Palliative Care: Part 4

            There will be more surgeries. At least one that we can count on, the Fontan, but it is, hopefully, a couple of years away. Still, our last visit with the doctors and trip to the hospital was comical. After all the stress we went through just attempting to have some semblance of normalcy, we walked into, well …

            We thought everything was going great. Our little man was full of energy, rambunctious, and working on trying to keep up with his brothers. So when time came for our six month checkup, I was ready for it. We went in Friday for the ultrasound, J3 was a champ, and we continued on with our weekend. Wednesday rolls around for the actual doctor’s appointment, they only come down to the clinic once a week, all five of us are chilling in our room when the doctor walks in.

            “So, have you decided to have the surgery Friday or wait until Monday?”

            We were shocked, having no idea what he was talking about. The doctor quickly realized the problem and explained that the archway that had a last minute procedure done to it during the bilateral Glenn was kinking and causing a drastic blood pressure difference between his upper and lower extremities. I should mention that he is always a little purple so we didn’t notice the difference. The doctor explains that they want to do an angioplasty to fix the problem.

            I call my mom and the decision is made for Monday. We have to go down Sunday to do all of the pre-operation procedures. We get a hotel for the evening and are back at the hospital early the next morning. At this point I would rank us as pros at dealing with the hospital. We take him to the back, they put him to sleep, my hubby and I go get breakfast and we wait.

            “Well, the procedure went great.” I do a little mental dance and cheer. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work.” Well, crap.

            The doctor explains that they want to go in through the side so that they don’t mess with the heart because it is working perfectly, as perfect as it can work, but that it will have to wait a couple of weeks until he recovers from the angioplasty. And it is at this point that my son shows just how strong he is.

            By the time he has recovered from the anesthesia, he is already standing up in bed. The nurse is doing the best she can to keep him preoccupied and sitting down. The surgeon comes down to check on him and decides that since he has already recovered so well, they can do the surgery in a couple of days. This works for us so that my mom doesn’t have to leave and then return two weeks later. The drive between us and where she lives is a ten hour drive. My hubby and I spent two days trying to keep our son happy. The nurses have brought in enough toys that our room looks like a play center.

            Wednesday comes and J3 goes back early. Hubby and I have breakfast, take a walk, and wait. The procedure went great. J3 is now more part cow. This is a personal pleasure of mine. I love cows and he has cow grafts because there is a less chance of rejection. So, now my son is part cow. :squee:

            First day out of surgery and he is already sitting up and spinning in circles. The poor nurse spends more time untangling J3 than anything else.

            Second day out of surgery and J3 is now actively trying to remove his cannula and Foley. The doctors decide to discontinue both. If he makes it through the night without any issues, they will pull his lines and downgrade him to intermediate which makes my hubby and I responsible for his care.

            Considering everything we went through during the first seven weeks at the hospital, everyone is surprised by his size, his amount of energy, and his recovery time. In a single week, he was prepped, went through two surgeries, rebounded from both, and was discharged.

            J3 is resilient, happy, and loving. He is smart and curious. He is my daily reminder that God exists and is amazing.

Because They Love Me

            I hope you have read the posts for palliative care since this is a continuation from the other side. I have written about the diagnosis and hospitalization of J3, part of the story anyway. I have mentioned that while my focus was completely on J3, there is a J1 and J2 at home, who are being cared for by Nana, my mother. I am ashamed that during this trying time they were not on my mind as much as I feel they should have been. I am ashamed that although I left them in the care of my mother, they were not my main concern. I am even more ashamed that during all of this time I was inattentive to what my husband was going through. This post is retrospective from the pieces I collected after the ordeal was ending.

            My husband and I knew J3 was going to need surgery and the time was quickly approaching, but we were unprepared for the day when the hospital called and told us to bring him in. My mother, who had already agreed to care for the children while we were at the hospital was on vacation when we got the call. She had two days to get home, do laundry, and repack for an undetermined amount of time. I can say now that it was a blessing that she retired right before J3 was born. I’m not sure what we would have done otherwise. Unfortunately, we had to leave for the hospital before she could make it down to be with the boys. The time gap was about six hours, which turned into eight due to bad weather. Thankfully, a friend the boys love and trusted was willing and able to watch J1 and J2 during this time.

