Try Try Try

If at first you don't succeed...try...try again.

That's a good saying for situations where a person is trying something new, or starting a new job or school or many other situations.

What happens though when that becomes your very life? When it becomes the way you have to handle every day little things that other people take for granted? Things like getting some sleep, using the bathroom, taking a shower, fixing a meal, washing clothes, running to the store for milk and every other little thing. How long can one just keep trying all the time while watching others do things so easily, without thought and hearing from people who should know better (doctors, therapists, friends, and family) that they just aren't trying hard enough? Where do they get the strength to just keep going with little or no support and understanding?

The answer is different for every person in a similar situation. For some it is pure stubbornness, for others it is anger at their mistreatment, for some it is a combination of both, and for others it is the belief that suicide is a sin and will send them to hell, leaving them no choice but to muddle through somehow. For some it is the love of their family and friends that gives them what they need to go on. The reasons for going on, day after day, when everything is a struggle, vary from person and person. Whatever those reasons are it is a good thing to remind yourself of them from time to time, specially when things hit a rough spot.

For me, it is a combination of reasons why I continue to struggle through every day. I am stubborn and don't like to lose, if I give up then I have lost to my conditions. This does not mean that I do not give in to it when I have to (bed days, taking things carefully and within my limits), it just means that I refuse to let my conditions take over my life completely. When I feel angry at my condition, I try to channel that anger into a more productive way be it housecleaning, writing, stitching, or something else. I try not to let that anger take over, instead I try to vent it in a positive manner. The same goes for guilt. There is a lot of guilt with a chronic condition, specially as a parent.

For me it comes down to this, I don't really have a choice. If I want to live some kind of life and not be stuck in a padded room or dead, then I have to keep trying. There is no other option. So I keep trying. It is not easy.

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Tomorrow starts the first day of school. I homeschool my son and this will probably be the last year I do so. I am nervous because I know that my conditions have affected the homeschool process before. He learned a lot last year, don't get me wrong. I believe he learned more than enough to pass the 7th grade, and I will be having his work reviewed which I have to do by law. I am hoping to catch him back up to the grade he should be in due to his age, which would be 9th grade this year. I'm hoping by the end of this school year he will test at 10th grade level for the 2011-2012 school year and start High School back in the 10th grade where he should be. It was the school system that decided all the work he did at home for 6th grade did not count and made him repeat the year.Granted I agree he did not do enough for the whole school year. I think he did half a school year, and that was always enough to promote my other kids in this school system, but not for my son. Anyway, I have his work set up for the rest of the week and am hoping it works out well. I am nervous though and hoping he doesn't give me the same arguments he gave me last year over doing the work. The hardest part is finding a way to make it interesting. Here is hoping I can do so!

As if chronic pain is not bad enough I can now add Hypothyroidism to my list of problems. I knew it was starting a few years back when my blood test came back off. The chemical my brain was putting out to tell my thyroid how much to make, was three times normal levels, yet my thyroid T-4 (I think it is) was just barely over the low end of normal. They chose not to medicate it at the time. It started to work for a while, then stop for a while. I could always tell when it had entered the "not working well" phase because my skin would dry out real bad and my hair would fall out. Over the past year I have put on weight (that I can't lose), my hair has been falling out pretty heavily (I now have 1/4 of the hair I had 2 years ago), my skin has gotten real dry and many other symptoms. So the doctor redid the blood tests and now the levels were low enough to start medicating it. I started Levothyroxine (synthroid) 125mcg a couple weeks ago. Here is hoping it works.