In my last post I mentioned how March was such a long month for us. Moving, health issues, and a new position at work. I recently took over a managerial position at work, our last studio manager moved back to the states a little bit sooner than we anticipated. I knew it was coming for the past few months and knew the transition was going to be tough but doable. When I told a handful of people, and they know how much I love work and what my goals are as far as my career they congratulated me. To be honest I was so overwhelmed by the issues this month presented I didn't even have time to step back and see what an incredible and amazing opportunity this was until someone brought it to my attention. Isn't this amazing though?! Now that I'm out of the thick of things I can really step back and be excited about this and make goals and work on the ones I've previously made. I'm hoping to get back on track with this as my health improves, it doesn't do any good to wish the timing of the mishaps were different, but just move forward.
Even though the brunt of my health issues were this month, we first started seeing some issues back in February. One Sunday morning I became incredibly ill at church, I asked Sean to make sure someone had Ely because I didn't know if we should go home or to the ER. Once we were in the parking lot I threw up, on the way home I had a really hard time sitting and just wanted to lay on my side. When we arrived home I laid on the bed hoping to get some pressure off my side but it didn't help. The pain intensified and I started crying. I knew it wasn't contractions, but pain I had felt previously with an ovarian cyst I had a little over 2 years ago. Sean gave me a priesthood blessing, the pain became manageable and I could handle sitting up. We didn't go into the ER that day, I had a doctors appointment in 2 days and thought that surely she would be able to help me. The pain was really mild up until that appointment. I told my doctor about my cyst history, about the pain I was in, and she basically shrugged her shoulders. She said she didn't see anything from my previous ultrasound and if there was a cyst there was nothing she could do about it. She proscribed me Zofran for my nausea. She told me that if I was on the floor in pain to go into the ER and that if it was a cyst that it could be torquing and that requires immediate surgery. Health care in the military is just so splendid. She really should have ordered another ultra sound. I've never ICED anyone before, I feel like it is vindictive and doesn't do anything for me. I go back and forth as to whether or not I should do that so she is required to give better care in the future.
Fast forward to March. It is still quite odd, but food just sounded terrible after this incident. I had to force myself to eat, and if I ate too much it either made the pain worse or made me incredibly nauseated. If I wasn't pregnant, I would have chosen not to eat at all, that is how terrible eating sounded. I had anxiety about my son getting enough to eat because I could handle the minimum. I thought I had things under control until the week after we had moved into our new place. Our family had not had one nice, normal day together since the move. Our house was still in a mess, but Sean was having a mandatory fun day at work and Ely and I were going to go watch him play baseball. She was so excited, even though I didn't feel very good I wanted to try and get her out of the house. On our way there, I had an intense pain in my side. I couldn't concentrate on driving any longer and pulled over luckily just a short ways away from where Sean was. He came to our car and asked if I needed to go home or to the ER. I told him I couldn't drive but still wanted to try and go to the game. I felt so bad Ely was looking forward to this and then we had to leave. He drove my car to the baseball field, we got out of the car and a few steps in I couldn't walk. We decided we probably should go and check things out. I called a friend to take Ely and I all I had were one or two diapers a few wipes and maybe one or two snacks, things I thought were sufficient for a baseball game. We dropped Ely off who gratefully, was excited to be able to play with her friend who was her same age. My friend was so awesome and handed Sean a bag of food and said it was to have at the ER. The car ride over was pretty miserable, all I wanted to do was lay down. When we arrived they didn't take me very seriously until they tried to put monitors on my stomach and the pain made me throw up. To be honest I don't remember much, I handed Sean my phone, told him to contact my work people. I remember saying over and over again that "This is worse than labor", I remember having nurses telling me to calm down, that they had to get the baby on the monitor for 20 continuous minutes but I couldn't hold still that long and that I was there for almost six hours and that didn't happen. They gave me some strong, strong drugs for the pain. After this, I had a doctor come in to talk to me about surgery and were basically saying that I needed it. They had 2 ultrasounds that showed I had an 11 centimeter cyst, but they weren't sure if it was torquing or not, that there was blood flowing to the ovary which showed it wasn't torquing at the moment but my pain would suggest otherwise. I was so out of it that these choices were exceedingly overwhelming and I did NOT want to have surgery and put my son through all of that. I said no, and they told me they wanted to keep me over night. They gave me a stronger medication for the nausea and it made me sleep for several hours. When I woke up it was dark, so naturally I was freaking out. The first thing I did was tell Sean " Ely! My classes! The dog!" He gave me the breakdown on how we have so many awesome people in our lives that are willing to help us out and that everything and everyone was taken care of. My pain was very mild, almost gone, I was exhausted but able to talk to people and carry on a decent conversation. The next morning they said that I could go home and did not need surgery thank fully.
