when life gives you lemons

pucker up. 

last friday i had a doctors appointment.  it was a follow-up visit to check my med levels for insulin resistance, thyroid....blah blah.  it was also to follow-up from my recent trip to the e.r.

my gut told me there would be tests as a result of my e.r. visit.  i was nervous as i packed a list of 'stuff' to discuss with the doc.

my gut was right, but they did not find any of the things my wildest imagination could have thought of.

  the cat scan found a lesion on my thyroid.  it was found accidentally.

 just like the mri a few years ago that accidentally found a lesion on my liver when the doctor was looking for something else. the lesion on my liver, no big deal. 

from what the doctor told me and from what i have researched this could be  i have hashimoto's thyroiditis, graves disease, or a birth anomoly.  we have scheduled an ultra sound. 

i still need to call the neurologist to schedule an appointment.  the hubby keeps pushing for me to get it scheduled.  i want to take this all one body part at a time,  if you don't mind.......he is worried.  i am trying not to.

when i was about 10 i had surgery.  it was a skin graft to form a new ear drum. 

i woke up during the surgery.

i saw a bright light, even through my closed eyes.  i felt as though my head was turned to the side.  i heard a man say 'get her......

next thing i remember i woke up in the recovery room to some woman moaning that she was dying. 

yikes, was i dying too?  i asked a nurse.  from her response i think she had rolled out of the wrong side of the bed that day and had not yet had her morning cup of joe....or a really bad case of pms. 

i told the nurse i woke up during surgery.  she quickly told me i did no such thing.  when i insisted, which was not my normal nature to question authority, she told me she would get my father to discipline me for telling lies.  that quickly put me in my place.  that was a no-no. 

after i was back in the childrens ward and settled in a nurse came and talked to me.  she was so nice.  she said she was going to come to my school and tell all of the kids about my surgery.  wow, did they do that for everyone???  never understood why she came and talked to me.

once i was home i noticed while trying to do something, write, draw...my hands were shaking very badly.  they have never stopped. 

i tried to tell my parents, about my shaking hands.  to this day i remember my mom rooting through a drawer in the kitchen, the dreaded junk drawer.  i picked the wrong time to ask.  she quickly dismissed my concern and told me to quit being a worry wart.  it was my imagination. 

i also noticed i no longer could balance on a balance beam.  one of my favorite things to do in gym class.

months later i was watching tv.  back in the day when remote controls did not exist and one had to move their body up off the comfy-ness of the chair or couch they were spud-ing upon.   since laziness had enslaved me at that moment i sat through what must have been the 5 or 6 o'clock news.  a picture of the hospital i had my surgery at was shown.  the upcoming story was about patients who were waking up, or dieing during surgery.  the cause - overworked anesthesiologists. 

it did happen to me!!  it really really did! 

i wanted to run upstairs and tell my mom.  that day was not a good day.  most days were not a good day for her.  my mom suffered with bi-polar.  she had her own worries.

years later when my ears started ringing i was diagnosed with menieres disease. 

right after my middle child was born i got very very sick.  soon after the ringing in my ears became worse, my balance became worse and now i had floaties in my right eye and the pupil would dilate to twice the size of that of my left. 

doctor after doctor...... no answers.

  my hearing loss also changed.  i could not understand words at times.  it sounded as though someone were using the dial on a radio to change the station.  only bits and pieces of words were being heard. other times i hear different words than what is being spoken.  tonight with my youngest it was the word science.  i thought i heard france.  he was sitting next to me.   my brain has had to become like a rolodex at times to play fill in the blank.  pieced together with reading body language, facial expressions.  conversations can be exhausting at times.  especially with my speech impaired son. 

most doctors dismissed me as nuts. thinking i had to be making this all up. after going to several and being treated like a nut, and having members of my family think the same i gave up.  i learned to live with whatever this was and rarely spoke of what i was going through.

