I am so grateful for the opportunity that we have to go to church every Sunday, and I can't wait until I feel well enough to go again.

I have a lot on my mind today, and I'm not exactly sure where my thoughts will take me so bear with me.  I am so extremely sad that I am not feeling well enough to go to church this afternoon.  I just wanted to cry when Nick left without me because I want to be there so bad!  I was blessed with enough strength last Sunday to make it to Sacrament Meeting, and I'm so grateful for that.  The last time I was able to make it to church was in December, and that was only for one week.  Before that it was in October when I first started getting sick again.  I felt so blessed and grateful that I could make it to church, and I can't wait until I can go back. 

While I was there, I wasn't able to sing the hymns.  I recently found out that singing is a no-no for me.  On a normal day for me, my lymph nodes in my throat are swollen, and I usually always feel a little light headed and weak.  When I sing, my lymph nodes flare up even more, and I feel a lot more lightheaded.  I was so sad when I realized I couldn't sing the hymns.  I want so bad to feel well enough to simply do the things that most people can do without even realizing it.  I want so bad to be well enough to have a calling and be able to go to church every Sunday and participate in the lessons.  I want so bad to be able to serve others during the week, and I want so bad to not be stuck in bed day after day.

After a few minutes of sitting and listening to everyone else sing the hymns, I was amazed at how my sadness and frustration of not being able to sing were gone.  Have you ever just sat and listened during the hymns instead of singing?  I hadn't.  It was so beautiful and peaceful, and I loved sitting there listening to it!  I know that they are beautiful and peaceful whether you sing them or not, but it was just different.  Maybe I felt that if I wasn't singing then I couldn't feel the blessings that the hymns bring into our lives.  I don't know what it was, but I'm content with not being able to sing the hymns now.  Hopefully in the future I will be able to, but right now, I am content.  Plus, when I remember how grateful I was to even be there, not being able to sing the hymns didn't matter at all.

Even though I haven't been able to go to church in awhile, I have never felt closer to Christ than I do now.  You know, I say that now but when I look back at my life, I feel like I've always been close to Him.  Sometimes I think that I feel closer to Him during the hard trials in my life, but honestly, when are you not in the midst of a hard trial?  Looking back on my life I can see the big trials, one right after the other, each time getting a little bit harder.  I know that trials are no fun, but when I lay them out, one right after the other, I realize that I needed the earlier trials to help prepare me for the later trials.  I learned lessons and developed trust and faith in Christ with the earlier ones that I needed to have to get through the later ones. It's kind of like when I was a second grader learning how to do multiplication.  It was hard, but I got through it and mastered my multiplication tables.  I was then a high schooler trying to get through calculus.  It was just as hard as it was for me to do multiplication when I was younger, but I had to have the earlier lessons and experience in math to get me through my later calculus class.

I'm going to let you in on my deepest darkest secret (are you scared?! hehe).  You know how little kids always have dreams of the future and what they want to do with their life and then that dream changes as they grow up?  Even as a child I wanted to grow up, get married, and spend my life serving my kids and my husband.  I then wanted to spend all my free time serving others as much as I could.  That has always been my one dream my whole life.  After I first got sick, I thought my dream was impossible.  How the heck am I going to ever care for children if I can't even take care of myself, let alone my husband and our tiny apartment?  Then, if I can't even care for my family, how will I ever be able to serve others??  I have learned that I will eventually feel better and learn to manage my illness.  I will be able to have a family and care for my kids.  Even more, I've learned that it's ok to let others serve me.  I don't always have to be the one doing the serving.  There are so many people in my life who want to help, and I need to let them.  It gives them the opportunity to serve someone, and it gives me the help that I very much need.  I will probably always need others to help me, and there is nothing wrong with that! 

I have also always been a perfectionist.  I always try to be as perfect as possible, and I hate when other people see me when I'm weak. 

