Trying Something New

I'm struggling a bit with where I want things to go with life, work, and the like. I know I have to go back to work at the end of my leave (at least part time, because OMG the cost of insurance will eat us alive, and if you haven't noticed, we have some medical bills around here that insurance covers, so it's kind of important). That said, I'm mostly enjoying being home with Acorn (and with Leaf when she was home)...and there are doctors and therapists to see, and just a lot to be done that doesn't agree with a full time working schedule. Not to mention that I need to feed my soul - I need to write and create and Circle with others on occasion and do those sorts of things that fill my cup so that I can take care of everyone else.

So....

I've been reading Goddess Leonie's blog for a while, and I love her energy and her approach to life. I love how she manifests things in her life. I've been drooling over her Creating My Goddess Year 2012 workbook too - and debating whether or not to get it because money is tight here, for a few more weeks at least, until insurance money starts rolling in (and hey, at least I got most of those ready to go out in Monday's mail, so I'm making progress, right?).  But I finally decided that it's less than $10, so I'm going for it.

I'm hoping to post some here about it, and likely will post more over on my "more me, less mom" blog, http://janetcallahan.com about how it goes as I work through it.

But first, I just have to say that it's as beautiful in person as the pictures on her website suggest:



Here's to 2012 being a little less complicated, eh?

Obligatory disclaimer: I bought myself the book - putting on my oxygen mask first, as most special needs moms are reminded from time to time. I want to join the Goddess Circle, but that will have to wait for insurance money to pay the bills...unless you all click on those affiliate links in this post and buy yourselves some of the lovely stuff Goddess Leonie does so that I get some spending money :)

Updates and random thoughts

I've been terrible at writing lately. Mostly, it's because everything here is chaos...and part of the chaos right now includes a barely functioning computer.

Thing is, I need to write. Need to process everything that's gone on recently. Need to let the tears flow that I've been holding back for weeks - and that is such an overwhelming idea that I don't even know where to start.

So I guess let's start with right now.

Miss Leaf will be 2 weeks old tomorrow. She's doing well. She's getting some breastmilk, and doing a lot of normal baby things (pee, poop, cry, sleep), she just does them in a plastic box, with lots of tubes taped to her face.


I'm finally home - a week as of tomorrow. Physically, I'm easily worn out, but haven't really even taken much ibuprofen in the last 5 or 6 days, because it's not an issue of pain. I'm spending a lot of time with my breastpump (it's a love-hate relationship....mostly hate, though). Pumping is going ok; I'm desperately hoping that we can start actual breastfeeding in a couple of weeks though, because pumping did not work out so well with Acorn.

Emotionally....well, the "post partum adjustment" social worker did tell me that it was normal to be extra emotional the first 3 weeks or so post partum, and we've definitely hit that extra emotional patch.

It doesn't help that a friend passed away last week from a complication of childbirth.

Anyway. It's time for sleep, so I give up for now.

Random Thursday Thoughts

I am officially more pregnant than I've ever been before (though, if you're going by baby size, that's been true for several weeks). It's still really odd.

The longer I'm here, the more twitchy I get about things - I'm twitchy about ultrasound gel. I'm narrowing down food choices. Showers are a requirement, not just a nice treat. I'm irritated by people who are acting like idiots. And on and on. That combination suggests depression, or at least a problem coping....but I'm still writing, so it must not be that bad yet, because when I'm actually depressed, I stop writing. So that leaves me confused - is this just decompressing? Or what? My former therapist has agreed to take me back as a client and to make hospital calls, but her father-in-law is dying, 4 hours north of here, so arranging an appointment has been challenging.

Acorn has really gotten creative with his climbing - the sink, the kitchen counter, the dining room table (with an attempt at hanging from the chandellier), and anything else available. This week he tried to use the high chair and the potty chair and several toys to help him get onto a bookshelf; when those were taken away, he started trying to use a board book....set up on end, covers bent back, pages splayed around in a star shape - short of making a stack of books, it's actually the strongest way to stand a book, in terms of load capacity, and it probably would have worked. And we had early intervention folks who thought not speaking meant he wasn't smart. ha!

Tomorrow is my 11th wedding anniversary. My husband is going to bring me  a nice dinner; certainly not the way or place I'd prefer to celebrate our anniversary, but compared to some years, this still counts as good - it involves us having a calm evening together, it doesn't involve a funeral, so that's an improvement.

