A Few Good Days...

Hey all! 

Been a while again, hasn't it? 

Yeah, sorry about that.  Life's been crazy around here lately...

But it's also been good.

I had a couple of big days this week...

Yesterday I spent most of the day shuttling between doctor's appointments.  My back has still been giving me trouble, and yesterday it dawned on me that it's been almost a YEAR that I've been dealing with this crap.  It was mid August I believe that it started last year, after I tweaked it when we moved into our apartment.  I've been going on and off to a chiropractor, who says I have an "easily movable pelvis" which is rotated and tilted.  We worked on getting it readjusted, which would help for a while, only to have the pain come back worse every time.  So I finally went to my regular MD about it.  She thought it could possibly be arthritis (which she still thinks it is) and put me on a series of several different muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory pills, pain pills and ice/heat regimens.  Nothing helped ease the pain for more than a day at most.  I finally had enough.  Yesterday she finally agreed with me that the pills were not helping (really?) and gave me a cortisone shot.  In my back.  In my SI (sacroiliac) joint.  One might think that it would have been extremely painful, but surprisingly, it wasn't.  It hurt a little, but not as much as everyone was building it up to be.  I am SO thankful for this shot!  Amazingly, it took hold and started working by late last night.  Today was even better.  So much so that for the first time in nearly a year I was able to be up moving around for more than 5 minutes at a time!!!  You have no idea how big of a deal this is.  My pain had gotten so bad that walking from my front door to the car (all of about 250 feet at the most) would have me doubled over in pain.  Standing for any length of time (to cook dinner, standing in line at a movie, in a checkout line at the store) was sheer misery.  This wasn't just "oh, my back hurts" type of pain.  This was double me over, drop me to my knees, sweating and out of breath, please take the machete out of my lower back type of pain.  I had gotten to the point of nearly being immobile.  But I pushed through each day out of stubborn frustration.  I cried daily because the pain was so bad, because I was tired of feeling like a fat lump of uselessness, because I felt that nothing was ever going to help.  People just don't realize how seriously a person can be affected mentally and emotionally by severe chronic pain.  I've had moments in this past year that I don't even want to admit to.  Moments when I just wanted the pain to stop any way I could get it to.  The biggest frustration for me is that I know that my weight does not in anyway help my back problems.  They're not the entire cause, but they certainly don't help.  I know that I have to lose weight.  I WANT to lose weight.  I want to be active and not just sit at home like a bump on a log every day.  I need to lose weight in order for us to TTC again, because at this weight it is impossible.  I have every intention and desire to get back to an exercise program, but my back pain simply wasn't letting me.  Everyone kept telling me, "Just push through it. Work through the pain."  Well, when it drops you to your knees and takes your breath away, it's pretty impossible to "work through it".  It's a vicious cycle.  I'm in pain partially because of my weight, I need to move to lose weight, moving is nearly impossible because of the pain, but I'm in pain partially because of my weight...  I felt so hopeless.  Useless.  Worthless.  But, as of today I'm doing pretty well.  I was able to go grocery shopping for the first time in months without being in pain by the time I walked into the store.  I was getting sore by the time I was hitting the checkout line, but for me, that's amazing!

I felt so good that I actually went over to our storage shed and went through some of my books and took them to a local used book store!  Yes, ME.  I parted with some of my precious books!  I think I was still high from the shot, if you want to know the truth!  LOL  Nah, these were books that I knew I wasn't going to read again, ever.  They took the majority of them (I had taken 4 reusable shopping bags packed FULL, and I only had 1/2 a bag to take back), and I wound up getting $78 in store credit!!!  WOOHOO!!!  I bought 3 "new to me" books and my husband bought one, and we still have almost $65 credit left.  They have a lot of books my husband was interested in, so he will be going back to pick some out soon.  The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing was the condition of some of these books.  It almost made me cry.  One thing anyone knows about me is how OCD I am about my books.  I take insanely good care of my books.  I always have.  Books are treasures to me.  I don't dog-ear the pages, I am very gentle with them so the covers always stay in good shape, and for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus I cannot fathom breaking the spine!!!  I nearly cried when I saw shelf after shelf after shelf of spines so broken you could barely even tell what the name of the book was anymore.  Such a tragedy.  I know that most people don't treat their books like I do, but it almost seems a bit disrespectful.  I think it comes from the way I was raised.  We never had a lot of money, but books were one thing that my parents always made sure we had.  Reading was a family affair for us.  We used the library a lot, but when we were able to purchase new books, it was a treat.  We (my sister and I) were always well aware that my parents worked hard and sacrificed much to give us the few "extras" they were able to provide for us.  So we learned from an early age to appreciate our belongings.  And the value of hard work.  Which is why I get so frustrated when I see books not taken care of.  Someone worked hard to write that book...what would they think if they saw it all beat up and damaged?  Oy.  I guess you could say I'm a little too emotionally invested in my books, eh?

Matt and I also had a couple of really good discussions these past couple of days.  The kind that afterwards left me with a smile on my face AND in my heart.  But we'll talk about those another day. 

Love,
Rebecca



~"...choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."    Joshua 24:14-16