So... what did you do this week?

So, just to put it in perspective a little, here's a recap of the last week of my life. The middle of November, you'd think it would be pretty typical. And in a bunch of ways it was. But my life is never quite what most people would call typical.

Sunday- Church. I talk to more kids about what they want to be in the pageant. We have a youth group meeting and mostly talk about fun stuff we want to do rather than service projects. Rev. Biddle is leaving it up to us, though, and maybe once we know each other better we'll do some bigger projects. Home for a billion hours of HW, since I have to meet a history fair deadline the next day (I HATE History Fair. I'm so glad it's over in a week and a half.)

Monday- School. I sit through a normal day. Mr Fecke hands out Sleigh Ride in Band. Sue and I hand in our draft. I'm settling in for the last class of the day, math (ugh). When Mr. Krol announces over the loud speaker that the school has gone into lockdown. There was an article in the paper that said something about the school planning a lock down drill, so I assumed it was just a drill. We had to lock the doors, shut off the lights, pull the shades, and stay away from the window in the door. We sat there in the dark and talked. It was NOT a drill. Some kid dropped some live rounds of ammunition in a classroom and another kid found them. We were stuck in the math room in the dark for 2.5 hours.
In one conversation I had with Sam, Kallie, Noah and some people, I mentioned having been at Glasgow airport, and that for some reason made Kallie think of the Christmas bloody nose, which led to a discussion of my webcam to the fourth grade, the transplant, etc. Sam was new to all this, but someone's response to his not knowing was "Where have you been?" It's funny that like everyone just accepts it as a part of my past. It's been nice to talk to Kallie more this year, as she was really there for all that and a good friend, too. Later in the convo, I mentioned something about my pneumothorax. Sam was incredulous. "What the heck, why do all these wicked intense things happen to you?" he asked. I wish I knew the answer to that.
When we finally left, we couldn't take our backpacks and we were funnelled out of the school in one direction and wanded by the state troopers. We couldn't go to our lockers or take our instruments. They cancelled all HW, but I had a lot of long-term assignments that I was planning on working on but couldn't. It was pretty relaxing, the family went out to dinner and then I chilled and went to bed pretty early.

Tuesday- Normal day of school, for a school recovering from having been on lockdown the previous day. We have a sub in spanish and get to watch a weird movie about a girl who becomes a drug mule. I go to work, get home and have to do quite a bit of hw, don't get to watch House and end up going to bed very late.

Wednesday- I have been looking forward to this day all week because we are having Jazz Combo after not having it for two weeks. This joy is tempered by stress over getting a physics worksheet handed in, and whether my mouse trap car has to go 3 meters for the testing. It doesn't, I get the lab done, we watch the movie again in Spanish. In band, Mr. Fecke hands out order forms for the super-cool band shirts we are going to order. They say BAND in the style of the AC/DC logo. I'm really excited, and Alex really wants one too. I think I might order him one and give it to him for Christmas. The mouse trap car doesn't have to do 3 meters, so I'm in the clear and the testing turns out to be really fun. Unfortunately, a teacher meeting in the band room crushes any hope of having Jazz Combo, but my lesson with Corey is still fun, and I get a lot of homework done in the wait time. I drive myself to Salem for a pageant meeting and Betsey and I iron out the casting decisions. I go home and watch the episode of House I missed (thank God for DVR), and go to bed.

Thursday- School per usual, but we play capture the flag in gym so Peter and I get to talk a little. About guarding interlopers from the otehr team, but still. Am I pathetic? YES. I have the afternoon off, nothing to do, so I relax and get a little ahead on HW. Uncle Ualter comes to visit, and I stay up late talking to him and mom about old family stories and photos. I learn some really cool stuff about Grandpa O'Regan. Like the time a protest he staged was on the CBS evening News and Walter Cronkite talked about him. Ualter said there's a high likelihood that the FBI opened a file on him because he had ties to the IRA. I hope we can get a hold of that some day, because it would be the coolest thing to have. They both said again that I probably would have been his favorite grandchild. It's sad that I never got to talk to him, that he didn't get to see me become who I am, a leader of voting marches and letter-writing campaigns. I go to bed late again, this time for a good reason.

