Have a happy fourth everyone! Enjoy the fireworks and time with your loved ones!
Bella Recovery, day 1 and 2
Life has been pretty uneventful on the recovery front. Bella’s home and she’s been talking away. Her voice doesn’t even sound hoarse.
Every now and then, she’ll mention her throat is hurting, or her tummy is hurting, or her head is hurting. But it’s only gotten severe enough to inspire tears once, and every time it’s happened in the thirty minutes before her pain meds are due.
The prescription pain medicine stings.We were following the doctor’s suggestion and giving ibuprofen except for at night, but then we realized that we could only give ibuprofen every six hours instead of every four. And at 3 and a half, she’s hurting. Every time we did two doses in a row of ibuprofen instead of alternating prescription pain meds with ibuprofen, she’s been in a lot more pain and the medicine has stung more going down.
So, now we alternate, and that seems to defeat most of the stinging and keep the pain minimal.
With the pain managed, the next hardest thing to deal with is boredom. She can only watch so much television before getting bored. We have an entire season of Dragons: Race to the Edge that we’re working through, and she has video games to play. Between episodes, we do crafts and play board games, but with the exception of that thirty minutes between doses, she feels like she can play. She gets down right hyper.
Also difficult is food. We’ve got breakfast down (eggs, yogurt, banana), and for lunch I found these great birds-eye pasta shapes meals that have soft pasta and corn and squishy peas and such that she can eat. But she doesn’t want it twice a day and she’s still unwilling to try soup or mashed potatoes. It wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t starving. We’re keeping the worst of the hunger at bay with those two meals, lots of ice cream, jello, yogurt, and pudding, and at least one carnation instant breakfast a day. But my kid, who has happily lived on air for most of her life, has now of all times decided she really wants a meal she can sink her teeth into.
But overall, I’m really pleased with how well her recovery is going. By contrast, here’s where I was on day one and two (post-op, if you’re counting the day of the surgery push both back by one).
Bella’s Surgery
We’ve known Bella needed to have her tonsils and adenoids removed since February. After a long wait to meet with the ENT (May), the surgery was scheduled for yesterday. That means my poor kid has known about a pending surgery for five months. She’s had five months to dread it, five months to chew her nails to bits.
Some things that helped prep her for the surgery were these two books and talking to other kids who’d had their tonsils removed. Also, the promise of ice cream and unlimited screen time.
What didn’t help was the fact that she was around when my tonsils were removed two years ago. Everyone kept telling us adult tonsillectomies were worse, but I kind of wonder if that whole “worse” thing has to do with kids limited abilities to express pain.
But, she had to have her tonsils removed. She caught every bug under the sun last year, and her tonsils were obstructing her airway and causing some major sleep apnea. So two days ago, we had a Bella day, where she was allowed to choose whatever she wanted to eat all day (and she did good. I was half expecting candy and junk food, but she wanted waffles and bananas for breakfast, McDonald’s for lunch, and pizza for dinner. Not super healthy, but not cookies all day either). And had a goodbye tonsil party that night where we watched a Bella movie and had cake to say goodbye. Then yesterday, at 6:30 AM, we arrived at an outpatient facility to have the tonsils removed.
She was pretty upset about not being allowed to have breakfast or water, but the promise of a popsicle after surgery kept her going. I’m glad I brought her leap pad with us, because we were in the waiting room for a good hour filling out paper work and (this was a surprise) paying for the surgery up front. Then they called us back and we spent about another hour meeting with the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the nurses. They all asked the exact same questions to make sure we were all on the same page. It was a really subtle safety precaution. We filled out more paperwork, and then Bella got changed into a really cute hospital gown with tigers on it.
They gave her medicine to stop her from salivating and we had the option to give her something to reduce her anxiety before they took her away from us and put her under, but we were warned this would impact her ability to come out from under the anesthesia. She’d be way more out of it and it would be a much bigger deal. Fortunately, this is where the books came in handy. Each kid in the books was given a medicine that made them sleepy and relaxed before they left their parents. Bella assumed the medicine she drank did just that and since it was early in the morning and she was sleepy and no one slept well the night before, she legitimately felt sleepy. So we opted not to go with the other medicine.
