My thoughts on Robin Williams

I tried to think of a witty title. Some catchy phrase or comforting words to convey my thoughts and pull in readers but honestly every article or blog I've seen has covered the gamut and almost all have just felt off. I feel like so many of the pieces I've read have fit into two categories. They either approach things as a tribute and a "he's free" vibe or they bash him as selfish or cowardly.

To me both are wrong, harmful, and so incredibly dangerous. I've battled with depression my whole life. Before my illness had a name and before I had a support system who supported, believed, and encouraged I attempted suicide. Depression, anxiety, bipolar or any other mood disorder is so much larger than a quick fix. It is often a life long battle. I can't know his thoughts, no one can, but I know debilitating illness. The news of his Parkinsons diagnosis I think sheds more light on his motives. No matter what drove him we must be careful in glorifying or condemning. Instead we have to focus on helping others. On his life. Those are the stories I've liked most.

To me the most important part of this is that he hit a point where he felt so hopeless that he made the ultimate irreversible choice and that we must all make sure that we love those around us so completely that they know that no matter what battle they face they are never judged, never alone, and never forsaken. We must listen. We must love. We must be the light in their darkness.

We must also be willing to talk, to seek help, to count on others when we feel lost. I've been in med changes recently and it has brought back some pretty hard core anxiety attacks. At first I was very resistant to even talk about them. I hate adding more issues for the people I love to see. And that just made them worse. I had to count on the people I love, even at 3 AM.

Be a light. I hope I am.

The OTHER reason October is important to me.

October 15 is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. Many who read the blog know my story. If you are new though I will share my thoughts again.

I have been blessed with 4 babies! They light my life. They are my world. 2 of them I lost during pregnancy. As my health journey has progressed I have learned that often FMS women have difficulty in pregnancy and that my lack of progesterone is not to surprising once you know I have FMS. Yay! I look around me and know so many women who have lost babies. I know their heart break, their fear as they try again. I know the anguish. Last year Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope started the I Am The Face campaign to help raise awareness and remove the silence surrounding pregnancy and infant loss. I eagerly joined that movement. I love Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope. They provide support online and locally to so many who are now facing loss. I also very much want the world to talk to those of us who deal with this. We want to remember our babies. We want to smile about them and cry about them and be free to talk about them and the pregnancy. There were good moments for all of us. So please spread the hope and the word. 1 out of 4 women will face this huge loss. They need our love and our kindness. They need our hugs. They need to be able to talk about it without being hidden away.

Texas Fires

I spent a lot of my growing years in Texas. Summers and holidays were spent with my grandparents on their  large spread outside of Bastrop. Right now the area is burning. So far it seems the family and other people I love have been lucky. Fire has come close and is licking at the boot heels but hasn't burned anything of ours yet but some reports say that half of Bastrop is gone and that it is going to get worse before it gets better. With Katia steaming up the gulf winds could pick up and the largest fire is at 0%  containment. So please everyone pray. Pray for those hundreds of families who have lost their homes, pray for those evacuated, pray for those at risk, and I selfishly ask for an extra little prayer for my family. While my grandparents are no longer alive to see a city they loved and raised their sons in burn we do still have family there and they are at risk and need that love.

Thanks guys!

Mind numbing fear and the blessings that come with it.

Lately a few of our fellow bloggers and real life friends have been having health fun. Health issues are never fun or easy. Some talk about it and some don't. Both ways are fine. Watching people i care about struggle has brought up some memories and so I thought to share some feelings as a show of support and a reminder than even when it feels overwhelming you are never alone in your fear.

When we first moved here my amazing guy decided it was time to push me to really figure out my health. I was tired all the time, bruises took days or even weeks to heal, I looked just plain sickly sometimes even though my weight stayed the same and higher than I would like even though I ate little. Nevada is a specialist state. The rate of lawsuits here are so high that your primary doc handles little stuff and passes you on for big stuff so she sent me to a hematologist. He discovered something odd. While my white blood cells are in the normal to sometimes low count range the percentage of them that are lymphocyte cells are very elevated. He tested again and again and always got the same results. Elevated lymphocytes. Well this can be a fluke or it can be a big deal. Two big deal options were cancer. One would kill me very fast and one may never kill me at all. So while we waited for some very extensive testing results and time between tests to check for accuracy I felt like my life was in this horrible holding pattern. 6 weeks of wondering about my life, my future, my children and their future. I have never been so freaking scared. I rarely slept. Every bruise was a new reason to worry. Every time I had a migraine I was terrified. I researched until I was blue in the face.

Then the results came back. Not cancer but no clue why you have the abnormality. My bruising was chalked up to being so fair. So it was on to more tests, this time to the endocrinologist. I was tested for everything he could think of. More waiting and worrying. Luckily most of his tests wouldn't result in a fatal diagnosis.

Once again I was healthy. I was the healthiest sick person they had ever seen. Sure my blood had weird oddities but nothing that pointed to a specific diagnosis. Then came the rheumatologist. The guy was a complete jerk but was sure it was FMS. And so I had an answer.