            At first, the boys were thrilled to have Nana replace Mommy and Daddy. No doubt plenty of rules were broken during this time. It took about a week and a half before J1 refused to talk to me on the phone. Even when we Skyped, he refused to look at me pretending I wasn’t on the screen. I know this behavior, it is a self-defense mechanism to protect ones-self from being hurt. J2 was not as bad.

            At week three, I was able to come home and visit for the weekend. J3 was doing well and I felt confident in my leaving him. I knew I was only getting two days with the boys and I made the most out of it. Donuts for breakfast, the park, our favorite fast food place, a few errands and an evening at home before church and now I have to leave. The change was immediate, before I even left the house they knew. J1 shut down unwilling to even say goodbye. J2 threw a fit that was just the beginning of his aggressive behavior to follow for the next four weeks.

            I didn’t fault either of them. J1 was in a self-defense mode. J2 was attempting to exert what little control he had over his life. But I didn’t really have to deal with this behavior, my mother did.

            Nana was a hard woman to grow up with, mainly because of her authoritarian parenting style, and my transference issues. She knew me and I knew she could handle anything that had to be thrown at her. I didn’t bat an eye at the idea of her taking over my household. However, she was sixty-three and suddenly thrusted into a situation where she had to be a single parent. Sure, my husband was home during the weeks we didn’t have major issues going on, but he spent most of that time working. Yes, he spent a couple of hours at night playing with the boys, reading and putting them to bed, but I have no doubt that my mother still fed and bathed them at night. After they went to bed, I am sure that my husband turned to his computer for a self-soothing evening. Neither of us really thought about how she was doing.

            My mother would later tell me that the situation was isolating. She got little sleep. One night J2 had crawled under her bed to sleep and she was unable to find him. Her stress level was through the roof. She didn’t have the team of pastors or social workers to help her through a meltdown. Yes, people visited and brought food, but it isn’t the same as having a break. Thankfully, one of the women at church was able to get two extra car seats through a program at the local police station for her so that she could leave the house.

            I felt bad for them, all three of them, but only after I was already home and knew everything was fine. Still, there is one person who through all of this suffered right beside me. Stood as a rock and did not falter until I accused him of moving on without me. He continued watching our shows without me there. He played games every night he was at home sleeping in a comfortable bed. He eked by with what support he had and broke down only when no one was watching. He suffered right beside me and I was oblivious to it because I was wrapped up in my own pain. He did this because he loved me.

            My husband suffered in silence because he loved me. My mother suffered in silence because she loved me. My father suffered in silence because he loved me even to the point of taking a three day vacation to drive up to give me a hug, say hi to the latest grandbaby, and visit his wife and other grandsons. J1 did his best to protect himself from a new sense of loss because he feared losing me, because he loved me. J2 became self-asserted and demanding, because he was thrust into a new situation where I was not a part of his world and he needed to feel some sort of control on his life. I would like to think that he did this because I taught him to be self-sufficient, because he loved me and knew this is what I would want. I am allowed a level of self-delusion.

            It wasn’t until everything was fine in my world before I opened up to see how everyone else had weathered. It was an introspective moment that pointed to my selfishness. All because they loved me.

Food: Yummy and Dangerous

            It is important to note that I am NOT a doctor, or a nutritionist, or any kind of authority that could be considered an advice giver for health. I am, however, fully capable of discussing my experiences and the knowledge that I believe I comprehend as I understand it. Now, since that warning has been given, I want to discuss my struggles with weight and dieting.

            First of all, I have been overweight my entire adult life. I can give a multitude of excuses for this but the fact remains that some eighteen years later I am still overweight. Not just overweight but morbidly obese and that is my fault. Of course, saying that being fat is my fault creates a blaming and shaming scenario and this has got to stop. (This, however, is not the point of this blog.) Let me start with a few admissions.

