Life sure is different these days

I really do mean it is different, on so many levels it is unreal. A big part of all of this is a huge personal struggle of me fighting myself, here I am a thirty-two year old female whose life has been just thrown upside-down the past few years. The past year really hit me even worse on a lot of fronts. But what I fight daily is the person that I used to be/the person that I know is still inside and the person that I have become. The truth is, this really is two totally different people, but somehow it is still me and I am really struggling with that.

There is Tammy the former athlete, the person who lived to be social, strong willed/hard headed, worked hard and played hard... etc. Then there is Tammy who lives in pain, can't sleep, can't handle being touched, doesn't want to leave her house or get out of bed, and goes to the doctors for a good amount of my social life. Life is truly different, I am different.

This week is typically one of my favorite weeks of the year, because it is the NCAA Tournament, for the first time since 2000, I will not be at the Championships and it is eating at me. I know that it is just this year. I know I can watch it on TV and follow it online, but it just isn't the same, not for me.

My life is truly upside-down.

Lots of Bandaids

I am not sure what is worse realizing that I have ten huge band aids on the left side on my body or the fact that my hand keeps cramping up where some of the testing was done earlier today at the doctors.

Anyhow I just keep pushing forward. February is one day from over and my life is so much different than it was a year ago. A term that kept popping through my head today was sabbatical, because in a sense I that is kind of what I am doing. Every year of my life for as long as I could remember January through March was a marathon of wrestling season, there really wasn't a day off during that time and I travelled all over the place. Now I catch what I can on TV and I did make it to a few matches but life is drastically different. My reality is very different.

My goal is to get better and I must say that is a tall order and a TON of work. February was a short month served up in a big old blur. I think I spent most of it curled up in bed, in pain with no energy. I do everything I humanly can, but sometimes that just isn't enough and I have to give up or give-in to the demands my body is making and I just have to stop.

I know my recovery takes probably 3 times as long as the normal person, for basically anything I do. This includes getting your everyday cold, which affects me worse than normal too.

So as I still work on recovering from my car accident in early December, it was great to see my doctors today and get worked on a little bit. Now if I could just get my body to stay that way...

New Experience

Yesterday was my first experience with an epidural/nerve block for my L5 nerve/disk. I have had all kinds of blocks, trigger point injects, needling, basically anything that you can think of that deals with a needle since 2011 when all of this started.

So yesterday I went to the surgery center at 7:15 am to get this done, it was a new experience. Well not fully new, I had something similar when I was 12-13 years old. Back then they put me under anesthesia and I woke up when it was all done.

This I was all awake for. I had a doctor and two nurses. The odd thing over all of this is that I have gotten so close to all of my doctor staffs that I know them all very well. This doctor I met once, I was just having it done here, so I did not have to drive to DC. However, it was funny, because I recognized the one nurse from our Virtuous Women's Dinner two weeks ago and said something to her before we went into the room. She was very nice and held my hand, even though I am usually pretty good with needles.

I will say if that is what an epidural for pregnancy feels like well then totally not worth it.

So they did some numbing and then did the block. I monitored myself yesterday and so far today. I personally don't think it did enough to be worth it. I need to talk to my doctor and tell her how I feel on it. to discuss if we need to continue.

In the mean time I need to make some calls today and find a certified hand therapist.

So off to do that amongst other things!

2014 Really Trying for a NEW YEAR

So for those of you who read my blog you know that last year was less than STELLAR for this lady. I feel that if it could have gone wrong, it did go wrong in 2013, I really don't feel like re-visiting those bad memories, but I guess for the sake of it I need to put them down. So the big highlights of the year were:

• In constant pain every day, to the point that I could not be touched.
• Went to the doctors minimum 3 times a week.
• April through July were the worst. Had 3 surgeries, contracted a horrible infection, had a PICC line, was on so many meds I could not keep track, had drains coming out of me, I am sure there was more I want to forget it.
• Was tested for every disease under the sun contracted a bunch of super weird symptoms over the rest of the summer. Went to all kinds of doctors.
• Had no social life, lost most of my friends.
• Gained a ton of wait since the surgery and infection, due to meds and all of the bed rest.
• Lost my job in September.
• Continued to constantly go to the doctor, still on tons of meds.
• Was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (only true diagnosis I was given other than sleep apnea).
• December got into a car wreck.

Okay so that sums up the main bad points of my BAD year.

This year I am working to try and change as much I can myself. Trying to treat my body as good as I can, which I still did last year. Taking my vitamins, eating right. Even though I am not suppose to I am going to try and start working back out slowly.

What will happen with work I still don't know my health is my No. 1 priority. I still just don't know where I stand with things. I am doing everything I can to try and get better and working with my team of doctors to get better.

