Tomorrow I'm hitting the gym

So I'm almost over my illness, the only thing I'm left with is a deep painful cough that winds up deep from within my core and probably keeps the neighbors awake! LOL I haven't been able to work out since I've been sick which for me has been quite distressing. I'm sort of obsessed with working out now and I just know everyday I'm unable to do so I've undone the work that I worked so hard to do. I think tomorrow will be the day when I start back up, maybe not full force, but something anyway. Getting a good cardio workout always elevates my mood and just makes me feel good. On Thursday morning I am giving flu shots at a local Kroger and I'm sort of nervous about it. I'm certified to give immunizations, but what if I get someone who is REALLY afriad of needles and they freak out, or what would be really bad would be if I stuck myself with a used needle! I'll just have to be careful and go slow and hopefully it will go well. Send me positive thoughts on Thursday morning from 9:30-11:30! Keep W in your prayers he's been a handful lately *sigh* he just always seems mad. I'll update on my Thursday goes.

WHAT?! No medicine cup?

So on the way home from eating at Chili's, we stopped at Walgreens to get me some Delsym aka dextromethorphan (cough medicine) for my cough. I was shocked and appalled when I got home and realized it didn't come with a medicine cup, and yet the directions stated to take 2 teaspoons. Ok so maybe I'm being picky but the average household teaspoon can measure anywhere from 2.5-15 mLs!!! My point being they aren't really that accurate and this is how people accidently give their children too much medicine! A teaspoon should measure 5 mLs, but if your teaspoon that came with your silverware happens to measure 15 mLs, you'd be getting around 30mLs instead of the 10 mLs that you should have been getting or 3 times too much!! Avoid this problem and the next time you are getting liquid medicine for yourself or your child, stop by the pharmacy and ask for an oral syringe so you can make sure you're getting the correct amount. Thanks and have a great day :)

Late night blogging

I've been banished to the couch because my coughing is keeping W awake. I've been sick for 3 days now. It's just a nasty cold virus so nothing much I can do except wait it out and self medicate. But now that I'm on the couch, I'm close to the computer so it's very tempting to get on here. Anyway my childhood best friend Amy is going through an extremely difficult time. Her boyfriend died suddenly on September 19 and they aren't really sure what killed him. Please pray for Amy to find peace and strength through this horrible time. Her boyfriend's name was Josh. On a positive note, me and W went to Chili's on Thursday and I colored a pepper and bought the create-a-pepper t-shirt. I made the pepper for Kennedy the cancer warrior! Here it is:

And here is a picture of just ONE of the walls with Peppers people have already done.

Don't forget to eat at Chili's on Monday September 29th because Chili's will be donating 100% of their profits from this day to St. Jude. I think this is just phenomenal. I have my second kinetics test on Tuesday and since I slept about 16 hours of the day on Saturday and Sunday, I haven't gotten a whole lot of studying accomplished so I'll have to really study hard tomorrow. Being sick just sucks. Plain and simple. I thank God I'm rarely sick. Well that's it for now.

Tomorrow is W's birthday.

W's birthday is tomorrow and I'm getting ready to go birthday shopping for him. His birthday is always sort of a dreaded day for me considering he is EXTREMELY hard to shop for. This time he made it a little easier for me by making a birthday wish list which consisted of nothing but DVDs and CDs. I may throw in a shirt or two as well. :) If it weren't for me, the man would wear t-shirts and cargo shorts everyday. By the way he will be 28 years young. Wow, when I met W he was only 24. I'm a little bit bummed though since he's working on his birthday and we won't be able to go out anywhere. Then I work Friday and he's going out of town this weekend, so I guess we really won't get to go out. Oh well, when I get a chance I'm going to make his favorite dish, liver and onions. I'm not joking, he LOVES liver and onions and begs me to make it all the time. And for desert, he favorite: chocolate chip muffins. Well I still haven't gotten any test grades back and the suspense is killing me! Well I'm off to Target and/or Best Buy.

1 down, 1 to go.

I had my first therapeutics exam today, and I'm not sure how it went just yet. I have to say it was easier then I imagined it would be, but I don't want to predict what I made because I'm usually always wrong. I'm just glad it's over with. I was so brain tired after the exam I went straight home and skipped my management class. I feel a bit guilty about it, but I'll get over that soon enough. I rested at home a bit then went and did my Zumba class. I LOVE Zumba!! For those that don't know it's an aerobic class that's based on Latin dancing and it REALLY works your core, it's pretty awesome, then I did yoga for about 45 minutes and came home. This day has really flown by. Tomorrow I have to have an emissions test done on my new car so I can get it registered in Shelby county, and we have to somehow get my broken down car back to our house so my dad can pick it up on Saturday. He knows a lot about cars and wants to put a new engine in it. Nothing else really interesting happening this week that I know of. That's it for now.

New car and other positive things.

I guess I should start off by letting everyone know my car started making a rattling sound and the check oil light kept going on and off, even though the car had oil in it, so we took it to our mechanic who told us that something in the engine was cracked and making the rattling sound and we'd have to replace the engine(again) to fix it. Some of you may remember that the engine has already been replaced once and we it hadn't even been in the car for 6 months yet. *sigh* After me and W discussed this situation, we agreed it would be better just to get a different vehicle for me instead of replacing the engine a second time and risking something else happening to the car. This car has been quite a nightmare for me. This is what has happened to it:
1.) Keyless entry mysteriously became "unprogrammed" while car was still under warranty, so we had it fixed.
2.) Keyless entry unprogrammed itself AGAIN conveniently right after the warranty ran out, so I've been w/o keyless entry for the past 4 years......
3.) Air conditioner had to be repaired while under warranty
4.) Brakes had to be COMPLETELY replaced when car was only 2 years old (Not under warranty)
5.) Motor went out in one of the power windows conveniently when the window was down. Had to drive car with trash bag over window until it could be fixed.
6.) Blew a head gasket last year, had to have several hundred dollars worth of repairs.
7.) Broken hose in coolant system (Note: ever since the blown head gasket, coolant system never worked right again, we were having to put coolant in car every week)
8.) At same time the head gasket blew, engine completely failed and had to be replaced...over 2000 dollars worth of parts/labor.

