What to write about …. life just rolls along at its’ frantic pace. I have been extremely ill and some days I think I will never be healthy again. At this point in time, after a hospitalization for acute pylenophritis, I have two kidney stones that need to be surgically removed, but because of the damage to my kidney from the infection, it must wait at least 6 months before we can do surgery. In the interim I have recurring infections, am living on antibiotics, have lost most of the term at university and now, just to make life a bit more fun, I have pneumonia. If I can stay fever free and mobile for long enough, I will have an individualized study plan at school, to get me back on track academically. But if I am too ill to attend classes, it isn’t going to be a big help. *laugh*

LL is doing well. He got a 32 inch flat screen tv for his room at christmas. His room was redone this fall, new bed, new desk, new shelves and his own computer. My little boy is growing up! At this point in time all he needs up there is a little fridge and he would never have to come down. That said, he spent last evening down here with us, watching tv and playing on my laptop, because he is a social creature and it is not fun to watch tv or play when there is no one to talk to about it. The idea with the tv was that when he has friends over they can play PS2 games up there without having to battle the dog, who wants to be included.

Ibo is busy as always. Politics takes much of his time and he has just taken a new position at work with more responsibility. I was thinking yesterday that the general “man on the street” have no idea how much time their elected politicians spend at it. Here we have “fritidspolitiker”, meaning that our alderman etc do politics as something extra and still work fulltime at thier regular jobs. So in addition to meetings for different committees as well monthly council meetings, there is a lot of time spent planning the future of the municipality. In Ibo’s case he has responsibility for BUN, the committee that oversees education from daycare to middle school (here that ends at 9th grade and high school starts in 10th grade). He has many meetings, often during work time, which means he must make up that time by working later or in his case because he works with IT, from home, late into the night. It is his dedication to making our society a better place that drives him and I respect him and the other aldermen immensely for that.

As for me, we have had a crisis to deal with in our committee (UAN) that oversees high school, adult education etc. Since I am a reserve member of the committee I am not obligated to be at all the meetings but in two years I have only missed two meetings, the first because I had made another commitment for that date, before I was asked to sit on UAN and the second when LL was very ill and Ibo was out of the country at the time. I feel that since I said yes I have a responsibility to be at the meetings as well as read everything that comes home and also to research on my own, so I have a broad understanding of the motions we vote on. It is only a small part I play but I take it seriously, it is that upbringing we had! *laugh* That said, it has been stressful the past few months for me as a peripheral member so I can imagine how hard it has been for those who are chair and vice chair of the committee. Hopefully things will soon get back on track here.

I hear that my sister is in Florida, how nice for her! Sun and relaxation … I would kill for that at the moment. *laugh* I suppose the rest of you have been vacationing in warm sunny places as well? I do know that calls to Canada go unanswered often so you must all be on the go as well.
We had a nice christmas, a quiet new years and LL and I went down to Gothenburg for 4 days after new years. He had a riot, saw an airplane museum where they got to climb in the planes and use a flight simulator, went to the observatory and saw Andromeda as well as a film, went to the natural history museum, which he informs me is much better than the one in Stockholm and played for hours with his friend Johan. I spent the time doing school work and battling a non stop fever, but we did get a bit of shopping in at least. *laugh*

Today I was out with Rusty, a mistake on my part. Pneumonia, active 30 kg dog, cold windy weather …. not a great combo. I am thinking I need to have a nap before the kidlet gets home from school.

Ibo had 5 weeks vacation and we enjoyed every day of it. Llywellyn shot up a couple inches over the summer and really enjoyed his summer. Susan is plugging along, getting deafer and more arthritic but she persists in believing she is a puppy even if she is 11. Rusty had a tough summer. He was sick from May on. We saw 4 different vets between May and July. He just got less and less active, stopped eating properly and finally had a crisis with vomiting and bloody diarrhea. We still don’t know for sure what his trouble was from, but after the crisis he began to improve, started gaining back the weight he lost and is back to running and playing like before, although he still is not 100%. The final conclusion is that he needs his tonsils removed. They are quite large and a resevoir for any infection he might pick up. First we need to have him seen by a specialist to check his heart and lungs …. a good idea before any anesthetic. Majong is grown up, he loves to be out all day, but he has to be in to sleep with us at night.