So here is to 2014, may it bring better things: happiness, health, wealth, laughter and friendship. Not just to me, but to those around me as well.

Oh December

Well I realized I didn't blog in November, potentially because I was so busy trying to get everything done and figured out in between the time when: I wasn't at the doctors, driving to the doctors or sleeping because I can't get out of bed.

I did manage to have myself a little bit of fun and make it to a few wrestling matches, a concert and a college football game though. Which of course means that I had to allow myself a few days of recovery after those days of fun.  I spent a few days at the NAVAL Academy and was able to see the March-On at the NAVY game, I must say I love the tradition and I fully support our men and women in uniform at any stage. I had a great time and I even got my picture taken with the mascot!

That however brings us to now. I met with my surgeon for the first time in months and he wants to restart our way of doing treatment for my pain. Which means I will be in for another very long series of nerve blocks come the beginning of the year. I am not looking forward to it, but hopefully it will tell us what nerves are torturing me and why.

I was able to come home for a long weekend to visit family and friends which I thoroughly enjoyed and on my way home as the bad weather started on an exit ramp I rear ended someone. I did some major damage to my car and even more damage to my body. I have been at my brothers house sitting here resting for a week. No pain meds, no muscle relaxers, just sleeping and trying to let my body rest. I am afraid of what might happen in the long run, but I have to just keep going.

I talked to the shop and the tech told me he was shocked my airbags didn't go off. So knowing that my body handles crazy amounts of pain on a daily basis and also takes much longer than a normal person to recover from doing something, this is going to take me a while to get back to where I should be. Of course I am contacting my doctors and will be following up with my physical therapist next week while I am in town. Luckily while I am back for Christmas if I need I can go down to Pittsburgh as well for treatments.

All I know is I am ready for better things to happen, this year has been so hard, so much has happened to me in every aspect of my life that I feel like I have just hit rock bottom in every way. I just know that somehow God will bring me up at the right time and place and I hold on to that. So in the mean time I will hold onto that promise.

The To-Do-List

The past few days have been so well what I would call my normal. Where I have to try and motivate myself to get normal mundane tasks done. I made my list of things to get done and really had to force myself to do things.

Some days are obviously better than others, but the past four days have just been plain rough. It is me recovering I think and finally getting back on my meds, now that my insurance is back to normal. It is amazing how such simple things can be so hard. Like I am horrible at taking out my garbage. I need to be more vigilant about how I am eating, so I forced myself to go shopping and get some food, but even that was still rough.

Then we think about laundry and cleaning. I moved into a 400 sq. foot apartment, and you would think I live in a huge house the way I feel cleaning this place is. 

Having all of these medical conditions is just miserable and not knowing when they are going to hit you is the worst! Between trying to get my sleep  together and my fibromyalgia somewhat under control, amongst other things this is just one hell of an experiment called my life at this point. Being that my social life is basically called the doctors, I just keep trying to figure out how to get through day by day.

You have the pain, the exhaustion (all the issues exhaustion brings), weakness, and a million other issues.

October has flown by

I still feel like my life is just a whirlwind and I have no idea where I am going other than spinning around like crazy. Some weeks are completely taken by doctors appointments, others go by and I have no idea what I did, they are a complete blur.

Right now I still don't know what I plan to do for work, because my body is not ready to do something daily. However, I am healing and getting better, but it is an extremely slow process and I know that I am still going to be dealing with issues long into the future.

I took a leap and did go back into the world of wrestling and worked a tournament as a consultant last week. It was nice to be back into things on my terms. I do love the sport and the people, that is something I do know will not change.

My body can only handle so much though, as I suspected as I continued with my week I crashed today and was in bed for about 14 hours. I am glad I was able to go see friends back  in Edinboro though afterwards and visit people that I don't get to see often. It made the trip well worth it even though it may have been hard on my body.

What was probably worse on my body was the prolo treatments/injects that my doctor gave me yesterday. Man did the one hurt. They are still pretty taxing today even as I try and stretch them out. I need to get some heat on them again this evening. I find it always interesting that she tells me how tough I am for how good I do while getting these treatments ... which makes me wonder how the other people handle them.  I mean they are miserable, but for someone in severe constant pain what is a little extra pain?

The weather is getting cold and for tonight I decided that I am baking some pumpkin bread... which I should probably go check on, but it does smell delicious.

So here I still stand or sit, trying to figure out my life, for the first time ever not knowing where I want to go and what I want to do and it really does bother me. I also know that right now my body just won't let me take on the world right now so to speak. So I need to figure out the right balance, but ultimately my body and health comes first.