As you can see it's been a wild (and expensive) ride with this car. By the way it's only a 2002 vehicle, but ran like it was from the 1980s! Anyway we went to carmax today and purchased a 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt, it's red and really cute and perfect for me. We also made sure to get the extended warranty considering our luck with cars. It was a long tedious process, but now I have a reliable, cute car!! Now if I can just make the monthly payments. :)

Cute Huh??

So I wanted to thank anyone who sent me positive thoughts regarding the state of my marriage. I'm happy to report we had a really good day today and I'm feeling very positive. We are going to take advantage of free counseling sessions offered to students through our school. I also have my first therapeutics exam on Monday and I'm pretty nervous, it's going to be difficult.


Lastly, everyone eat at Chili's on September 29 because they will be donating 100% of profits from that day to St. Jude!! I can't imagine a better cause then this...ok maybe I'm a little biased since I work there. Do you realize St. Jude is one of a kind? It's the only place I know of where money is literally not an object when it comes to treating these kids. I've prepared drugs that were $2500 for a small vial! But this drug may be the patient's LAST HOPE, and it may SAVE THEIR LIFE!!! Some may not know that while St. Jude's main patient population are pediatric cancer patients, we also treat children with HIV/AIDS and other catastrophic diseases such as hemophilia, sickle cell anemia as well as a variety of other hematologic and endocrine disorders. The HIV drugs are ESPECIALLY expensive, but give HIV + patients a quality of life that they'd otherwise not have. Also patient's families NEVER had to pay for any treatments not covered by their health insurance and if they have no insurance, well then they don't have to pay! How awesome is that?? St. Jude also provides money for food and basic necessity items such as toiletry items as well as housing. Outpatients stay in either the Memphis Grizzlies house, the Ronald McDonald house, or the target house. Patients also come from all over the world for treatment, just the other day I made some chemo for a young boy from Nigeria with relapsed cancer. Well I'm sure most of you know how special St. Jude is, so eat at Chili's on the 29th and also create a pepper in honor of a a child fighting or a survivor like Kennedy!!

I need prayers and strength

Things haven't been going well for me and W lately. He's very short with me, ALL THE TIME, doesn't really show affection very much, NEVER offers emotional support if I'm sad or just had a bad day, he's NEVER happy it seems, and I don't think he wants to be married anymore. :( We're both under ALOT of stress lately because we're both in difficult educational programs, I'm in pharmacy and he's in nursing so time and money are scarce at times. I don't know what to do. He said his main two problems are 1.) that I'm a messy person (and I am) and I don't clean enough and 2.) I don't fufill his sexual needs. I admit that I'm messy, but it has a lot to do with me being so busy at school and I do work still also. And about fufilling his sexual needs, I admit I am lacking in that area, I just don't have the same needs he does at this point in my life with so much going on at school. The difference between us is that I'm STILL HAPPY, but he seems to be NEVER HAPPY. He also admitting to me the other day that he doesn't feel he'll EVER want to have children, which is something I MOST DEFINATELY want. I don't know what to do. I need prayers that we'll be ok, I don't want a divorce, but I can't go through my whole entire life with someone who is NEVER pleasant around me and never shows me affection and love and his always mad at me. Also these past few weeks I've been without a car so he's been driving me around and he's really unhappy about it. He hates it and it just makes me feel twice as bad. I don't know what to do.

One Job I'll never complain about.

Ok so I haven't written in quite some time. I haven't really felt up for it....until tonight. After the recent airing of stand up to cancer, I've been a little sad. I like to keep up with all the caringbridge pages for some of the patients at work, but maybe I shouldn't because when things don't go well, it's very heartbreaking. An 8 year old little girl from St. Jude just got some bad news about her progress. Her name is Mary Kate and you can visit her page here. This leads me to the title of my post. I prepare chemo at St. Jude for kids with cancer. It's a tough job. Sometimes I work for hours on end with no break. Sometimes a child will need a really large dose of a drug and I'll have to reconstitute a large number of vials to get a big enough dose, and my back starts to hurt and it gets hot in my mask and I sweat. Sometimes I stick myself with the needles I use to make the drugs. Sometimes I won't be able to find a child's order and I'll have to go searching for it even though I may have 20 chemo orders to make for the next day. Sometimes something just isn't right and I have to call the child's nurse to figure something out. I check the math on all the doses to make sure an error wasn't made and all this is very time consuming, BUT when I have bad days I always think to myself: This child and their family is trusting in ME that this chemo is made CORRECTLY. They are depending on me to take my time and make sure everything is done right, and that's what I do. To think for one moment that I may play a small part in saving a child's life makes any and everything I do at work worth it. I've been blessed with good health and I'm so very humble to God for giving it to me. I'm broke as a joke and without a car right now, but I'm healthy, and there are so many adults and kids who wish they could say the same. I'll never complain about my job.