Jasper Fforde is the best-selling author of the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime books. He has been writing for twenty years, but only published for ten.

That was part of a message that graced my inbox earlier this month, and I liked it. “Writing for twenty years, but only published for ten.” Here’s a guy who was tenacious and gave himself space, or at least that’s what I’d like to imagine.

In my new-found effort to reconnect with friends, yesterday I attended a baby shower for my college roommate. We’ve seen each other all of twice since graduation day twelve years ago, and that’s been a shame. She was one of my closest friends. It was delightful yet extraordinarily awkward to get back in touch with someone at such an intimate affair — filled with family and friends who were much more familiar with the more recent details of her life. I didn’t know she was pregnant until two weeks ago, and not until the shower yesterday did I find out she’s due in a month. I’m pretty sure most everyone else had at least this basic information about her tucked under their caps as they made their entrance.

Since college, my friend attended and graduated from a prestigious law school and currently practices at a highly regarded firm here in the city. My choice yesterday was to hang out with her friends from law school or her mother and aunts. I chose the population closer to my age but far removed from my lifestyle: the attorneys.

As they made the rounds with each other, discussing which areas were busier than others (apparently, lots going on in the areas of estate planning and finance) and what they were advising their mentees to do after they graduate (run and hide, there are no jobs for lawyers with experience, let alone new grads), the question came upon me: what do you do?

Gee, what do I do? My days feels full, though when I said, “I’m a mom,” my response hit the group like a balloon pffffting its air. Sorry folks, we’ve got nothing in common.

Or so I thought.

Strangely, one by one, each of them admitted to being a mom. It was weird. These women who were entrenched in conversing about the law and their jobs started coming clean. “I’m a mom, too. My son is 18 months,” and another, “I have a five-month old,” and yet someone else, “My baby was born 10 weeks ago.” And as it turned out, the one with the 18 month old is taking jobs on a contractual basis when they are available from her company; the one with the five-month old is rounding out her maternity leave; and the one with the 10 week old is on maternity leave, too.

It was as if each other them were “coming out of the closet” and admitting they were also mothers. It took me by surprise — weren’t we all just talking about business? Weren’t we just talking — in the active, very present voice — about doing business. Not that I think motherhood was something any of them were trying to hide or were ashamed to admit, but it was so obvious that they defined themselves by their jobs rather than by parenting.

Who are any of us, anyway? That’s the question that has become important to me recently, but that’s not where the conversation amidst the scones and fresh berries was headed.

What I wanted to say to them, since they were on the topic of profession, is that I’m a writer. But I haven’t been published in years, nor do I have some kind of burning desire to do so. I suppose that conversation wouldn’t have taken off any better:

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh, yeah? Where would I have seen your work?”

“Unless you’re one of the hundred or so people who read my blog on a daily basis, which I highly doubt, nowhere.”

I know that’s not entirely true. I also contribute to Hopeful Parents. I could have said, “I run a blog for parents of kids with special needs.” But that doesn’t feel like much of a profession since I don’t get paid for it.

Which brings me to the question of why do we define ourselves around what generates an income? I suppose if someone is willing to shell out money for some service you provide or a widget you make, it lends at least a little bit of credibility to your declaration. But does that mean that those of us who see not one cent for what they “do” don’t make the cut?

Can I call myself a writer or not?

That’s a question that gets tossed around the screenwriting community all the time. Go on to any screenwriting community, and you’ll hear people ask it all the time. Here they are slaving away at stories, sweating it out on their computers, only to get rejected (because let’s face it, a minutely small number of screenplays get picked-up a year) — yet, they’ve done something. They’ve made something. It may not be saleable, but that product now exists. If they’re at a dinner party (or a baby shower) and the question comes to them — what do you do? — how are they to respond? I’m a waiter. I’m a computer programmer. I’m a mom. Nobody recognizes them as a screenwriter, so they can’t say they are.

Anyway. All this to say that I really like that guy’s quote about writing. Including how long it took him to get to the point where other people saw him as a writer gives the rest of us non-published or not-recently-published writers a bit of a boost to our ever-questioning egos.

I’m just all over the place, aren’t I? Trying to write a novel, trying to knit. Now I’m going to try vocal jazz. My voice is definitely nothing to write home about, but I have loved the jazz standards since I first knew about them. I’ve always wanted to sing them and scat. So I’ve decided to find myself a coach. I’ll keep you posted…

I am usually the last person in the world to start raving about a telephone, but I’m feeling the opposite of buyer’s remorse about my new phone. What would that be? Buyer’s elation?

I’ve been thinking that these new smartphones are what Kitchen Aid mixers were to the 1950s. They made everyday life an order of magnitude easier. Now I can blog (seriously! there’s a WordPress app on my phone), catch up with my friends on Facebook, check e-mail and of course, use the phone. I’m still getting the hang of it all, but I see my life becoming a little more streamlined all because of a tiny computer that I can hold in my hand. Woo-hoo for the 21st century!

