#and this was after a doctors appt which always causes terrible anxiety

[sxvxrxssnape]

my diet these days have been wildly fluctuating between being vegan bc that's what i ultimately have wanted to be for like 4+ years, switching to vegetarian after a few weeks (namely when groceries run out and i don't have much money) bc it's cheaper and i have severe anxiety when it comes to eating out/with others and it's easier to simply request no meat than no animal product altogether, to being so fucking depressed i can't bother with food/don't even care to eat so I just rely on whatever my husband makes/brings home and it's always meat based but at that point I could care less and it continues until either im so god damn tired of feeling sick all the time (ive been vegetarian for 70% of the last 6 years, and vegan for about 20% it, so my body just doesn't like eating differently and i only went vegan in the first place bc i was constantly feeling ill) or my food anxiety over what I'm eating finally overtakes my depression of not wanting to stay alive, and I go back to being vegan

but the problem with fluctuating so constantly based on my moods is that it makes interacting with people so difficult. it's a constant "wait I thought you didn't eat meat" and "but you ate the barbeque we made last week :( I tried something new with the smoker and I'm really proud of it :(" which makes me feel awful and i just give in and eat it but my anxiety is yelling at me for eating things that aren't on my safe list but my self hatred eats at me if I don't bc then I have to tell my husband, who went out of his way after work to splurge on a food item my anxiety can't handle right now because "you said you were having a bad day and i just wanted to cheer you up :(" that I don't want it and wow doesn't that make me look ungrateful

like my ideal would be a mainly vegetarian diet with vegan things mixed in whenever I can afford it/just feel like having it and the only thing stopping me from living like that is the anxiety of being a burden to the people around me/being labeled as difficult bc I won't eat something. I tend to only eat vegan at home and when I see a cool already vegan menu item and vegetarian is such a low maintenance request but the idea of having any request makes me anxious (and it's so god damn difficult, I have trouble asking if I can get a fucking crunchwrap with no tomatoes bc I feel im asking for too much) and i hate attracting attention towards myself when food is involved i hate it hate it I hate it i hate everything about it and eating it and the way foods not on my safe list makes me feel and how it feels like I'm suffocating from it

my only real saving grace right now is being pregnant i can just brush it all off with "oh im trying to keep it vegetarian like I was before but sometimes the baby is just really craving fried chicken haha :)" despite the fact that i have had zero cravings and I'm only eating x bc at this point it's that or starve myself and I'm too tired to think about food and it's a good excuse for why I'm constantly jumping from diet to diet, but I'm kinda wondering what im gonna do after the baby is born, but I'm hoping it gets better and i stop feeling like a stranger in my own body and feel more in control after the baby is born bc I can't look at my god damn reflection or keep my hands from measuring the circumference of my thighs to make sure they're still the same size and my eyes/body dysmorphia are just playing tricks on me and they're not suddenly 3x in size, and maybe everything will go back to normal after all this bc I am so god damn tired of still having food anxiety after like 7 fucking years

Sometimes I wish I was an annoying vegan animal rights activist who remained committed to their diet for the animals but i only did it for health reasons/it was the easiest step to recovery after finally reaching a breaking point with my eating disorder but apparently I never got past the "its okay to eat as long as it's healthy" step bc now whenever my depression throws my life to the side i stop caring about what I eat bc I stop caring about being alive and then its just a matter of time until my anxiety about food is worse and it's a constant cycle of it all and I'm fucking tired m8. i used to say I had an eating disorder. Had. But I'm starting to think it never actually went away. It just found a different way to manifest.

#i would be fucking surprised if any of this made any god damn sense #im sorry for the rant im sorry for being a bother #but i had a bad anxiety day that featured 2 panic attacks and my husband took us on an impromtu picnic at my favorite beach spot yesterday #and picked up my usual from burger king #and I'm in the middle of my 'can only eat safe foods' anxiety #so i was up half the night having a panic attack and wanting to hurt myself for eating something not on the list #and this was after a doctors appt which always causes terrible anxiety #i managed to eat half my usual breakfast then spent the next hour trying to breathe through the 'maybe you should never eat again' anxiety #so im fucking tired and done with it all #my post #food anxiety #eating disorder #tw

[beauty-brains-and-booty]

I need insight on some female-reproductive health issues I have going on.