The tweak to my BP meds is both good and bad - I'm watching the BP numbers creep up day after day, which is bad, but it helps a little bit with the sleepiness and brain fog. I guess we'll see.

Winter can bite me

Dear blog, it has been 11 days since my last post. Before that it was 7, and then 5 (though that was just a little blog hop post) and before that 7.

I could blame it on a lot of different things, but the real root cause is that it's winter, and this is Michgan, land of not much sun in the sunny part of the year, and no sun at all this time of year, when it's just becomming light when I leave for work, and nearly dark when I leave there for home.

The truth of the matter is, I'm struggling, mood wise, and it shows in my blogging, or lack thereof.

It's not like this is a new thing. It's been ongoing, to varying degrees, for years. We've replaced most of the lights in the house with full spectrum bulbs, I've increased my vitamins, I've learned to meditate. I've even taken antidepressants at various points. Some years have been bad. Some years, like the year Acorn was born, I was already so overwhelmed that the seasonal changes were completely unnoticed.

And maybe that's part of the problem too. I've been stressed lately...but not in the same sense that I was back then. This is more a death by a thousand cuts kind of stress, and I'm just not up to handling that sort of thing these days, because there are so many more important things to deal with. We're making plans for next year - plans for life without a trach, we hope. And that's a huge adjustment for all of us.

It's good, but stressful, and the fact that there are so many good things going on right now just makes the depressed mood stick out more.

blood and vampires

Sounds like a good title for a post this time of year, don't you think?  I've got a really deep post on Samhain coming this week, but this was more immediate, and that other one needs another revision

Among the odd symptoms of this virus thing that's been causing all my joint pain and migraines and such has been a really unhelpful shift in my blood sugars....30 points higher than normal, which takes me from "normal" to "diabetic" if we're going strictly by the numbers. Changing diet hasn't improved them.

I have PCOS. Insulin resistance is part and parcel of that, and I've usually had really good blood sugars, all things considered, but it's something I keep an eye on - especially since I used to have hypoglycemic episodes caused by the insulin issues.

So, I drug myself into doctor #5 of this whole illness today (my kid isn't the only one with lots of doctors), my endocrinologist. And of course, after hearing the whole story, she's scratching her head, but wants blood - 5 tubes.

I used to call phlebotomists "vampires" - now I mostly just spew expletives under my breath, and remind myself that I can stop complaining when I go to phlebotomy school.

So, I've been at this blood draw thing a while. I know my body, and my veins, and I know how to make this work best. If it's one or two tubes, try a hand, but not up by the knuckle. If it's more, and you're not a rock star phlebotomist, try the forearm, because you'll never get my elbow. I warn them. They're deeper than they look, and they move - just because it's "right there" doesn't mean you'll get it.

This morning's tech was new at the endo's office.

Everyone else there remembers me - I tell them the same thing every time, and they remember all the bruises after Acorn was born, and looking for a non-bruised spot to take even more blood than the almost 4 dozen vials that had been done in the month before that appointment. I bruise easily; moreso back then, immediately after Acorn's birth, due to pre-eclampsia and HELLP screwing up my numbers.

New, when it comes to phlebotomists, is usually a bad sign.

I noticed this woman's bracelet right off the bat - a charm bracelet, each charm an icon of a Catholic saint. That often leads to interesting results when it comes to me and phlebotomists - the woman at my OB's office used to stop and close her eyes and pray before doing my blood draws, after her first experience with my veins.

I gave her the usual story. She said it would be fine. She found the vein in my elbow, and grabbed the needle...and then realized the vein had moved when she came back to insert the needle. She tried anyway....and failed. She did the "digging around in there looking for the vein" thing, praying (out loud) for Jesus to help her.  The needle hole didn't even bleed when she gave up.

Her second attempt went in my forearm, praying the whole time. She nearly blew the vein, but did get what she needed.

And then I drove to work, bottle of soda on my arm in hopes of preventing a hematoma. So far, no bruise, but it hurts like hell....

Baby Fever

Have I mentioned that I want another baby?

I know, it sounds crazy. We have all this stuff going on, and there is the liklihood that another pregnancy would be equally high risk...adding another child to this would be crazy, right?

That's why it's called Baby Fever.