It was really hard letting them wheel her bed away. When I got my tonsils out, there was this little kid the next room over screaming for his mommy and daddy. The poor thing was so terrified that I was crying on his behalf. There’s really no worse sound than a terrified child. I kept picturing Bella getting back there without us and flipping out and us just sitting out in the waiting room not knowing. But when I talked to her about it later, she said that everyone was so nice that she never felt scared.
She woke up asking for chocolate and assuring us it didn’t hurt as bad as her throat normally did. Her doctor said her tonsils were pretty inflamed and riddled with tonsil stones, which he was expecting, but he was surprised by the size of her adenoids. Apparently they were much larger than he anticipated.
Bella gave the doctors evil glares when they checked on her, which was surprising since she’d just said they were so nice. Further investigation revealed she’d been promised a popsicle, which had not yet been delivered, and that she’d get to blow up a balloon. But the balloon was’t a real balloon (the thing they breathe into for anesthesia).
We got her a real balloon and a popsicle and all was well.
Then the kid in the next curtain partition over woke up and started screaming. Which had to hurt. So he screamed more. Poor kid was just too little to understand what was happening. His mom was frantically trying to calm him down and the doctors gave him something, but it was really awful to hear, and it stressed Bella out because she’d been fine pain wise but now she was thinking, maybe she should be in pain.
The rest of the day went much better. Bella took her pain medicine and napped until the next dose was due (four hour gaps), at which point we switched to Ibuprofen because her doctor insists it works just as well for managing pain.
We’ll see.
By the end of the day, Bella was bored with unlimited screen time, tired of ice cream, and unwilling to try soup or mashed potatoes. She was hungry for real food and very upset she couldn’t get any. I wasn’t too worried because I wasn’t allowed to eat anything on my first day, so she was better off. And since I’d done this before, I knew all the tricks. I had the humidifier ready, the ice collars frozen, the meds spaced out perfectly. Movies and shows and games all picked out. Gatorade with crushed ice and an intimate knowledge of just how much the pain killers sting going down, so she had lots of warning.
It got worse at night, which I was expecting. That’s when all the talking kind of crashed down on her. She didn’t want to take the stinging medicine, but we had ice Gatorade ready to chase it down. Once the medicine kicked in, she went to sleep. We set the alarm for more doses (switching to ibuprofen for the rest of the night), and she slept really well throughout the night.
This morning, she was happy to eat her breakfast. Eggs, banana, and greek yogurt. Chewing doesn’t seem to bug her as much as it did me, so that’s good, but we did wait until her ibuprofen kicked in before feeding her. She’s excited to be able to brush her teeth and enjoy a full day of screen. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.
For comparison, this is what day one of an adult tonsillectomy looks like.
Thumbs Up
Tonsillectomy Master Post
Two years ago, my tonsils were taken out, and I blogged about it. Extensively. Why? Well, when I’m worried about something, I deal with it by researching the thing that bothers me to death. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I read every book on pregnancy and every blog I could find. I took every class offered. It’s how I coped with the terrifying unknown.
There wasn’t much out there on grown-ups getting their tonsils taken out, so I decided to chronicle my recovery so other people like me would have at least a little something more. And man, am I glad I did, because now it’s my daughter’s turn to get her tonsils removed. I’ve been reading over my old post, trying to figure out what to expect and what to buy before tomorrow morning.
That’s when I discovered it’s really hard to navigate old posts. So I’m putting all the posts here in one easy to click on place.
Mostly for my benefit, but hey, it might help someone else out, too. I’ll also be blogging about Bella’s procedure and recovery and adding those links to this posts as I go along. That’ll make it easy to compare and contrast for anyone wondering about the differences in recovery between adult and child.
Adult Tonsillectomy
Stopped blogging at this point because all the updates were basically the exact same (throat sore but tolerable in slightly lesser increments) until…
Recovery from Tonsillectomy (Day 11)
Child Tonsillectomy
Writing on Wednesday: Immortal’s Spring
Writers read, so on occasion, my Wednesday writing blogs are going to have book reviews. I don’t review books on my blog often, but I started this series before I adopted that policy and it didn’t feel right now to finish the reviews for such a riveting series. My previous reviews from this series are on the blog, as well as guest posts from the author. Check them out.