Here's a fun story for you:  When I was little...5 or 6ish...my mom had a little day care at our house.  Every day some kids would come over and play with all our toys.  I really loved it, but we did fight about which toys to play with a lot.  In Primary one Sunday I remember that we talked about how we should all try to be like Jesus.  I had been taught that Jesus was perfect, so I thought that I had to be perfect.  On Monday morning, I told myself that I was going to be perfect that day.  All day long I let all the other kids pick what toys to play with before I picked my toys.  I let them tell me what to do and where to sit.  Instead of taking turns with toys, I let the other kids take the toys away from me right when they wanted them.  I remember at the end of the day I was sitting in the kitchen completely exhausted.  My mom was talking to the last parent to come pick up their kid.  I sat there and just cried because it was just too hard to be perfect.  I felt like a failure because even though I had been perfect that one day, I knew I couldn't do that every day.  It was just too hard.

Even though I now understand the role of the atonement so that we don't always have to be perfect, I still try to be.  Just because I'm now sick and can't do everything I've always felt like I should do doesn't mean that I'm slacking.  I still feel guilty every time I can't make it to church even though my bishop and doctors have told me it is ok, and pushing myself will only make me more sick.  I know that I am gradually changing my views and realizing that I'm not perfect and that I don't need to be.  Also, just because I set high goals for myself doesn't mean that Heavenly Father is going to be upset with me if I don't accomplish them, especially when they are unrealistic goals. 

Well, I'm getting really tired and weak so I'm gonna go rest.  I hope you got something out of this!  It really helped me feel better to write it.  Hope you all are doing well and that you have a good Sunday!

Update on My Journey to Better Health

I haven't really been feeling too much better, but I have found a lot of ways to help with relieve some of my symptoms!  Here are some things I have found that have really helped in case someone else is having problems and wants to try them out or you just want to know how I am doing. 

Side note: I feel so so blessed to have so many people who want to help and who care so much about how I'm doing.  We have had so many people from our ward who help out in different ways, and they are always asking how they can help more.  We are also blessed with lots of family near us and many dear friends.  We just don't know how to express how grateful we are. 

Back to what we were discussing, here are some things I have found that help me so so much:

-Eat 6 small meals a day.  I started doing this 3 days ago and it has already made a difference.  It's been a little hard since my body craves meals since that's what it is used to, but I'm hoping that goes away after awhile.  It has really helped my body to not have crashes so often.  It has also been a lot easier for me because I don't have to cook actual meals.  I just grab something small like a boiled egg with blueberries for a meal or greek yogurt with almonds.  I love it.

-I have gone gluten free, sugar free, and eliminated fruits that have the most natural sugars in them.  I have known that I needed to go gluten free for awhile now but I just didn't have the energy of learning how to do that.  I still don't have energy for it, but I know that I really need to do it.  I can do some research in the next couple weeks while I use what I do know.  The sugar makes me REALLY sick.  My doctor told me that my body reacts to sugar like a drug.  If it gets a little taste of it, it craves more even though it makes me super weak.  Then when I give it more, it gets even more sick and craves it even more!  So lame.  I don't know if that's how every body reacts to sugar but mine is just more dramatic or if its just me.

-Try to get as much vitamin D as possible.  I haven't really tried this one out yet since it's winter, but I believe that it will help me a lot when summer does come.  Last year I got sick in October when I stopped going out in the sun, and I didn't start feeling better until May when I started getting sun again.  I was feeling awesome until October and got really sick again.  I know that this is not my only problem because even when I did feel a lot better over the summer, I still had lots of problems I do now.  It was just a lot easier when that one problem was gone.  I have started taking a prescription dose of vitamin D once a week, and I'm supposed to take it for 8 weeks before I go in to get my blood tested again.  I am on week three and haven't really seen a difference yet, but that could be because I've had a really rough couple weeks.  This week is warmer weather so maybe I'll go to a park a few times and enjoy.  I'll let you know how it goes!

-Eat more sodium and protein.  I have also started this this week and I think it has helped a lot.  The sodium helps a lot with my low blood pressure.  It has helped me feel not near as lightheaded as I usually do!! I'm seriously so excited to continue doing this.  The protein has also made me feel more stable because I used to get almost no protein.