Friday- School again, Fridays are a drag, all my classes, no gym, no band. In study Sally says that Peter went on Tim's facebook and saw the secret group we made. I hope he didn't notice that I'm the creator, I hope he doesn't think it's insulting or creepy. I'm pretty whatever about it, since I've given up on anything really happening there. I go to work, and with Skye, Jeni and no Mr. Connolly, it's really fun. Afterwards, I buy the stuff to make my trench cake. I have a delightful evening watching TV and making a cake that is a model of a WW1 trech, complete with masacred gummi bears, licorice barbed wire, wafer-cookie reinforcements. I had a really good time making it, and I can't wait to share it with my class on Monday.

Saturday- Work with Skye. She handles several customers without needing any help, and one totally by herself while I was in the bathroom. It's so cool to see how she's getting better every day. She leaves at 12, though, and I am swamped with customers and Nicole, Lauren, Brooke, and their parents visit since it is Chris's birthday. I manage to do everything and get out of there at about 1:10. He told me "Great job" on my way out. Weird, but he's been doing more praising since Elaina quit. He's still paying me 50 cents below minimum wage, though. I need to find a way to bring that up without seeming bad. Dad informs me that the boy's soccer team lost 4-2 in the state finals via text. They had a great season, though, and it was so cold I'm glad I didn't go. This afternoon I did really nothing, cleaned my room and organized my stuff, took a shower. It was nice and tomorrow I'm going to have a lot of HW, but it's all good.

So, in a lot of ways, very typical- school, work, HW, TV. But in a lot of other ways- talk about nosebleeds, terrorist attacks, BMTs, FBI files, being on lockdown, working on a Christmas pageant, and making a cake that looks like a trench- wildly abnormal. My life is so bizzare sometimes.

Awesome Day

Well, I've had varied survivor-related issues in the past few months, some kinda bad, and I really need to get on mom about the therapist thing. But surprisingly, going to the AAMDSIF conference and Capitol Hill day has made me feel much better about the whole thing. I guess knowing that there is a place that it's completely acceptable to talk about it, and having people who know exactly what I'm talking about is really comforting. So I'm doing better with all that since then.
But all that is not what I'm here for now. I feel the need to write about what a totally awesome day I had yesterday. I let myself sleep because I wasn't going to work and I got up about 9 am. I ate and mowed the lawn. Ian sort of quit doing it because he hated the job and how low the pay was, so I offered to pick up the slack. It makes me feel really cool to push the thing around, hear the roar of the mower, smell the freshly mown grass, and feel like I'm striking a blow to the face a sexism with every step I take. Sorta dorky, I know, but I had a good time. Next I took a shower, then watched a little Monk with Ian. After that, I went to the library and got another one of my summer reading books out, a Henry Reed book (since its a summer tradition), and a novel for me to read for fun. I then proceeded to read in my treehouse for several hours. It was awesome! That is exactly what I built the treehouse for, and it was so nice to just read and be outside. I figured out a new way to climb up and down, and I ate a nice lunch out there. Then, I practiced the clarinet and read some more inside. I drove to my clarinet lesson, which went really well, and I was happy to get back to that. Corey was happy with the work I did on the Mozart, which I was really glad about. I went home and got to talk to the woman who is going to design a professional poster for the Craft Fair! That is going to be soooo awesome. Then, I got to hang around and read some more, then I went for a nice bike ride all around my usual routes, then over to the convenience store for a slushie and some Hostess cakes. Home for more reading, and at about 6, I went over to Corey's. I wasn't expecting to get to hang out, but she was free, so we did. We mostly talked about our summers and school and the education budgets and stuff. Then we baked cookies and brownies and watched HOUSE then talked some more until 2 am. Her sister had Maddie Lanois over, and I think I got her hooked on House :). Corey and I are planning a season 5 premiere party with all our friends who watch the show. I loved the novel I got to read for fun. It's funny, but that was one of the best days I've had in a long time, and probably ranks up there with my best days ever. It was so simple, but I got to do everything I wanted to do, it was relaxed and fun and I didn't worry about work or summer reading or bone marrow or vaccinations or anything. The things I did were so simple, but they made me feel so good. I'm going to have to make a plan for more days like that in the future. I feel so refreshed and just...happy. This is what enjoying the summer is all about.

