ulcer

Life as I know it

/ Outrunning my demons / 5 Comments

Whew, it’s been awhile which hasn’t been my intention. I was meaning on writing earlier this week, but the dogs jumped the fence and ran away. I had to focus on the problem at hand instead. Thankfully Paul got tags for the dogs with their name along with our address and phone number. We received a phone call several hours after the escape from a farmer who had one of our dogs. Paul went over to pick him up and figured the other dog was nearby. The farmer lived along 150 wooded acres and took Paul with him on his 4-wheeler to search for an hour with no results.

Paul and I both spent a good portion of the day each driving around aimlessly searching, asking people we saw on the road, and driving with our windows down and heat up listening for the stray bark. I was searching for a good picture of our last missing dog, joining groups for missing pets, and just made a post as darkness was quickly approaching when the doorbell rang. Someone found our second dog walking on the road toward home several houses down. It was strange because when our second dog came home, the dogs snarled and fought with each other. Another crisis was averted, but the day was pretty much shot. On a good note, we were grateful to see the kindness of strangers.

Last week I had my follow up endoscopy and my doctor appointment this week. The good news is that my ulcer is gone, but my colitis is still here. They gave me another medicine to try and if things don’t get better in the next two weeks, they are going to put me on a medication for ulcerative colitis. So far no improvement. I’ve been gaining weight like crazy and nothing fits which has not been pleasant.

Arabella also had her doctor appointment and will need to get her tonsils out. The recovery period for her will be two weeks. A lot of people have been telling me it’s a hard surgery for adults. It will be nice to be able to mom her again though.

Yesterday my mom came over for a visit. This week my dad fell and my mom called 911. It took three men to be able to lift him up. My mom showed me pictures of his bruises from falling. She also showed me pictures of his bedsores. I think he needs to go into nursing care, or at the very least they should have a health care worker come out to the house. I told my mom that and asked her what she was planning on doing. I asked my mom several times, but she didn’t even acknowledge that I was speaking to her. She kept saying how hard her week has been and how she is having a hard time. She said she wasn’t invited to visit her sister down in Florida, although her other sister was invited.

I think something needs to be done. But my parents are still ‘competent’. Thankfully my brother Mark and his wife Carla will be visiting my parents this weekend. I’m hoping I can talk to them about the situation and try to get the ball rolling to come up with a plan. Otherwise, Paul and I will be going out to talk with them soon. But even that is complicated with Arabella’s surgery coming up and Paul possibly being out of town for a business trip. Not to mention that my parent’s are the guardian of my disabled brother. It’s just one big mess.

But other than all that, things are going fairly good. I am almost finished with my memoir. I’m planning on getting a couple more tattoos. Next month Paul and I have a trip planned to Hawaii and I’m getting close to crossing off visiting all 50 states off my bucket list. I am happy where I am at in life. Things aren’t perfect, such as with my own health struggles, but I’m adjusting. For the time being, I am not in crisis mode and I’m going to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

What’s happening this week – 11/9/23

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

Hello! I think this time of year is always one of the hardest thinking of the winter ahead. I can no longer trick myself into thinking it is summer because the warm days are gone along with the healthy summer glow. With the time change, the skies are dark at 5 PM. All I want to do is sleep or eat like I’m preparing my body for hibernation.

I haven’t been feeling the best either. Some days I can really tell I have an ulcer with the stomach upset and nausea. The last several days have been cool and rainy. My joints ached like crazy. My whole body seemed locked down in pain and I just felt tired and crabby. It’s hard to believe the weather can affect how I feel physically. It doesn’t seem logical. There is still a mourning process to everything. Five years ago I ran a 50k. Now there are some days where walking up the steps feels like climbing a mountain. The whole experience has really humbled and changed me.

This week has seen it’s fair share of problems. This past weekend, the hot tub stopped working. The jets made a clicking sound and turned on and off by themselves. It sounded like the motor was going to burn out. I haven’t been able to find someone to fix it yet. One evening Paul and I came home to a strange noise downstairs to find water shooting out of the back pipe of the toilet. Several rooms were flooded including Arabella’s bedroom. At least it was clean water and it wasn’t from the leak Paul fixed a couple weeks ago. One of the dogs has a red swollen eye. I’m hoping it’s nothing serious. Best case scenario is the cat got him and he will learn his lesson about chasing cats. I don’t want to think what worse case scenario is. This morning I caught the dogs pulling stinky algae encrusted dead leaves out of the stagnant water of our decorative pond, fighting over them, and then gouging them down. Gross!

