The hand your dealt

Throughout my life, there have come times when I have had to do some self-reflection and soul-searching to figure out why I have done some things or why things have happen. Recently this was speared on by the changes in my body over the years from fertility drugs and then the hysteroctomy. I thought everything would be wonderful after the surgery, and the past year of it not being anything clos to normal, let alone wonderful has encouraged even more searching and changing doctors and finally some answers of sorts.

I have come to a theology of my own. Each and every person is dealt a hand of cards. Now this isn't poker, this is a big old hand full of cards, but the dealer isn't dealing them blind, the Lord is the card dealer and he knows what he is dealing into every hand. They are not put there to test you or to make life hard but to make you the wonderful, beautiful person he has in store for you to be.

The hard cards are not tests, they are not punishments, they are not things that you can blame for the rest of your life...."Oh, I am overweight because that is the card I was dealt, there is no use trying to lose weight", you might have been dealt an overweight card, but it's not something to blame, it is something to use as a step, as a climbing tool. These hard cards are meant to make us look inward, to find our strengths, to embrace the challenge and to grow into the person we are suppose to be.

Maybe you were dealt a divorce card, well that is no reason to think you are unworthy of love, maybe it was dealt you to show you how strong you can be, maybe it was to show you that you have to put your faith and trust into God and not man for the love that you deserve.

I have struggled with my own parents divorce when I was young, I have struggled with my father's battles with alcohol, my own infertility problems and then my weight. Finally I have realized that I can't blame anything on those struggles. They were not cards dealt to allow me to blame them and just go on as if the struggles of the past should explain my issues now. As if you should accept me as I am and if I should be content to be overweight and insecure. The cards were dealt me to force me to turn to God, to ask for his help, to ask him to show me how to deal with them and how to use them to make me into the strong capable person I know i can be.

For so long I have let those cards lay there in the background. I have let them stop me from doing something I wanted or desired, or keep me from feeling worthy of the love that has been given me. For so long, I have not dealt with the card, I have just let them sit there, thinking I was doing what i needed to do, but never really facing them. Just allowing them to lay there in the background, to fester an grow was not dealing with them. Now i realize that I have to deal with the cards, I have to play those cards and change my life, my thoughts, my beliefs and my goals.

Today I start playing those rough cards. I start dealing with the struggles, but instead of hiding them back in my hand and letting them fester and cause problems again in a year or later, i am going to play them. Really play them, take them out of my hand an lay them on the table for all to see. I am going to completely take them out of my hand and let them go, never to rear their heads again, never to take away what i deserve again. I will not lie and say this is going to be easy, it is not, but it has to be done. Letting someone ls see your hard cards or your demons or your faults if you want is probably the hardest thing in the world, but if i don't play them, don't lay them on the table, don't admit to them and how they have effected me up to this point, then what good is it.

I am wonderfully and fearfully made in God's image. He has only the best in store for me, I am his and he loves me no matter what....it is time that I embraced that fully, and allowed him to love me in spite of my flaws and through my flaws, to mold me and make me the wonderful person he has had in mind for me from before I was born. Today i take charge and release those cards, they can no longer hurt me or allow me to feel unworthy....I am worthy of God's love! I am worthy of a full life, unimpended by those cards.

I am woman, hear me roar!

Picking up the pieces

Did you ever know one of those people who just can't make a relationship work? Ii mean, they try and try, but it never works out and they end up alone and needing someone to help them pick up the pieces. And why do i have to be that person? Is it something about me that makes people younger and older think I have all the answers?

So I am used to this. I have been picking up the pieces after every relationship ends, and I have been taking care of two people all my life, but I just wonder if it will ever end, or will I spend the rest of my life taking care of them? One is my younger brother and I don't mind that. I am suppose to take care of him, but the other is my father, and isn't he suppose to be there for me instead of me picking up his pieces?

My brother called me today crying. He was all upset. My Dad's latest wife had left him. So I spent some time talking my brother down and getting him calmed down. Got him to a better place and so I had one crisis down, but another left to go.

So I suck it up and make the call to my Dad, and it actually went better than I thought. He talked to me for a bit. She rally did leave and it was over, and i guess he saw it coming because he sounded better than I expected. He is working and taking care of the farm. He swore to me that he isn't drinking, and he didn't sound like he had been, so I am hopeful.

