aw, crap!

I guess I might have overdone it yesterday. At least I hope that's what it is. I have been exhausted today. Completely wiped out! *sigh* I guess I got my hopes up a little bit too soon. And that's not a new thing to me. My poor mother, love her heart, has always griped at me for "doing too much". She could never understand why I insisted that when I felt good, I HAD to do as much as possible. Which in years past, involved doing all sorts of stuff for my boys during our homeschooling years.

I never understood how she, the woman who, to this day, will run herself ragged doing for others, couldn't see why I felt it was my duty to do all I could for my boys. She is of the opinion that my health issues should take presedence. I know she is concerned because I am, after all, still "her baby", her firstborn. But she has trouble I guess seeing me as a mom too. Funny how that is, even when her only grandchildren, my two sons, and my daughter-in-law (!) are grown and on their own now... I'm still her little girl. My mommy is so funny that way. And I love her for it, but it sometimes makes me crazy. *heh*

So now my boys are grown and I'm not the homeschool mommy anymore and I don't often have to put myself out very much. I like to be involved in our church and of course in our Emmaus community. That's really my whole life besides my family. With my daughter-in-law working now, and all of the kids working so much with the teens at their church, we don't get together with them as much these days.

Anyhow, seems I maybe overdid it yesterday & now I'm drooping a bit. But the hubs & I have a leadership workshop at church in the morning and we're suppose to help set up, so I need to have my big ol' butt in the bed because 7 am comes early... a whole heckuva lot earlier than noon, right?

God bless!!

things are lookin' up...

Wow! I was up by noon today! Go me! Seriously, if you have been reading here, or paying attention, you know I've been doing some major sleeping lately. Til way up in the afternoon! So to get out of bed for good by noon is a major step for me! Lord willing, just switching the time I take those blood pressure meds.. oh, and using my C-PAP machine will fix this problem.

I may not have gotten up then except the phone kept ringing. A couple of times it was sales calls, which I hang up on. Then it was Mom, checking on me. Then it was my mother-in-law asking if she and my father-in-law could ride with me to an Agape making party (it's an Emmaus thing ;) and then she told me that the blind couple in our community wanted a ride, too. So, okay, yeah, I can do that. We have room in our super-cab pickup for six, so no problem there.

Then about 1 o'clock I got a call from the blind lady asking if I could run them to town, first Walmart then their bank. Seems they'd gotten into some financial strain & needed to transfer some funds before 5 o'clock.

*sigh* I admit it. At first I felt very put upon. But then I prayed for God to take that away and give me a thankfulness that I am able to help them. So, I told her I had to wait because another lady from our Emmaus community was bringing over some craft supplies for tonight, but after she left, I'd be there. That'd be around 2:30.

So the craft supplies lady is a very friendly, jovial woman and she likes to talk. *heh* I found myself looking at the clock and starting to feel irritated. But then I stopped myself and just chatted back with her. And guess what? She probably wasn't here but about 10 minutes or so. And there I was feeling as if she was putting me behind schedule. Thanks, God. :)

I hurried to get my shoes on & gather up my purse & grocery list. Yep, I needed to go to town anyway, so it wasn't really an imposition for me to take this lady with me. I was a little unsure of how much she might slow me down though, since I'd never been grocery shopping with her before.

I felt so bad for them as her mother-in-law, who lives next door & helps take care of this couple, was telling me about the mess they were trying to straighten out. Something about changing when their insurance payments came out and overdrafts and interest... I just felt so bad for her. I know how it feels when something like that happens & it is NO FUN having to ask someone else for help let alone having to tell them why you need the help. :(

So after I was fairly sure both she and I knew what we were supposed to do, we took off. First we did the shopping. They only had three things on their list, but it wasn't hard having her along as I made stops to pick up what I needed. The most annoying part was how people kept stepping in front of us. She was holding onto the cart handle and I had hold of the side or front of the cart, slowing her down or turning her as necessary. Obviously they didn't realize she was blind, but still it was so frustrating! She made a comment about me being "an old pro at this", so I must have done okay comparatively. LOL!

At the checkout, I just positioned her in front of the keypad and let her take care of withdrawing the extra money. I swear, it took less time to do my shopping with her in tow than it usually does for me by myself. Of course, I would have stopped to look at stuff I didn't need if I'd been alone, so she probably saved us a few bucks! LOL! I told her as much, too.

