This Just In: Life Ain’t Stable

Oh hey, friends.

It’s been quite awhile.

I’ve missed you. And writ­ing. And this blog.

Life took a turn for the crazy, but here we are yet again.

After the big genet­ic show­down, my plan was to take a few weeks away from the med­ical world to just be. There are a lot of unknowns and “to be deter­mineds” and I want­ed some time to let it all soak in. Genet­ic test­ing was an ultra-marathon, cer­tain­ly not a sprint, and I was ready for that glo­ri­ous post-race recovery.

HA.

Rather than soak­ing in epsom salt baths and enjoy­ing a lux­u­ri­ous mas­sage, my immune sys­tem took that whole “time away” thing a wee bit too lit­er­al­ly, and took one heck of a vaca­tion over the past 3+ months. Evi­dent­ly I need to be more spe­cif­ic with how I plan on spend­ing my “off” time.

A week before Christ­mas I picked up a stom­ach bug, fol­lowed a week lat­er by an upper and low­er res­pi­ra­to­ry tract infec­tion, that turned into pneu­mo­nia a few weeks lat­er, which then caused me to break a rib, which was capped off 2 weeks lat­er with a bulging disc in my low­er back.

Then, just when I thought I was com­ing up for air (and could actu­al­ly walk with­out look­ing like a lame emphy­semic pen­guin), my nonex­is­tent thy­roid lev­els took a swift and rapid trip south, caus­ing my endocri­nol­o­gist to near­ly fall off his chair with a glance at my lab report, and inquire “how on earth did you do that?!”

(Which, by the way, is the 2^nd time in 2 weeks I’ve been asked that ques­tion by a doctor…does this mean I get a refund on my copay?)

Short­ly after the Ghost of Thy­roid Past vig­or­ous­ly stirred the pot, I added two more rounds of sinus infec­tions (or rather, nev­er got rid of the first one), which brings us to this week, when I got a call to tell me that my doc­tor had called in my pro­to­col to the pharmacy.

“Oh…protocol for what?”

[awk­ward long pause]

“Didn’t some­one call you with your test results?”

“Nope, that’s why I’ve been leav­ing dai­ly messages.”

“Oh…one moment please…”

[sec­ond awk­ward long pause]

“So…normally the doc­tor would call you, but…you have a rather exten­sive inter­nal staph infection.”

Stu­pen­dous.

(And for all of you men­tal­ly cal­cu­lat­ing how long it has been since you’ve been in close prox­im­i­ty to some­one with a giant staph infec­tion, I have been assured by both med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and Dr. Google that I’m not con­ta­gious. Just full of my very own set of antibi­ot­ic resis­tant bac­te­ria. No big deal.)

Peo­ple. I’m tired.

(And full of bugs. Just saying.)

I real­ly want­ed to write a post about how I’m back in action! and things are great! and I’m tak­ing 2016 by storm! but instead it seems that 2016 IS a storm. And maybe that’s why it has tak­en me so long to come back to my blog, because maybe sub-consciously I want­ed to wait until I felt like life was stable.

This just in: Life ain’t stable.

Genius that I am, I thought the great immune sys­tem vacay was a per­fect time to a) release a brand new makeover of my company’s web­site (check it out!) and b) buy our first home.

Just call me Einstein.

Through the extreme gen­eros­i­ty of our fam­i­lies, Mr. Restart­ing My Hard Dri­ve and I recent­ly made our 6^th move in 10 years into a town­house of our very own. It has been a whirl­wind of excite­ment and pack­ing and box­es and unpack­ing and more box­es as we set­tle in and make it our home. And I’m not sure why this made sense in my head, but some­how I had this image of mov­ing into our new home, and turn­ing 33, and burst­ing with health and vitality.

It wasn’t log­i­cal, I know. But I’m human, and a dreamer…so ya know, not the best com­bi­na­tion in the log­ic department.

I had this image of being super­woman and whip­ping both my busi­ness and new house into shape, all while exud­ing ener­gy and strength. Instead I’m full of antibiotic-resistant bugs, and had to rely almost entire­ly on friends and fam­i­ly to move my belong­ings, so as not to bulge a disc or break a bone or pass out in a heap.

Not exact­ly on point with the illog­i­cal dream plan.

It’s like lis­ten­ing to the same album over and over again, and nev­er get­ting past the 3^rd song.

Over the years I have writ­ten very lit­tle about the invis­i­ble behe­moth of shame that resides on my shoul­ders. I sup­pose I car­ry it with me wher­ev­er I go, but some­how I’ve always felt like writ­ing about it would give it more worth than it was due, so I’ve kept most­ly mum. How­ev­er, noth­ing unleash­es the beast more than dig­ging through all your belong­ings, and unearthing a life­time of memories.

And trust me, I so wish it didn’t.

I often talk to my clients about shed­ding what doesn’t serve them, and like many peo­ple, I know it is eas­i­er to share advice than fol­low it your­self. I believe, and have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about, the fact that we all have a choice in how we live our lives. We can­not decide what hap­pens to us, but we can always decide how we respond. But, I think shame falls into a bit of a gray area in this depart­ment — not clear­ly defined by chance or choice, which is why it has been on my mind lately.

I don’t want to be ashamed of the box­es of unused run­ning clothes, or dust-collecting children’s books. I don’t want to feel a twinge of pain and embar­rass­ment every time I get a med­ical bill in the mail, or when peo­ple ask me when I’m hav­ing kids. I don’t want to con­stant­ly think about the emo­tion­al and finan­cial bur­den I have been to my hus­band and family.

But I do. Every day.
And I know it doesn’t serve me.

I am under no illu­sion that mak­ing some grand blog-post procla­ma­tion that I am shed­ding my skin of shame will actu­al­ly make it hap­pen, but I think there is some­thing very pow­er­ful in shar­ing your inten­tions. I can’t start off my 33^rd year in a new home with health and vital­i­ty, but I can cer­tain­ly decide to start it with a renewed focus on exu­ber­ance and self-worth, despite the never-ending roller coast­er of my immune system.

And that is exact­ly what I plan to do.

So no — life most cer­tain­ly is not sta­ble, and you know what? It may nev­er be. I raise ques­tions and pro­voke befud­dled looks from the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty and chal­lenge every phar­ma­cist I’ve ever met. I look fair­ly nor­mal, but am put togeth­er with a lot of stitch­es, glue, and robot­ic parts. I’m not liv­ing the life I planned, but I am bound and so very deter­mined to live a life that has pur­pose — no mat­ter the num­ber of infec­tions or breaks or bulging discs.

This is who I am.
Hel­lo, world.