In my most recent blog, I wrote about a recent experience I had with a cleanse. I have received so many unexpected emails, texts, messenger texts and phone calls, people seeing me and pulling me aside to chat about their own experiences, that I have decided to post something I wrote about what led me to finally have the, honest, raw, and thorough Come to Jesus conversation with my doctor. If you haven’t read it yet, you can still read this one first and then go and read that one if the subject matter interests you.
So, here goes...

I have been dealing with something for a long time and to the nth degree these past couple years now that, but for my (often inappropriate) sense of humor, might have pushed me towards the brink of depression. Sparing what could easily become countless pages of details, I’ll just say that spending years trying to self-diagnose and push through something I assumed was temporary and related to something I was doing wrong didn’t work, and, in hindsight, it slowed down my healing. 

It wasn’t until this past winter that I sat in front my doctor for my annual exam and started to list off things that “just weren’t right” with me, and, while it had never previously occurred to me before that the vast amount of symptoms I was having could be related - and even how vast that list had become, in recent months as I started to keep a list in the notes of my phone of all the random things that were bothering me. I saw the length of the list and knew something big was wrong. I started tracking which ones had worsened or evolved into something else or something more. And - I had begun to suspect that there really was one big thing behind it all that was causing collateral damage, essentially making me feel like I was slowly dying. 
I know how dramatic those words must seem, but it’s frankly the only way that really expresses what an honest look back at the previous years felt like. Where, for instance, I had originally been having headaches gradually and mildly, I began having them during certain parts of the day, and then I began having them during other parts of the day, and then they were occurring every day, and then the time on each side of the episodes was expanding until I had a good hour in the morning and a good hour in the evening, and then… I just had a headache around the clock. 

At that point, the severity of my headaches began to change… worse during parts of the day, not as bad during other parts, and then the worse became more often than the not as bad until I had an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening where they weren’t awful. And then, yes… I just had a bad headache all the time.  

There are several dozen other symptoms that I could go through to explain how they changed similarly… sleep problems, hair loss (including the sides of my eyebrows!), sores and cysts appearing all over me and in my mouth, other skin issues, exhaustion and just complete and utter fatigue, brain fog and confusion, dizziness, tingly, irritability, anxiety, heart palpitations, shakiness, fumbling to find words when I spoke, feeling like my tongue was too big for my mouth, spasms in my face where my muscles would freeze giving me a strange expression for 10-30 seconds (it didn’t hurt - just bizarre), I felt moments of sheer overwhelmedness, sensitive to bright lights and sounds, hitting a metaphoric wall and having a desperate need to lie down suddenly, not being able to remember directions, instructions, or even routines that I had followed without a thought for years, later finding unnatural typos and just straight up WRONG WORDS in my written messages that I’d go back to review (not natural for this grammar nazi and 1st place county spelling bee winner), etc etc… etc. 
More than once I got a confused side-eye from Jose when he’d see me doing something I wasn’t realizing, but he wasn’t around often enough to see that this was becoming my new normal. I have spent my life practicing perseverance and an external facade that I’m ok even when I’m not, so how could he have really known? I hate complaining, I feel awkward admitting that something is hard for me… I have internal conversations with myself all the time trying to reconcile fighting a battle with the sense of failure I feel sometimes. There is a never-ending war being waged inside me between what I want to do and the fact that there is a challenge in front of me that I can’t just blow off. I say all of that to say that I didn’t actually even admit to my own husband that something was wrong with me until I had made the decision to lay it all out there at my dr appointment. Until that point, I was still working out my own action plan and wasn’t really ready for outside opinions; I needed to check off all of my own action items first. This - if I’m honest - is how I have always done life. 

For better or worse, I have to sort through my own stuff before I let others help me. This was even true when my first marriage was ending. I suffered alone for an entire year before I was ready to talk about the affair between my husband and my friend and how we were divorcing. By then, I had come to terms with it and then it was a shock to everyone else who then had to deal with their own emotions about our split. This way of dealing with personal trauma, pain, and adversity is vastly different from those that deal with their own battles with their loved ones by their sides or who find solace in the listening ear of strangers. I find that I am that person for others, and it helps heal me in other ways to know I am trusted by others who are in a vulnerable state. I don’t know why I can’t seek that out for myself. I just don’t know how to do it, I guess.  And maybe that’s just me, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. But it has definitely slowed down my conversations with my doctor… it caused me to just say, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m exhausted and not feeling my best, but I’m working on some things and not ready to try what you might suggest.” How stubborn is that??    

