On the Mend

Wow--this time last week everything started to go wrong. Eddie was getting fussier by the day from cutting teeth, my infection started getting REALLY bad, my hard drive fried, and eventually my back went out.

But things are looking up!

Eddie's first tooth (bottom right) appeared as a little while blister-looking thing two Saturdays ago and then popped through completely by Monday. He's drooling a lot again, spends a lot of time chewing on plastic spoons, and varies between being super clingy/fussy to being his normal happy self. So I think he's working on another tooth.

My breast infection is basically gone. It doesn't hurt to nurse him anymore and he's not sucking out any gobs of chunky milk anymore (a gross but good thing about nursing/pumping during an infection is that you can SEE the results of getting the milk flowing). Now I have peeling skin from being so swollen (not engorged with milk, but literally swollen from the infection). I'm still on antibiotics but I feel 100% better.

It took three types of antibiotics (one was a good ol' fashioned injection in the butt) to cure me. A breast milk culture showed, luckily, that it was probably just regular staph from my skin instead of something pathogenic (or resistant to drugs). On Tuesday night I had to get the babysitter to come help bathe and bed Eddie since I could hardly hold him. Eddie was NOT PLEASED AT ALL having Jacob do his bedtime routine instead of me. Oy. And I had to ask Dave to come back home, all the way from Gualala because I just couldn't take care of myself or Eddie. He arrived just in the nick of time because in the hours between Tuesday bedtime and Wednesday morning my fever spiked, I was shaking, and all my muscles tensed up. Except for going to the doctor and nursing Eddie or pumping I spent the next two days sleeping. When I walked I avoided bouncing with each step as much as possible and adjusted my posture to accommodate my swollen breast. (Hence my back going out.)

Dave has run something like 8 different data recovery programs on my hard drive but to no avail...yet. He's determined to get at least the report I wrote on Monday (but had not yet submitted) and my R files off of it. Once he's satisfied we'll mail it back to Acer since it is still under the 1 year warranty. In the meantime I'm using a temporary laptop that I don't like much, but at least it has Windows 7 instead of Vista on it.

Yesterday I got a deep tissue (read: painful but wonderful) massage from a sports medicine guy downtown. He made some great suggestions about ways that I can avoid this type of injury again--core strengthening exercises, how to "properly stand up from a seated position, paying more attention to what my body is telling me, etc. He also said I should "not stress out so much" because then I will be happier over all and will probably be able to sense when my body needs to relax. Hahahahahaha. I told him that I have very little time for exercise given that I have to work AND take care of Eddie all the time. But I will try to get a pilates or yoga DVD that I can do at home while Eddie is playing. We'll see how that goes.

My back and thighs are quite bruised and sore from the massage but the lower back muscles that I pulled on Sunday don't hurt anymore. Thank goodness. It was hard to hold Eddie to nurse, let alone carry him around the house for simple things like diaper changes.

So things are looking up! After I mix up some aphid-killer spray for my roses I'm going to go lay on my heating pad for the next hour while Eddie takes his morning nap (let's hope it is a good 2 hours). It is gorgeous outside today...and that means the aphids will soon be here.

=)