            Admission number one: I am a compulsive overeater.

            Admission number two: I am an insulin resistant type 2 diabetic.

            Admission number three: I am a happily married woman with three very young children whom I would like to spend several more decades of my life with.

            I want to start with admission three. My husband loves me. Just As I Am. Of course, he is concerned about the health issues as a result of my weight and diet, but he would never tell me that I am fat. He won’t even suggest it. Hates when I refer to myself as morbidly obese. Unfortunately, children are honest, brutally so at times. They remind me often that I am large, fat, big, whatever comes to mind at the time. They are 5, 4, and 2, respectively.

            They are so young. I want to see my children graduate high school. College. I want to see them marry. I want to be able to enjoy grandchildren. Regretfully, this will probably not happen. At least, not if I don’t make some changes. Now. Like, Right NOW.

            Having said that, I can now turn to admission number one. I am a compulsive overeater. I know, some people eat because they just like food. Some people are happy with their size. Some people are healthy despite their size. Well, that is not me. And I am talking about me. I can wake up in the morning and say, I will not eat junk food today. I will pass over the yummy, yummy treats all day long and then suddenly have a toaster pastry in my hand. By the time I realize I am eating it, well, I have already eaten this much, might as well finish it. I don’t even like toaster pastries. Seriously, of the many snacks in my house, toaster pastries are one of my least favorites. So, why did I eat it? That is a great question. One that I simply do not have an answer for.

            I do like to eat. I like to eat away my problems, and by this I mean sitting down in front of the television with a feast of food and snacks and eating myself into a coma. I like to eat for celebrations and in this past month alone, there have been many. Valentine’s Day, my birthday, my children’s baptism. All of which I could have skipped the cake, candy, cookies, pies, and everything else offered, but I didn’t. Also, we had company for a week, she has dietary issues. Yes, I can cook around them, but I didn’t. We just ate out all week. Needless to say, despite being close to dropping below 300 pounds, I gained instead.

            Still, this year I am working on the motto of: No Harm. No Foul. There will not be any guilt this year. There are just going to be small changes from time to time that should eventually make a whole that I can be proud of.

            Sadly, a lifetime of poor diet and inactivity has resulted in type 2 diabetes. An insulin resistant type 2 diabetic. What does that mean? Well, it means that I cannot tolerate any amount of carbohydrates. The amount of inulin required to counteract a single carb is 2 to 1. So, for every 15 grams of carbohydrates, I have to take 30 units of insulin. And carbs are not just in candy and breads. They are in vegetables, processed meats like sausage and bacon, milk, fruit. Anything that your body breaks down into sugar is a carbohydrate. So stop eating those items.

            It should be that easy. Shouldn’t it. But as we have already covered, I am a compulsive overeater. Not just that, I am a sugar addict. Sounds funny. Hahaha. You’re addicted to sugar. I would never compare myself to someone trying to break a cocaine or heroin addiction. Unfortunately, I have woken up in the middle of the night many times, sweating despite the air conditioner being set to sixty-six, shaking uncontrollably, my heart pounding on my chest, my husband racing to get my monitor because at this point we know what is wrong. The level of sugar in my blood has crashed and I am going through withdrawal. A day or so later, the headaches will kick in, think caffeine headache level of migraine and then draw it out for a week because the only way to get past this is to push through cold turkey.

            Dieting is not easy. This is the point. If it were easy, there would not be a multibillion dollar industry promising quick fixes.

            So, what does that mean for me? Well, it still means exercise, diet, and trying to cut out diet sodas. It is both that simple and that hard.

            A few weeks ago I starting exercising, then I rolled my ankle. I needed to stay off of it. Wear a brace. Ice it down. A pitfall to be sure. I continued stretching during this time so that I would not lose my flexibility.

            I am currently watching my carbs as well. Sixty grams a day. I am attempting to replace soda with tea. Not the same substitution at all which is why I am struggling.

