Bugs are People Too

I haven't written on here in quite a while, and even then, it was super lame. I freely admit, I'm not a writer. I have terrible sentance structure, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and pretty much anything else that could be terrible, is terrible. I've decided I just don't care. I'll never get better if I don't practice. So here goes.


Growing up, I always cringed when I killed bugs. Most people do, I suppose, but not for the reason I did. If I saw an ant crawling on the counter, I would have an internal struggle. Do I let it strut around like it owned the place? Crawling on surfaces where my food is? Or do I kill it and risk ant vengance by loved ones?

I blame cartoons where bugs are given personalities and feelings. If someone killed my brother I would seek revenge and blood. I also blame words like, swarm, and army, which give the allusion of organization. If they can organize, they can fight and kill.

I didn't want any blood on my hands. I didn't want to be traced back to the death and be held accountable. I would try to explain to friends why I didn't want to kill the bug on my backpack, but would realize how ridiculous the words sounded as they came out of my mouth. By the end of my explanation I would already be trying to find a way to prove I wasn't insane, and it usually came down to me laughing, saying "just kidding hah" and squishing the bug...muttering a low apology and request for mercy.

Realizing no one would ever quite understand my fear I stopped explaining it, and asked others to do the deed for me. When I was alone, I would bargain. " If you don't hurt me I won't hurt you and you can go on living your little life, but here are the rules. 1. Stay in your corner, or I will assume you are running towards me to hurt me, and that breaks the contract and it will be your own fault. 2. If you do break the contract, your friends and family have no claim on my blood." This usually worked out pretty well.

The south is pretty much a nightmare for me on a daily basis. I see hundreds if not thousands of bugs daily and I know, I just know that they are all connected and watching each others backs. We have ants up north, but these ones BITE. We have spiders up north, but these ones are POISONOUS. You can imagine how this could complicate an already stressful situation.

I kill ants/spiders/moths, etc on an almost daily basis and none have never been avenged, but that truth does not placate my fear. Irrational as it may be. I didn't write this all for nothing, I wrote it because if I'm ever found dead of an unknown cause, please don't forget to investigate the ants.

Not the best night.....

So last night I woke up feeling all barfy. I opened the bathroom door so I would have a clear shot to the toilet because I was quite sure it would come to that. To my surprise, later (quite a while later) I feel asleep with my innards still intact. I woke up and spent the day with a stomach ache,and super tired for that matter, but thought that maybe I had just handled the beef improperly that I made for lunch. Well, on my way home from church tonight I started feeling a little sicky to my stomach. I came in and took some tums... and that was rough, because I absolutely hate chewing that crap... and started doing the dishes. A few minutes into it my stomach started swelling and feeling sicker and sicker. I didn't end up finishing the dishes because it got so bad I decided I needed to get into my PJ's and lay down. I put my hair in a pony tail (thank heavens) and got out my pj's. All of a sudden I started salivating a ton and had a weird taste in my mouth. I got to the toilet just in time! not fun. I really hate throwing up. So anways, that was about an hour ago. My stomach felt a little better, but in the last 30 minutes i've been getting barfier and barfier. So now I sit, with a pot and a roll of paper towels (incase of one of those -I won't make it to the bathroom- moments) waiting for tj to get home. The very worst part of all of this is, I have a cleaning job tomorrow. I just started last week and I already have to cancel, at the last minute too since it's too late to call tonight. The family just got over the stomach flu last week so I would feel terrible if i came over and spread it all over their house and they got it again. UHG that sure makes me look like a great reliable worker right? I hate when I can't win

Surgery!

It is over! I had so many fears and doubts and those are all gone and I couldn't be happier, and all thanks to God

Like I said in my previous post, endometriosis can only be diagnosed through surgery. It can't be seen by ultrasound or CT scan or anything of that nature. My obgyn and fertility dr all were pretty stinkin certain I had endometriosis because I had pretty much every major symptom. I say this because after my surgery, my Dr. said I DON'T HAVE ENDOMETRIOSIS!!!!!!! Let me start from the beginning.

I got to the surgery center at 6:30 and got bloodwork. I then got prepped for surgery, which included slippers (i'm still wearing and loving them) a cap for my hair, and a gown. They got my IV hooked up and got my mom and tj back there waiting with me. They told me I was going to have a tube in my throat once I fell asleep and that the surgery should take an hour to an hour and a half. I was so scared not knowing what i'd hear when i woke up. i had a test called an HSG done a couple months ago and it looked like one of my tubes was blocked and the other one might be damaged.

I woke up suuuper groggy and nauseaus.... my dr walked by with a big smile on her face and said "you're a perfect woman, we found no endometriosis and were able to fix the tube that was coiled up and kinked" She was so surprised to not find anything there and so was I!! She said that my pain is probably caused by some nerves that are getting inflamed every month and making the pain so bad. All I could say was "God is soo awesome!"

I woke up around 11 oclock and my recovery was only supposed to be 1hr... but I didn't get to leave till almost 4pm. I layed in bed at first, drifting in and out of sleep. Every few minutes my moniter would start alarming and a nurse would say "Grace, wake up and take some deep breaths.... you're breathing too shallow and not getting enough oxygen" It was so annoying. the second i stopped taking deep breaths it would just drop drop drop and then beep and i'd have to start all over again. After a little while they took my to a recliner where my husband and mom got to sit with me. That was before noon. I again drifted... in and out.... and the nurse would come in with a wheelchair and carry my IV bag and take me to the bathroom where I would sit. I didn't feel like I had to go, but they said I had to go before I could go home. I would sit there, start to fall asleep, and finally just pull the cord to get the nurse back in. I did this 4 times. I drank gingerale, had 3 big bags of fluids, and even drank some coffee to try and get myself to go to the bathroom. It just never happened. Eventually, after a few hours they told me I needed to get a catheter in to empty my bladder. Not. Pleasant. They did the cath and i have to say, my bladder was FULL.

