Punday 3/31

Punday 3/24

My New Diagnosis

I had my yearly physical on Thursday and there were a couple problems. I haven't been taking my supplements the past few months like I'm supposed to so I got a wrist slap for that. When you are taking six-seven medications a day, some of them more than once, it's easy to say I don't want to take any more pills so I'm going to stop these. They can't be as important since they aren't a prescription, right? Wrong. They are important they just won't do as much damage if you take them when you don't need them or something so they are available over the counter. One of them she said if my blood work doesn't improve in six months I'm going to have to go on a prescription so just take the supplement already. I got a pill reminder box so when I go to take my meds at night they are already there and I can't convince myself not to take them or conveniently forget.

The big news though is my thyroid. My TSH levels are 11.75 when normal range is 0.04 - 4.50. They have always been normal before but I think they may have been on the higher end of normal last year. What caused such a big jump? We don't know. After doing some research I may have developed Hashimoto's which is an autoimmune disease. Basically your immune system attacks your thyroid preventing it from doing what it's supposed to. I already have an autoimmune disease and if you have one there's a good chance you will have or get another. So I have to go on another prescription for that (which you have to take on an empty stomach at least 30 minutes before breakfast).

The worst part about this is how it affects TTC. We were hoping to do a donated embryo transfer around June after my lupron shot wore off. That has now been officially canceled. Hypothyroidism can cause the FET to fail or a lot of bad things to happen if it's successful. Miscarriage, pre-e, stillbirth, heart failure, anemia, low birth weight, or brain and nervous system birth defects. You can have a healthy pregnancy but you have to be very on top of it and have your levels checked every 6 weeks. Due to my other health problems I'd probably already be high risk and this just adds to it.

At the very least we have to wait until my levels are checked again at the end of May. If they come back normal I'll be cleared and we can start making arrangements for a cycle which would take another couple months. If they don't come back normal we'll adjust my meds and wait a few more months and check again. Going by my health history this is what I'm predicting will happen. Even if I'm cleared in May I'm not sure I feel comfortable moving forward with this being such a big deal. I think I would feel more comfortable having at least two normal blood tests under my belt so I know it's not a fluke and has leveled out. So now I'm thinking late fall/early winter transfer at the very earliest, if nothing else happens to push it back. We've had a couple quiet hurricane seasons so who knows we could take a direct hit or something.

The good news (if there is such a thing) is a lot of the problems I've been having lately could be because of this. Fatigue, joint and muscle pain, depression, weakness, weight gain, sensitivity to cold (seriously I'm normally always hot but the last few months I've been super cold! I'm bundled up in my Tardis blanket right now!), thinning eyebrows (weird symptom but Josh says I have that), paleness (Josh says my paleness is unrelated lol), memory problems and having trouble thinking, dry skin, constipation, all sorts of lovely things. I could start feeling better in as little as three weeks which is a lot better than the three months I thought it would be with lupron. Of course it could take like a year but hopefully it doesn't.

It really sucks having another diagnosis, another health problem, another medication. I've already been having a bad week partly due to the symptoms above and some personal problems so my mental health has definitely suffered. I just feel so terrible, you know? But I'm glad I know now so we can at least start treating it.

Nanny 911

A friend of mine was watching Nanny 911 and saw my sister and her husband ten years in the future! I've talked a bit about her situation before and it's sad to see it played out on TV. It's season 3 episode 10 The Mills Family if anyone wants to watch (it's on Netflix). What's even sadder is it only shows one aspect of their dysfunctional relationship. It doesn't show how he isolates her or the cycle of him breaking up only to take her back out of the goodness of his heart so she owes him and is even more under his control. It's sick. As we watched it my mom and I were glad my sister is having a girl so she doesn't have another little mini BIL to gang up on her like the wife in the episode.

Sucky Day

I have no hope. Things will never get better, they will only get worse. What's the point of pretending otherwise?

