Weekends are for Laziness

Thursday afternoon, I went for my recheck on my left big toe.  I had it permanently removed this time.  I've had nothing but problems with the first two toes on each foot for years now and have had them removed about five times each.  If any of you have had a toenail removed, you know the process is not fun at all.  I'd have to say that the surgical process isn't much different getting it permanently removed other then them jamming phenol under the nail bed.  I did kinda feel the procedure because I vape so much that the nicotine didn't fully numb me, but still proceeded anyway.  I will say that the healing process is much, much different with a permanent removal than a standard removal.  It looks a whole lot worse before it starts to look better and the pain takes a lot longer to subside as well.  It didn't help that I was starting an infection.  So, the doctor put me on oral and topical antibiotic.  It doesn't feel too bad today, but still having some slight pain.

My infusion at the hospital went well on Friday.  I was extremely impressed by the attentiveness of the staff.  They treated me like a celebrity - wanting to know if I wanted my feet up, if I wanted a pillow and/or blanket and if I wanted a drink and/or snack.  They were very kind and very accommodating.  I do feel a little better since the infusion.  I have three more infusions and then I figure out what the next steps are going to be with the doctor.  I'm on my last bar on my vape and I think I will be done with vaping.  I've thought about quitting a few times recently, but could not bring myself to do it.  I know it's time for me to quit and I have to find the strength to just do it because I know that it's not benefitting my medical situation at all.  For one, nicotine combats chemical levels of certain medication such as Cymbalta which I'm on for anxiety related to my chronic health issues.  It influences dehydration and it can also make absorbing vitamins a challenge.  All things that I'm having issues with.  It's so much easier said than done to quit, but if I want to fix my medical conditions, I have to be willing to change.

I'm also going to start being stricter with my diet.  I've been consuming way too many carbs for my liking lately.  I wrote a list of foods that I can have so that grocery shopping trips will be less daunting.  I'm finding that if you are truly eating healthy, there really isn't much variety and it requires consistency.  Then I had a thought last night.  If I can redundantly eat the same unhealthy fast food, I can do the same with healthy food.  Once my toe is healed a little better, I'm going to start some regular low impact exercise a few times a week.  Ultimately, I'd like to lose a total of about 130 pounds.  My doctor would be happy if I could just get down to 170 pounds and while that is a great starting goal, I know that I want to lose more if I can help it.

We had the tree guys here on Friday and they did a lot of work for us.  We had them take out a tree in our yard that uprooted, remove two giant bushes in front of the house that we were having a hard time maintaining (and now you can actually see the front of our house now), trim another giant bush on the side of our house and trim the gigantic tree in our backyard.  The yard looks much, much better now.  They were here all day Friday, working their asses off and were reasonably priced!  Today I made meatballs in the crockpot with country gravy and we will be having green beans with it.  I have butternut squash and Jay has mashed potatoes.  I have to finish the laundry and take a shower.  After that, just have plans of relaxing for the rest of the night.  I think I may finish reading the rest of The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins - book review to come.

I hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend and wonderful week ahead!   

Me Oh My...

Looks like I came here again just to say how much I absolutely suck at keeping up with my blog. 😒

Just kidding.

Well, I have quite the life update for ya'll.

So, if you have read any of my past posts, you know that I've been dealing with autonomic dysfunction for about a year and a half now.  It's a journey that hasn't been fun to say the least.  At the beginning of this year, I started seeing a psychiatrist due to the relentless stress this invisible illness has been putting on my body.  I also got diagnosed with mild sleep apnea this year as well and now I sleep with a CPAP machine.  The psychiatrist put me on Cymbalta three times a day and it was rough adjusting to the medication at first, but once I adjusted to both the Cymbalta and the CPAP, my autonomic episodes have become less severe in intensity.  Unfortunately, I'm still having them and the frequency and duration varies.  However, for the most part, they usually don't get too intense but the lack of energy has been so awful that I've been bed bound a lot which has lately prevented me from being able to go to work.  THAT'S A HUGE PROBLEM!

My family doctor has truly been a saint at helping me through this.  It's very difficult to find doctor's that want to take on this case due to the complexity of the condition.  The nervous system can malfunction for countless reasons and it takes awhile to pin point exactly what is causing it to freak out and want to shut down.  I've already been denied by a geneticist and an immunology specialist, so there's that.  My primary found a genetics company that is in the process of sending me a testing kit to bring to the lab, so they can draw my blood and test me for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which is a 17 gene analysis.  I start going for two hour infusions this Friday, every Friday for about a month.  The first session is just lactated ringers and B12.  Doctor wants to take it slow with additives so that I'm able to identify which vitamins will make a difference in stabilizing me.  Next month, I have a consult with the neurologist and I'm hoping because they deal with the autonomic system, that they will be able to help me figure out exactly what is wrong...or in the very least, guide me in the right direction.

