Making Some Changes & Life Updates With Chronic Illness

If you haven’t noticed, A New Kind of Normal is currently undergoing a minor facelift! I’m working on tweaking the design and layout so thank you in advance for your patience!

While chatting about the changes, I thought I would give you a few life updates with chronic illness. I didn’t plan to disappear after this year’s Blogging for Endometriosis campaign ended but life got a little crazy (even more than usual)! My health really tanked and we’ve had a couple of scares.

While we were on vacation, we went go-cart racing and on one of the family tracks, Abby and I got nailed hard. Thankfully it was on my side of the car so I took the brunt of the hit. It was not a normal bump and crash. We were hit so hard the suspension of the car broke and we were complete sitting ducks. In all, the attendant counted that we were hit by at least five different cars (it was the first one that did the most damage). Needless to say, my body wasn’t happy so I got checked out just to be sure but thankfully Abby wasn’t hurt at all, just shaken up. If the jerk had hit her side of the car, I might have ended up in jail.

On top of that, a few weeks ago I discovered a lump in my right breast. With my family history and my own history of having an abnormal mammogram and having a total hysterectomy at 26, we didn’t want to take any chances so my doctor rushed a mammogram and ultrasound. Thankfully, we got some good news and it was only a cyst so the girls are A-OK! Praise the Lord!

Then, in addition, I have been having even more trouble with nausea, stomach pain, and not being able to keep food down. Gastroparesis has been an issue for some time now but after needing to remove several adenomas during last year’s EGD, my GI wanted to go back in to see what was going on so I had an EGD last Friday. The only thing about EGDs that make me nervous is getting the IV. There is no prep other than not eating or drinking after midnight so the process isn’t quite as anxiety-inducing as a colonoscopy but with my terrible veins, I hold my breath until that IV is in place and then I’m golden. I always warn the nurses and usually they laugh and say they hear it all the time but never have a problem until they go to stick me. Then they believe me. My nurse this time around was amazing. She had to search and search (and search!) for a vein but once she found the pitiful thing, she hit it first try. It wasn’t ideal and it hurt like nobody’s business but it got the job done. Thank God for vein numbing medications! The whole team was amazing, took great care of me, and the procedure went smoothly. They had to remove two more polyps (we won’t know if they are adenomas until the pathology comes back) and they did the routine biopsy to monitor my Celiac disease but the doctor did note that there was some liquid still retained in my stomach during the procedure so I am not sure what that means. I should be receiving my follow up information and biopsy results any time now so I will keep you updated!

Hopefully between the tests and visits with my doctors, we will be able to get a better handle on my health and things will fall back into place. I am ready to get back into a routine, not only with blogging but with life in general. I cannot believe that Abby’s last day of school is next week and I will no longer have a kindergartener! The year has flown by so fast but we are ready for some summer fun!

Thank you guys so much for sticking around and for all of your support! You have no idea how much it means and how it keeps me going!