Finally, when I had a dr appt coming up for my annual exam (for insurance discounts), I decided I would say that my experiment in my own self-healing was - not over, really, but - I was officially ready to open up my notes and get some help with a potential diagnosis… Actually, I was desperate for it. "Please fix me. I’m convinced I am dying." 


To be continued…

I’m not ready to go into some of the history needed to really build the framework for this story, but, in short, for about 8 months now I have been trying to tackle some problems I’ve been having for several years that seem to have multiple causes. Some things I know, and some things have been ruled out. I have a stubborn case of hypothyroidism that was diagnosed this past December, for instance, and I suspect it has been a problem for a lot longer that I realize and just got tangled up in pregnancies, breast feeding, and sleep deprivation; something I’ve now learned firsthand is that your thyroid affects EVERYTHING. I had no idea how awful it can be before it became a problem for me. Something else I’ve learned is that I am nowhere near menopause, so I cannot blame any “changes”. I have a tendency to have low levels of iron and vit D and am on supplements for those, but all of my other numbers look good. I have arthritis in my lower spine, and I have unexplained back pain in the lower half that causes me to get up and down slowly and to avoid picking up things from the floor as often as possible, evidenced by my bathroom and closet floors and the floor on my side of the bed. If you need any further evidence of this, just call my husband, and he will be happy to confirm. I get terrible abdominal spasms when I sit up or turn a certain way that feel like a charlie horse in my stomach, and this is something that, surprisingly, surgery for an umbilical hernia did not correct.

For the first time in my life, snoring has become a norm for me, anxiety is also a thing, and so has mustering any energy whatsoever for anything that isn’t on the absolutely necessary list. There’s more to it than all of this… much more. But for now, I’ll just leave it at this: I have been on the most significant personal mission I have ever been on - meaning that I am, for the first time in my life, focused on seeking out the root causes of my problems and addressing them by any means necessary. This has meant that I spend a lot of time in the evenings and mornings before work and during any lunches I take alone researching an endless number of topics. It means I email my doctors all the time asking, “What about…?” and “Am I right…?” “Can we…?” and “What have you…?” I have sat with my general doctor, with my obgyn, with a neurologist, with my chiropractor, and with a kinesiologist, and I have ugly cried in front of all of them trying to talk through things that I’m experiencing and things I’ve learned, things I’m uncertain about, and asking for things they think we can check, etc.  

Wherever I can tackle problems naturally, I do. For my thyroid condition, I am taking a prescription, the dosage for which continues to be increased while I wait - and hope - for improved results. I use essential oils, and I continue my life-long interest in learning as much as I can about the mind-body connection and the stomach-brain connection.  We are very food conscious at our house, and, while we do eat out and can’t always be sure what is in that food, at our home we keep it on the up and up. We are believers in quality probiotics, whole foods, collagen, grass fed / wild caught, and drinking lots of water. I've also added digestive enzymes to my daily regimen. One of the treatment plans I’m currently following also involves some eastern medicine… clay packs and such. I’m seeing a chiropractor, I’m getting acupuncture and… Additionally, I’m in the midst of a parasite cleanse. If I wasn’t already a fairly humble person, this process would no doubt have made me get over myself pretty quickly.  You can only be so cool and glamorous when you’re constantly swallowing some tincture or caplets and paying close attention to the clock and to the locations of restrooms every where you go. 

Here’s the thing…

I have this huge, full life. There are 6 people in my home, 7 cats (one geriatric and on medicine twice per day and a special diet), a dog (who takes allergy medicine twice per day), 6 of originally 7 hermit crabs (RIP Rachel), 2 of us working full time, a house that is never straightened up for more than a few hours at a time, laundry, yard work, 3 vehicles - one of which is on its last leg, one kid who still demands a butt wiping several times per day (for another 1 year, 9 months, and 38 days anyway), four kids who get tummy aches, bug bites, cuts & scrapes, banged noggins, fat lips, can’t sleep, etc etc. 