I still need to be tested for Mast Cell Activation syndrome as well.  If all else fails where I live, I may have to travel out of state to seek help from a specialist but we are trying to exhaust all of our options locally first.  I'm hoping that the infusions will at least make me feel stable enough where I can maintain working without needing to be out anymore.  It's been rough for sure on that front.  If the infusions help drastically, there many be a near future discussion with a general surgeon about placing a port for regular infusion purposes.  From what I've been told, it's extremely difficult to convince a surgeon to place a port for the sole purpose of hydration and micronutrients.  Here is the case that I'm building so far:

I've been dealing with this condition for about a year and a half now.  I've had three E.R visits prior to starting Cymbalta and the CPAP which have helped considerably, however, I'm still having significant autonomic flares that as of late, make it difficult for me to go to work.  I drink approximately 120 ounces of water daily as well as I have tried vitamin supplementation orally for my deficiencies to no avail.  As far as my peripheral veins go, I'm a difficult stick and even more so when I'm dehydrated which has been a consistent battle.  I also have very tiny veins as well.  My GI tract is compromised which I believe is causing malabsorption issues.  Another reason that I believe this to be true is because my stool often has fatty deposits around it which tells me that my body is not breaking down fats properly.

Now, if the infusion trial were to drastically improve my quality of life and stabilize me, my goal would be to bypass the GI tract in order to sustain properly hydration and vitamin levels to be able to function, especially if this were to be the only way to keep my quality of life maintained.  I understand the risks associated with said port such as risk for infection.  I understand this even more so than the average patient because I work as a Suture Specialist for a medical manufacturing in a clean room where everything needs to remain sterile.  Also, each time I go for an infusion, it's a $200 co-pay and $800 a month is not financially feasible for me long-term.  Self-administering infusions would be much more cost effective for me in order to maintain my health.

So yeah, there's that so far.  This journey has been hard work.

I was thinking about renaming my blog to something like, "Chronically Tinisha" or something similar, but then I realized that I don't have plans of being chronically ill forever and I never really wanted my blog to be all about sad, depressing stuff but as of late, that's been my life.  At least I'm being real, right?

The Great Ice Storm of 2026

*Yawn and big stretches*

Happy Tuesday everyone!  We survived the great ice storm of 2026 this weekend.  I had a snow day and a half from work and I go in at 10 a.m. today.  Thankfully, we didn't lose power.  We are expecting more winter weather this weekend.

I don't really have much to say this morning - just wanted to say that I'm still alive!

I did some cooking yesterday and I made Oreo truffles to bring to work for my co-workers today because that's the nice co-worker that I am.  I've been window shopping on Shein and putting things in my shopping cart for our vacation to Tennessee at the end of October.

Because I don't have much to say, I'll leave you all with this:

#foodforthought

Things Are Looking Up

Good morning.

I have a few life updates to note in this post today.

Jason and I have paid off some debts with the money that we have come into recently, so we will no longer be living paycheck to paycheck anymore which is a huge sigh of relief after many years of living paycheck to paycheck.  We will now be able to afford to swiftly save for both things we need and want.  In saying this, we will no longer have to clench our butt cheeks together each year to be able to afford a decent vacation once a year.  I have also received my sleep study results back and I do, in fact, have mild sleep apnea.  I will be going to a medical equipment consult this Friday to get fitted for my brandy new A-PAP machine.  All things considering, I hope that the sleep apnea has been the root cause of my autonomic dysfunction, including the high blood pressure, tachycardia, palpitations and anxiety because if we treat the sleep apnea, it may mean that all of these issues will significantly reduce, if not, completely resolve.  I'm also looking forward to not feeling so much chronic daytime fatigue so that I'm able to function better.  On top of all of this, I received a phone call yesterday from my job, extending the job offer to me for Suture Specialist which I excitedly and most definitely accepted!  I officially start on Monday, February 9th!  I worked so incredibly hard to achieve this and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds with my career path at Arthrex.  Though the pay could be better and career advancement process could be improved for individuals such as myself who sincerely want to invest themselves into the company, overall, it's really one of the best places to work.  I'm truly blessed and thankful to work for Arthrex.

