On the up!

HA!!! Right on!!

So... I almost feel a little bit embarrassed for my last entry and the state of panic I was in when I wrote it. I guess you might have a tendency to become a drama queen after a night with no sleep when all you are doing is trying to diagnose yourself online, and the only things that come up in your searches are the most terrible things you can imagine. Also doesn't help when you go to see a doctor and he acts all awkward because he doesn't know what you've got and starts ordering all kinds of crazy tests lol. Well let's just say that guy is still learning.

Sunday night when my swelling was at its worst, my parents and I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to go to the hospital. I hadn't stopped getting bigger and we couldn't see the end in sight so I was like "fine I'll go." I planned to head to the emergency room at the U, but last minute got the suggestion from my mom that I should go to the first doctor I had seen in the instacare, show him the change, and ask what he suggested I do. I knew he would just tell me to go to the hospital because he had told me that if it got any worse that is what I should do.

When I got back to the instacare I asked for him and mentioned to the receptionist that I usually saw a different doctor, doctor Tensmeyer, but was unable to see him. She said "well he's here right now if you want to talk to him!" They took me back to see him without checking me in (this guy had been my doctor my whole life) and after taking one look at me and within thirty seconds of feeling my swollen nodes and glands he diagnosed me with the MUMPS! I started laughing because that was something that had crossed my mind but that I had ruled out because of the fact that I knew I had had an immunization shot as a kid. Well turns out that I must have got a rotten shot and I was one of the lucky few that actually got to have the wonderful experience. He drew my blood, told me there was nothing they could do for the mumps, and sent me home with a pat on the butt telling me to get better. I was so relieved! Today is Tuesday and the swelling has gone down a lot already- it's going down just as fast as it went up, which is startlingly fast. But in this case, the quickness is welcomed!

There are a few things about the mumps that I think I am going to miss. First of all I really enjoyed being at home and enjoying my mom's home cooking. Even though it all came in through a straw, it was tasty. I also really enjoyed shaving my face and not having an annoying jawbone to shave around and under. It's always so hard to get the hairs on the underside of the jaw, but with my bloated face it was easy as cake. Not going to work has been nice, and I have had a lot of time to study for the CPA exam. Sadly, I will be going back to work soon, but I figure if I'm good enough to go back to work by Thursday, I'll be good enough to go to YELLOWSTONE to catch all the fish Thursday night!! Ahhh... life is good!

Not my week

Wow. Lately it seems as though I never write a positive entry and I just complain about what is going wrong. Maybe it has just been with my few last posts but I regretfully admit that this post will have a tuff time being any different. I've decided July just hasn't been my month.

There were a few things in July that I had been really looking forward to: my trials bike competition and my Yellowstone fishing trip with Trent. It didn't look like the competition was going to work out because my fan was busted and the new fan that I ordered would have to be spliced in to the mess of wires under my gas tank and I didn't know how to do it. I was able to get a guy from Colorado to send me an electrical diagram, which was good, and I was able to get the new fan working. I spent so much time and effort during the week trying to get the bike ready and it still didn't work out. Here is why.

Thursday night as I was eating a chicken nugget I stretched out my neck to take a bite and felt something pop in my neck where my lymph nodes are. Immediately I felt tenderness and pain in my lymph nodes, and immediately they became a bit swollen. I went home and slept only to find in the morning that they had become more swollen, about the size of ping pong balls, and you could tell they were swollen just by looking at me. That night, Friday night, I went to a few parties and was self conscious about them and was joking around with a few girls I met about me having a goiter. It was a funny topic of conversation and an ice breaker but it was pretty difficult to explain why they were there in the first place.

That night I sweated all through the night and ran a fever. When I woke up to head out to the trial bike competition I was having a tough time swallowing but not a sore throat.. I looked in the mirror and saw that my neck, chin, and cheeks had double or tripled in size from what they were the night before and it scared me to death. I thought about just going up to the competition anyways but was worried that the swelling would worsen to the point that it would close up my airway.

I went to the insta-care and was waiting outside when they opened up at 8:30. The doctor had no idea what would be causing it and had me do blood work, cultures, and x rays. The x rays showed that I still had room in my airway to breath, the cultures said I didn't have mono or strep, and the blood work indicated that my body was fighting some sort of infection. He said that the x rays did not show any abscesses, but that I would need a ct scan. I asked him how much that would cost and he said 1200 dollars. Since my deductible is like 3000 dollars and I haven't been able to save that much in my health savings account as of yet, I told him I wanted to hold off on the ct scan unless I absolutely had to have it. He said that if I didn't see improvement by Monday, he would recommend I have it for sure.