I work and I take care of everyone else. The one thing I do for myself is I journal. I don’t watch much tv, I listen to books and podcasts while I drive, and so when I’m sitting anywhere… on the toilet, on my back patio at night, in my bed while I can’t sleep, during lunch time when I’m by myself, etc… I am usually typing away in my journal. I’m a pretty good listener to myself, and for someone who spends a great deal of my work day by myself or in meetings with different people every day, journaling is my way of meaningful banter or conversation. I don’t go to the same office every day and converse in the break room or in someone’s cubicle. I don’t get a lot of personal time with friends. I barely see my own husband without kids piled on us. So this is basically my non-G-Rated social life… writing.  It helps me clear my mind and work through stress. 

When I first considered that I may have parasites (how about that segue??), I felt some relief in knowing that I may start feeling better in a couple months time. But then I felt very anxious and worried about fitting in the die-off symptoms with… LIFE (see the above truncated summary). I don’t even have time to do the things I have to find time to do, so how was I going to add this very intense process into it? The answer was simply that I didn’t have a choice. And at the end of it, I knew that I may be able to cross something off of my list that contributes to getting myself back to… well, myself.  

So what goes into a parasite cleanse? Well, you swallow things, some of which taste pretty awful. And you do this several times per day and then you tip toe through life with your stomach rumbling and suspicious gassy feelings - do I or don’t I? The answer is DON’T. Don’t ever. But you will, and then it’ll be your reminder to Never. Trust. Again. If you’re like me, you start using the flashlight app on your phone every time you go to the bathroom, bending over to examine everything more closely.  It becomes almost an obsession. And you think more than once, “Omg what I have become?”

Then you get to the part where you’re ordering the case of enemas from Amazon. You put that up on a shelf in your closet and you think to yourself, “This is what it’s come to.” But don’t get all caught up in that thought yet, because what it’s really come to hasn’t even happened yet. 

It’s not even when… You’re face down & ass up in the only bathroom with a trustworthy lock on it and enough space for you to crouch down in that position in front of the toilet in the first place. You’ve inserted the enema and are awaiting the impending emergency when your 7 year old comes to the door to “talk” and then, hearing you answer near the floor, lies down on the floor outside the bathroom door and asks you to hold his hand under the door. You’re holding his hand and sweating profusely, and then he wants to know why you’re so close to the bottom of the door anyway and all you can say is, “It’s because I’m leaning over. And, um, I’m tall, so… yeah.” You finally convince him that you need a few minutes and he should wait in the living room for you, and then you lie your face back down on the hand towel you brought in to use as a pillow and you feel something hitting your head. You realize a cat is on the other side of the door and is slapping your head. And now he’s pulling your hair with his teeth. You might be thinking “THIS is what it’s come to!” but you’d still be a little premature in uttering this phrase, however tempting. 

It’s not even when the emergency happens and you’re up on the toilet that you can truly say you’ve hit rock bottom. It’s actually on any given day during this cleanse that you use the bathroom right after you’ve eaten, you get up, pull up your pants, flush the toilet, and feel a satisfying fart coming as you walk out of the bathroom and you give in knowing you just finished going to the bathroom and there was nothing left. Oh, but what you didn’t account for was that your body is still making more… and there’s always more when you’re doing a cleanse… and you’ve just shit your pants standing up 2 feet from the toilet with your pants on. And now your 7 year old is standing there again and wants a hug and wants to ask questions about dinner, about frogs, about a character in his favorite tv show, about, you know, just life in general. Oh, and he wants to show you how well he can still do the Floss. And you’re sweating again and trying to look composed and breezy while backing into the stall again; you’re trying to close the door while he is very confused. And you think to yourself, “He has no idea what’s going on here. I mean when in my entire childhood when I was bothering my mom or grandma or aunts while they were going to the bathroom did it ever occur to me that they had just shit their pants? It didn’t. It wouldn’t have. And yet, here we are. So now I’m standing there contemplating whether I should ask any of them if they’d ever crapped their pants as adults or if it’s just me that does this.

