My Autoimmune Life

Emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually – and those are in the order they affect me in…. the emotion one is the worst for me….. I hate it……..
This has been (for a lot of reasons I’m not going to discuss on a blog) one of the worst weeks of my life. I’ve been pulled this way and that, I’ve had a lot of drama happening, and there have been a lot of changes back and forth as far as what was even going to happen with the kids.
As I told a friend early this morning on the phone – the last time I had a week this bad I was with my ex husband… and dealing with all his emotional abusive, the sexual mess (abuse? harrassment? I’m not sure what it fits under….) and all the manipulation…
It hasn’t been all bad, we still had the kids til this morning and they are a light in my life… there were definite good things.
But the stress kept piling on and I was getting exhausted and emotional from all of it. E and I ended up having some disagreements last night – no yelling, but lots of coldness towards each other and frustration…
I was made into a very easy target by a lot of people because none of them can take their anger out at each other… and emotions were running high all over the place… so it wasn’t an easy night.
Sonja is awesome… and proof of that is that she let me text with her for awhile at 2am her time when I was upset, then let me call her a couple hours later and sob at her and rant and everything else. She and I passed a lot of helpful advice between us and just got to talk. I finally reached the point I was giggling again and was tired so we hung up and she went back to sleep. I took care of one more thing around the house then it was my turn to sleep also.

I woke up sick this morning… I stayed in bed late since it wasn’t time to take t he kids to their mom at their grandparents house yet, then got up and finished what needed to be done to get them ready to go.
I made it to my inlaws house without being sick to my stomach again… had to get to their bathroom in a hurry when I was preparing to come back home (at least I didn’t end up vomiting there) and made it back home without getting sick. I ended up eating a piece of bread when I got home, and crawling into bed to sleep with E….
I woke up about 40 minutes ago or so and had to get up because I was nauseated again…. luckily eating some bread with peanut butter managed to fix that…. so I think I’m going to have to start keeping food in our room until whatever is causing this (I have a strong suspicion) is gone.
I have yet to cry (since dropping them off) and I just feel so empty right now – I can’t produce any emotion at all …. I know how I would be feeling if I weren’t emotionally exhausted, and it’s just weird to feel this.

An update on the symptoms I mentioned in my last post (I think it was the last one)…. nausea, vomiting (poor gamer woke up while I was doing that this morning and got to hear all the subsequent events), nasty headaches, peeing a lot, emotions are a mess, breasts are making me want to scream from the discomfort/pain at times, and it’s hard to get comfortable when laying down.
Most of those could be stress and/or weight gain related – the vomiting however fits nothing that is normal with stress (bowel issues are common with me – not vomiting – I rarely vomit) …. peeing a lot is common when my emotions start getting tied into things…. my IC flares are hormone and emotion caused generally. The headaches could be stress and lupus related. The emotions – well it’s been a hell of a week. And the breasts – when they grow they do this too…. so if I’m gaining weight they are filling out again and that would cause the pain…. normal thing that happens when I gain weight or go on bcps….

I feel miserable right now – and I don’t know if it’s pregnancy, pms or weight gain and stress combining…

My breasts are extremely tender and sore, I’ve been feeling really sick to my stomach the last couple of days, I’m even more tired than usual (though still having trouble sleeping), and I just all around feel weird…. :/

A situation that I’m not going into happened and we have the kids for a couple more weeks (at least unless something changes overnight) …… I’m not complaining for any reason other than the fact it upset the kids a lot to hear that they aren’t going to get to go home, since they’ve been working up to a frenzy about it for almost a week now…….
So they’ll be here for awhile longer probably, and we’re back to the plan of me taking the train out to get them home and to visit my family…. at least that’s the likely situation, as I mentioned in the first sentence.
Wish us all luck!

Edit: All three of them will be here until Monday or so, if not longer, depending on when someone can drive them to the station.

So, M might as well be my baby – he may not be human, but he’s been a baby to me since I got him….
Duckling started calling him her brother this morning!

This is the last full day we have them – their mother will be here in the morning at some point to pick them up – she and a friend are driving here since we won’t have the money for train tickets until mid Sept and their school started Wednesday. The school they need to attend is the most popular in the district (or so she says? I have no reason not to believe her) so she needs to get them home so they can actually get in rather than having it too full for them.

Chance of pregnancy mentioned…

So I’m either (finally) gaining weight back or I’m in the very early stages of pregnancy…. My breasts are hurting *really* bad…. and if I’m gaining weight back that would lead to them filling out again and them hurting due to the growth… if I’m pregnant, well, I think it’s pretty self explanatory lol!