Molly Ringle does it again with Immortal’s Spring. This riveting conclusion to her Chrysomelia series had me awake till the wee hours of the morning because I just could not put it down. She did such a great job handling a tangled web of story lines, both in present times and in the past. And she handled the delicate line authors walk when dealing with horrific and crippling grief in a way that didn’t make me want to strangle the character or get annoyed at the author for underplaying it. Her attention to relationships, the ins and outs of friendship, true love, romance, and sister/daughter/motherhood? (it’s really complicated) is really commendable.
As a mythology writer myself, I really appreciate her attention to detail. It’s great fun to read someone else’s take on the convoluted world of mythology. I absolutely recommend Ringle’s series if you enjoyed The Daughters of Zeus series.
Molly Ringle Presents Poseidon and Ares
Molly Ringle is back, promoting the third book in her trilogy, Immortal’s Spring! Check it out on amazon now!
Thanks for having me back, Kaitlin!
Probably the coolest thing for me about reading Kaitlin’s series (and Rick Riordan’s, and others based on myth) is finding the common cores that we’ve each kept inside each of these famous characters, even if we’ve fleshed them out in different directions. This week on that subject: Poseidon and Ares.
As god of the sea, Poseidon has dominion over marine life, waves, and tides, but can also cause storms and earthquakes (because the sea “holds” the earth, is how one interpretation explains it). Also, surprisingly for a sea god, he created horses and has a special affinity with them.
For the ancient Greeks, surrounded by the Mediterranean on nearly all sides, the sea was of gigantic importance, both in good ways and bad. It gave them plentiful food, immense beauty, and a route to far-off countries. But it also sank ships and drowned people, destroyed cities with tsunamis, and provided a way for invaders to sail right in and start attacking. All things considered, it’s easy to see why Poseidon (or indeed, any god) was viewed as someone both beneficent and dangerous.
The gods in my series (Persephone’s Orchard, Underworld’s Daughter, and Immortal’s Spring) are more human-scale than in the myths. My Poseidon, we learn in Immortal’s Spring, does wield a fair amount of water magic—he can topple enemy boats with waves, and swim pretty much endlessly—but he can’t cause earthquakes or storms, nor can he breathe underwater. Still, he realizes his abilities would make him an asset in sea wars, and knows the ambitious Zeus would pressure him into using his powers for that end, so he keeps his magic hidden from most. One of the only people who knows about it shares the powers herself: Amphitrite, who will eventually become his wife.
The Poseidon in my series is better behaved and more sympathetic on the whole than his counterpart in Kaitlin’s series, but we flipped sides when it came to Ares. He’s basically one of the villains in my series—the arrogant, bloodthirsty god of war who has a tendency to make terrible decisions, usually involving violence. Plenty of myths show him in this light too, so it made him handy when I needed an immortal to do facepalm-worthy things. In Kaitlin’s series he’s appealingly gentle-hearted under his mandated god-of-war duties, and I came to like him quite soon, which was a fun surprise.
But something Kaitlin, the myths, and I agree upon is that if there’s anything that softens Ares’ heart (and therefore might soften him in our eyes), it’s his love for Aphrodite. It’s a strange but rather beautiful pairing: the goddess of love and the god of war, who have in mythology an ongoing passionate relationship. What does that say about humanity, do you think? Or about love, or about war?
Perhaps we can take heart that in mythology, Aphrodite and Ares produce a daughter: Harmonia, the goddess of harmony. So if the dangerous passions of love and war can be brought together to produce the spirit of harmony, maybe there is hope for us all. That said, Harmonia in her own marriage, along with her descendants, did not enjoy entirely peaceful lives…but that’s a myth for another day.
Fave Friday: Zombies Run Radio Mode
I love Zombies Run. It’s by far the best running app out there. I’ve been a fan since they launched the premise on kickstarter (my name is in the survivor’s log, you know.)The story is great, the premise is entertaining, and I mean, come on. Zombies! You can read my review on the app and the 5k training app here.
Weirdly, Zombies Run is one of the top search terms leading people to my site, so in an effort to help out my fellow runners, I’m going to answer a question that’s gone unanswered on their facebook page and yahoo ask, and the zombies run wiki.
How long is radio mode?
First, I emailed the question to the support staff. Here was their answer.
Hi Kaitlin,
Thanks for getting back in touch.
I’m afraid we don’t have any hard and fast data on how long each Season of Radio Mode is, so I can only give you estimates. Seasons 2 and 3 are the longest, whereas Season 1 and 4 are of about equal length and shorter than Seasons 2 and 3. Currently Season 5 can be completed in between 1-2 hours, but this will increase once we add more clips.
