Sunday AM

Good Morning!!! from Sweden

Here it is sunny at 10:00 am and soon I will go out and deliver my advertising circulars. Later I might work on a new crocheted bag (this one is rectangular) using purple and rust Eskimo yarn but soon I will need more yarn. :-)

Erin

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006 00:38:38 -0500, YarnWright spewed forth :

It is almost 0900 for me and I have yet to swill down any coffee. The boys are still abed, the pancake batter is thinking gassy thoughts, and I'm waiting for my coffee beans to recover from a week in the deep freeze so that I can start pulling shots.

My toe seems miraculously improved this morning, to the point that I didn't think about it at all until I bumped it on the toeboard under the kitchen cabinets. I did get new shoes yesterday (every girl needs more than one pair of flipflops, right?).

Today's forecast is calling for "showers and thunderstorms all day"; more of the same for tomorrow and Tuesday, as well. Wonder how many Monopoly rules arguments I'll have to referee today? I'm considering buying Monopoly for the other kid-infested families on the street so that their grownups too can experience the joy of having 6 boys between hte ages of 7 and 12 arguing over Monopoly rules in their dining rooms. I'm a harsh judge and likely to fine malcontents who argue with my decisions: run two laps around hte block, clean my cat boxes, swab out the kid bathroom toilet. They're learning not to argue with me :D

Or maybe today I'll get out the Risk board and see if any of the boys are interested in world domination...

+++++++++++++

Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...

Hi Everyone,

It's 11:40 a.m. here. Been up since 7:00. DH made French toast and cleaned the kitchen. I've been knitting on a cable sock from a 1950 Bear Brand Hand Knit Socks (for Men, Women, Children), using Opal Solid. It's going pretty well, but may be a bit small.

DH & the boys are fiddling around with dominos. He bought them yesterday for the boys. What a fun game. I haven't played since I was a child.

Lately I've been on a Queen kick. Last night we watched a DVD that had a bunch of their videos, & a documentary of the making of Bohemian Rhapsody. It was facinating.

We may go out later for lunch & may buy some sparklers or something. It's cloudy, & we need the rain, but it's been dry as a bone, and the rain seems to be going west of us. I would be happy if it rained all day & I just sat & knitted.

Hesira

It's now 10:03 AM according to the clock on my computer. I've already been to the emergency room...again. About a week and a half ago I noticed a tender bump on the back of my head. It felt like I had bumped my head on something, but I hadn't done that; this bump just appeared. I thought nothing of it until the area around it started swelling and became painful. I went to the ER for the first time last Sunday, and all the doc told me was to take Tylenol or Advil for the pain and see my doc in followup. The swelling and pain kind of waxed and waned over the few days between the ER visit and when I saw my doc, who also just told me to take Advil for the pain and come back next week. No one seems concerned about this bump, which is what started the whole thing. My doc did give me an anti-inflammatory injection, which took the swelling down completely for the rest of the day, leaving only - you guessed it - that bump. Friday, though, the inflammation was back, and yesterday even 800 mg of Advil at a time didn't help. The only thing that worked was keeping ice on the back of my head. I didn't get much sleep last night, and around 3:30 AM I decided to come out into the family room and sit and knit for a while. I kept the ice off my head just to see what would happen. Around 5 AM I went back to bed and actually slept for about 2.5 hours, but when I woke up I noticed that the area of inflammation now extended from the top of my head all the way down to my neck, and it feels like there's some lymph node involvement in the neck. I go back to the ER, and still get blown off by the same doc from last week. He claimed he couldn't feel any swelling or anything, but this bump is hard to miss, and if you push on my scalp there's some "give" in the tissue which normally isn't there. I'm thinking that this is a localized infection - which doesn't always cause a fever, and it's the lack of fever that has the docs saying it's not an infection - in this bump on my head. I have a return appointment to my doc on Thursday, but I'll probably go in tomorrow if this swelling isn't getting any better - and I'm pretty sure it'll get worse instead - and if my neck is still tender.

We're supposed to go to my parents' house this afternoon, so I'll be bringing my knitting with me. I'm currently working on a lace shawl and a diamond lace sweater, so it'll be one of those I bring with me.

Have a good day, everyone!

The Other Kim kimagreenfieldatyahoodotcom

Well, Wooly, all the boys (whatever their age) that I know would be interested in world domination, as long as someone else would clear up after them!! Love & higs Christine

This is OUTRAGEOUS!! You need both another doctor and a different emergency room. Please keep pushing, even if you have to go to another city for another E.R. Find another doctor if you can, or, if your insurance requires referrals, demand a second opinion. You have that right.

This is not something to fool with. Yes, it "could" be just a sebaceous cyst or the like, but until you have a proper diagnosis you do not know.

It is very sad that when we are sick, we have to fight for treatment. Do you have someone (husband, SO, elderly parent) who could go with you and really DEMAND proper care?