I had about a week of calmness following this incident and then Ely and myself became incredibly ill with the flu. This week was not as painful as the previous one, but I was already so worn out that I could hardly handle taking care of myself let alone her as well. After a night of dealing with vomiting I took her into the doctor at the Pediatric office. She was already appearing to be on the mend, she was happy and chipper. I had a doctors appointment at 2 at a different hospital across town. I was trying to hold on until then. Following her appointment I could barely keep up with her, she ran to our car, that thankfully was parked close in expectant mother parking ( I am forever grateful for those spots for this reason). I remember before things became bad I prayed to Heavenly Father, "I need someone to come help me right now. I cannot wait to call someone, I need help now, please send help now." It was all I could do to get her into the car and then I started throwing up. I sat down on the sidewalk while Ely crawled all over our van. I texted Sean and said I needed help but he was at work and it would have taken him several minutes to get everything approved to leave. Ely started honking the horn and doing all sorts of shenanigans in the van. A man came out of the clinic and asked if I needed help. I nodded yes, and he asked if he could get my daughter, I nodded yes again. He asked if I could walk and I said no. He got me a wheel chair and wheeled me into Family Medicine. I'm not sure how important he is but he got me into Family Medicine immediately where they concluded that I would probably need an IV and another hospital stay. This day definitely was not going the way I imagined or anticipated. I ended up in the ER across town, where they sent me to Mother Infant Care, where they wanted to keep me all day long. I had 2 IV bags and a banana bag that took 4 hours to administer. By the end of this day I was just immensely grateful for my angel that came to my rescue and made sure I received the help I needed. After this day, the next few at home were miserable. Walking the dog was such a chore. I remember trying a few people I knew back in the states to see if they could come help, of course no one could drop everything at a moments notice and fly across an ocean. I hope to be financially stable enough and available if my daughter ever needs me that I will be able to be there for her one day at her moment of need. I never want to feel like that again, not necessarily the ill part but like I had no one to turn to. I also was working, which when you are a Mormon lady that works at night it feels so weird asking people to help you with your children in the mornings. Women in our church are encouraged not to work, so I feel like I should be hiring a babysitter all the time versus asking someone to help me out for free. And while I'm sure no one really is judging me, I have a hard time asking for help when I feel like " If you are so sick, why are you going to work? You should be at home with your kid" I've found no paid nanny wants to watch a sick kid. I felt like I had exhausted most of our resources at church as it was that past month with moving and hated being that family that only took help but never administered it. I felt like we had done that for the past month, so here I was, desperately needing help and just too stubborn to ask for it. So we survived, Sean getting us through and really picking up the slack.
I considered the next few events to be a large part of my healing process. I was coming around to feeling better by our wedding anniversary. We had a couples massage and dinner together which was perfect.
Our students were invited to perform at a beautiful event for Women's History Month. They opened the event and were requested to do a number that we put together the month prior specifically for this dinner. This evening was the first heavy meal I had since I was sick, it was a delicious three course meal and I had my students ask fun questions about which fork to use ( seriously I'm not even sure). It was so enlightening to see these young ladies carry themselves in such a positive manner, to expose them to a formal event that celebrated women in the work industry.
At the end of the event there was a panel of successful business women who answered a series of questions. What stood out to me the most was that these incredibly accomplished women claimed their most important successes were people.... whether it be their own children, students, spouses, marriages. They valued people as their greatest success and some of these women were powerful in the work force! They also spent a large part of sharing their success on asking for help, for doing it often and doing it when it was needed. It took me hearing it from a Scientist and CEO that yes, it is ok to ask for help every once in a while when you need it. I then felt a little ashamed, that I was incredibly worldly and that my church has instituted the Relief Society for this reason, to administer relief in times of need. I've heard my whole life that requesting service when needed is fine. Now that I was finally on the mend I was accepting that maybe requesting help wasn't so bad after all.
About a weekend after, our church held the General Women's session of General Conference. Two of the talks spoke about women that faced health challenges much more severe and debilitating than mine, who held positive attitudes throughout their trial. It was a humbling experience hearing these talks, that yes I've been sick, but it really isn't as bad as it could be. Despite everything, my son is still healthy and growing. That now that I am no longer sick, my trial was not long and did not result in me potentially loosing my life. The challenges I am currently facing are temporary whereas some people this is not the case. I will eventually face surgery down the road, for something that is completely fixable and that will hopefully not give me any problems following the surgery. I feel comfortable writing this now because I feel so much better thankfully! I don't know why March had to be so hard, but a part of me is grateful that it was. I learned so much about myself, the strength of my family, the love from those around me in my ward and work place.
In all of the chaos I noticed my girl was growing in so many remarkable ways. Her vocabulary is so VAST! She is so smart. She has the book
We're Going On a Bear Hunt nearly memorized, she reads it to me now. She loves unicorns, princesses (mainly Rapunzel, Belle, and Cinderella) star wars (she LOVES Rae), french fries, chicken nuggets, strawberries, babies, lipstick, and crafting together. We are so CLOSE to being potty trained, we are still working on going out in public, at home we have quite a bit of success. We have been working on it for a year and she is almost there, who knows, we may be at it for another year if we plateau here. Her hair cracks me up! It is half straight and half curly. She is always on the go, she practically runs everywhere! She knows about her brother and talks about him frequently, she gives my belly kisses and cuddles with him specifically in the early morning. She is so resilient and I'm so proud of how she handled things this past month.
Had to get a photo of that hair!
A much needed visit to Zakimi Castle Ruins the last Friday in March that both Mommy & Daddy had free followed by Enzo pizza and Maeda Beach. It really was a miracle. We were ALL healthy. My heart was so full of gratitude.
Celebrating making it to our 3rd trimester this month! Baby boy is doing great, he is active and growing so fast!
