Life, What Are You Doing to Me?

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." ~ Helen Keller

In my recent post, Absent, I said that I had, for the first time in my life, not had a period. Because of not having my period I didn't know where I was in my cycle or even if I was having one this month. I mentioned that my doctor was having me get my blood drawn to see all the indicators of what my hormone levels were. When I had my appointment with her she told me that everything looked really good (unlike my previous visit when she had said my estrogen levels were fine, but my progesterone level was low and my FSH higher). It felt like much more encouraging news. So, now I will just have to wait and see what unfolds in the next few weeks regarding my period: if I have one or not!

But in other not so encouraging news, I am having some new health issues that are causing me concern.

I know I have mentioned that often I can feel that I am ovulating because I will get an achey feeling in my right ovary (my doctor doesn't thing I ovulate from my left ovary, I think I do, but that it is extremely rare). Anyway, I did feel that achiness in my right ovary and I did think I was ovulating. But the achey feeling kept persisting.

I told my doctor of the continued achey feeling in that area and she had me get another ultrasound done on my ovaries and my uterus. I had had the same procedure done several months back which showed that I had cysts on both my right and left ovaries and that I had a big fibroid in my uterus. As a follow up, she had the ultrasound done on me a few weeks after that first one. In that second ultrasound it showed that the cysts, as well as the fibroid were gone. I think I mentioned that I had taken some herb pills my Chinese acupuncturist had given me to make them go away, and apparently that had worked, because as I said, the second ultrasound showed everything, the cysts and fibroid, had disappeared.

Now, however, after feeling the same problem and having my third ultrasound done. It has been shown that my right ovary is enlarged measuring, 5.5 x 3.1 x 3.7 cm. The results continue by stating that there is a "complex ovarian cyst" measuring, 5.1 x 3.7 x 3.7, and further, that it is "most likely a hemorrhagic cyst," as well as having, "small free fluid around the right ovary."

Okay, so this cyst may, or may not, be a problem of any severe nature, but then I get worse news (or at least it feels like it to me). The day after my ultrasound (the one I just mentioned) I had an appointment with my doctor so I was able to go over the report with her right away. She said that I needed to get in to see and OBGYN to look further into what should be done.

I have never been to an OBGYN! Yes, that is right, at my late age I have never had an OBGYN appointment! But after she discussed that with me I told her my pain in my ovary had increased dramatically and it now was completely swollen. She examined me and felt the bulge and said to me, "That isn't your ovary area. Your right ovary is higher, above this swelling. This seems like it is a hernia." I'm thinking, I've heard the word, hernia, before, but I don't at all know what the hell it is!

So, now my doctor tells me that I need to get into see not only the surgeon for the hernia issue, but the OBGYN for the cyst problem. She gets me an appointment with the surgeon for the next morning and lets me know that she is also faxing over to the surgeon the lab report on my cyst so that if need be, she (the surgeon) can coordinate with the OBGYN.

I find myself in the surgeon's examining room and of course she tells me I will need to have surgery to fix the problem, otherwise she says, it will continue to be a problem and it could potentially get worse. In addition, she says that she will get me an appointment with the OBGYN and coordinate with him (the OBGYN is a man) as to whether or not he will need to do a surgery also. In which case, she tells me, if he should need to operate, they can open me up once and go in one right after the other! I see the OBGYN tomorrow morning.

Yep, that's how my life is going...  and now I feel as if this hernia may have been with me these past three years and I felt the achiness thinking it was my right ovary, when a more likely scenario is that the hernia (beneath my skin) only presented that achey feeling when I was actually ovulating, but only because at ovulation that area would swell. However, at this point, at least until I talk further with my GP (she gives plenty of time to discuss issues!), your guess is as good as mine.  

But what would really be an interesting question answered - and I don't know enough about hernias to know - could it be that the hernia problem, in any way, has caused my severe, chronic nausea problem. The surgeon didn't seem to put the two together, but can it just be (now that I can look back more clearly) that my nausea started three years ago, just at the time when I started first noticing achiness in (what I thought) my right ovary? It probably seems like an impossibility, but it definitely has has gotten me wondering...

Well, anyway, this all happened on Thursday and Friday. And if that wasn't enough disheartening news, C. writes me today and tells me he does finally have a release date from the military, but rather than it being in June, it won't be until sometime in July (a full month longer than anticipated). Which, even if he is mentally up to meeting me (the military, over this past year, has just about sucked every piece of sanity he has left, out of him!), it would only give us a short amount of time before he has to move on to his next career challenge: law school.

So, yeah, I'd say things are a bit of a downer for me right now.... However, I am trying to look for at least some one thing from a positive perspective, and I think I have decided what it is: that I have been needing to have an OBGYN, to be seen by an OBGYN, especially in light of what my goal is, but have never bothered to do so... now, Life is getting me there....

