one day at a time...

As I have previously shared, I fell down the stairs a few weeks ago...my foot is almost completely back to normal (yay!) but still has some pain especially in the morning. The pain from my cyst is still there (I don't expect it to go away anytime soon) so two Thursdays ago, I decided to call the doctor back and get the pain medicine they suggested a few weeks before that. I was a little nervous to take the pain pill - not quite sure why, maybe I was afraid I'd get addicted or something, or wasn't sure what it would do to my system (my system just seems to hate me)...so that Friday (5/13) I took one pain pill in the morning, another one ~5 hours later. About an hour after the second one, I felt like I had a fever and was going to be sick. Getting sick at work is never the goal  - but that's exactly what happened. I woke up the next day and felt worse and tried to keep taking OTC drugs to make it go away but finally broke down the following Tuesday and went to the doctor. Upper respiratory infection they said - take an antibiotic for 10 days, get an allergy shot in my butt and call it a day - wonderful. The Nasonex and Loradatine was working so well for so long - but I swear, a few weeks back in my cube at work and I'm sick again...I swear there is something in our building that makes my allergies go crazy! I took this picture of myself at work to show you EXACTLY how I felt that day...miserable.

The next day - Wednesday - I'm starting to feel a bit better actually when I wake up, but not a ton. I decide to take it easy, get ready for work - then watch a little TV downstairs before leaving for work. Sally didn't want to go out until I got downstairs and got comfortable on the couch. :) I let her out (not 10 minutes) and I kept checking on her and she was standing at the door, tail wagging and everything. When she walked through the door I started crying - I didn't know what she had done but her skin was pulled back and there was a huge red mark where you could see underneath her skin....it was so gross. I ran her upstairs and told Richard to get up as fast as he could (he later told me he thought I was just crying because I didn't feel good) but no - I was worried about Sally!! He called the vet and they only do surgeries on Wed mornings so it was perfect timing - they wanted us to bring her in and see Dr. Heekin before she started surgeries for the day. When Dr. Heekin walked into the room, she goes "Wow, that's really big - what did she do??" (Please note, at this point I felt like I wasn't completely crazy - since the vet thought it was huge! She said sometimes they can just stitch it quickly or from the outside when it's small, but since this was so big - she recommended same-day surgery to get it reconstructed from the inside/outside. My stomach sank - I felt so bad for her - she didn't cry or whine or anything until they put her in a crate in the back of the vet's office...I felt so bad that she had to go through all of it. Richard picked her up that afternoon, then picked me up from work - when I saw how big the scar was, I was disgusted...it was so gross. She is just today starting to really want to pick at it and mess with it - I keep telling her no but I don't think she cares much what I'm saying. She still isn't herself - she's sitting in corners - most recently she went out back and laid down in the very far corner of the yard (I don't think she's ever done that) - this is her before surgery/after surgery/next day pictures - so glad they could take care of it so quickly.
I couldn't really get a great shot of what it really looked like in real life (since the worst part was the vet pulling the skin back :( but I did the best I could) - she kept coming over and leaning up against me...afraid I think of what was going to happen.

 A few things I didn't realize - How much they would shave, how big the scar would be or how groggy she would be/ for how long.

 It took until I came home the next day for her to smile again and greet me with the excitement I have grown used to - she is so sweet and I wish I could make her pain go away. She was so excited for me to be home, it was really sweet because Richard said all day before that she was pretty groggy and didn't really know what to make of the world.

Today was the walk for autism (I probably overdid it by going but that's ok - it was worth it) because I came home not feeling 100% again. I walked with Val (my backyard neighbor) and we had a great time. It was good to see Amanda/Kalysta down there...they are camping this weekend so I was surprised they were coming for it, but I'm so glad they did!

I picked these flowers from our rose bushes today and it is so simple yet pretty - I love all the colors.

These last few weeks have not been my favorite - I've had much better weeks and I've struggled lately with having too much on the calendar. I looked ahead and there are just so many things going on, I have to remember to make time for myself and focus on getting better. I think if my health was 100%, it would be easy to just say "Suck it up and do it - you can sleep when you're dead!" (someone said that in high school and I always remember it!) but when I've been struggling so much emotionally and physically - that's when I have to stop and think about what I'm doing and the choices I'm making. I don't like saying "no" and I certainly don't like letting people down - but I have to remember - I'm in constant pain at this point (with my cyst) and this upper respiratory infection has just made it really frustrating the last week or so to keep a positive outlook on things. I know we have a lot of commitments on the calendar and I'm looking forward to all of them - but I also have to start remember to take weekends to just do nothing - to just sit at home and not do a darn thing (except maybe clean a little bit) :) let's not get crazy...but I do long for just summer days of cooking out with Richard and listening to music on our deck.

If people are wondering about our next round of IVF - it's still going to start July 10th with the Lupron medication - that's the last we've talked with the doctor. I am supposed to go back just for a check-up in June to make sure I'm doing ok (or as well as I can do with a cyst the size of my uterus in my body pulling at my scar tissue!)  I'm really at peace with this next step of the process - I've accepted the fact that I'm going to try once more, and if it doesn't work we are going to move on - we have to, for my sanity. I don't want to go through this again with my body - I just don't have faith or hope that it can do it - ever. I don't like that it's come to that feeling, but that's the best way to describe it - it needs to end, I can't keep going on like this in my life. I have really high hopes for the next stage of the process, whatever that might be - I look forward to one day being a mom - I hope by next Mother's Day I am a mom - whatever way I'm meant to be one!

Next week is going to be crazy - and I'm just hoping it turns out better than expected!