LL is still busy, he has violin twice a week, scouts, streetdance and craft club. We haven’t heard yet when stamp club will start and if we can fit it into his schedule. He is a little Ibo. *laugh*

Ibo is busy as well with work and politics, he thrives on it but I have to keep a close eye on him so he doesn’t overdo it. At the moment he is ill (I think I infected him, have been ill for a week myself) so he is taking it easy at home.

Today is LL’s 10th birthday. Imagine that, 10! This time 10 years ago I was sorting laundry and barbecuing shish kebabs, with no idea that the sore back I had all day was actually labour, after all it was 6 weeks before he was due. *laugh* We had a party at a barnensdjungel, where they jumped in a big air filled crocodile, climbed through tubes, climbed ropes. It was fun for all. The nicest part was I had no preparation to do and no clean up after.

On that topic, I am debating getting LL the vaccine for tick borne encephalitis. We looked into a couple years ago but the doctor felt there wasn’t much risk here. With the increased number of ticks though and the fact he is outdoors in the woods at school, I think it is time to re evaluate.

It was a nice weekend. Friday Ibo went to work, LL went to a friends’ house and I went in to school to study and do some photocopying. Saturday I studied, LL had a friend over and in the afternoon I went with both of them to the carnival. We stopped and dropped off a few things at farmor’s apt on the way, Ibo was picking them up at the airport at 1630 and knowing how tired they would be after 20+ hours of travelling, I thought it would be good if they had milk, fruit and yogurt to tide them over till they had caught up on some sleep. I got flowers and left them as well, it is always nice to come home to fresh flowers.
Sunday LL had another friend over, I did housework, Ibo puttered on the computer and then clipped both dogs. When he was done clipping fur, I clipped nails. Then I took the boys to the carnival and we went from there to famor’s for fika and saw her parents, who were on their way home to northern Sweden. At the carnival LL won a huge chocolate bar, which was a box with 2 kg of chocolate bars inside. He also won 3 more stuffed animals to add to the 4 he won previously, so it was a fun weekend on that front.

We had vegetarian chili for dinner and S & J joined us. We invited her to come along to LL’s dance recital this week, since Ibo has a meeting and can’t make it.

I am back at the books but taking a little break for a coffee and updating.

We attended something called a party district congress, a meeting for social democrats from the Stockholm region. I was not picked as a delegate, Ibo was of course. But I was asked if I would be a reserve delegate if someone didn’t show. So at 0715 on Saturday morning, the phone rang and it was Anna saying that I needed to go along. *laugh* There were activities for kids as well, so we all went and it was a very interesting weekend. The only difficulty I had was when one of the speakers was from Denmark and it took a couple minutes to accustom my hearing to his accent.

I am in training for Tjejmilen again. This year I want to jog it, not just walk, so I started their training program last month. It has been a bit erratic with the kidney stone treatments but it is going well.

Kidney stone …. I am booked for a fourth session of blasting in 2 weeks. Monday after the 3rd session I saw pictures. The stone was originally the size of the first joint of my thumb and was located high up under a rib. It was not an easy angle for blasting but after the second session it moved down to a better spot so when they were done the 3rd blasting it is now the size of my thumbnail. As long as it is not moving it doesn’t hurt and hopefully the next session will be the last.

