How to Be an Irresponsible Adult/Overdose

I’m sitting in my living room writing this post with a blanket draped over my legs and a sleeping cat taking up half the couch.   It’s been like this for a couple hours now because I left work early.  I left work early because I’m an idiot.

It all started two days ago, when I went to see my team of hospital doctors to have them review my annual kidney biopsy and my current medications and blood levels.  One of the drugs I take, Tacrolimus (aka Prograf), is an immunosuppressant that is supposed to be maintained at a certain level in my bloodstream.   So I have get blood drawn regularly to make sure the level is acceptable.  

I’ve had issues with my Prograf level since I received my new kidney.  One day it’s too high, but most days it’s too low.  According to the hospital pharmacist, some people have to be on a higher does than what is considered normal.  I’ve taken 2 milligrams twice a day and I’ve taken 12 milligrams twice a day.  I’ve even taken zero milligrams in a day!  That’s bad.  Don’t do that.  

After my most recent lab reading, my doctors determined that my Prograf levels were a little low so they prescribed me with the drug Ketocanazole.  It’s used to treat fungal infections but nephrologists may prescribe it to help raise a transplant patient’s Prograf level.  I remember the first time I took it, about eight months ago, that my mail order pharmacy almost put the kibosh on me ordering it because of it’s interaction with Tacrolimus.

After my most recent appointment, my nurse called to let me know that she’d sent in an order of ketoconazole to my pharmacy because my Prograf level was, of course, running a little low. She told me to start taking it in the evening.  So that night, as I was preparing to take my evening medication, I remembered that I hadn’t stopped by the pharmacy to pick up my prescription. But OH! Resourceful me discovered that I’d had some leftover from the last time I was prescribed ketoconazole.  It said to take one pill twice daily. So I popped my first pill, got into bed and when I woke up, I popped another one.

This is how you listen to your gut:  If you’re having hot flashes, and shaking like a crack addict looking for their next hit…you probably took too much medicine. Pounding headache?  You probably took too much medicine.  If you go to work and are sitting at your desk thinking you’re going to vomit and then you calmly retreat to the bathroom and proceed to actually vomit…you probably took too much medicine.  

After emptying all of the Chai tea and oatmeal from stomach into the toilet in the handicapped stall of the 9^th floor women’s bathroom, I called the hospital.  

Me: Hi Nurse…Ummm…I got your message yesterday about the ketoconazole.  Ummm…how much was I supposed to take?

Nurse:  Half a tablet, twice daily.

Me:  Ummmmmm OK.

Nurse:  Yep, why?

Me:  I took too much.

Nurse:  You did? How much did you take?

Me:  Umm, two full tablets.

Nurse:  Two tabs?!  What did the instructions on the order I called in to the pharmacy say?

Me: Oh..about that…I just took some of what I had left over from last time.  

During lunch, after eating next to nothing, and staring into sunshiny space while sitting in my company’s courtyard, I made the decision to leave work early.  It’s much easier to starve and feel nauseated  and be on edge from my couch or bed than it is while sitting at a desk with the office A.C. blasting over my head.

One BIG lesson I’ve learned about my transplant medicines is that you just have to go with the flow.  One minute everything’s fine, the next minute you’ve contracted some disease and have to go back on antivirals, or you suddenly aren’t producing any bone marrow and you have to stop taking this or that.  When you have someone else’s body parts living inside of you like I do, anything can happen.  And you have to be prepared for that, have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust in your doctors.  I have nothing but love for my doctors so if they tell me to take something, I usually don’t put up a fit.  Unless, it’s a shot.  Even after seeing so many needles and having a tube in my stomach I still DESPISE shots.

How has your week been?

Happy Fourth

"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; 

to me those have always been the two most beautiful words 

in the English language."

 ~Henry James

New Posts Monday

The Big Trip Video--Greece Highlight Reel

Because I had a kidney transplant, Ben and I had to postpone our honeymoon.  Instead of jet-setting immediately after our wedding, we ended up going to Greece for ten days in May.

Enjoy this video installment of my Big Trip Diary!

Since last year, I've become a bit obsessed with making videos whenever we go on a trip.  I'm a child of the 80s and 90s.  Which means there are a lot of VHS tapes floating around my parents' home of me walking, talking, riding my bike.  My parents even walked around with a camera the size of a boombox to capture my little adventures growing up. I miss those times.  I miss them so much in fact that I'm starting doing something similar.  The only difference is that my camera is not even bigger than my hand when I'm using my iPhone. 

