Ghost Chronicles: Part 2

March 2/3

I suppose I deserved this visit from my ghost (If one of them, because I think that there's 2 now, is my grandma). I said one of those things that scare your family and friends. I had a bad infection and I had been feeling really crappy, the right side of my face had swollen up. The family was over making room for Ryan and Liz to move in and I started out with the right side of my lips going numb and it then proceeding up my face. Most of us are medical professionals and know that I was having one of the symptoms of a stroke, so it was a trip to the emergency room to make sure that I wasn't. Apparently, I scared my ghost too. Because after I got home, I saw the ghost again. I'd convinced my parents that I could sleep by myself because we knew I wasn't going to have a stroke, so they dropped me off at home and I'd crawled into bed and to sleep. I laid down and at some point during the night I had rolled over and saw a smoking comet (anyone who knows my grandma would know how she loved her smokes) streaking across the ceiling above my bed. Then I had a little break from my ghost. I don't remember what day it was, but I was taking a nap before work one day and I felt something stroking my hair, even though I was alone.

Fast forward to last night. I was sleeping with my bedroom door shut and I swear that I heard it click open. Then I felt something jump up into bed with me, like a cat (and there has never been a shortage of cats in this house until now), and walk around the bed for a minute and then jump off. Nightmare, I miss you buddy, but please leave me alone while I sleep.

Ghost Chronicles, Part 1

So, I never really believed in ghosts before. I didn't believe other people's stories about ghosts in their houses.

Until I saw one in my own on Sunday night.

Since I've moved into my own place, the water heater has been making funny sounds. It shakes the pipes in the whole house when it turns on and you can hear water running. It's not a quiet sound. So, it just happened that I was falling asleep when the water heater did it's lovely little trick. I opened my eyes and rolled over and I saw it.

Right by the door, which was partially open and letting in a little of the light from the nightlight in the hallway, was a set of what looked like curlicues of smoke at about knee height coming out of the carpet. There was nothing to explain it besides a ghost. There's no heat vents or anything that would explain smoking carpet.

And it happened again last night. Once again, the water heater did it's little trick and I opened my eyes. About a foot away from my head, overtop the pillows that I have on an end table next to my bed, was an "orb" of "smoke" with wisps coming out from it. I rolled over and tried to ignore that it was there, but sleep did not come easily to me the rest of the night. At some point, I felt something patting the blankets next to me, yet I was all alone.

What will my ghost do next?

Sleep

I miss it. I want to go more than 2 hours before waking up.

Four Hours

It seems that the last few days have been broken up into four hour increments because since I've gotten up on Tuesday, until today, I haven't slept for any longer than four hours at a time. After I got home on Tuesday morning, I slept and tried to get up after a short nap but my body wouldn't let me, even though I promised it that it could sleep through the night since I had the night off, but that it would have to wake up at 7am so that I could get to my MRI on time. Well, body didn't like that, so instead of getting up at 3:30 like I'd planned, I got up at 5.

Did the normal stuff that I do on a night off with no plans then, watched TV then a movie and wasted time on the internet. Exciting. Finally convinced myself around 1:30 that since I had to be awake and alert at 7am that I should probably go to bed. Good idea in theory. In practice however, I didn't fall asleep until 2ish and then woke up wide awake at 6am.

The MRI was just loads of fun, lemme tell you that. I get to Covenant and they show me where to go and then I have a regular MRI, where they strap these pads to my shoulder and strap them into place and stick giant headphones on me so that I can listen to some music and not focus on how freaking small of a tube that I'm in. Then they take me in for three different x-rays. Then off to another room for flouroscopic guided needle placement. Yes, it was as painful as it sounds. First they numb the area with novicaine and a normal sized needle. Then comes the nice big spinal needle so that they can get all the way down into the joint, while constantly taking x-rays that show up on the television monitor so that the radiologist can see if he's in the joint or not. And boy, the 1 second that he actually hit my bone, I just about hit the ceiling, luckily he didn't hesitate to give me more novicaine. So the needle finally gets down where it needs to be and he injects the contrast. It was really cool getting to watch the contrast start to show up on the x-rays that he was taking. Few more x-rays on that table and then off to the MRI again. Get strapped down to the table again and in I go. Then another MRI with my arm above my head. Loads of fun. Hour and a half since I got to Covenant and I get to go home.

Now they told me to expect some pain later in the day, so I was prepared for a small ache. On my way home I stopped to get some lunch meat for sandwiches because we were totally out and I had some flatbread multigrain wraps that I wanted to use. As I was coming out of Jack's I could barely use my right arm to lift the bags. But I got home and around 12:30 I laid down for a nap because I was tired and I had to work that night, but I didn't want to sleep right before work because I wanted to go out with my friends. Sure enough, I laid down, and 4 hours later I was awake.

And oh my god, I experienced a new level of pain. I moved my arm and sharp pains would shoot down my arm. But since I was sore before I took my nap, I took 800mg of Motrin. So that helped some. Friends and I went to BWW and the mall. I came home and took more Motrin. I was in pain. My mom finally made it home and I told her how much pain I was in. She was surprised and no one told me that the pain was going to be so sharp or intense so I was wondering if it was regular or not.

I made it through work, just barely and my coworkers all realized that I was in a ton of pain. Luckily it was a slow night and I was able to not move my arm too much. Got home from work and had to wait until 9am to call the doctor's office. Mom told me who to talk to so I talked to Heidi and she had some strings pulled to get the report faxed over stat and worked me in at 1:45 that afternoon. So I got about 2 whole hours of sleep then because I was worried about not getting up in time for my appointment.

Good news: I don't need surgery. I have no torn cartilage but I do have a ligament that's thinner then it should be. Luckily though it's not the ligament that holds everything in place. So for the next 6 weeks I need to focus on strengthening the rotator cuff and shoulder. I was also given some pain killers to help with the pain from the procedure.

I made it home and slept for another 4 hours, but it wasn't even solid sleep, it was that light sleep where you don't really sleep. It was annoying. But luckily I made it through the night last night with minimal pain and then came home this morning and slept for a glorious 8 hours. And I'm still tired. I'll be sleeping good tonight.

Sleep

It seems like that's all that my world revolves around right now. When I'm going to sleep, how much sleep that I'm going to get, if it's going to be during the day or night, am I going to need a nap to get through work That's the joy of working third shift. You're awake unnatural hours and your body doesn't like it. And thanks to random days off, I'm having problems getting on a regular schedule. Good thing that this is only until I get done with school. In the mean time, give me lots of coffee.

4:59am

That's what time I woke up today. My alarm doesn't go off until 5am. Blech.