            Every overweight person struggles. Every person is different. Every situation is different, but this is mine. I will continue to change my diet slowly. Change the way I exercise. I know that if I continue making these small changes, sooner or later, I can be proud of what I have achieved. In a month or so, I will let you know how I am doing. I will tell you the changes that I have made. I will add some recipes I have found that work for me and my family.

            Through failure and success I will continue on.

Palliative Care: Part 3

            Part Two of Palliative Care was about the rollercoaster ride of J3s first month in the hospital. The story began with failure to thrive. Continued to the DKS procedure with a follow up of oxygenation issues. And explorative surgery landed him on a bypass machine. Despite all of that Part Two ended well.

            The next five days moved remarkably fast. J3s chest was closed. He was taken off his ventilator. His Foley was removed. His arterial line was removed. He was breathing 21% oxygen, so they wean his pressure until he came off oxygen completely. They removed an RA line and prepped to remove the other the next day. Also, and most important to me, I got to hold him. When he finally realized what was going on, he started to smile and coo. It was an amazing feeling. 

            After a month of being in the hospital, J1 and J2 are coming to visit me. We had an amazing weekend at the zoo and other children friendly places. While it was sad to see them leave. I was rewarded with the most amazing gift. J3 was being downgraded from ICU to intermediate care. I get to room with him again. I get to hold him again. I get to be responsible for his care again.

            The doctor informed me that the real work will now begin …

            As if what we have been through hasn’t been hard enough.

            What the doctor meant by real work was that J3 had to learn how to eat, a skill that most people take for granted. J3 quickly became physically exhausted after five milliliters of formula. Building him up to drink four hundred milliliters, which was the minimum limit for his release, was tedious and time consuming.

            J3s feedings were every three hours. I was supposed to feed him for fifteen minutes as much as he could imbibe and repeat the process. For two weeks, I warmed his formula. Measured every milliliter he drank. Prayed that he gained weight. For two weeks, I slept thirty minutes every three hours if he would sleep long enough for me to sleep. After a week of this I locked myself in the bathroom and cried while J3 screamed angrily ten feet from me. The nurse came in once I emerged and ordered me out of the room for an hour. I was able to eat a hot meal for the first time in a week. After a week of prayers, he started gaining weight and eating just enough for the doctors to release him.

            Finally, after seven weeks of being apart from my family we were together again. We lived month to month waiting to return to the hospital for his next stage of surgeries. It came in April, right after Easter. Honestly, I can’t remember much about that stay. I remember the surgery went well. I remember he didn’t suffer as badly as they had expected. I remember returning home with a happy semi-healthy child within the week they had told us even though I had prepared to be there longer. I remember being home for four or five months before the unexpected happened and we were back at the hospital. But that is another story.

            I will say that I walked out of this experience with a deeper faith and trust in God. Even during some of my darkest days since then I cannot look at J3 without being reminded that I am blessed.

Baptism

            This past Sunday, my three sons were baptized. Not at all J3s decision, although when asked he did answer, “Yeah.” And I am fairly curtain that J1 only agreed to it because J2 was going to have it done.

            What started this event occurred Christmas Eve 2015. I stood up, leaving my sons with my parents and proceeded to partake in communion. The fact that J2 was left out of something, obviously important to a large portion of the church, deeply upset him. This, I was already prepared for. I used this opportunity to discuss baptism with my son.

            It went something like this:

                            

Me: Sweetie, it is not right to take communion without being baptized.

J2: I’m a big boy, I want to be baptized.

Me: Sweetie, choosing to be baptized is a big decision. It means that you understand that Jesus loves you and choosing to love Jesus. It means that you are going to try to be a good person and walk the path Jesus would have you walk.

J2: I’m a good boy. I love Jesus. Jesus loves me. Also, He made the worms.

Me: Okay, well, let me talk to Daddy about it.