I love my Dad, but I have known for years that he has problems, namely he is an alcoholic although he has been sober for years at a time, anything can set him off on a binge an usually the breakdown of a relationship is one of those things. And my grandparents ha always been there to me talk to him and keep him sober, or pull him out of a binge. Grandma's been gone for 7 years now, and he had his last binge not longer after her passing, and grandpa an I pulled him out of that, an then he met his latest wife. He did really good in that she kept him sober, and even when grandpa passed he didn't go on a binge.

This is the first time I am going to be on my own to keep him on the right road! I am actually scared, but at the same time, i am going through so much in my own life, I don't know how I can handle this. Of course my first thought, my first instinct is to push my problems aside and deal with this other crisis first, because it's my "duty". I hope i never leave my kids feeling like they have to clean up after me, or take care of me, or that my crisis are more important than their lifes.

Lord give me wisdom!!!

10am and I'm ready for a nap....

I get up as usual this morning to get the kids off and on the bus. Maeve is begging me to drive her to school. She made a present for her classes student teacher, her last day is today and they are having a party, and she didn't feel like she could get it on the bus.

So I got dressed and took Maeve to school. Of course we had to stop at Circle K for a Polar Pop on the way, but I dropped her off and then went over to CVS. I had some stuff i needed to pick up, and then while i was there i noticed that the gardening stuff was 25% off, so of course I had to look at that.

I stopped at two garage sales on the way home. The first one has this really nice white ornate shelf that i like an would look great against the walls in my living room, there are a tan color called "Moose Tracks" and white picture frames and shelves really stand out against it and look crisp and clean, and the shelf was priced at $3 but they said to make an offer, but it was just so heavy! My walls have trouble holing really heavy things even with anchors, so I just wasn't sure. I ended up passing on the shelf.

The second garage sell didn't have much, but i did find a nice top for Maeve, but I wasn't as pleased that i stopped at it as I was the first. It looked good from the street but once you got into the garage it was a bunch of knick-knacks and Christmas stuff and I was not in the mood for that. So I headed home.

I hung a new wind chime I got at CVS on my porch, and then decided to finally finish planting the flowers I got for Mother's day. each year a couple in our church that owns a nursery donates flowers to be given to all the mothers in the church, and they are always good quality flowers. Somehow this year, the flowers the kids gave me are all full sun flowers, and then my mother-in=law gives me her flowers. She says she doesn't have anywhere to plant them, but i plant mine in containers and she could do, but I don't push the issue, it's not worth it.

So now have four containers with flowers on my front lawn just beside my sidewalk. I am loving the way it looks, but now, here it is only 10am, and I am exhausted. I am ready for a nap!

i can't wait till all my blood work comes back and I go back to the doctor. I have been feeling this tired and lack of energy since the surgery last year, and this is not normal. I mean the whole time Brad and i were dating and until we had Tiernan I worked a full-time job and a part-time job, so this is not like me to be so tired and not able to do much! Sometimes I think it is the biggest problem, but then I also think it feeds some of the other issues, so i am looking forward to finding something.

I just want to feel like me again, not working two jobs, but having the energy to take care of my family would be nice.

Which way is up?

For years now, I have been so in tune with my own body. I could tell you when I was starting to get sick, I could tell you what each and every little pain was and when I was going to get a headache. I knew it. I understood it, and I had to. Starting at age 21, I was diagnosed with PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) which is basically just a big pain in the butt, but it effects every woman who has it just a little bit differently so we had to learn, as women with it, to understand our bodies. To understand how the differences in hormone levels effected us each and how to make it all work better, or at least closer to normal.

2009 was a rough year, first emotionally because I lost my grandfather, and second physically because things started changing, and although it was acting different and causing me more problems, I could still explain them to you and tell you what was going on, why I was in pain and about how long it would last. I knew there was going to come a time that I would have to consider the hysterectomy, I had known that for a long time, probably since the first diagnose, and I was fine with that, I just expected it to be a simple fix. Take out the parts causing all the problems and I will be up and felling great in no time at all! Right?

WRONG!!!

Here it is a little over a year after the surgery, and I feel completely upside-down! I no longer understand my own body! I have no clue what it is doing! Everything I have known for so many years is gone and I am floundering in the same body but without the instructions!