*****

I'm back to trolling adoption sites, falling in love with children I haven't met. I'm charting temperatures (and approaching 3 months without ovulating). Fertility drugs and their accompanying mood swings were not fun...but I'll do it again, if that's what it takes (which it will....up to the point we are willing to go, which is to say, we're not doing IUI or IVF, but there are personal reasons for that that I don't want to get into here).

It's not as painful as before Acorn, but it's approaching the same intensity. It's not as sharp; it doesn't bring tears to my eyes to see pregnant women and newborns...but instead, a deep sense of longing.

*****

The other morning, I dreamed about being pregnant. About finding out I was pregnant. It was one of those amazingly detailed dreams that seem so real, it's hard to tell what reality is when you wake up. It was a dream involving finding out away from home, and having to tell other friends suffering infertility about it - something I didn't really have to do last time, because back then, all my friends who wanted babies already had them.

I used to trust dreams like this, but...I'd had so many dreams that my first child would be a girl, and instead I have a boy. So many dreams about 5 kids (always five) and yet I only have one....and his existance was "just barely." So many dreams about our business being wildly successful, and we've shut it down. So many dreams.....all wrong.

*****

And yet, I know that right now is not the right time. There are family plans in the works for early summer, and getting pregnant now would almost certainly mean missing out. And since it's not like it'll just happen, these things have to be planned, and if you're going to plan out the next year and a half of your life, you might as well try to make it convenient.

And who ever thought kids and convenience belonged in the same thought?

life gets in the way

You'd think, being a working mom with a special needs kid, that I'd be better at scheduling...but you'd be wrong, at least when it comes to scheduling me into the calendar. Things have been hectic the last couple of weeks. It shows in my writing, and my artwork...and in things like sleep and emotional stability

Acorn has seen cardiology, urology, pulmonology, orthotics, x-ray, PT/OT/ST (those three are every week), the psychologist (that's every week too), we've scheduled an IEP re-do for next week, and he's seen 3 of his 4 school based therapists this week.

Acorn is now off O2 when he's awake (mostly) and we're waiting for a surgery date from urology. And we've gotten through all of those appointments without screaming, panic, or sobbing. I guess the psychologist is worth what we're paying her, but it's still pricey.

One of our cats is dying, and has to be infused with fluids several times a week, plus multiple vet visits. Kidney failure is not fun, and we're discussing at what point we say enough is enough. For now, he's not quite himself, but not suffering either, so we soldier on in what we know is a losing battle.

My back has been getting progressively more stiff the last couple months, and I've had 4 migraines in the last month, so it finally became obvious that I needed to stop and regroup on the self-care front and find a chiropractor last week...because my back and hips hurt so much it brought tears to my eyes.

Where am I supposed to fit in 3 adjustments a week for the next month? Luckily, the new chiro has appointments right up to 6, and is super fast and less than 3 miles from home.

They don't do manual adjustments - they use a gun thingy, and some applied kinesiology - so it's a little more holistic than past chiros I've seen (or, "they're more woo than most" as my spouse puts it). The doctor I see in their office was quick to point out that she's been getting adjustments for years, but was still having migraines until recently, and that they don't push supplements because they're not going to sell things they haven't found on their own and used first.

For all that it seems more gentle than the manual adjustments I'd gotten before, it sure hurts like a manual adjustment after the fact. I've given up and taken motrin several times, and no, drinking more water...lots more water....isn't helping any.

They have an office dog too, which is nice, and a kid-specific adjustment room decorated like a jungle. Since Acorn is at risk of developing scoliosis, it wouldn't be a bad thing to get him in too, but schedules....

Tonight we have nursing straight through the night. Much though I'd like a nice quiet dinner and a movie, I think our to-do lists are long enough that we need to get stuff done instead.

Tomorrow is Pagan Pride Day, and I haven't gathered up supplies for the craft I'm teaching, nor have I really put together my notes for the workshop I'm doing on toddlers and energy work.

Tomorrow is also karate test day. I'm going for my red belt, which means I'm at the half way point to being a black belt - take that, people who think that we can "fix" fat by exercising, or that all fat people do is sit around watching TV. The guy who broke into the house two winters ago sure regretted it, and I was only just barely an orange belt then.

Tomorrow is also, of course, chiropractor day again too. Ouch

Sunday is bead and stone shopping day, as K and I are heading to a trunk show for one of my suppliers.

And somewhere in there I have orders to fill, a website to work on, and an IEP meeting to prepare for.