            And I did. We waited a couple of weeks to see what would happen. Then one morning as we were getting ready for church J1 and J2 come in. J2 asks if they can be baptized. J1 simply nods his consent to wanting an answer to the question. Once again I explain that it is a big decision and that they need to be sure. J2 was jumping up and down as if my answer had been yes and he was ecstatic. I did the next thing I could think of. I made an appointment for our family to talk to our pastors. The resulting decision was that all three of our boys would be baptized together. The baptism was still weeks out and without fail, every Sunday, J1 or J2 would eventually ask if today was the day.

            Finally, the day came. Mother-in-law had already arrived. We went through an early morning rehearsal. I had explained, multiple times, the schedule for the day. Everything is going smoothly, at least, as smoothly as it ever does. J2 was running around, not loudly, but out of reach for me to be able to stop him. This is a new behavior that I have not yet figured out how to negotiate.

            Then children’s time occurs. This is the point where all the children sit in the front of the sanctuary and have the sermon explained to them in terms they can understand. J2 uses this time to crawl around and under the communion table. Usually, it is after this that the boys go down to the nursery and play. Not today though. This leads to the first melt down. J1 begins to cry. I carry him to the back and explain that because he is being baptized today he cannot go to the nursery. I add that if he would rather not be baptized I would take him to nursery. No harm. No foul.

            No, he wants to be baptized.

            As we return to the pews, I find J2 sitting as far away from everyone as he can get. This of course gives me easy access to him and I take the moment to pull him into the back as well. This conversation is a little different. I take him all the way to the back, through the choir room, and into a bathroom. I expect that a spanking is coming and a resulting screech of outrage to proceed.

           

Me: We talked about this last week and you are too old to roam around and cause mischief. I will not have it. Do you understand me?

           

J2: Now covering his backside, knowing that I am unhappy and that he knows better and deserves a spanking. Doesn’t actually say anything. He simply nods.

           

Me: Good, then you will return to the pew and sit down and behave or we will be back in the bathroom and you will receive a spanking. Do you hear me?

J2: Another nod.

            The culmination of our day arrives as the five of us are standing around the baptismal font with our pastors, an elder of the church whose family means a lot to me, and the children of our church. One woman is taking pictures for her mom who could not be present. Another is taking pictures to be helpful. As well as my mother-in-law, who is taking videos for my father-in-law, who could not be there either. Of course that is not the circus I am watching.

            I am watching J2 play in the water and then wipe his hands off on my backside. For whatever reason the decision was made to baptize J2 first. I didn’t even get to enjoy the moment as I see another melt down pushing the edge of J1s sanity. J1 realizes that the pastor is going to pour water on his head. He quietly removes his hand from the font and backs up beginning to shake his head.

            “I don’t want to do this.” He says in such a quiet voice that I am the only one who hears him.

            I reach out to grab his arm doing my best to get hubby to take J3 who I have been bouncing in my arms as he has already signed many times that he is done. Hubby takes J3. I lift J2 into my arms and hand him off to the pastor, who is already noticing the issue. Our other pastor steps in to attempt to keep him as dry as possible and to J1s everlasting credit his melt down is silent. He is passed off to the other pastor who is doing her best to dry and comfort him. My focus is on J1 and wanting so much to hold him and tell him how proud of him I am that I miss J3s baptism as well.

            This ends with the boys being lead around the church. J3 leads the procession in the arms of the pastor. J2 is waving to people smiling. I still have no idea what was going on through his mind. J1 is desperately holding onto my hand still patting his head from time to time to see if there is any water left.

            At the time, I was just so relieved that things went as smoothly as they did. Now, I can reflect on the idea that every year we can celebrate their adoption into an endless family of brothers and sisters.

Palliative Care: Part Two

            I wrote part one of this series almost a year ago. Even then it was written nearly six months after the fact. I had planned on writing part two immediately, but I couldn’t. Now, as I sit here writing this I am choking back the tears of the horror that I felt during that time.

            We were admitted on September 2, 2014 after J3 had lost five ounces in a single week. Failure to thrive. During the next nine days we would watch him slowly begin to gain weight as we waited to have a cardio MRI done and impatiently wait for the results. Two days later, the MRI results are still not in but a cursory view of the prints and ultra sound leads them to believe things are worse than everyone had originally assumed.

