The Life and Times of Alann

Last Wednesday we had what is called an inversion, if you don't know what that is it is when all the cold air in the valley gets stuck underneath the warmer air higher up in the atmosphere. So any air pollutants that get stuck in the air stay there. It got so bad last week that you could not see the mountains and the sky was this yellow orangish color. Apparently i am fairly sensitive to the air quality around me, we have always lived in more rural type settings so i have never really had too much experience with smog and such...... Hold on Nikki just threw up. OK I'm back. So where was i, oh yes the yellow air. So, lately Becca has started to snore in her sleep (not her fault) which not only keeps me up, but wakes me up too, so my level of sleep right now is pretty low.

Then the in version rolls in and my sinuses start running like there is no tomorrow and it feels like someone is pouring Tabasco sauce down the back of my throat. Then at night everything backs up and i have to wake up to cough my airways clear so i can breath again. Well after a couple of nights like this i finally get a real cold, which funny enough is actually better than the inversion because there is less mucus and more breathing, but more coughing. Which leads to my next part the inversion has started to clear and I'm on day 3 of being sick (so far its 1.5 weeks total of the whole thing) and i start to cough so hard that i end up moving 2 of my lower ribs on my right side.

At first they just hurt like if you strained you back and pulled something, so i thought nothing of them. But then the next day i had a meeting i had to go to for school and somehow on the walk over to the building i moved them again and even worse. So for the entire half hour meeting i am sweating up a storm because of the pain I'm in and i seriously thought i would have to ask these complete strangers who i just met to call an ambulance for me. But the meeting ended and i was able to make it back down the stairs to the main hall. The problem now is that i have to get back to my office and get home with my backpack which contains everything valuable and personal in my life. By this point the pain is excruciating. Imagine that you have been hit in the back of the ribs with a baseball bat and have one of the deep, black/blue, swollen bruises now and every time you take a step or try to breath someone takes the rounded handle side of a broom and pushes on that bruise.

To get to my office i have to walk about 3 city blocks get on a train take it to the down town station and then walk another 6 blocks to get to my car and i have to do it all with out being able to take more than a 1/4 of a light breath. So i go over to the men's bathroom get in one of the stalls and take my belt off. Then i put it under my shirt and tighten it down to the smallest hole over my ribcage so that i have something to help me support my self and allow me to breath. I put my shirt down put on my coat and backpack and walked out of the building and started to walk to the train station. I got to the end of the parking lot and had to bend over so i could gasp for air. I had to do this about 2 more times while walking down this back walkway to get to the station. The whole time hoping that i wouldn't pass out in this no mans land from lack of air or pain and get mugged.

But i finally made it to the train where i got on and sat down using the backrest to support my ribs so i could breath. By now i have decided that there is no way i am going back to work and that i really need to see the chiropractor today, right now, instead of tomorrow at our normal time. I also don't know if i can make the even longer walk to my office to get my car and drive there myself. So i called up Becca to get the cell phone number to the doctors and told her between ragged gasps that she might have to meet me at the south train station and take me because i can't breath and don't know if i can walk to my car. So after just talking to Becca right now, she said that she wasn't concerned about me after i got off the phone with her, which i didn't know.

But either way i called my boss and let him know what was happening and he was like o.k, like i had just told him i landed on the moon and was having tea with little purple penguins. Then i called the doctors and set up an appointment for 5 which is his last time available. Then i look at my watch and realize that if i go to the south station i will never make it on time and i have to walk to my car and drive there to make it. So i undid the belt because it was making me sick and got off at the downtown stop and with my hand holding my ribs in place started to walk the 6 blocks to my car. By now the spams have lessened and i can take a 1/2 a light breath and the broom isn't jabbing me as hard. I made it to my car and raced over to the doctors and got there at 4:57 and sat down on a chair as best i could so i could breath.

A few minutes later Dr Dave (our secondary primary doctor) comes by and looks at me and are you OK? I tell him what is going on and he says that he will get a room ready and bring me back in a minute. After i get in there he tries to have me lay on my back which doesn't work because every time i try i spasm. Then we try the front where after a couple of tries we finally have some success. So he adjusts what he can and then tries to move my ribs to no avail. He then puts my on some electro-therapy and says that the muscles are too swollen to move with out first putting me on some suppressants and says all i can do is go home and put some ice on it to help the swelling to go down.

So what adjusting he could do helped me to be able to breath at about 1/2 a normal breath and the spasms have stopped except for when i breath too deeply. So i go home let the dogs out set the couch cushions up to give me some support and got my icepack out and sat down and started my ice down rotation for the night. Finally Becca comes home and we talk about our day and she tortures me by making me laugh which causes me pain, evil woman ;) and i continue to do ice therapy. Around bed time i told her i would have to sleep propped up on the couch so i could breath and could she please take the dogs with her into the bedroom for the night, which she did. Then i went and took some cough depressants and pain killers and luckily went to sleep. And surprisingly only woke up once when i felt light headed from being propped up for so long, so i moved the pillows and went back to sleep.

Then this morning we went back to the chiropractor where he was able to move the ribs back into place. Now i can breath 7/8 normal and only spasm when i try to breath deep enough to cough, which is not often or when Becca makes me laugh, evil woman :) That about wraps up may adventure for the week and I'm hoping next week won't be nearly as exciting.