Sleep? Who needs sleep?

I think my job is eating my brain

I need a new job. Or something. Because I think this one is slowly killing me. Or maybe it's the schedule. Or the 45 minutes each way commute.

There are days where my job is perfect - where I am very comfortably me, in my element, doing my thing. Creative, organized, insightful, and inquisitive, solving problems, figuring things out.

There are days when my job is soul sucking and painful, where I can't imagine enduring another day of it.

And there are days it manages to be both at the same time.

Don't get me wrong - my job is important to our family.

I have health insurance, which Big Oak only sorta-kinda has access to at his job (his boss likes to change the coverage from month to month to lower costs). At this point, Acorn wouldn't have insurance if we were dependent on Big Oak's employer for it. And it's turned out that having really amazing insurance (one of those "Cadillac" plans you hear about on the news) makes getting the waivers Acorn needs a lot easier - they know they aren't going to have to pay out more than the copays on most things, and paying for 40 therapy visits a year after the 60 our insurance allows is far far less expensive than paying for 100 visits.

And I make half again as much money as my spouse. We're still paying for some things we did early in our marriage that, in the grand scheme of things, were not the wisest choices. I used to say we were paying off "young and stupid" but it's more accurate to say that we were chasing a dream of a life that didn't require these crazy day jobs, and just didn't quite get there. Having a day job that pays more money than your parents ever made combined makes the risk analysis on business opportunities look a little different.

And Big Oak's job isn't all that stable. Yeah, he's worked there longer than we've been married, and yeah, he hasn't missed a paycheck yet....but there was that time that the electricity at the office got turned off because paychecks went out. And the boss is talking about cutting everyone to 30 hrs a week if sales don't pick up this summer. Which isn't such a bad deal (other than the 10% of our family income lost, though we can do that without giving up anything other than massive debt reduction), if Big Oak gets to choose which hours he works (which he probably will), since it'll mean he can take Acorn to appointments and I can save my last 6 vacation days for Acorn's hypospadius surgery this fall, and anything else that comes up.

But - and of course there's a but - I wish I had more time at home with Acorn. I wish I had more time to write and create. I wish I had more time to just enjoy life, rather than running from thing to thing all the time. I wish I wasn't spending so much time on the road.

It makes me contemplate taking the option my employer offers to work 75% or 80% of my hours for a similar cut in pay. But I wonder if one day a week would get eaten up in household chores and scheduling Acorn's doctors and therapies.

Or if it'd be just the thinking space I need...

...or if it would just be a better mirror to show just how badly I need to do something else with my life.

Making Peace with My Period

subtitle: Aunt Flo, who visits most women monthly, doesn't call or write, and sometimes I think she's writing me out of her will

*******

Today, Acorn broke a glass soda bottle. Big Oak had put it in the top of the pop bottle bin (we have a bottle deposit here, so you save your bottles up to take them back). I'd mentioned before that putting it in the top of a full bin was asking for trouble - Acorn likes to pull bottles out and play with them - but it fell on deaf ears, and when Acorn did exactly that today, he dropped the glass bottle on the floor and it shattered.

I try very hard to be the kind of parent who doesn't yell. I know when Acorn is getting into things like this, he really needs more attention - when I give it to him, he's less likely to cause mayhem and destruction.

Today I failed. Actually, most of this week I've failed.

I knew it was coming - I took a medication to try to kick-start my menstrual cycle, which last made an appearance in January with the help of an expired package of birth control pills. Before that, it was the January before.

Taking hormones makes me crazy - super edgy, super moody, achy, and likely to snap at anyone.

Today it was Acorn.

*******

I have a primary diagnosis of PCOS, and I take a metformin and synthroid to manage the easily handled contributors, but even at my lowest weight, with plenty of exercise and a reasonable diet, my cycles have never been regular.

For someone like me, who can go years between cycles without medical intervention, medications like this throw things way out of kilter. And for me, the side effects are more pronounced because they're so out of the ordinary. I cramp, a lot, because I'm usually clearing out far older blood than is normal, for example.

My first gynecologist was a jerk who wanted to give me either speed or the now infamous phen-fen because I was too heavy (at my strongest as an adult, and my lowest weight as an adult) for his personal taste in women. I was 18 and a virgin, and he had a problem with that, lecturing me on how sex was ok, as long as it was serial monogamy. He said I'd probably need clomid to get pregnant, but a monthly script for someting to keep my period regular was needed.

