my subconscious is a fiend

i have the weirdest dreams.

srsly.


a few weeks ago, i had a dream that all of the kids from my class were in. i got to hug them all, and hang out with them. but we were at a parade, and one of the kid's family was made up entirely of extremely overweight gypsies. yeah. weird. and no mystery why i had that dream, i miss my kids like crazy.


i also had a dream awhile ago like my "dad" who was actually some guy i've never seen before, and i were flying a plane through hell. but it looked like hellfire peninsula in WoW. no idea what it was, at some point we landed and then the plane was gone. lolersk8.

and then last night i had a dream like i was the MC in my current story, and that one of the other characters killed my MC's sister, and forced me to stay with him anyway. and he was really hot, which is the way i wrote him, but still....a guy kills your sister, you should never notice how hot he is. all the same, in my dream, i was all over that ;) i'm thinking this dream was my subconscious saying i'd better finish this story, or else....



hahaha man i love dreams. now if i could have a dream WITHIN a dream.....i'd be satisfied :D

personality chameleon......

have you ever known someone who's a personality chameleon?

you know, the kind of person whose personality changes all the time, especially based on who they're around and what's "cool" at the moment?




personality chameleons= FAIL

breaking out of the sick bay

i think i've blogged enough about being sick. i was sick enough to never be sick again in my life and be okay with it ;) but like all things, the sickness has to have closure.

by closure i mean, i need to break out of the sick bay, as it were.
what do i mean by that? well, i'll tell you. have a cup of tea.


the last six months, i have been very ill and have thus developed daily habits in living according to how sick i was. example: for the first five months of the illness, i was working at the school so i went to bed at eight thirty every night so i could wake up at six thirty the next day and have a hope of having the needed energy to work.

i also pretty much ate whatever i could keep down, with little regard to what it actually was. as long as it stayed in my stomach and i wasn't ralphing it up at work two hours later. so it wasn't always the healthiest food even though the majority of it was decent.

also, i spent all of the time i wasn't working for five months in my room/in bed. this got old, and fast.


well, after my blood transfusion a month ago, some of the habits shifted. i was on a steroid because of inflammation, and the steroid made a complete insomniac out of me. so now i was awake till five am pretty much every night, and sleeping in till whenever i could. usually about ten at the earliest, and one at the latest. ew. ick. gross. i LOVE waking up early. this was very annoying to me.

secondly, i started feeling insatiably hungry (also a side effect of the steroid. DON'T take steroids unless you NEED to) and so i started eating whatever i wanted in huge, disgusting, massive amounts. don't believe me? one saturday at jcw's i ate the following: a half salad, a grilled cheese sandwich, an all-american burger, an order of hot wings and some fries. yeah. and i still didn't feel full. oddly enough, i haven't gained any weight but i've been eating truckloads. now that i'm off of the steroid, i haven't been eating as much but still have had the "i'll eat whatever" mentality that i carried the last six months.

lastly, i have been absolutely STIRCRAZY after all of the time spent in my room/bed. and without my job, i've been finding other ways of entertaining myself. this summer, i'll be bekah's buddy. i'll be spending all day taking her to movies, parks, the pool, whatever i feel like. it'll be fun, but it needs to feel like a job so this leads me to the point of this post:

breaking away from the sickbay= getting rid of these "sick" habits and behaving like a normal, healthy person again.


first and foremost, i am going to fix my sleeping patterns so i am going to bed around eleven and waking up at six. i am going to walk and lift weights, because now that i'm quite thin i'd really like to tone up. i'm also going to be eating super clean and working really hard to eliminate foods that trigger colitis flare-ups. i'm kinda nuts obsessed with taking care of myself after how sick i've been. it makes sense, i know lol.
i pretty much just need to break out of the few "sick" habits and mindsets i've had the last few months. it shouldn't be too hard, i've already started doing it. i'm so excited to be feeling healthy again. i can't wait to work out and just live each day super hard after being in "snooze" mode for months. it's exciting!!


i know this blog entry is kinda boring, and truthfully totally word-vomit style. i always have to write about stuff to get it all figured out and set in my mind, so forgive me if you actually read this whole thing and now want the five minutes of your life back ;)

bahhhh

i want to be your daisy buchanan

what will it be like to fall in love again??

moving!

