Not a New Year's resolution!

Year ago at this time I was technically diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis). It was a shock and took my whole family and friends on a long journey to confirm or deny it. A year ago I wasn't able to sleep because my legs were tingly and numb. I started having a chronic headache over my right temple (still have that one). Going to bed was the worse thing, because I would just lay there or would have to get up every hour to pee or my legs wouldn't stop moving. At the time the doctor starting me on meds to help with the numbness. Sleep got some what better. Sadly the medicine made me gain water weight and within a couple months I was 15-20 lbs heavier from that previous fall. (All the work to to get baby weight off went down the drain) After all my doctor trips and procedures to determine that I do not have MS, I still wasn't happy. I thought I would be relieved, but mostly all I felt was hopelessness. I wasn't any better and I had no answers.

I am finally stepping out of the roughest year of my life physically into a new era! I have a diagnosis, Chronic Lyme Disease! Some of the previous symptoms are still there, but many are getting better! Thankfully I have switched to a supplement for sleep instead of meds (the weight still hasn't gone away, but I guess I have to deal with that). I still have numbness randomly and tingly too. The chronic pain in my head has never left :( but there is still hope for the future. I won't give up!

I can't promise I will be 100% better by the end of 2017, but I can promise myself to take better care of myself and recovery. I can't promise that stress will go away, but I can promise to slow down and rest when my body says so to help relieve stress. I can't promise all my chronic pain will go away, but I can promise I will try to learn the triggers of them. I can't promise I will have enough energy or endurance to be out and about everyday, but I can promise to have fun filled moments with my precious daughter when I can!

This next year I don't want to make a new year resolution...I just want to keep working at the journey that has been set before me. Praying for my husband and his new job! Enjoy all my 2 year old girl's moments, even the tantrums and no naps. Making better financial decisions. Connecting with new friends and relationships! And last but not least WRITING MORE!!! If there is anything that I have learned from this painful year is that my story can help others, whether they read them or not, I know that it helps me to heal emotionally from this long journey of keeping most of my pain to ourselves. I never want to stop doing something that I feel led to do even if one person reads it (my faithful mom) or millions!

The struggles of Chronic Illness and money

Sometimes we are faced with tons of struggles. Those of us with chronic illness and especially invisible ones we are told not to stress ourselves out, mostly because stress causes more pain, more complications and much more. Actually, what is more difficult than stress is the cost of the disease, monetary costs.  It starts with the price of drugs, price of doctor visits, price of supplements, and price of hospital stays.

Being sick isn’t fun, but financially it hurts worse. When my daughter was born we had enough (or so we thought) money for her delivery. But when there was complications things got a little more expensive. When she didn’t take to nursing and was allergic to all over the counter formula we had to go purchase the most expensive formula on the market, which wasn’t covered by insurance. Even still we had tons of doctor visits, specialists, and more. The amount we paid out of pocket kept rising and we just were not prepared for this. I know there are many of you financial planners that would say you should of known better. But at the point of having our daughter we were just doing good at paying off our debt and keeping a good budget. This situation set us back and at the same time we didn’t know we qualified for any financial assistance. Since we didn’t qualify for the state’s assistance we had no idea that there were more options with the hospital and clinic. Things weren’t looking good, but then we got a couple of breaks and finally we could see the light. Then I got sick and my husband had to go by ambulance to the ER twice. We just weren’t prepared for it all.

The stress of finances makes our illness worse. I can even tell with my husband when he is stress his blood sugar goes up.  For me I get more pain, which just puts me in bed longer. Honestly there has been days that we didn’t even know if we have enough gas or groceries. But thankfully we have had friends and family that have helped us. We couldn’t of done it without them. For a long time we were silently suffered together as a family because we were embarrassed. We talked to financial counselors and many said we weren’t that bad. Which understandable compared to others we weren’t, but we weren’t moving forward or getting better. I couldn’t forgive myself. I was and still am hard on myself, blaming myself for the dumb mistakes and the use of credit cards to pay medical bills and groceries for all of special allergies.

I honestly don’t feel like I deserve any help from anyone. I feel like I should be the one giving help because in truth compared to most of the world I am in much better shape, which I am grateful for the blesses we have. Still in so many ways I want less, I need less, but getting healthy is still so expensive. Why do I have to try to explain myself to everyone about why we made certain choices? Why can’t I just be okay with the fact the past is the past and we made the mistakes and we are trying are upmost to be better. It isn’t just an easy fix. I can’t just get a job and go back to work to solve the problem. I have to think of my health and our daughter too. I know people around us are problem solvers and want to help us out. All I want is someone to forgive me for the mistakes and still love us no matter if we forget to send a letter or call. Money comes with strings, no matter how hard we try for it not to. I watched my parents constantly struggle with needed support from churches and people. And even though the support they got was for them to live, not just do “missions work” it was still very difficult to do fun activities without us keeping it a secret from family and friends. I grew up thinking money came with attachments even though we would give money freely to local churches or people without expecting anything in return. Why can’t I expect that of myself? I would so much rather give away money to many others than be a receiver, but right now in our life we need to be receivers. We do not feel deserving of it. And there are been so many that have unselfishly given us to help us through these difficult times. Also I do believe that the gifts from friends and family do not have strings attached. It is only my embarrassment that puts strings on the money. I promise that one day I will be able to pay it forward even if today I can give unused toys to a new international friend. I always need to remember that paying it forward doesn’t have to be anything big.

We are still being surprised by what God wants to do through this situation. I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we had to financially, physically, and emotionally. So if all our mistakes help others not do what we did then it is all worth it. Right now my voice is to write, maybe a little too honest than some people want to hear, but honesty needs to be heard. So many of us hide behind the difficulty because we are afraid, which we did too. But all it did was get us deeper in debt and hurt. We never knew how large of a family and friends we had until we opened up and shared our story. Being honest has been the best decision for us. I pray that our story can help someone today!