Sleigh bells ring...are ya listnin'?

Hello, All!
Christmas is almost here! I wish I could say that with a ton of enthusiasm..but I can't. I feel like my Christmas spirit..as well as Halloween and Thanksgiving were all sorta blah this year. We did actually get a Christmas tree...but I've been not feeling well enough to decorate it. I suppose I should..seeing as how there's only a few days left till Christmas. But, I can still enjoy it through New Years. I haven't taken out even half of my Christmas decorations. I haven't finished my Christmas cards...and to make matters worse, I haven't gotten my stamps yet...because I lost my debit card and I have to wait to have it sent through the mail and UGH! Hopefully I will get those sent out before Christmas for goodness sakes. We didn't manage to pull of a christmas card picture this year...so you better believe that next year I'm pulling out all the bells and whistles for the holidays! I will have to admit that I am feeling a lot better. I went to see a neurologist who did a full exam on me. He believes that whatever I have is not neurological...which is good because I had every single symptom of MS. He really believes that I have fibromyalgia. I'm going to say that I have to agree with him, mainly because that's something you can't really diagnose unless you've ruled out pretty much everything..and believe me I've had every test you name it! The only thing I'm waiting for results on is the MRI I had friday night. That's to completely rule out MS. I'm very happy with the fibromyalgia diagnosis because I know it could be much worse. Yes, I will have incredible pain all throughout my life but the good news is..for now, I can control it with my lifestyle. When I'm older I may require some medication. But Honestly, I've noticed the pain has gotten a lot less now that I was diagnosed. I think a lot of the pain that I was having was a direct result of anxiety I was having about not knowing. Yesterday, I felt great, I hardly had any pain until last night. Night, is when the pain or the symptoms are usually the worst but I'm learning to deal with it. Last weekend I landed in the ER thinking I had a blood clot in my leg, the pain was so bad. Lee has been my support through all of this. I think it has really brought us closer together. When you go through something like this, you feel really helpless and without him there I probably would have LITERALLY gone crazy. Thanks to everyone for all the prayers. We BOTH really appreciate it.
SO...on a lighter note..I woke up this morning to some snow! Ok...a dusting. BUT it's beautiful and our kitties love it! Pumba wont get out of the window..he's just staring at it. I'm so excited to go home this week and see Roanoke pretty and white for Christmas. Then, we'll be traveling to Winston Salem to spend some quality time with the Money's. John will be spending New Year's Eve with us here..honestly I'm not really sure what we'll be doing. I didn't really plan on doing anything but we'll think of something. I'm taking Lee out for his birthday...he's been wanting to go to the melting pot and there's some dumb movie he wants to see. Then, Lee got me tickets to go see Legally Blonde..the broadway show! I'm so excited! I can't beleive next year is when we're getting married! Only 260 days left...i can't wait to spend the rest of my life with the man of my dreams!
Well...that's it for now..Merry Christmas to all! have a safe and happy holiday!

Optima Health is makin' bank this year!