You're kidding, right?

So the past few days I've had some chest congestion, breathing trouble. Mom and I figured walking pneumonia, no big, but we'll get it checked out just in case. So we go to the doctor and she listens, says she hears nothing, my O2 sat is 99%. So I'm thinking this has been a big waste of time. She sends me for a chest x-ray and I go back up for the results. It takes a while and then she comes in and says I have a pneumothorax, which is air in the lining of my lung, basically a half-collapsed lung. They're pretty common after trauma, but a spontaneous one (which mine appears to be) is pretty rare, surprise, surprise. Honestly, I found it pretty funny, just the fact that it was me, and this weird thing instead of something lame and basic like bronchitis. Mom did too, and we were practically laughing while the doc explained it. She prob thinks we're crazy. So for this they take a wait and see approach, so I go back on Monday for another check, then if my body has re-absorbed the air, no big, if not they put me in the hospital for 24 hours on 100% O2, and re-evaluate. If that doesn't work, they basically go in with a needle to get the air out. Kinda freaky, and I hope it resolves on its own, though I kinda enjoy the whole medical rarity thing. Probably far too much for my own good. It's one of those psychological issues left behind by my sucky bone marrow. It's odd, because as much as i want to get better, there's a part of me that wants the drama of the more invasive treatments. I know I shouldn't hope to not get better, but I can't commit to hoping for recovery. Going back to school and having to tell everyone was a hark back to the days I explained bone marrow failure to my class. It was weird but pretty fun, another weird psyche thing. The bummer is I'm banned from physical activity and clarinet playing until Wednesday. Which mean probably no In C, no practicing, no clarinet choir, and no lesson with Corey. Also, no running in gym (how sad) and no exercising on my own (including walking to school which is a bummer as its nice out). So I now have nothing to do, and I am getting bored. I'll have to find other stuff to do to make up for it. Overall, a very odd day, and I'm sure it will be an odd week. I guess I am just a freak of nature, through and through. It's just so ironically funny that every time I go to the doctor's office, it ends up being weird. She said in a typical practice, you see spontaneous pneumothorax about once every two years. So it's like a 1 in 1000 chance. Which makes my medical history now like a 1 in infinity chance. My life is just one big instance of cosmic irony, I guess. What was a little off-putting was the concern everyone else had. Only Grace seemed to find any humor in the situation, and she said it was only funny because I found it funny. Well, I guess that's life... only really my life though.

End of Vacation

Well, it's the last night of February vacation. I'm sad to see the restful time go, but at the same time, I'm excited to get back to school. I feel very refreshed. Mr. Fecke's facebook status says it all : Erik Fecke is excited to return to band. I have a new clarinet, so returning to band will be especially fun. I'm waiting anxiously for my clarient lesson to find out from Corey whether this was a good buy or not. Returning to school means returning to the crazy pace of life, the homework, and the stress of school. I didn't do much homework at all this vacation, but I think that should help me be ready to attack it anew this week. I always love going back to school after a break because everything feels exciting and new but familiar at the same time. I'll get to see my friends and hear about their vacations. It'll be good. The time over vacation always slips by so fast. But I actually did do quite a bit: work, babysitting the Mentes, Shamrock for HAWC, church, building a treadmill, reading a bunch, sleeping a bunch, finishing my science fair testing, jamming with Sloane, hanging with Grace throwing snow into the Ipswich river, exploring frolicking in the snow, and being randomly kind, spending time with my family, walking with Charlie, playing the clarient I bought this vacation. And now it's time for dinner and Toscanini's ice cream for dessert. It's all good. :))