As I was getting up, the nurse said, everything that could go bad or be uncomfortable after surgery, you got. I told her that it doesn't even matter, that what mattered was that God took care of me and let me get the best news ever. Much better than I, or any of my doctors expected.

You want to hear a theory? I think God gave me all the symptoms of endometriosis so they would do the surgery and be able to fix the tube. Here's the thing, the HSG I had showed my tube was obstructed... but if we had done surgery just for that, insurance would not have paid for it and tj and i could never have afforded it. But beause of all my symptoms of endometriosis they were able to do the surgery for that, which IS covered by insurance! God really orchestrated this whole thing amazingly. I now have a 50% higher chance of getting pregnant because i now have two working tubes!!

Anyways, I am really hopped up on darvocet right now so please excuse the crappy everything. SO HAPPY!!!

Body Breakdown

So I haven't written in here for quite a while... partly because I didn't have anything interesting to write about and partly because I forgot my password.

I figured I'd write about all the crappy health things i've been going through, so here goes

About two weeks before christmas, my friend Sarah and I decided to play tennis! It was below the freezing point and windy but who cares, we'd be running around right? It was fun, but after a few minutes my legs were numb. A few days later I started noticing my right knee swelling when I was walking on it. I decided to take it easy but a girls gotta walk! This went on till after christmas, getting so bad at times that I was walking around like frankenstein, and avoiding my right knee so much my left knee was hurting as well as my back. I came home from erie and stayed off it as much as possible. All of a sudden it stopped swelling! I was so excited... I fixed it! I was sad to realize it wasn't fixed as much as it was just... different. Now, I would go to extend it to stand up or lay down and it would crack so loud tj could hear it across the room and it felt almost as if it were snapping back into place. I didn't go to the gym or work out at all because I was afraid of irritating it or causing permanent damage. As many of you know, I am out of work right now, so thinking of dropping 20 dollarinos on a copay was out of the question. So I just waited, and rested. Well a couple weeks ago I got sick. pretty darn sick. Fever, sore throat, cough, labored breathing, and general ickiness. Well I haven't gotten completly better and I have surgery next friday (just be patient, I'll get there) so i figured, if i need antibiotics I have to see the Dr. now.

For the last 3 years I've been seeing the Nurse Practitioner at our office. I can't stand her. I could go in with a broken leg and she'd say "there's just a bug going around". Several times I've had to actively pursuade her to actually look into a problem I was having, and each time MY diagnosis was correct and hers was wrong. This time I requested to see the REAL doctor. You know, the one with the PhD. He was great! We had a conversation. That's right, I talked, he listened, he talked, I listened. It was like a breath of fresh air. He told me I had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed me some antibiotics and said I should be fine for surgery(see next paragraph) if I take them. Next I told him about my knee and he put one hand on my knee, and with his other hand moved my leg in all sorts of positions that would be uncomfortable for even the most talented contortionist. As he did this he was talking about that fun popping sound that knees do. He stopped mid sentance and said something along the lines of "Oh wow, listen to that. That is pretty bad" He continued to tell me about how the socket of my knee is all ridged and grindy instead of smooth like it should be and that my knee is in pretty bad shape. So basically I have osteoarthritis in my knee and he prescribed some anti-inflammatory medications and said we'll see how they work. I'm not to play tennis or anything that has me moving like that... you know, all squatty and running sideways type of thing. I have some exercises to do to strengthen the small muscles around my knee cap. In general the visit was nice because he addressed all my concerns, but I am slightly upset to realize I have a problem with my knee that will only get worse with time. OK. Next.

Next friday feb 5th I'm getting laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis. You can't see endometriosis with any sort of ultrasound or scan so to truly diagnose it you have to see it through surgery. My two doctors both believe I have endometriosis due to my symtoms, but like I said, you can never be sure until the surgery. They're going to go in through my belly button and a few other places and look into my pelvis and clean out any scarring and adhesions they find from the endometriosis. They will do a few other things while they're there which may, or may not, be successfull. I have known that I would probably need this surgery for over a year now... and now it's here. I am very excited to get it done, and hopefully there will be some great things that come from it. I am mostly hoping for decreased back and pelvis pain, but there are many things this surgery will affect, such as my ability to get pregnant! Here are my fears... I don't know what I'm going to hear when I wake up. There is a wide spectrum of outcomes. I could wake up from the anesthesia and my doc could say "We went in and found nothing!" Or I could wake up and hear "There was a lot of scarring and adhesions, your tubes (of the fallopian kind) are ruined and will need to be removed. We tried to remove as much as we could, but had some bleeding and had to go from laparoscopy to an open procedure" You see.... when I got my gallbladder out, my dr and I pretty much knew what we were getting ourselves into. In this case, neither of us do, and I won't know until I wake up what my fate is.

OK so I get it, this was boring, and long. Here's the thing, it's too late now... I'm not going back through and deleting things just to make your life a little easier. I'm too tired and taking approximately 4 new drugs to spell check or clarify. I promise I'll get better with practice. Next time I'll tell you about my new "diet" and how happy it makes me. Sound interesting? check back.