Cold Spaghetti

Our neighbor found this incredible website.

And this wonderful discussion that puts it all into perspective. Both awesome resources. Thank you!!!

I’m finally getting around to looking into this myself and am not pleased. Turns out that Tylenol 3 (coedine and Tylenol) is not recommended during nursing. (Note: this was the med I was given specifically to use while nursing… although it barely puts a dent in pain management at this point in my recovery.) I can suck it up if I know it’s safe, but now I’m not so sure. I can’t tell if it’s a class II or class III drug (there is conflicting information depending on the other active ingredients?… or maybe I’m too clouded to read the information clearly), but the drugs.com recommendations for Tylenol 3 and hydromorphone (Dilaudid) are the same… that the substance shows up in breastmilk and it’s not recommended. Withdrawal symptoms in nursing babies are generally frowned upon.

So.

Do I continue nursing Kate on Tylenol 3? Do I force wean her — which would entail my avoidance of her completely for a few weeks. My not holding her for 5 days didn’t do the trick, goodness knows how far we’ll have to go before she forgets about the whole nursing thing being connected to me. If I decide to not to wean her, do I continue to restrict use of the hydromorphone (the drug of choice) or do I go ahead and use it since the recommendation reads the same? (The doctors were pretty vague about this stuff. I could write a tome of frustration with this.)

Anyone else been in this position or have any insight?

Monday morning: Much, much worse. We decided that to go right to Oschner’s Emergency Department after dropping the kids off at school. I showered and tried to get dressed… only couldn’t do it. Spasms eventually put me, half-naked, on the floor: paralyzed. I arrived at Oschner via ambulance.

The bottom line: bones are fine, MRI showed some herniation between Lumbars 3 and 4, but was negative. This is a muscle injury. Serious pain meds (Dilaudid) took several doses to have any effect; pain caused extreme nausea/vomiting when I would stand to use the bathroom (the first few hours they used a catheter). Every bit of this was humiliating and simply awful.

Now: trying to stick to muscle-relaxers and coedine (and nausea meds) so that I can nurse Kate. I thought that she would wean this week, as she hadn’t nursed since Monday morning. Wrong! She crawled up on me and pulled at my shirt moments after seeing me when Paul arrived with the kids this afternoon. I had stopped taking the dilaudid yesterday just in case. The bummer is that without it, my movement is much more limited. I am still going with everyone to the beach, but won’t be doing any of the activities we’ve been dreaming of doing… sailing, swimming in the ocean, long walks for photography, etc. But at least I can be there! PA friend Scott (who works in Ortho at Tulane) has been a great resource. Bottom line is that it will be a 4-6 week healing time, but I won’t be like this forever.

Home from the hospital; in a lot of pain, but okay. A crash course in post-NOLA health care and hospital care. Kate has unfortunately been thrust into premature weaning… hoping to keep up some supply so that she has a choice to nurse over the weekend if I can stay off the narcotics. Paul is a champion.

The August issue of The Trumpet, a local publication by the NOLA Neighborhoods Partnership Network, features the story of Abeona House in it’s “New Orleans Success Stories” issue. The article describes the school, its philosophy, and integration into the Oak Street community. It was written by three Abeona parents (yours truly included in that triumvirate) with my photographs sprinkled throughout. These include the photo on the cover (seen at left), which I took of the kids peeking in to Oak Street Cafe to see Charlie Farmer at the piano.

I’m hurt. I have no idea what I did to cause the soreness and stiffness that found me Saturday morning; I assumed that the head cold I’ve been fighting off was the culprit. Not being a complainer, I moved a little slowly all morning but didn’t gripe or make it an issue. And then, on the way home from our diaper re-stocking trip at the Evil Empire, when I reached back to take the cardboard insert out of Will’s newly purchased Spiderman lunch box, it happened. It was so violent and sudden that I may have passed out for a moment. Paul quickly pulled the car in surprise asking if we needed to head to a hospital. It wasn’t that he hadn’t notice my limping around all morning — he confessed he assumed that an unpleasant bathroom episode that was in the works — but he was not expecting my lower back to suddenly burst into flame right in the bucket seat.

The spasm was the first of many. Collectively, they knocked me at least partially out of commission for the weekend. No bed rest… walking, stretching, lying with legs raised, heating pads… everything we can think of that is good for the lower back. Kids can’t take care of themselves, no matter how hurt Mommy gets. And I love Paul to much to dramatically insist on a weekend of rest and recovery.

