Much Awaited Answers!

I'm a little slow giving an update on my blog, but we finally made progress in getting some answers for many of the health issues I have had in the past couple of years.  In April, I started seeing a new doctor at Forward Health Solutions in Hattiesburg, and the Friday before last, we received the results of twenty-one tests that had been ordered.

We discovered that my thyroid levels were low, my adrenals were low, and my hormone levels were completely out of whack.  Having a basically nonexistent progesterone level was the explanation for all of the miscarriages I have had.  In fact, it is an absolute miracle that we have Abby and Pax.  Progesterone is essential to sustaining a pregnancy in the first 12 weeks of life, and it's amazing that I did not lose the kids we have with my low levels.  God has been so good to us in ways we never even knew.

Pax and me on Mother's Day at Waffle House

Also, we learned that I am very, very low in iron.  Though we still aren't sure what caused my labs to be so off yet, we do have a plan of action now.  I'll be receiving weekly iron injections in addition to supplements to try to boost everything that is off.  I am very hopeful that I will begin to have a normal energy level again within a few months as we work on adjusting everything to get it just right again.

I am so very thankful that this appointment was productive and helpful.  After hearing so many times that everything was "normal" when I knew everything was not, it is a huge relief to know I will be able to overcome the fatigue I have been battling for so long now.

Abby and me playing flower princesses one morning in May

As for my diet, I tried eating Paleo last month to see if it would help at all, but honestly, I'm just more of a fan of eating gluten free clean cuisine style.  It works better for my family, and I feel better with that diet specifically.  However, I did learn some great Paleo recipes that I will continue incorporating into our diet in the future.

It's my hope as my energy returns again that I will be able to blog more again in the future.

For now, I am so grateful to be on the right path to feeling good and am so thankful that God directed us where we needed to go to get some answers that we needed very much.

‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Bucking the System

Once again, I've dropped off the blog radar for a period of time, because life has been unpredictable here. I've been struggling with a host of GI issues since I became pregnant with Pax, but switching to a strict gluten free diet has pretty much eliminated all of those symptoms. Praise God! That is a huge step forward for my health.

However, though I have not talked about it as much, I am still battling a chronic fatigue that comes and goes like a beast.  

When I say it's fatigue, I don't mean a tiredness that is normal from being a mom of two little ones. It's a weariness that knocks me on my back and makes me too exhausted to be able to sit up in a chair for long periods of time. It's frustrating. It's discouraging. It's humbling.

I haven't talked about it much except with close friends and family, because I did not want to deal with other peoples' opinions and their labels on top of this illness.  

It's not depression, though I wish it could be fixed with a pill.  It's not laziness, because I am too type A to be lazy for longer than an hour.  (Anyone who knows me just smirked at that comment.)  It's not predictable.  I went for a few weeks without a single episode and thought it was gone, but then it returned this week and had me down for two days.  I hate it.

This past week I started seeing a new doctor that specializes in integrative medicine.  I'm really hopeful that she will be able to give us direction in how to help me heal or at least deal with this better.  I'm starting a Paleo diet this month per her recommendation.  My doctor is ordering more tests to try to help us figure out exactly what this fatigue is and why I keep miscarrying.  Chances are they are connected.

Why blog about all of this now after I have kept it mostly private for two years?  

Well, I realized something this morning.  I love to blog.  It's my way of sharing what God is doing through my life. However, I've really felt like I did not fit the correct "blogger format" for a while.  You see, most blogs go something like this. A blogger shares their story about how something isn't going well... They may be in debt or are overweight or are sick. Then, the blog turns around as they share how they worked themselves out of debt, learned how to become fit, or figured out the secret of how they could become well. You get the picture.

My blog obviously doesn't fit into any of those categories. I don't have life figured out. I'm not debt free anymore. I'm not perfectly fit. I am certainly not a postcard picture of health. In my head, I subconsciously felt like I did not have the right to blog while I have so many unanswered questions... while I am vulnerable to criticism or opinions.

I'm bucking the system.  I am going to keep writing my story.  

I am going to pick up blogging again not for you but for me. Testifying about God's presence and faithfulness in this chaotic mess is my worship to God. I don't have all of the answers, and I probably never will.

In the end, maybe what all of us need is not another blog sharing about how they have it altogether but about a God who came down into this world and turned it upside down with His Son Jesus.

 

Life isn't neat. It can't be filed away in color coded categories. Sometimes, the good and the bad are just a blended up crazy mess that simply point to our need for a Savior and that help us long for a perfect place to go to one day.

Welcome to my blog. The good, the bad, the ugly. May we be transparent enough in our journeys to show people that Jesus is the One who holds us together and that we are a living testimony of His grace. In the end, Jesus is the One who satisfies... not a perfect bank account, not a rocking hard body, or an A plus on our medical report. May we strive together to show people Jesus is enough.

Jesus is enough for me.

Thanks for coming along this journey with me.

^{Ephesians 2:19-22 The Message}

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

Learning to Move On

Well, this blog post is long overdue.  I have wanted to check in again for a while, but I just didn't know what to write.  Free time has been scarce.  About every virus in the county has visited our house in the past few months, and either the kids or I or both have been down.  It's not been a fun season.

