SO much has happened in the past 1.5 years it's overwhelming to try recount everything. That's why I've put things off- I kept telling my organized self, "your stories won't be in order, your pics won't be in order, your thoughts are going to be all over the place...Well, yep they will be when your skip 1.5 years of your life in blog form!
For those who started following me many years ago because of my illness here's a brief update. For about three years all of my labs have been normal. I've traveled. I've water skied. We've moved. We've renovated. We've had surgeries (and about to have another) and a concussion. A LOT of life has been happening with a pretty "normal" in remission type of body! About three weeks ago (kinda out of the blue) I started having some symptoms of that pesky dermatomyosits disease. Since I don't mess around with those kinds of symptoms I headed straight to my rheumatologist to get labs done. That night he called to tell me sure enough my CPK was quite elevated (remember that number I've charted for the seven years and kinda has looked like a roller coaster?! Yup, that one.). My initial reaction was shock and some tears. Chan and David were standing right there when I was on the phone with the doctor. Remember, Chan has never really quite understood what all this disease has done to me since it was before he came into the picture. I reassured him my tears were really not from fear but from complete frustration. Frustrated that I'd COMPLETELY gotten of my steroid 6 months and have been tapering off off my other "steroid sparing" meds for months as well and have done great! I've slept better. I've not had the brain fog. Did I mention I've water skiied all summer? In other words...I've felt STRONG.
My next response was- "Let's pray! I'm NOT going down this spiral again, and I certainly am not going to to listen to satan's lies that want to trip me up!" I made a couple more appointments- one with my Chinese medicine doc and other with my holistic medicine doc. I got chewed on a bit from the last doctor, and honestly, I deserved it. When verbalizing to her the timeline of going off my steroid (which was approved by my rheumy), tapering the other meds plus detoxing my body through a pretty dramatic diet/lifestyle change I'm thinking to myself, "Ummm, yep, that was a lot for my body to get used to. Bad girl!" So...I'm back on some meds that I have a love/hate relationship plus an entire slew of supplements that have helped before, and I already see some improvement. Hubby has put me on "house arrest" by limiting all my activity level. Ugh.
Other things happening on the home front is that I have three teenagers in the house! Abigail has just started her senior year in HS and filling out college applications as I type. She's a starting player on her varsity volleyball team again, and she loves it! Audrey An and Chan are now in 7th grade- crazy. Audrey An is following in her sister's footsteps with volleyball, and she is one determined little gal. Love watching my girls play a great sport. Chan is all thing computer, science and math. He's so smart and even got the highest GPA in math last year. Pretty unbelievable he does so well with only being in the USA and speaking English for four years.
We've had some great vacations the last couple of years, and we are all so grateful. We've moved since my last post. That was and is a complete gift from the Lord! I can't remember what our summers were like before this one-one without being able to literally walk 5 minutes down to the dock, push a button on a lift and drive off in our boat. It's been the source of many many happy memories, parties and spur of the moment "let's go for a sunset cruise" with lots of friends and kids (almost 90 this summer!) from school and church. We have taught kids to knee board, water ski, and wake surf (but I'm leaving walk boarding lessons to someone else due to Abigail's accident and concussion last year!).
Here are a few pics from this summer. Maybe I'll do a more detailed post of some of the adventures later...
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| Wake surfing is so fun..l.don't think I'll ever slalom again. Wake surfing is way easier on this "older" body of mine! |
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| Sisters skiing! |
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| David's a professional now. |
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| Being goofy at her senior pic day! I "might" have shed some tears! |
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| First day of school! |
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| This morning was breathtaking- no filter! |