Punday 3/17 - St. Patrick's Day Edition

Small improvements are better than no improvements

Last week I mentioned bleaching my hair. This week I've colored it purple! I was gonna wait another week or two to have my blonde hair for endometriosis awareness month but figured I should while I still have some of the stronger pain meds if needed. The next time I color my hair it will be back to brown! Makes me sad to think about it but I know it's the right thing to do. That'll probably be a while though. Because my hair is shorter than when I used to dye it purple I still had about a third of the bottle left. Normally you're not supposed to keep left over hair color but for the unnatural semi-permanent ones it's okay. If even comes in a resealable bottle and you don't have to mix it with anything. So I've been mixing some in with my conditioner to help is last longer. It also helps that I don't take a shower everyday and hardly ever shampoo. It'll still probably end up being a light purplish gray for a while before I color it again but I'm okay with that.

Thankfully my mouth is healing well and I've been back down to my regular meds for a few days now. I'm even taking it less often than I can which is great! I usually only take it twice a day now with some Motrin in between. I left the house Friday to go to a drive in movie with my mom and some friends. We watched Frozen and Catching Fire. Then on Monday (I think?) I went out to dinner and grocery shopping with DH for the first time in a while. My previously broken ankle started bothering me though so I've been keeping it up and iced a few times a day.

A while back I won a Fitbit Zip and finally opened it to see where I stood. You're supposed to take 10,000 steps everyday and yesterday I managed a whopping 505! It's a little low because of my ankle, but even without that I'm sure I'd be less than 1000. I just can't move very much when I'm at less than 75% (which I have been for a year minus a few good days) or things are even worse the next day. It's depressing. I remember when I used to walk a mile every other day with Scotty and do 45-60 minutes of yoga the other days. I had to stop walking so much because my stupid ankle was getting inflamed but I miss it. I hope I can get back to at least doing something soon.

Punday 3/10

I Wear Yellow For Me

I bleached my hair! You might remember in the fall I got my hair cut and the stylists said they wouldn't even try to get the red out of my hair. Well I decided to try it myself, and they were right lol. I bleached it twice and the bottom where it was the reddest and has been red the longest is still a strawberry blonde (a little lighter than the picture shows). I decided to go ahead and do it now for a few reasons. First it's endometriosis awareness month so no better time to have blonde hair, right? Second I'm on some super strong pain meds so now is when my neck arthritis would hurt the least. It still bothered my neck and shoulder obviously, but not nearly as much as when I tried to color is myself 6ish weeks after getting it cut. I got some purple I'm going to do one last time in a few weeks and once that fades I'll be going back to brown.

I have that dress in the picture which is kind of yellowy tan, some yellow skinny jeans, and a black and yellow floral shirt I've been wearing plus yellow nail polish. I did have someone ask about all the yellow recently but it was my little sister lol. She already knows I have endo so not much awareness raised there. It's hard to raise awareness though when you never leave the house! I also made myself this bracelet which has yellow for endo, teal for PCOS, and pink & blue for infertility/miscarriage. I am trying to wear it everyday this month. So far I've only taken it off to shower so I won't have as many opportunities to forget to put it back on!

I saw my therapist on Monday and we talked a bit about how my plans never seem to work out. I've been feeling like there is no point trying to plan anything if it's just going to not happen anyway. I've been feeling especially bad about always cancelling when we have plans to go see my friend who lives two hours away. My mom was asking me when I'd like to reschedule our visit for and I told her what's the point I'll just have to cancel again. I wish we could just spontaneously go one day when I'm feeling pretty good but it's just not possible. If I'm feeling okay either her, her husband, my husband, or my mom are busy. Talking about it helped though because she pointed out I'm probably hardest on myself. My friend probably isn't as frustrated and angry with me over it as I picture in my mind. She understands. But it's still hard.

My next lupron shot is supposed to be anytime now but they haven't called me about it yet. They said they'll call me whenever it comes in instead of me making an appointment. Tomorrow is my birthday and I was hoping it wouldn't be until after that. I don't know if the side effects will increase again and that would be a terrible way to spend my birthday. So that prayer seems to have been answered at least!

Punday 3/3