We joked about how she was going to have to find where I'd parked because I'd forgotten. I then took her to their bank, walked her in and let her take care of the deposit there. Then we headed back to her house. I helped carry in the groceries and the little mother-in-law, who is in a wheelchair, just thanked me over & over. I told her it wasn't a problem since I had to go anyway. That seemed to ease her mind a lot.

And now I'm at home, where I discovered that my sugar had gotten a little low, 57... sheesh! And I got all my groceries put away, my low blood sugar treated & sitting here writing this post while I wait for my in-laws to come over so we can ride to pick up the blind couple to go to an Agape making party.

Wow... what a wild & crazy life I lead. And I'm so thankful for it. And SOOOO thankful to be feeling better. God is just good like that.

Blessings~

it's cool being a tool...

A tool of God, that is. That's what my hubby and I had the honor of being this past Sunday. It was snowing and had been during the night, so there was enough snow on the ground to make most churches cancel services. Yes, I know, it doesn't take much and believe me, it wasn't much, but it was enough to get on top of your shoes if you walked through the grass.

Since our truck is not a four-wheel drive, we decided not to take the hilly road we usually do to church. We went around a longer way and were headed down the parkway. I was fooling with my phone and didn't see her, but Tommy suddenly said, "I bet that woman is freezing to death." I looked up but didn't see anyone. Then he slowed down & said, "I wonder where she's going. I should have stopped and picked her up." He asked me if I thought so. I told him it was up to him since I hadn't seen her.

So he turned the truck around and soon I could see her. All humped over with a Army jacket on, jeans and tennis shoes...walking in the field, so I knew her feet had to have been soaked & frozen.

Tommy pulled over, rolled down his window and hollered, "Would you like a ride?" She said yes, she would and she was just going to the little grocery store at the gas station about a 1/4 mile down the parkway. We drove there & Tommy told her if she wasn't going to be too long, we'd just wait and drive her back home if she wanted. She gratefully said okay and jumped out of the truck.

I was struggling with feeling "put upon" and feeling guilty for it. I was supposed to work in child care during the second service and it was looking like we were going to be late for first service, especially if we took this lady home, too.

It wasn't long before she came back out and we were on our way to take her home. It turned out that she lived just off the road we live on, about a mile and a half from us. We were almost out of gas, too and had planned to make a stop for fuel after church but driving the extra distance, we were going to have to stop before going to church and soon, according to the fuel gauge.

Once we got to her house, which turned out to be a rough-looking single-wide trailer that she said had been divided in half, so she was renting half of it. She'd told us that she had just moved in Friday. She said she'd went with "this guy" to pick up some furniture the homeless shelter had given her and on the way back home, they stopped at a liquor store. She told us later that he had gotten violent. She did have a cut lip. She had called the police, so the man was now in jail. As Tommy pulled up, he started asking if she would want to go to church with us, but he never even got the question out before this lady said, "Yes, I would love to go to church with you!"

She insisted on changing clothes, so we turned off the truck while she went inside the trailer. Yes, the fuel was getting that low. While she was changing, I texted the lady at church to tell her I wouldn't be able to work in child care. We didn't think it was a good idea for Tommy to be alone in second service with this lady we'd just met. The woman at church agreed with that and said they'd handle things without me that day.

The sermon and worship music was awesome and perfectly suited for her that morning. She said she loved it and would love to go with us again. We told her it'd be a pleasure to pick her up since she was right on our way anyway.

She called me Monday wanting to know if I had a flat screwdriver and hammer she could borrow. Apparently she'd got a ride to town with someone to get groceries and to take her by the jail. She said the guy who'd beaten her Friday had her key in his pocket when he was arrested and now she was locked out of her trailer because he wouldn't sign the key over to her. At that time, Tommy was gone in the only vehicle we have, so I had no way to drive down there. She said her landlord wasn't home so she couldn't get in.

I didn't know what else to do since I couldn't help her. She apparently must have waited til her landlord was back and got them to let her in.

I called her Tuesday to see if she wanted to go to Celebrate Recovery at our church. She told me she was back at the homeless shelter in the next town over. When her landlord had let her in, she saw the damage done by the guy, apparently she ran into the bathroom to get away from him and he'd torn the door off its hinges. So the landlord had kicked her out.

She seemed to be okay. She told me she was reading the devotional book given to her by our church as a first-time visitor gift. I told her to stay focused on Jesus and to keep me posted with what was going on with her.

I don't know what God meant or us to do for her, Christina, but I hope we didn't fail Him. I'm not sure why she went to the shelter in the neighboring town, instead of the one here. It was amazing though, to watch God work.

