Well hello there… how have you been? I can’t believe it’s been almost two months since my last post. Well, actually I can, I just don’t really want to. Where have I been you ask? I have been traveling through the land of Myself, specifically the area of “Feeling Sorry For”. I don’t really recommend this place, but if you have to go there try not to stay as long as I have. I had been given ANOTHER f’ing diagnosis with no cause or cure and it just put me in a downward spiral that left me feeling like WTF?! Instead of taking this news and putting more emphasis on managing my health I basically went on strike. I stopped doing anything related to all these fun and fabulous no cause/ no cure conditions I have. Literally, cold turkey. No reading, writing,  journaling, looking at my blog, exercising… yeah, I showed… ummmmmm… myself? Yeah, that’s it! I showed MYSELF! Dumb, dumb ,dumb…. I went on strike and who exactly was impacted by this? Me. Oh and by the way… Essential Tremor, this is the newest addition to my list. If you have an uncontrollable shaking of your head or hands then you may want to look into this. I guess having an invisible disease, the thought was… I should have something that folks can see, yeah let’s make her head shake (it’s really more like a nod). Ahhhhhh, someone up there has a sense of humor, I’m just trying to find my way to see the lighter side of this.

On the more sunny side of this place I have been in for the past month, I have been watching my diet. I was also diagnosed with gall stones a couple of weeks after my Essential Tremor diagnosis so I had my gall bladder removed last week. Finally a problem that has a solution! Yes, it meant having a body part removed, but I am really hoping that this resolves a lot of my GI issues I have been dealing with for a long while. In watching my diet, the last few weeks I have been drinking protein shakes as a meal replacement for two meals a day. Incredibly, this has helped a lot. It seems like the only time I feel somewhat okay is when I drink the shakes. Food and I are still having a love/hate relationship. I love to eat, but the food and my body hate each other. This is really uncool, can’t we all just get along?

I have rambled a bit, but what really prompted this post is this funny (well, funny to me) thing that happened yesterday. My first instinct was to tell my husband, but he’s on a short trip away and I didn’t want to intrude on his time away. I would have texted him, but I don’t have the patience to type this into my phone (another device I have shied away from lately). Anyway! Back to my story (I am so easily distracted!). I have been trying to lose weight, the real reason for the shakes… yesterday I am in the bathroom weighing myself and I saw the number on the scale and I was like “What the hell?? WOW! No way I lost that much weight!!” Seriously, I’m standing there and my weight has dropped like 5 pounds overnight. At this point I’m trying to figure out how this could have happened… could it be real? Then I look up (since I’ve been looking down at the scale this whole time) and realize I AM HOLDING ON TO THE TOWEL BAR. Yes, as I’m quite sure you can all relate, standing up sometimes is challenging without some help. Well, don’t weigh yourself while doing this or you’ll go through this same fun experience. It’s like winning the lottery (okay, granted a small one – not the Mega Bucks one) and then waking up and realizing “Nope, still not a millionaire”. At this point I gently let go of the towel bar and the little scale thing moves, moves, moves to that point of reality. I have just woken up. I started laughing and thinking, oh man, I gotta tell my husband this one! I can see him shaking his head at me as I write this. I’d like to say lesson learned, but I’m afraid I’ll probably do that again, so I’ll just say it’s good to laugh at yourself everyone once in a while.

After enjoying some time with my folks, my incisions were screaming in pain (it’s hard to relax or move with all that screaming), I gave in and took some pain medication. I told my daughter this so she was aware and then did a few chores and went to sleep. I was KNOCKED OUT when all of a sudden I hear my door open, not open quietly mind you it was opened with purpose and my daughter comes rushing in and says to me, “Did you hear that? Did you hear that?”. Let me just restate… my husband is not here. My heart starts racing and I’m trying to wake up and this damn fog from the pain meds is holding me back… fear just grabs a hold of me as I try to be the grown up in the room. She continues on, “It sounded like a werewolf…”. Not what I was expecting. I am pretty sure I responded with something like… “Am I awake or is this a dream?”. Did she really say… werewolf? I think maybe she should not be allowed to watch that new Teen Wolf show. I mean, this can’t be a normal thing to rush in and ask in the middle of the night, right? Okay, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear a werewolf, but if there had been one, I would not have heard it (another reason why I don’t like to take meds that make me drowsy). So I’m like, “Why don’t you just sleep in here?”. Instead she takes the dog out of my room, goes back to her room and leaves me wide open for attack. I thought my solution was better. I’m completely freaked out, yet I’m so tired I just fell back asleep. Interesting experience, that’s what drugs do for you, put you to sleep so you don’t have to face the world… on that note, maybe I should ask her when she wakes up if that really did happen… but it had to because the dog was clearly NOT in my room when I got up this morning.

I bet when you decided to read this you weren’t expecting this! I hope I’ve given you a reason to smile today.

Stay super cool and remember… one day at time, one hour, one minute. I wish you all an awesome day of wellness and hope!

Tamiko