The Fun Just Never Ends...

I guess things were just so exciting that I was trying to keep them that way... NOT!! On Monday of last week I had a sore throat. By Tuesday morning it was worse, so I called and made an appointment with my doctor, thinking I had strep throat. The strep culture came back negative (thank goodness), so he prescribed an antibiotic for tonsillitis and told me to take ibuprofen, gargle with warm salt water... all the regular stuff. My appointment was at 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday. By the time I left the doctor's office, I had decided that I was just going to take the rest of the day off work so I could go home and rest. Before bed Tuesday night, I did everything just like the doctor said. The pain in my throat was pretty bad, but I've had problems with my tonsils all my life. At 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, I woke up to even more pain. I could tell I had been sleeping with my mouth open because it was so dry. I decided to try some more warm salt water so I could, at least, sleep through the rest of the night. When I attempted to gargle, I found that it was physically impossible to do so. My throat had swollen almost completely shut. Trying not to panic, I woke Curtis up to tell him that I needed to go to the ER. I knew if I panicked and my nose got stuffy, that I wouldn't be able to breathe AT ALL. We got to the hospital around 4 a.m. and I was admitted by 5:30 a.m. The CAT scan showed that my airways were blocked from the back of my throat to the base of my neck. For two days, I had steroids and antibiotics pumped in through an IV to reduce swelling and get rid of infection. An ear, nose, and throat specialist came to see me the first day I was there and asked if I had ever considered a tonsillectomy. HAVE I? HAVE I?? Of course, I have... I could never find a doctor who thought it was necessary. I have to finish out the antibiotics that were prescribed at my doctor's visit on Tuesday and then I'll have a follow-up with the ear, nose, and throat specialist on November 27th. I'm sure we'll schedule the tonsillectomy for sometime between then and Christmas. That was a VERY scary experience and one that I don't care to repeat, so the sooner I can get my tonsils out, the better! I'm still having some pain and there's still some swelling, but it's looking much better.

This is a Christmas ornament that I experimented with today. I picked these plain ceramic ornaments up at Michael's and then "stamped" on them. Using the Holy Triptych stamp set, I stamped the images on tissue paper using Encore Gold Ink and heat embossed it with gold embossing tinsel. I'm not completely happy with this first image. I used metallic pencils from SU to color the image, but I like the look of the angel in the second image MUCH better. I used the classic ink refills to watercolor her, which is how I'll color the remaining ornaments. This is actually the same ornament. I just put an image on each side. After coloring the stamped image on tissue paper, I put SU Crystal Effects on the ornament and then placed the tissue paper over the Crystal Effects. Once it had dried (about 30 minutes), I put more Crystal Effects on the edges of the ornament and then dipped it in "Diamond Dust", which I also picked up at Michael's. This is the image that I colored with metallic pencils...


...and this is the image I watercolored. I like this one much better.

This is a side view of the ornament, so you can really see the "diamond dust" on the edges.

I also have some of these ornaments in a heart shape and I'm anxious to put some bling on those, as well. I really, really like this Holy Triptych set, but I'll try some other images, too, just for fun.