All Along...It was Hamnet

Approximately six weeks ago, Andrew ever so lightly smashed his toe (his words, not mine) and has been in abject agony ever since (my observation, not his). Last week it was so very sore and swollen and he decided to clip his toenail to see if that would release any pressure. He was unprepared when pus started streaming out from under his nail after he disturbed it. 

It felt glorious...but it was also rather concerning and finally convinced Andrew to go to the doctor—urgent care, of course, it being the weekend.

The doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics and suggested that the toenail might spontaneously fall off in the future. They also asked Andrew to come back in and have a physical exam during normal business hours (since Andrew hadn't had one since before his mission...in the year 2003). 

So Andrew went back for a physical. And that doctor looked at his toe and said that the nail probably wouldn't fall off, but recommended that he see a podiatrist anyway. 

Andrew put off that for a few days, but eventually did call to make an appointment because his toe was still dreadfully swollen and throbbing. 

He went in to the podiatrist yesterday and the podiatrist was like, "That's never going to heal. Let's rip that sucker off!"

And that's precisely what they did. 

Andrew was not thrilled. His toe still hurts. But it also now feels like it might one day get better. 

Meanwhile...

I recently finished reading Hamnet. 

I watched Hamnet earlier this semester with Miriam (after Andrew watched it on the plane when he went to Qatar for his interview) and we both sat on the couch sobbing through a good 50% of the movie. It was so beautiful, so tragic, simply heart-rending. So then I read the book and it was just as beautiful, such a poignant description of grief...and life...and...anyway...

I don't mean to foretell anything dreadful by sharing this quote, it's just what came to mind as I've been thinking about the past few days:

"She is a fool, a blind idiot, the worst kind of simpleton. All along, she thought she needed to protect Judith, when it was Hamnet who was destined to be taken."

All along...it was Hamnet...

In this situation, I am Hamnet. Andrew is Judith. 

And, boy, I did not see this coming!

I have been working hard the past few months, doing a lot of lifting and moving of furniture and boxes. That's what one does when one is moving. But I'm not particularly weak and I practice good lifting posture. I have an excellent squat. 

Guys, I even make sure to tell a recently postpartum woman to please bring a helper and not try to lift a 70 lb. freezer into the back of her SUV by herself. I'm like the spokesperson of good lifting technique. 

That's not to say that I couldn't have made a mistake and strained too much. But...we haven't even been lifting much recently...because most of our stuff is long gone. 

Still, I've been spending a lot of time checking in on Andrew's toe, boiling water for his epsom salt baths, hounding him to call the doctor and make an appointment. 

I was surprised, then, to find a strange new thing on my abdomen yesterday—a bump...a bulge...a bubo...

Too much Hamnet for me (I'm positive this isn't bubonic)!

I pointed it out to Andrew—literally, I was like, "Not to, like, upstage you or anything, but, uh...what do you think this thing on my stomach is?!"

After much pondering and research, I determined that I...have a hernia! 

I was a little flummoxed trying to figure it out because it is in such an unusual place (just under my ribcage, on my left side) and it doesn't really hurt...and in fact feels better than it has felt in a long time! But that was the only thing it could really be!

Did I cry when I realized this? Yes. 

Hernias can only be repaired surgically and I was determined to live my life without surgery (thank you very much).

Did I have weird nightmares of it expanding out of my side like a balloon and getting really taut and shiny and translucent before popping? Yes. 

Andrew got up to take Miriam to the airport at 5:30 this morning and although I didn't come down to say goodbye to her (again...I had done that around 1:00 in the morning after we finished repacking her suitcases...and I was currently snuggling a sleeping Phoebe), I was still awake. And I was awake at 7:00 when he dropped her off. And I was awake when her flight left. 

But then I fell asleep and slept until noon! 

And it felt really good to have slept at all, even though I had all those strange nightmares. 

But then I called the doctor and made an appointment, which Andrew so kindly drove me to because it was raining furiously when it was time to leave. 

And the doctor was like, "A hernia? Here? Strange. Can you cough for me?"

So I coughed.

And he was like, "Huh. Let's try that test with you lying down. Cough again. Huh. So that is a hernia. It's responding precisely how a hernia would. I'm just going to feel around to try to find the break in the muscle here because..this is such a strange location...I don't know..."

We worked up a treatment plan...which is that he would call his friend (who is a hernia specialist/surgeon) and tell him that he absolutely must squeeze me in next week because we are on a Timeline.

That's about as far as the plan goes. 