There are approximately 8 hours total of Radio Mode content for Seasons 2 and 3, but that is an estimate on the low side, and also doesn’t account for the 2 minute gaps in between each clip. You would need to at least double this, probably treble it, to get the true length of Radio Mode when played through the app. Seasons 1 and 4 are about half that length, so roughly 4 hours uninterrupted, as a conservative estimate.
I hope that answers your question. If there’s anything else I can help with then please let me know.
All the best,
Lou
I’m really grateful to Lou for getting back to me, and that information was more than I had before, but if you’re like me, that’s not enough. I finished a season a few weeks ago and in the gap, I started listening to radio mode during my runs. But, I didn’t want it to end in the middle of my run. But with this answer, I was confident enough to get started knowing there would be many missions worth of content. Because of that, I can provide a more detailed answer. At least for season 1.
Quick review of season 1 Radio Mode. It’s not as motivating as the actual missions. No one is telling me to run faster or harder and no one’s dying. Earlier in the season, there were a lot of clips that were basically “That was a great song. Here’s the next one.” But as the season found its stride, I laughed out loud listening more than once (the sports bra quip was the best). Laughing is super awkward when you’re running, by the way. I enjoyed the stories toward the end and getting to know Jack and Eugine even better. Definitely listen if you’re a fan. No materials, but still worth the listen.
Stats:
Season 1 radio mode lasted for 10 thirty-minute (estimated time, sometimes I went longer if a clip was still going, and today the actual radio mode ended at 29 minutes.) runs if you set it to 2 minutes between clips. I used an external music player, so my songs didn’t factor into that. Each run started and ended with a clip. I’ll break it down into more detail below. Hope this helps!
Run 1: 30:03 Minutes. 11 Clips Included: Testing; The Major Won’t Be Happy; Stay Away; Update Your Maps; More Music, More Chat; Pretentious; Technical Difficulties; Radio Abel Is Off Air; Getting Some Air; Public Service Content;
Run 2: 32:25 Minutes. 11 Clips Included: Misting Up; Happening Tune; Stay Safe; Reminders of Home; Small Caliber; Flashing the Quad; Tips from the Road; Quiet Is Key; In a Post-Civilization World; Terrible B.O; Not Anymore.
Run 3: 30:29 Minutes. 10 Clips Included: Balanced Diet; Touch it And See; Zee-Bay; Clean, Dry Feet; Pretty Addictive; Drop Us a Line; Network Recovery Effort; ROFFLENET; Totally Moronic; Cool Story.
Run 4: 30:04 Minutes. 9 Clips Included: The Well Has Run Dry; Call For Equipment; Eugene’s Choice; Sing Along, Fever Dreams; Paging Dr. Freud; Full Upgrade; Robot Radio Abel; Priorities; Useful Starting Location.
Run 5: 35:29 Minutes. 11 Clips Included: Think Big; Thursday!; Indulgences; Money Where Your Mouth Is; Abel Minds; What are You Thankful For; What’s Your Weapon; Hopes for the Future; To the Doctor!; Water, Food, Fuel; Find It, Filter It, Boil It.
Run 6: 30:07 Minutes (The saddest/sweetest radio mode mission). 9 Clips Included:Committed to Your Entertainment; Brain Freeze; Tim Vine Jokes; A Mess Without You; Phreatic Aquifer; Thrunners; Emotionally Open Individual; No More Spam; Martyr
Run 7: 30:17 Minutes (The funniest radio mode mission). 9 Clips Included: Like You’ll Ever Forget; Alright; If You Want to Live; Martin!; Tyresias; Ben? Ben!; Father Michael; I Will Share My Evidence; Be Wary;
Run 8: 30:03 Minutes. 8 Clips Included: Erase You From My Mind; Very Exciting; CookBook; Apology Song; Be Careful!; Survival Tips; Spatter; Standards; Mud.
Run 9: 30:36 Minutes. 11 Clips Included: Ear Present; A Mixed Bag; Twice a Day!; Eye Candy; Squidlet; No More Sports Bras; Ring; Resurrection; Brock Samson; Stay Strong; Lady Cluck.