Of course sometimes answers don't feel like comfort. The answers can be scary and life altering. They can feel like an awful weight pressing down on our world and forever changing things. I tend to be grateful for answers even when they suck because I would rather know what battle to wage than stand on that bleak precipice and hope I jump the right direction to flee the demons chasing me. It truly is in how you look at it.

So if you are facing challenges please remember that you are not alone, you are loved, and the worst result you can ever get is "Inconclusive". Test on. Push on, fight on. Get your answers and know that whatever the outcome you won't face it alone.

It is National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day!!!

It is a day pretty important to me. FMS is a large part of my life though I have tried very hard to not let it be the defining point in my life. I was officially diagnosed about 8 months ago. I think my journey started when I was 14 though. I read an article recently on risk factors for fibromyalgia and discovered I fell into a pretty much guaranteed group. I am female, I discovered through research there is a family history of it on my maternal side, I have sleep issues, I have a personality that hates stress and gets depressed easily at times, and I suffered an auto-immune illness in the form of Mono as a teen. I was a walking bottle of FMS perfection.

So among the beautiful plethora of symptoms/concurrent issues I have the obvious widespread pain. My legs tend to be the worst and I have had that for as long as I can remember. It can be anything from a dull ache to a minor throbbing to an intense burning and can be just my knees or from toe to hip. Over the last few years the pain has spread. In times of stress or when I am on my period the pain can be through my shoulders, from finger tip to elbow, base of by neck, across my forehead, base of my spine, lower pelvis, and jaw. I have been diagnosed with TMJ, which is a lovely jaw issue that can require surgery and means I sleep with a mouth guard to help reduce the pain. I have migraines. Luckily I started meds for those and have been able to go from a couple of days a week to a couple a month if that. I have developed a lovely oversensitivity in the pads of my fingers and toes making certain days very difficult to walk, cook, write, type, touch anything, and I removed my acrylic nails because getting them done became agony. I have the extreme fatigue. Getting one major chore done along with the needed daily chores and taking care of Lexi in a day is a good day! I have discovered that my issues carrying my babies very likely relate to the FMS making the choice to tie my tubes a good one. I can be very forgetful and tend to have lists in my phone for everything as well as all tasks scheduled into my calendar so that I won't forget. My joints crack regularly and fairly painfully. I suffer from depression. I am obsessive over certain tasks and need order in certain things to reduce my anxiety.

Those are the bad days, lol. Stress increases the chance of a bad day. Over-activity increases it. I tend to isolate myself from situations that could cause stress to reduce the chance of bad days which makes me come off as a hermit. Add that I genuinely love just being with my husband and girls watching movies and i often frustrate others. I promise it is not you. I really just am content in my solitude and much less likely to be miserable so I don't venture out often. I am on a great medicine called Savella for the FMS and it has helped to make the good days out number the bad days. I absolutely still react to stress and still have days where staying in bed would be lovely if I didn't have a toddler. I am blessed to have a guy whose response when I apologize for being a broken horrible wife in my worst moments just hugs me and says "You may need a little extra patience and a little extra care, but I would not change a single thing about you!". He is one of the best things in my life. I am just like everyone else it just takes me longer and some days I am lucky to get to it at all but it will get done eventually. I love as much, I laugh as much, I cherish every moment with my family and I count every single blessing in my life. Fibromyalgia is one tiny part of me, it is not who I am. I am a wife and a mom. I am a writer, a designer, a reader, a cook, a teacher, a lover, a friend. I just happen to have Fibromyalgia.

CNN has great info on FM and you can also learn more at the National Fibromyalgia Association website. Take some time to read about it and learn. It is not in my head. It does not mean I am a hypochondriac. It is a real syndrome that affects millions around the world and each and every one of those sufferers deserves your love, understanding, and support!!!

What really is a family?

We took a recent trip to visit my SIL and her family and as we were sitting and talking as per our usual I had an epiphany. She is very much what family should be. This led to the wondering of what family really is and means. Family is supposed to love despite our faults. Family is supposed to be our biggest cheerleader and our strongest critic. When we are at the cliffs edge family stands beside us to pull us back and at the bottom of the cliff to catch us. Luckily Hubs and I are blessed with more family than we sometimes know what to do with. Sometimes though family becomes a crutch, a way to get ahead in life with little actual effort, a parachute that becomes a safety blanket that never goes away, cushioning us from dealing with life. Those instances turn the very definition of family from "love" to "toxic". How do we deal with that? When does love and support turn into something decidedly more harmful and what steps need to be taken to save not only the relationship but the giver's sanity? I began to ponder this and really try to think of solutions. I see many toxic relationships throughout life and knowing how to find the balance is so important. I came to realize that some relationships have no safe way to remove the harmful parts. If one person tries then the very essence of family requires another to step into that void and become the one being hurt. Maybe another solution is not to end the harmful aspects of a relationship but to accept them in a bid to protect others from feeling more pain the you do. I do know that sometimes we have to sacrifice much to receive the blessings.