Since the last time that I blogged we have done some work on Claire's room. We finally have all the insulation put up and glued in place and we have all the drywall up and ready to be taped. We were able to save 2 pieces of insulation and one piece of drywall so we could return them. Which is good because we forgot to buy a couple things last time we were at Lowe's, so now we have money to buy the rest of what we need. This project has been the fastest and easiest one that we have done so far and if things continue to go the way they are we will be painting sometime this or next Saturday night. I have been testing the room to see how well it retains heat now that we have done the major part of the construction and while it does not get overly warmer than the rest of the house it now is the same temperature as the rest of the house instead of being a good 8 degrees colder. We ended yesterday's project work by going to papa Murphy's and getting some pizza and watching an 80's movie called Ice Pirates.

Then i took a hot bath to try and relax a shoulder muscle that had been bothering me all day and Becca played the wii she borrowed from work (i think she's addicted to it), then we went to bed. All in all it was a very productive and pleasant day. I'm thinking that tonight I will try to get some of the mudding done in the room so we can be a little ahead for when Saturday comes, because we usually have lots of errands to do and I don't think this Saturday will be any different. So maybe if I can get a little more work done tonight we can get things done this weekend and not have anymore projects waiting to get done.

So it has been like 5 weeks since i posted which is due to my being lazy, finals and the Christmas holiday season. Does this mean that i have a ton of stuff that i can update people on, yes Does it mean that i will do it, no. It all depends on how fast i can type on my lunch break. Luckily though non of the stories i will tell are like the stories from our thanks giving outing to AZ. We had no major break downs or mishaps the worst thing that happened was that on Christmas day we had a winter storm that turn off the power for 2 hours and left almost 2 feet of snow in the front yard. But the power shortage was in the middle of the day and the snow will melt on its own so those two events weren't really that bad after all.

I got my grades for school today and and got 3 A's, 1 A- and 1 B+ which brings my school career GPA to 3.853, not too bad if i say so my self. Now i have one semester left to graduate and will be taking 13 credit hours. 6 hours are semi blow off classes 4 are for a group CAP class that depending on the class members could be time consuming or not and the last 3 are a traditional in the room learning class. So hopefully things will be fairly easy next semester.

Becca and i have decided to call our baby Claire Abigail Severinsen (so far) and she is due on Feb 11 09. We have gone to see the hospital and what kinds of rooms they have there and were all the important rooms are. Becca signed us up for a birthing class that starts next week and goes past when Claire is due so we may not finish the class, but we will be more ready than if we didn't take the class at all.We have started to work on Claire's room and are about 1/3 of the way done with it. We need to install the rest of the insulation and then put up the dry wall, mud, sand, and then paint. We are trying something different for the paint in Claire's room this time, we are going to paint it in a way that I have suggested. Which means instead of doing one full bodied color like the rest of the house we are going to do a full bodied color on the bottom half of the room and then a lighter whitish color on the top of the room. The hope is that this time the full bodied color wont overwhelm the room like the green piant does in the bedroom.

For Christmas i got a lot of tool stuff, a camcorder, a self sufficiency book and some PS2 stuff and we are still waiting to receive our gifts from Becca's family, but so far it was an enjoyable Christmas haul. My parents stayed for about a week and visited with me and my brother, it was fun having them here to visit and mom got to see the new bathroom we just finished. I gained the traditional Christmas 5 lbs and have started going to the gym to lose the weight and stay in better shape. It is especially important for me to keep going because i no longer have the workout classes and my job at WSA is nothing but sitting at a computer. So weight gain is an easy thing to do, I would say almost as easy as when i worked at nothing but noodles ans drank soda all day. So with my high blood pressure it is important that i try and lose some weight and do strenuous exercises to keep in shape.

The goal for this month is to prepare for Becca's soon lose of work hours by finding her another job or new position at her current employers. We are going to try and refinance the house to a lower rate to lwer our monthly payment, but need it to appraise for 165,000 which means we need to finish up the home improvements soon. We also are talking about how many hours i need to maintain and if we can get rid of some of our life style ways in exchange for others, like giving up Becca's cell phone or a home line and Internet access so she can work from home and other such things. We are also playing with the idea of rearranging the whole house and changing the purpose of rooms from one to another to see if it works better functionally. It will also give us a chance to do some deep cleaning and sorting of stuff.

Work is going good and i enjoy being here. I don't think that i will work here full time next semester, but if they want to hire me after i get my masters there is a chance i would accept it. We still hope to move back to the Midwest some where. So far the main candidates are Columbia Mo, because of our past experience with it. Kansas City Mo, because WSA has an office there that i could transfer to. Or to one of the towns located around the greater St Louis area, because there are jobs there and the land type we want and Dan is there. If no in Mo I am pushing for IL, upper AR, lower IA, or western TN. I don't really want to go too far north or into the plains and if you go too far to the east with out getting to the coast you run into the backhills people, which i would like to avoid.

Well thats all i can think of right now so hopefully that is enough updating for everyone and hopefully i'll get back into blogging more often