaths.

So I ran back inside, got dressed for work, ran back out, and picked up the baby squirrel with my bare hands. Rabies-schmabies. He was cold (it was in the 70s this morning), so I took him inside and wrapped him in a dish towels and cuddled him and tried to warm him up. After a little while he started breathing better and moving his paws a little, so I took him back outside and put him on the ground, still in the dishtowel so that he’d be a little warm and my neighbors wouldn’t step on him. I made sure his mom could get him out if she came back for him, then left for work.

I’m still not sure whether he fell out of the tree or something took him out of it–he had some cuts on him, but that could easily be from falling through the branches or from his littermates’ wicked squirrel claws.

While at work, I used my mad resources (aka Jamie) to track down a list of local wildlife rehabilitators, and  a couple of hours later, I used my lunch break to come back from work to check on the little guy. He was still there, so I scooped him up, took him inside, and put him in a box with an old t-shirt and a bottle of hot water. Then I took Heath out and he immediately ran back over to the area where we’d found the squirrel. I figured he just wanted to investigate since he never realized that I’d picked the squirrel up and brought him inside, but no–he found a second baby squirrel that unfortunately was already dead.

That sealed it–baby squirrel number 1 was coming with me.

I took him to work and left him in my nice warm car (with the windows down a little so it didn’t get too hot), then grabbed my list of rehabbers and started calling. The first call went to an answering machine that said they weren’t accepting wildlife, but I managed to get a hold of someone on the second call and within a half hour I’d taken an extra-long lunch and driven to her house in Cary to drop him off.

He was a lot warmer than he had been on the ride over to Cary, but by the time we got there I couldn’t tell if he was breathing still. I told the rehabber I wasn’t sure if he was still alive and she said, “Well, we’ll see about that, let’s warm him up” and grabbed him and stuck him under her shirt. She told me to call her if I found any others. God bless wildlife rehabbers–that’s a ton of work for a unequal share of sorrow, but I bet when the little guys pull through it makes it all worthwhile.

I suppose I could call to see if he made it, but I’d rather leave it like this. If I don’t know, I can speculate that he’s still alive and warm and fed at the rehabber’s house, and I can console myself with the knowledge that if he died at least he died somewhere warm and soft instead of cold and alone in the leaves.

After I got home from work, I took Heath out and he led me back to the second baby squirrel. I buried it under the tree it fell out of and put a big rock on top so nothing digs it up. We’ll keep checking the area for a couple of days to see if any more baby squirrels turn up.

My Heathcliff is such a good boy! I wish he’d always find cute things instead of snakes…