this week, derek and i finally moved all of our stuff out of our apartment. for the last few months while i've been sick, our stuff has sat there untouched. derek offered to move it, but i wanted to help, especially because we wanted to divide up our stuff that was still boxed and i had no idea what i wanted!
so we borrowed some bigger cars and went over with my little brother to help since i'm still really pathetically weak and have this cough to boot. we put on music, packed everything up and divided it. it was cathartic, and oddly fun. i sorted all of my clothes, and i couldn't believe how much i have! i'll never need to go shopping again lol. for the last couple of years i was overweight and hated all of my clothes on myself so i never wore them. now i have tons of barely-used stuff to wear. it's pretty awesome!

so now i have my stuff all in my room. thanks to my gram buying me a BEAUTIFUL chest of drawers, all of my clothes have a place. i have my new bedding, and need to set up my new bed frame. i cleaned up my room and unpacked right away, and it's MUCH nicer now not to be living in the insane clutter it was for a bit!

next weekend, derek and i are going up to logan to visit our good friends and i am so excited! we're going to spend friday and saturday up there. it's so great to have him as a friend. when we cleaned out our apartment, it reminded me once again that what we were doing was right. i thought back to what it was like living there, and how much happier we both are now. we get along so well now, i know it sounds weird, but any time we spend together now is so much more fun. the weekend in logan will be a blast, going there as friends. i'm excited to go because i've been so housebound lately recovering.

along those lines, i slept ELEVEN hours last night! eww, gross. i know i really needed it, but i still hated it lol.

well, i'm off to vacuum my room now! i can't wait until it stops raining, i want it to be warm so i can wear all of my super cute spring clothes, including the ones i bought this week with my birthday money (finally!)

i'm out :P

the misery of it all....

so i was miserable for like, the last three years.
don't believe me? read my old blog. i did tonight.
i was cringing reading it. my misery was palpable through my words and expressions. my bitterness. my self-loathing.

i was horrible to people, and most of all horrible to myself.


i'm just so grateful for the challenges i've had, because they've led me where i am:
i am a happy person
a person at peace
a good person

every day, i am happy. i'm no longer "waiting for life to begin", which i often talked about in my old blogs.

nope, i'm living.



and it's wonderful :)

omfg boredddddd

holy goodness i am so restless. i need to do something to entertain myself, and quick.


hmmm.....
i've been doing a lot of reading lately. i just finished the hunger games, which i really enjoyed. but i'm restless to go out and DO something...

unfortunately, i really can't. i need to take it easy and get better. i can't tell if this cough is going away or not...it seems kinda the same as it was two days ago, except i feel a little less crappy. i can't tell if i still have a fever or not...all the same, i want to go somewhere! do something!
this week, derek and i are finally going to get all of our stuff, and i can't wait to go through my clothes and see all of the summer clothes i haven't worn forever. i'm sick of wearing the same thing every day hahaha


well.....this attempt to save myself from boredom failed....onto the next!

now here's something you'll really enjoy

first, i must broadcast
that the current score is
moonface- 0
rachel- 1


moonface, in case you don't know (which you probably don't because let's face it, why should you?) is a condition where your face swells. the swelling in my legs went down a few days ago and so they're back to normal, but my face and the top of my neck stayed pleasantly swollen and "malone-like" (see gentlemen prefer blondes for reference)

needless to say....i didn't like it....if you looked just at my face, it looked like it did when i was at my heaviest. and then there's this malnourished little body underneath it. so i was walking around looking like quite the circus attraction. in my opinion anyway. i tried to laugh about it, but this is my FACE we're talking about....not my legs...and when i finally started being able to laugh about it, the swelling started to go down. yay! it might be because i'm tapering off of prednisone, who knows....but all i can say is: "see ya, moonface...don't let the door knock you on your ass on the way out." and excuse my french, but trust me, you'd feel the same way if it was you....