At that point, I hadn't had a period in 4 years.

He put me on progesterone, which made me nauseated (little did I know, but it causes me to have unpleasant blood sugar swings), and then put me on birth control pills.

If there had been such a classification back then, those birth control pills caused symptoms that would easily have been classified as pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder - I was not functional 2 weeks out of every 4, and I hemmoraged with each cycle - bleeding often continued 15 days or more, and I was filling a super strength tampon plus a heavy/overnight pad in about an hour for the first 4-5 days of each cycle. The cramps were so painful that I often didn't leave bed for days.

My doctor back then told me there was nothing wrong with my reaction - that I needed to give my body time to adjust, and then that it was all in my head.

My doctor now shakes his head and says that even then, ultrasounds were available, and no self-respecting sane doctor should have prescribed pills without an ultrasound (or a D&C) given how long it'd been since I'd had a period at that point.

*******

The story of getting pregnant with Acorn is long, and not really for this post, but let's just say that fertility drugs leave me feeling awful.

And Goddess help me, I want another child.

I've tried, over the years, to make peace with my cycle - and when I don't have a cycle, it's pretty easy to do just that. Out of sight, out of mind. When I've had cycles of hemmoraging, peace comes through giving in and sleeping - not that this is a helpful thing in terms of keeping the rest of life in balance. The cycles where I'm cranky...we all just keep our heads down, which is definitely not a peaceful way to be.

While some women find cloth pads and menstrual cups empowering, giving them insight into their cycles and helping them live more in harmony, for me they're a reminder of things that feel broken (the whole fertility process) and a necessity - I can't carry enough tampons for one of those hemmoraging cycles, but a cup can be emptied over and over again.

And if we want another baby, we have to do it all again. So there isn't much choice.

I dunno. I want to find a way to accept this as the way it is, to make peace with this whole menstrual cycle - to get back in Aunt Flo's good graces.

But when it feels like she's suckerpunched you in the pelvis, it's hard not to think about finding her in a dark alley and beating her senseless

Anxiety in Spades

Some days, it occurs to me that Acorn comes by his anxiety naturally.

My mother's partner passed away earlier this week. I did not really know her. But my mother needs some support, and the likelihood of anyone else in our family going to the funeral is slim to none, so I feel like I need to go.

I don't like leaving my kiddo behind. The one trip I've taken for work was downright traumatic on that front, and this one involves a weekend - and I often feel like that's the only time I get with Acorn.

I don't like last minute things like this - I found out yesterday afternoon, and I have a flight out of here at 9 am tomorrow. I always feel like being rushed is going to result in something being forgotten or lost or otherwise screwed up.

And finally, I really struggle with anxiety when it comes to groups of people I don't know. As far as I can tell, I'm driving from the airport, an hour and a half into the middle of nowhere, and attending a gathering of people I don't know, in honor of someone else I didn't know. I know that to some extent, I will be put on display as my mother's daughter, the one with the sick kid, and I really just hate that.

I dunno. I'm kind of hoping for a relatively quiet weekend with some down time to meditate and write. But knowing my own anxiety, the situation, and my mother, I'm guessing that's a long shot.

rewarding ourselves

Today I stopped on the way home for a candy bar - a Payday, to be exact, with it's yummy sweet and salty combination.

I was reminded of years ago, the many evenings I walked "home" to my great-grandmother's house after math team practice.

Obligatory side note: yes, I'm a geek. I'm an engineer, for Pete's sake, remember? I was captain of the math team my junior and senior years, and I have an armor-plated letter jacket (covered in medals won at competitions) to prove it. Math team was my main extracurricular activity from 7th grade through graduation.

A fair number of those walks were accompanied by a Payday candy bar, hard-won by being first to answer some crazy complicated math question.

Our coach was Mr T, originally from Japan, and something like a cross between Mr Miyagi (Karate Kid) and Jaime Escalante (Stand and Deliver). One of his favorite training methods was "board races" - 2 or 3 teams of students competing, each team sending a person up to the board to work a problem. And sometimes these came with tangible rewards.

Candy bar questions were frequently difficult, and commonly pitted a smart underclassman against a seasoned upperclassman.  There were soda questions too, and sucker questions got you a Tootsie Pop.