School is going well, big exam next week. Family is doing well, Ibo is as busy as ever as is LL. Ibo has started training Rusty to search and he seems to like it. The first morning they went out I was home and after Ibo dropped him off and headed off to work, he sat beside the door and cried for ever so long. Susan is the same as always, she sleeps, eats, sleeps, eats. I have been taking her along when I train, it is a good pace for her. Rusty wants to run so I don’t take him, I am jogging not running and I am worried that he will pull too hard, in excitement and my shoulder will dislocate again. We do go the dog park so he can play with his friends, whenever I have a self study day. Majong eats, goes out, plays with all the neighbourhood cats and comes home at night to sleep. He will be a year old soon and Rusty will be two next month. Our Applegrove “kids” are growing up. *laugh*

LL is playing violin now as well as dancing. He has a little circle of close friends that visit back and forth and he is settled and happy. It took a long time for him to be settled again after the summer of 2006, but he is finally almost back to the happy carefree boy he was before.

Me, I am content, we are getting along and happy together, as a couple and as a family. I take each day as it comes, I will never really be the trusting, naive person I was 2 years ago, but life is like that. You live, you learn, you move on. *laugh* Post accident, my arm has almost full range of motion but it is still nowhere near as strong as it should be, but it is getting stronger. My sight is the same, I can’t read for any extended periods without blurring and have to sit in the front row for lectures, but there seems to be some improvement, albeit minuscule.

Yesterday was Valborg, so LL and I went to the carnival and the bonfire together and stayed to watch the fireworks. Ibo was out with Rusty and a group of politicians, nattvandring (night walking?). Because Valborg is a big night of drinking for kids, there were a lot of different groups out walking and checking that no one got into trouble or hurt.

Today is labour day here so there were festivities at the local town center, it was fun, I took Rusty along but Susan stayed home. LL met a friend there and they had lots of fun. The guest speaker brought along a friend from the US, who is a supporter of Obama and he made a speech about why Obama is going to be the next US President. It was fun to have a speech in english for a change. *laugh* LL went off with his friend to play and we came home, both night hawks are now napping.
That is the story of life in our house at the moment. *laugh*

I passed the rewrite of my first exam, we all did. I think I was just so throw off first time around, but now I know what to expect.

Monday I went in and had my kidney stone blasted, something called Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy. Because it is such a large stone, I have to go back next Monday and perhaps a third time, to disintegrate the entire thing. It was interesting how they did it and because I am a nurse, they explained things in great detail. I came home about 1700 and fell asleep. LL went to violin with farfar and came home and made himself something to eat and put himself to bed. I woke once to throw up about 2130. Tuesday I headed off to school but by noon I was so nauseated and sore I was not sure I would get home on the train without throwing up again. I called Ibo and asked if he could take LL to stamp club and luckily there were no meetings last evening, so he could. It was another sleepy evening but I had much more pain than the evening before. Of course I had been sedated on Monday with a hefty dose of tylenol, morphine and valium. *laugh*

This morning I am still nauseous and sore, I did take Rusty out for a short walk in the snow …. yes, I said snow. *laugh* We had enough last night that Ibo had to shovel this morning. This has been a bizarre winter and spring all around.

We have now studied, the cell, nervous system, circulatory system and tomorrow is respiratory system. It is an intense schedule but it is going well.  Next week is CPR but I am not sure I can manage it. Monday is out of the question as I am having eswl #2, Tuesday is an option if I am not in too much pain, but my real worry is my shoulder. It is much stronger now but I am worried it is not up to the compressions yet. I discussed this with our supervisor and she said if it is necessary I can observe and show them that I know the steps and then recertify in the fall when my arm has had a full year to heal.

I need to go into the city this week and have my second hepatitis b vaccine shot. It is a drop in vaccination centre, so I will try and make it there after school tomorrow.

I used to remind him to do homework and violin every day and he complained that I nag at him, so I stopped. Now it is the mad rush to get done the day before. I hope he will learn to do some every day so there isn’t this cram session but I doubt it. He is just one of those kids that is slow at doing stuff and he needs to work at it every day to be done. At least he is faster in the mornings now since he wants his bedtime extended and we have said only if he gets up and gets ready for school in a timely manner. He is actually dressed and ready to feed the dogs when I leave for school now! Man it is hard to be a kid, so many rules and responsibilities. He told me today he had too much to do as a 9 year old. His responsibilities are to put away the cutlery when I run the dishwasher 3 times a week and feed the animals twice a day (and keep his room halfway neat). He gets an allowance of $7 a week for this. He does not believe me that other kids have jobs to do as well, even more than he does. *laugh* He also conveniently forgets that often I empty the dishwasher during the day so it can be a couple weeks between his doing it and that I help in the evening with the feeding because the dogs get medicine.

