The Apple Basket Teacher: Yes, I am a Copycat...Five for Fraturday!

{Sunday update! I forgot a few things, including a picture! Additions are in green!}

Happy Saturday all! :) How all of you can crank out your posts on Friday is beyond me, so I am copying the Amazing Kristin, A Teeny Tiny Teacher, and doing a Five for Fraturday!

First off, Congratulations to M & M Bilingual for winning everything in my store!!! Thank you for your patience. You will also have access to the next 5 items I place into my store {I had planned to have those in before the giveaway closed, but as my life seems to go, things did NOT go as planned!} Thank you to those who stopped by, entered or took a look at my store, no sales yet, but I WILL keep moving forward & trust God for the results.

Ahhh, 2 seems the right number for this since the last 2 weeks did not go as planned. I have been on Cymbalta for over 2 years {another 2} and it has been a blessing in my life. It deals with depression/anxiety {which I have battled with for a long time} & pain from Fibromyalgia. A bonus side effect has been the disappearance of my restless leg syndrome! That eliminated another medication I had been taking. :)

Cymbalta went generic several months ago, and I have been getting the generic for about 3 months. I noticed at school on August 21st some weird symptoms; dizziness, light headedness, my eyes not tracking right, my head feeling strange. I looked up Cymbalta vs. generic after school and started reading of others having difficulty with the generic. I contacted my doctor and requested brand name only. I had checked several times at the pharmacy, and they didn't have it phoned in yet. When we did pick up medicine {just a few days before my last post} it wasn't brand name, but it was a different generic so I figured it would be better.

I finished my post LATE Sunday night, the next day was Labor Day and I did sleep a lot of that day, just figured it was from being up til' about 3:30 am. I went into work on Tuesday & I COULD NOT FUNCTION!! I was BEYOND fatigued!!! My eyes burned, just wanting to close, I couldn't think clearly, had a hard time communicating what I wanted to communicate...thoughts and words sometimes hard to get right, so I walked up to the office {a walk that felt like MILES} and requested a substitute. I started the day with my students because of the late request. I always greet my students at the door with 'Good Morning' and one of my students said, "That was a sad 'good morning.'"

Once my substitute was there I headed to the doctor and learned she took walk ins at 11:30. I live about 20 miles outside of town, so I figured I would go to Denny's to wait {& use their free wifi}...Nope...just sat it the car messing on the ipad waiting for the minutes to go by. When I saw my doctor she also felt it was due to the generic, they had no samples left in the office & through my insurance I could not get more medicine until it was late September. :-( She had me take it more frequently, hoping that would give me more of the active ingredients {generics must be 80% the same as the name brand...the other 20% who knows!} and wrote a note for me to be off work all week. :-( I did NOT want to be out all week, but I also knew I could not be effective the way I was!

The next day I felt much better mentally and emotionally, but I HURT all over and felt pretty wiped out so I slept and Thursday went back to work. I was able to purchase the Cymbalta (around $250!) with what I had in my health savings plan.

Thursday was Back to School Night, so a long day! Friday was okay, but I was pretty wiped out for the weekend, I went to bed Friday night and got out of bed Sunday morning!!! In addition & our Internet kept going out! This last week was busy catching up, & my daughter's Back to School night {she attends a new school in our district~STEM Academy & uses her Chromebook all day long!}...so here it is 2 weeks later, no posts & no new products!

Last night I decided to look up an episode of E.R. that is special to our family. My stepson, Tyler, has a heart condition and has had 3 open heart surgeries. In 2008 he was able to go to a very special camp, Camp del Corazon that is specifically for kids with heart disease. He was able to go to 2 different weeks of camp with them. In the last season of E.R. they had a story line that the camp was there in Chicago and they used kids from camp in the filming of the episode. Tyler was unable to participate in the filming, but we were so amazed when it was televised that there was a GIANT picture of him in several scenes! Now, this was really amazing because when I had gone through HUNDREDS of pictures from camp on their website, I only spotted Tyler in about 4-5 pictures! It was fun to watch that episode last night, purchased it on Amazon!

Once again we had our 'Flat Stanley' class for Back to School Night.

And finally, our school was challenged to do the ice bucket challenge and raise money for MDA. My class brought in the most so students for our class were able to soak our principal, Mr. Finch. We raised around $500 as a school, I believe. I missed one of the teachers, but here's our principal, teachers, & one of our school board members!