So. Here I am again. This time with more fabulous news on my health. Well for all one of you who have been following my blog..here's the latest. I had to meet with my doctor to discuss cholesterol meds. Yes, I have high cholesterol. Very high. BUT, this did not come as a shock to me because I have hypercholesterolemia. It runs in the blood on my mother's side of the family (I've always said, the ONLY thing I got from my birth mother was high cholesterol..thanks Mom!) Stupid chromosome 19! Your cholesterol as many of you know is supposed to be under 200..preferably around the 180's. Cholesterol is a plaque that builds up in your blood and can block your arteries causing you to be at risk for heart attack, stroke, or heart disease. When I was 8 years old I had my cholesterol taken. It was 340. ( I heard all one of you gasp!) Yes, that's extremely high. Mind you, my mother and grandmother's were both in the 400's and they have always been on meds for it. A few years ago, right before or right after I met Lee, i had it taken and it was 320. Wow 20 points. Anyway, after all these crazy health problems started I told my Dr about the hypercholesterolemia and she wanted to take my blood. My pediatrician and primary doctor in Roanoke never wanted to put me on meds because I was so young. I told my new pcp here in VA BEACH that I WANT to be on meds if I can do it safely. I don't want to have to constantly wonder if these crazy symptoms are cholesterol related. She said that back in the days that I had my cholesterol checked that it was pretty much unheard of to have someone that young or even as young as me on meds. Well, times have changed. She has a lot of young children on Cholestorol meds. Therefore I got my blood checked and my cholesterol was 306! (the doctor gasped) I jumped for joy because its the lowest its been in my entire life....even if it IS TREMENDOUSLY high. FYI I am now an officially consumpting Zocor on a daily basis. Let's add that med to the list...my BC, ativan, Naproxen, daily vitamin, and metamucil (that I've really been taking for my own amusment since Lee had it recommended to him because of all of his bowel problems)I feel like a have a nightstand of a 70 year old woman. Oh but it doesn't end there. Because of everything that is going on...I have developed severe anxiety. You can add celexa to that list of meds....I'm excited about this one. Not only to calm my nerves..but Lee's mom went on it and lost 30 pounds. I've already lost 10..lets add 30 more! Not to mention feeling better? That would be amazing!? So the last test she is ordering is another test that could tell if I have MS or not. That's a big one. I had a negative EMG and normally if that is negative you can rule-out MS but because my symptoms seem to persist, we're going to try the MRI. AND even though my back and neck x-rays came back negative as well...she's going to do an MRI of the neck since I have a lot of tension and back pain just to make sure there are no nerves there that we've missed. I know my doctor is thinking positively so Lee and I are too. Please keep us in your prayers ..I don't know when the MRI's will be scheduled but probably sometime next week. Oh and to my one blogger reader..anemia was ruled out..b12 deficiency..etc etc. There's really nothing left to do. If this is all stress/anxiety/depression..the celexa will slowly take care of that. I'm so ready for a new year!! Not that I'm trying to skip Christmas or anything but...anyway.

Christmas photo shoot..because we CAN!

Ok so we decided to try to take our christmas card pic...I'm not really pleased with any of these..yes I KNOW the lighting is bad..we were experimenting...without further ado....






Thank you.

Where are you Christmas?