I saw my doctor on Friday. She agrees that I am feeling so ill and rundown because of the constant infection my body has been battling for months. I started on new antibiotics pre surgery but am still feeling rather punk; nausea, headache, general malaise. It should be better once the kidney stone is gone and I am infection free.

My fellow is away at a conference this weekend. He left early yesterday morning and met us at his moms for dinner about 1830. We were home around 2000 and he headed for bed at 2130. I tucked in LL, called in the cat and went to bed as well. We all were much more rested this morning when he headed out for day 2.

LL and I went to the library yesterday to pick up a book he reserved. He reads like I did at that age, voraciously, in both languages.  We passed a flea market in the town square and he found a Star Wars game for $6 and a bunch of books that were $1 each. So he has reading material for a week or two. *laugh* One of his purchases was a coffee table book of nature photography. He bought it for the library at his school since they are outside and study nature so much. He is a thoughtful kid, even if he is pushing the limits as part of being 9. *laugh*

Now I have to get back to my studying and listen to my son complain about having to write nicely. He hates writing, part of it is that he is left handed I think and the other is that it is too slow a process when he knows he could type it up so much quicker. *grin*

Life is rolling along at breakneck speed. Our first term is divided into two section, nursing and medicine. I started with the nursing section, lots of ethics. It started out ok, but it was obvious a couple weeks into the course that my eyes were not up to it. So I put things in motion to be declared sight handicapped. It took until the end of the first half of the term, but I am now in the system as having a sight injury and have access to all course literature in the form of talking books. As of last week I have all the books in that form. It has been a help but I am such a visual person that I feel I don’t get as much out of the talking books as I should. I have 3 years to get used to it. *laugh* I felt very confident in the first section of the nursing, was not hindered by language and felt I had understood everything. Then I went in to the first exam and had a complete panic attack, resulting in me only answering two of the four questions and one of those I never completed. It was a real ego buster. But I just squared my shoulders and moved on to the next section. As I expected I got U (the swedish equivalent of F) on the exam, but the fact I got VG (an A) on the next exam gave me back my confidence. In the interim I had finally received the talking books and using them to review, I prepared to rewrite the first exam. I did that last week, went in, did not panic, answered all 6 questions, wrote 9 pages and am positive I got at least G (a passing grade). It went well with the final part of the nursing course and I started medicine a couple weeks ago. We started with anatomy and physiology and I am feeling good. This stuff I know and it has not changed since I studied it 30 years ago. There is stuff that is new of course, when I studied in the 70’s, DNA was not a big thing except to scientists, but now it is part of our basic A&P curriculum. Very interesting though and my reading of the American Journal of Medicine over the past years means I had a good grasp of it already.

I have gotten into a routine of using the hour on the train either way as study time and that is working well. Routines are taking shape at home as well. Everyone is involved in their various activities but we manage to have family time as well which is great.

We were at a day long political function yesterday. Anna had a gift for my fellow, she got him a book about a well trained dog. *laugh* There were lots of laughs over that.

I finally have a time to get my kidney stone blasted, April 7th. The continuous urinary tract infections have taken their toll and I am exhausted and have a fever the majority of the time. I will have to continue taking the antibiotics for a month after the treatment and then I never want to see an antibiotic again in my life, I have been taking them every other week now for almost 6 months.