-Avoid warm/hot water at all costs.  Ohmyfreak this has helped so much!  The hot water makes me SUPER weak.  I have only been showering about twice a week because they would destroy my body and make me super weak for hours!  When I realized that the heat was what was making me sick I started taking colder showers and I felt so much better.  I still get weak after taking showers, but it isn't near as bad as it was.

-Avoid standing in one place or sitting in chairs normally.  This one is a killer.  Probably the most annoying thing I deal with.  Because of my low blood pressure, standing or sitting normally makes the blood pool in my blood instead of making its way back up my body.  This makes me super light headed since blood isn't getting to my head, and if I don't sit down or sit differently then I will faint. Supposedly walking isn't as bad because your legs are moving so it keeps the blood moving, but the same thing happens to me when walking. It just takes maybe 10 minutes longer to get really bad than standing does.  When sitting, I have to keep my legs up on the couch with me and bent up close to my chest most of the time.  This makes it really hard for me to sit through class or work or really anywhere you sit down.  I haven't found a solution to this yet so if you think of something, let me know!  I also bought a short stool for the shower so I can sit down and keep my legs up close to me.  It has been AMAZING! I barely felt sick today after showering!

-Exercise for my legs is supposed to help a lot with the low blood pressure.  Stronger muscles in the legs help keep the blood moving.  I haven't tried this yet because I know my body is not ready for more exercise yet.  If I go even a little over what my body can handle, it will destroy me, and I will have to start over at the beginning again.  I hope I can start exercising my legs within the next couple weeks.

I'm getting really tired now so I'll stop here.  Hope this gives you some more info on how I'm doing!

Just for laughs, here's a clip from Parks and Recreation, one of my favorite shows!!

 

 

New Blog Name!

Alright...I haven't been on here for awhile, but I am back!  Hopefully for a long while.  First things first...I changed the name of my blog!  I have been trying to think of a name that is unique to me, and I finally found one!  When the Piggies Come Home.  I love it.  Let me explain.  When I was about 2 years old, my family moved to Minnesota and went to the state fair there.  There was a momma pig with a litter of piglets.  According to my mom, all I wanted to do was look at them and nothing else.  After that, I wanted pig everything and pink everything because pigs are pink. And guess what...I still love pigs!  Charlotte's Webb is still one of my favorite movies.  

My dad used to read me When Cows Come Home.  It is a great book, and I loved it!  If you haven't read it, go read it!  





So I put the two together and voila! There's my new name :).  What do you think?

Next order of business...I have been pretty sick lately.  About a month ago I took an online quiz for my class, and it made me really sick.  I hadn't yet experienced getting sicker after mental exercise, but it was bad.  For the next week I had a fever, muscle aches, sinus problems, and I felt so weak.  I basically spent the whole week in bed.
 
Then, I caught a really bad cold.  It was HORRIBLE! Nick and I have decided that we are not going to allow anyone to see me if they are sick or have been around someone that is sick.  My immune system barely works as it is, and when I get a simple cold, at least for right now, my body just gets destroyed.  My lymph nodes are already swollen when I feel "normal", and when I get even a simple cold they FREAK out.  Nick had to stay up at night taking care of me because they hurt SOOOOOO bad.  The only way to make the swelling go down and the pain to go away is to go to the emergency room to get steroids or wait until I get better.  I have had to go to the emergency room in the past for steroids, but I want to avoid doing that as much as I can.  The steroids make the swelling go right down, but they also stop your immune system from doing anything.  Sometimes living through the pain so your immune system can function is worth it in the long run, but sometimes its not.  I have NEVER felt pain like the time I went to the emergency room for steroids.  NEVER.  So, if we have plans, let me know if you have been around anyone sick.  I don't want to take any chances.

The next week we went on a trip.  Nick and his sister went to Seattle to visit their grandma, and they dropped me off at my house in Boise.  Traveling made me sick, especially since I hadn't gotten over my cold yet.  My ears hurt all week, and I just felt so sick!  I spent the whole week either laying in bed or on the couch.  Now that we are home, I'm trying to rest and recover from traveling.

Just remember:  If you or anyone you have been around is sick, please don't come visit.  I really can't get sick like that again!!