Hold on, it's a doosey!

Alright. Please forgive my somewhat absence of late. I am about to catch you up...

So there has been so much going on around here. Besides Lori's wedding (Yeah!) we had the joy of my baby, baby sister Erin coming home from Kuwait for a quick visit. She will be stationed there until late this fall before coming back to the states this spring. We haven't seen her since Christmas so it was so nice to have her home. These things are weird in that the entire time it was so very hard to make it meaningful as immediately it felt as if she hadn't been gone but a week. Whether that is good or bad I don't know, but it is comfortable and yet it is happy.

My dearest mother in law has recently found out she has cancer. How much of the details she would like me sharing I don't know...(please forgive me Sandy if I cross some sort of line).  Luckily, it was found early (another example of why you should all be doing your preventative care!). She had a lumpectomy, but unfortunately this wasn't sufficient enough and is undergoing surgery tomorrow for something more radical. She will have her mastectomy & reconstruction THE SAME DAY. It is amazing to me what they can do now. Her procedure is quite new, very intensive and if it wasn't for all this cancer stuff, I might be a little jealous. I asked Brian to start me a "Tips for Tits" jar at work a long time ago and have yet to see a dime! Enough goofing... We are all very confident & hopeful, but uneasy just the same as I am sure any family would be. Please send her your prayers and good vibes!

Our car has been in and out of the shop. We have been traveling to and fro. And in the midst of all of this I have been having a lot of dizzy spells. Dizzy for lack of a different word. "Off" or "Skewed" might be closer. Usually it lasts for only 1 minute tops, sometimes 5. It's gotten very bad while I am driving and have periods in which it is up to 75% of my day. I've gone through a battery of testing and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they haven't found anything. No MS *whew*. No brain tumor *whew*. So now we are going to call it "motion sickness" though it doesn't really fit that... I will be trying some sensory physical therapy to desensitize myself to issues with motion. Seems a bit like a wild goose chase, but nothing else seems to fit either.

We've also had some big changes at work which has also made things a bit crazy. For those who don't know, I had been working at our local pediatric clinic in our Health Care Home program doing the pre-visit planning. Floor nursing had not been very satisfying, on a personal level, and so I had made the transition to an office job to give myself a little break from patient care. Floor nursing required speed & efficiency, but then left little room for true patient interaction/care. I lost my empathy in it. I was becoming Nurse Ratchet. Pre-Visit planning has been fun, I feel like an investigator going through charts and picking up pieces that my have fallen through the cracks and catching near misses because of the gaps in an ever growing healthcare system. It has removed all portions of patient care and I have missed that. So now, my BFAW is leaving her position as our Health Care Home Care Coordinator and filling the role as the unit's nursing supervisor. We have decided to change the role a bit and split it between 2 people now as it was very quickly becoming overwhelming. I will now be one of those two people along with Sarah (Yeah!). I am excited for the transition as it can be a very personally rewarding role and allows for the development of that relationship/interaction with the patient (which I have been missing). Our HCH program is geared toward our kids with special healthcare needs and the care coordinator position allows for these families to have a constant contact within the clinic that can help them navigate "the system" both in the clinic and out. I had the opportunity to work in the role when Beth was out on maternity leave and I have continued to help out here and there as my current role allows which is a comfort in the move. However, this will mean that we are going to have to work short for a little while and it will definitely be overwhelming and stressful for some time. With giving up smoking I have found it much harder to deal with stress and have not yet found a "replacement" for that anxiety, etc. If anyone has any tips other than deep breathing or counting to ten before just turning around and biting someone, I would love to hear them!

For the longest time I have tried to convince myself that I am a mellow, laid back person. I am slowly realizing that maybe when I was younger (and maybe smoking dope!) that may have been somewhat true. But really, I am fairly high strung. So I have been working very hard on finding things to rejuvenate me. My BF, Brandi, and I have something fun we are planning for our ladies night out each Wednesday (more TBA at a later date). I have taken on a couple craft projects. All things quick & easy, but satisfying. I swear each day that I am going to take up yoga again. I never felt so good, both mentally, physically & emotionally as I did when I was doing yoga regularly. So why oh why is it so hard to give up 30 minutes to do it? (Maybe because I don't feel like I have 30 minutes!)

Anyway, that's our crazy crazy roller coaster that we are currently on. So, please forgive me as I come home each night too tired to even lay on the couch and set aside my stress and my anxiety to type. Anything I have left at the end of the day is going back to my kids & my hubby right now. I will try to post fun little things as I can, but if not, just know that I am probably exhausted and asleep while Scooby Doo plays in the background with my kids sleeping beside me on the couch (yeah, that's where I found us at 8:45 tonight).