Run 10: 29:00 Minutes of Radio Mode, 1 minute of music at the end. 6 Clips Included: Dark; This Zombie Life; This Zombie Life; This Zombie Life; This Zombie Life; This Zombie Life. ^ Not a typo, that’ what they were all called because it was the continuation of a story. Made for a great run.
So there you have it.95 Clips coming in at 300 minutes in total (though that will vary because a new clip starts every time you start and the spacing isn’t consistent). I hope this helps anyone with the same questions I had.
Writing on Wednesday: Snowflake Step 6
For step six of the snowflake method, you return to the one page plot synopsis and expand it into a four page synopsis. To do that, take each paragraph in your one page synopsis and expand it to one page. This is a great place to let all the frustration you might have felt trying to boil the novel down to one page release. Here you can add many of the details.
I’m not going to post my four page summary for Persephone here, because spoilers, and hello, space. But since I’ve already shown how I expanded one line into one paragraph, I can show that one paragraph’s expanse into a page. I’m going to be doing the second sentence/paragraph because paragraph/page one would basically be background and set up, and that’s a bit easier to come by.
Spoiler warning for Persephone ahead.
Sentence 2 from one paragraph summary: When Boreas, the god of Winter, attempts to whisk her away to a not so winter wonderland, she’s rescued by Hades and offered refuge in the Underworld.
Paragraph 2 from one page summary: Persephone thinks her mom has lost her mind. She runs away to her friends house only to discover that her best friend is also in on the secret. Before Persephone can process that they might actually be telling the truth, she’s attacked by a season. Boreas, the god of winter, has his eye on Persephone and now he wants to whisk her away to a not so winter wonderland. She’s rescued from the serial rapist by Hades, Lord of the Underworld, and offered refuge in the Underworld until the end of winter. The catch? He has to marry her to take her there.
So now, do the same thing. Break this paragraph down into sentences and turn each of those sentences into a paragraph. So let’s do that with Persephone thinks her mom has lost her mind.
Persephone’s mom starts spouting off insanity about being the goddess Demeter and Persephone herself being a daughter of Zeus. Assuming her mom is hysterical, Persephone plays along by asking logical questions to get her mom to realize how crazy she sounds so she’ll snap out of it. But when her mother answers her questions with a deadly certainty, Persephone realizes her mother legitimately believes they are gods. Persephone is considering googling the local mental hospital when her mother starts talking about taking Persephone’s priestess and best friend and skipping town. That’s when Persephone realizes her mother’s delusions could turn dangerous.
This progresses neatly into paragraph two. Persephone runs away to Melissa’s house to warn her, and discovers Melissa was already in on the secret. Now could the above sentence be better? Absolutely. I could use the word when about a billion times less. The construction isn’t great. If I ever sent that paragraph as part of an expanded synopsis in a query package, I’d absolutely go over it and smooth it out. But for my drafting purposes it tells me Persephone’s feelings and the events that are happening sequentially. Writing a scene from the information in that paragraph would be easy. It’s just more expanding.
Tune in next week for more of the snowflake!
Happy Summer Solstice!
Today is the longest day of the year. The sun is the highest it will be in the sky, and as of today it’s officially summer. Now, I don’t know about where you guys are, but here, it’s hot! And it’s been hot for a while, so this isn’t so much the start of summer for me. It’s just another summer day. An extra long, extra hot summer day. So I’m taking my little one and heading to the splash pad. And I suggest you do the same.
Enjoy the summer!
Orlando
Looking for another way to take action? The creator of this design is selling t-shirts to benefit the victims here.
I’ve been pretty quiet about the events in Orlando because I was at a loss for words. Literally. I’ve used them all. There has been so much anger and hate and violence taking lives that even my most heartfelt of sentiments ring hollow. Be assured, Orlando is in my thoughts and prayers, but if this shooting taught me anything it’s that thoughts and prayers pale compared to action. And if #holdthefloor was any indication, I’m not the only one who has learned that lesson over the past few years.
From now on, instead of wasting another moment on words when these kinds of things happen, I’m going to post ways to take action.
Click here to contact Christian West Howard
Other Ways to Help Orlando Shooting Victims and Their Families
Jet Blue is offering free flights for the families or domestic partners of victims.
Every day I’m seeing more outreach for the victims in Orlando. If you see anything I’ve missed, post them in the comments here.
Kaitlin Bevis 