The young man who was captain my first year had a thing for orange Tootsie Pops, and there's usually not many of them in the bag anyway. Truthfully, I had a bit of a crush on him, seeing as how he was teaching me triganometry. And orange Tootsie Pops have been my favorite ever since.

Thing is though, there's no problem in life that you get soda money for solving; no bag of Tootsie Pops in the file drawer to reward a particularly clever answer.

So sometimes, you have to go buy yourself the candy bar when you've done a good job.

children are people too - and so am I

There are a lot of directions this post could go. I'm still not sure this is the right one.

One of the primary values that I hold when it comes to Acorn is that he is a person, with all the rights that come with that status. He's not an inert lump of goo to be ignored, not a posession to be mistreated and thrown away, and not an animal to be forced into obeying the will of someone bigger than him just because they're bigger. For a more detailed take on this concept, go read RMB

One reason this is so near and dear to my heart: there have been (and continue to be) a long string of people in my life who present themselves in a way that says, "do these things to make me happy. Make me happy and I'll consider you worth respecting/loving/listening to."  The problem with people like this is that there really is no way to make them happy - their requests become demands, and their demands become ever more grandiose and crazy, and it's still not enough - it's never enough. It's never enough because I cannot make them happy - only they can do that, and they choose to blame their lack of happiness on the rest of us instead of getting on with their lives.

The way that "failure" is usually rewarded is with hostility towards the personhood of the person on the receiving end. Any attempt to stand firm and insist that you have rights - the right to have needs and wants, the right to have feelings, the right to hold an opinion on how something ought to be handled - is met with derision, because obviously you've already failed to prove that you're worthy of respect. But the thing is...I get to have those things because I am a person, and I exist. Not because someone else gives me those rights.

And yes, I want to protect Acorn from those sorts of people...nothing wrong with standing up for him, especially since he's not big enough to stand up for himself. But it's easier to just make sure he isn't in those sorts of situations to begin with.

herbs and medicines

You know, sometimes herbs are just the thing, and other times you really need a doctor.

Obligatory side note: I challenge anyone who thinks that doing the right spell will solve every problem to find the spell that will heal Acorn's lungs and get rid of all this equipment and drama (not an issue this week, dear friends, but one I expect to hear if we're out and about in the Pagan community, because I certainly heard it when I was trying to get pregnant). For those of you who believe illnesses are related to karma: the lesson we're all learning from Acorn is not to slap people for saying these sorts of silly things, because we should be nice to those who are too stupid to know better.

That being said....today I ache. All my joints. I know it's a function of the season - it happens most years. And you'd think, being the good PaganMama that I am, I'd have some herbal remedy at hand, already made up....or at least, I'd know exactly what herbs to use in my tea this morning.

Instead, I take an anti-inflammatory - it's a prescription this week, because I injured my wrist recently, and was given this to take for it, so I might as well finish off the bottle on related pains. Gods hope the pain lets up soon, because if I take this stuff (or any other NSAID) 3 or 4 days in a row, I start bruising for no reason, and it makes people wonder what I do in my free time, or whether I'm a victim of domestic violence. And if I'm in a car accident at that point, getting wounds to clot correctly will be a toss-up, and other issues will ensue. Yes, I've been seen by a doctor for this. No, they found nothing technically wrong, other than the fact that I bruise too easily. That's why they call it "practicing" medicine - they practice on you until they fix you or kill you.

I've never been big on rote memorization. I was an engineer long before I was a priestess, and engineers learn, first and foremost, to look things up and check their work. Memorizing lists of herbs I may or may not use in the future, and their indications, is not high on my priority list.

So...I could go into my meditation room, stnad in front of the two large bookcases full of facts and opinions, pull out two or three books on herbs and other remedies, look up the possible solutions, see if I've got the right stuff (I probably do), make the remedy, and use it.....

...or I could just take the pills that I've already paid for, and sleep a little later in the mornings. I'm thinking sleep wins.

silly doctors.

It took 5 years to get pregnant with Acorn, in part because of PCOS, and in part because of other unidentified problems.

One of the things that feeds into PCOS is low thyroid.

This week I went to the endocrinologist for a checkup. She had lowered my meds after my last round of bloodwork, but it turns out she thought she was raising them. No wonder I've been tired - I thought it was odd that she lowered the dose at the time, too, but we've been so busy with everything that I figured it was just me.

oy.

Here's hoping the new dose improves things.