Appreciating those special people

It occurred to me recently how very fortunate I am.  I have three beautiful children, just added a beautiful granddaughter and the most amazing man I think I could have possibly ever met.  I don't know what I must have done in a previous life to deserve such great fortune but perhaps I don't let them know quite as often as I should how absolutely amazing each one is and how truly blessed I am for them all.

My fiance is a true super hero but maybe one that is conflicted and doesn't know yet that he has these super powers.  The man works very hard, averaging 6 days a week, comes home and continues to work hard.  Unfortunately for him, not long after we met, I started to become not so well.  I always had little pangs here and there but the pangs turned into pain, and developed into chronic pain.  He complains sometimes that I am always sick, but other than all his complaining you would never know living with and being with someone like me who is chronically unwell was anything but exactly where he wanted to be.  I can't imagine Royalty could be lavished with more love, attention and affection from their subjects.  He daunts on me.  He is my morning alarm clock, my medicine dispensary, my personal chef, personal trainer, butler, chauffeur and of course amazing lover! All that and he's super sexy!  If I'm having a bad day just knowing that he's there to protect and love me is all I will ever need.  I believe I would never be able to face all that I have gone through and all these illnesses have done to me if it weren't for him.

Do you have someone who you truly love and depend on?  Someone who you may not feel you can express your appreciation for them enough?  Tell me your love story and how that person has affected your life.

Not so unbelievable

I would love to say it's hard to believe that I haven't posted in over a year but it's really not that surprising to me.  It's probably not too surprising to anyone who really knows me either.  What might be surprising is that even though I don't log in here to post I have notes, spirals, a memo app on my phone and countless other places that I keep notes and collect info for no purpose or end game other than chronicling those little things that remind me that something is not quote right or that my body is off at the moment.  The thing about it is, my symptoms sometimes subside, leave altogether or take a long sabbatical leaving me to forget what it was that was concerning me in the first place.  The problem for those around me is that they witness and hear about those times that I know and feel something is off since I have a tendency to not only write it down but also voice it whether to myself or whomever is sharing oxygen with me at the time.  What this interprets to for those people around me is constant whining, whimpering and complaining.  It seems as though the doctors have labeled me as depressed and having anxiety.  I may have to agree with anxiety but I will have to respectfully disagree with any reference to depression.  I know that many will say that chronic illness and depression go hand and hand and I suppose it makes sense but for me I just cannot accept it to be.  Yes I would absolutely love to stop being in pain, yes I would love to have answers and be "fixed" but to try to label me with some general anxiety or depression term in order to explain away any symptoms I have I will not accept that.  To say someone is depressed because they would like to get back their quality of life is no more accurate than the days of old of blaming everything on dehydration and hormones.  Our bodies are complex and just like any machine can have multiple systems that are affected by something quite simple.  Why does the health industry look for a long difficult explanation and when incapable of narrowing down to one item blaming general things like anxiety and depression?  Hopefully I can keep coming here to keep a diary of these feeling, my symptoms, test results, diagnosis and other silly things I find out along the way, and hopefully one day this will help someone else who might feel lost identify with another lost, but not depressed soul :)

Get Inspired!

So this weekend has been hectic so far and will be all the way until Monday morning when it's time to go back to work, but I wanted to get at least one post in because I found inspiration in an unsuspecting place on Friday and can't stop thinking about it.  One of my co-workers who also has an auto-immune disease is doing something about it!  She is involved in an organization call ed Take Steps.  While promoting this event we got to chatting and I'm so glad we did!  As another sufferer of an auto-immune I understand how it is when people don't understand that you are sick because you don't have something like cancer or heart disease and they don't necessarily understand it.  People generally only care or ask or seek knowledge about what directly effects them.  This was a perfect conversation starter as I am the "new girl" there and don't know many of my co-workers.  We didn't have any in depth, eye-opening, philosophical type of conversation that would move Heaven and Earth but just getting to know a little bit about people in your work, community and neighborhood deeper than just your name, age and race is nice sometimes.  It's inspiring in a world where we are so attached to our electronic devices and just rush past each other in the grocery store.  It inspired me and took me back to a time when I was younger and people knew each other better and where more empathetic to each other rather than being so automated all of the time.  It gave me hope!

If you are interested in her cause the link can be found below and donations of any kind are always welcome year round!:

http://online.ccfa.org/site/TR/2013TakeStepsWalk/Chapter-NorthFlorida?px=2337255&pg=personal&fr_id=3852

If you have problems with the link or if expires for any reason please message me and let me know so I can get an updated one.