Which actually got me to thinking today…how freaking cool is it that while I’m sitting in my car waiting in line for the car wash, I can think about my friend in Dubai, and proceed to communicate with her all on this little tiny object no bigger than the size of my hand? This was blowing my mind today.

What will happen in the future? Will someone’s thoughts one day pop into another person’s inbox in their brain? Will we break the physical wall that divides us from the spiritual world? Will a robot clean my house like Rosie on the Jetsons?

My guess is that cave people never dreamed of the way we live now, but it sure is fun dreaming of how people will live in the distant future. That is, if we don’t destroy ourselves and the planet first.

Caller ID listed the name of E-Niner’s school.

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s the school nurse.”

I’m thinking, Oh, no.

“It’s not an emergency,” she said (whew) “but,” (we all knew the “but” was coming) “E-Niner has been acting differently today. He says his chest is hurting, and he’s pointing right near his left nipple. He said his legs were hurting and he said it was hurting him to breathe out.”

Last year we ran some genetic testing on E-Niner that shows that he has a chromosomal abnormality, but technology isn’t yet advanced enough to isolate exactly what’s happening. The geneticist told me, though, that I should be mindful of his heart and his kidneys as abnormalities on this particular chromosome can sometimes cause issues with those organs. I know. Not good.

And especially not good when the nurse is calling me telling me that my son’s chest is hurting. And especially not good when I give my son a daily dose of a stimulant, which has warnings about misuse and cardiac trouble. My mind goes into hyper-hyper overdrive, and in seconds I’m on the phone with the pediatrician getting him an appointment, stat.

In the middle of my panicking mess, as I’m changing my clothes so I can pick E-Niner up from school and take him to the doctor (note to self: no PJs after 10AM, even when you think you have a breather), it dawns on me that we’re never really out of the woods on this thing. In an instant, I can get a phone call and shift immediately into emergent caregiving mode.

After I’ve smoothed out my hair and grabbed my keys — just as I’m stepping through the door — the phone rings again. His school. He’s spiking a temp. Come quick.

The backstory here is that yesterday E-Niner received the Swine Flu vaccine at school. Part of me wondered whether this was his body building up immunity — when I took my seasonal flu shot a few weeks ago, I developed flu-like symptoms that lasted 24 hours — or if this was some weird reaction to the vaccine. Part of me wondered if there were any correlation at all.

I don’t know what I’d do without my sister. She hopped in the car with me and helped support me through the ordeal. E-Niner’s breathing got loud while we were in the car on the way to the doctor’s office, and I just kept thinking about his heart. Once we arrived and I let them know about the chest pain, his pediatrician was with us in a flash. She’s wonderful. So dedicated to him and to our family.

She checked his heart and his breathing, and said she couldn’t detect anything amiss. His blood pressure looked good and so did his pulse. Thank God. And I finally relaxed. The flu I can deal with. Maybe he had gas. I mean seriously. Why is it that symptoms that could be extraordinarily serious could also just be gas? Has anybody every looked into that?

She checked his throat, which he complained was hurting, and swabbed him for flu (but apparently not swine flu — their office had no test for swine flu yet) and for strep. Flu was negative. She’ll let me know if strep cultures come back positive. Apparently that takes a longer time to determine.

Her thought is that if it’s not strep, then it’s possibly the swine flu or a reaction to the vaccine. I’m just glad it’s not his heart. How I wish medicine would get up to speed with this genetics business! It’s nerve-wracking to know only a little bit.

E-Niner got the swine flu shot at school yesterday. His school is nowhere close to where we live — it takes me half an hour to get there on the expressway when there’s no traffic. He did such a good job with the shot (no tears at all..and he watched the needle go in!) that I offered to take him home instead of taking the bus. His shot was at noon and school gets out at 2:15. I had a couple of hours to kill with no plan.

Took myself over to the Verizon store. My contract had expired and I was eligible for a new phone. That new Motorola Droid has been marketed pretty heavily and thought to be a contender against the iPhone, which I would consider if Verizon sold it. Checked out the Droid and honestly? Hated it. I couldn’t get over its shape — a rectangle. It was like nobody put any thought into what a phone should feel like. Considering how much I use my phone, I want it to feel good in my hand on next to my ear.

I had walked into the store hopeful to find a phone with all the bells & whistles plus more, and ended up finding a phone that reminded me of that awful, boxy, cumbersome car phone my dad had installed in his car in 1987.

Sitting next to the Motorola Droid, though, was this very neat looking HTC Droid called Eris. It was significantly curvier than the Motorola phone, which isn’t saying much because I believe my kid’s box of Trix cereal is curvier than the Motorola phone, and had a warm, rubbery grip. Ah, that’s what I want. A phone that doesn’t slip out of my hand and immediately takes on my own body temperature.

