Okay, so the title is sup­posed to be a pun on the recent ill­nesses that has plagued the fam­ily for the past few months. More aptly, Ri and myself. Argh! It seems that we get over one thing, get a brief respite, and then knocked back on our duffs. I’ve missed so much work since Sep­tem­ber and it really sucks. Espe­cially because I just started this job in July. Thank the Lord I’m good at what I do and my boss/office man­ager is so understanding.

I can­not wait for Grant to get home tomor­row. I just want to crawl into bed and cud­dle up and let him take care of me. Is that sad? Lol. By the time he goes back to work, I am ready for the break. I’m just that type of per­son. I have to have alone time, no mat­ter who the other per­son is. But after about 3–4 days, I start to miss him horribly.

I’m going to jump around a bit with this post because A. it’s late, B. I’ve taken my pain med­i­cine, C. there are a lot of spo­radic things on my mind. I really want to start post­ing more though. I wanted to get my domain back up and run­ning for a rea­son, but I haven’t really stuck with it. I think when Grant goes back to the rig this next time I am going to devote some time to spruc­ing up the lay­out and work­ing on some plug-ins. I always go through this funk dur­ing the win­ter, sea­sonal depres­sion I think it’s called. I don’t do much as far as pho­tog­ra­phy this time of year either. I think it’s because I’m not out­doors as much. If you notice over the last few years, I go pic­ture crazy start­ing in the early spring and it hangs around until mid to late fall. Then I almost com­pletely dis­ap­pear again till the fol­low­ing spring. I need to work on that, lol.

Other than that, I hope every­one is enjoy­ing life lately. I know things have been kind of crazy with nature as of late. What about that tor­nado in L.A. today? My prayers go out to those affected by the earth­quake in Haiti. My own uncle and aunt (He is the min­is­ter of our church) were in Jamaica on their way back from a mis­sion in Haiti when the earth­quake struck. They were on the bal­cony of their room on the 15th floor when it hit. Uncle John said all he could do was hang on to the rail­ing and pray. He said noth­ing spears you to the core than feel­ing like you can’t even trust the ground beneath your feet. Again, my prayers are with you all and I am donat­ing what money I can here an there, at church, Red Cross, etc. Once things set­tle down, our church will be going over per­son­ally and build­ing homes with sup­plies bought from our tithes.

I’ve fol­lowed Ree, Oklahoma’s very own Pio­neer Woman online for years. She is a big part of my inspi­ra­tion in pho­tog­ra­phy and much of what I know I have learned from her site. I just want to say that on top of being one of the sweet­est, quirki­est, and just down right most awe­some women out there, she is also the most inspir­ing. This woman never stops giv­ing from her heart. She started out pledg­ing to donate 10 cents for every com­ment made on her site dur­ing a spec­i­fied time limit to the top three char­i­ties named. That total ended up being $2,585.00. Ree was so over-whelmed with the response that she got from this pledge that she took it even fur­ther. She donated the full amount to EACH of the three top char­i­ties named, a dona­tion total­ing $7,755 out of her own money. WOW. I wish that we could all give that kind of money to the peo­ple around the world who need it.

Okay, so this post is already turn­ing into a novel and I need to crash soon, so… I’m gonna fill you in on what has been hap­pen­ing the past few days. Some of the info I’m about to go into may be con­sid­ered TMI, espe­cially if there are any non-females lurk­ing about. There­fore, I’m going to place the details behind a cut. I hope every­one has a great week and God bless.

About two weeks ago, I started get­ting the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that I might be preg­nant. Now, I’ve had the Mirena IUD since Sep­tem­ber 2005. It is sup­posed to be the most effec­tive form of birth con­trol next to hav­ing your tubes tied. Even more effec­tive than a man hav­ing a vasec­tomy. Sup­pos­edly, if on the rare chance you get preg­nant, it is an ectopic preg­nancy and can­not be car­ried to term at risk of the mother. So, need­less to say, I was get­ting pretty ner­vous by this point. I was hav­ing many of the symp­toms of preg­nancy (spo­radic nau­sea, mild cramp­ing, ten­der­ness in par­tic­u­lar areas, emo­tional, fatigue, etc.) and to top it off, I had not had a period since before Thanks­giv­ing. Now, with the Mirena, the lack of a period is not nec­es­sar­ily uncom­mon. Some peo­ple stop com­pletely. But com­bined with the other symp­toms, I was not lik­ing my odds. There is the off chance that the IUD can slip and move into the uterus and you can have a viable preg­nancy, so that was what Grant and I were hop­ing was the case if I was truly pregnant.

