i suck at this blogging regularly thing...

Ok, first and foremost, I want to say that I SUCK at this blogging thing. The last few weeks have been INSANE for me personally. So yeah, there's my excuse.

I've decided that there's no point in keeping things secret on here. It's my blog, I'm going to write what I want. My pleasures, my pains, my happiness, my depression. I'm just going to lay it all out there. It will hopefully be therapeutic for me since I can't afford to go see a therapist. (yeah...I'll get to that.)

I'll start things out cheerfully. Here's Penelope, who's going to be 6 months old soon:

Ah, I just love her little face. Well, I'll be honest, I love her little everything.

So, life has changed dramatically in the last couple of weeks. We moved, again. Back to our hometown, so we can try to save some money and try not to drown in all our bills.

We've both got new jobs, what sucks is that they're part-time, but right now we can't afford childcare so it's all we can do currently.

As far as my health issues go, I've had more testing done. I had an EMG. Which for some reason I thought was a brain scan of some kind, boy was I wrong. They hooked little electrodes to me and used a taser to shock me and see how my nerves reacted. I think I was probably shocked about 90 times or so. Some were no big deal, some frickin' hurt. THEN, my Neurologist said she had to stick needles in different muscles and have me flex them to see how they react to stimulus. It was terrible. She poked me in each limb about 10-15 times.

The good thing about this test is that we're 95% sure about the diagnosis. One more test to go. A spinal tap. I have that tomorrow morning. Once we get the results back on that, hopefully we'll have a 100% diagnosis. Currently, my doc thinks that it's a rare disorder called Multifocal Motor Neuropathy with Conduction Block. Only 1 in 100,000 people get this disorder. But thankfully, there is a treatment for it, but it's an IV infusion that I have to do 5 days in a row at the hospital, and each infusion takes about 4-6 hours. So, yeah, I'm about to start this new job and I have to tell them I can't work for a week because this treatment apparently wears you out and can make you feel pretty sick.

If this is in fact what it is, then I'll have it for the rest of my life. I'll have to get these IV infusions regularly to keep my symptoms from getting worse. But on the upside, it's supposed to help the numbness/weakness. I hope it works.

I'm honestly just glad we have an answer. I'll do anything to make myself feel better. Even if I have to endure these stupid and painful tests first. God I hope it works.

Thankfully it's not hereditary or genetic, it's origin is unknown. But at least I don't have to worry about Penny or any future kids having it. And that's also a good thing, I can still have more kids. :-)

So yeah, tomorrow's the spinal tap. I hope it doesn't suck as much as I'm anticipating it to.

Here are some fun pics from this month:

sorry

I seem to have been slacking bigtime, I'll update soon. I promise.

5 months

First, I'd like to say that today was a horrible tragedy for the people in Japan. My thoughts and prayers (you know what I mean, "atheist prayers") are going to those people and their families.


Penelope is 5 months old! Time is seriously flying now and she's getting so big. She's trying SO hard to crawl it's ridiculous. I think by the end of the month she'll have it figured out. My smart little lady. She's reaching for our faces now too, feeling things out. She grabbed my nose SO hard the other day, her little fingernails dug in and DANG, it friggin' hurt. She likes feeling daddy's beard too, its scruffy surface yet soft texture. It's so fun watching her figure stuff out. Discover her surroundings.

And the crawling thing, ugh, it's KILLING me to see her be so independent and strong, but at the same time I'm so proud of her. She sticks her tiny behind up in the air and pushes her face into the ground, but by god she gets where she wants to go. A combination of rolling, pushing, and wiggling around on the ground. It's funny.

Rebecca Woolf over at Girl's Gone Child just found out that she's having twins! Holy crap! I'm so excited though for her. I can't imagine what it would be like to find out you're having twins, and I understand her fear about it. It's overwhelming. But SO exciting! I can't wait to see what she names them, what cute indie folksy clothes she dresses them in, how her two older children Archer and Fable are with their new younger siblings. I can't wait to read about it!

At the end of this month, I've got some plans to meet up with a long-time internet friend, K, and her son, T, who was born the day after Penny. I met K when I first got pregnant. I joined babycenter.com and joined the October 2010 birth board. I found a group of women on there who are as different from me as the day is long, but we developed an amazing bond. Through the last year, we talked almost daily about our pregnancies, our struggles, our marriages/relationships/lack of relationships, our pains, our aches, our joys, our excitement, our worries. It's strange to be so close to a group of women who you might possibly never meet. We're all over the country and one of us is in New Zealand. There are tentative plans to meet up when our New Zealander comes over the pond, but nothing's set in stone there. But this month, K will be coming to visit family in Chicago, which puts her only a few hours from me, which means, A MEETUP! I'm really excited. Like, REALLY excited!

So, my health issues, ugh. The numbness is still very there. My hands and feet and right calf are numb, they're getting harder to use properly. My balance is all messed up because of the numb feet, I even fell face first into a wall at my parents' house two weeks ago. That was awesome...NOT. I had an MRI yesterday (which I'll get to, holy crap) of my brain and spine. I know I should hope they don't find anything on them, but part of me would be happy just to get some answers and not need to do further testing. I would love to just know WTF is going on with my body!