A Year Ago

"Live well, laugh often, and love with all of your heart!" ~ Unknown

One year ago today, April 22, 2012, something happened that changed my life... it has yet to be determined what the final outcome of that change will be... but whatever comes from that day, wherever the road from that occurrence will lead, it has already been a day that I will always remember, that I will always cherish and that I know God ordained... C. came into my life.

I don't talk so much about C. anymore because, as you know from reading this blog, things between us haven't always gone so smoothly. But when you allow your heart to be as open as it can be, you take a chance as to the consequences of what that openness will lead to: the greatest of heartache or the the greatest of ecstasy (with your heart that open there is usually no middle ground!). But either way - through the loss of heartache or the finding of love - you are no longer the person you were and you will never be that person again; you will have grown... and always, always, it will be for the best.

Right now C. and I are doing well with one another, but he is still deployed thousands of miles away, and his date of release from his military service though just months from now, seems like an eternity. 

I don't know what,  if anything, our future with each other will be, but I do know that through each peak I have reached with him, and through each valley I have walked alone, I have learned what I didn't know until he came into my life: the art of loving - to love oneself so fully, so completely, that you can give of that love to another with no expectation of it being returned, it is given because it must... your heart won't allow for anything else.

Absent

"One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks." ~ Jack Penn

In my last post I wrote that my period was late, but that I thought it would eventually come. I questioned whether or not the trauma of going through my episode of anaphylactic shock may have been a cause of "throwing it off." 

Well, it never did come. My body felt like it was going to arrive but it just remained absent. 

Of course, it concerns me deeply, but I know that I am only capable of controlling what is in my realm of control. I must, in faith, leave the rest to God - and that is a great solace to me - that we are a team! 

I asked my doctor if she felt that the anaphylactic shock could have played any part in not having my period the past month (even though it is top of my mind that my age is definitely a huge variable!)? She said that, yes, my body not only went through the trauma, but that the massive dose of steroids pumped into me to stop the inflammation, as well as, taking the other steroid prescribed for the week after my release from the hospital, could definitely have adversely altered the functioning of my hormone levels. 

But because this is the first time this has ever happened to me, since I started my period on my sixteenth birthday, I was completely lost as to where I might be in my cycle. Was I even having a cycle this month? She ordered blood work, so I went to the lab to get that drawn. I'll go back to her next week and see if she has gotten that information from the lab and what, if anything, I need to do next. 

Do I feel worried about this having happened, that my chance of getting pregnant with my own eggs, having a biological child of my own, is slipping away from me? In this situation, with how my life is at this time, I don't think I would be human if I didn't feel some form of doubt. But, guess what? I don't have doubt that I can overcome my doubts!!! 

Late

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. " ~ Thomas Jefferson

I'm once again late this month on having my period, but I feel sure it will come eventually... (it could have been thrown off by the whole anaphylactic shock thing!)... I think about it, but I feel strong in my faith that everything will work out as it should... perfectly. I guess what I mean to say is, that although doubts do enter my mind, my inner-voice is very strong and sure and tells me to let go of my doubts and be free of my fears. Like I said, the voice is strong (and it is reiterated through the signs I ask for and receive!) and so I feel comforted. I feel like I am told to "know," but that stretches the limits of my mere human capacity so, I am only able to believe... : )

Links

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." ~ Benjamin Spock

I have, since I started this blog in January, 2010 (yes, *sigh* it has been that long ago!), used Scribd.com as my source for uploading my longer pieces of writing. This lets me put the basis of my thoughts in the blog post and allows you to decide if you want to click on the blue-highlighted link to read more fully my thoughts, my in-depth experiences.

Anyway, I'm writing about this now because I don't often travel back to the beginnings of this blog, nor follow it through the years,* and so I had not realized that so many of my links were invalid.

It was disheartening to find this out, as so much of the core of my story revolved around the writing I had linked to - especially regarding my mom's story. After all, it was my mom's story that so fully made me decide to not just follow my dreams, but actively GO AFTER THEM!!! And at the moment I decided to go after my dreams was really the moment that I decided that I need to write about my experience, and thus, created the blog, Dreaming Miracles.

But now I have gone back and corrected the links so, if you weren't able to earlier, now when you click on them they should take you to what it is I wrote more deeply of. I think, as I alluded to, it would be especially helpful in understanding my journey if you click on the links in each of the blogs entitled, My Mom's Story is My Story (there are four parts), because it was from that dark place which forced me to look for the light.

*I have to say it was so good for me to have gone back an re-read what I had previously written. You might think that it would be hard because of the fact that I have been writing so long about trying to make my dreams manifest, but it wasn't like that at all. It was more inspiring to me, gave me a more hopeful feeling, made me think in a more faith-filled way, and, I think, was really important for me to see how, though I sometimes have doubts, God remains so strongly by my side!