Since January, I've been on the low fodmap diet per my GI dr's orders.  While it helped to resolve some of the GI issues I was having, it did not eliminate them, and it completely zapped my energy.  I went to a dietician to try to make sure that I was getting enough nutrition on it and learned that I knew more about the diet than she did.  Fast forward to March, I decided I couldn't manage my blood sugar well enough on the low fodmap, and I decided to just go strictly gluten free again.  Two weeks later, my GI symptoms have been almost erased, and I am starting to have more energy again with less down days.

Two years of medical treatment later and random diagnoses have landed me in the same spot I began this journey on.  I must be gluten intolerant.  I don't need a test to tell me what I already know from experience.  Any time I eat something with gluten in it.  I get sick.  Really sick.  So sick that it knocks me on my back for a few days like the flu.  My tummy bloats like I am pregnant.  I get brain fog that dumbs me down.  It's nasty stuff.

Honestly, I feel kind of jaded and frustrated with the medical community at this point.  While gluten intolerance is a legitimate medical diagnosis, very few seems to know about it in my area.  Because I was afraid of following a strict diet for relief that was "all in my head," I gave up on it, and I have spent the past year off it much sicker than I needed to be.  I can't blame them entirely.  I'm at fault too.

I was gluten free for almost my entire pregnancy with Pax, because it was the only thing that helped me survive the GI symptoms that I had.  Eating gluten meant throwing up thirty or more times a day.  Not eating gluten meant retaining my calories.  It only took a couple of doctors doubting that I had gluten intolerance to give me the excuse to eat freely again, because it is so much cheaper to eat "normal."  Instead of being strong enough to be my own advocate, I caved to their opinions, and it's made life tougher than it needed to be.  Heck, I have huge blocks of time that I simply don't remember, because I was just existing- not living.

I'm moving on.  I know gluten and I will never be friends again.  I hate that I had to take such a long journey to get here, but I'm here.  I really dislike that I will have to check the label of anything that goes in my mouth from this point on, and I really, really hate that I am going to be the kind of dinner guest that is impossible to cook for.  However, this is my life.  Denial won't make my health return.

Hello, my name is Anna.  I have gluten intolerance.  My life is not over.  It's really just beginning.  Apparently, this is part of the story God wants me to tell.

What are you in denial over?  What secret struggle do you have that you've let rest for far too long without dealing with it?  What do you avoid because you know the cost is high and the road is uncomfortable or awkward?  It may not be an illness.  It may be an addiction.  If it is ruining your life and moving you off the mission of loving and serving Jesus well, it's time to deal with it by God's grace.

Let's move forward together and just accept the story God has written for us.  In the end, we're not just telling our story.  All of our stories are simply weaving together to tell His... a story about a God who generously loves, redeems, and equips a broken, helpless people and makes them into something new for His name's sake... a perfect bride for His Son Jesus.

Will you take the risk with me?  Let's move forward for the sake of Christ.  Our time here is short.  Let's make the most of this life.

^"28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,^[a] for those who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified." Romans 8:28-30

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

Receiving My Test Results

Well, today I received "bad" good news.  I followed up with my GI doctor to find out the results of the EGD from a few weeks ago.  The good news is that I don't have cancer, Chrohn's disease, celiac disease, or H. Pylori.  The bad news is that we still don't know why I am frequently sick and hurting.

All of my symptoms seem to point to the broad category of "Irritable Bowel Syndrome," which basically means I have a wide range of gastrointestinal symptoms and the medical community has no idea what is causing them.  

Blah.

What's my plan of treatment?  A strict diet called FODMAP.  Since I have already been avoiding high fat, processed, and sugary foods, it's not a lot different from what I have been doing already.  However, my food options are narrower, and I will have to go gluten free again.  Apparently, it's the most successful plan of treatment for IBS available right now.

I know I should be thankful for what I do not have, but right now, I'm just discouraged to have spent thousands of dollars this past year on vague answers and an even vaguer solution.  

Changing my diet again just means more hassle and effort when I already struggle with chronic exhaustion and down days.  Living on a tight budget, going gluten free again is not going to be fun.  It's expensive!  Anyways, you get the point.  I'm feeling overwhelmed right now, and this isn't what I had hoped to hear.

However, I have two choices today as I spend the last few hours I have before the world ends (I kid!).  

I can choose to feel sorry for myself or I can acknowledge that I am discouraged and move on.  Life will continue.  It looks like my chronic illness is here to stay apart from miraculous healing (which I will still pray for), but nothing has really changed.  God is still in control.  I am still His daughter.  Our world is still broken, but this life is just a vapor.  I can choose to lay on the couch and comfort myself with forbidden foods, or I can pray for the grace to keep going and choose to live.

I choose to live.

Not in my strength... but in His.

Maybe, IBS is not really bad news as it would seem but a reminder each and every day that this world is not my home... that as this body fades away, my spirit is being strengthened and prepared for the fulness of what is to come.  I will not let IBS sow bitterness in my heart.  I will look to Jesus and walk beside Him on the good days when I can walk and let Him carry me on the bad days when I am down. I will not let an illness define who I am.  I am the daughter of a King, dearly loved and on a mission to tell of a loving Father who did not spare His most precious Son because He loved us so much.  A Son who became human and suffered just as we suffer and who lived and died to set us free from what binds us now.  This Christmas, I will choose to live because of this Son... my Jesus.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.