The MRI was well, terrifying. I have a panic disorder, so I told them to give me some kind of sedation meds so I wouldn't have a full-on meltdown once I got in there. So I get there, take the meds, and they bring me in a half hour later. Had the meds kicked in yet? NO, but did I want to hold them up? NO. Of course not. Accommodating ME just went along with it. So I get in there, the tech is really nice. He asks if I need anything before I go in, I say, an eyemask. Ok, so they get me an eyemask. From here on out, I'm depending on my sense of hearing. I hear him clicking things around my head, fastening me in, laying things across my chest, large wire-y things near my arms. He puts some headphones on me and says "what kind of music do you want?" I say, "Oldies" thinking, "they're cheery, and will keep me positive." Plus, if I say rock or something god only knows what kind of crap they'll make me listen to (nickelback? ACK!) I wanted to say, how about some Iron and Wine, or Animal Collective, Cat Power, anything? No....

So, they get me situated, and shove me in the giant magnetic tube. I can hear how tight the space is, just from the echo of noises around me. I can't see anything, but I can tell that the walls are like, inches from my face. I'm thinking, "thank goodness I have this eyemask," there's no way I could keep my eyes closed long enough for this. My morbid curiosity would've ruined everything. A woman's voice comes on in my headphones, "Ok, we're going to get started. You ok in there?" me: "yeah" Her: "Ok, the first scan is 3 minutes." click. All of a sudden BANG BANG BANG right around my head. I think that there's some kind of alarm going off, that something's wrong. But when it continues and no one is pulling me out, I realize, "holy f*%$! this is the scan. I have to listen to this for 3 minutes." BY THE WAY, the oldies music I requested is inaudible during the test, AKA, totally useless. So, the first scan stops. Her voice again: "the next scan is 5 minutes" click. Again with the LOUD and I mean LOUD BANGING. It's a different banging this time, but it all pretty much sounds like you have a metal bucket on your head and someone is slamming a giant sledgehammer against it every half second.

I'm trying to breathe deeply, trying to calm myself down because at this point, the sedation meds STILL HAVE NOT KICKED IN. I had to talk myself out of pressing the "pull me out" button SO many times. I knew I couldn't do it, I knew that if I pressed that button that I'd be wasting everyone's time. I had to deal with it. I kept telling myself. Nothing hurts, nothing is wrong, everything is ok, they need to do this so they know I'm ok, millions of people have MRI's and they're fine!

So, about halfway through, the voice comes on again "we're going to pull you out and inject the contrast now." Wait, what? AN INJECTION? NO ONE MENTIONED A FRIGGIN' INJECTION. Again, breathing deeply. I hate needles, I hate injections, I hate needles, I hate hospitals, I hate the scrubs I have to wear because if I wore my jeans the GIANT MAGNET around me would rip them off or through me or something fucking terrible. I hate hate hate this. breathe deeply.

I leave my eyemask on because I don't want to see any needles. He's (the tech) is talking to me through it. Tries to get a vein on my arm, no luck. Tries to find a vein on my other arm, no luck. Tries on my hand, pokes me, no luck. "Um, I'm gonna have to try your arm, sorry, I have to poke you again." Me:"just do it please." breathe deeply. panic panic panic. breathe. "Ok, I got it." GOOD, jeez, it's not your JOB or anything. "calm down, you're irrational fear and anger of hospitals and anything medical-related is stupid!" I think to myself.

They finish the injection. They put me back in the machine. Guess what, the sedation meds STILL HAVEN'T kicked in. panic panic panic. breathe deeply. Half an hour more of loud banging. I get out and guess who finally feels the meds kicking in? oh, that'd be me. Awesome.

I get dressed and we go home. I'm all loopy and drugged out. Yay...not.

All in all, the MRI was awful, I hope I never need one ever again, and I hope this stupid ridiculous test tells my Neurologist exactly what the fuck is wrong with me.


sorry for the f bombs. I'm just ridiculously stressed out. My life has turned upside down and I'm an emotional wreck. I'm not even going to write about it because I'm tired of crying. I'm tired in every way imaginable. I'm emotionally drained, I'm physically exhausted, I'm mentally consumed with stress, and I'm just a mess. My health is in the toilet and I'm terrified.

Ok, enough about me and my feeeeeeeeeelings. If you've made it this far, thanks. Onto the cute baby pics, I know that's why you're here anyways :)

stomach sleeper

So last night, for the first time ever, Penny slept on her belly all night long. Sometimes she would fall asleep partially on her belly, sometimes all the way on her belly, and I'd always turn her over after she fell asleep so she'd be on her back. Last night, she must have turned over completely at some point and when we woke up this morning, she was on her belly, sound asleep.

Now, this is something I was afraid of. All the "pros" tell you that back is best and whatnot. But really, how bad is the belly? She spends so much time on her belly now that she's figured out how to roll over, so she's quite used to it now and actually seems upset if we put her on her back. She used to HATE LOATHE DESPISE tummy time so it's weird to see this complete change in her.

There are lots of changes in her lately. She's so curious about the world around her. Touching things purposefully now and trying to figure out what they are. Feeling the textures of everything with the tips of her tiny fingers. It's so cute to watch.

She also wants to crawl, like, REALLY BAD. She's pushing her tiny tush in the air and scooting her way around. If she wants to get somewhere, she'll get there! I like that about her, she's determined for sure.

She's so awesome. She's going to be 5 months old in a few days. Strange how times flies.