1 month out

A little over a month ago is when my anxiety roller coaster started.  Things are getting better but I still have days that are not so great.  Yesterday I felt really good; I was in a great mood and no anxiety at all.  Today I feel sort of blah, tired and I had a bit of anxiety this morning.  So it's up and down for sure at this point.  But- I'm moving in the right direction.

This is what I have done so far:

-  I quit caffeine and alcohol 100%.  This has been hard because I'm so tired and I wish I could just have one cup of coffee!

-  I am eating 100% gluten free and most of the time I am trying to eat whole foods, not processed foods. I met with my dietician today and the next step is gluten and dairy free.  I am not excited about this at all because- cheese, yogurt and butter. 

-  I'm journaling before bed.  This is mostly a list of what I am grateful for and what I still need (ie: patience, support, not to feel guilty, etc.)

-  The kids are going to daycare pretty much full-time right now.  On Monday I will keep them home to see how I handle it.  I'm going to slowly ease back into keeping them home with me two days a week.

-  Spending more time outdoors, going for walks, sitting in the yard, trying to enjoy nature.  This always calms me down.

I did get some of my blood work back and it showed an elevated TSH level, a very low glucose level and a couple of other items out of range.  I'm waiting to hear what my functional medicine doc has to say about the results.

Freedom Farms

This weekend we went to a local fall festival at Freedom Farms.  The weather was perfect, the kids were so excited and I felt like my "normal self".  It was a day to be remembered that's for sure.

The pony rides were probably their favorite part of the day.  They each rode twice and we had to practically drag them away from the area when their turn was up.  They were in love!

 

 

 

Then we took a hayrack ride up to the pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins.  Gavin loved riding behind the tractor and we even got to see some cows (his favorite animal).

 

 

 

Next up was face painting.  Emily chose a butterfly and Gavin got a cow.

 



 

 

 

It felt great to be back in the swing of things and feeling like myself again. 

I hope you all had a great weekend too!

Emily & Gavin Lately

I figure I've posted enough about myself lately and I miss writing about the kiddos so here's an update.

Emily:

She's going to be 4 in a little over 2 weeks and I can't handle it.  She loves learning anything and everything and is always asking questions. "How do you spell this momma?  What does this word start with? What's 4+5?"  All day.  She can write her letters and spell all of our names.  She's working on learning to write her numbers and she's pretty good!  She loves music and dancing so much. She can hear a song one or two times and learns the words very quickly.  Her favorite things right now are rocks and jewelry.  We collected lake glass on our vacation this summer and she has quite the collection of glass and rocks that she sorts through and plays with all the time.  I also went through my old jewelry box and gave her a bunch of my old jewelry and she is obsessed.  Her sleep is fantastic- she goes to bed around 8:00 every night and after a couple of songs and naming our favorite things from the day I usually don't hear another peep out of her.  She wakes up around 6:45 or so every morning.  We went through a little phase where she was waking up crying at 4am daily and I got her one of those "alarm clocks" that turns green when it's ok to get up and that stopped that problem the next day.  Her relationship with Gavin is pretty funny.  She loves her little brother so much but she gets annoyed with him from time to time.  She does try to help him do things and she takes good care of him at daycare, which makes my heart swell.

Gavin:

Gavin is 2.5 now and he is so funny and is always laughing about something silly. The past few weeks he has started a difficult phase.  The whining about everything, crying and throwing himself down if he doesn't get his way phase.  It's hard.  I think it happens because he is frustrated.  He wants so badly to do everything that Emily can do and when he can't he gets very upset.  He also doesn't talk very clearly so we have a hard time understanding what he's trying to say sometimes.  He has started sort of stuttering at the beginning of sentences and I remember Emily going through this too.  It's like their little brains are moving faster than their mouths can get the words out.  He is all boy as far as being physical.  He loves wresting around and climbing all over his dad and jumping off anything and everything.  He is much more daring than Emily which gives me a heart attack daily. He loves our animals and walks around the house calling for them during the day "Where are you Sadie? Where are you Pete?"  His favorite things right now are animals, trucks and trying to do anything that Emily is doing.  He follows that girl around and does exactly what she does all day long.  His sleep is not great.  He fights going to bed for over an hour and he wakes up at 6am on most days.

Mostly, I'm just so thankful that I have these two little ones in my life. 

The stone is finally gone!

Thank God, the stone is gone.

We went to the hospital at 7:30am yesterday for my second surgery.  I got checked in, got my IV and talked to the nurse anesthetist.  He told me I would be under general anesthesia and the urologist would use a laser to break the stone and then remove it.  If everything looked ok he would also remove the stent and I would be good to go.  Then the urologist came in, told me the same thing and said he would see me in 4 weeks for a check up.

So off to surgery I went, it was quick and before I knew it I was waking up in recovery.  About 2 hours later I was able to go home.  I was sore but not nearly as sore as I had been the past few days. The doctor had given Steve these pictures when he went to update him.  Crazy that something so small can wreak such havoc.