I recorded all of this video footage during our honeymoon in Greece and compiled it on Windows Movie Maker.  If you're curious what I did with our last video, I burned it onto a DVD and put it in a binder which will be designated "Home Videos."  

2014 Later-moon in Greece from Jewel Edwards-Ashman on Vimeo.

If you're looking to plan a trip to Greece in the future and visit all the same places we did and stay in the same places and eat in the same places, then you'll find this list of hotels, restaurants and tours useful.

Our entire trip was planned by the wonderful Petros at Hellenic Holidays

Hotel Amalia

Strofi

Chat Tours

 Lagos Mare Hotel

Astra Suites

Santorini Sailing

To Psaraki

Ambrosia

Lucky's  

Just Shy of One Year Married

So I had a really long post written about the one thing I learned at the end of one-year of marriage.  It was really long and really corny and really boring. I thought that it was what I wanted to write to sum up my first year of marriage.  But the post wasn't a true reflection of how I really feel about this first year.  So I deleted the whole thing.  I think it was like 600 words and it took me several days to write.  
But this is what I really think about our first year:

June 15, 2013

  The first year of our marriage was easy.  I'd say it was the easiest and best of Ben's and my 9 years together.  And I don't say this to downplay any other couple's experience with their first year of marriage. We've heard countless times how hard the first year of marriage can be.  So we expected the worst.  But we've been blessed.  We know we have hard times coming, but we're happy that we've avoided them thus far.  During this incredibly easy year I've discovered most of all that Ben and I were made for this.  We were made to be married to each other.  Getting married was kind of like the missing link in our lives, so once it all went down, everything else just started falling into place.  Someone at a bar jokingly asked me if I missed being single.  I non-jokingly replied, nope.  Not one bit.  I know that this is where I'm meant to be-- being Ben's wife and creating a life together.  

Trip to Arizona, August 2013

We get a real kick out of referring to ourselves as the Ashman family.  It's just the two of us plus our cat, which I guess in some people's mind isn't a family because there aren't any kids.  But we think of ourselves as more than a couple, more than two people in a relationship.  We're relatives! We have to write each others' names on forms and paperwork. We get mail that's addressed to both of us.  We have savings accounts, dammit!   And we know that not having kids to raise right now, doesn't make us any less of a unit. 

Christmas 2013

We still have disagreements.  Just because our first year of marriage was awesome and easy compared to some of our previous years of dating does not mean we didn't have any fights/arguments/yelling matches this year.  For me, the big difference between fighting pre-marriage and fighting now is that I don't start coming up with to ways to get out of my relationship because we're much more than that.  Ben is just like my sister, mom and dad. We can't stay mad at each other for long.  Just like with my siblings, we may get into a heated argument, but at the end of the day we are a family.  Nowadays, we apologize quicker, we forgive easier, we resolve things a hell of a lot faster, and we keep it moving because we know that we're all we've got. We're bound to one another.  

Death Valley, Calif., February 2014

  I love Ben so much more than last June 15 or any day really.  We've been together for almost a decade so you'd think, how much more can you love a person or learn about a person.  When you've been dating someone for so long, it's easy to get caught up in wishing for that "new love." That infatuation that was present when we first started dating.  One thing I've noticed this year:  I have no desire to go back to the newness of love.  I love where we are right now.  And I think I'm MORE obsessed and infatuated with Ben now than I was during our first year of dating.  It's kind of bad actually.  I'm pretty sure I have a problem.  

Pre-Greece with Grayson, May 2014

  SO, in sum, being married, it's pretty great.  I think I'll keep doing it.

Us Before "$5 Movie Night," June 10, 2014

Big Trip Diary: Santorini

Because I had a kidney transplant, Ben and I had to postpone our honeymoon.  Instead of jet-setting immediately after our wedding, we ended up going to Greece for ten days in May.

I'm sharing a few pictures and our daily observations in this last installment of my Big Trip Diary.  Come back next week for our vacation video!

Being in Greece for a such a long time you expect there to be at least one day of less than spectacular weather. The day we left Naxos, it was overcast with a few rain drops in the air, which made us thankful that we were able to see the Naxos beaches in all their sunshine glory the day before.

At about noon we were driven to Chora to catch our ferry to our final destination, Santorini. We boarded the Blue Star speed ferry and 12:50. This was by far the nicest ferry Ben and I had been on ever. It was like riding a boat that looked like the inside if an airplane, Starbucks, and mall food court all at once.  Then as we we found our seats and the boat started moving, motion sickness hit Ben like a ton of bricks.  We didn't talk for the entire two hour ride to Santorini.

