I suppose I should blog about this stuff too...

Forgive me for a rather vague yet blunt post.

The past year has been extremely difficult for me personally despite some rather cool things that have gone on with me "professionally." My body has been in a lot of pain, I have had the most extreme fatigue I have ever experienced in my life, I'm constantly on the verge of tears or on the verge of screaming, and let's face it, I've just kind of been a miserable bitch due to all the stress and depression all of this has caused. I haven't been myself.  At the start of it all I had a back injury that lasted 8 weeks. I was not able to pick up my baby to nurse him, put him in and out of the crib, pick him up to change his diaper, you name it. So my mom drove a half hour (if there wasn't any traffic mind you) every single week day morning for 8 weeks to come and help me out as soon as my husband left for work and stayed until he walked in the door that evening. She literally did everything but nurse the baby!  I still did that, but I needed help lifting him in order to do it. If you've ever breastfed a baby during a back injury you know where I'm coming from. I don't recommend it. (The back injury part... I highly recommend the breastfeeding part.)  THANKS MOM!

So back when I was pregnant with El Bebe #2 the "fill-in OB" I had for that appointment (before I switched to a midwife - smartest move I ever made as written here) noticed a lump in my throat but he said I had to wait to do testing til after the baby was born.  Honestly, I forgot about it. Besides the fact I now had a brand new baby and a very busy toddler to care for, doing a bunch of medical tests was the last thing I wanted to add to my To-Do List.  I could feel the lump and see it, but I put it aside as far as looking into it. Call it denial, call it avoidance - I call it postpartum depression.

Several months ago I started up with a new family doc and she started me on some tests to look into it. This test result led to wanting to do this test, and that test led to this scan and so on. After several tests were done in several different facilities all over hell's half acres and over several months because kids are "NOT ALOUD" at any of these tests making the process that much more difficult for a stay-at-home-mom, I was told there are a few different lumps in there and not just one like I thought. I ended up having another very detailed and time consuming test that would check out all of the lumps and determine if they were "OK" or not. That test came back but I needed to go to a specialist to hear the results... I was told that some came back "OK."  I'm not sure what happens to them, but they aren't anything. But some of the lumps showed up as "something" on the test where others were found to be "nothing."

So what that means is that tomorrow I go in to get the "something" lumps biopsied to see if they are cancerous. I have a good chance that they are not, but in the "something/nothing test" they are "something" so if not cancer, then what?  This is new territory for me so I have no clue what else it could be. But the specialist basically said, "we're going to do a biopsy to see if they are malignant or benign if they are malignant then you do chemo/radiation and it should take care of it no problem or we surgically remove it...but it's most likely nothing."  So that is where I'm at right now.

I only throw this out there not for sympathy, not for attention but for positive vibes sent my way. Call them prayers, positive energy, positive vibes, whatever makes you feel more comfortable. I'm a firm believer in positive energy. I'm one of those people who thinks that you should tell everyone that you are pregnant right away instead of waiting (and suffering in silence with morning sickness) throughout your entire first trimester.

SIDE NOTE: For those who have never been through a pregnancy, most medical professionals advise you to wait to tell anyone until the second trimester because the first trimester (the first 3 months) is a delicate time in your pregnancy where if you are going to have a miscarriage, typically it will happen during that time. I actually had the first OB I ever saw when I was pregnant with my first tell me, "well, the test came back positive but don't get your hopes up.  A lot of women miscarry during this time."  Talk about  a buzz kill.  She wouldn't even say the words, "pregnant", she just kept referring to it as a "positive test result."

I didn't take her advise (big shocker there - the girl who had a water birth at home not taking the advice of an OB), but I wanted everyone in my life to know we were pregnant because I liked the idea of having all of my family and friends thinking and dreaming about the tiny lil baby growing inside of me, sending it love and light. And if something did happen to the pregnancy then I'd already have that support system in place. Nothing happened though because she's out riding her bike right now. The more the merrier when it comes to positive energy, prayers, positive thoughts, etc., as far as I'm concerned.

So if you could just pass along some love for me tomorrow and float it through the universe over my way that would be great. Oddly enough, I'm not really afraid of the pain of someone sticking a needle in my throat to take a sample since I've given birth to two children and am no stranger to pain, and I'm only mildly worried about the test coming back cancerous because I feel that it's not.  I'm more worried about, "what is going on with me?" because I know that something is wrong and the specialist already told me that if it is cancerous it really has nothing to do with all of my symptoms right now. I'm not feeling like myself and something is off and I'm in pain, my joints hurt like I'm in my 80's and I'm very tired and run down and I have put on a lot of weight over the past year which is stressing me out too.  I'm just not sure what it is yet and that is driving me crazy. So...who knows?  Any medical mystery solvers out there reading my blog?  Give me a heads up!

Anyway...I'll update as soon as I'm able to.

Peace*Love & Light,
coco cana