Hey everyone! It's finally that time of year! Christmas is here. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at home although I didn't feel very good most of the time we were there. On Wednesday night we headed home to stay with my grandparents so that I could help them on Thanksgiving day get ready for everyone's arrival. I woke up early and made a pumpkin cheesecake..which I was told was very good (I don't care for cheesecake!)and I made the stuffing this year. My mom hasn't been feeling so well for the last year or so and usually she makes the stuffing..she was going to use the boxed stuff this year and I said "NO WAY!" not for Thanksgiving! So, I took it upon myself to make it and it turned out really good! Yay! I didn't have much of an appetite this year because I've been feeling so poorly. We still don't know what's wrong! I had blood work on Monday after Thanksgiving and that came back normal so it's really just a guessing game now. The Doctor seems to think that it's stress and that my pain is coming from inflammation but I've been taking strong anti-inflammatories and the pain isn't really going away. we've ruled out...pinched nerves, stroke, heart attack, carpal tunnel, MS or any other anti-immune diseases, blood clots.. etc. It's starting to really affect my day to day because I'm in a constant state of worry that something is really wrong. Some days I feel really good and others I feel like crap. The only day that I felt good over Thanksgiving was Friday. THANK GOD, because Friday is when I had so much to do. My dad and step-mom and Lee's mom and Lee and myself went to the Kyle House to meet with Schaal's catering and see the venue! Everyone loved it! I'm so glad..I think they were all pleasantly suprised..my dad was especially happy about the prices and everything that is included. We have saved so much money! I'll blog more about that later on my wedding blog. Afterwards, we had lunch at the Cracker Barrel and then headed over to Carlos restaurant to meet with the lady about the rehearsal dinner...another long story in itself. UGH! We also had to get a new battery for Lee's mom's car because it was dead. Then we went to the coffee shop for a few. By the time we left there i was exhausted. I was supposed to meet up with friends that night and it just wasn't possible. The next day I woke up feeling horrible..not to mention the fact that I had an incredible stomach ache (which lasted for three days!) I spent most of the day on my dad's couch. I was supposed to go to a dinner party (MY IDEA!!) at Jenny's house and I didn't make it to that either. That caused a crazy amount of unexpected drama. I feel like with this illness or whatever is going on with me that a lot of people don't understand how it affects me. When the pain hits me it makes my whole being uncomfortable and I can't describe it..I feel like I've pushed people away lately because I haven't really been good at making plans and keeping them. To those people I apologize because I would be there if I could. Thank god I had enough energy on Saturday night to play a few board games with dad and Tina. We played cranium (we bought this for them last christmas) and they had still never played it! So we broke that out and played apples to apples as well. The next day sadly we had to head home. I was in tears to leave my family when I felt that bad. We drove home and Monday i woke up. It was a good day. Tuesday and Wednesday..good days. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and today..not good days. I have another Doctor's appointment Thursday. I'll keep everyone updated on what's going on. Oh, I almost forgot! I got my Christmas present early this year! Lee got me an AWESOME camera! He gave it to me last night..I guess he knows how bad I've been feeling and he wanted me to be able to use the camera for Christmas. We still have to take our Christmas card picture and hopefully I can get up enough energy today to clean the rest of the house and decorate! I wish I would've had it Friday night. We drove down to the boardwalk and drove through the 32 blocks of Christmas lights. They give you a CD and you pop it in and it plays as you drive. It was fun...we also got a combination ticket to go see the lights at the Norfolk botanical gardens. YES, you had to pay to go to the Christmas lights. I was really bummed because I'm so used to my sweet little FREE Elk's home! But the money does go to the Ronald Mcdonald House and I get patients coming over from there EVERYDAY at my job so I'm glad I could support such a wonderful cause. I really want to get some other volunteer work in this christmas but I haven't been feeling well. That will be a new year's resolution. TO give back. I really feel God pulling me in that direction. He's really testing me this year.
On a lighter note...I have been promoted! Well, transferred sorta. I've been offered another position. It's in Pediatric Surgery which is still in my department but I am being promoted to scheduling coordinator. Honestly I don't know what that means because I haven't been scheduling surgeries. I met with the manager, Stacy and I guess basically my manager, Tina and Stacy and our BIG manager John all wanted me for this job. I guess I'm doing a good job. It's a huge pay increase which I am beyond thrilled for because Lee and I really need it! I haven't told anyone this yet but Lee and I are moving. I'm ok with giving out these numbers because I don't feel its that personal. WE LOVE where we live. We live in Maple Bay Townhomes off of Laskin Road in Virginia Beach. Less than 3 miles from the oceanfront. The community is very quiet (which is strange because nowhere around here is quiet) and when I say quiet I'm excluding the jets..those are loud. BUT, we hardly notice them anymore. We have a pretty large townhome..I think its between 1200-1300 feet..I don't know the exact number. Two Bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a huge kitchen (eat-in) and a nice size living room, not to mention our Master is huge and our guest bedroom is decent as well. We have plenty of storage and a great fenced in back deck. We love it but when we moved down here we had one day to find a place to live. We didn't really know our way around that well and we settled on this place. We are pretty much getting ripped off. We pay over 1100 in rent. We pay another 100 for our cats to live with us. YES 50 dollars per pet PER MONTH! That was after a 350 dollar pet deposit! CRAZY! We shouldn't have to pay 100 dollars for our sweet babies to live with us! We live on the end so we were given one free parking space..which would've been 100 dollars but we lucked out in that..and we got a discount on the rent..so really we would be paying a LOT more. Total right now, we pay over 1380 to live here every month. In some places that would be acceptable but that's even expensive for around here! We are getting ripped off. Lee really wants to pay off his student loans so we can buy a house here in the next couple of years. So, we wanted to move someplace that is cheaper. I was worried because I wanted to stay in the same area. We love being so close to the beach and all the nice stores and restaurants and homes in our area. It feels really safe here. We ended up finding an apartment in another similar neighborhood literally on the other side of Laskin Road (across the street from us and a couple of streets back) It's a smaller apartment..the kitchen is incredibly tiny (hard for me to get used to because I've been lucky and always had a big kitchen in every apt I've had) the appliances are more outdated ( i could care less) and there's not quite as much storage...(our biggest problem) but we can make it work. There's only one bath which is ok because it's all on one level. I'm very pleased with it other than the fact it's a tad smaller. Get ready. With pets, rent, and parking (which is free btw..ugh) 884 a month! We are literally saving like 500 dollars a month and living in the same area that we wanted to live in! We are thrilled. We will be moving in March but we've already paid our deposit and reserved our special till then! I hate moving but I know it will be worth it to save so much money and have that much extra! I still haven't even posted pictures of this place for everyone to see but I will as soon as I decorate for Christmas. Wow...I think I blogged so much that my arm is asleep. Anyway..that's all I can think of for now. Hope everyone gets out there and enjoys their Christmas traditions this year!

Megan~