so next i'll just say...i've been kind of bed-confined, because i tried to do too much after my blood transfusion and now have a mean cough/cold that may or may not be pneumonia. "they don't know for sure"....seriously, i am starting to doubt doctors in general so much after this whole ordeal that i am considering seriously going into medicine because i will NEVER be one of those "too casual about it" doctors that seem to be everywhere....whew...mini-rant over....anyway, i'm pegging my hopes on it just being a cough but they gave me an antibiotic shot anyway.....and so from being bed-confined, i have read the great gatsby another fifty times.
words cannot express how much i love that book! i've also started the hunger games....jenn and i have a deal that if i read that, she'll read the great gatsby....the hunger games is really good! after all of this reading i've been doing, i'm super inspired to write. i'm so excited to get back into writing now that life has changed so much and i actually feel like i can. i just...couldn't before...long story, but that phase is over :)


oh and i got new bedding...which is really exciting to me for some reason. i can't WAIT to get my room officially cute and set up! when i've recovered from this cough thing...it's the FIRST thing i'm doing!


all for now!


ps....willy wonka is the GREATEST. thuh end.

so.....i almost died.....

so i figured i'd write an update on my health, because although not that many people read this blog, i still can hardly wrap my mind around what happened. more than that, what COULD have happened to me- and i get things out by writing, so here goes:

i went and had my colonoscopy and found i have colitis. was given some medication. that was supposed to be "the end" as it were, and so i started taking the medication, whatever....


a couple of days later, i wasn't feeling much better. and on top of everything, my feet and legs began to swell. like, hugely. black spots kept showing up in my vision, and i started being able to hear my heart racing constantly in my ears. i'd eat in the morning, and then i'd feel the food just stick in my upper stomach all day and not get hungry for literally hours. i started to get so tired that i'd walk down the hall at work and have to stop and lean against the wall to breathe. i'd been tired like that for months, but it got so bad those few days that i could barely stand up without needed to rest. when i went to bed at night, i could barely get up the next morning. needless to say, i was freaked out.

i called my GI from work and told his nurse that my feet were swelling, and she called me back five minutes later to schedule an ultrasound that day on my legs because they were worried i had blood clots. this freaked me out to no end, and i left work to have an ultrasound. i found that i didn't have blood clots, and my GI said he wanted to see me asap.

i went in to see him, he looked at my legs and sort of freaked out. "i've never seen this reaction to that medication before," he told me. "i'm worried you might be experiencing kidney failure. we need to order blood tests, stat. we'll find out what's going on." they sent me to the lab for about fifty blood tests, and then afterwards sent me home with the promise of a phone call with the results within an hour.

i went home, more distraught than i'd been probably the entire time i've been sick the last five months. my feet were so swollen they began to crack and i could hardly walk. i started bawling on the drive home, convinced i'd reached my limit. possible kidney failure? what else didn't they know was going on in my body?

the nurse called me a few minutes after i got home, saying they wanted to send me to the hospital lab for some tests this time. so my sister accompanied me back, and we did a bunch more tests. when they were through, i was informed i'd need a blood transfusion first thing in the morning. THREE UNITS OF BLOOD.

i stared at the woman. "do i need to be admitted tonight?" i asked. because seriously, i was almost scared to go home.
"first thing in the morning should be fine," she said, looking too doubtful to be comforting. so home i went.


the next morning bright and early, my family tried to wake me. i felt like i was being roused from a coma. i could hardly wake, and my face and neck were so swollen i looked like i'd gained fifty pounds over night. derek grabbed my laptop and we headed to the hospital.

we walked in to the IV Therapy section, and the two women at the desk craned their necks to look at me. "you're walking and conscious?" one asked incredulously. i laughed, but she was completely serious. "we've never had an outpatient walk in here with hemoglobin levels as low as yours," she said. "let's get you lying down."

i sort of didn't know how to respond, and let them usher me to a hospital bed. "you can order room service," the woman, evelyn, told me. "we need to go get the blood." she shook her head. "three units. i can't believe you're walking and functioning."

i wasn't really sure what to say. i'd had no idea that it was that bad.

so basically, i ended up spending the day in the hospital with my gram, who came to keep me company. the blood transfusion took about seven hours in all. evelyn came in and spoke to me A LOT and really informed me of how serious my situation was. she said a normal person's blood levels are 35, and mine were at 14. "you have less than half the blood in your body that you're supposed to," she told me. "your levels are life threatening right now." she seemed upset. upset that it had taken so long to get me in. she and the other nurse were both freaked out, saying that i looked like a dead person and they'd never seen someone actually like, conscious with such low levels.