Plus, when I started using the Eris, it was nearly immediately intuitive. When I played with the Motorola Droid, I had to keep asking the Verizon guy to talk me through what screen I was viewing, and I consider myself to be about as tech savvy as the next gal who blogs, tweets, facebooks, etc.

What really kind of sold me on the Eris is that the weather is on the front page of the phone next to the time! This may sound really silly, but I guess it’s an important feature for me. My kids both have the iTouch, which is basically an iPhone without the phone, and I use it every morning to check the weather. Only with the iTouch, you have to click on the weather app to get the weather. Not with the Eris. It’s right there, and I love that. Now I know if I need to wear shorts or pants, bring a coat or a sweater, or if my kids should wear jeans or get by with sweats.

So anyway, like I said, I had time to kill and spent more mental energy analyzing a phone than I’ve ever done in my whole life. And I must say, I really, really like that HTC Eris. It’s better than the Motorola one hands-down. If I were Apple, I’d consider the competitive bar to be set by that Eris Droid and not the clunky Motorola one.

Anyway. After checking out the new gadgets at the phone store (and deciding to purchase the Eris online, where I ended up getting it free after all the rebates and discounts I had for being a loyal Verizon customer all these years), I still had an hour to blow.

So I took myself to Joann fabrics and purchased myself a ball of yarn and some needles. I had no idea what I wanted to make, still don’t. But there is something that’s contemplative about knitting, and I feel like I’ve been in a contemplative space recently. I think that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. No words about things yet, only thoughts that may one day coalesce.

These searches brought people to my blog. I love all the emotion:

• what the hell is assburger

• what is the dreaded hand foot and mouth disease?

I usually use nouns in my searches, but now will consider using adjectives as well. Much more entertaining.

To those who aren’t “crazy,” “can’t sleep,” and “need to find religion” — glad you stopped by.

What are you waiting for?

That’s the question I’m asking myself right now.

My imagination of a “perfect life” is one where I have very strong, loving connections with my husband and children, and I imagine a cozy home where we’re able to connect with family and friends. I’ve always thought this time should come “later,” when we’ve “earned” it. Once the kids are grown (and we’re consequently not so exhausted), once the husband is retired and downshifted, once we can afford to build the home of my dreams.

That time is too far away, and there’s no reason I can’t do this now. If my relationships are what’s most important to me, then I should work on those. I’ve felt so good reconnecting with my friends with whom I’ve lost touch since having kids and new friends who’ve I’ve met online. It’s felt good to have more quality time with my husband now that things have calmed down with E-Niner. It’s felt good to sit back and watch my kids be kids. So why am I waiting for some magical time to come upon this family and my life that will make everything perfect?

That time will never come, and there’s no time like the present.

Time to start prioritizing what’s important. And to me, for now, what’s most important are my family and friends.

I love the internet. The reason I love the internet is because I can describe my symptoms on my blog, and an actual doctor from cyberspace can find it, read it, and provide some help!

His comment deserves to be a post here so that others having problems with sinus infections, sinusitis and post-nasal drip can find relief. Thank you, Dr. Davidson, wherever you are!

Hi there,
First of all, I’m sorry to hear about everything you’ve been through. It sounds terrible. I’m a physician who also specializes in allergies, asthma and immunology. I see many patients with acute and chronic sinus infections, and these infections can be very difficult to tolerate. I just wanted to offer some advice as you go forward, as you mentioned that you’re still experiencing some post-nasal drip.

There’s a big difference between acute sinusitis (a new sinus infection) and chronic sinusitis (a long-term sinus infection). We generally believe that acute sinusitis is due to a bacterial infection that often shows up at the end of a cold. This sounds very much like your story. Antibiotics are often used, but Azithromycin (Z-pack) is really not the best 1st choice for such an infection. I know that the Z-pack was given for your sore throat, but that was probably the beginning of your sinus infection, and not a cold. Then you received some Augmentin, which is notorious for causing significant diarrhea. The reason it’s used is that it works well for sinus infections, but the side effects can be difficult, especially after a Z-pack. Remember, these antibiotics not only kill the sinus infection, they kill many of the bacteria that we normally have in our stomach and intestines — these antibiotics help us digest our food. Without them…well, you experienced significant intestinal symptoms (diarrhea, hemorrhoids, etc.) largely because of the antibiotics. Sometimes we even tell people to eat lots of yogurt while taking these antibiotics. This helps to repopulate the normal bacteria that we all need.

