Emotionally Drained

The last few months been really tough. I'm extremely tired and emotionally drained. If you don't want to feel down you probably shouldn't read this post. Just a warning.

It all started off with my mom having a heart attack back in March. I got a call from my cousin at 6:45 in the morning telling me my mom was in the hospital but they didn't know why yet. It turns out she was awake early that morning watching tv and felt intense pressure on her chest and was sweating profusely. My mom never complains and hates to bother people, so she decided not to call 911 but to drive herself to the hospital. It's a good thing she did, because as soon as she got into admitting she passed out. The next thing she knew she woke up with a flurry of activity around her and a doctor telling her she'd had a heart attack. They had to put a stint in to clear up an artery. The before and after picture of the artery was crazy. Before the surgery the artery is about a mm long. After it's about 4 inches. About a month later she had to go back and have another stint put in. Thank goodness she is doing well.

I didn't feel as though I was going to lose my mom, but it sure made me think about how much I appreciate her and how awful it would be to lose her. It also made me consider my own health. Diabetes and high cholesterol run in my family and I don't want either one. I also don't want my children to have to worry about my health. So I've started exercising 3x a week as well as giving up fried foods, eating about 1/4 of the carbs I used to eat and basically eating as a vegetarian. I've never felt more healthy in my life.

Just when things were looking up, my dad texted me one night to tell me my stepmom had been taken to the emergency room for pain and dehydration. About an hour later he told me it was possible she had acute leukemia and she was being transferred to Stanford. I'm grateful that she was taken there because my sister-in-law works there and she and my brother live close by, so I knew there would be support for them there. Within 24 hours my stepmom was diagnosed with acute leukemia and they were talking about blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants. That next Saturday I went up to see her in the hospital. At that point she and my dad had decided not to go through with any treatment, since there was only a 40% chance it could save her. More likely it would just give her another 2 weeks.

I've never sat at the bedside of someone who was passing before. Talk about putting things into perspective. She and I had never really had a close relationship, even though she helped to raise me since I was 9 years old. We were very different people and I closed myself off from her years ago. But she held my hand and told me she was proud of me. She told me not to give up writing about my testimony or playing piano. She said I was always a good person and a great mom. All the years of resentment I felt towards her had melted away when I found out she was sick. And I tell you, it lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. There was so much I resented about her and I realize now that I wasted too much time and energy. She did the best she could raising children that weren't her own. But most importantly, she made us go to church and read the Scriptures. Her favorite quote was Joshua 24:15, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." The foundation for my faith was built upon what she taught me growing up. For that I will be forever grateful.

The day of her funeral I started taking Zoloft. I've started having trouble with pms again. I don't think it is as bad as it was when I was taking Zoloft before, but it was getting to the point where I was spending days at a time depressed in my bed, emotional, swinging from mood to mood and, more recently, becoming violent. We're talking throwing food and overturning the folding table. Alex had been begging me to go to the doctor, so I finally went. The NP wanted me to use birth control to regulate my periods or get rid of them altogether, but I've tried almost everything and the hormones make me crazy. Plus, I don't want to take birth control since I don't have to worry about getting pregnant anymore. I refuse to have an IUD or Norplant put in. This left Zoloft. Since I had taken it before and it helped a little I decided to try it again. Within 3 days of starting it, I became a zombie. I slept all day. I lost my appetite. If you know anything about me, you know that is weird because I love to cook and eat. I also started having trouble breathing. Now whether this was psychological or otherwise, I don't know. But I was conscious of every single breathe I took for 7 days and my chest and windpipe started to hurt. I started wondering if I'd just suffocate one day. Two nights ago I told Alex I couldn't do it anymore and I wanted to stop taking it. He gave me a husband's blessing and I felt that stopping was the right thing. Three hours after I stopped taking it, I felt like a rain cloud was lifted off of me and I became hungry. I'm still not back to my old self but I know I'll get there. I don't know what the next step is, but I can't live like a zombie for the rest of my life.

Now Maayu has been sick for several days with a fever and vomiting. Alex is stressed out by the load of his 3 jobs and the fact that his wife is psycho. I'm really looking forward to summer and hoping that it will be stress free because I'm tired. Please pray that life will start to look up from here.