            The reality of the situation is that we are going to be here longer than we expected. Longer than anyone had explained. My husband has to return to work. He is running out of vacation time. We are running out of finances. We live from paycheck to paycheck as it is. And we have two older boys that although love their Nana, I have no doubt they would enjoy seeing their daddy. I miss them a lot and while I have concerns for them, my focus is completely on J3.

            September 10, 2014 was a whirlwind of people coming in to get signatures. Do I know what is happening tomorrow? Not really. He is having a procedure called a DKS. I still can’t really explain what it is. I break down and call my mother, who tells me to call my husband. He does the only thing he can. He sells his car. The transmission is going out anyway and it gives us a little over a week worth of funds so he can take off work. I am relieved to know that he will be with me in the morning as our son goes into surgery.

            September 11, 2014, we walk J3 as far as we can go. At 7:10 A.M. my husband wraps his arms around me to give me strength and comfort. It was after 4 pm before I could see J3 again. Just long enough to take his picture and stroke his hand, leg and head. He shed tears whether for me or not I will pretend it was a reaction to my presence. An hour later we got 10 mins with him. This time he opened his eyes and gripped our hands. My heart broke when I had to let him go and his blood pressure dropped. They told us there were issues and he was going back into surgery. Blood pooling. Blood pressure. O2 sats. Two hours before we saw him again.

            September 12, 2014, 4:00 A.M. The doctor needs to talk to you. Not the words I wanted to hear as I woke my husband up and we walked down the eerily silent hall to my son’s ICU room. They tell us that they have been fighting to stabilize him for the past two hours. They aren’t sure what to do for him. I have a mental break. I fear God is calling home my son. For the next two and a half hours I sit vigilantly praying. Exhausted, I say goodbye to my son not expecting to be with him again. Two hours later he is stable, for the most part. We will be fighting against oxygenation levels for the next eleven days.

            To say that this stay in the hospital was an emotional rollercoaster ride is deceptive. To wake up in the morning and have had the night go great, to two hours later his oxygenation levels crash, to an hour later he has stabilized, only to repeat at least once more today, then do it again for the next eleven days brought me to a mental breaking point. During this time I was able to go home and visit my two older sons after being away from them for three weeks. Those three weeks felt like months and I wasn’t even halfway through my stay there.

            September 23, 2014. J3 goes in to have exploratory surgery to figure out why his oxygen levels keep dropping. It is never good news when a social workers calls you into a consultation room. The level of anxiety rises when a member of the pastoral team joins you before the doctor comes in. He didn’t code, but he was placed on the bypass machine to keep him alive. We still need answers. The surgeon will do his corrective surgery as soon as he finishes his current surgery if we find something he can fix. This, of course, is a paraphrasing of a longer conversation. I managed to keep it together until everyone left before collapsing on the floor. A mess of devastation, anger, and prayers.

            Joe is once again rushing back to my side. Thankfully, they manage to find what is wrong and it is fixable. I stand by J3s side as we wait for him to return to surgery with the surgeon to shorten his shunt. Joe makes it by minutes in order to tell J3 he is loved before he returns to surgery.

            September 24, 2014. Everyone is encouraged. I thank God as the morning holds continued improvement. Talks of closing his chest again. Deep sighs of relief. Hugs from doctors and others who have been a part of this rollercoaster ride. There is finally light at the end of the tunnel.

            This was the first part of our seven week stay at the hospital. Even today, I struggle with the fear of possibly losing my son because his heart gives out. The cardiologist remembers to remind me that this is palliative care. My son’s heart will still give out in ten or twenty years. My solace is the idea of how much can change to improve his odds during those years.

Who I Want to Be

            I came across an article not too long ago meant to help people begin changing personal habits. While I can no longer find the page I borrowed from I found it to be a great exercise in visualizing what I wanted to be and how to make the changes required to become that person.

Let’s begin:

Who do I want to be?