First, we never go that way to church. We usually take a much shorter route that would have completely bypassed where Christina was when we passed. Also, she told us she had felt such an urgency to "hurry" and go to the store when she had all day to get there, but she had felt an urge to hurry and thankfully, she gave in to that. Why did we have this encounter with her? I'm not sure, but perhaps we were merely the sowers and someone else will come along and water and someone else then will reap a harvest in her life.

But wow... how cool to be a tool in the hands of such an awesome God!!

oversleeped...

So, yeah, I'm still dealing with this crazy fatigue/exhaustion/whatever. I mean, c'mon, when you sleep til 4pm, SOMEthing is just WRONG!!

I went back to the doctor yesterday for a post-antibiotics check-up. She said my ears look fine & I'm no longer wheezing, which was all great. Thank God! I really love my doc. She's actually a Physician Assistant, but she's just so down to earth I can tell her anything. The dude-doc, who I also really like, is not quite as easy to talk to. He's Indian, not like Native American, the other kind (LOL!) and he is horrible about making faces. I mean, if you will notice, it must be a cultural thing because if you encounter a person of Indian heritage who is not really talkative, they will more often than not, make these expressions. I tell him he would suck at poker because of that. LOL! He's super about thinking outside the box and NOT treating mere symptoms. He wants to get to the cause of the problem, but those daggone expressions kill me. After my first visit, I just started saying, "What does THAT face mean?" *heh*

Anyhow, so I told the PA about my super-sleep-itis & her first question was do I snore? Well, um, so he says. ;) And yeah, I know I do because I sometimes wake myself up. I told her that I do and that, yeah, I have a C-PAP machine at home, but that I'd not been wearing it. She said that was the first thing. Then she looked over my meds & suggested that I try taking my blood pressure medicine at night instead of morning.

I started that last night. I'm hoping that's what it is since it is a relatively new medicine. But I wasn't all bright-eyed & bushy-tailed this morning. I slept til after noon. *sigh*

I feel like a total failure when I do that, but it's like I canNOT make myself get up! I'm going to try hitting the hay around 11pm tonight. That IS when I get to bed most nights, although I HAVE gone til about 1am a few times since all this sleep-sleeping began. I have done that before though and had NO problem getting up in the morning. I'm hoping changing the time of my bp med will help.

We shall see...

digging out...

Wow... it's been SO long since I had a blog with, well, with lots of things. Like regular posts, fancy gadgets, um, readers!

I don't quite know what to do with myself. But I do want to say THANK YOU for the wonderful, encouraging comments. You don't know how much they've done for me. :)

Back on the topic of depression... the last couple of days, I've been able to get up several hours earlier. That's a step in the right direction. I wasn't this specific before, but I have been sleeping like 14-18 hours, y'all. Yeah, HOURS. I just could NOT make myself get out of bed, other than slogging through the room to let Tucker in and out, and a trip to the bathroom, I was sacked out sleeping like a dead woman. Totally zonked and just UNable to make myself wake up.

Of course that meant I was also missing my morning meds, which includes a huge dose of thyroid (duh, the metabolism regulating hormone?!) I was diagnosed with Grave's Disease back in 1999, and since my heart rate was near 190, I was immediately put on beta blockers, had to stop breastfeeding my baby (my second & last child) and was sent to an endocrinologist for further treatment of the Grave's. The nurses there kept telling me how much better I was going to feel once they got this under control. I'd quit feeling SO tired and stop being perpetually "too hot" & sweating ALL the time and I'd have SO much MORE energy.

Yeah. Whatever. It didn't happen like that AT ALL!! The endo decided a radioactive iodine treatment, or I-131, was the best way to go. Sounds creepy, I know and I wish in the worst way that I'd had the wisdom to seek a second opinion back then, I was just SO eager to start feeling better!! I never gave it a thought and forged ahead.

ANYhow... after the I-131 treatment, my thyroid production was not decreased, but it CEASED. I mean, it went from about 5x above normal to almost immeasurable... hovering barely above zero!! I could tell the endo wasn't expecting that & definitely not so suddenly. I was to have a blood draw at my regular doc's instead of driving to Lexington to the edno's office, and the results sent to him two weeks after the treatment. They called & wanted me up there pronto once they got those results & instead of the usual month or more before going on thyroid replacement meds, I was on them in two weeks. And a high dose of them, too.