last year the e.n.t.  (ear, nose and throat) overheard my conversation with my audiologist who was adjusting my hearing aids.  i was telling the audiologist how i had given up on getting help.  i was tired of everyone thinking i was nuts. ( thank goodness my hubby was there for me though through all of this. )  the ent told me she believed me.  my ears and brain were not communicating.  there was a book on this i could read.  it explained the discovery of this condition.  even gave help on how to deal with this condition.

 finally!  finally!  finally!   again.  i was not nuts.  i was not being a worry wart.  it was not  IN  MY  HEAD!

my balance over the last couple of years has been getting increasingly worse.  bouts of vertigo and dizziness causing me to bounce off walls and furniture at home.  at the store the hubs holds on to me when i don't have a death grip on a shopping cart. 

i have challenging days and moments and then i have great days and moments. 

tonight we went to the pharmacy that fills my thyroid prescription.  they also have a medical supply shop. 

tonight i picked out my forearm crutches.

i wanted to run. 

i wanted to run far away.

but i stopped myself.

i want to be able to walk by myself through the mall and not have to worry when the beast called vertigo would attack leaving me stumbling or cause me to fall.  i want to hold hands with my hubby, not hold on to my hubby.

i hate it when people see me stumble and glare at me with disgust assuming i have been drinking.

i did not run.

i puckered up.

i held back the tears.

i hope this is just my menieres.  the hubs and i are both worried about the possibility of m.s. since i seem to have many of the symptoms. 


i will be making lemonade out of the lemons i have been handed. 

just need to find the pitcher and some sugar.

i know they are somewhere near. 

one minute he is cute, then the next i want to duct tape him to a wall

the post tonight was going to be about 3 things, beads and bits to make up a couple of new necklaces, 3 days, and how adorable little bertie bert is.

the post tonight is going to be about how the only thing saving that darn cat's hide is his cuteness.

bert is a handful.  all day long you hear someone yelling his name.  he is in to EVERYTHING.  he is a toddler and teen all rolled into one.   he knows he should not walk on the kitchen table, but yet you catch him on it all of the time.  everytime i set a mixing bowl on the table to make something, usually cookies for the hubs and his co-workers, if i do not wait until it is his nap time i have to lock him in a bedroom.  other wise 

this happens if i don't

he loves to lay in the bowl.  you can not turn your back on him even for a second.  he is the complete polar opposite of our other cat, moan-uh.

moan-uh is a cat cat.  she is aloof.  she tells you when to pet her.  she tells you when she would like a bowl of milk if you please.  she is cute until she sees that you have caught her.  she knows not to get on the kitchen table.  it took about 2 weeks of hitting her with water from  the squirt bottle to learn.

steph and i had been talking in the kitchen and watching bert be bert flipping around in the livingroom with an attack of the midnight crazies like always. it was just a bit after 1 am and i told steph i wanted to write my post and get to bed at a decent time, so we made sure the puppies were tucked in on their pillow in front of the space heater, pulled the gate shut and turned out the lights.

i thought for a brief second on the way back to my bedroom if maybe i should lock bert in my room for an hour or so until he wears himself down.

should have listened to my gut.

the gut is always right

 as i literally sat in my comfy chair in my bedroom and opened the computer and began uploading the photos i planned to use in what i was going to post, bert made one of his usual late night crazy runs into my bedroom and dove under my bed.  right about the same time i heard a noise.  nothing too loud, but i figured it was no big deal.  steph was in the room with me and she took off for the livingroom. 

i knew it was trouble when she said 'mom, you need to come here.'

something told me to grab the camera.

the noise was not loud to me, because i don't wear my ears (hearing aids) around the house.

these are the two january and all things snowy trees.

used to decorate the grey, blah month that january is and has come to be.

since my balance, or loss of it, has become a more serious issue over the last couple of years

i needed to wait until tonight when my hubby worked a normal shift at work

to help me bring the rubbermaid tubs upstairs so that i could  take down january's decorations

and put up our february, valentine, decorations.

i almost removed and wrapped up the ornaments this afternoon, but no i had

to wait for the tubs. 