First, I’m not asking for any sort of medical advice, simply if other people have had a similar experience or can relate. I have NO idea what’s going on, and my first appointment with my new OBGYN isn’t until the 19th. I just would like some peace of mind in the meantime I guess? Warning: I’m going to get VERY TMI and put things in a timeline.

So, a bit of backstory. I’m 26. I’ve been on birth control for over 10 years now (first the combo pill, but I had to switch due to having certain types of migraines). I’ve now been on Nexplanon (the arm implant) for almost 5 years, and yes I’ve had it replaced after the 3 year mark. Before Nexplanon, I always had heavy periods, they were regular, but rarely any PMS symptoms or cramps or anything like that. After starting Nexplanon, I only had a period about twice a year, and they were always very short and light.

Within the last yearish, I started having periods more frequently as well as PMS symptoms and cramps. They’ve now become more regular. I’ll get a period every 5 weeks now, they’re heavy, and I get terrible PMS and cramps along with them. I’ve also been having light spotting between periods too, usually around the time I’m ovulating. I realize that’s normal. However, things have become very NOT normal lately.

My last period came a week early (the standard 28 days instead of 5 weeks). It started on September 25th and ended after only 4 days and was super light compared to usual (mine usually last 5-7 days). I had one of those weird gut feelings that something wasn’t right. I ended up taking a few pregnancy tests over those days of my period just to be safe. This may seem like overkill to some, but I wanted to be absolutely sure. I took a blue dye stick test. I wasn’t sure if I saw a VERY faint 2nd blue line or it it was just my anxiety. So, I went and got that triple pack of First Response tests (pink dye, digital, and rapid result). All of them over the next few days came back negative. So I just figured everything must be fine

A week ago (1 week after my last period had started), I began having pain in my lower abdomen/pelvic area. It was a dull ache and kind of felt like I had a 10 lb rock sitting inside me. I’ve had that feeling before and it tends to go away, so I just waited it out. But then on Thursday and Friday of this week, the pain got SO much worse. I have a general dull ache in the center/left of my pelvis/lower abdomen as well as on and off sharp pains on the left side around where my ovary should be. I have a LOT of pressure too as well as spotting, on and off nausea, and an on and off low grade fever.

Yesterday (Friday) when I woke up and went to the bathroom and wiped, I had some light yellow/green discharge and a bit of pink spotting. That was the only time I’ve had that discharge. I went to urgent care, they tested me for a UTI that came back negative and said to follow up with my OBGYN and go to the ER if the pain got worse, as they were limited in what they could do for OBGYN issues. Later in the day, I started having a bit more spotting that was dark chocolate brown (sorry to make that comparison but that’s exactly what it looked like. I checked my period calendar, and based on a 28 day cycle (which my body recently decided it was going to start), this was the day I was supposed to release an egg during ovulation. I chalked it up to maybe I’m just dealing with that weird syndrome where you have spotting and some pain during ovulation.

Today (Saturday), I woke up and felt okay at first. But then as I got up and started moving around, the pain and pressure came back and it’s SO bad. It’s radiating to my lower back, hurts to move, the spotting is more to where I have to wear a pad now and is more red than brown. I’m SO bloated (which I always am to some degree, but moreso now). A few hours ago, I started getting what sort of felt like a cross between menstrual cramps and diarrhea cramps. It came in a huge wave and I immediately went to the bathroom and pooped (important because I haven’t been able to do that in days because of the pain and pressure). Felt a bit better understandably, but I’m still having more menstrual-like cramp pain in addition to the sharp pain on my left side that’s now pretty constant instead of occasional. I still feel like I have to poop, and it feels like I have an inflated water balloon on my left lower abdomen. I feel like whatever is going on down there, there’s just so much pressure that it’s pressing on my bowels and making me feel like I need to go to the bathroom when I just can’t.

I did take another pregnancy test earlier. My reasoning was if it for some reason came back positive, I might be dealing with an ectopic pregnancy. It was negative though.So now I’m stuck here wondering what stage of medical issue am I at: 1) Is my period just fucked up due to something undiagnosed like cysts or endo? 2) DO I have a cyst and that’s what’s giving me these problems? 3) (the least likely but still on my worry list) WAS I somehow pregnant and the tests came back negative because I’m going through a miscarriage now?