Any­ways, Sat­ur­day night I finally decided to go get a test before going to church on Sun­day because the wife of one of the guys Grant works with also has the Mirena and found out this past week that she had an ectopic preg­nancy and is more than likely going to have a hys­terec­tomy because of the result­ing dam­age.  Again, I was really start­ing to get anx­ious. Thank­fully, I started my period Sun­day morn­ing. It was pretty heavy and I was hav­ing so hor­rid cramps, but I fig­ured that was to be expected because it had been so long since my last one.

I went about my day on Sun­day like nor­mal. By Sun­day night the cramps were absolutely hor­ri­ble and had spread to my lower back. On top of that, the only time I have ever had a period this heavy was the first one after hav­ing Ri. I was really start­ing to get pan­icky, think­ing that maybe I really was preg­nant and was try­ing to mis­carry. I took two pain pills that I had left­over from recent den­tal work around mid­night and went to bed hop­ing that it would let up. All night I tossed and turned with cramps and cold sweats. Finally around 5:00 am I couldn’t take it any­more. I called Mom and I got in the shower while she got up and headed over. We dropped Ri off at her day care around 6:00 am and went on in the E.R.

Luck­ily, the got me back pretty quick, but stated right off that they couldn’t give me any­thing for pain until the deter­mined if I was actu­ally preg­nant or not. Lovely. So, they drew what seemed like an unre­al­is­tic amount of blood con­sid­er­ing I felt I was bleed­ing plenty already. They also did a catheter to get a pure urine sam­ple to make sure I didn’t have any blood in my kid­neys and what night. Finally, the doc­tor did a pelvic exam and then I got to cover up with a nice warm blan­ket and wait. I have never been more relieved than when they came back and told me that I was def­i­nitely not pregnant!

So, if I wasn’t preg­nant, what the heck was hap­pen­ing. Appar­ently, I had an ovar­ian cyst that rup­tured. The doc­tor sus­pects that the rea­son I haven’t had a period in so long is because the cyst was some­what large and was block­ing every­thing. Nice, right? So, part of the rea­son I was bleed­ing so heav­ily was because of the blood in the cyst and I was also pass­ing tis­sue from the cyst as well. They gave me so pain med­ica­tion and told me to go home and stay off my feet and no lift­ing until I can get into my doc­tor. If the bleed­ing gets worse before then, I am sup­posed to go back to the E.R.

The bleed­ing has let up a lit­tle, but the cramps are still hor­ri­ble. I went back to work today, but I am doing my best to stay at my desk and off my feet like they want. My doc­tor wanted me to come in Thurs­day but I couldn’t get off work till next Wednes­day. So, I go in then to have an ultra-sound to deter­mine if there are more and have a biopsy on any remain­ing tis­sue from the one that rup­tured. Appar­ently I’ve had a few irreg­u­lar pap smears in the past and I have had extremely  ele­vated white blood cell counts as well, so she wants to be extra careful.

They are also going to remove the Mirena. From what the E.R. doc­tors and the my own doc­tor has said, it may very well be the cause of all of this. The doc­tor said that the Mirena is great for patients for the first two years, but after that, more often than not, it causes all kinds of prob­lems. A lot of these prob­lems can be quite seri­ous. I hate tak­ing the pill because I am hor­ri­ble at remem­ber­ing it and I have all kinds of weird side effects because of the hor­mones. I’m def­i­nitely not going to get the Depo Provera shot! I have done that before and I lit­er­ally gained 40 – 50 lbs from just two shots. I have loved hav­ing the Mirena and I really wish I didn’t have to changed birth con­trol meth­ods. But I just don’t see how I can keep it if it is going to cause prob­lems like this.