Chronic sinus infections, those that last <6 weeks, or occur <4 times per year, are largely considered to be non-infectious. That is, bacteria are not the problem. It’s a problem of inflammation, or the body’s response to a virus or bacteria. You can give all the antibiotics in the world to a patient with chronic sinus infections, and they won’t get better. That takes us to the next issue: rinses, nasal sprays and antihistamines.

These medications are much more helpful for people with chronic sinus disease, and they even help people with acute symptoms as well. These medications will likely come in handy for you, much more so than the Augmentin or Z-Pack. The sinus rinses are very basic — they help move the mucous, viruses, bacteria, allergens out of the nasal cavity. If one or more of these triggers are making the sinusitis worse, it’s easy to understand why nasal rinses can help. They also moisturize your nasal passage that prevents congestion from occurring.

The one type of medicine that may offer you the best benefit is a nasal steroid. These are medications like Nasonex, Veramyst, Flonase, that we’ve all heard of. This class of medications is VERY effective for sinusitis patients because they decrease the inflammation or swelling and stop the drainage at the same time. Bottom line: If you’re looking for a fix without antibiotics, I’d start with a salt water sinus rinse and follow up with a nasal steroid. You’ll find that the post-nasal drip will get better, along with all the diarrhea caused by antibiotics.

I hope this all helps! If you have any other questions, or are looking for additional information, please take a look at my website: www.davidsonallergy.com or even email me at joshua.davidson at me dot com.

Take care,
Dr. Davidson

No school today for the kids. This morning E-Niner has behavior therapy. Then we’re going to visit one of my best friends from high school with whom I reconnected in the past couple of weeks. Turns out her oldest daughter has some pretty major gut issues — colitis, Celiac, something else. She got in touch with me because, through the grapevine, she had heard about E-Niner’s psychological issues. It never ceases to amaze me how raising a child with special needs creates an instant bond with other parents going through the same thing. l wonder if it’s because we really feel that connected, or if it’s because we feel that misunderstood everywhere else…

Back in early September, I got a bug. Very bad sore throat. Couldn’t talk. I maybe blogged about it. After a week of that nonsense, the doctor put me on Z-pak. It immediately got rid of the sore throat. I was grateful.

At the tail end of that deal, I started to get some post-nasal drip. Just kind of hung out in the back of my throat. Nasty. And then one day at one of my favorite restaurants — a little Costa Rican place named Irazu — I involuntarily started heaving and throwing up all that mucous that had painted the back of my throat.

That day, we had decided to eat outside, so I was literally throwing up in the sewer drain next to the dumpster. I couldn’t stop the retching. Classy, I know. If that weren’t so bad, what’s worse is that I can never go back there again. The association of fried plantains and vomiting mucous next to a stinking dumpster is just too visceral for me to suppress. The good news, I thought, was that I had officially licked that bug. There was no way my body had any more mucous in it.

I was wrong.

I continued to have post-nasal drip for the next month and a half until I brought myself to the doctor again. This time, I went to my allergy doctor figuring that this was an entirely different beast that had attached itself onto my early September cold. Maybe I was having allergies.

He asked me if I had been doing my nasal sprays. (No.) And was I taking the Xyzal he prescribed. (No.) But I had used the Neti pot! I wasn’t sure if it was in my head, but I thought that the Neti pot had made things worse in the few days leading up to the appointment. He said in very rare cases, he’s seen Neti pots cause sinus infections. After examining me, he made his diagnosis: sinus infection.

So. Back on the antibiotics. This time, Augmenten. Oh wait. Scratch that. First he gave me Avelox. My tongue swelled up within 40 minutes of taking that. So he told me to pound a Xyzal and two Benedryl and get ready for bed. I spent most of the day on Halloween asleep on the couch, knocked out. It was actually rather pleasant to get so much rest.

Augmenten came the next day. I’ve taken it before with pretty much no side effects. Not this time around. This time around, I’ve been feeling drowsy about two hours after taking it. Works well with the evening dose. not so well mid-morning. And — this is my problem — it was giving me diarrhea. For the first seven days of taking the meds, I was going three to five times a day. It’s amazing how much water weight I retain. Geez.

(Three to five times a day of pooping + four to six swipes of toilet paper) times seven days = hemorrhoids!

So disgusting. So embarrassing.

I ignored the little buggers for the first few days, hoping that they would go away. But when you keep pooping and wiping and pooping and wiping, they tend to stick around. The past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of lubing up and popping in a Tucks suppository every so often. Can I do a “you know you’re getting old” joke now? You know you’re getting old when you look forward to peeling back the wrapper on that creamy bullet of Tucks and putting it where the sun don’t shine.

The kicker is that today when I wiped — there was blood. Ugh. Seriously, people. Do I need a visual reminder that things ain’t looking good down south? Today is my last day of that damned Augmenten, and the nurse says the hemorrhoids should clear up in the next couple of days.

But the beauty of all this is that I still have post-nasal drip!