Life lately

I haven't blogged in a while because, well, not a whole lot was going on for a while. I decided to blog tonight with stuff that's happened lately.

Health update first, I suppose. I did hyperbaric treatment again for a total of only two weeks. The first week went fine. During the first day of the second week, I was having trouble popping my ears. They bring the pressure up so fast that you have to constantly clear your ears. It's like being in an airplane but the pressure sneaks up on you a lot faster. We go "down" about 40 feet below sea level (pressure-wise), and at 10 feet I couldn't clear my ears. We tried to go to about 12 feet and my ears started to hurt pretty bad. They sent me back to work and I didn't treat that day. I came back the next day and it was the same thing all over again. We decided to just re-schedule for the following week to give my ears a rest. Also, I was getting over a cold so that is what was most likely causing my ear problems. The next week I did a full 5 days of treatment. It gets pretty boring in there, but we do get to watch movies. This time I was in there with a few other old-ish people. One lady was really old and I generally let her use the bathroom first after we got out of the chamber, since I wasn't ever really in a hurry anyway. One day she thanked me for always letting her go first, whispering in my ear, "You know, I wear depends but I don't always count on them!" It's funny how much old people will share with you and with such little shame. :) Haha. She was really cute and had a tiny voice which I liked.

Following Hyperbaric treatment I have not really noticed much herxing for a long time. I'm still on the same meds as before. Last night my left shoulder blade hurt REALLY bad again. That was the same thing that happened last time I had a herx reaction. I'm hoping that it was also a herx reaction this time and not just that I tweaked my shoulder or something. Last night I put one of those stinky menthol patches on it that I got a while back from that acupuncturist that I was seeing. I didn't notice the pain today at all. I think I remember them saying that the patch is supposed to suck toxins out of the sore spot, but I'm not sure if that's accurate or not. It seemed to work either way. I'm hoping my leg or hip or knee or something will start hurting again, too. That way I'll know whether I'm reacting or not. I just want to KNOW that the lyme is being KILLED OFF!

So, last Wednesday my stomach hurt reallllyyy bad and I felt totally nauseous. I didn't eat dinner (which is quite weird for me) and I immediately stopped taking my meds cuz they already bug my stomach a lot and I knew I couldn't handle any more going on in there. I went to bed early with a barf bowl by my bed, but luckily I didn't have to use it. The following day was Thanksgiving. I felt better in the morning but still not 100%. I ate as much food at Thanksgiving that I would on any other day (PLUS pie). I did okay for most of the day but near the end of the celebration I felt like crap so we went home around 7:30-ish. I felt quite yucky again and went to bed early again. Each day after that I felt a little bit better, and I think I'm finally around like 90 - 95% today. YES! I didn't take my pills that whole time which is probably not that good, but I honestly couldn't handle anything else bugging my stomach. BLEH! I started them up again last night. (No, I'm not pregnant by the way.)

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Thanksgiving was pretty good over all. Luckily, I didn't have any responsibility concerning the food or food preparation. YES! All I had to do was bring apple cider. It turned out yummy. I just heated it up in our slowcooker with a few cinnamon sticks on the bottom. Yum yum! James and Joey were so cute. Most of my relatives were there. We just hung out, ate, watched football, played with James, etc. I'm thankful for Grandma, Carl, my mom, and all of the others who helped pull it off this year. There are many things this year to be thankful for. I am so thankful for my Ryan. I just have so much fun with him even when we're just sitting around on the couch watching TV together. He takes good care of me when I need "pushes" (that's when he pushes on my back until it feels better), helping me remember to pay the bills, listening to me rant about work or whatever it may be. He's sweet and funny and handsome and I LOVE HIM! :) I am also so thankful for my family - Mom, Dad, Tammy, Lance, Nae & Seth and my favorite boys, James and Josiah. I can't get enough of my nephews and their cute smiles. I try to steal all of their kisses and snuggles. :) I am thankful for our jobs, even when we dislike them. We are blessed to be making money during this time. There are a hundred other things I could list, I'm sure.

