If one person can change, that change could impact many:

Friday, October 19, 2007

Another woven tapestry thread knotted, i.e., my cousin with RA passed

I'm sure in some strange place, maybe my life's tapestry that is embedded with threads from all the people that have meant the most to me has caused the "blanket" to be shiny and beautiful. But, for me, I'm in the middle of another overlapping year of grief. @%$#!!!
Yesterday was 1 year since my grandmother's passing, tomorrow is the 1 year since Gene's grandmother's passing (luckily for him, he was in Anchorage, AK at the time - it all happened rather suddenly - and after being together for 16+ years, she was like a grandmother to me,). December will be 1 year since my granddad's passing.
Today, it has been 3 weeks since my cousin, mentioned in another blog as "Cindy P.", passed from, mainly, complications of the medications many of our medical people like to put all us "autoimmune's" on. I spent every last free moment with my cousin, Cindy, during her 11-12 weeks in the hospital. She didn't survive 5 days once taken home, via hospice. She was my confidant on our chronic medical living and my "solder in arms"; my "partner in crime", the crime being the war raging against our bodies, in spite of any energy wished for to keep up with our mind's thoughts. My cousin raised her kids to 25 and 23 yrs. After watching the youngest, I realize I need to find away to make myself stronger - Find a way to self-preserve.
In some ways, that prayer has been answered, as I finally had a long-term memory that I could recall vividly [that wasn't associated with anything emotionally attached to me] - something I haven't been able to achieve for almost 3 years! I've held a lot of different emotions for this one loss since before and, even, during a long time after we had moved here: sadness, anger, victim-ly, determined, flight-or-fight, giving up, and finally it faded to me back to fighting, looking for my own answers, and trying to understand what I can from what I know and have learned. My growth began to return to me within my mind. First, in little ways - but ways that mattered a lot.
The connections began to make themselves in my mind. I was becoming somebody I missed - myself! ha ha Losing my immediate family members was hard, because I woke up not ready to be in the roles I was put in. But, I glided right into that spot as if it were meant for me to carry on. When I lost the one person that knew experienced what my life is really like and shared many of the same theories I had come to in order to enjoy my life and be someone my child would have as a deserving opposite sex parent, as well as a serve as a great Mom, and yet, without her, there were these times I felt lost and empty. This is from someone that knows we pass to a dimension we can hardly understand. Rather unexpected - yet ironically, this week, a younger girl with similar health problems as me, as well as entering into problems that compounded onto the very ones I had about 12 years ago, has entered into my life! I hardly think that I could fit into Cindy's shoes - and to be honest - no one will ever fill her shoes. But, the relation from one person's role to the next level occurs; every time we lose one of our own, whether we think we are prepared to be in the next role or not.
Loss is complicated and somehow finds a way of trying to simplify itself. Am I finally noticing what it is that I need, or am I looking to fill the void? If so, does the "Circle of Life" only involve our children? Maybe it depends on how involved a person sees themselves? In that case, life IS cruel and unfair; for no one can always be involved. Sometimes our priorities shift and our participation changes. That doesn't mean we stop caring, or decide being involved is more than we can commit to and therefore, never wish to again! If we didn't, then why do so many people blog to the point we have our own "community"?

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The weight is off, Thank God, the weight is off (well it's only been 2 solid years of work!)!!

