Health Update

So I’ve gotten really behind blogging so I’m just going to dive in and see how quickly I can catch up.

Things have been a little overexciting on the health front lately. This summer, I was really struggling with some extreme insomnia. No matter what I took or did, I was getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. I had a constant headache and just felt nonfunctional. It was getting a little frustrating to say the least. I finally went to the doctor. He gave me some more helpful sleep stuff and did some blood work which uncovered the big underlying problem…diabetes.

While I am honest enough about my state of existence to not be surprised, it still surprised me. It was pretty scary since I know of a few people who have had very serious health issues come up due to their diabetes. Luckily, as I’ve studied up, I’ve found many of those things to be quite avoidable, especially with today’s monitoring technology & such. Still, it has been a strong motivation to do well with making improvements to my lifestyle. In truth, it’s just finally enough motivation to make me do all the things I believe to be right. Still, it is sometimes overwhelming to think of being bound to this for the rest of my life…but usually I can take it okay, especially with such a supportive hubby.

Unfortunately, as I began to work on getting more active, I messed up my knee. It’s very bothersome. They suspect I’ve torn my meniscus and am likely to need outpatient surgery to fix it. I’m having an MRI tomorrow to figure out what we’re doing. I’m definitely not looking forward to this but it’ll be nice to be able to reliably walk around.

Rob has joined in on the fun but he drew the kidney stone problem. He’s always been daring that way. ;-) This is his second round with kidney stones. The first was 12 years ago so at least it’s not been often, like some poor people we know. This time, however, didn’t go as smoothly as the 1st. The urologist gave him a couple of weeks to pass it on his own before they would do outpatient surgery to retrieve them.

Unfortunately, that’s what we ended up having to do. The procedure went just fine and the recovery started well. Everything turned out fine in the end but that recovery was much more traumatic than we’d expected. It kind of sucked actually. The urologist said the main stone had wedged itself in pretty tightly making it very unlikely to exit on its own. He had to laser it apart and that barely worked.

It’s been a few weeks now and he’s feeling back to normal…thank heavens! Hopefully we won’t be looking at a recurrence any time soon…and by soon, I mean within the next 100 years.

Kyrie’s decided to take the wimpy way out. She just got started on her orthodontic experience. A few days ago, she got a bite plate (sort of a retainer thing) put in and brackets on her top teeth. She finds the bite plate a bit tricky to get in correctly but it’s getting better. If she’s hard to understand, she knows it’s not in right. I’m sometimes tempted to pretend I can’t understand her but I don’t think she’d find it that funny. Of course, her teeth are sore and the insides of her cheeks aren’t loving the brackets but she’s adjusting. In a few weeks, she’ll get an expander that she’ll wear for a few months before moving onto getting the bottom brackets on. So exciting!

We hope all of you are having a less complicated time with your health and lives. Of course, we’re thankful that we aren’t dealing with worse things as we know many are. Even at some of our tougher moments, we know the Lord is paying attention to us and blessing us. I have struggled for so long meaning to do better about diet and exercise and finding myself to be my own stumbling block. With this diagnosis, I find myself able to make changes I’ve wished for for a long time. It’s just very interesting the way the Lord watches out for us. Hope you all are feeling it too!