To hell and back, that last few months...

Yesterday was an amazing day for me. I tried on pants I haven’t put on in about 2 years. I literally gained 70 lbs plus in three years. I have written many times about being broken physically and mentally. These last two years have been full of incredible heartache, so much so that writing even became too much. Every time I sat down to write something for the blog I would just cry and cry.

There is a point in which hope seems pointless. That things don’t seem like they will change. You are stuck in the same cycle over and over. While there are still days like that, my days seem to have gotten brighter. The overwhelming feeling of being helpless seems to go away little by little. As I tell people my story of a disease that no one even the Dr’s don’t really understand, to our struggle with having children, I keep getting told you should write a book.  Maybe one day I will turn my blog posts into books, but right now blogs seem to be enough.

In June I had gastric bypass. It was not an easy decision. If you had asked me a year ago, I was adamant that in no way would I do that. It was an easy way out, that I could just lose the weight on my own. As my Intracranial Hypertension and PCOS progressed to severity that my body could no longer handle, the hardly eating because of nausea and exhaustion was making me gain weight. Nothing, no matter how good I ate, I gained. On top of that I was dealing with a body that could no longer exercise that getting out of bed was a struggle, and I barely made it through the school year. In the last year, I have had 3 major surgeries. A brain surgery, back and spinal surgery, and my stomach.

Let me tell you bypass is no easy thing, but I am so glad that I made that decision. I am now 80 lbs lighter, and I have a new lease on life. My body is working normal again. There is hope. Seeing other pregnant woman, having friends and family making pregnancy announcements, anything pregnancy is still incredibly hard to deal with. I have had to find other avenues to deal with my emptiness that I feel. I now sell Origami Owl to help pay medical bills, and I coordinate Foreign Exchange students, as well as taking classes to be a Child welfare and Attendance Counselor. We have invited a young man for Taiwan into our home to be our son for the school year. I at least get to play mom for a little bit.

I pray and hope that one day I will get to know what it is like. I am now taking each day one day at a time, and using the strength God has given me to not blow up at that child who says I must hate kids because I don’t have any of my own. She is so young that she doesn’t truly understand the heartbreak I feel in my heart. I have gotten so good at putting on a façade. No one knows how much pain I am in physically or mentally. I hide the tears that want to spill out every time I hear an announcement or walk into the bathroom and over hear a pregnancy conversation. I hide the bitterness when I hear someone complain. I hide the snide comment I want to make when someone says I understand how you feel, or they know someone who has the same issue. No you don’t really understand, because unless you have been in my shoes, you can never understand how I feel, and the fake sympathy just makes me feel worse, but I know that they don’t know what else to say. Instead I go home and cry into my husband’s shoulders because yes he truly understands.

With all of this has become a feeling of inadequacy.  I can’t give him the one thing we both truly want. That my body and what it does is out of my hands, and that having a rare brain disease with no cure, and a medical condition that the medical community only recognizes enough to give you birth control but not cover the meds you actually need, is frustrating beyond belief. Why me? Why does the crack head get to keep popping out babies while I cry, pray, hope that one I get have just one of my own.  What I would give for a we weren’t planning it moment.

Through all of this though, there is one thing I have discovered. I have discovered not only how strong I am, but I have learned compassion for others. It was there, but not in the way it is now. I see that every one has there struggles, and what may seem like a small problem to me, I understand that for that person it can be a life and death struggle. The one thing I have told my family is that I hate that my Intracranial Hypertension is treated like something minimal. That it is nothing. It isn’t cancer. That it isn’t that big of a deal. Many people close to me have been guilty for this. For calling me a baby, for saying that I need to just deal with it. That it isn’t a life or death struggle like cancer. For me cancer seems almost better. The Drs know what to do with it. With my disease it is a shot in the dark. The shunt may or may not work. Just take these heavy-duty pain pills and live with it. Yes, you are going blind but it is just headaches. We truly don’t know how someone is suffering until we walk a day in his or her shoes. I am dealing, and I am so grateful that I get to go back to almost normal, that I have my life back, that I can do almost all of what I did before, because not everyone has been as lucky or blessed as me.

So in June I went into the hospital a very broken person. I came out a stronger woman. I survived 24 hours from hell in which I couldn’t get out of bed because just moving made me dry heave. I had nurses and Dr’s yelling at me to get out bed and walk within a couple of hours, but just a trip to the bathroom was enough to have me dry heave for 10 minutes. So when they realized that they couldn’t give me enough nausea meds and that sleeping was better than me being up, I was left alone.

Here I am 81 lbs lighter, and yesterday I decided to pull out old pants just to see if they would fit. They weren’t plus size. They were normal size bought in a store when I could just walk in a store and fit in clothes. They FIT!!! I was so excited. I felt sexy, I felt normal. We decided to take our “son” shopping (his favorite activity) and my husband said I could spend some money on clothes because he realizes that I just need new ones. So the first few stores I walked into, I looked around didn’t really see anything, and was truly nervous if I would even be able to fit. No one gave me that odd look like why are you in here, you won’t fit in anything. Instead there were inviting offered to help me. I finally worked up the courage to try on a few things. I cried, or almost did; I really do hate public crying. The 16 with no W after it fit. That hasn’t happen in a long time, a very long time. I thought maybe it is just the outfit, nope. The next item fit. The XL shirt fit, that is an XL not the XXL. It fit. So of course I had to buy a few. Now the 16 is a tight 16, but in a week or two it will be just right.

Now we are waiting on finding out am I or aren’t I. We are in that dreaded two week wait. I have all the glorious symptoms. See two years ago I was miserable with those sore boobs, you know all those PMS things. Well now I welcome the hormonal migraine, the sore boobs, the cramping, the moodiness because it means only one thing. My body is working, and I am back to almost normal cycles, although I was never truly normal.

In the meantime I have host mom duties, a jewelry business, teaching, graduate schooling, church activities, and lots of fall things to do that it seems the time is flying by fast. I truly can’t wait to see what God has planned for us, I just feel that we are on the other side and nothing but good is going to happen. In the meantime, I need to read up on how to deal with a teenager.