¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear DANIEL,
Happy birthday to you!
.....and many more!
....on channel 4!
....on the Polka Dot Door!

(Okay so maybe only Canadians will know that last line. Well only the dorky ones anyway....me included of course!)

So my Wuvey is 29 today. Woo hoo! Yipee! Yahoo! That means only 364 more days till he joins me in the 30's club. (I robbed the cradle, what can I say?) Anyways this weekend is packed full of fun for the big guy. Tonight we have our dear friend's Jacki & Terence coming for dinner. Then tomorrow night our dear, dear friends whom we miss so much, Justin & Tricia (what's with the couples named J & T, eh?) and thier 3 little ones are coming for the weekend. I was going to keep it a surprise for Dan that they were coming, but then I couldn't contain myself (cause I SUCK at keeping surprises!) and I blabbed it to him the other day. So he knows now and I ruined Christmas!

Anyways so they're coming down and then Saturday we're going to the Woodland Park Zoo with them and we're also meeting Dan's college friends that live in Lynwood, WA, there too, and we're taking Sarah's two Stinky's with us, so Sarah can rest for the festivities later, which will consist of a BBQ and lots of fun and games! I'm making my "famous" Carrot Cake and GAK-A-MOLE (they're both famous) and it's gonna be an awesome weekend of fun, friends, food & farting (the kind that you get from eating my garlicy Gak-a-mole!).

I'm so excited to have the "other Price's" come down. We haven't seen them in probably a year. And we've yet to meet adorable little Aliza. Justin and Dan are like the "Nerd Twins" (I mean that in a complimentary way) and always have a great time talking their geek-talk, and Tricia and I ALWAYS have a great time laughing and shopping and ususally my head hurts by the time they leave from all of the laughter. Although I've got a head start on those headaches........speaking of which........

I went to a Headache Specialist at the University of Washington yesterday, after trying multiple things to try and rid the headache that still haunts me since December 4th. My Chiropracter took X-Rays of my neck to see if that was the culprit and it was totally fine and then I tried Acupunture, which I'm sure would work on someone who gets headaches a lot, but in my case didn't help even one bit. The only thing that I benefited from that, was a damaged nerve......which obviously wasn't a good thing. It's still healing and it was almost a month ago! OYE!

So anyways I saw "Natalia" yesterday (even though she's a Nuerologist, she insists I call her Natalia instead of DR., which I thought was very cool) and I was very impressed! She was the first person to call my headache like it was, which is a "daily headache" and she didn't call it a "migraine" like all of the other doctors and Nuerologist were calling it, so that sold me right away. She KNEW what she was tlaking about. Anyways she was the first person to EVER explain what she thought was going on with me. She explained it for about half an hour, even drawing a chart on paper, so we could follow along. So basically she believes that even though my MRA looked totally fine, that obvioulsy the channels of my nerves are not and that's causing my pain. She also said that I may be genetically prone to headaches and because in the past I've suffered from headaches all my life (something I thought was totally normal, yet now I find out not everyone gets them as often as I do) and I've taken medications like, Tylenol, Excedrin, Advil etc... that it's resulted in a rebound headache with medication over use and it's now prevented my brain's natural pain-fighting functions from working. Now this doesn't happen to all people, so don't think that if you get a headache every once in a while you shouldn't take a pain reliever, but I'm talking about: I used to get severe headaches at least twice a month and sometimes as often as twice or three times a week. Anyways some people who aren't born with this, we'll call it a "headache-prone gene", can have headaches in their life and respond well to pain meds, but then eventually will get less and less headaches, whereas a person like me, will get continually worse overtime, because I'm just prone to them, and the medications will stop working for me, like they already have. Anyways the answer to the problem is pretty simple actually. As there are many things that are atributing to this pain that I suffer; it's almost like a vicious cycle that I've been circling around for years and never realized it, until she pointed it out for me. Like for instance a major one was sleep deprevation, which has been a problem for years. I'm also low in Iron, a borderline anemic and I often skip meals which is SO not good for you, but even worse for me. She also mentioned about metabolism (which I know mine is horrible) and oxygen to the blood (which my iron defficency is not good for that), and about my adreneline that all contribute to the body and is worsening my inflamation in the trigeminal nerves. All this is so blah, blah, blah, but I find it so fascinating and especially, cause now I actually have a diagnosis I can relate to.

So anyways she's got me taking Alieve for the pain, and a drug that is a prophylactic medication and it's actually an anti-epilepsy drug. Now this is the funny part. The side effects of this medication is losing the ability to spell (so it'll make me even stOOpider!) but this is where it's really funny: loss of sweating (sweet! I won't have to shower as often!) and........weight loss, sometimes anorexia. Well bring on THAT drug baby!

Darn......if I become anorexic.......I won't be fat anymore. Gee......what a loss!

Seriously though, I can understand that anorexia is a disease and someone very close to me once suffered from it and I don't mean to make a joke out of it, but come on.......can you blame me for laughing that it would make ME anorexic or that I should worry about weight loss? C'mon, this is ME we're talking about here!

Anyways we'll see how this all goes. It just seems like things are finally going up the rollercoaster of life instead of being down at the bottom. I mean besides this, my cast should be coming off soon, (well it should be healed up anyway) and then in less than 2 weeks I'll never have to wear glasses for long distance again! I'm getting Lasic surgery finally!

It was suppose to be my birthday present from Dan, well it still is, but we had to wait till this year, cause we put $$ aside in an FSA account to save on the taxes. But I'm finally getting it done! I'm actually really scared about it, cause, (as I was telling my fellow Activity Days leaders last night) I'm an "eye rubber" and an "eye picker" (I'm constantly playing with my eyes and I'd get infections really easily as a child. I even had an emergency room trip because of it and they had to stick this eye wash thingy in my eye socket......it was SO gross!) and so I'm so worried that I'll forget that I just had surgery and I'll wanna rub my eyes or pick eye crusties out or something and then I'll ruin my surgery. But Roz assured me that because I'm an eye-rubber/picker then I'll be even more self concious about it and won't do it. I sure hope so! I also worry about the whole "King of Queens" incident where Doug got Laser surgery for Carrie and it totally went wrong and she couldn't even see after a week. But then again that's because he went to an unreputable place that took a "coupon" (buy one eye, get the other free!) and we're going to a very reputable place reccomended by my Optometrist, so I'm sure that won't happen. But it doesn't mean I don't think about it!

Anyways I've gotta go and bake and make stuff for tonight and this weekend. I hope Dan has a great day and that he did well on his exam (he took his first final for his Masters degree that he's working on right now......although he won't be done for a few years, cause he's doing one class at a time). And I hope this weekend will be like, totally awesome! Like, fur shurr!!!