Don't allow them to brush you off again, doctors are very good at disregarding wives and mothers.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006 10:38:17 -0700, The Other Kim spun a fine yarn

Kim! Please know that I'm thinking of you! DO keep us posted regarding this condition, PLEASE! Hugs, Noreen

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006 18:41:00 +0100, Christine in Kent, Garden of England spun a fine yarn

I *have* to, the devil's making me do it, but those boys sound precisely like our sitting president, splort! LOL Noreen

I considered going to a different ER today, and I probably should have done that. I mean, I even told this guy that this all started with this bump on my head, and this bump isn't normally there, but all he said was he couldn't see anything wrong and diagnosed "scalp tenderness". That's a cop-out diagnosis if I ever saw one, and I was a medical insurance biller for 7 years before becoming a medical transcriptionist

14 years ago so I've seen a lot of diagnoses. The problem is that there's no outward-appearing problem; no redness, no abscess, no nothing.

I realized something yesterday a few hours after I spoke with my regular doc. He didn't mention anything about this bump at all. I don't think he realized that this all started with this bump, and the swelling is a direct result of it. He's a real nice doc and took good care of me when I had pneumonia, even managing to talk me into having a CT scan to make sure the scarring on my x-rays was old (and it was, from bouts of bronchitis in my younger days); I won't have any tests I deem unnecessary. I'm gonna try to see him or one of his associates tomorrow and see if I can start to get some action on this bump. Today the Advil seems to be working on the pain but is doing little for the inflammation. If I can get someone to give me a stronger anti-inflammatory than ibuprofen, like Relafen or something similar, it would probably help a lot. It's the inflammation that's causing the pain, as evidenced by my complete lack of pain after receiving that injection on Thursday. All they've wanted to give me was prescription pain meds, and I can't take those because those would incapacitate me, and I have 3 kids, 2 cats, a household, and a small business to take care of every day.

I'll yell, scream, and cry if I have to to get this figured out. Besides, I'm supposed to go to Ozzfest this coming Saturday, and I'm gonna have to back out if this hasn't started resolving; 14 hours of headbanging in the blazing sun of San Bernardino just can't be good for this

The Other Kim kimagreenfieldatyahoodotcom

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006 13:53:59 -0700, The Other Kim spun a fine yarn

Kim, You're also welcome to scream, kick, vent HERE too, and also, if you really need a shoulder, some here can attest to my off-list empathy! Hugs, Noreen

Well maybe not *quite* that bad Noreen, but bad enough!! Love & higs Christine

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006 23:29:08 +0100, Christine in Kent, Garden of England spun a fine yarn

No, you're right, of course, those boys couldn't be THAT bad, LOL Hugs, Noreen

Kim,

Please keep us posted as Noreen stated. We are all concerned.

Hugs & God bless, Dennis & Gail

Adding my vote: write down all the details, keep two copies, give him a written copy, and demand a proper investigation. If he doesn't respond, start finding new doctors. Bring fresh copies of the details with you, always keeping a copy at home. Fake a fever if you have to, to get some investigation. And start documenting all the times you've been to a doctor about this, so that when they start saying "you should've come in sooner" you can prove that you did.

=Tamar

Oh, I've kept the discharge orders from both hospital visits, and I'll make sure to write down the contacts I've had with my doctor.

I was at my parents' house yesterday and told the whole gory story to my sister-in-law, who has some ailments that she's been told are "all in her head" so she's really had to fight to get docs to take her seriously. She agrees that the docs are merely treating the symptoms and not trying to find the underlying cause. I mean, I was fine until this bump appeared on my head, and the other symptoms happened afterwards. It really doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that this bump is the likely cause of the swelling, but the ER doc wasn't interested in pursuing this, and I still think my doc hasn't realized that the bump isn't normally there.

I asked my husband if his regular doc would be more likely to treat the cause as well as the symptoms, and he assured me that his doc would, so I'm gonna call his office today and try to get in to see him today. I don't know if I'll be able to, but I don't want to drag this on any longer. The scalp swelling is over my entire scalp now, and I just want someone to take this seriously.

The Other Kim kimagreenfieldatyahoodotcom

Sorry ladies was to overworked yesterday , have a FULL scheduled week this week , in between go on knitting ,,,, this that and other things as well as embroidering some mini presents ,,, Good Monday to all . mirjam

Update.

I tried getting an appointment with my husband's doc, but the soonest they could see me is next week Friday, and that's just not satisfactory. I called my doc to see if he was in today, then hit the road over there. He was not pleased at the "treatment" I received from the ER doc. He poked around my head a bit more, and the bump now reveals itself to be a cyst; now that it's bigger it's soft and squishy, just like a sebaceous cyst feels. It wasn't this big when I saw him last Thursday, and that's why he only gave me a Decadron injection; it was small enough that that should have take care of it, but it didn't. He gave me another Decadron injection and started me on a Prednisone taper. He also had some blood drawn, but I forgot to ask what tests he was running. I'm going back on Wednesday so he can see how the cyst is responding to the Prednisone, and if it's still a problem he's gonna refer me to the surgeon who works with this group for possible excision.

Thanks for all the good thoughts. This will be resolved soon :-)

The Other Kim kimagreenfieldatyahoodotcom

Ouch, Kim! That doesn't sound good at all! Did you finallly get to see a "real" doctor?

Higs, Katherine

Well, I suppose that is good news, but I'd still be pretty angry at the ER doctor. Keep us posted.

Higs, Katherine