I prefer the boring, quiet weekends...

So it's been an interesting week... last week at this time, I was fighting off some kind of weird malady -- my stomach was feeling sort of off, and then I got a fever and started feeling achy. I thought maybe I was getting the flu, but by Wednesday I was feeling fine again. So apparently I picked up some random 24-hour thing from somewhere. But no matter... everything was back to normal by mid-week...

So I didn't think much of it when Rick complained about his elbow hurting Wednesday night. He thought perhaps he knocked it against a door or a table or something, and just couldn't remember. During the night, I became aware of much tossing and turning from Rick's side of the bed... at around 3 in the morning, he said his elbow felt like it was "on fire," and he couldn't sleep. So he took some Advil, which helped enough that he was able to sleep the rest of the night...

In the morning, he showed me his elbow, which was swollen and red (like angry, seriously peeved red). At this point, he thought maybe it was some sort of bug bite -- but to be honest, I was really hoping it WASN'T a bug bite, because I didn't like the idea of a bug that could cause a bite like that hiding somewhere in my house. An exterminator would've been immediately necessary. But as I looked at his elbow, I couldn't see ANY place on his arm where the skin was broken -- in fact, other than the fact that it was obviously really annoyed about something, his elbow looked fine. No bruises, scrapes, cuts, anything...

But as the day wore on, Rick decided that whatever was going on with his elbow was NOT normal, so he made a doctor's appointment for Thursday afternoon. It took very little time for the doctor to decide that an orthopedic surgeon should be consulted -- she thought it looked like bursitis, which affects the joint, and orthopedists have more specialized knowledge of the issue. But the doctor was unable to find an available orthopedist, so she sent Rick straight to the ER to have the fluid drained from his elbow (ouch).

After four or five hours in the ER, Rick was finally given the okay to leave, with a prescription for pain pills and precautionary antibiotics. (They'd sent the drained elbow fluid to the lab to test for bacteria, and initially everything looked okay.) But as Rick was walking home, he got a phone call from the ER doctor saying that something WAS growing in the elbow petri dish, but it wasn't clear yet how serious it was, so he promised to call back on Friday...

Friday afternoon, Rick called me as he walked home from work and said he needed an overnight bag because he was being admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics. Apparently whatever started growing in that petri dish was very bad (although not quite as bad as MRSA, which is the super-resistant bacteria that's so hard to get rid of), and once he got to the hospital, they hooked Rick up to an IV of Vancomycin. (We read on Wikipedia that this particular antibiotic used to be a "last resort" antibiotic. But now there's bacteria out there that can even survive the "last resorts" so NEW last resorts have been developed...)

At first, I assumed Rick's hospital stay would just be an overnight thing... Faisal was nice enough to give me a ride home on Friday, and then I walked over to the hospital Saturday morning, thinking Rick and I could get a cab home together. But the orthopedic surgeon decided that one more day of antibiotics would be a good idea, so I walked home by myself Saturday evening. He then decided that one MORE day of antibiotics would also be good, so I embarked upon another walk to/from the hospital on Sunday. It's only about a mile walk to the hospital... and even though I'm quite used to walking/jogging three or four miles at a time on my treadmill, I was totally exhausted over the weekend. Each evening when I got home, I thought about making myself dinner, and then decided to just heat up a can of soup and watch stupid movies on the couch (seriously, I actually watched "Wrath of the Titans" one night... it was bad the first time I saw it in the theater, and it was STILL bad the second time...)

But the hospital wasn't completely horrible, as far as hospitals go -- Rick's room was on the top floor of the hospital, which, we found out, used to be the "VIP" floor. And Rick ended up in the room that Michael Jordan used to request when he needed knee surgery... or whatever it is basketball players generally need. So the room was HUGE -- I could've done cartwheels in there. There's also a Starbucks in the lobby of the hospital, so I was able to sneak cappuccino directly into Rick's IV line...

He came home yesterday afternoon, after being given the option of taking oral antibiotics and waiting to see if the infection completely clears up on it's own, or having immediate surgery and just taking care of it. Rick decided on the "wait and see" approach, hoping to avoid the surgery. He'll find out on Friday if that worked or not. 

The view from Michael Jordan's hospital room...

It's hard to tell just how big it was from this picture... it did, however, need a much bigger television set...

Cappuccino has healing properties...

And then this morning, I got the worst news of all -- the cupcake store across the street is CLOSED!! My cupcakes are gone!! No more glimpses of deliciousness through my living room window!! Noooooooooooooooooooooo...