My birthday is coming up as well. I have not planned a party, I don’t want a party and I absolutely refuse to organize one as is the swedish way. This is my 50th and I want to spend it as I want, school, dinner out with my fellows and then studying for the exam the 11th. *laugh* I will say that I will be very upset if my fellow ignores this. 50 is a big deal here in Sweden, I have had any number of free gifts in the mail, the two grocery stores I shop at have send coupons for free cake, one of the cruise lines has sent a certificate for a free cabin on a cruise to Helsinki. But when it comes down to it, I just want a bit of family time as a celebration.

Majong is growing up, he goes out now. I took him and showed him where he could go around from the front of the house to the back and all the cats play in the bushes and field at the corner of the row houses. He travels back and forth between front and back and comes when I call him. Rusty is as loving as ever, but needs more stimulation, time is limited with school. I start my training program tomorrow for this years 10 km run so I will take him along. Susan stopped losing weight on her diet food so we started her on a new one this week. The biggest problem is her sneaking Rusty’s food if we don’t keep an eye on her.

That is about all I have to update. *laugh*

I was home at 1645 and went to meet LL at dance. Then we came back and headed out to stamp club. Ibo and I ended up staying and talking with Anna, upstairs in the party headquarters, while LL had his stamp club downstairs. Then it was home again and I read some for school before bed.

Wednesday we had our first official lecture, an introduction to ethics. It was interesting and I took many pages of notes. I was done at noon, picked up my student keycard and then headed home. I was here about 1330, took Rusty out to play some, took Susan for a walk, started doing laundry and dishes and just generally caught up. It was lovely that none of us had anything booked and we had a nice family evening in the middle of the week.

Today is a study day, I slept in an extra hour, took Rusty out for an hour and now I am working on formulating two questions to send in before tomorrow’s seminar. Tonight both Ibo and I have nämnd meetings so LL is going to his grandmothers. It will be a bit odd for him because his aunt won’t be there, she headed off Tuesday for a year long adventure in Australia.

So what has gone on all these weeks? I healed, I wrote the university entrance exams 3 weeks after my accident, I had a horrid time with my arm and my sight but now I can lift my arm over my head, tie a bow behind my back and do up my own bra. My sight is still a bit off, I no longer have blurring and I saw an eye specialist last week who said physically everything is fine. But she noted exactly what I was aware of, there is a small delay in focusing when I look from one thing to another. She felt that would also get better shortly though.

I needed 0.7 on the entrance exam, I got 0.9. I sat with my right arm in a sling and holding the paper a few inches from my face for the 5 hours I wrote, but it was worth because I got a place at the university I wanted, in the first round. I did not finish the studies I had started at the adult education centre though. I couldn’t manage with my eyes.

So this past week I started at university! In 3 years I will have my degree and be licensed to work as a nurse here in Sweden. It feels great and I am already deep in researching for the first presentation, next Friday.

Christmas was lovely, we had lots of fun, the kidlet was spoiled as were the rest of us. But Ibo got sick over the holidays and ended up with pneumonia. He is now on the mend but still tired and pale. I was sick with fever most of the holidays and the reason became clear when I had an ultrasound last Monday. I have a 1.5 cm kidney stone lodged in my left kidney. It is causing the ongoing urinary tract infections I have been having since October. I started on a new round of antibiotics and finished them yesterday. I am now waiting for CT of my kidney and then they are going to attempt to blast the stone. We spent New Years with Ibo’s dad. He was away at christmas, he made a trip to Mecca. He came home with pneumonia and was really not well but once he started antibiotics he perked up.
Llywellyn is well and happy. He has violin lessons two evenings a week, dance one evening a week, scouts every sunday, stamp club on evening a month and craft club two evenings a month. So he is a busy little boy. Now that I am going to school and making an hour and twenty commute each way, I am up a bit after 0500 and out the door by 0700. I get home between 1700 and 1800. So LL comes home himself from school and will be going to dance on his own since it is a 1600, but we will try to be here to take him to everything else.

That is a short recap of the past 3 months. We did lots, had lots of fun, lots of laughs and enjoyed life. What more can a family ask for? *laugh*