A prayer request and a therapuetic entry....

Hi girls…(and in case there are any lurkers or browsers…hi there!) lol…umm so here’s what’s new with me…my sister eluded to some blood pressure issue that I had on Friday….here’s that lovely little story….by the way today, I’m grappling with a case of what I’m pretty sure is poison ivy rash on my face…so umm can ya’ll pray for the plague of locusts that I’m expecting any day??!!! Geez oh petes!! For most of my life, I’ve not had to visit the doctor on a regular basis. But the last couple of years, it has been one thing after another….bronchitis, laryngitis, shingles, impetigo, two infected ingrown toenails, infertility, and most recently high blood pressure…and now poison ivy!! I refuse to go back to the doctor for poison ivy so this had better clear itself up! Argh!! On the other hand, as I’m typing this, I’m reminded how thankful I am that these are all pretty minor ailments in comparison. However, the little things are adding up and getting on my nerves!!

Now the blood pressure thing, not such a little thing, considering I am overweight, I am an apple shaped person (meaning most of my weight is carried right around my middle), I do not exercise much at all (hence the overweight apple shape that is me), and I have family history of both stroke and heart attack. Needless to say, Friday’s incident has scared the crap out of me enough to make some major changes as far as diet and exercise are concerned.

Friday, the Lord gave me a wake-up and smell the decaf coffee moment. I’m 36 years old and I can’t continue to remain in the same habits and except to live a long healthy life. It all started when I tried to fill my prescription of Chlomid. I still had refills left but the date had expired. So rather than call in the prescription renewal, my obgyn called me and invited me in to see her. So Friday morning I went in to see my obgyn.

First the nurse weighed me (always a pleasure) and then led me into the check up room and proceeded to take my blood pressure. Now I’ve come to expect that it runs a little high and the nurses usually comment on it but this nurse said it was really high. She may have said something like 195/115. They never really clearly stated to me what my numbers were while I was there. And I never really thought to ask. All that registered to me was their concern. I was sort of in this surreal state or something. Anyways, so another nurse came in and they changed cuffs – still high. So they leave me alone and not too much later the doctor comes in and tells me that my blood pressure is “crazy high – like stroke-level high” and she then instructs me to go to the emergency room when I was done with her. So of course at that moment if they’d taken my blood pressure again, I’m sure it would have been double whatever they had just witnessed. She continues to talk to me about the whole infertility issue and somehow through all my fears and fighting back tears, I actually managed to have a really great conversation with her about how we’d like to keep trying, she increased my level of Chlomid for three months, and she again talked about the fertility specialist referral and I asked what the options would be there and she explained a few procedures that they do before they got to the drastic measures like in vitro. I told her that I wasn’t really interested in pursuing too many drastic measures and that we’re actually considering adoption as well. By the end of our conversation, I did finally end up in tears. She asked if I was upset over the infertility treatments or the whole blood pressure thing – I told her the blood pressure thing. She did try to calm me down by telling me that with PCOS this is normal and it’s just a part of the condition. Of course, in that moment that wasn’t comforting but later I remembered her saying that and it was of some comfort, especially since I wasn’t feeling any other symptoms. They kept asking me if I felt alright and I really did feel fine!

So anyway, right before I went in to see the doctor, I had made sure my cell phone was off, because inevitably Jimmie would call me when I was in seeing the doctor. My phone was off because the battery was dead. So when I left the office, I was in tears and I knew I needed to call Jimmie but I also knew my cell phone battery needed charged and my charger was in my car, but I had driven the truck to the doctors grrr….My obgyn’s office is at the hospital but the emergency room is on the other side of the complex, but on my way out of the dr.’s office I stopped in the restroom and just let myself cry for a little bit. Then I made my way out to the truck. The whole way I was saying silent little prayers that my cell phone would work just long enough to call Jimmie to come to the hospital. My fear was, first going to the emergency room alone. In my mind I just knew they were going to keep me, maybe do some sort of surgery on me, and all the while I’d be bawling unable to communicate to anyone why I was there. Looking back, I’m such the drama queen. But it was really truly upsetting. I’ve never had to go to the emergency room and I’ve never had any kind of surgery or even been admitted to the hospital for any length of time (again – I’m so thankful that even though I have all these minor ailments, I’ve not really faced anything major or serious healthwise).

So I get out to the truck, cell phone in hand, and I just pray over that cell phone. I tell God that He is much bigger than this dinky little cell phone and its dead battery and please please please just give me enough juice to call Jimmie and communicate to him my need for him to come quick. I turned on the cell phone, dialed my husband’s number, he picked up, immediately heard the fear and tears in my voice and informed me that he was on his way to the hospital. Thank you LORD!!! Someone could reason whatever they wanted about what kind of power might have been left on the cell phone battery, but I’m convinced that the Almighty Creator of every living thing touched that little cell phone and brought my husband to me!

