TGIF

The title says it all. These past few weeks have been quite stressful and I am so ready for the weekend. Due to new requirements placed upon the staff at my school, I am spending tons of time outside of my contract hours doing school related things and I honestly feel like I haven't spent any quality time with Justin and Makenna since school started. Also, I haven't been feeling 100% and yesterday I started having a great deal of pain in my upper back and neck--which I found out is often times a side effect of an ovarian cyst. I didn't think I would ever say this, but I cannot wait to go to the doctor on Thursday to hopefully get some answers and also some relief from the pain I am experiencing.

On a positive note, we do have some exciting stuff going on this weekend. One of my co-workers had a baby this morning, so me and a few friends from work are going to the hospital to visit her tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully after the hospital visit Justin, Makenna, and I can do some shopping together (we need to buy a birthday present for Makenna's friend who will be turning 1 next week) and just spend some quality time with one another. We are also looking forward to something else this weekend that I can't go into any great details about yet. But I will fill you in whenever I can. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

What a Week...and it's only Tuesday

The title says it all. The week school begins is always stressful and hectic around the Coffer house, but I believe this year tops them all to date. Let me begin back to last Thursday. I began having some very dull abdominal pain, but it really wasn't bothering me so I didn't worry about it. Friday afternoon it got a bit worse so before I left school I went to talk to our nurse. After telling her my symptoms she said it sounded like a kidney stone and told me that I should probably go to the doctor. For those of you that know me well you know that I HATE doctors so I wasn't too keen on the idea. Plus it was 3:30 on Friday afternoon so I knew I probably couldn't get in anywhere. I know some of you reading this are thinking that I could have gone to the ER or urgent care and I am fully aware of this fact. But let's go back to my dislike for doctors and you will surely figure out why I decided to not do anything about it. I told myself that if it wasn't better by Monday (which was yesterday) I might think a little harder about getting the pain checked out. I went to work Monday morning not feeling 100%, but not feeling too bad. However, as the day progressed the pain got worse and worse, but I thought I was doing a fairly good job of hiding it. And apparently I was until about 1 o'clock when the first of my co-workers asked if I was feeling okay. I told her I was just in a bit of pain and she told me to get to the doctor. Then when the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th person asked me (without knowing anyone else had asked me) if I was alright, I knew that I was know longer hiding the pain and I began to think that I needed to see a doctor. By 2 o'clock (just a span of 1 hour) I was in incredible pain! I was demonstrating a lot of symptoms of an appendicitis, so I finally broke down and headed to urgent care. I called Justin and he met me there. It was a very scary experience and I was in a lot of pain, however, the doctor I had didn't seem too concerned. After a battery of tests including a urine analysis, lots of blood work, and x-rays of my chest and abdomen, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I felt like the doctor thought I was crazy, but I was in tremendous pain. She decided to send me for a CT scan and then we went back to wait in the exam room. My CT scan got done at about 6, so at this point we had been there for 3 hours. For another 3 hours Justin and I sat in the room with me in quite a bit of pain and Justin starving because he hadn't eaten. Not one person came to check on me so I was not a happy camper. Finally at 9 o'clock (looking back I have no idea why we waited so long) Justin asked a lady sitting at the desk outside my door if we could get an update because no one had come to see us in 3 hours. She said she would go check and my "awesome" (please note the sarcasm) came in not 2 minutes later. She said that they had just read my results (which I don't believe for one minute) so that is why we had to wait so long. Anyways she proceeded to tell us that everything on the left side checked out okay, but that they did find an ovarian cyst of my right side. She said it would have nothing to do with the pain I was experiencing, but I wasn't convinced. She also told me that it was a pretty large cyst, but that I shouldn't worry about it. Once again, I wasn't buying a word she was saying. At this point we left the urgent care (at 9:15) and I came home and did my own research. I found out (I am so thankful for WebMd and other medical sights) that the pain experienced due to ovarian cysts tends to radiate to the opposite side (and people who have experienced this have verified this information) and that there is always a chance that they can burst and cause more trouble. Oftentimes they aren't anything serious and go away on their own, but due to the fact that I believe the doctor I saw is completely incompetent I called my OB today to get an appointment to discuss this with him because he is a competent professional who I can get some accurate information from. Unfortunately, they couldn't get me in until September 3rd, but if they pain continues I might see it they can get me in earlier. I will keep everyone posted on what I find out.

On top of my ailments, Justin hasn't been feeling well and he thinks he has a very bad cold. He didn't sleep well last night so he stayed home part of the day today and slept. So, with all the events of the past few days, we are exhausted. However, Makenna is doing good and getting sillier by the day. I hope my next post will be about her instead of me. Stay tuned!

Cookie Monster

We finally got the video to work of Makenna imitating Cookie Monster. Her good imitation is at the very end so make sure you watch the entire clip. Enjoy!

Last Week of Freedom

I can't believe that it is August already and that means it is about time for me to go back to work. I head back to work on the 12th, so this will be my last full week off and I hope to do some fun things with Makenna. We have made progress on some of my summer goals, but none have been fully accomplished. Makenna can now repeat the alphabet with us and she knows some letters in order (ie: a-b-c and p-q). She can also recognize the colors blue and red. I think this is because I have taught her that Elmo (aka Melmo in the Coffer house) is red and Cookie is blue. Yes, she is obsessed with Sesame Steet right now. We are also still in the progress of potty training and I hope to work on that pretty hard this week.

We have had a relaxing week this past week, but not one without excitement. On Thursday, we headed to Bolivar because my aunt from Delaware was visiting. No one was at my grandma's house so Makenna and I went in and made ourselves at home like we always do. I set Makenna's toys out in the living room and left her in there playing while I went into the kitchen to wash my hands. If you have been following our blog a while, you might recall a picture I posted of Makenna on here of her riding on the Jazzy chair that my grandma got for Christmas with my brother. Everytime we go to my grandma's house, Makenna wants to go for a ride in it so one of us puts her on our lap and we go for a ride. Well, on Thursday, she decided she would go for a ride by herself. I hadn't been in the kitchen but a few seconds when I heard "beep, beep" (which is the sound the Jazzy makes when it is being turned on), so I ran back into the living room. I see Makenna up in the Jazzy and taking a little ride on it. Luckily she steered in in a very straight path and she didn't have time to make it very far. I couldn't help but laugh at the sight, but it was kind of scary at the same time. I am just glad she didn't run into anything! Sometimes she is just a bit too smart for her own good, but I wouldn't have it any other way.