For once I’m hoping I’m not pregnant!….. I’m about 20 or 25 lbs less than I should be…. so I’m not sure I could even sustain a pregnancy at this point… And honestly, I’d rather be back up to a healthier weight before I get pregnant, though whether I’m pregnant or just gaining the weight back I will be VERY happy….

It just seems so odd to me to be hoping it’s not a pregnancy…. I’m over here giggling.

I also told E if we did manage to get pregnant this month I’m calling the kids our good luck charms….

Or at least that’s how I feel….

I’m having pain in my left ovary and on my left side almost always…. I also have a lot of lower back pain almost continuously now, which means that my bowels and the back of my uterus are sticking together again…. :/ I’m sick of hormones and I’m sick of daily pain – because even if I’m not having endo pain, I’m having lupus pain due to the storms we get here…

Even during months we aren’t trying, I feel like a walking ovary – like my ovaries and uterus are becoming all that is important to me – that elusive pregnancy and baby, and the parts that are needed for it…. And that’s not something I like feeling. I’m able to concentrate on other people, and things about other people, but when it comes to myself, especially certain days of the month, I just feel like a set of ovaries and a uterus, an empty uterus. A failure. And I know I’m not a failure, but that doesn’t mean I’m good at convincing myself of that fact when I’m having one of those days …. I’m so tired of being a walking baby making machine that isn’t even managing to do that job right… :/

Oh those household chores can be wearing….
So today was payday. E did a bunch of the shopping after he got off work this morning, so that we at least had food to get through today, and some extra stuff, so that it will last us a few days if we don’t get back out to do shopping right away. After I was awake I went and deposited the money in the bank, and paid utilities. Rent will be paid tomorrow.
When I got back home from those errands we made a homemade breakfast. E made syrup – he took some maple syrup we recently bought and combined that with a simple vanilla syrup – water, vanilla and sugar… so we have maple vanilla syrup now. After he finished that he cooked bacon while I made french toast. When we all finished breakfast Duckling worked some more on learning her letters so she can learn to read and write, and Gamer played a video game on our XBox. E and I watched a couple episodes of Star Trek Voyager, after which he went to bed. I went with him for some cuddles, and we decided to have some “grown up time” as well….. especially since I’m right around ovulation, we decided we might as well try, it’s not likely anything will happen anyway, between my weight and the fact so far I’ve managed to get pregnant once and miscarried right away. If I do end up pregnant we’ll both be happy, and he’ll just have to help some more with the kids until I take them home. I started falling asleep while we were cuddling so he told me “Don’t fall asleep J, you have kids to watch…” so I grabbed my pillow and curled up out on the couch and rested (I never actually fell asleep, but my eyes were closed and I came close a couple times) until Duckling ended up wanting to cuddle, then I woke up and cuddled with her for a bit before they went to play outside. I’ve been up since then.
A little while ago I had them help me carry the trash that had been stacking up in the kitchen (hey, I’ve been sick and E has been working, plus our dumpster was pretty full, today was the day they come empty it) out to the dumpster, and we threw it all away. Then they helped me pick all the shoes up that were next to the front door (the entryway is part of the kitchen) and I moved the rest of the stuff out so I could sweep and mop. M is currently locked in Gamer’s room and the bathroom the kids share (it’s connected to both bedrooms) while the floor dries, and the mop is rinsed, rung out and drying in the bathtub in the master bathroom. I feel accomplished, but that took a lot out of me, especially since yesterday was a bad flare day, as was the day before. I took 1/2 valium last night when I went to sleep (if the kids need me or if there is any odd noise in the house I’ll still wake up to it, but I sleep more soundly and feel more rested, I’m not constantly waking up just because the air from the fan hits me or whatever) and woke up feeling a lot better.
As I mentioned I was worn out by lunch time, but the resting took care of it, I now have a clean kitchen and am ready for another nap… just a few more hours until I’ll be in bed though, so I can live with it.
All in all I feel very accomplished! (Just wish those few activities hadn’t taken enough out of me to make me wish for two naps just a couple hours apart…)

I’m curious what the difference is in the nerves of women with endo, vs. those without…. and does it have to come from someplace the endo is near? or does it work anywhere in the uterus?
Or maybe I should read the article more? (I’m not awake right now – well… not very awake anyway!)

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/last-quick-and-accurate-way-diagnosing-endometriosis-24222.html I see further in the article it explains what I was wondering lol… but I’m too tired and foggy to understand it right now….

Edit: Ummm… you’ll have to copy and paste the link since for some reason it doesn’t want to pop up as a link…….

I mentioned that my friend Sonja sent an EndoFEMM to me…
Well it has become a huge comfort thing for me, as well as helping with my pain. I curl up with it when my moods turn sad or black, and it’s like curling up with a nice warm teddy bear!! It’s so comforting for me, and I can’t even express it properly, but it is wonderful!
(Thanks again Girl!)