So I sat in the truck, crying a little but mostly trying to get myself calmed down enough to go into the emergency room. By the time Jimmie got there, I was half way calm but of course when I saw him I started to tear up a little bit again. But he made little jokes and sort of got my mind off things a little bit and in we went. I registered and shortly after they took me back. I don’t know what the first reading was but after the nurse took a couple of readings, she lead me back to an emergency patient room. They were like little patio rooms with sliding doors. Cute place. There were two chairs and a little bed. I was fully preparing to get comfy in one of the chairs when she told me to put on one of their pretty little hospital backless gowns. Argh. So when she comes back in, she fluffs up the pillows and puts the bed in like a sitting up position and tells me to have a seat. At this point, I’m fully thinking that I’ll be out of there in ten minutes. So I sit on the edge of the bed – I’m not getting comfortable cuz I’m not going to be here long. I never felt bad at all. But they all kept treating me like I should feel bad and that made me worried. Anyway so she hooked me up to a heart monitor and took my blood pressure several times.

Good grief – I’m writing a book here! Can you imagine what my memoirs will be like if I actually do get pregnant!! Should I just tell you that long story short, I have high blood pressure. I wrote down my readings while at the hospital the first one I recorded was 198/108 with a heart rate of 87. By the time they let me go I was at 143/93. Monday at Walmart I checked my bp and it was 160/99 and yesterday when I saw my regular doc it was 160/100. So the emergency room doc took an ekg, x-rays, and blood samples and sent all the results to my normal doc and my normal doc has prescribed a medication that they prescribe to women who are pregnant. (I would tell ya the name of it but I haven’t yet picked up my prescription – I will have it by the end of the day today). I told my normal doc that my obgyn had increased my Chlomid, but I also asked if, because of the high blood pressure, should we consider not trying to conceive. She said absolutely not. She just would like my numbers to come down before I get pregnant.

So for some reason, I feel compelled to keep trying to get pregnant, and so we are. Jimmie is so funny. He doesn’t say much about his opinion about whether we have children or not because he doesn’t want to deal with the disappointment if it doesn’t happen for us. And actually, I’m kind of that way too. I try to make it appear that the whole infertility issue doesn’t phase me one way or another, but it does. I keep grappling with the whole issue of why do I want to have a child so badly. Because I’m supposed to? Because other people really want me to? Because I feel like people will value me more because we have children? But the answer that is forming is that I want a child that Jimmie and I can love and raise up and hopefully give the best pieces of us to – our sense of humor, our sense of values, our love of God, our quirky families, and yes even Jimmie’s infatuation with tractors. Those of you that have children already (which is all of the journal goddesses, I think) you know what I’m talking about.

I’ve always been a late bloomer. Natural tendencies just seem to come to me later than most people. Like, I worry about the whole biological clock thing. I hope we haven’t waited too late but I’ve really only in the last couple of years felt that I was ready and wanting a child. Really, I also feel that maybe this is – well I know it is actually….God’s planning, His timing, His preparing of Jimmie and I and building the desire for a child at this point in our life. I’m in the middle of it right now so I can’t see the whole picture of what is happening right now. But I have to cling to the fact, the knowledge, the promise that God is in control.

Wow, I’ve really lain it all out there in this entry. That was very cathartic.

Ok on a totally unrelated topic. A speaker at Women of Faith, Dr. Henry Cloud (any New Life live fanatics out there beside me – give it up for New Life Live – wahoo!) anyway, Dr. Henry Cloud (of New Life Live)(ok I’ll stop lol) umm what was I saying? Ok, Dr. Cloud kept saying “Grasshopper” (think Kung Foo movies) at the end of various comments. Well Brain twin and I were the only ones in our little group that had an inkling of what he was quoting there (actually brain twin thought that it was from the Karate Kid movies – which I’m not ruling out that maybe they played on the Kung Foo movies in the Karate Kid – that would make sense – I just don’t remember). But anyways, I’ve never even seen a Kung Foo movie that I remember anyway, but I just thought it was a pop culture thing that everyone knew. But out of 5 of us only 2 knew anything about the Grasshopper thing. So here’s a link, if you are bored, that has quotes from the Kung Foo movie. There you go, Grasshopper. Incidentally, when I looked this up, I saw one site that actually referred to the fact that, from my understanding – I only briefly glanced at that site- but it appears that Grasshopper may actually be like a rank in the actual study of the art of kung foo. Anyways….there ya go…a bit of pop culture trivia…http://www.kungfu-guide.com/addendum_movie.html


umm so I’m gonna go itch my face…argh stinking poison ivy….

Happy Wednesday!

Oops – one more thing…Melinda really does deserve to win the whole thing. Man oh man she was on fire last night! But really like somebody last night said, they are all so diverse at this point that it is hard to tell. I think for once, the proper people made it to the final three!

One more thing….I’m so happy that my girl Layla Ali is still in DWTS!! I hope she wins it – I doubt she will because Joey and Apolo are so darn good too…but I’m rooting for Layla!

Ok bye!