I've been praying so heavily for these burdens to be lifted from me because they have caused me so much stress.  For so many years, I've been struggling severely under a very dark cloud that felt like it was never going to dissipate.  God's been listening and I also think I have some prayer warriors to thank here as well.  God knows what I've endured and I'm finally getting the break that I deserve.  I will not take that for granted.  I'm finally, slowly getting my spark back and I must say, it feels nice.  I have an appointment on March 9th to follow up with the sleep apnea doctor on how the APAP is working.  My tattoo appointment is closely nearing as well.  I can't believe I will be sitting for my first ever full-day session and it's going to take multiple full-day sessions to complete.  I've been waiting to get this tattoo forever as I absolutely adore Alice in Wonderland.  It has significant meaning behind my mental healthy journey.  With my mom coming out at the beginning of August and Jason and I going on vacation at the end of October which already has a deposit slapped on it, I'd say that we are off to a pretty amazing start to the new year!  I've been dabbling into a new hobby of drawing and I will also be getting back into reading.  I want to do more of the things that make me happy.  Soon, I will be working on my overall health better.

When I get my first trip of a lifetime at work, Jason and I are thinking of going to Rome, Italy.  We may also take a day trip to Venice while we are there.  Jason has a long-lost relative that lives about an hour and a half away from Rome, so when the time nears, we want to see if he would be willing to meet up with us and show us newbie international travelers a thing or two.  With the debts that we are paying off, we are going to be saving that money that we would have spent on monthly bills to finally renovate our house.  I definitely owe it to God, Jason, family, friends and my co-workers for supporting me unconditionally through all my shit, both good and bad.  I'm going out with my co-workers this coming Thursday to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and drinks.  Once I start feeling a little better from using the PAP machine, I want to get with my friend Penny who has been nothing but patient with me as I struggled with health which in turn made it very difficult for her and I to get together.  I truly hope that this year and going forward, my life stays on this very positive track because Lord knows it's been very long awaited.

We are getting ready to receive some very nasty winter weather here, starting later this afternoon.  We are not even sure at this time if we will be able to go to work Monday and possibly even Tuesday because they are predicting that the roadways will be impassable due to excessive ice.  They are also predicting that we will have extended power outages for several days with no prediction when the power will be restored.  I went to the stores early yesterday morning and felt like I was in the run of my life trying to get what we needed to get through the storm.  It was almost like a mini black Friday out there!  It took me about three stores to find bread, but other than that, I was able to get everything else that we needed.  Shelves were definitely bare.  I had to pay three times the amount that I normally pay for bread because the only bread I was able to luckily find was Nature's Own Keto Bread but it will suffice.  The first part of the day today will involve getting everything done that requires electricity so that I don't have to worry about those things.  We have food and a gas grill to make food on, gallons of clean drinking water and will charge our phones in our gas-filled vehicles as necessary.  We will be okay!  We have plenty of warm clothes and blankets to keep us warm.

Positive Updates are the Best Updates

Things are finally looking up a little bit so far this year.  Jason and I became a little more financially stable recently and are looking forward to paying off some of our debts so that we aren't living paycheck to paycheck anymore.  Simba and Isabelle are considerably stable with their health issues for now.  My autonomic attacks have reduced significantly in frequency and severity, though they do still happen.  I should be able to work with the sleep doctor a little better once I get my sleep study results back to get relief from unrested sleep which will hopefully in turn reduce my chronic fatigue and my anxiety even more.  We booked our trip to Tennessee for the end of October a couple weeks ago.  My mom is coming out the second week in August to visit and spend some time with us.  I'm in the process of taking leadership and development classes at my job as well as I've had both my phone and in-person interview for Suture Specialist.  I've been filling in unofficially as a specialist for the last three months.  I should hear in a few weeks on whether I got the job or not.

The first Friday in February, I'm starting the process of getting my Alice in Wonderland half sleeve done - finally!  It's going to take about twenty hours of work to complete.  This will be my first time sitting eight hours for a tattoo - a little excited and nervous at the same time.  I've already filed my taxes.  So yeah, I'd say that things are going pretty decent.  Jay's dads birthday is this coming Friday, so we are going over his house Saturday to take him out to eat and have cake with him.  I started back going to therapy this week.  I have plans to go every other week.  My next plan is to develop a self-care plan to work on my overall health.  I haven't been keeping up with my water intake that well lately, so I'm definitely going to be improving that.  I'm thinking about switching my morning breakfast to drinking a Premier Protein shake and watching my carb consumption a little better.  In the next few weeks, I'm going to start incorporating some low-impact exercising throughout the week after work.  I would also like to come up with a dedicated skincare routine.