I came to my parents house and have been here resting up, drinking lots of fluids, and sucking soup out of a straw because I can't open my mouth. I don't even look like the same person. I look like I'm 100 pounds overweight in the face. You can't see my jawbone at all and my outside jaw and cheeks come out so far you can't see my ears. Today is Sunday, and this morning I have noticed the swelling besides becoming bigger, is moving down into my upper chest. This is really freaking me out and everything I read online, which I don't want to believe and probably shouldn't pay attention to, points straight to cancer. I have never been so worried sick; the suspense of this all is really killing me.

I'm supposed to leave for Yellowstone on Wednesday. Ha. Yeah right.

4th of July casualty

So the summer is moving along quite quickly as it always does, but for some reason this summer seems to be moving much faster than others. I have been in my house for two months now and am really starting to feel like it is home to me. For the last few months I have been studying nonstop for the CPA exam which I will be taking sections of up until November, and probably beyond. I took my first section two weeks ago (BEC) and although I went into the testing room having studied my material into the ground, I left feeling as though it would be a very big miracle if I ended up passing the stupid test.

There was so much material that I had never seen before and that was new to me- there were none of the questions I had been used to studying. The last practice test that I took before going in for the real thing, I got a 99% on, so I left feeling really frustrated. I took the test on a Thursday and was planning to reward myself by going to the river to fish afterward. I left the testing center only to discover it was raining, and raining hard outside. I went home and practiced the piano a bit, worked out, and hung out with a friend named Stephanie.

The next day I had planned to fish, but Abe called me up and asked if I would like to take my Trials bike up to the Bountiful B. I was pretty excited for that and decided to put fishing off until Saturday. (had Friday off because of the 4th of July weekend). So anyways, we go riding up at the bountiful B and I find out that my fan isn't working and my bike is overheating. So we ended up spending half of the time trying to jump two wires together to get the fan to work but I ended up just coasting it down the mountain and taking off. I went to Provo where Benjamin was having a BBQ and hung out with him for the rest of the night. We went to a party where we met a few nice girls and then we went and walked up and down main street in Provo. I had invited one of the girls to come along who wasn't up for the long walk so I felt bad for inviting her and became a drag on Benjamin's social mood- because he wanted to go around and meet everyone he could but could tell that our gal friend wanted to go and I was feeling awkward with her wanting to go. So.... we left.

The next day ended up being a perfect ending to a perfect weekend when I finally went fishing on the Provo and everyone and their dog decided to tube down the river and scare away all the fish. I was having absolutely no success as well as a hard time fighting the current so I called it a day at like 1:00 in the afternoon. I went back to Benjamin's house where I was supposed to meet up with him to go to another BBQ and then out to a rope swing in Mona. I texted him and then fell asleep on his couch. I woke up and saw that he texted me with directions of where I needed to be but by then hours had passed and I couldn't' get a hold of him. I thought "well, I guess I'll go save us all a spot outside the stadium of fire." So I took off and scouted out a patch of grass and sat there from 5:00 until the firework show started at 10:00. The girl that was supposed to come watch with me canceled, Benjamin didn't show up, and I watched the show alone with a couple of roommates that came last minute. Awesome right? Lame!

So this weekend was a bit better, but I still considered it a casualty. It was better because I was finally able to get some decent fishing in on Friday after work and cooked them up at my parents house where we had a campfire and roasted marshmallows. Saturday afternoon I studied for the next section of the exam that I am taking next month. At about 5:00 I decided I was tire of sitting at the kitchen table and so I decided that I would move the studying to my bed. Bad idea. I fell asleep again, missed my text messages again, missed out on the fun again, and didn't' wake up till 11:00 pm. Ha ha that was so annoying! So needless to say I couldn't sleep. I studied, watched "so you think you can dance", worked out at the clubhouse, and took a drunk girl in a cocktail dress home who was wandering the streets crying because she had gotten in a fight with her best friend at a party and didn't' have a way to get home. Pretty interesting night for sure.

Sunday night I went to Lehi to hang out with a girl named Tanya who I met the week before at the party with Benjamin. The whole time I hung out with her I was having to defend myself from her stinky farting pit-bull who wouldn't leave me alone and who I was scared to death of. He kept trying to playfully bite me and I was not interested in playing his game, and this chick wouldn't put him in his cage! Last time I'm going over there that's for sure. I got home at 1:00 am and the second I walked in the door I could smell that something in the house was burning. I went over and noticed that someone had left the oven turned on and the metal was so hot that you could smell it. Not only that, but my room mate decided he should turn the air conditioner down to 65 degrees. Oh, and don't forget that there were strange people sleeping on the floor cuddled up with the quilt I made and hardly even use myself because I'm trying to keep it nice! Yeah.. something has got to give!

Well, these next few weeks should be fun. I've got a motorcycle meet coming up and am pretty excited. I also have a Yellowstone fishing trip coming up that I am super stoked about. It's going to be good times.