And I began thinking about my left side, which, honestly, has felt pinchy for quite a while. 

Like...for a few years now...

So I have a theory that this hernia developed when I was pregnant with Phoebe. 

She was, as you might recall (I certainly do), transverse until quite late in the pregnancy. That means she was lying in my womb sideways instead of upside down (as she should have been). This put a ton of pressure on my sides rather than the front of my abdomen (and she was required to have a follow-up appointment for her hips because of the increased pressure it put on her body).

As I have begun protectively holding this little hernial protrusion, the position felt all too familiar to me. I believe that is where I would frequently rub to try to get her to back off from while she was rapidly growing perpendicular to gravity.

And—interestingly—that is the same spot that typically hurts when I've gone running (or done any other vigorous exercise) the last few years. I honestly thought I was just prone to getting, like, side stitches (running cramps) there. But...I guess not...

I mean, that might also be true...but I think it's possible that in the last four years some of those "side stitch" pains may have actually been hernia pains.

I don't really know.

The doctor asked if I'd ever had diastasis recti with any of my pregnancies and...I haven't.

I just checked again for fun and—not to brag or anything...because I literally have a hernia, okay? And that's a little embarrassing for me, so I'm definitely not here to brag—my abs are tight (like unto a dish).

You couldn't jam a finger between my abs if you tried, let alone two fingers!

But then off to the side of my ribs my intestines are just, like, literally popping out of my body.

So...that's neat.

I don't really want surgery (remember how I was going to go through my entire life without ever having one? That was the goal...that was the plan), but I also don't like having this bulge on my side. And if the surgery eliminates the constant pinchy feeling that I've had for...however long I've been ignoring it, thinking it would eventually go away...then perhaps that's an added bonus. 

The downside is that we are moving so we (1) are on a strict timeline and (2) have a lot of work to do and suddenly Andrew is injured and limping and I am injured and am forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk. And two of our nearly/grown kids are not here to help!

Rachel is at BYU and then will leave for her mission. Miriam flew out to Utah this morning to attend two back-to-back organ workshop/camps and will fly to Qatar by herself from there.

*****

Weirdly, Zoë asked me just this morning (okay, this noon when I had just gotten up and she was just barely getting breakfast brunch) how much a gallon of milk weighs. 

I told her that I honestly had no idea how much it weighed in pounds, but that I did know that milk and water weigh approximately the same amount and that 1 mL of water is equivalent to 1 gram in weight and that a gallon of milk is approximately 3.75 litres. So, that's 3750 mL, which is conveniently precisely 3750 grams.

"And what is that in pounds?!" she wanted to know.

(Do you know how excited I am to move back to a place that deals in metric? Very. Also, is it obvious that we are without any sort of ask-a-computer device in our house when we are so very used to an ask-a-computer device being in our house. "Alexa...how much does a gallon of milk weigh?")

"Oh, I can never remember the conversion. It's slightly more than two pounds in every kilo."

"Kilos?! I thought we were working in grams!"

"We are—by the kilo! Kilograms!"

"Ugh. How many grams in a kilogram?!"

"That's easy!" I said. "1000!"

"So a jug of milk is like...3.75 kilos," she ventured.

"Yes."

"So that's like...7.5 pounds?"

"Sounds about right..." I said. 

Our calculation was off, but the principles behind it were correct. 

First of all, water and milk do weigh approximately the same amount. The density of water is 1 gram per milliliter, while the density of milk is about 1.04 grams per milliliter. So milk is only slightly heavier than water (but we didn't add that weight into our calculation)

Also, there are 3.785411784 liters in a US Gallon, so slightly more than my remembered-conversion of 3.75. And there are 2.20462 pounds in a kilo, so slightly more than the rounded-down 2 that Zoë used to make her final calculation.

All told, it seems a gallon of milk weighs approximately 8.6 lb (3.9kg) in the US (and in the UK or Canada, where they prefer to use an Imperial gallon, a gallon of milk weighs around 10.3 lb (4.67kgs)).

So basically I can lift 10 lb. max.

Poor Phoebe had a little meltdown at bedtime when I informed her I would not be carrying her up the stairs to put on her pyjamas.

Excuse me?!

Why should she be required to climb the stairs using her own two legs when she has a perfectly good mother right there?

Because Mother is broken, remember?

Andrew's going to have ever so much fun at the airport with all of our luggage (while I will be unable to lift a finger).

By my calculations we'll have upwards of 24 suitcases with us...