i called bert every name there was but bert.

i threatened to duct tape him to the wall.

i would never do that, but the vision of it.....well it just is.

so what is saving bertie bert's hide.

bert has a blankie.

it use to be my favorite blankie

it is the softest blanket i have ever felt

the day bert fell from the railing to the bottom of the steps after mia spooked him

when he was only a couple of months old, i scooped him up and wrapped him in my favorite blankie

while i tried to get ahold of bill at work.

bert had broken his nose it seemed from the looks of it.

he was bleeding from  his eyes and his nose.

we have just 1 vehicle, and the closest vet was much further than the 5 or 10 miles i had ever walked

at one time.

i layed on my bed with sweet little bertie bert and prayed

i wondered why the amazing tale of how we had been brought together would have taken place, only to have him taken from me.

i prayed more, and more, and more.

then i let go and realized i had to have faith.

i stayed at bert's side through the night.  by the time i had gotten ahold of bill

so much time had passed that i knew medical attention would not have changed the outcome.

the next day bert woke up and was terrorizing the house like usual.  quite an impressive and divine healing.

ever since that day my favorite blankie became berts.

bert also has a favorite chair in the livingroom.   



the blankie is put on the chair and that is where cute, adorable, sweet little bertie bert takes his naps.

for the last week and a half we have been waking up to find it all over the livingroom.  the puppies are kept in the kitchen.  moan-uh would tell us where to move the blanket, she would never do such heavy lifting herself and since it smells of bert she would not lay on it anyway.

our only conclusion is that bert had to be moving it.   he is more like a dog than our 2 chihuahuas are so this did not come as a surprise.

today after sam came home from school he walked out into the hall and then loudly whispered to me in my bedroom to come see what bert was up to.  i grabbed my camera and we caught him in the act.

he was dragging his blankie back to my bedroom.

i have never seen a cat do this.

the hubs grew up in a house full of cats, he swears this creature may walk and talk like a cat but that is where the cat-ness ends when it comes to bert.

how cute is this.

this is why bert is not duct taped to the wall after knocking down the trees tonight.

 

etsy shop opening delayed to 2/8

short and sweet tonight.  not the post i had in mind originally.  steph and i are going to open our etsy shops on the 8th instead of the 1st as we had originally planned. 

my visit to the e.r. recently set us back a couple of days, but mostly we both lost track of the days and the 1st really snuck up on us.  so much so that when steph realized on friday that the first was monday she made a mad dash into my bedroom at 3am in a panic to tell me.

earlier this evening i had another of my icky svt attacks.  this is the first time in my ten yearsof svt attacks that my hubby has seen the icky version.  it scared him &($% out of him.  now 4 - 5 hours later i still have the chills that i normally get with this type of svt attack,  my back, ribs and chest are hurting from tensing up.  i decided to surrender and will be taking a xanax to see if this helps with the pain from the spasms. 

friday we have a doctor appointment and am hanging on to faith that it will be good news. 

on a happy note the hubby and i had a second date sunday,we locked ourselves in our bedroom for an hour or so then we did the grocery shopping alone.  who would have thought grocery shopping could be fun.  we decided to make it a 'date' on a regular basis. we felt like kids again, and it felt good to let go and be the us  that brought us together in the first place.  the 'us' in us seems to get lost easily in day to day life.

hoping tomorrow is back to normal and then i can post picks of the lovlies we bought at michaels saturday.  trying to decide between 3 sketches as to what the finished necklace will look like.  i have a lot of coordinating 'beads' to go with what we bought so the possibilities are wonderful.  

i am off to tranquilize and close my eyes, i hope.  the hubs is 'chasing bunnies' in his sleep,   i need to nudge him awake enough to stop the dream before he breaks a bone, clears off all that decorates his bedside table or falls off the bed.....again. 


here is some summertime eye candy to warm your toes on this cold winter night......

a night at the race track

a humid post thunderstorm sky

a 'cal-i-pit-er' that

became

butterfly

night, night, sleep tight.