I'm hoping I can keep up with my blog better, especially to track my progress.  I've been battling keeping up with this thing for years and I'm not sure why.  I love journaling and find it to provide a sense of stress relief.  Plus, my therapist highly recommends regular journaling as a tool to reduce anxiety, depression and stress.  Well, that's all I have for todays post.  I'm going to put my Salisbury meatballs in the fridge, relax for the night and maybe peruse Kindle to see what kind of books I can get into reading.  Not to mention, we have been talking about where we want to go for my first trip of a lifetime benefit at work - definitely out of the country!  I get a trip of a lifetime every five years that I work for my company and each five years, they give you more money towards it.  We are thinking about going to Europe, possibly Rome!

Alright.  Ta-ta for now!

Self-Intervention

It's been a hard few months.

I've been dealing with chronic medical issues all the while trying to come up with a plan on how I'm going to heal.  The biggest person I have let down over the years is myself which led me to face a lot of hard truths.  I've been worried about everyone and everything else other than myself and that has reflected in my current circumstances with both my mental and physical health which has caused issues in my relationship with God, Jason and both my professional and personal life.  This year was definitely the straw that broke the camels back and it caused me to be at my wits-end.  I've had some time to stew on my thoughts and I'm not sure if I lost myself completely at some point in the process or if I've never had the chance to meet my true sense of self to begin with - to be honest, I'm not really sure I know how to tell the difference which I think is the barrier I struggle with in determining which one really took place.  At this point, however, I feel that trying to wrap my head around which one it is, is irrelevant because either way leads me on a journey with the same purpose which is finding myself.  Either way, I have to take time to heal and discover the person I truly am.

As I sit here and reflect, I've come to realize that I have given up a lot in neglecting myself.  I have given up on my health all together, self-care, my worth, family, friends, things that make me happy and at times - my professional life, my relationship with God and Jason.  Because of my lack of self-worth, I've allowed things that I should have never allowed.  Mostly, I let other's and their opinions live rent free in my head causing all kinds of manifestations of negative inner dialogue.  I've felt the incessant need to justify myself to others when it comes to their expectations of how I should be living my life and/or what I should or should not be doing.  I've been over-exerting myself in trying to keep the peace for everyone else that I allowed it to create nothing but total chaos and havoc in my life.  I've reached the point where I can't hold up this facade any longer.  I had to reach deep within myself to realize that I deserve better, to realize that I'm worthy of living my best life just like the next person.  After all I have been through, I deserve at least that much.  My therapist has been an integral part of helping me come to these realizations.  Though medication is still in the trial and error process for me at the moment, it has definitely helped balance me out a bit better and though I still have autonomic attacks from time to time, they have lessened in both frequency and severity which has allowed me the opportunity to think with a much clearer mind and provide me with some form of mental stability.

These issues didn't appear over night, so this journey will be nothing short of the same and that's okay.  After all of these years, I deserve to take this journey of self-love and care.  It's okay to be in a place of brokenness as long as we don't stay there forever.  This turmoil stemmed from early childhood and I've just let it take complete rein over my entire life.  It's time for me to bury the hatchet within myself and begin this journey.  That's not to say that I will not help other's when they are in need and of course, when I'm able, but more so, that I need to set myself as a priority first and foremost.  There are many, many things that I need to allow myself time to feel and heal from.  We live in a world where we really should and need to normalize that it's okay not to be okay and that we may need help at times.  It's nothing to be embarrassed about as we are all human.  With all of this being said, I don't have any specific New Years resolutions because for me, it's not about achieving a specific goal in a certain frame of time.  This journey that I'm about to take isn't something that can be achieved in just a years time - it's something that will unfold over the course of the rest of my life.  However, I will be taking this coming year to focus strictly on myself and the ground work necessary for this journey.

Things that I will be working on going forward:

Relationship with God, Jason, family and friends

Self-love, self-care and my health both physically and mentally

Changing the way I think/talk to myself

Paying off debts and saving money

Professional life

Working on our house

Engaging in things that make me truly happy (blogging, going out more, spending more quality time with Jay, reading, listening to music, painting, traveling trying new things)

Letting go (of my past, letting people live rent free in my head, being a people pleaser, worrying what others think of me, grief of losing my mother-in-law and my father, worrying excessively for no reason)

Allowing myself to feel and be truly happy

Creating a safe space for me in my spare-room where I can have time to myself

Dysautonomia - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

After seeing a cardiologist, I've recently been diagnosed with dysautonomia, unspecified.  The long and short of it, there is no cure for it.  There isn't really a doctor who will touch it with a ten foot pole either.  Did my cardiologist look at me like he was telling me I had terminal cancer?  Yes.  Did I completely lose my shit and break down in front of him to the point of being inconsolable?  Most definitely.  He can treat the high blood pressure and the tachycardia with medication that is being caused by the dysautonomia but beyond that, he can't do much else.  He recommended that I salt my food in moderation, even with blood pressure issues and to try compression leggings.  He said hydration and rest are important aspects.  

