Sue

This year my parents and siblings decided to have a holiday party.  We had a great time with a soup buffet and an ugly sweater contest won by my brother, Scott, for his Pittsburgh Steelers sweater.  My sister posted pictures of the ugly sweaters on her blog.  Mark played guitar and sang and my nephew, Taft, was mesmerized by his guitar playing.  We had a dessert buffet provided by my sister, Stefanie, and a viewing of “Small One”, the Disney short that my Dad worked on when he was at Disney Studios.  We also had a Nativity play.  I borrowed costumes from my mother-in-law and showed everyone a scrapbook page from my Christmas book illustrating the last time we did a Nativity play in 1999.  Mark and Kylie reprised their roles of Mary and Joseph, Brady was the baby the last time but this time he was a donkey.  The other little cousins weren’t around.  Brian was a shepherd that time but he was absent this year on his mission.  We had a great time and lots of fun together.

Click on a photo to see them larger in a gallery.

“I love technology”, as a famous movie character says, and we are usually pretty up to date with techy stuff here.  But that poses its own problems for me.  Scott recently purchased me a new laptop to replace my faulty old one, which is wonderful.  However, I am not anywhere near figuring out all the cool stuff on Windows 7 that is available at the click of a mouse, and now I have a new Droid phone to figure out.  This is not as easy as it seems, because it’s basically a small computer with its own operating system that differs from any large computer I’ve ever owned.  We spent the evening going through tutorials and manuals and haven’t even scratched the surface, I’m afraid.  I can call, text, and manage my contacts and email, which I feel is a great accomplishment at this point.  But I want to do the awesome stuff without being frustrated.  Of course, this applies to my computer and I’ve had that for a couple months.  But honestly, how many lame tutorials can a person stomach in one day and remember any of it?

The up side of all this is that soon I’ll be doing cool stuff with both machines.  The down side is that once I get them both figured out and am comfortable, there will be new technology to own and learn.  It’s a vicious, worldwide conspiracy designed to make techies happy and normal people crazy.

Thursday I went to a boutique and bought a plaque that resonated with me.  Of course, I’ve heard this saying many times, but I guess it just really struck me this week and I think I need to be reminded of it often: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…It’s about learning to Dance in the Rain“.

In September 2008 I had some health issues and was diagnosed with a hypothyroid problem.  I spent two years trying to learn to deal with a chronic disease, get used to the medication, live with setbacks, and very slowly watched myself able to do less and less.  In September 2010 I had a severe setback that prompted me to request a referral to an endocrinologist who immediately tested and diagnosed me with Hashimoto’s disease.  This is an autoimmune disease, which means my body makes antibodies that attack my thyroid gland and also makes me more susceptible to other autoimmune diseases.  it causes me to cycle back and forth between hypo- and hyper-thyroid symptoms, so life is a crazy carousel.  I started having daily headaches, and after 4 months of that, I asked the endocrinologist who said I needed to get that taken care of immediately by my regular doc.

So I am in the midst of lots of medical tests to figure out why I am having the headaches.  An MRI showed that I have some lesions on my brain that are permanent scar tissue from the headaches.  So I’m tracking headaches on a chart and taking meds to prevent them.  A blood test has ruled out lupus antibodies but found super high cholesterol so now I’m taking meds for that.  Yesterday I had three ultrasounds to check out my heart and arteries to see if I’m having mini-strokes.  An adrenal stimulation test came back fine so my adrenal gland seems to be working OK even though I’m still fatigued.  And through all this, my emotions are out of whack from the thyroid, doctors don’t call with test results very quickly, and regular life goes on with legislative meetings and a special session this week.  Fortunately for me, I have the best husband in the world who is patient and understanding.

I have been waiting for over two years for the storm to pass, and despite the best efforts of friends helping me cope, I have mostly ignored their good advice and hoped for the skies to just clear up and life to get back to normal.  But I have finally realized that I need to stop waiting for the storm to pass, and learn to dance in the rain.  That realization made, the challenge now is how to do that.

Ah one and ah two…