Yesterday I went for another bone density test. It’s a quick test but I got a little suspicious when the tech wanted a more detailed shot of my left hip…and didn’t do my right hip. I asked her when I would hear back from my primary doctor about the results and she said probably within the week.

A couple of hours later I had an email from my doctor.

“Your bone density is BELOW THE EXPECTED RANGE FOR AGE. I recommend that we establish with our endocrinologist, to see if you need medication at this point or not…”

I called the endocrinologist and my appointment is for August 8th.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO IN THE MEANTIME?!

Exactly how brittle are my bones? Am I in immediate danger of breaking a hip? Do I have the bones of a 70 year old woman? An 80 year old? Why is this happening to me at the ripe old age of 43?

I can’t pull myself away from the internet. I learned that my diseases: Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, Ulcerative Colitis and even Depression can contribute to low bone density.

So can Leukemia, Lymphoma and cancer of the bone marrow.

I can’t believe I have to wait nearly two more months for my appointment.

This reminds me of the time a radiologist told me I could have breast cancer based on my mammography. I was told to make an appointment with a breast specialist and I got one..two months later. The spot on my mammography was deemed an old cyst by the specialist, but I spent an agonizing eight weeks in limbo.

Has this ever happened to you?

How did you get through the waiting period?

The post Lovely In Her Bones first appeared on Mama Sick.

I talked it over with my primary physician and she says it could be scar tissue from when I gave birth to Tyler. I had a stage three episiotomy tear. It also can be related to my Osteoporosis. I asked her about medication for it and she said they have a lot of side effects. She told me that they actually have physical therapy for the pelvic floor

I don’t know if I am up for PT of my lady bits. I’m thinking of just buying those pads.

Do you have incontinence? What are you doing about it?

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The post Incontinence?! first appeared on Mama Sick.

When women have chronic illnesses, it often is very much out of our control what we weigh. Medications, our diseases, and not being able to exercise because of the pain and energy zapping we feel, all contribute to how much we weigh.

Now I am going to talk numbers, for me personally.  I am 5 feet 6 inches tall.  You may be envious of my current weight but the fact is that I am not happy about it.  Everything is relative, you know?  I weigh the most I have ever weighed, except for being pregnant, 157 pounds. Now, I know that some of it is swelling, but who knows how much weight that is, a couple of pounds? Less?  No one can answer that for me!  I seem to wear it well, and am currently wearing sizes 8s, 10s and 12s.  Sizes are crazy aren’t they?  How can I still wear my size 8s?  Why are some size 10s swimming on me?  I have what I would describe as a Rubenesque figure.  Only we don’t live in the 1600s:-(

For many years I was a solid size 10 with my weight being around 145 pounds, give or take. I got comfortable in my size 10 clothes, I accepted “size 10 me”, finally.  Some people would even praise the fact that my weight never wavered.

Then I had Tyler.  My pre-pregnancy weight was 146 pounds and I gained just 23 pounds as I had Gestational Diabetes and had to be careful.  When I came home from the hospital, my stomach had already shrunk considerably and I had already lost 13 pounds, which really is like the baby and the crap that you carry with the baby.

In one month or less I was down to my pre-pregnancy weight.  And then I just kept going.  I was not on a diet, I was not doing anything.  I had a stomach virus on top of that and so when Tyler was seven months old I weighed a horrendous 117 pounds!  I looked like a heroin chic model.  People at my new job were telling me, “YOU just had a baby?  You look amazing!”

But I hated myself.  This wasn’t ME.  I had gone from years of being a size 10 to a size 4! I would look at myself in the mirror and cry.  I was in shock over my skeletal frame.  While people were praising me for my weight loss and amazing will power, my doctors were flummoxed. My endocrinologist was telling me I was just plain crazy. He said it in a bit nicer way, he said I had post-partum issues and should be seeing a Psychiatrist and therapist, but I already was, the big dummy.  Is it even necessary to say I fired him?  I was being tested for every cancer there was since unexplained weight loss is a major symptom of cancer.  No cancer, thankfully.