A troublesome fact: this is not the first time this has occurred. The previous time (a few weeks ago) also coincided with a head cold…. so, can viruses trigger severe lower back pain? Can this thing come back to ruin yet another weekend?? (Satchmo Fest and White Linen night were both missed to much disappointment.)

Although walking with a tilt — hip to one side, shoulder to the other, not unlike the zombies in the ‘Thriller’ video — I am generally getting around. Saturday afternoon, I still managed to get down to Thumbelina to get a few things taken in before our trip next week. Whether or not this bold move was the cause I don’t know, but Sunday morning hurt worse. Getting around was almost impossible for most of the day. I didn’t attend a birthday party with the kids and spent most of the day on the living room floor trying to keep my back as straight as possible, testing how close I could come to various Iyengar yoga poses. I’m impressed I feel as well as I do tonight.

This morning, I swore I would find a doctor and been seen Right Away on Monday. The resolve is wearing off as my limp subsides. After all, is it really necessary to see a doctor for lower back pain? If I make more of a commitment to work my back more, then won’t it just go away and never bother me again? If it’s acute, I wouldn’t bother thinking about it, but could this be a repeat performance brought on by a similar virus… and therefore, something chronic? (Can back pain really be connected to a virus like this, though? Seriously?) Without doubt, my feelings are a wonderful example of my bad habit of NOT practicing what I preach regarding Health and Medicine. (Another in-the-moment example: my extreme overuse of OTC painkillers to get through the weekend.)

There is one lesson to be learned in all of this, though. The lesson is that my Mom deserves some serious props for being Very Right. Because sometimes, I am totally my Dad’s daughter.

An amazing moment, but it’s true: my kids can play together without inflicting bodily harm! I am documenting here in the event this becomes the stuff of Urban Legend in another year or so. They played nicely, shared the same toys, and even withstood the hug and tickle game that Kate begun without serious incident. Go kids!

Like most New Orleanians, we spend some time each day rationalizing and justifying our reasons for living here. Particularly in the case of Paul and I, where we are essentially mobile: Paul as a full-time telecommuter who can work anywhere and me working on a dissertation. If we were “somewhere else,” we reason, we could save more money. We could send our kids to public schools without the luck of a lottery system. We could have a bigger house where each kid has their own bedroom; maybe upgrade to the minivan. We could have a driveway and a garage, with motorcycles parked inside. We could go outside after 11pm without considering the possibility of random violence or worries of break-ins. These are all really nice things. To some people, they may seem like essentials. Certainly, this is the only place we’ve ever lived that didn’t have these (barring our stints in Central and South America).

The stuff above certainly sounds like the American Dream — the two car family life that we were raised to work towards. So why choose a different life, a harder one, in a city deeply immersed in some of the nation’s biggest problems? To answer this question, we make lists. We all seem to have these “lists,” a running tally of why we live here; the qualities that exist here and nowhere else that keep us from leaving. The reasons why life here is different, unique and special. I am still coming up from my most recent Katrina-time-of-the-month and feeling tired, so I have been doing a lot of “listing.” To that end, maybe as an attempt to boost my spirits, I’m sharing my current list, in no particular order. Should anyone else reading this have lists they’d like to share, I would be delighted to read them.

