more slightly scattered thoughts

I guess it's been two weeks since I posted last. Since my last post, we've seen improvement! We had our one month follow up appointment with the ENT, where we got good and bad news. The good news was that there is less fluid in the inner ears, although there still is a way to go. The bad news was that the low sodium diet which we had been told could just be a temporary thing gets to become our new lifestyle. For good. That's kind of hard. I'd been holding back a little, clinging to what our Primary Care doctor had said about it being temporary. I hadn't done enough homework or found enough recipes because I thought we could survive off the same 8 recipes or so for a few months.

We got to travel to my brothers wedding, which was fantastic! We didn't think we would be able to, but the ENT gave us the okay! It was fun to be with all of my siblings, even if it was for a short amount of time. Chris did really well while we were gone, able to cut back on some of his medications and still participate in everything we needed to do (except that we didn't stay up til 1:30 [or was it later?] with my siblings the night before the wedding).

Today we went to run a few errands, and for the first time since May... Chris drove! We went to HEB, Bed Bath and Beyond, Costco, and Sam's Club. It was 102 degrees outside, but he did a fantastic job the whole time. We're noticing that he doesn't rely on his cane quite as much!

We see our Primary Care Physician again on Friday where we anticipate getting the official letter  allowing Chris to go back to work next week. According to the ENT, he'll still be on some of the meds for another 10 months, but we don't go back to see them til the end of October.

After talking to some women in the ward I learned that there is a family who has dealt with Meniere's before, so I talked to the wife about diet restrictions. She told me about a bread that has no sodium, about a specific brand of lunch meats that has no nitrates/nitrates, no msg, and depending on how many slices you use, a low(er) amount of sodium.

I'm still working on finding more meals that we can eat without having to leave out too many ingredients or doing substitutions. We're getting better at this! I'm figuring out what I'll need to send with Chris when he goes back to work next week-gotta make sure he has all the food that he needs so that he doesn't end up having to go supplement it with things from their cafeteria. We've been eating a bunch of bananas and grapes lately, and those are both easy things to add to his lunch.

Something else that we're struggling with now is getting back into a more normal sleep schedule. We've  been letting Chris sleep as late as he needs without setting an alarm, and that then means going to bed later at night. That also means that I've been sleeping as late as I wanted to because I wasn't about to set an alarm to wake me up. We've got to kick that habit so that he'll be rested enough to go back to work and so that I'll be rested enough to lead a normal life.

I haven't really touched my schoolwork in the last few months, so once he gets back to work I've got to jump on that and get caught up. I also fell behind on my challenge to finish the complete Standard Works in 2012. I just didn't have the mental capacity to read all 7 pages a day that I needed to to stay caught up, so now I'm playing catch up.