First Day of School

We had an early start to the school year this year because the school district will be doing construction work on the high school next year.  We started August 22 and will end a bit early in the spring.  This year, Austin is in 4th grade, Sarah is in 1st grade, and Trevor is in preschool (2 mornings per week).

Austin and Sarah off to their first day of school, August 22.

Trevor ready to go for his first day, August 23rd, his 4th birthday!

I asked him to turn around and smile at me to show me his backpack and he wiggled his butt and did this:

Then gave me a real smile!

All 3 kiddos ready to head to school.

He looks so big heading off to school with his backpack on.

 Trevor by his cubby in classroom.

 Signing in by tracing his name.

Trevor had a great first day at school for his birthday. He got to wear a birthday crown, hand out birthday treats to his class, be the line leader, and his class sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

All 3 kids had a great first week of school, but Mommy has had a harder time.  On August 18th (Steve's birthday), I started having a strong ache in my left shoulder/upper arm.  It started getting worse and worse and by Friday night after making Trevor's birthday cake, I was awake for all but 1 hour of the night because the pain in my shoulder was so bad.  I couldn't even lie down because it hurt more lying down, so I propped up in bed in agony all night. I felt a bit better during the daytime, but the nights were terrible.  My arm was also weak (and it is my dominant arm since I am a lefty).  After a rough night Friday night, I went in to the TRIA Orthopedic clinic urgent walk-in clinic to get my shoulder looked at.  The doctor thought it was an inflamed nerve in my shoulder and gave me some pain medication and a course of high dose steroids to take.  I took the steroids and some ibuprofen, but over the next few days it just kept getting worse, not better.  I suffered through work on Monday, but on Tuesday, I was having more pain and needed to be seen again.  My dad has connections to a friend at his golf club who is an awesome ortho doc at TRIA who specializes in the shoulder.  My dad gave me contact info to call his assistant directly and Dad also texted directly to the doctor's cell phone to see if he could squeeze me in to his full schedule.  The assistant called me back and got me in for a 1pm appointment.  Dr. Steubs found that my arm was weak in a C5 distribution, meaning that the C5 nerve was the one causing the problem because the parts of my arm that were weak or in pain were connected to that nerve.  He thought I might have a disc bulging in my neck and pushing on the nerve, so I had a neck MRI that evening to check it out.  It turns out that there was no bulging disc, but we didn't find that out until the next day because the scan was done after radiology had already left for the evening.  Overnight that night, I was in such excruciating pain that I couldn't cope any more.  I called my mom at 1am sobbing, asking her to come over to be with the kids so we could go to the ER.  We got to the Abbott ER at about 2am and around 3:30am, I got a big shot of a narcotic med called Dilaudid to help with the pain.  I had never really had narcotics before and I got pretty woozy and nauseous.  They gave me a nausea med and let me rest a bit, then made sure I could get up and walk before discharging to home with an oral pain med (oral Dilaudid) and a muscle relaxant (Flexeril).  The pain was much better after that, but I had to stay on scheduled narcotic to keep it under control.  Then we got the MRI results back confirming there was no disc pushing on the nerve.  I have been diagnosed as having Parsonage-Turner Syndrome (brachial neuritis) - basically an inflammation of the brachial plexus nerves.  The medical texts describe it as causing "excruciating pain" and I can attest to that.  The ortho doc talked with neurology and recommended starting a nerve stabilizer medication called gabapentin (brand name Neurontin).  I have been ramping up that dose and after starting that med, I felt much better yesterday (Thursday), so I though I could stop the narcotic.  Today (Friday), I tried not taking the narcotic and it did not go well, so I went back on it to give the Neurontin a little more time to take effect before getting off the narcotic again.  Ugh!  This pain, at its peak, was more intense than any pain I could have imagined and I would not wish it on my worst enemy.   I am hoping and praying for a resolution to the pain and weakness so I can get back to work and back to my normal life!  My mom has been incredibly helpful, coming over to help with the kids, drive us to kids' activities/school (I can't drive on narcotics and these other meds that make me sleepy), etc.  Michelle made us a yummy dinner too, and one of Austin's teammates helped get him to soccer practice.  It takes a village sometimes and right now, I need my village.  Say a prayer that the pain resolves and I am able to get past this. A week of constant pain has been really hard on me and my failed attempt to get off the narcotic medication today has frustrated me and made me worry about how long this will go on.