Master and me were looking very forward to our nice long weekend and of course I started to get sick last Tuesday night. Gob got another (partial) blockage (meaning you can only pass liquids, and no solids). Glamorous, I know. Well, when this happens, it usually lasts about a week, even when doing everything I’ve been taught to do by the ostomy nurses. It can last weeks or months so I guess I’m just fortunate that’s never happened to me. I’m also pretty lucky that a diet of baby foods and mashed potatoes doesn’t lend itself to complete blockages, or at least it hasn’t yet.
Regardless, we both kind of knew that this was going to put a major damper on the weekend. As much as we wanted to have fun and all, it’s hard to have fun when it’s ninety degrees and you have to lay on your side under a heating pad and drink a ton of soda pop while both feeling and looking nine months pregnant. I tried not to whine about it too much, but I was pretty miserable for the majority of this blockage, and it’s really hard to make merry during a holiday weekend when you feel awful. Not to mention, stomach stuff of any type (especially when it affects your ability to eat and drink properly) makes you have less energy and so overall I wasn’t feeling myself.
One thing that can help a lot with blockages is to soak in a hot bath. We don’t have a bath tub here, but we do have that pink pool and I was looking so miserable that Master offered to run a couple of pots of hot water out to the back yard to let me sit in it a bit and see if that would help. (The hose in the back yard only gives out cold water unless it has been sitting in the sun a while, and cold water wouldn’t be of use to us, in this situation.)
So, I donned some pool clothes and got pool pig ready and a towel, and then I started to fill pots when the sink hose just exploded in front of Master and me. Exploded. I don’t know sink technical terms, but our sink had a plastic bit on the bottom that keeps the part that the water comes out of firmly in place. That just kind of.. Ruptured before our eyes. We now had a mess to clean (thank goodness it was water, and not a hot chocolate spout, amiright?) and not to be deterred, we continued filling pots (but with the hose extended all the way and the water turned down so that we wouldn’t spray all over the kitchen). The pool was half full after all, why give up now?
The next morning was Infusion, with plans afterwards to go in search of our missing sink part. I woke up not feeling great, but we had hoped that Infusion would help. Blockages dehydrate you and I already have problems keeping hydrated. A few times in the past I have gone to Infusion and then subsequently passed whatever it is I was trying to pass, so we had hoped that I was going to manage to feel much better for the rest of the weekend. Unfortunately not. I could feel myself just bloating up (especially in the middle around Gob) and I think I would have taken a third bag if my prescription allowed it. That’s a lot of fluid though. I’m sure it helped, but it wasn’t my usual “boost” because it didn’t solve my problem. Ugh.
We left Infusion and off we went to get our sink piece. We went home, where Master spent the majority of the day wrestling with the underside of the sink to try to remove the faucet we had. It was kind of an awkward squeeze in there. It took him a couple of hours, but when he finished he held it up like he had just shot a big piece of game and held it over his head triumphantly. HA! Love him.
He got the new faucet in place, and guess what? The hose that came with it was about six inches too short for us to have water in the kitchen that night. I don’t know what it is with house projects, but there is somehow always just this one other part that you don’t realize you will need or don’t think you will need, and you do. It’s kind of like sewing because that’s what happens to me every time I do a personal sewing project too. There’s always one more button or ribbon or something. Only, this time it was kind of vital because if we don’t have running water in the kitchen how am I going to wash the dishes? I mean, that’s only fun for a day and then when the kitchen sink piles up it’s not fun anymore.
I was too sick to go out though, so Master decided that we were just going to go out and get the sink hose on Sunday. No biggie.
Sunday morning I woke up very sick. Master handed me Pygmalion.
“You look like you need to be tucked back in!” he told me.
I don’t know what was going on with me, but I was stumbling around and I felt so nauseous I thought I was going to puke. We figured it could have been my stomach problems and Master handed me a soda to start in on (I hate soda but they do help, ugh!) while I slowly woke up. He wasn’t even sure I was going to get going that day, but by some miracle I did manage to make it out the door for us to go get that sink hose.
Once Master got the sink fixed we were both pretty thrilled. You don’t realize how much you miss having water in your kitchen until you have to constantly walk to the bathroom to wash your hands etc. I’m glad Master was able to get it going!
We still weren’t having much luck with Gob, but I was trying not to be a downer, because there wasn’t anything that I wasn’t already doing that could help. Movement helps a lot, so I was trying to keep doing my chores, and running around and drinking constantly etc. I know Master could tell I wasn’t feeling quite myself though. We still had playtime that night, but he put a heating pad on my tummy after he tied me up. How cute is that?
Seeing as how it was the weekend of the Fourth, we had been taking all week about all the fun things we were planning on doing! For one, we wanted to play in the pink pool. Master and me fill up the pink pool and let it sit out in the tent getting warmer (but it’s not hot for sure) until we’re ready to go out and relax in it. Then we set up the mist snake and it’s so cool and nice in there. So, we got all our pool stuff and we settled in for a bit of hot weather pool relaxing.
Within five minutes of settling into the pool with zero clouds in the sky, we started to hear thunder, so there went that plan! We ran into the house but I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about missing out on pink pool time because this happened:
So, I guess it wasn’t all bad.
Maybe it should rain on us more often?
When dinner time came around, Master opted for grill food. He set up a little pudding dish filled with a bunch of Pop-Its for me to play with while he was grilling. Pop-Its are always a great way to entice me. I like them more than is reasonable.
When dinner was ready we took it over to the fire pit and decided to light a campfire. We lit the tiki torches and were planning on having some relaxing fire time. Master got me some sparklers to play with, and I ran inside to get my jacket because I started to get really cold suddenly! How weird for July!
I came back outside, and was playing with sparkler #1 when Master gave up because the fire had blown out twice already. It just wasn’t our day for outdoor activities. I still was feeling crummy anyway so we spent the rest of the night inside hoping for a better day on the Fourth.