Okay, maybe that's not the WORST news in the world... but you can bet I'll be perusing Google maps tonight to find the next closest cupcake store around here...

Because cupcakes ALSO have healing properties... :)

This week's randomness...

So Rick recently bought a couple Fitbit trackers for us to use -- have you guys heard of these? They not only track steps that you've taken, but they also track flights of stairs climbed, calories burned, and how many miles all those steps add up to. And, you can wear it in a band around your wrist while you sleep at night, and in the morning it tells you how much time you spent sleeping vs. how much time you were awake. (Last night, for instance, I really didn't feel like I was sleeping well... and according to my Fitbit, I woke up 20 times. Which sounds about right...) I have my tracker set with a goal of 15,000 steps a day -- every time I reach it, Fitbit sends me a nice little congratulatory message. So far, I'm really finding it to be a motivating tool -- I actually WANT to walk more, so Fitbit will tell me what a good job I'm doing. Which is sort of weird, but I guess motivation -- even when it comes from an inanimate object -- is always good.

I've been loving the extra light in the afternoons this week. With the disappointing winter we've had, I think I'm just ready to move on to spring now. Of course, this doesn't mean that we couldn't have a surprise April snowstorm. (Which, incidentally, is exactly what happened the first year we moved to New Jersey.) Besides, with spring comes BASEBALL -- I always so look forward to baseball season... even if the Yankees aren't looking so good this year... :)

I've heard from three separate, random sources this week how great cardamom is in coffee. Is this a new thing? I've never heard the virtues of cardamom-infused coffee lauded so passionately as I have this week. It's like all the coffee-loving people in the world had a secret meeting and decided that cardamom is the new "it" spice. Naturally, I had to try it in my own coffee this morning... so I added some ground cardamom to my coffee grounds before brewing. And it IS pretty good... I sometimes add cinnamon to my coffee, but I really do need to experiment with more spice variety. Maybe I'll try cinnamon AND cardamom... yeah, I'm crazy like that...

And back to the spring topic -- how are we already halfway through March?? Sunday is St. Patrick's Day, which means the Chicago river will be dyed green and crazy green-bedecked people from far and wide will converge on the city to wander up and down the streets, patronizing every bar in sight. Seriously -- I've never seen a city get so intense about St. Patrick's Day. They REALLY love that holiday here... I prefer to stay in my condo and avoid the drunk people...

I now have more than 5000 steps completed for the day, but since I need 10,000 more before my Fitbit congratulates me, I suppose I should get moving instead of sitting on the couch typing a blog post. :)

Recent randomness...

I have been at a loss for decent blog topics lately, which has resulted in much silence. So to the two or three of you who actually read my blog, sorry about being so boring. :)

I didn't watch any of the Oscars last Sunday... I just don't care about those awards shows all that much. I did, however, spend the evening watching a movie that WON a few Oscars: Jaws... which I'd never actually watched from start to finish. I'd seen a minute or two here and there -- but never the whole movie in its entirety. ("Is that Richard Dreyfuss??" I exclaimed, when his 28-year-old self appeared on-screen.) And let me just say -- that movie is SCARY. That shark was huge! And yeah, it was a fake movie shark... but still -- that fake movie shark was HUGE!! I've always found it extremely unsettling to swim in lakes and oceans -- I don't like large, dark bodies of water filled with unknown contents... and now, well, I'm just not sure I can ever go near the ocean again. :) (By the way -- John Williams is a movie soundtrack GENIUS. That guy can musically capture the mood of a film better than any composer out there...)

I think our snow chances for Chicago this year are officially a bust. We got a couple inches the other night, and it's actually been snowing off and on for the last three days or so... but it's been too warm for the flakes to actually accumulate. So while it's been pretty to watch it fall, it hasn't really amounted to much. Such a disappointing winter... well, for those of us who love snow. :)

It's been exceedingly cloudy the last few weeks, which has been rather depressing. I always find that I have more energy when the sun shines -- apparently I run on solar-powered batteries. Needless to say, I've found myself dragging most days, trying to decide between working out (which usually helps to give me a bit more energy) and drinking copious amounts of coffee (which temporarily gives me a slight energy boost, but only until my coffee is gone...). But we did have one clear day last week, which happened to coincide with a full (or almost full) moon:

But today is yet another cloudy day... so in lieu of drinking copious amounts of coffee, I'm off to work out. Hope everyone had a good week!