Even now, if I have to go to a different pharmacy than my usual one (where my sweet cousin is the druggist!) they always question my dosage of thyroid. It's more than double what is considered "normal". *sigh* Yeah, so ... I dunno if the endo over-dosed me with the radioiodine or if my body just really needed more thyroid than most, but anyhow, now I have a very sluggish metabolism and missing my thyroid meds is NOT a good thing. I know that's just added to my lethargy but if I don't take that by noon, I am not supposed to take it. It is affected by dosage timing, so... if I miss that rather large window of opportunity, I just miss out for the day. I know, I KNOW... alarm clock. But see, you act as though you're talking to a practical, functional person... and when I'm this deep in a depression...you're just NOT, okay?

So, yeah, I had been up and sorta going while it was still morning the last few days. I've worked on a project I have coming up for our Emmaus Community. I even went to a reunion group meeting last Thursday. And do you know, I mean THIS is how good God is, there were two ladies there that I hadn't met before. One of them sat right across the table from me. And when I shared that my biggest struggle was & had been this debilitating depression, SHE TOUCHED MY ARM & SAID, "I've been going through the same thing. I know exactly what you're talking about." And she really did, too. We talked a little more about how destructive depression can be and how hard it is to 'make it' make sense to someone who's never experienced it.

See how God looks after me? :) He's awesome like that and I really needed the reminder that He's always there for me.

Today, I got out of the house and ran around Lexington with my hubby and kids. We did not one single solitary thing that could possibly be construed as constructive or productive. But it was good for me. I walked and walked around in the mall with Melissa. I enjoyed good meals with her, Tommy, both my sons and one "adopted" son, a friend of theirs from church. I laughed my head off at their snowball fights in restaurant parking lots and monkey calls in the middle of department stores.

I may not have accomplished a thing, but I feel blessed, and I feel hopeful. And folks, it's been way too long since I felt a glimmer of hope.

Life is good, just like the God Who gives it.

Blessings...

bump, rattle...

That's the sound my thoughts are making as they roll around my head. I've got so many of them up there, you'd think there would be no room. So either that means there's more space in my brain that I thought (of course, meaning my brain is bigger!) or maybe my thoughts are smaller than they seem to me?

*chuckle* It's scary the way my mind works sometimes...

I've been so sick the past few days. The day before Tommy was to leave for camp for the boys' Chrysalis, I felt it coming on. The sore throat, thumping headache.

"But maybe I can fight it off.."

Yeah, whatever. So Tommy going to serve at camp means he's gone for three days. Now there are special services almost each day, so I will normally go down there if we can afford the gas, that is.

We had three boys who were going to be attending the weekend. Boys that we've watched grow up in some cases, through the church. Boys who have taken to calling me Mama & Tommy Dad. So he was thrilled to be able to serve this weekend.

Not only that, but both our sons were also serving down there. One on the music team and one in a support team. So we had two generations serving... but then they needed another person for prayer team and asked Tommy's dad to serve. Wow... three generations serving on this one Chrysalis and there were seven other father-son/s "sets" serving.

What an awesome legacy! And what an amazing weekend it was. The precious testimonies of those boys was such a blessing! I'm excited to see what God's going to accomplish through them.

So I spent the weekend trying to fight off the inevitable bronchitis. I barely slept for coughing and trying to breathe. I made a batch of soup for a family who's father had surgery and went with another lady to take that out to them. That was Friday, the night Tommy left. Then Saturday, I left around 7am to get to the send-off ceremony at camp, taking a bowl of "Dirt Cake" that one of our boys requested. By Saturday night, I was quite a bit sicker & called in to our children's services coordinator at church to say I couldn't serve the next day. Then I got a text from camp saying the cake was all gone & the boys were clamouring for more. I hoped maybe my daughter-in-law could pick up the ingredients and bring to me after church the next day, but she had to take her siblings back home in a neighboring county, which would have made it too late to make the cake.

*sigh* So I dragged myself to the local grocery store, which is always higher so I seldom shop there. I realized once I was at the checkout that my debit card was at home, so I had to run back outside to get my checkbook. As I gathered my bags to leave, I could have sworn I stuck the checkbook in my coat pocket, but as I was struggling to get the door unlocked at home, the phone rang. It was someone from the store saying I'd left the checkbook. *siiiigh*

I dropped the bags inside the house & went straight back to the store, hurried back home to put the 'cake' together, then got in a hot tub to sweat awhile, took some more Alka Seltzer & got dressed to head to special service at camp & of course, deliver the requested food stuffs. ;)

By Monday morning I was feeling horrible.

Since I already had a check-up appointment scheduled for Tuesday, I didn't even try to get in to see the doctor on Monday. I didn't want to spend the day sitting in the waiting room and I didn't want to risk pushing myself/time to get to camp for closing ceremony & picking up of my hubby.

