ChezPerky

So I don’t really feel like the steroids have helped a whole lot with the hyperemesis. I felt marginally better the first few days and kept a couple crackers down here or there, but not enough improvement to really be able to say it was the steroids that made it better. But there *have* been some benefits:

• The inflammation around my PICC site is almost entirely cleared up. I am quite certain that it is the steroids responsible for it because when it gets close to time to take the next dose, it starts gettting puffy and itchy again and recedes within half an hour to an hour of the steroid dose.
• My headaches/migraines are much improved. Not absent, but not constant either.
• The sciatica that had left me nearly completely immobilized last week is almost gone. I have occasional twinges here and there if I step down wrong, but nothing crippling like before I started the steroids.
• My overall itchiness? Just about gone. Before starting the steroids, I was so agonizingly itchy that my skin was raw from all the scratching. Nothing had helped it. Also? I no longer seem to be getting a rash from the Phenergan – I don’t know if this is related to the steroids, or just that I have acclimated to the drug. Either way – less itchy is awesome.

But, by far, the most intriguing side effect of the steroids is that I have a ridiculous burst of energy much of the time. Even yesterday when I felt more dreadful than I’ve felt in weeks (possibly months) – I had plenty of energy. My husband was working in the afternoon/evening, so I was on my own from about 2:30 on. Just as the triplets were waking up from their nap. I expected this to spell disaster given how yucky I was feeling, but I had plenty of energy for them. I gave them a snack, played for a bit, and did a bunch of cooking. I made three large mac n’ cheese casseroles (2 for the freezer) and toffee/chocolate chip/pecan cookies. Last week I made a big pot of beef stew (frozen in 1-2 person portions, depending on the person), curry chicken, schnitzel, sweet potato pies (I had three of the most ginormous sweet potatoes I’ve ever seen in my life – and they made three pies!), and white-cholate-chip brownies (the brownie mix came in a box, so it doesn’t necessarily count – but J helped and had a ball. He also helped with the mac n’ cheeses and the cookies).

I have never been good at cooking and freezing things. If I cook something, I want to eat it now, not later! I always think I’ll take a Sunday and cook kugels and casseroles and soups for the freezer so that I’m not so slammed all the time when it comes to cooking. But it never works out that way. Recently, though, J has been super interested in cooking with me, and it gives us things to do together with relatively low stress. It also makes him SLIGHTLY more willing to try foods if he’s had a hand in making it. Though he still wouldn’t eat the mac n’ cheese casserole. Oh well.

I wonder if this is what "nesting" is like. It’s way too early for me to be nesting (I hope!), and with the triplets, I never got to really know what nesting was like – I was on bed rest forever and so sick I didn’t have any energy most of the time, but I did have a couple days here or there when I would freak out about needing to clean and so and purge. I remember one day when Seth and J were out doing yardwork and I suddenly freaked out about space and I waddled out and said, "We have to get rid of the piano. I never play it, I’m definitely not going to have time to play it with three babies in the house, and it’s taking up SPACE! We could put a whole shelf, a changing table, feeding table, something, ANYTHING in that space! It has to go!" Seth looked at me, looked over at J, and turned and said, "I think perhaps we’d better come inside to work instead of being out here. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the attic freaking out about all the stuff we needed to get rid of. And purge, I did. But that was the exception, not the rule. Technically I shouldn’t have been up there at all, but fortunately, that was before some of the scarier times in the pregnancy.

I have niggling little thoughts about all the crap in our attic often, reminiscent of that summer day with the triplets, but hopefully I’ll be able to squelch it this time. Surely the cooking is at least useful. And I do have in my mind that we need to have stuff in the freezer, because I’m petrified that I’ll get to a point where I just *can’t* cook and I’ll have this family who needs to eat. J could live all year on chicken nuggets and apple slices, but Seth hates cutting up apples. And surely, the triplets ought to have more variety than that, lest they end up with such a limited palate as J.

It’s not nesting, really, but the energy sure is welcome.

So the steroids kind of suck (side effects e.g. severe reflux and oral thrus aren’t any fun), but overall? I’d argue that my quaility of life, for the moment, is largely improved.

Except, you know, the throwing up part.