Those of you that may not know me "well", may not know I'd been hiding a bit of a secret: I gained up to what I weighed before I delivered Joey before he was born, roughly 2 months prior to moving into our newly built MS house in ~June 2006! At first arrival here in Oxford, me, my husband, and my (at the time) soon-to-be-3-year-old-son, lived with (or more like survived in) my mother-in-law's (MIL) house! The 3 of us in my small family shared one bedroom and shared a bathroom. Unknowingly at the time, we also had ALL our business shared with God knows who; whether it be the cousin's-uncle's-mother's-sister that we've never even met!!! We had to learn the hard way that no business of ours was sacred from my MIL. We lived there about 11 months while we built the house. I thought [naively] that be the one and only nightmare-ish experience while in the MIL house. Since I would just have to deal with it; little did I know at the time, after finally losing 45-55 pds of my preger baby weight (yes, I got that happy about getting to EAT while pregnant) would not be a thing of the past! Maybe I lacked losing 7 pounds at the time, if that, but I was rather proud to be 30+ new mother and be in a big 8/ small 10 size and was certainly happy to live my whole life with that way! I also had myself convinced that a person gains 10 pounds a decade (or so the teaching my graduate school days stated). Frankly, I wasn't one to get all worried over a few extra pounds; especially right in the throws of my somewhat recent menopause!
However, during said time, I believe the heavier sister-in-law and really overweight MIL "plotted" to make my thin body (while it was 'functionally thin', not gaunt, mind you), be made fat as soon as possible as some sick joke for hope of me maybe, er uh, being miserable - I don't know?!! All I know is after a few, "let your sister/daughter-in-law bring out the cake/drink/[fill in the blank]" comments from the men of the family (and their friends), rather suddenly, pies, cakes, brownies, cookies, and the like were being cooked at rapido rates in my MIL's house!!! And while yes, my MIL, child, and husband did all eat such treats, I was into the beginnings of swearing off any bleached flour or sugar because of my Crohn's not being treated properly - in addition to not feeling well in general when we got here, began to just 'packed it in'!!!
One day, I stepped on the scales at the MIL/temporary residence: and topped the scales at 192 pounds!!! Just 3 pounds less than what I weighed before I had Joey!!! As one can imagine -
Panic set in, as I knew I had been made a fool of after being labeled the "cute wife" in Gene's family for the majority of the years (roughly 16 years) - I had suddenly become obese (and it was put in my chart by all my doctors, to the degree, one doctor continues to keep that down as one of my diagnoses)!!!
I suddenly wanted my family, my privacy and my figure returned to me the way it had arrived when we landed in MS 9.5 months prior! As it was, we were right upon moving into our newly built, with each our own small, but personal touches, environmentally friendly, "dream house". The initial move in turned out as the only dreamy thing about it was moving out of my MIL's house! ha ha We moved in before the house was finished, just to get away from my husband's family! So, a couple of months we "camped" in our house, as we slowly incorporated the "dream" back into it.
I visited a local doctor. He handed me the Dr. King books of restaurant and grocery store foods and their fat, carbs, and protein contents. What is the saddest part, with a thorough graduate degrees' worth of training, classes, and research in biochemistry (& the pathways that feed each cycle of the human body starting with the glucose pathway) and molecular biology; I could have written these books! Ugh!
Nevertheless, I swallowed my pride and set off to, at minimum, hit the top of my "ideal weight" for my height and age. I was told I would have to lose a minimum of 32 pounds. An "ideal loss" would be more near 50 pounds! The shock and shame slowly set in:

I have a few scarce pictures I posted to show you my lower "obesity" weight (plus the new pictures of the majority of lost weight). As mentioned, put into my medical chart as a diagnosis was "obesity". I hate doctors, most are no thin wafers themselves, this one in particular calling me, at my biggest, at a size 16, OBESE! Well, kiss my @ss! :)
And for doctors that leave "obesity" on a patent's chart well after they have not been are my pictures above for my proof! In 2 of them, I stand next to a 98 pound Barbie-Mom/close friend (getting off the point a bit, but: that's another mother of 3, also my God children's mother).
I'm posting pictures so you can see the nearly 50 pounds I have taken off!
To be a post-menopausal woman, living a disabled, fairly sedentary (this is hard to explain, but let's just say I have to rest in between periods of working myself into a muscle/nerve/joint spasm(s)-pushing-myself-too-hard to having to sit for a while to recuperate or if I've overdone it - or just flat out have to cat nap, which sucks for my husband and child when I have to do this), and still trying to blend in with the "normals" of Oxford, MS, which has nothing normal, all while this college group hasn't changed in 20 years! Honestly, if I can manage to do it here - there is hope for anybody!

Love you guys!

Saturday, June 30, 2007

As Life Allows...

As you can see, I have trouble putting any "regular" blogs out - but I am coming around to making it a priority; so those I cannot see and visit with like I used to, at least know that I am thinking of them and I love them! This means: Lorian, Amber, Katie D, Jennifer T, Jennifer H, Cindy P, Cindy E and Cass E, (as well as all your families/children) and all of you not in pictures or mentioned as of yet: know I am thinking of you! You all are always on my mind! I miss your loving company with the very depths of my soul - longing for your kinship - for I feel there is just no replacement for the love we feel when another "kindred spirit" uplifts an other's soul!
May you each be blessed and kept under our Guiding Spirit until we meet up again.
Your Everlasting Friend,
Suzanne