So by the time I made it to the doc's office, it was confirmed that I did indeed have bronchitis and not only that... a double ear infection! Go, me!! Woo!

No wonder I felt horrific all weekend! I seriously don't know how I made it through. But then again... I DO know::

Isaiah 41:10---"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

depression...

I suffer from depression. That's kind of a lame statement to my way of thinking. Doesn't EVERYONE have moments in their lives when they feel depressed about something? Especially if you have survived the teenage years!

And I know there are different levels of depression; clinical, major, et cetera. I also have diabetes. Type I, not Type II, which are two totally different diseases, by the way. I've had it for almost 40 years. It sucks. But there it is, and I do the best I can to live, day after day, minute by minute, with this disease that has no remission.

I know people who have had transplants and now are no longer classified as diabetic, but the disease has left its mark on their bodies, not to mention they now must take anti-rejection drugs, so I'm not sure I'd be jumping up & down wanting a transplant. And of course, that leaves out the fact that MOST of the time, you are not "eligible" for a pancreas transplant unless your kidneys have failed & you need one of those too, so you see, transplantation is not the "cure" it would seem to be.

It is proven that diabetics almost across the board, suffer with major depression. Not just diabetics, but anyone with a chronic disease. And why not? Dealing with an ongoing disease, for which there is no cure and no easy treatment ought to depress anybody, right?

Even someone who is naturally upbeat and positive will succumb to depression to some degree at some point in their lives. It's just the nature of the beast.

Your body doesn't work correctly when you have diabetes. In Type II, it's "usually" because you have been overweight OR you have simply not been good to your body, feeding it a consistently unhealthy diet, and the pancreas just reaches a point where it can't go on your body no longer reacts to insulin as it should. Again, that's "usually". Sometimes people get mad when you infer that their Type II diabetes is kinda sorta their own fault and they could have avoided it had they just watched their diet and maintained a healthy weight.

And just to be perfectly honest, I get a little offended when people try to place Type II on the same playing field with Type I. For those of us with Type I, there was nothing, not one. single. thing. we could have done differently to avoid having this disease. NOTHING. Our pancreases are faulty, we don't produce any insulin in most cases, so there's no chance for us to change our lifestyle and get back to a non-diabetic state.

Type I isn't reversible, no matter what book titles you've seen in Barnes & Noble, okay? That's what happens when you confuse Type I with Type II... you get idiotic books that tell you if you'll just eat raw whole foods, you can become un-diabetic.

Whatever. It ain't gonna happen. There's not one single case.

Okay, so now that we're clear on the main difference between the two so-called "types" of diabetes, let's move on to the depression that inevitably comes along with it.

Do you realize that for a diabetic, there is not a single moment when this disease is not affecting our bodies in some way? Every morsel we put in our mouths, every half-hour we delay eating or the times we forget to eat altogether, the times we are more active than usual...or less active, the fifteen minutes we sleep in and delay that first finger prick to see how much insulin we should take, or the times we forget to take it... There is no respite from the demands of diabetes.

Most of you know, I now use an insulin pump, which is a wonderful device, acting as a sort of external pancreas, except that I must tell it what to do. The thing is this: after a few years of living like this, with this "thing", this disease constantly "in your face", so to speak, one tends to get tired.

I reach a point where I simply don't give a flip what my sugar is. That's the danger zone right there. And normally it is the precursor to a round with some pretty nasty depression.

Now, I have taken antidepressants in the past. They never caused any of the horrible side effects I've heard about on YouTube...although there were a few way back when I was first put on them that we discovered DID NOT WORK. But even when you find one that works great, they're not free, nor are they cheap.

So, when push comes to shove, or more precisely, when money gets tight, I start looking at my long list of meds to see just how many of them I can do without.

And also, I don't WANT to be dependent on anti-deps, either. Even though I know I feel better and get along better when I'm on them.

So anyway, the kind of depression that comes shortly after or maybe along with the "who gives a flip" attitude is vicious. I feel so desperately alone and useless. I know I'm not taking care of myself, and with each passing year, I know that my body can't withstand me getting into this kind of funk as well. I know I'm doing damage to my organs and shortening my life. But somehow, SOMEHOW I just don't care.

So I ask you, how do you deal with that? Once you get to the point where you KNOW that you KNOW and you still don't care? You can't seem to MAKE yourself care. How do you rebound from that? How do you climb out of a hole that dark and that deep?

I'm not sure. But I sure need to know. God help me climb out of this hole, help me to stay out of it. Show me how. Amen.