things are looking up!

oh hi! it's me...the one who hasn't blessed this blog with her im so depressed posts love in a good month or so. breaking news folks: IM BACK!!! last time i updated you was a week post surgery, im now 4 1/2 weeks out. to be honest, it hasn't been all rainbows and unicorns...which is kinda why you haven't heard from me. i was sick of having nothing good today say, or pretending i had good things to say. i don't wanna get too excited but i think i am finally making some progress. there was some concern that i had reherniated my disc and had a follow up CT scan which showed "post op abnormalities". oy, thats a phrase i dislike. so they had to order an mri to confirm or deny a reherniation. i got the results of that today and to quote my doc "your mri looks fine, no disc issues at all".

for real!? im good to go!?


he says the pain im feeling in my leg could be some nerve damage or some scar tissue. to be honest, the pain isn't that bad compared to what i was feeling before my surgery. hell, i havent taken any pain meds since 3 days post op. that says something, especially when i was taking 8 vicodin a day just to get through the day before surgery. what i feel is a pinch right behind my right knee and its worse when im not active. doc said that getting in the pool is A OK and thinks that will be the best thing for me right now.


to say the last 4+ weeks has been an emotional roller coaster is an understatement. i can remember 2 days specifically that i just wanted to jump off the ledge. i was mentally done. the first day i sent my dear friend an email asking him all my "what if" questions. he wrote back, answered every last one of my "what if" questions and talked me off the ledge. then, i got two care packages that day from two amazing friends.

then a few weeks later when my leg was really getting wonky and worse this gem of a package showed up at my parents doorstep from my royal sister...

another thing that has kept me from freaking out is going through all this with someone. i remember getting back to my room from surgery and seeing a tweet from eric. he was going to have the same surgery as i just had a week later. we've been chatting since and it's been so nice to have someone to talk to about different pains or things that are going on in our recovery. i have had amazing support from all my friends and family but it's nice to talk to someone who understands and knows the exact things im talking about.

sooooo that's the injury update. just because my leg has been all wonky doesn't mean it has slowed me down any....

ive been watching hours of whale wars with zachie at night...

reading lots of trash magazines...

taking boat rides to islands off the coast of maine...

watching joanie kick butt at the ll bean 4th of july 10k...

enjoying parades with my little man...

eating lots of strawberry shortcake...

taking t on lots of walks...up lots of hills...

and of course watching lots of world cup soccer!!

i've also been swooning over all things tattoo and hope solo related...but that's all for a different day! :-)

ive got another week and a half or so of recovery left before i am cleared to go back to work. im finally feeling good. ive got some spunk back and im not letting it get away from me again!

the good, the bad and the ugly

so it's been a freakin week since my surgery! ya, the one i have been oh so patiently waiting for freaking out about for the last bunch of weeks. well folks, i lived! :-) this last week has been a roller coaster of emotions. but here ya have it. the good, the bad and the ugly.

***** WARNING! IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, SKIP THE UGLY PART OF THIS POST*******

the good I HAVE NO MORE LEG PAIN!!!! im not living on pain meds every 3 hours! this is probably the most exciting news ever. going back to last wednesday though. i had to be at the hospital at 7:00 for my 8:30 surgery. when i checked in they told me my surgery had been moved up to 8:00 so they hurried through the admission process. i was a ok with that. one thing i am learning through all of this is that i am not in any way shape or form a patient person and so waiting around was not at the top of my list. it was pretty smooth sailing. routine questions that i had been asked a million and one times already so my answers were pretty automatic at this point. they also had to do a routine pregnancy test even though i prayed to God  told them i wasn't. while waiting for those results they asked the "are you depressed or suicidal" questions. i told them that my answer was contingent on the results of my pregnancy test. they laughed. thankfully, im not. win. 

i spent most of the morning being a smart ass with the nurses. shocker, i know. however, my surgeon got me back when his pale skinned, red headed self walked in to sign my back (always comforting when the surgeon has to autograph the correct side of my back to make sure he operates in the correct place). He lifted up my shirt and took one look at my nasty sunburn and told me i was more red then he was and he's not used to seeing such things. yeah, smart sarah spent 4 hours in the 93* sun over memorial day weekend. burnt to a crisp!. then, someone tells me they are giving me a nice little morning cocktail and the next thing i remember i was waking up in the recovery room, crying and them yelling my name. 

details are a little fuzzy at this point. i know they pumped in some morphine but i also remember at that time not feeling any leg pain at all. 

is this really over? has the last 4 months of pain finally come to an end?

so they wheeled me up to my room and i promptly asked for my phone. does this really  surprise anyone??? i needed to send out a quick email to my amazing friends who have been such huge supports to me. then i of course had to have my mom snap this gem of a picture so that i could let my twitter peeps know i was alive! 

it wasn't an hour later before i was up an walking around. since i had surgery at the same hospital that i work at (only slightly awkward) i had lots of visitors all day. however, this was the best visitor i had!

i settled in to bed and caught up on some reading. 

5 hours after surgery i took this picture. 

so the rest of the night was pretty uneventful. my husband and mom left, so i was left to entertain myself for a while. this was about the time i thought that being a pole dancer with my IV pole would be a fun career. 

the bad if i didn't think i was sleeping before surgery, im realllllly am not sleeping now. oy. i think the night i spent in the hospital i slept 3 hours or so. although i did have a sweet chat with my nurse at midnight about how we think the hospital is haunted with nuns. seriously, its true. i can't shower for another week (mind you, it's been a week already since my last shower). mmmmm sponge baths you are not fun. aren't you jealous that you don't get to hang out with me for the next week??? i can't work, drive, lift, bend, twist etc for 6 weeks making a very independent person completely dependent on everyone else. ill have a checkup at 6 weeks and as long as things are going well, i should be able to ease back into running at 8 weeks. withdrawing off of vicodin is not fun. not fun at all. i stopped taking it saturday after my surgery and was living in the land of the dead until tuesday morning. 

