Missed Me?

OK, yeah, it has been a while so I have finally decided to come clean as to why my blogging has been so erratic. For about the last year I have been progressively having more and more joint and overall muscle pain. I have been to the doctors numerous times in the last 18 months. All kinds of blood tests for everything from West Nile, RA, MS, chronic fatigue, lupus, and fibro myalgia, to more than I can even remember. There were days when getting out of bed required absolutely my entire stubbornness, which anyone that knows me knows how much of that there is, I would get in the shower turn the water as hot as possible and wait until I could move enough to head into work. I was becoming very weak, unable to lift things I have always taken for granted like a bale of hay, or even groceries. I was also having a lot of other symptoms like using the wrong words in conversations, forgetting basic things and finally some pretty serious tummy issues.

Besides the physical issues I was also dealing with some pretty stressful situations at home and work, like having a drug addicted cousin threaten Scott and I with a baseball bat in my front yard, getting Emily settled in her first apartment, my brother-in-law having some serious health issues which Nancy and I rushed over to be with Donna in Ogden. Work finally hired a second analyst who turned out to be a psychopath in my lab for about two months. My sleeping, despite my ambient addiction was approximately 3-4 hours a night. In November I had to go to New Orleans for a water convention and knew I couldn't handle that on my own, so Scott went with me. The day we got home I went and picked up a couple of Shetland ponies that I had bought, and the day after that I had a colonoscopy. The colonoscopy showed lymphocytic colitis which the doctor prescribed some steroids for a couple months to clear up. Blood tests were continuously inconclusive except for one main thing, a serious vitamin D deficiency (no seriously, I am outside all the time).

All of this stress finally caught up with me and I had a pretty serious break down in both my mental and physical health just before Christmas. After seeing my doctor (again) she decided that I needed some serious anti-anxiety drugs, and that the steroid that the gastroenterologist prescribed has caused even more anxiety. So, a couple months on some of these new medications and I'm starting to feel a lot better, and a whole lot more like my old self. Turns out the human body isn't designed to continuously stress and go non-stop. With this new medication, I am still going a lot, probably not as much as I was, but I can sit still long enough to watch a 30 minute sitcom, and I am sleeping about 5-6 hours a night now.

I'm not 100% but I'm working on it, one of the problems of long term vitamin D deficiency is muscle weakness, and so as recommended by my doctor I am now going to a tanning bed about once a week, which is really weird for me. The anti-anxiety drugs are helping with the muscle and joint pain, and I am trying really hard to slow down....I promise, I really am trying.

So on top of all that, I just haven't had the energy or enthusiasm to keep up with the blog, but I have had several things that I wanted to blog about, so for the next few months there may be some random posts from the last year or so.

Thanks for checking back in