Mastitis and True Friends

That's a really awkward post title, I know.  I'm still recovering and my brain is fuzzy.

Tuesday night around 5 pm I started to feel really chilled and achy.  By 7:00, I was curled up under a blanket wishing the world would disappear.  By 10:30, I had a raging fever.  I was in the process of weaning Henry and mastitis reared it's ugly head.

I posted this picture on Instagram at about 8:00 Tuesday night:

I felt like that for about 24 straight hours.  I was able to get on an antibiotic by 10:30 on Wednesday morning.  That, and a hefty dose of Ibuprofen gave me about 4 good hours when the kids got home from school.  I got dishes done, a bit of laundry put away (that Stanton had kindly folded on Tuesday night while I was in my fevered stupor).  By the time 7:00 rolled around again, though, I was a mess.  I had a fitful sleep last night - wetting my sheets with sweat attacks a couple of times.  I'm feeling quite a lot better this morning - still weak and chilled, but nothing at all like I was yesterday or Tuesday.

This was my first bout with mastitis.  To my family who gets it regularly while nursing, I'M SO SORRY.  Wow.  It is horrific.

The whole reason I'm even writing this post, though, is to record what generous and amazing friends I have.  Jana Brough saw this picture on Instagram and by Wednesday morning, she had me totally taken care of.  My mother in law took Cannon for the day, and Brigham after school,  and brought us dinner.  Linda Hastings took my girls to gymnastics and Trudy Day brought donuts for my kids to have as an after school snack.  I was just overwhelmed by the love and care I received from my friends and family.

Early in the day on Wednesday, I was really weak and knew I needed to eat something - but I just didn't have energy to make anything.  I started to pray that someone would bring me some soup or that if no one had soup to bring, that I would have enough energy to make some for myself.  I fell back asleep and when I woke up an hour or so later, I felt good enough to go downstairs and grab a package of ramen noodles.  Not very nutritious, but the broth felt so good inside of my achy chilled body.  I was thankful that I was able to get some for myself.  Trudy arrived just about a half hour later with the donuts for my kids for after school.  I am 100% certain that she was an answer to my prayer for soup.  I know she didn't bring soup, but she brought something that I hadn't even thought of - something for my children to eat when they came home from school.  I needed those donuts for my children much more than I needed soup and Heavenly Father knew it.

I'm so thankful for a community of family and friends who just step in and help whenever a need arises.  I can't express it enough.  Oh, and sweet Henry slept almost the entire day yesterday (not like him) and then slept through the night again last night.  I'm so thankful that he was able to do that.

I'm hopeful the crazy sweats are a sign that I'm on the mend.  I can tell I'm not 100% yet, but I'm feeling so much better.

I'm Getting There!

It's 11:05 and I've got to go to bed - we go to 9:00 church tomorrow.  It's my favorite church time.  I love being done early in the day.  But...it's going to come early and I'm not prepared!

It's nice to get the blog somewhat updated.   Man oh man, going through the hundreds of pictures we take is really daunting!  Upload to iPhoto, categorize by months, export to desktop folders, import to Picasa, sort through them, edit the really bad ones, make collages, export the collages to the desktop, import to Blogger, write the posts and insert the pictures.  It's a time-consuming process!  Totally worth it, though.

I've back dated several posts so they'll print in proper order when I do the book this month.  Scroll down - they're all on this page.