Travel medicine June 2012

My doctor hypothesized early in my illness that warm weather would help me if I felt good enough to travel.  My husband had his summer airline second job by then, so we tested it with a trip to Hawaii and though I spent a lot of time in the room resting, she was absolutely right.  My turtle trips started last year, and I slipped in a very brief one this year (a couple of weeks ago.  My friend Jenny, in some of my turtle pictures last year, happened to be on Oahu the same days as us.  This first photo is the kids waiting in the ocean while I talked with Greg about flight options for getting back.

Today's best 'lobsterquotes'

Lobsterquotes is the twitter handle of an optimist (I'm assuming) who posts inspirational quotes.  I can't click "favorite" fast enough to save all of the ones that catch my attention. 

I had a good evening with the kids, forcing myself to breathe peacefully and FOCUS on the end of the kids movie we were watching, rather taking the opportunity to fret about work/legal matters.  And if my mind wandered there, I thought healthy thoughts about what a healthy perspective would look like.

So when I opened my computer after they both went to bed, each twitter lobsterquote came with a calm breathe that took absolutely no thought or effort, and with a calm little wave of endorphines.

These are the ones I could "favorite" fast enough to save (gems, all of them).

A contented man is always rich~proverb

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back~Chinese Proverb

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot of times~Dean Smith

Family is a haven in a heartless world~Lasch

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought~Peace Pilgrim

We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves~ Orison Swett Marden

Happiness lies, first of all, in health~George William Curtis

Little chickadee 'medicine'

You definitely have to hear this song to fully appreciate it, but the words are wonderful.  A (semi) local npr kids show, the pea green boat plays it often and we've had time to listen to the show after school lately (like right now). Luckily, another blogger found it a shame that the lyrics are not on line and posted them (http://ayoureadorable.livejournal.com/4944.html).  I seperated the lines where there are pauses as far as I remember....at least these are the spots where there's a little pause when I sing it in my head.

I want to collect these kinds of little trinkets this month in honor of national health blogging month.

She is only, a little chickadee
Just a common backyard bird

And she knows
no care or worry
She is happy in this world

Some of Katie's Wedding Photos....my little shutter bug

Before the wedding, I was talking to the photographer about a girlscout that is passionate about taking pictures and he was telling me that he has seen amazing pictures taken by kids.  Katie had started taking lost of picture in Vegas, running out of space and batteries each day.  At the wedding, Judy Edwards, a fellow bridesmaid, told Katie she could take as many pictures as she wanted on her fancy camera.  When Katie really got going, she didn't put the camera down for hours.  Judy had about 5 minutes with her camera, but she was comfortable with Katie going to town.  and she started emailing selected photos the very next day.  She's amazing.

But Erik, the wedding photographer (photos posted in previous post about elegance and cfids) was right...I couldn't beleive what I was seeing.  Katie's pictures are really something.  He commented multiple times that she may have found a career and that we will need to be buying her some good equipment.  This is just a smattering so far.

Kids in Vegas Part 2 (video, photos, Christopher's hat, lion king tickets, and 3 mile goal)



Katie doing math by the pool



Monday was our first full day, and we sat through the time share gig, as planned, to earn 3 free lion king tickets.  It was still worth it, but of course it went long.  The kids were awesome for the first hour and a half of what was supposed to be a half hour (not that we ever thought it would be that short).  I did get a bit agitated with this one becasue my patience with subjective math is pretty short.  But its comical to watch them turn to Greg, as if he'd be more likely to accept their creative reaoning.  Trust me people, if I'm not buying what you're saying, you lost my husband a long time ago.

Our goal was to get to the Mandalay bay to book our seats and see as much as we could along the way.  It was a lot of fun zig zagging through the crowd and looking up at everything.  Christopher's hat disappeared in the Mandalay and he was pretty distraught until we (very luckily) found it.  The kids didn't know we where we were headed or why, and Katie couldn't stop trying to get me to spill the beans.  The video below shows her face when I finally told her.  They were pretty excited to have tickets to the Lion King for Christopher's birthday (Tuesday).

We're here.....Kids in Vegas Part 1 (video)

Sunday night we made it to Vegas.  The craziest part is how crazy it wasn't to get there.  We left our front porch at 11 am and were checking into our hotel by 5 pm.  Christopher cried when we landed because I mentioned that Vegas was in the desert and he didn't want to be in a desert for his birthday.  But now that he's seen the pool he is completely over it and back to being excited.

We packed what food we could and checked a regular sized suitcase and one of our carry ons instead of taking just carry ons.  In addition to saving money on food, it was nice to have less with us from plane to plane and it was nice to be able to protect my bridesmaids dress, which made it nicely to Vegas.

We signed up for a 30 minute time share schpiel in order to get 3 free lion king tickets and free breakfast.  It will save us at least $160 and let us see a show, which we would definitely not be able to do otherwise.

Our not-so-scary lion

No crash this week (last week of September after Kintal Lake)

It's been a great month in terms of health.  I traveled to Hawaii with Jenni (lots of turtle blogs posted about that trip), followed immediately by a camping trip to Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park, followed the next weekend by a Girl scouts camping trip to Apgar in Glacier, followed this past weekend by a camping trip to Kintla Lake in Glacier for my birthday.  Some of the trips are covered in more detail in my Montana Momma blog.  Following a couple of these trips I caught colds that clung on a couple of times.  Otherwise though I wouldn't say I had major crashes, especially considering the level of activity on some of these trips.  I'm pretty pleased.