I don’t want to go to the ER unless I feel it’s absolutely necessary. I’ve already been twice this year for other unrelated things and know how they can be about women’s reproductive health. I’m terrified of going and them just telling me it’s IBS and an irregular period and to follow up with my OBGYN. But at the same time, I’m not sure I can wait another week and a half if this issue doesn’t start to get better. Urgent care can’t do anything. I can’t get into Planned Parenthood until AFTER my OBGYN appt is scheduled for. I may not be able to get into my primary doctor either. So I’m stuck.

Has anyone else had similar issues? What ended up being the cause? Did anything help? Currently, OTC pain meds don’t really help and I’m just in bed and only moving when I have to. I know no one can tell me with certainty what I’m dealing with, I just hate feeling confused and alone and in pain not knowing what the issue is. Thank in advance for any insight or advice or kind words.

#personal #period #periods #menstrualhealth #menstration #women #woman #womens health #women health #female health #pcos #endometriosis #endo

[thenightisland]

you know the drill:

this is becoming like its own series but idk how else to explain this awful year i don’t even feeling like properly linking so here’s just the URLs of the other ones in the series: 1. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161087786689/explanationsupdates-under-the-cutmore-i 2. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161920216354/additional-updatesexplanations-under-the-cut 3. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/163767959805/updates-under-the-cutmore-post-one-post-two-on 4. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/164398486219/on-the-fourth-edition-of-what-the-fuck-is

one of the assessors got jumped a while back. she was just walking past a pt in the main assessment dept and he jumped up, punched her in the back of the head, took her to the ground and beat the fuck out of her. she was out for weeks and weeks and had broken facial bones. i can’t believe she didn’t quit.

our nurse executive quit though. not like, went prn or gave two weeks notice, like just straight up was like I’M DONE and walked out which honestly is the closest i’ve ever come to respecting him.

while having more psychologically unstable pts isn’t new, having more medically unstable pts has been a problem lately. like our crash cart is not like a medical hospital’s crash cart it’s like. an ambu bag some iv supplies and a stethoscope no lifesaving medications. when a pt has a medical issue we send them out to a medical hospital because obv we don’t have the resources to treat complex medical issues where we work. which didn’t used to be an issue because you’d used to see maybe two medical codes a year on my unit. we’ve had /ten/ since my last update post /just on my shift/. two of which weren’t even “pt is going downhill fast” codes they were “pt has no heartbeat and isn’t breathing” like we had to fucking bring two people back from the goddamn dead /within ten minutes of each other/. we’re all like we’re psych nurses man if we wanted to do this shit we’d work er. [and the er we’re required to send these pts to is awful like they sent us back a guy who had almost died twice in three days who had an /untreated brain tumor/ bc obv he’s totally fine]. or we’ve been doing mash unit style medicine like the suicidal kid with partial thickness burns all over his chest and neck that literally no one was doing anything about. we were debriding burns with a mixture of different PO IM and SQ drugs to achieve the same effect as IV morphine because debriding is extremely painful but not doing it will just make things worse and no one else seemed to care so we just fucking did it. like we’ve done so much medical nursing lately. like the one with the uncontrolled severe seizures that led to the medical hospital labeling her first break schizophrenia despite no family history of mental illness but /five different medical issues that all cause psychosis/. or the one they let on the unit despite being on the do not readmit who has untreated hiv that he actively tries to give to other people and /active tuberculosis/. or the one with the aneurysm. or the one with severe CHF. and on and on and on. and remember: we’re not the most medically unstable unit in the hospital because we have a 40 bed /geriatric psych unit/ so you can imagine the kind of pts /they’re/ getting. on the plus side, all of our ten odd codes lived.

my personal life is still a goddamn mess, of course, but that’s a given. don’t even know where to begin with all that. and i can’t talk about a lot of it which makes it that much more fun.

i had an entire crisis about the odyssey [which tbh is still kind of going on even after /weeks/] because i’m getting so cagey in memphis because i fucking hate this town. and i just got back from new orleans which is the closest thing i have to an ithaca at the moment and it killed me to come back to this fucking city.