Ever since the surgery I have been dealing with horrible headaches. I went back to the OB/GYN and she gave me estrogen, which is normal for most patients, and without thinking I acceped because I expected that, but then I had to remember that my body isn't normal, it has PCOS....which by the way, never goes away, yes I no longer have my ovaries, but everything else associated with PCOS still exists in my body, so they change the name to Androgen Deficiency or something else, but it all mean the same thing. So for me, the estrogen just made them worse, and so we added more estrogen and more thinking I was too low, which seemed only natural since my body has never had a normal level of any hormone, but it just made it worse and finally it came to a point that I lost it....I bottomed out!

I got so depressed from the headaches and the general not feeling right that I took to my bed for three days, and in that I forgot to take any medicine. At three days, I guess the estrogen was out of my system and I started feeling better. The lack of estrogen allowed my mind to clear enough for me to realize that something needed to change. I decided that I had to start taking charge again. I found a family doctor that I like and we are starting the process all over again from the beginning. We have discovered that the headaches are related to my blood pressure. I had preeclampsia with all three kids, so the effects of that are that I might start running high blood pressure now. Although my blood pressure still mainly stays in the normal range, when it does rise, I have headaches. So I am taking blood pressure medicine, although only a small dose, and I still have the k from the doctor to monitor it myself, to take an extra pill it it is high, to skip a pill if it is getting too low.

The problem for me is that this is a re-learning experience. I am having to re-learn my body, and it is not easy. I am still trying to figure out what high blood pressure feels like beside the headaches and what low blood pressure feels like so that I can get the medicine regulated. I have a home blood pressure cuff, and i take my blood pressure daily and multiple times a day, and slowly I am getting to understand it, and this is just the first step. There are still so many other issues to deal with, but taking one issue at a time, instead of dumping 50 medicines into my body for each issue at one time is much nicer.

The trouble is that I feel like I wasted a year...I should have been better prepared for this and I should have taken control sooner, but I didn't. I feel guilty about that, at the same time, I feel like everything is upside-down because I can't understand this new body yet, and it is not a pretty sight!

I must have a saint for a husband and cherubs for children, because how they have put up with all this, I have no idea! And it's not over yet!

Dance, Dance, Dance and Boy Scouts....

When I was going through all those years of fertility treatments, I never really thought about what life would be like if we ever had kids. I remember thinking that I would always bake birthday cakes from scratch, and I do. That was something that kept me going in the darkest days of treatments. When we finally had a boy, I guess I thought of football and baseball games, and when we had a girl I thought of softball but that was about it.

Well, Maeve is defintely nothing I could have ever imagined or dreamed of. I was not a real girly-girl growing up and Maeve is into Musical Theater and Dancing. Wow. I have entered a whole new world. Today is dress rehearsals for a benefit show that the dance studio is putting on tomorrow.

Maeve, and now Molly also, dance for One Step Above Dance Company, or commonly in the area known as OSA. Tomorrow afternoon at the Fairgrounds they are doing their company, or competetion dances ad a benefit. Tickets are $5 and all the money goes to the Ellettsville Boys and Girls CLub. Now, I have to say that I am super excited to be part of something like this that will benefit the Boys and Girls Club, because I love our boys and girls club, It is awesome and the people there really care about the kids.

Maeve and her dad had to be out at the fairgrounds at 9:40 this morning to rehearse their Father-Daughter dance. Every couple of years the studio does a fun dance with fathers and daughters, and they performed for the first time last week. I got to watch and I have to tell you it was amazing. Some of the dads were great dancers, others had no clue, but that wasn't what mattered the most, what was the greatest thing was the look on the girls faces when they were dancing with their dads.

Now I guess it's time for me to get cheesy, but you know, I loved the fact that the studio took the time to offer this dance, and even more that there were so many dad's that agreed to dance with their daughters no matter what their skill level was. In this day and age, with so many broken families and so many parents working two and three jobs that they don't have time to spend with their kids, ad with the teenage pregnancy rates and the research finding that it might have something to do with the lack of a fathers influence. It is so wonderful to see these guys take the time from their lives to spend time with their daughters.

Right now, Maeve is just getting out of the shower and I have to get her fully dressed, hair and make-up and into one outfit for practice at 1:40 then she has her other dance at 3:20. Like I said, it;s a dance, dance, dance day.

It is also a boy scout day, as Tiernan is going to the Boy Scout lock-in at the armory today, and he has to be there at 1pm. So it sounds like dad is going to be driving to the South end of town to the armory to drop Tiernan off while I am driving to the wet side of town to the fairgrounds for Maeve's dance practices.

