Priorities

I ran across this as I was looking for ways to tone my abdominal muscles with out tearing something fragile and having another nightmare on my hands. My heart goes out to this person and every single person that has spent a minute suffering like that. My situation is/was different but I can relate on a lot of levels, since I had the ileostomy and all. I have a lot of the same symptoms as colitis sufferers, however I am not losing weight. I am gaining. Go figure.

At times I want to just sit on the couch and baby myself and be glad all my stuffing is closed up under the scars and not do anything that might remotely hurt anything. Other times I see myself sliding backward into a place I never thought I would be again. I am nearly back to where I started on the scale and it blows. I am stronger than this person I see in the mirror. Stronger than I ever thought I would be again. I have bad days. Some are horrible, but I am here and able to breathe and move. When we move I will have access to everything I could ever dream of pulling something important on. I need someone to show me how not to kill myself with it all.

Last night, at three in the morning, I took about a hundred deep slow breaths. Each time I exhaled I smiled. Stupid me laying in bed smiling in the pitch black at the ability to breathe. I would like to take yoga or something. Someday. When I become Whendoleen The Millionare and can afford such things, along with music and ballet lessons for the three children.

I have been taking a few baby steps toward getting my rear back in gear. It is very painful when I yawn still. I don't know why. It feels like my ribs are all broken. Thankfully yawning isn't a frequent occurance, eh? I feel it a little when I get winded too. That might be what triggers the fear when I do try to go out and exercise. Me and pain, we don't get along much anymore. That and the digestive hell that seems to happen more frequently when I am not anywhere near home.

I have been a fairly good girl this past week. My diet is better, not ideal, but better. I finally gave in to my better judgement and through all thoughts I have been entertaining of trying the Adkins diet out the window. I know what makes me lose weight. Eating steak, eggs, ham, and lard for every meal is not going to do that for me. Fruits, veggies and small portions of naturally low fat foods. That is what works for me. I am actually tolerating a few fruits and veggies this week. I have missed salad and juice so much. I keep whining about the fact that Planet Smoothie closed where we are moving back to. I lived on smoothies when I was losing all my weight. Bastards. I guess I will have to just live with Jamba Juice. They don't have my Chocolate Two Piece Bikini with Fat Burner but I will have to live. I make okay smoothies. It isn't quite the same though. Not that I can even think about dropping wads of cash on Jamba Juice every day for the five of us. That gets stupid expensive.

I have only had two really bad sickness days this week. I don't even attempt to go out of the house if I suspect I am having one of those days. I am trying to ease up on the bottle, of Pepto, that is. I have been relying on it for weeks to keep me from getting sick while out of the house and that can't be healthy either. I am not able to just run out and look for moving boxes like I need to. However, I am getting a lot done around here.

I have had a very self pitying attitude about my physical state lately. I only need small reminders of where I have been that bring me back to where I stand now with a clear view of how amazing and strong I really have been. I have never really allowed myself to feel that what I went through was an act of strength on my part. I have always chalked it up to simply having no choice. It's true, I didn't have a choice. You honestly can't know how abnormal life becomes until something like this happens to you. It changes every choice you make all day long, every single day. I do have a say so in how I let it get me down. I am not going to let it run my life anymore. I can't.

For me, and everyone who has had to have medical care on such a grand scale it is just as mentally taxing as it is physically. When I am not sick I have to deal with the budget and trying to work in the bickering with creditors over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bills and insurance papers and coming up with copayments and generally dealing with the financial stress this has added. I am a couple grand away from being through with that end of it. I think. That is if I don't get any presents in the mail I am not expecting in the next few months. I don't know where it is going to come from seeing as I haven't included any payments to any of the medical bills in the grand plan for the next several months. I can tell you this though, I am not going to lose too much sleep over it. Those greedy bastards can just wait. We reorganized our household priorities and number one on the list is moving out of the ghetto.

Speaking of which, I have to call the office Monday and let them know about the roof leaking in the kids' room again and about the various other little things they need to fix before I leave so they don't try to charge me for any of it when I leave.

I am so close to being okay again. So close to being done. I want to do a little dance. It is a bit early to celebrate yet though.

Posted by gwendolyn on August 24, 2003 at 01:45 AM