When we got home, the kids were across the street with Grandma and they came over for a few minutes to say hi and bring me flowers they picked.  They are just the cutest.  They have been handling this so well and I am thankful for that.

All of this seems like a weird practical joke and I'm ready for some calm in my life.  Or at least no trips to the ER in the near future.

Another trip to the ER

Yesterday I was starting to feel better pain wise from my ovarian cyst rupture.  My anxiety has been under control and I've been feeling better all around.  We went to our friend's son's birthday party and we all had a great time. The kids has their faces painted for the first time and they were so excited!

After the party the kids really wanted to see Grandma and Grandpa so we dropped them off and went home to relax a bit.  After about a half hour I started to have sharp pain in my lower right back.  The pain was gradually getting worse and I told Steve we might have to go back to the ER.  In my mind I was thinking, "are you f*cking kidding me??".  We called Steve's parents and told them what was going on and within 10 minutes the pain went from bearable to unbearable- I might throw up- get in the car and drive fast.  I think I screamed at Steve to go faster the whole 30 minutes to the hospital.

They got me to a room pretty quickly and gave me pain meds thankyoulord.  Then we waited for another CT scan and talked to the ER doctor (same guy who saw me on Wednesday- crazy).  My CT scan showed a 6mm kidney stone backing up my kidney flow and causing quite a bit of swelling.  The doctor did not know why it didn't show up on the scan from Wednesday and he also said that my kidney looked normal on the scan from Wednesday.  So he consulted with the urologist on call and they decided I would be going to surgery at 8pm to see if he could get the stone out.

Long story short, he wasn't able to get the stone out so a stent was placed and I go back in tomorrow to have the stone broken up with a laser.

Lord I need a break.

What a night

Wednesday I met with my nutritionist for the first time.  She is awesome and she has a lot of experience helping people with anxiety and PMS (and many other conditions ) change their eating habits to relieve their symptoms.  We will meet every 2-3 weeks and go over her goals for me and what I have been eating and how I have been feeling.  My goals for the next two weeks are to go 100% gluten free and to control my blood sugar by eating breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack and dinner.  If I eat fruit or a (gluten free) carb I need to "anchor" it with a healthy fat like avocado, coconut products, nuts or seeds.  So if I want an apple I need to have almond butter with it so that my blood sugar doesn't spike.  She also wants me to add more of these healthy fats to each meal.  Meeting with her helped me a lot and made me feel like I was doing something productive to feel better.

I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before so I had been a tiny bit anxious all day.  When we picked the kids up from daycare I was feeling really anxious.  For some reason the needs of the kids and the loudness/craziness has been triggering my anxiety.  It doesn't happen all the time but it happens.  So after dinner we decided to go for a walk because being out in the fresh air almost always helps to calm my anxiety.

We got home from the walk and I was feeling better, when out of nowhere I started having really sharp pains in my lower abdomen.  I thought maybe I needed to go to the bathroom but that wasn't the case.  I sat on the bathroom floor trying not to get sick and told Steve to call his mom (she has a long career in nursing).  When she got to our house I was feeling very faint, the pain was getting much worse and I was starting to hyperventilate.  She said we should probably get to the ER in case it was my appendix or another kidney stone.

I put on the bravest/most normal face that I could and said goodnight to the kids and off to the ER we went.  The ER doc was convinced it was my appendix but after a cat scan they told me I had an ovarian cyst that had burst and that I have three other cysts on my left ovary.

The upside to all of this is that I was able to keep my anxiety under control and besides being very sore I was fairly calm all day yesterday.

Here's hoping this weekend is a relaxing one.

Anxiety Part II

Yesterday was the first day in 2 weeks that I actually felt like myself.  I was so grateful to be able to drop my kids off at daycare, go to work, pick my kids up, make dinner, actually eat dinner and play as a family until bedtime.

It's amazing the little things that are taken for granted when we feel fine.

The mornings are still my hardest time of the day.  I wake up with a terrible jittery, anxious feeling and getting the kids fed and off to daycare is a struggle.  There is a lot of inner dialogue that goes something like this, "everything is fine, you can do this, take a deep breath, etc."

Things I'm doing to help with my anxiety:
-  Taking Zoloft 25mg daily and Ativan .5mg as needed
-  I haven't had any coffee or alcohol in 2 weeks
-  I go to spinning 2-3 times a week and I take a lot of walks, being outside helps a lot
-  I listen to guided meditation before bed and it usually puts me to sleep
-  If I start to feel overwhelmed around the kids, I remove myself and go somewhere quiet
-  I've been writing in a journal before bed
-  I use my essential oils all the time
-  Acupuncture and chiropractic
-  Therapy
-  I am meeting a nutritionist tomorrow that was recommended by my functional medicine doctor

I don't know how today will go but for now I am thankful that yesterday was a good day.