Stress relief

It's been quite the week chez Dear. Obviously, there's the whole "Holy Crap Christmas is in a week how the heck did that happen!?!" thing that sneaks up on me (and I suspect many other knitters) every year, but for added fun we've been dealing with Mystery Health Issues that Émilie's been having over the past few weeks as well.

Last Friday the school called me and asked if I'd noticed that something was wrong with Emilie's face. She'd gotten into a bit of a scuffle with a friend a few days earlier, and I honestly thought they were following up on that (she had a scratch beneath her left eye). I was in full "Responsible Mommy" mode, right up until they said "Well, we don't want to alarm you, but she appears to be paralyzed on one side of her face. You might want to come pick her up and get her checked out."

Think about that a minute. When the word "paralysis" is used in a conversation about your child, let me assure you that the adrenaline goes WAY up in a right hurry. Five minutes later, I was well on my way and Dad was on the phone with Dr. Grampa, who pulled a Mario Andretti and arrived at the house about 20 minutes later (a drive that would usually take 45 minutes easy). She receives a full exam, and the preliminary diagnosis is that she's got Bell's Palsy, which is treatable and reversible over time.

She's been on medication since Friday, and seems to be responding to the treatment. Facial control isn't entirely restored at this point, but we've been seeing some improvement, which is a good sign.

We were still concerned about WHAT brought on the palsy in the first place of course, so yesterday we took her to see the ENT. He suspects that she's actually got Infectious mononucleosis, and it's the mono that has caused her facial paralysis, which is rare but not unheard of in the literature.

What's NOT so good is that she also seems to have substantial hearing loss in her right ear, something that can't be explained by either the mono or the Bell's Palsy... Phone calls are made, and we somehow manage to jump ahead of a six-month waiting period and get her an appointment for a proper hearing test TODAY. See? Holiday Miracles really do happen!

So how do you think I've been dealing with all of this? Well, I've been knitting up a storm, of course. For instance, earlier in the week I knit Émilie a Holiday Candy Cane scarf for school.

See the Bell's Palsy? The right side of her face just doesn't quite work :(

OK, so it's not exactly a LONG scarf, but did I mention I knit it in one evening? Yeah... I cast on for it at 7:00 PM, and was weaving in ends and making fringe a bleary-eyed 4.5 hours later.

I also got a substantial amount of knitting done on the Non-Cookie-KAL Estonian Socks, mach 2.

MUCH happier with the colourwork of this version. I futzed around with the calf shaping, heel and gussets quite a bit (I'll get into the details in another post), but the important thing is that - as of 11:15 last night - I have a kick-ass Estonian Sock that fist me like a second skin.

Too bad I still have to knit another one...

Happy Knitting Everyone. If I don't get to post before the big day, we at Casa de Dear send wishes of Happiness, Peace, and most importantly Health to you and yours.