I'm really at a complete loss for words to be perfectly honest.  I'm devastated.  There are so many things that can cause dysautonomia, so there is no definitive way to figure out what exactly is causing it which is a huge problem.  I'm suffering from a lot of mental health issues because of it.  I've altered my life a lot lately in attempt to keep my symptoms at bay such as quitting vaping, switching to decaf or caffeine free products, eating healthy and drinking approximately 120 oz of water a day.  I also take vitamins for deficiencies.  All of the testing I've done has come back reasonably normal.  Bloodwork testing hormone levels, thyroid, complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, auto immune disease, lyme disease, cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine, tryptase, etc.  I've also had a cardiac scoring test, tilt-table test, ECG, EKG and echocardiogram as well as wore a 30-day heart monitor - all of which came back normal.  So, lets talk about it...

The Good: It can't literally hurt you.  Now I say this loosely because if you don't manage certain symptoms such as the blood pressure and tachycardia that goes along with it then over-time, yes, it can hurt you but other than that, it can't kill you.  Fortunately, the blood pressure and tachycardia symptoms of dysautonomia can be treated with medication, staying sufficiently hydrated, managing stress and consuming a healthy diet.

The Bad: There is no cure for it.  It is next to impossible to find a doctor that is willing to treat dysautonomia.  It's very difficult to figure out what exactly is causing it as there are countless things that can cause it.  It's not a highly researched topic as it's only becoming more and more common after COVID.  Having the hypertensive type of dysautonomia (not associated with POTS) is even less common which is the type that I have.

The Ugly: It sucks!  You never know when an attack is going to happen and even though you may have discovered some of your triggers, sometimes it still has no rhyme or reason why you are in a flare.  The flares can range in severity and length of time.  They can last only 15 minutes and not be that bad or last up days in a row and be completely debilitating.  You may even feel so horrible that you feel like you need to go to the E.R but the reality is, the E.R can't do a single thing for you.  How do I know?  I've been there for this.  They chalk it up as anxiety, may or may not give you a limited script for anti-anxiety meds, tell you to follow-up with your primary care doctor and send you on your way.

I've come to learn that the E.R can't help you unless you are actively bleeding, having a heart attack or having a stroke.  These attacks can be extremely traumatizing.  The most common symptoms I have during a flare is I get extremely cold (especially my hands), brain fog, rapid heart-rate, tingling throughout my entire body, flight or fight panic - basically feeling like I'm going to die.  In more severe attacks, including all the common symptoms, my whole body has tremors.  In the worst attack I've had so far, can't catch my breath and talking like I had a stroke.  The night of my worst attack, I dialed 911 on myself which was before I knew what dysautonomia was.

Triggers (for me anyway): HEAT, excessive sugar/carb consumption, dehydration, moving too quickly, too much stress, excessive lights and sound, being over-stimulated in general, standing too long, etc...

Tips that help me: Stay hydrated. Quit vaping (nicotine in general).  Limit caffeine and alcohol to a bare-minimum.  Listen to your body and don't force yourself to do something you can't do - if your body is telling you to lay down and get rest, DO IT!  Take breaks if needed.  I take breaks whether I'm out running errands, doing household chores and even if I'm out and about enjoying myself.  Be kind to yourself and limit your exposure to stress.  There is going to be stress in your life no matter what, but limiting as much as possible is imperative in reducing flare-ups.  If you can't get your own stuff done, don't agree to help others.  You can't help others if you're on fire yourself!  You have a condition that is chronic, complex and involuntary - you shouldn't feel guilty for that!  Lastly, what helps me during an attack is getting a cold water bottle and holding it to my chest.  I do deep breathing exercises and either sit or lay down until the feeling passes.  I try to distract my mind by either watching T.V or scrolling through social media of some sort.  I also tell myself, "This will pass as it always does.  It can't hurt me and I'm going to be okay".  I'll repeat it as many times as I deem necessary.