And NOW I’m sitting back down, peeling my pants off, taking a deep breath while I grab the box of wet wipes, and I think, “THIS is what it’s come to. This. Right. Here.”

To be continued…


#hypothyroidism #parasitecleanse #workinonmyself

If you ask me to describe myself with 5 words or less, I would not normally think to include “vain” in my list of adjectives. In fact, I think I lack vanity almost to a fault since the twins came along and I only floated further away from that description with each kid thereafter. It’s not because I don’t WANT to have a certain amount of vain-ness; I actually think it’s a nice quality to have in reasonable doses, and I envy (just a little bit) people who can pull it off effortlessly.  I see you in my social media newsfeed, and I think to myself, “God, you're gorgeous. I didn’t even take a shower today…” as I shake my can of dry shampoo pleading with the universe to let there be enough to cover me for just one more dirty-headed day and then I SWEAR I will wash this mop. There’s enough… butterflies… relief… YES! This is my day!

The truth is that I just don’t have enough bandwidth for the level of vanity that I desire, because other things fall in line in front of it. I realize I could reorganize my priorities and pull it closer to the front just like others do, but, I’m not that good; I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Sometimes I think about how I would never have left the house without looking presentable in my pre-kid days, and now entire weekend or vacation days can go by without me even having looked in the mirror until I pass by one later in the evening with a laundry basket in hand and sweaty hair sticking to my neck and, ohp, yep… those are sweat drops above my lip too. My poor husband and kids… the way they must picture me in their heads is not the way I picture myself, I’m quite sure of it. In my mind, I’m almost always me on my best days. To them, I’m probably most always the me I think of on my worst days… the sweaty one carrying laundry and maybe mindlessly displaying some side boob sneaking out of one of my favorite, hole-y t-shirts… You know, the me that would never open the front door for you. I’d be pushing my husband to the door and sneaking behind him to the bathroom to put on a bra (damn you, visitor! Don’t you text??).

Then today comes…

Once in a while, something happens in your day to remind you that you do still have some modicum of a quality you thought you didn’t you possessed any longer. Today, I was reminded that I am more vain that I realized. Today I had to leave the house with a cold sore the size of small planet on my face. And I cared BIGTIME.  I seem to get over people seeing my messy hair and yesterday’s mascara quite breezily, but having a sore next to my mouth makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out for 7-10 days. And God forbid I have to meet someone for the first time on a day when I have a cold sore, because I’m convinced that’s how they’ll always see me. “Oh, yeah, the Rendon boys’ mom? Yeah, I met her last year… tall, blonde, herpes on her face?  It was disgusting. I couldn’t even eat my lunch. Anyway, yeah, she’ll be here later (shivers abruptly).”

Let me tell you when you have reached a new level of self-awareness: it’s when you are behind a group of cars that slam on their brakes and a car behind you nearly rear ends you, and your first thought - YOUR LITERAL FIRST THOUGHT - is “Oh God, don’t let me die out here today with this thing on my face. What if I need CPR and no one wants to help me? What if I’m lying on the table in the morgue and everyone is talking about my disgusting fever blister and putting on an extra set of gloves, wincing as they touch me, or they’re calling in the interns, and when they arrive and ask which one, they point at me and say, “That one with the herpes simplex.”? What if they send in my loved ones one last time to visit with me before they take me off to the cremation facility and they can’t even soak in their love for me and wallow in their “I’m going to miss her so much” feelings because they can’t stop looking at this thing on my face? What if my mom takes FRICKEN PICTURES of me and sends them to everyone??!” SHIT!!! GET OUT OF MY WAY, EVERYONE!! This is NOT my day to DIE! And off to the shoulder I go. Safe and sound and a little less humiliated than I otherwise could have been.

So, yeah, vanity may not be in my top 5, but I’m guessing it’s at least #6 after all.

#sweat #sideboob #selfawareness #vanity