I used to test the power of eating anything and everything I wanted.  I used to have half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, sometimes more, every night.  After the stomach virus and a return to a desk job I did stabilize into a comfortable size six.  I started to like being a size six, and who wouldn’t?  Being able to wear trendy or classic office clothes without looking like I was trying to stretch them just to fit into them.  I was always the kind of woman who made it a habit to go the next size up, rather than attempt to fit into the size they weren’t any more.  It was more flattering.

I realize now that Lupus was starting.  It had taken over my metabolism, my endocrine system. Lupus wanted me thin and so I was.  I was finally that willowy amazon that I had thought could only be found in my dreams.  The only thing that I didn’t have was I have always wished I was shorter. Oh, they have such cute things for petite women, don’t they? Well, that probably IS going to happen too since I have Osteoporosis and have already shrunk a few inches.  Be careful what you wish for, right?

Enough with the past, let’s get to how I ended up being 160 pounds.  My meds for my mental illnesses, and my mental illnesses themselves, make me want to eat.  My pain makes me want to eat. Sometimes it is so bad, I don’t want to feel it any more, I want to feel an Oreo cookie, you know? Someone told me that eating releases the same pleasurable endorphins as narcotics or exercise or being happy.  For me the only thing that works is the food as I cannot exercise, I do not get high from my drugs and happiness around here is short lived.  I only have the Oreos!

I also have this weird feeling that I cannot nap or sleep unless I feel full.  The food helps make me sleepy and it is easier to get to sleep.  Or then I have insomnia and I get hungry, being up for two to three hours in the middle of the night, who wouldn’t?

But what really convinced me that I had to do something was the amazing Christine Miserandino, The Spoon Lady, of the amazing But You Don’t Look Sick blog.  I saw pictures of her recently and she is already so beautiful but now she has lost the weight she was lamenting about and she looks fabulous!

I don’t know how Christine did it, but I have decided to go on the ShutMyMouth Diet.  I have decided that I am stronger than Lupus, Depression, or my meds and I DO have control over how much I weigh.  I will not let them have their “weigh” with me any longer.

So far I have lost a pound on the ShutMyMouth Diet but more so, I feel like I am once again the Master of my body, the Queen of my Temple, or whatever you would like to call it.  I am not advocating that YOU should go on the ShutMyMouth Diet, you should consult your doctor before beginning any diet, but for me, what harm could the ShutMyMouth Diet really do?

My goal is to lose a reasonable 20 pounds in how ever long it takes, as I will be eating my usual meals and a treat when I want it, as long as it is within reason.  Maybe I am on to something with this new ShutMyMouth Diet?

The post The ShutMyMouth Diet first appeared on Mama Sick.

My mother is here visiting until tomorrow and we both attended Tyler’s school for the annual Mother’s Day “Muffins With Mom”.  We were the first to arrive to Tyler’s class and one of his teachers asked if either my mother or I would read a book to the class and the moms.  My mother had always wanted to be a children’s librarian so she gamely stepped up to read the book Love You Forever. If you know this book, you are thinking “oh no!”, if you do not, as I did not, you are thinking you are going to hear a beautiful story about the love between a mother and her son…which it was, until the mother DIES!  My mother was reading it and crying.  I was hysterical since it is my mother up there reading it and I have a disease that can be fatal, and most of the other moms were crying too. The kids didn’t understand why we were crying.

I was so pissed!  Who’s brilliant idea was that horrific book?!  I could think of a hundred others more appropriate! Still, the kids sang and signed a song for us and we did have some nice muffins, and Tyler had made sweet cards for my mother and I, plus a gift for me, which you can see in the picture below:

Was this before or after I bawled my eyes out?

On Saturday, my mother and I took Tyler to a Mothers’/Kids’ Day at one of our local farms. When I woke up my lips were swollen, chapped and stinging.  It seems that the lip gloss I wore to the Mother’s Day program to “glam” myself up a little had caused an allergic reaction.  Thank you, Lupus!  (I am still reacting to it four days later.)