Arabella finally was able to get back on her health insurance and went in for a check up to get some of her medications reissued. She has been coughing quite a bit lately. I’ve been jokingly telling her she needs to quit smoking. Turns out she ended up testing positive for strep. I’m not surprised she started a new restaurant job and is sick already.

Angel and Dan left earlier this week for their honeymoon/anniversary trip to St. Lucia. It sounds like they are having a wonderful time. I was the one who suggested the location since it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. I was able to give them a lot of tips and ideas about travelling and what to see while they are there. Paul and I are very jealous and long to be in the Caribbean sun right about now. I’m really happy for them they can experience travelling while they are young and carefree.

Because of my health, I’m fearful of the best travelling years window starting to close. It happened so much faster than I was ever expecting. My husband said the other day instead of climbing mountains, we can still view them. There is some truth to that.

This week I started writing my memoir again. I am a lot further along then I thought I was. I probably only have a couple weeks left until the writing is finished and the editing begins. I am excited about this. But what happens after? I would like to keep writing but don’t have any more big goals.

What’s happening-November 1, 2023

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It’s hard to believe November is here already. This morning we broke down and turned on the heat. Yesterday we received our first snowfall of the season. Not the best day to go trick or treating. Not that I worry about it anymore. The kids have grown and we live in an area, although I bought candy and turned on the lights for two years in a row, no one knocks upon the door. This year I did not buy candy and instead volunteered at the cat shelter. Today I finished my yard work. For the life of me, I don’t know why I waited this long.

Yesterday I had my GI follow up appointment. Turns out I do have an ulcer. My colonoscopy results were not normal either this time and back in 2020. They are not sure what is wrong but think I might be in the early stages of ulcerative colitis. For now they put me on acid reducing medication and I have to follow up in January to do another endoscopy to see if the ulcer is gone. I know I’ve had ulcers before because I’ve had this pain several other times in my life. Once was during childhood. I pretty much quit eating because my stomach hurt so bad. My parents threatened to take me to the doctor but never did. Once was right before I did a marathon.

I’m thankful to have a vigilant doctor. Sometimes I worry that it is all in my head like the seizures I was having. I have to be less hard on myself when my body is less than perfect.

I’m planning on hunkering down and writing more starting next week. I always worry about what I am going to do once I finish my book. But life has a funny way of giving me more to write about.

Healing wounds

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

My mom hasn’t been feeling well since she retired. At first, the doctor thought that she was having problems with her gallbladder. But instead, she found out that she has an ulcer which she attributes to the stress in her life. I think that working and keeping busy kept her mind off of it. I understand because that is how I cope.

It has been a rough year for my mom. It’s been hard since she took my brother off of his anti-psychotic medicine due to some health issues. Matt started hallucinating again and became fixated on wanting to hurt my brother Luke’s daughter.

My mom was looking out for the best interests of Matt and my brother Luke was concerned about protecting his family from Matt. This caused a lot of conflict.

It stirred the demons from our childhood within Luke. This was a very painful time for Luke. But it was also a catalyst for him to process, deal with it, and heal. I’ve found that the healing process is very difficult. It has forced both of us to deal with feelings that are unexpected that we have never processed before.

It is hard for my mom. She says that it is very hard to deal with a child that isn’t okay. She spent day to day just trying to survive. I can understand that more now that I have teenagers. I worry all the time about how the decisions my son makes will affect his whole entire life. It’s a heavy burden to carry worrying that your child is falling but nothing you can do will pick them up. I somewhat understand.

Luke feels a lot of anger towards my mom for favoring Matt over him and even over the safety of his children. Matt will always be first in my mother’s life and I have come to accept that. I was once in Luke’s place when Matt wanted to hurt my kids. I had to have boundaries. I had to be the bad guy. I had to isolate myself from my family when I needed their help the most. I understand.

It’s not easy and there isn’t an easy answer. Some good has come out of it though. Luke started the healing process. We have been having a lot of deep conversations and working through this together. For the first time, we have each other. Sometimes good can come out of bad. This has given us strength that we never thought we had.

Matt has been back on his medicine for awhile and is passive again. The voices in his head have been quieted. It’s surprising how long it has taken for the rest of us to heal our wounds. Slowly, surely we are on the mend.