I was 18 when I got married the 1st time in August of 1991. Two months later I got the most amazing news in my life. I was going to be a mother.
Few things in life ever come close to this news for most women. For me, being pregnant was magical. It is an experience that you will never forget. God has blessed women by allowing us to be the ones to carry our precious children and bring them into the world. Yes there is pain at the end, but one look at that amazing little life and you forget it..
The first thing that made me suspect I was pregnant was at 5 weeks. We were stationed in Oklahoma and I got in the shower one morning and the water spray felt like knives! Ladies, you know what I mean. I remember being in a hurry and just letting it go. When it happened again the next day, I started counting back. I went to the store and got a test and there was the prettiest + sign I have ever seen..
A couple days later I went to the military clinic and it was official. I remember calling my mom and she was so excited! Chris was at some training exercise (this would become the norm). Mom was sure from the beginning that the baby would be a girl. She sent me a beautiful pink baby dress.
December 27th, 1991 I started throwing up. That would be the beginning of almost 7 full months of morning sickness. Strange that they call it Morning Sickness when it happens 24/7. Over the course of my pregnancy with Taylor I lost 28 pounds. Other than getting sick 4-5 times a day, everything else with that pregnancy was picture perfect. No medical issues of any kind related to the pregnancy and even very little swelling! Chris was in the Army and he got orders to go to Germany when I was about 5 months along so I moved in with Mom and Dad til after the baby was born.
Taylor was due on August 11th but because the nausea was getting worse every day and I got to where I couldn't hold anything down they decided to induce me on July 21st. Mom was there with me through the whole thing. Induction started about 5am and they broke my water at 6am the next day. Finally at 2:28pm on July 22, 1992 she was out. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I can still close my eyes and see that moment in my mind. Every detail about her. How tiny she was . How perfect her little mouth looked. Counting all of those sweet fingers and toes. The red tint to her hair. I was 19 years old and I had a baby that was all mine. This little person who depended on me for every single thing. It was scary and magical and wonderful.
That day was almost 17 years ago. So many things have happened in that amount of time. From her first time nursing , her first steps, the first day of school down through time to her first love and her prom. When I look at her sometimes I can't believe what an amazing woman she is turning into. Goodness knows I have not been the perfect parent over the years but pride still fills my heart that I must have done something right. Shes so smart and beautiful. Talented and mature. Shes so grounded , more so than alot of her friends and she knows just who she is.
So soon that tiny baby will be moving out to start her adult life. It seems so sudden that she could possibly be old enough to be at her last year of school. Wasn't it just yesterday that I put her on the bus for the first time ? That her childhood is coming to a close causes my heart to ache, but at the same time I am looking forward to being there for her like my mother was for me. Through her first pregnancy one day when she will hold her own tiny miracle in her arms, a day she will never forget no matter how time passes by.....
I recently got a new tattoo. It is a butterfly which is a symbol for Lupus and Fibromyalgia. The colors of the wings are birthstones for each of my 4 amazing kids. The 10 accents on the wings are green for my birthstone and represent 10 years since I was diagnosed. The antennae on the butterfly are turned facing each other and represent the fight between what I need to do each day against what my body will allow me to do each day.
I am 36 years old. From my early 20s I had been sick with one thing or another and was always bothered with aches and pains. I caught every infection out there. I went to drs who told me over and over that there was not anything wrong with me, that I was just depressed. Take these pills and they will fix everything. This went on for years. 10 years ago when I had my son Joshua, I got real sick. Septic shock from my c-section caused a heart attack.
Thank goodness there was no lasting heart damage. Also something good came out of it. I found out a few weeks later that I was not crazy. That what was wrong with me all the time had a name. 10 years ago I found out that I have Lupus and Fibromyalgia. As scared as I was, a part of me was relieved. Finally I had some answers. Finally there was something real that I could fight. Finally I knew that it was not all in my head.
I wish that I could say that it has all been uphill from there. That they were able to give me some magic pill and made it all better. We do not live in that kind of fairy tale world. But I came to terms with it and decided that I would not let it beat me. That I had to get up every day if I wanted to or not. Working has been sporatic at best. Mostly I am able to work for about 6 months out of the year, but its better than nothing.