Top among the activities that could have caused crashes was getting caught in a storm on Kintla Lake in the Canoe.  Prior to that the level of exertion was very doable, with Greg paddling a lot so I could take pictures.  As a rain storm blew in, the wind became quite intense.  Another canoe was having trouble getting back before we started heading in.  We had to paddle really hard to make it back.  Without CFIDS it would have been exhausting.  That happened Sunday and it is now Wednesday.  If I were going to crash, I think it would have happened by now.

Video for Greg ~ Northern sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rea3GN5rwGs



More health all week

So, to recap, the week before last I was in Waikiki looking for turtles.  Last weekend I was in Glacier camping with my family.  Yesterday, I returned from a weekend Girlscout campout in another corner of Glacier (more pictures and detail in my outdoor blog).

I now have another round of work sludge (bread and roses blog) to contend with, which is impacting me, but I'm trying to cope as best I can.  These trips give me something to draw from for each round and they build me up as I see what I can do.  Being outside is very good for me.

The other leaders know my situation.  And I am happy to say, they understand.  They helped give me options that allowed me to rest and keep going without feeling guilty for what I wasn't doing.  I realized just now as I type that I didn't feel guilty for resting or for hiking less, I just appreciated all the help from other leaders.  We wouldn't have a troop otherwise.  And I'm very glad we do.

I chose to eat french toast even though I can't have dairy.  I felt it in my gut mid-day and it probably made me a little foggy, but I was already fighting a cold, so I couldn't really pick that out.  The french toast was covered with syrup into which ants had found their way....12 out of 24 people ate the syrup anyway (though most of us did take the ants out).

 I think campfire smoke impacted me both weekends, but this weekend was chilly and even wet, so I needed to spend time by the fire.  I love getting outside and seeing the things I can do, instead of being confined to my house having to face all things I'm not getting to do (primarily work).  The next photo is about how I felt and probably how I looked, followed by a picture of me trying to look awake.  The photo after that is the view I was enjoying at the time above Avalanche falls a bit upstream.

 

This was the first trip to Glacier for one of our girl scouts.  What's better than that?

Regular Days ~ Mom stuff

School days with two in school are very different.

Last year, on really bad CFIDS days Katie could get herself going and be up on time and have a smooth morning.  I HATED that she ever needed to do that.  I'm feeling pretty darn good right now.  But I saw turtles, so of course I am.  But I have a lot of normal days ahead of me.  I don't know what those days will be like.  I hope they stay good.  But even a cold can turn that around for a while.  And my unfortunate work situation will continue to bring stress that will continue to impact me.  I think I'm seperated enough from it right not for my health to be more impacted by more immediate factors.  If so, I can keep getting up with the kids....and either way I will have to.

One school morning can pack in a regular day's worth of nagging and bickering all packed in to an hour.  It is easier to keep my CFIDS temper at bay when it is spread out over the day.  That part of things has gotten much, much better.  But in some ways, that makes it harder for the kids to see my symptoms.  I think they want to feel like I am getting better.  I think they can see the improvement, but I think they need to see no symptoms in order to for it to count for them. 

That makes it harder for them and me when I do snap at them.  Those are some of the things that make me such a different mom with CFIDS than I was before.  Of course I snapped at them before, but it was different.

There are moms out there that have had this for years.  Some of them have kids who knew them before and some don't.  Katie remembers, but I'm not sure how well Christopher really does.  And I don't know which is harder.  I want Christopher to really, really know who I was before. 

But I want him to see that first hand.  And it is so very hard to let go of that.

I'm still just as torn as I have always been between acceptance (as a necessary aspect of effective coping) and a firm belief that I am going to recover.

That is one of the reasons I haven't seriously considered applying for disability retirement, even now that it is the only option I'm being given.  There is so much I can do and I want to focus on what I can do.  I am one of the lucky ones when it comes to this disease.  Not just because I can fly to Hawaii (for free) and see turtles.....but it does illustrate my point.  When my family went last fall, I spent a great deal of time in the hotel room resting (and ironically that was back when my employer was allowing me to work).  This time, it was rarely to never my health that limited how much we did (though hiking and running and climbing things was out).  That would not be the case for most people with this disease.

This is why I am blogging....this is cathardic and this disease is completely life changing.  Even the good days and the positive thoughts are all within the context of something really horrible.  Even at its best it takes away most of your life.  But still I am lucky and all the time I spend remembering that is worthwhile.

I am going to take a nap, then filter through my turtle pictures from the last day of my trip.

Kid Stuff: Missing Chick

Every little moment counts  : )

A very good friend of mine (and former colleague), Heidi, gave us a momma hen and five chicks early this spring (we lost our chickens and most of our ducks last summer to a neighborhood dog).  One by one, each chick except for one turned out to be a rooster (which doesn't work in our neighborhood, so Heidi was ready to take back any roosters).  The former baby was broody already this summer, so we gave her some of Heidi's eggs to sit on so she could hatch some new hens for Heidi. 

Five hatched and one disappeared.  I brought in a couple for the kids to hold recently.  One of the chicks hid before Christopher could grab it.