1. The walkability. My address has a walkability score of 88/100. The quality of life gained from walking the streets — not as a choice but as the way things are done because that’s the way they were designed and intended — is almost immeasurable to me. (HT: BC4!)
2. Abeona House. No where else can I imagine a more inspirational center, full of love and life, integrating family, community, and learning in ways that surprise me everyday. With fellow parents Denice and Dana, we wrote an article for the August issue of The Trumpet that discusses the integration of the school within the Oak Street community and how it symbolizes the best of the character of New Orleans neighborhoods and is driven by the school’s philosophy towards learning. I’ll link it when it’s available online, but I understand it is out if you want to pick up a hard copy.
3. Music. Everywhere. Paul and I go out Very Very Rarely, yet we hear live music — Really Good! Live Music — several times a week. Bands play at Whole Foods almost every weekend. Charlie Farmer at Oak Street Cafe (a weekly tradition, where we bring our computers and use their wireless to work over breakfast). Random artists on Magazine (on one surprising afternoon, it was Theresa Andersson just hanging out with a guitar).
4. Our House. We love this old house. The incredible curb appeal that stops you in the sidewalk to gaze up at the tall porch details. The floors that allow bits of light to pass up from under the house. The fact that nothing is square (Kate can close the bathroom door without worry — the gap between the frame and door is large enough for her fingers). I love that when we give our address to a local, they rattle off nearby house numbers where they or other family had once lived. The sense that this place is full of a history that is so beyond us feels so warm and right. It makes me feel that I am a part of a living history, laying witness to time as it passes.
5. The People. Someone told me that in New Orleans, you treat everyone like family and everything as if you were in your Grandma’s parlor. In other words, you are warm to others and respectful of the city. By and large, these sayings have showed themselves to be true.
6. How can food not be on this list? I cannot recall a bad meal, ever, since moving here. I think that my kids are so lucky to have Louisiana and New Orleans in their upbringing, where they can sing Johnette Downing’s songs about Gumbo, Red Beans, Jambalaya, Catfish, and Crawfish — and know that they are those lucky children she’s singing about.
7. The beautiful foliage. The green, constant green, with blooming flowers year round. I feel a little more alive when surrounded by green leaves and colorful plumes.
8. The weather. Hot and humid? Bring it! I can’t imagine not being in New Orleans in the summertime. The air hanging with the wet smell of heavy leaves, the sweet scents mixed with the damp mold of mulch composting. It reminds me of abroad… of India with its jasmine and hibiscus, of Honduras with its heavy summer rain.
9. The architecture. How people look at a building not as what it IS, but at what it has been and what it could be. Who can measure the value in a piece of carved wood that is 100 years old? There is value there, there is a story. This is one of the only places I know where people will stop to listen for it.
10. The celebration of life. Carnival, countless music celebrations, Second Lines… and so much more. The sense that life is short, that our time is limited and that if we should make it to the table once more, we should be thankful for it — and celebrate it with good food, music, and dancing. Life itself is a reason to celebrate. So when I go outside each day, I go not looking for a cultural experience… I am part of the cultural experience.

For those reasons (and so many more), for now, we choose to live here.

The talk of the town (and maybe the country, as it was featured on All Things Considered this morning) is that New Orleans is finally getting some government. This about sums it up:

“One of these days, the people of Louisiana are going to get good government, and they aren’t going to like it.
– Huey P. Long

No, no, we didn’t finally get a quality major or congressman or anything like that. But we did vote in an assessor that is finally looking into making taxes fair. And a lot of people are really unhappy. Here is how it has worked in the past: families pass down homes from generation to generation (or sell them very cheap) and they are taxed based on the sale value of the home… never to change. To avoid pesky re-assessments, you do some special favors for the assessor and he or she “adjusts” the value of your home, or simply overlooks it completely. (Note: Paul and I actually met with our previous assessor before the election — a college drop-out getting paid $120K/year in a position his mother handed down to him in a non-election year — he told us in no uncertain terms that because we were “nobodies” our taxes should remain high.)

So how does this play out? Well, to give some examples: two of the shotgun doubles (one next door and one 3 doors down) are assessed at around $100k, less than three times the assessment of ours (and their market value). That works out to us paying about 5 to 6 times more than they do for the same house. Across the street, in the super-fancy private drive newly built homes, at least two are assessed at approximately the same value as ours — meaning that they pay the same taxes that we do for a home with a two-car garage, private drive, and roughly 800 square feet more living space. In short, moving to the city and/or not being connected to the city’s elite means that you shoulder the overwhelming majority of the tax burden.

After Katrina, local elections were shook up a bit by the “I.Q.” platform that pledged to consolidate assessors (7 assessors in New Orleans oversaw these special favors throughout the city) and reform the unfair property tax situation. Low and behold, we elected one of them. And good heavens, she is following through. At least, it seems like she is. Her office has been sending out new assessments based on comps of home sales. I don’t doubt that some may be a tad bit off (as many are claiming, based on slowing sales of higher priced homes) but what I’ve been reading from those on the local discussion forums looks right on. People are freaking out; particularly landlords who are already blaming the assessor’s office for forcing them to raise rents (note: taxes haven’t even been set — the millage must be adjusted accordingly).

Paul and I have not seen our assessment; it has yet to arrive in the mail. This afternoon, we should be able to access everyone’s assessments online (the one good thing Nagin’s administration managed to do pre-Katrina was to make this information public). Seeing this will give us a clue to how fair and just the city is trying to be. If the millage is adjusted the way we think it will be, changes are that our taxes will go down to a more appropriate level, which is a welcome relief.

In short, we are very excited about all of this. And while I struggle with side effects of possible gentrification of poorer areas due to increased property values, I can’t help but hope this more equitable, reasoned level of taxation will draw more young professionals to the city and help us rebuild. (To those who are complaining, think about these previous years as a little lagniappe!)