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One thing I am very thankful for is the way that God works things out. And for new friends. Which brings me to my next story. So, some background first. Mitch (my lyme-dude that works along side of my doctor and also runs the hyperbaric center in Chico), is also our landlord. His daughter Brandee married a family friend, Mikey. (Is it Mike now? We're all grown up!). When we moved into the triplex that Mitch owns (where we live now), Brandee and Mike lived next door to us. They moved out about 2 months after we moved in so we didn't get to know them as well as we wanted to. They moved to Davis for school (med school for Mikey, eeeek!). Anyway, I decided to email Brandee via Facebook because I remember hearing that either she or her sister had lyme disease. I emailed her to ask her about how she was feeling now, what treatments she did, how long she had symptoms, what her symtpoms were like, etc. I just felt like it was a pretty easy and non-threatening way to reach out to someone else who might kind of have an idea of what I'm going through. She wrote back and told me about her symptoms and that she was on antibiotics for years, and that she is feeling a lot better than when she was in jr. high school when her symptoms were at their worst. THEN she told me that she was going to be in town for a doctors appointment that next week and asked me if I wanted to get together and talk. ACK! Way out of my comfort zone, right? But it was actually just what I needed. We chatted back and forth a little bit through facebook email, and decided we'd meet that Tuesday around 8:30 but didn't pin-point a place yet. Come Monday night I hadn't heard back from her and I wasn't sure what to do. She had given me her cell phone number so I decided to just text message her on Tuesday morning to see if she could still get together. I just said, "I didn't hear back from you, so I wasn't sure if we were meeting this morning. Let me know if another time would work better". She called me back a few minutes later. Her internet connection was down at her parents house so she couldn't write me back or retrieve my phone number from her email. She told me she was freaking out since she had no way to get ahold of me. She asked if I had just texted her a few minutes ago because she can almost NEVER recieve texts due to poor reception at her parents house. But, she got mine! :) We ended up going to Cafe Ricci accrossed the street from our place that morning. It all worked out, despite bad cell phone reception and no internet connection. WOO HOO! We could only meet for about 45 minutes because she had an appointment that morning. It was great to talk to her. She is really, really sweet and easy to talk to. So it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. She was really encouraging. She told me that I could call her anytime if I need someone to talk to. She's like "just call me anytime! We can even pray over the phone! Whatever you want!". She is such a nice girl and I think she really had a soft spot in her heart for me and my lyme-issues. She has been well for several years but kind of had a "relapse" about a year ago. She shared with me that God has taught her a lot especially in this last year of getting sick again. I shared my fears with her about the future which are fears that she has also had. I'm scared of getting more and more sick each year and my husband having to take care of my like I'm an old lady. I'm scared that I won't have enough energy to be a parent, or that a pregnancy would be really hard on my body. I'm scared of passing on the lyme to my baby. I'm scared of the lyme spreading to my brain and having to deal with difficult cognitive issues (which is the case for a good number of lyme patients). These are all things that she has feared as well. She told me that God taught her this time that he is bigger than us and our Lyme. If he wants us to have children, we will have them and he will give us enough strength to care for them. We might be afflicted with Lyme, but it doesn't define us. The verse that kept coming up in her mind was the one in 2nd Corinth about taking every thought captive. She would have a fear/thought about the future and she'd have to realize that God is bigger than that fear. Then she'd "take the thought captive" and submit her fear to God. Pretty much repent for not having the faith that she should have. I agree with everything she says. I told her that I know all of that in my heart but sometimes it does overwhelm me. I know that she understands though. I am glad that she was open with me and also that I have another person praying for me now. I wish she lived here so that we could be closer friends. I need to email her soon to find out how her appointment went and to thank her again for reaching out to me (especially since it is so out of my comfort zone). I, of course, began to cry at one point (or two) because I'm wimpy or, "a big ball bag" as Allie's mom in The Notebook phrases it. I think I was also just emotional anyway, plus, it was too early for me! Sheesh! :)

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I'm looking foward to Christmas. The holidays can be hard sometimes, but Ryan helps me find joy around this time of year. He kind of turns into a little kid around Christmas time and that makes me get more into the Christmas spirit. We went out on Black Friday and ordered a new TV for our Christmas gift to each other. It should arrive this Saturday. They're also going to haul away our old TV for free. YAY! We can't wait. Our old TV is dying fast. :-/ I'm working on Christmas shopping now, but it's hard this year! I think I'm pretty much done with James, Joey, and Nory, but I have no idea what to get for several people on my list. I just want to get everyone exactly what they want but it's hard to know what is going to give them that special feeling inside. Haha! I'm such a dork. We still need to put up our tree. I think every person we KNOW put their tree up right around Thanksgiving. We need to get on it before Christmas has come and gone.

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We got new neighbors on Saturday. We got quite the announcement that they were here last night. Well, technically really early this morning. Around 5:15 we both woke up from a knocking on our neighbors back door. The pounding went on for a few minutes. We then heard her go to the front door and try there. She came back to the back sliding glass door and continued to pound on it. Somehow she got locked out at 5:15am?! She continued to pound and to scream "JONATHAN!!!!?" pound! pound! pound! "JONATHAN!!!" Um, yeah. The pounding and yelling went on for about 30 minutes, which at that point we were completely awake. By the time I fell asleep again Ryan's alarm was going off at 6:30. ugggghhh. was JONATHAN in a freakin' COMA or something?! I really hope they made like 7 copies of their keys today. I'm also glad I didn't see her this morning cuz I might've just ran up to her face and screamed "JONATHAAAN!" at her. UGH!
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Well, it's 10:40 now so I suppose I should go brush my teeth and get ready for bed. Ryan demolished my Typing Maniac score, so I need to rest up tonight so that I can maybe try to beat it tomorrow. :) I honestly didn't think he could beat me. But he did. I am ashamed. Goodnight!