            I want to be that mom who gets up early to work out before packing her kids lunch and getting them off to school. There is no over reach here. I am fine with handing them a generic toaster pastry and a piece of fruit for breakfast. I want to be able to dedicate myself to writing and volunteering in the hopes of someday making the world better. I want to put everything aside in the evening to play the soccer mom and have dinner on the table at night when everyone gets home. Crockpot meals make this a complete possibility for me since anyone who knows me knows I am a lazy cook. I want to help my children realize that the world is so much larger than just the everyday routine that they see. I want to be healthy. I want to go hiking and bike riding with my husband and children on the weekends during the summer and play video games or watch movies with popcorn during the winter. I want to learn to rock climb and kayak. I want to read to my children everyday even if it is only a comic strip. I want my children to see me reading the Bible daily so that church isn’t just a “Sunday thing”. This is the person I want to be.

What does that person do every day?

            Get up early

            Exercise

            Makes healthy meals

            Writes

            Reads

            Studies the Bible

            Here is the catch. In order to make these changes, you just start with one change. Since I already read the Bible daily with my husband in the evenings and there is a rule in our house that whenever a child brings you a book we have to stop what we are doing in order to read that book to the kiddos, I am choosing to exercise. Can I make this a daily habit for two weeks? Yes. By not planning out a daily routine, I can choose daily exercises that I am comfortable with. As my body hurts less, I can push harder. I can change up routines from day to day based on how I feel. Even on days of rest, I can dedicate that day to stretching.

            There are days when I wake up and don’t feel like working out. In order to keep going, I keep a health journal where I record the food that I ate, the exercise that I did, and how I feel about the day overall. I have to take a blood glucose test several times a day which is another reminder to exercise as it helps keep my numbers down.

            Here is the big thing to remember in attempting to make change. One slip up, two, twenty, it doesn’t matter. Momentum matters. Mantra: No harm. No foul. No feelings of failure. I will start again. Tomorrow.

Evolving Dreams

            I have always enjoyed writing, as long as what I was writing was not directly about my life. I was adopted when I was four. I have a lot of horrible memories of my early years. Therefore, talking about adoption was a sensitive subject. I felt abandoned by my biological parents and bought by my adoptive parents. Now, I can admit that my birth father was probably grooming me for a life of sexual abuse, a cycle repeated by what his grandfather had done to him. Unfortunately, the repercussions of such early grooming would follow me until my mid-twenties. But in my early teens I was hostile and secretive about such discussions.

            Growing up I would do everything possible not to confront myself and my past. I wrote about fantastical worlds where everything was perfect and no one suffered. I wrote about people who were flawless. As I grew, I hated those around me. I hated the world I grew up in. I hated myself. I did not believe that good existed. I believed that every good action masked a devious desire that would expose itself at the last moment when it was too late to avoid. I was bitter. Slowly the people in my stories became monsters. Vampires. Werewolves. Witches. All devious and deceitful.

            Then something in my life changed. I met a good man. I met good people. While I struggle with the ideas I grew up with, I was forced to accept that there was actual good. Not perfect by any means but good. My monsters changed. They began to have good intentions despite the outcome. Then God become a priority in my life and therefore my stories. One of the women I critique with began to notice this change as well and pointed it out to me. For good or bad, I am God focused in one way or another. This conversation led to another one about how I wanted to portray my work for publication.

            I was staunchly against publication under a Christian title. I didn’t want to bottle neck my work. I wanted it to appeal to a wide audience that might read about vampires but not about God. There is a joke in there since I am not published and should be grateful that anyone is willing to look at my work, but…

            All of this has led me to become more aware of what I write and the point of the stories I want to tell. I have accepted the change in my own work. I have experienced a change within myself. While I am attempting to become a regular blogger, here at Its Shire-shh-mit, where I write about my life. Attempting to become a writer. What it is like in my house as a stay-at-home-mom with three boys. Dieting because I am morbidly obese and have type two diabetes. What it is like to deal with a child with a congenital heart defect. I am also preparing to enter the world of devotional writing. An idea that truly terrifies me. However, it is something that I feel I am being called to do. The blog is called Amateur Prayers and I am not sure what will come of it, if anything.