i was pretty upset, too. in weird ways.
the more i spoke to evelyn, the more i realized that i had seriously been on the verge of multiple organ failure. i could have DIED. my body wasn't digesting food and i could hardly wake up because my body was SHUTTING DOWN. literally.


partly through the transfusion, i started to cry realizing that i had been so angry yesterday about my situation, and i actually should have been grateful. grateful i hadn't experienced kidney failure or had a heart attack. when evelyn explained to me what my body was doing being forced to run on so little blood, i started to pray. pray because the Lord had preserved me once again like he had when i was a baby with the chicken pox. i just kept thinking, "i'm so sorry i was angry, things could have been so much worse."

as the hours went by and more blood was given back to me, i began to actually get hungry. when i ate, the food didn't just sit. my skin began to get a bit of color. evelyn kept saying they were literally giving life back to me, and i had no idea just how literal it was until the transfusion was over.


i went home that day, and i could already walk a little more without having to stop and sit. my heart was no longer racing in my ears. evelyn told me i'd be more mentally clear, and i had no idea just how much difference there really was. it was as though i'd been sleepwalking through the last few months. suddenly, i was awake and aware again. i felt like a kid, excited about everything.


the last few days, recovery has been pretty good. i am back on the colitis meds because the swelling was (they think) from the lack of blood and NOT a reaction to the colitis meds. they have already helped me be able to eat again instead of throw everything up. i have had a lot less blood loss too. (sorry if it's TMI, i don't really care). i also am taking iron, a duretic to help with the edema and a steroid to help with the colitis. i can walk around and DO things without needing to rest after ten minutes.
i'm going in for another complete blood count at the hospital and another appointment with my GI on monday, so i'm hoping that everything looks pretty good. my legs are still swelling, but my GI said that will take time to go away. i'm just hoping for good news and hoping that my blood levels are where they're supposed to be monday. i may need another unit of blood, and frankly i kind of want one just to make up for everything i've lost! the three units brought me up to about 25, and i'd like to be a little closer to 35 so we'll see after i talk to my doctor.

overall, i cannot believe how blessed i've been. i know i'm waxing a little religious here but this is my blog after all lol and this whole thing has been a very spiritual experience for me. to know how close i was to dying, and that i wasn't aware of it until after the fact....i am baffled what a little perspective can do. i was so angry the day before my transfusion, convinced i couldn't take anymore. then, when i was really made aware of how serious my situation was and the fact that i was okay.....it just shook me. i know the Lord loves me and is looking out for me, and every blessing i've been given promising i would be alright was REAL. i know now, no matter what happens in the next little while i will be okay in the end. i truly know that, even if i'm not done with the scary stuff. i have faith, and i have been so blessed to have this experience.


the last part of this whole thing was i had to quit my job. i had taken so much time off already and i knew my recovery would be too intensive to work. honestly, my boss had no idea just how serious my situation was and i still have yet to fully explain it to her. i'm going to hopefully this week though. i loved that job so much and i know i was meant to have it. i have missed my kids every day, but i know the right thing will happen and if i'm meant to work with those kids again, i will. until then, i'm praying because i seriously, seriously miss them. having to quit was the hardest thing, but i knew my recovery was too iffy to be able to promise a work schedule at this point.


so, that is all that has happened. it's so crazy to me to think that it's all really happened. i feel like such a different person after these last five months it's not even funny. i feel like who i'm meant to be, and i honestly believe i could not have become this person without these trials, no matter how painful or scary or hard they've been. i've been so blessed, and i appreciate any thoughts and prayers that have been sent my way. i've needed them, and you have no idea how much they've truly helped.

:)

blood transfusions, kidney failure, loss....oh my!

having a blood transfusion tomorrow....apparently it takes like, six to seven hours so i get to hang out in a hospital bed all day....it's fine because my legs and feet are so swollen i can't walk anyway....


which brings me to the NEW part in rachel being sick.....my doctor is worried i might be experiencing kidney failure.....so yeah.....i had about a million blood tests today, i'll be having this transfusion tomorrow and......




i had to quit my job.


i don't know if i'll be able to work, or if i'll be confined to a hospital bed for the next few weeks, or what....so i had to quit. i'm praying a lot, really trying to keep in mind that the Lord does everything for a reason.....




all these things considered, i had a pretty bad day.....but i'm a little better now....


pray for me?