Mom, Tyler and I, before the back-breakingly rough hay ride starts.

As part of the “festivities”, there was to be a sheep-shearing demonstration.  I had heard many people say sheep-shearing is abusive, but I wanted to see for myself, and they were doing it in front of the kids, so how bad could it be?  I think my view of sheep-shearing now that I have witnessed one could be another post entirely.  Let’s just say that when I saw the 8 inch gaping wound on the sheep I said, “Okay!  Tyler, why don’t you go ride the ponies now?”

Tyler also rode a tricycle around an obstacle course made of hay.  At four-and-a-half-years of age, I am becoming concerned, because Tyler still does have a bit of trouble pedaling and steering, but again, perhaps another post.  It was even harder with him crashing into the hay. My mother and I took turns helping Tyler steer and pushing him along.

Tyler really starts cruising now!

At this point, if you know me at all, you may be thinking, “Why Emily, aren’t you overdoing it a bit?”  Except Mama wasn’t thinking about that then.

Sunday dawned.  I got up before everyone to go to the bathroom and I screamed in pain.  My right elbow felt like I had broken it and my left didn’t feel too much better.  I could not open my non-child proof cap pain medicine (which I keep locked in a safe), nor my already opened bottle water.  I had to wake Grant up and then everyone got up.  Not much of a Mother’s Day for me, nothing from Grant, as I had asked him not to buy me anything, since we cannot afford it, including cards.  But besides the gift and card Tyler had given me on Friday, Grant told me Tyler had another present for me that he was very excited about. He came up to me and said, “Mommy, I want you to have this book.”  It was his own book, Gallop, that Grant had bought Tyler a couple of years ago from a museum.  Tyler had picked it out for me and told Grant that he had wanted to give it to me.

Tyler was following our lead.  Since Grant and I are so poor, if we give our loved ones gifts, it is usually a “re-gift”, something nice that we had when things were much better for us.  I thought it was so sweet that Tyler knew that he did not have any money either, so he had picked out one of his own things to give to me.

But as I said, I did have this horrendous elbow pain that I had never felt before.  I’m thinking, “Lupus, osteoporosis…I need to have this checked out.”  I knew it was from helping Tyler on the tricycle at the farm.  I called up one of those immediate care places.  There I was on Mother’s Day with my mother at the doctor’s office.  I was taken in quickly and diagnosed pretty quickly as well.  Lateral Epicondylitis, or the more common term, Tennis Elbow in both of my elbows.  One usually gets this from repetitive motion but because of my other diseases, I didn’t need much repeating.  The doctor said I had to be careful not to bend my elbows at a 90-degree angle or more, no lifting, pulling or pushing…and no computer!  You see how I am listening to that one?

My mother and I went to the pharmacy.  It was 12:30 and my brother and his wife are coming at 1:00 for Mother’s Day and my brother’s birthday.  Grant called me and told me that Tyler was sleeping in our living room.  What?!  He never naps this early!  My mother, brother, his wife and I all got to my apartment at the same time.  Tyler of course was still in his pajamas, I had not showered.  Grant tried to move Tyler to my bedroom but he woke up and now he was a complete grouch.  He hated everyone, and told them so.

My brother, his wife and my mother went to pick up food we had ordered from an Italian restaurant.  It was a lot of stuff and some of it was in a box on a chair in the kitchen.  Tyler walked by and by accident knocked the food onto the floor.  My dinner and my sister-in-law’s dinner are laying on the floor!  My head was spinning.  My mother and I looked at each other, and started just putting the dinners back on the plate.  I will probably get some rare infection from this.

Tyler got cheerier after eating his spaghetti with meat sauce and having birthday cake! Everyone decided to go for a walk, play mini-football and go to the playground.  Everyone except Grant and I, who got into bed, and slept.

So, no pictures of the actual Mother’s Day as I never showered and got back into my pajamas.

Like I said, the good, the bad and the ugly and at some points, the very sweet.

The post Tuesdays With Tyler: Mother’s Day Weekend: Chronic Illness Style! first appeared on Mama Sick.