Upon arriving in Santorini, our driver, Yannis, picked us up at the small "in the middle of nowhere" port, along with a bunch of other hotel vans, buses and sightseeing tours. Then we started the winding drive up to the top of Santorini's cliffs. As we ascended higher we began to grasp the awesomeness of the majestic view of the dramatic cliffside and the sparkling sea stretching forever into one direction. 

The view from our hotel room on arrival day

We arrived at our hotel, in the quiet village of imerovigli. Astra suites. Things that we adore about Astra Suites:

• The service is better than anything you would receive in America...ever...I think.
• Every morning they bring breakfast to your room and you have the option of sitting outside on a private balcony to eat or not. Its located right on the caldera, so the view is break-taking.
• The rooms are more than just rooms. They're spacious studio apartments with a kitchenette.
• The robes and the towels are plush and smell like flowers.
• The food at the hotel restaurant.
• The little gifts: wine, glasses to drink out of, chocolates, and fresh fruit.

The first night, we didn't do much but sleep, recover from our ferry crankiness and try out the hotel restaurant.

But even though it was cloudly, the sunset still lit up the sky that first evening with its radiant pinks and reds.

The next day...

Waking up in Santorini is waking up in paradise. The first thing I see shining through our windows is the glow of the sun rising on the other side of the mountain. It casts little bits of light across the caldera.

The view of Scaros in the morning

We are served breakfast in our room: a basket of delicious croissants, smoked ham, cereal for Ben and a frittata for me. We ate, and read the daily newsletter that accompanied the breakfast. The newsletter told of us different things we could do on the island and the weather forecast. As the sun continued to rise we started to think about our day. At about noon the sun was completely on top of our caldera and balcony, so we thought it would be a nice time to go out and sit.

Once we showered, we walked out onto the balcony and took in the amazing views of the Aegean Sea. We figured that we'd kill some time before our planned sunset sail and go to Fira, the capital, for about an hour before leaving. Big mistake. The sun was shining direction onto the caldera, which meant that we were baking as we started our walk to Fira, up and down cement steps on cobblestones. We decided to quit early while we could and head back to the hotel to prepare for our sailing tour. 

Our catamaran, Triton, coming up to shore.

The sailing tour was wonderful. The positives: good conversations with other guests; the views from the boat; the funny and knowledgeable crew; the delicious DELICIOUS food.

As one point Ben jumped from the boat to swim to the "hot springs" which were not actually hot. He ended up dotted with sulphur. He also enjoyed quite a helping of grilled calamari. After dinner and a good chunk of wine we started the sail back to port while watching the sunset. 

The "hot springs"

When we arrived back to Astra, we were once again exhausted from a day of exploring and fell right to sleep.

A Santorini sunset

The Next Day...
 
We woke up to quite a surprise, weather wise this morning. The forecast predicted a very SUNNY day so we were prepared to head out early for our walk up to Scaros. We didnt want a repeat of the previous days attempt to walk to Fira. We figured we'd beat the sun to the top of the mountain, and the cool off in the pool after the descent. The temperature was fine when we awoke, but the entire island seemed to be covered in thick fog. Too the point where not seeing the mountain was a bit scary. 

Our vacation cat, Zorro, hanging out on our balcony in the fog.

Our breakfast delivery guy assured us that it would clear up as the day went on. We had planned to leave for our hike at 11 am. We didn't end up going until around noon. The fog was still a bit heavy but clearing up. By the time we reached the mountain, sunshine was peeking in and out of the clouds frequently. 

After climbing Scaros, we decided to rest for a few hours, watch a bit of CNN, the first time we'd used our TV on vacation.  Then we finally decided to make our walk to Fira, about 20 minutes from our hotel in the village of Imerovigli.  I stopped for a couple pictures along the caldera...

 

While in Fira we completed our souvenir shopping and Ben tried his first ever gyro...authentic Greek fast food.

The Final Day...

Our last day in Santorini we spent exploring some of the beaches on the south, including a red sand beach...

 

And a black sand beach.  There's a special place in our hearts for black sand beaches since we first encountered one in our other paradise, Maui.

We ended our vacation in Oia having dinner with probably the BEST VIEW in the history of views (you'll see more in our video). Until then, enjoy this picture of me in the pretty dress I bought just for the occasion.