            At this point in my life I am casting a net wide. I have applied and been accepting and hopefully will be completing a B.A. in English. My goal is that my writing will be improved and enhanced by studying others. After that, the plan is to push to graduate school for religious studies. What will become of me and my education after all of this, I cannot say. I can say that I place an amazing amount of faith and trust that God will lead me and my family toward a new future. And that I hope that future will include writing in whatever form I am drawn to.

            Follow me as I find out what my future holds.

Tomorrow

            Almost a month ago I saw this video on Facebook of this woman demonstrating ab workouts. I thought to myself, I can do that. A few days later I started. Realizing a few months had passed since I last worked out, I didn’t push myself too hard. I started with one set of ten for each of the four exercises. Excitement filled me the next morning when I woke up without any pain. I immediately increased to two sets of ten. This progress continued and soon I had added leg lifts and was doing two sets of twenty of each of the four ab exercises. The exercising felt good. In the span of a week I had lost four pounds. I stopped drinking soda. I was eating healthy. I Felt Good.

            Two weeks of great work came crashing down. I got sick. I had never experienced a sinus infection before. The pressure in my face was intense to say the least. I thought my teeth were going to fall out. My jaw throbbed. My cheek bone felt like I had taken a punch to the face and at any moment my eye socket would burst and my eye would fall out. Needless to say, I didn’t want to work out. That started two weeks ago. Once the pain of the illness had left me, I battled with the ability to breathe. The buildup of mucus and unending need to blow my nose. This past Sunday, I could breathe enough to sing, of course my voice was horrific. I refrained from torturing those around me.

            I worked out the following Monday. I did a single set of fifteen of the original ab workouts. It was easy and I should have pushed myself forward, but I didn’t. I had already spent a week eating horrible food. Coke was already back in my diet. I managed to eat well all day but by the time my husband got home, I was exhausted. I ate a bowl of cereal because it was quick and crashed. Tuesday was not any better. Laziness had crept in and I was craving caffeine. Neither of these things are easily overcome by me. Wednesday, I spent the day away from my house. Quick foods for the children never result in healthy eating for myself. But the promise to myself is to start tomorrow.

            No harm. No foul. No feelings of failure. I will start again. Tomorrow.

2016 A Year for Change

This is a quick blurb. Nothing particularly important. I'm not checking for spelling. I'm not checking grammar. If that bothers you, stop reading.

This year my husband are taking stock of our lives, what is important and what is not. We are important. Our children are important. Our family is important. Most importantly, our faith is important.

Things that will happen this year:

• My husband and I will schedule time for just us. Gaming a couple Fridays a month and a group date night with church friends.
• Time will be made for our children. Sunday's are family days. It may be spent shopping or chilling at home on the couch but we will be together. Honestly, we are waiting for it to get warmer so we can start going on walks. J3, our youngest, cannot be in cold weather for long. Also, one Saturday a month must remain unscheduled for family time as well.
• We will introduce our children to community service. Starting in February, we will be serving the hungry in the community a meal once a month. This is an activity we will be doing with our church. Yes, our children are young, four and a half, four, and one and a half. We don't care this is important to us.
• My husband and I will read a chapter from the Bible every night, even if we don't head to bed until 2 a.m.

Things we are striving for:

• For me to restart college. Hopefully, I can return and get an English degree, with the goal of moving on to grad school in order to get a religious studies degree. What are my plans for such a degree? I have no idea, but God has gotten us this for and God will continue leading us.
• Show my husband that he is capable of starting Let's Plays. This is just too complicated a topic to explain the challenges so far.
• I would like to be off of my insulin in the next couple of months. This means eating healthier and exercising. No, I did not make a new years resolution to hit the gym and stave off carbs. For the first time ever, I did not make a new years resolution list. This year, I will not set myself up for failure. This way, I can celebrate my successes and learn from my mistakes without the self judgment that comes with the idea of failure.

Hopefully, I will begin blogging more regularly ...

E. Schierschmidt