Weekly Weigh In....or not...
Weight: ???
So, after the week from...well...not Heaven if you catch my drift, it's not at all surprising that my scale has given up on me. It has been absolutely grueling.
Two days this week I was in bed with excruciating abdominal pain. There were no other symptoms. No medicine seemed to alleviate it in the slightest. On the bright side, no one else in my family suffered from it. Which also means, we don't know what caused it. It could have been a flu bug of some sort, and my family was lucky enough to avoid it. It could be tied to my fibromyalgia or Hashimoto's. It could be something else entirely. That's one of the difficulties of having chronic pain. With these disorders, I never know if the pain is connected. Is that pain from the cold, rainy, winter weather, or did I actually pull a muscle? Ouch, that hurts, is that a fibro flare or a pinched nerve? Stomach pain... something I ate, my disorder, or appendicitis? Could this chest pain be just one of my attacks, or an actual heart attack? I'm afraid to delve too deeply into the research. To be honest, Web M.D. is a rabbit hole for me. Like many others, I would be the one to search symptoms of a pinched nerve and come out the other end convinced the doctors are going to amputate something. I do very basic searches for warning signs to look for, and leave it at that until I see my actual doctor. No use getting my anxiety into overdrive. But the pain itself is real. No matter how much I wish it was all in my head, or just my anxiety, the pain remains.
One day this week, the anxiety and pain became overwhelming. And so, I had a panic attack. I'm not ashamed of it. It happens. And thankfully, I have a great support system. We were able to get it under control in relatively no time at all. Though, it does take a toll on me physically. During the peak of the panic attack, my whole body tensed. Unfortunately my left side never let go after it was over. So, I couldn't lift my left arm the rest of the day.
Another disappointment, our daughter found her giant Christmas gift hidden in our closet, completely by accident. It was my fault. I had mentioned needing something out of the closet without being specific enough to say it was actually the hall closet I needed it from. Of course, something so big, I couldn't just take it away and make her wait until Christmas. It was nice to see the smile on her face, but it means I'm back shopping for the perfect gift from Santa. It also means we had to tell her the Santa secret. How did we have the gift she asked Santa to bring? Well...we HALF told her. We told her that Santa himself doesn't actually go around the world in one night. We told her parents put the gifts under the tree because WE are Santa's elves. This led to so many questions! The best I could come up with was, when you have a baby, you get a letter in the hospital from Santa explaining that you are now an elf for your child. Santa has been given your phone number and the night of Christmas Eve, he calls and tells you if your baby is on the nice list or the naughty list. And you put the gifts or the coal under the tree. The irony is, I never intended on doing the whole Santa thing with my kids. I wanted to focus on our religious beliefs for Christmas. I was afraid of the day she found out it wasn't real. But I was tricked! Bamboozled into participating in the story (the lie!) of Mr. Klaus and his eight flying reindeer. I don't even remember how it happened that she came to know about him. Believe in him. But here we are. She believes he's real, and I'm frantically trying to explain how the elves in all the stories don't really live in the North Pole because they're actually PARENTS!
She is going to hate me when she gets older...
But, I just couldn't break her heart again. Because you see, this week we ALL had a big heart break. We had to say goodbye to our beloved cat, Daxter. He was the most beautiful silver, short haired house cat I've ever seen. We miss him very much. I can't begin to go into it, as the pain is still too great.
Hopefully next week I'll have the new scale to continue weekly weigh ins.
Until then...
So, after the week from...well...not Heaven if you catch my drift, it's not at all surprising that my scale has given up on me. It has been absolutely grueling.
Two days this week I was in bed with excruciating abdominal pain. There were no other symptoms. No medicine seemed to alleviate it in the slightest. On the bright side, no one else in my family suffered from it. Which also means, we don't know what caused it. It could have been a flu bug of some sort, and my family was lucky enough to avoid it. It could be tied to my fibromyalgia or Hashimoto's. It could be something else entirely. That's one of the difficulties of having chronic pain. With these disorders, I never know if the pain is connected. Is that pain from the cold, rainy, winter weather, or did I actually pull a muscle? Ouch, that hurts, is that a fibro flare or a pinched nerve? Stomach pain... something I ate, my disorder, or appendicitis? Could this chest pain be just one of my attacks, or an actual heart attack? I'm afraid to delve too deeply into the research. To be honest, Web M.D. is a rabbit hole for me. Like many others, I would be the one to search symptoms of a pinched nerve and come out the other end convinced the doctors are going to amputate something. I do very basic searches for warning signs to look for, and leave it at that until I see my actual doctor. No use getting my anxiety into overdrive. But the pain itself is real. No matter how much I wish it was all in my head, or just my anxiety, the pain remains.
One day this week, the anxiety and pain became overwhelming. And so, I had a panic attack. I'm not ashamed of it. It happens. And thankfully, I have a great support system. We were able to get it under control in relatively no time at all. Though, it does take a toll on me physically. During the peak of the panic attack, my whole body tensed. Unfortunately my left side never let go after it was over. So, I couldn't lift my left arm the rest of the day.
Another disappointment, our daughter found her giant Christmas gift hidden in our closet, completely by accident. It was my fault. I had mentioned needing something out of the closet without being specific enough to say it was actually the hall closet I needed it from. Of course, something so big, I couldn't just take it away and make her wait until Christmas. It was nice to see the smile on her face, but it means I'm back shopping for the perfect gift from Santa. It also means we had to tell her the Santa secret. How did we have the gift she asked Santa to bring? Well...we HALF told her. We told her that Santa himself doesn't actually go around the world in one night. We told her parents put the gifts under the tree because WE are Santa's elves. This led to so many questions! The best I could come up with was, when you have a baby, you get a letter in the hospital from Santa explaining that you are now an elf for your child. Santa has been given your phone number and the night of Christmas Eve, he calls and tells you if your baby is on the nice list or the naughty list. And you put the gifts or the coal under the tree. The irony is, I never intended on doing the whole Santa thing with my kids. I wanted to focus on our religious beliefs for Christmas. I was afraid of the day she found out it wasn't real. But I was tricked! Bamboozled into participating in the story (the lie!) of Mr. Klaus and his eight flying reindeer. I don't even remember how it happened that she came to know about him. Believe in him. But here we are. She believes he's real, and I'm frantically trying to explain how the elves in all the stories don't really live in the North Pole because they're actually PARENTS!
She is going to hate me when she gets older...
But, I just couldn't break her heart again. Because you see, this week we ALL had a big heart break. We had to say goodbye to our beloved cat, Daxter. He was the most beautiful silver, short haired house cat I've ever seen. We miss him very much. I can't begin to go into it, as the pain is still too great.
Hopefully next week I'll have the new scale to continue weekly weigh ins.
Until then...
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