Some days are better than others. Sometimes I wake up and realize that I actually slept for over 5 hours in a row! I can do that morning stretch and it doesn't trigger spasms from my neck down through my back, hips, and legs. I can actuall get up and my feet don't feel like I am walking on glass. Other days I am not so lucky. I wake up every hour, get up and walk around because the restlessness in my arms and legs make me feel like I want to scream. I try to stretch before I get out of bed and I am torn apart by spasms from head to toe. I can't walk without thick cushion house shoes because of the pain in my instep and heels.
Other than the pain, are the rashes you get for no reason. The little blisters that pop up that resemble the acne, but isn't. The itching and swelling you get. The fact that you can tell when a change in weather or pressure is coming without even turing on the news in your muscles and joints. And don't get me started about how sometimes for no reason at all you go to walk and after you fall, you realize one of your legs just decided not to move. How you go to get a plate out of the cabinet and your hand stops working and it breaks on the floor. And you gotta love it when you know what you want to say or you know a song by heart because you have sang it a million times, but the words just will not come to you. My eye sight failing, my teeth are a mess, and aseptic lupus meningitis took most the hearing from my left ear, but hey! I still have my hair...Oh wait, that falls out by the handful too.... sigh...
After all this, I think the worst part is the fact that on the outside you look just like everyone else. Like there is nothing in the world wrong with you. And people just can not understand why you don't get things done. Why you are "lazy" or you don't work full time. Why you don't just snap out of it or just get more exercise and loose weight to fix your energy problems. How if you would just put your mind to it, everything would be all better. Ah, why didn't I think of that?? After a while you just learn to tune all these people with their best of intentions out and figure out for yourself how to keep on keeping on..
10 years later I still hurt. I still catch infections from every source out there. I can't go outside in the sun without gobbing on sunscreen +30 proof to keep me from getting rashes and getting sick. I still won't take pain meds unless I just can't take it anymore. I still get up every day even if I don't have to go to work and put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. Through the pain and through the depressions, even when I just want to sit down in the floor and cry (well not the floor because I can't get up as easy as I used to and since I started back to work again it needs a good moping and I am too tired at the end of the day to do it) I keep trying to see the good in things and keep a good sense of humor even when things look like they are at their worst.
Right now I feel like I am in a good place in my mind and in my heart. More at peace with myself and with God than I have been in a long time. Over the last 10 years that is another thing that has had its ups and downs. I have been through the why me's and why didn't God take the pain away for good.
It took a long long time for me to realize that I could blame God for not fixing me and become bitter and depressed and shut myself off from the world or I could just accept that everyone out there has trials and problems they have to go through. What makes me think that I should be any different. After all, didn't I have a house over my head? Didn't God give me 4 amazing kids? When things got really tight with money, didn't He give me a job even when I didn't know enough to ask for one? When I really need something, isn't He there for me to make sure that my kids don't go without ? The answer is Yes.
In the end, what more could we ask for? Its through the trials and the pain and the hard times that we are truely able to see the amazing blessings we should be thankful for. If everything was perfect and wonderful all the time we wouldn't have the need to look for them.
"Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain. ..."
Purple - Purple represents courage and endurance things all lupus patients must have. Butterfly - Traditionally the butterfly represents freedom, transformation and recovery. Also, one of the more common symptoms of Lupus is called a butterfly rash. It is a red rash across the nose and cheeks that resembles a butterfly. That is why the butterfly has become the symbol of hope for Lupus patients. Wolf - The word lupus in Latin means wolf. This word was used for this disease due to the rash that many patients get a rash across their face that was said to resemble the markings on wolves' faces. Ribbon w/ a knot tied in it - This symbol represents the complexity and uncertainty of the disease. Right now, there is no cure.. And no one without the disease can even begin to know what its like to live with it. Please be open minded, understanding, and caring if you know someone who is living with Lupus...
Saw Kelli's Blog and decided to try it out myself. Been wanting to do this for a while now but wasn't sure where to start, but I guess you gotta start somewhere . So here I go..
7:04 AM | 
Posted by
Melanie Davis Bolden
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