Next weekend will be even more of the same as Maeve has regionals at Beech Grove saturday. It'll be my first experience with this, I was never in dance or dance competitions growing up, so I am learning all the time!

Depression...

Almost a year after my hysterectomy and nothing has been the same. Probably the first big mistake I made was listening to the doctor when she said, let's wait six months after surgery to see what your body does. I should have insisted on have all my levels tested before surgery and then within a week or so after surgery testing them again and started on medicine. I didn't, and it's true, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Now don't get me wrong, my life is defintely better off afterwards. I was in so much pain from the cysts in my ovaries and the fibroid in my uterus that I wasn't living. I was spending more time in bed in pain than doing anything else. I will still tell people, if it has been recommended to you, then go ahead, but to keep your ovaries if at all possible. For me it was not possible to keep my ovaries. The only problem is that almost no one that I talked to had lost their ovaries too. I had no idea what I was going to be in for. Maybe more research, maybe more talking, maybe just more fighting for it the way I felt was right.

I started getting depressed about six weeks post-surgery. It was about like post-partum depression, but I didn't have a nursing baby to help take the edge off the depression. It was just getting worse and worse to the point I had to call the doctors office, so a prescription for an antidepressant, but that didn't do it. I think I have the brand changed twice and the dosage changed more than I can think since then. Of course after six months out, the hormone replacement got added in, and that brought it's own set of problems with it.

I haven't been able to sleep since the surgery. Which I hear is normal, but of course no one wanted to do anything about it, oh let's get some hormones in you and it will get better, finally last month they gave me something to sleep that works as bout as well as jelly beans! So I was fed up and called the doctor's office first thing Monday morning, with the promise that the nurse would call me back that morning. Yeah right, finally Friday afternoon about an hour before the office closed someone called me back, but of course they didn't do anything.

After almost a year of not being able to sleep it has finally caught up with me, and the depression has deepened. When you aren't sleeping, it is very easy to fall deeper into the depression. So I was already depressed after the surgery and it wasn't being handled well, then top that with not being able to sleep, that wasn't being treated at all, and I am a mess. You want to talk about the hormones?

The migraines started about four weeks out from surgery, and they were terrible. I think I have been on three or four different migraine medicines, and no matter how many times I say, that the medicine was doing nothing for the migraines. I mean I can only take two pills in 24-hours and the migraines will come back in 6 to 8 hours some days. I keep trying to tell them that they aren't working, but no one wants to listen, which only makes the depression worse because I feel like I am not worth listening to, The hormones only help to create more of them.

I finally got on hormones, got on a patch. Of course that didn't do too well, still ave headaches, so they added a estrogen gel. As long as I was taking both of those on schedule and not skipping a patch change or the gel, I was getting fewer headaches. They added some progestrone, not sure why, but it has seemed to increased the headaches.

Now I still love my doctor. She delivered all three of my kids and she has been great. But when I first started seeing her, she was a new young doctor in an office of older doctors, then she moved out on her own into a small office, that soon grew and grew and now has three doctors and two midwives in the office. She is still a great doctor, but her office has grown too large. The office staff no longer seems to care. I can remember when I would call in and all I had to say was my name and all the staff knew my history and could help with anything. I mean, let's put it this way, my account number in her office is #38! I have no idea how many people they have in there now, but I know that I almost never talk to the same person, and I have caught a couple of nurses saying things to me that were out-and-out lies, and I am not going for that and had to call her on it, and of course she was upset, but yo know, once your office gets too large, it is out of your control.

I made the hard decision this week, in a few of my more lucid moments to research a new doctor. I had been needing to have a general doctor anyway, and that is what I looked for. A general practice doctor, but one that had underlying specialities in women's issues and HRT. So on Wednesday I called and they got me in the next week on Thursday. They were trying for Tuesday, but didn't have one early enough to make sure I would get home before the kids got off the bus. I was shocked. I am used to having to call four months in advance to get an appointment. I am looking forward to hearing another view on all this, and really hoping for some answers. Or at least if not an answer, someone to listen and be willing to work with me to find an answer, not just brush it off like it's no big deal.

I am sure I will be blogging about my thoughts from the appointment next week. Oh you poor people, you have to listen to me ramble! Oh well, you knew what you were getting into when you read the title of the blog and still kept reading!

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