***** WARNING! IT'S TIME FOR THE UGLY*******

the ugly 18 fantastic staples later. i did say i wanted another tattoo! :-)

***** THE UGLY IS OVER :-)*******

so there you have it folks. the basics of what i hope is a changing point in my life. ive got so much more to say...but, ive got 6 weeks of doing nothing ahead of me, so ill save that for another post or 7. i just want to thank all my amazing friends and family who have been there with me every step of the way. picking up the pieces at home, being on the other end of phone calls when i was beyond frustrated and crying, and celebrating my recovery. THANK YOU! I honestly couldn't do it without you. 

peace out st.marys. you've been great!

boston awesomeness part 2: c.r.a.z.y

after our bloggy brunch, danielle and i headed back to the apartment to get ready for the red sox game. back when i started planning this boston weekend i knew it had to include the red sox! sadly i was working the day tickets went on sale and i wasn't able to snag any that day. luckily for me, sam was on it and got 8 tickets! wooot woooot! im always excited to go to fenway, it's one of my favorite places ever. this time, i was even more excited, i got to share fenway with my friends, fenway virgins, and out of town runners. i got to show 'em how the red sox celebrate.

pre game on yawkey way (danielle and i snagged a beer before heading in)

the crowd roar of "yoooooooooooouk". (no we are no booing our teammate)

the drunks in the bleacher seats

sweet caroline in the middle of the 8th. (sam may have been to fenway before, but i bet he's never seen it sung with as much awesomeness as danielle and i put into it!)

and papelbon and the dropkick murphy's in the top of the 9th. (sadly he was not needed this day)

thanks sam!

despite the whether it was an awesome game. the sox pulled out of their loosing streak and gave us a nice win. i met some more cool peeps and listen to jennifer and danielle talk about how we are going to push D to BQ!

danielle: "do i need to lift weights during my training?"
jennifer: "do you stop and lift weights during a marathon? No"

ally, danielle, jennifer, sam and i

jennifer, sam and josh

:-)

this is where the night gets real funky. this probably won't be very funny to you (unless you are danielle or ally) it's one of those "you had to be there" moments,  but i have to write about it. one of the best nights ive had in a long time.

ally had made reservations at a restaurant for her and one of our friends. sadly, she was not able to make it to boston due to medical compilations. im happy to report that she is on the mend and doing very well. boston will be her's someday. danielle and i did our best to take her place. our first challenge was getting from fenway to harvard square. id like to think that the three of us are pretty smart but we had a hell of time time getting there.

our first problem came trying to get T tickets. danielle had an interesting conversation with some cop looking dudes at the T station. it started of with danielle asking if they worked there (no they are just dressed in bright yellow official looking jackets for fun) and they ended up having a Who's on First kind of discussion about how to get T tickets. Finally the dude just told us to put our cash in a bucket and go through the gate. im sure they had a good laugh about us after we left.

so we trot along and danielle tells us she spent a semester at tufts (an exchange program, she didnt fail out :-) ) and that she knows how to get around on the T. my details are a little fuzzy now but at some point we ended up on the wrong T going the wrong way. we were sure we were headed to CT. i know this isn't really possible, but we would have made it happen. it was that kind of night.

fiiiiiiiiinally we made it to the restaurant. super cute place i might add.

we sit down and jesse, our waiter asks if we would like some water.

"why yes, we would love some"
"we have 3 options of water for you this evening. we have pellegrino sparkling water, still bottled water or cambridge's finest tap water"
"haha, you're funny, we''ll take the tap water thanks"

when he said he had 3 options for water, i thought he was being funny. i apparently don't go to enough fancy restaurants to know that there are options for water. he was dead serious.

i'm really not even sure how to describe the rest of the night. we are pretty sure our water was spiked. we were the most sober girls ever, and i know we were acting as if we had been drinking for days. everything was funny...we were crying we were laughing so hard. our waiter got weirder and weirder as the night went on.

"what do you have for dessert?"
he proceeds to tell us.... "now i'll let that marinade with you for a bit. i'll be back to take your order"

REALLY!? wow.

i asked him if he would mind taking a picture with us (i think ally just about died, something like "oh no you did not just ask that" came flying out of her mouth). somehow it came out that we all write blogs and he says "oh, do you tweet about your blogs?" and theeeeeen, he gives us his twitter name and facebook info. i was about to tweet him when i realized i had been making fun of him on twitter all night. ha. i passed.

meet jesse

our reservations were for 5:30, i don't think we left until 8:30. we were there entirely too long. before we left we had one pit stop to make...in the bathroom.

poor ally

as if the toilet was on a pedestal...ally couldnt touch the ground

we decided we wanted to hit up niketown before we called it a night. we booked it to the store hoping they were still open. we had heard that they had a photo booth and given the mood we were in, we needed to take advantage of that.

they were open. we took over owned that photo booth. we even decided to run it for a while and showed other people how it worked and what to do. (dear niketown, you can hire us if you like).

we finally were ready to call it a night. it was one of the best nights i have had in a long time. although i just met ally, we all got a long like we had been bff's since 2nd grade. im sooooo glad she got her texas ass to beantown!

so there you have it, part 2 of my boston awesomeness. next up, marathon monday: things you see at mile 26. this will be a little more serious, but just as awesome.