i’m also really paranoid right now because after i come back from vacations, something terrible always happens and i’m not exaggerating it’s like clockwork to the point that the bad things have all happened between friday and sunday after i’ve returned from my vacation, each time, without fail. well that would be this weekend so i am just waiting to see what great horrors await me this goddamn time. [last time, it was the whole coworker killed in vehicular homicide thing]. but i guess paranoia isn’t the right word. you’re only paranoid if you’re wrong, and my life has already set the precedent. so i guess anxious is the better word.

the anxiety is increased given that my mother has been out of work all week because they’ve had trouble regulating her blood sugar and so she’s been really sick and even said so herself she’ll probably end up in the er over the weekend because she doesn’t think she can make it till her next doc appt because she’s miserable, and she’s already been in the er once when this weird shit started happening a month or so ago so the Vacation Curse has me even more concerned than usual, which is saying something. 

there’s a new psych doc working now and everyone is really unsettled by him and we’re pretty sure he’s a genuine psychopath like completely without exaggeration and he’s already done a lot of really creepy things to/with staff members and one nurse said in passing “i’ve known a lot of doctors like him he’ll end up fucking a pt at some point” which we initially left to hyperbole but he’s been doing shit like transporting female pts to other units without the staff’s consent in his own car which is like all kinds of not allowed, and the way he talks to some of the staff is just downright rapey honestly. and so we had a rough case this summer who, through the combined efforts of my squad, we got her from a diagnosis of intellectual disability with schizophrenia, nonverbal, self harming all the time, history of physical and sexual abuse, constantly in restraints and on a 1:1 obs level to a new diagnosis of autism spec with ptsd because her “hallucinations” were /flashbacks/ and she ended up very social and verbose and like fucking read william blake for fun and had a great sense of humor and was off all special observations and had a transfer to another facility pending so she could get more 1:1 long term therapy, and the creepy doctor was covering her case while her actual doc was out of town and he rode all the way to the other hospital with her which is another thing you do not do, and we found out from a coworker that she is now a /2:1/ [two staff members within arm’s reach 24/7], self harming again, in full shutdown/meltdown mode, and nonverbal. and it was such a rapid deterioration that all of us lost sleep over the possibility that this creepy doctor might have done something because even after she was at the other hospital and therefore no longer our pt, /he kept going to see her/. which fucked us up a lot because we were the ones who worked so hard for so long with her. like even the thought of it.

recently had 25th birthday so naturally had a crisis about that because i’d always said my goal was to be out of memphis by 25 and yet here we are. 

another of our fave pts, esp one of /my/ fave pts, died out of literally nowhere. the day before my birthday. so that was great.

also felt really surreal to see the news about the convictions in the holly bobo case, which i found out about when one of my coworkers was reading the news on his phone during a lull one night i forgot that to him and everyone else it’s a national news story [hell it even has its own wikpedia page] but to me it’s just /holly/ because she was /in the class above me in our nursing program/. my first semester in college i remember seeing her face on missing posters on every building on campus. so it was really a weird moment of dissociation for me. glad the motherfucker was found guilty on all charges, obv. 

the tech of mine who got his skull slammed into the floor, the one who’s been out with what can only be called severe psychological trauma, is supposed to be coming back the third week in october. which i just. i mean i’m glad because he’s one of our best guys, but i’m also like /why the fuck would he come back/ because he could be a fucking english professor again. motherfucker spent part of his youth growing up in italy and montreal, lived on the west coast for years, /was/ a college professor, did time as a script doctor in LA, and was a fucking thriller novelist who just gone girled himself for whatever reason and ended up working with us. there’s literally a reddit thread asking if anyone knows what happened to him and i want to be like don’t worry it’s fine he works with me. but so we’re like why would you come back to this place after what happened to you when you have so many other options available to you????? what are you running from that makes you so desperate to keep centering your life around a locked acute psych ward???? why did you gone girl yourself to begin with??? like he was screwed up enough there for a while that he wasn’t even answering his calls or texts and our boss had to send the police to do welfare checks on him because he lives alone so it’s like man why not go back to the life you had before and /get away from all of this/ it’s not like my situation where i’d rather be living a different life but have never done so, he already has the foundation because he’s already lived a different life he has an in that i don’t have and i can’t for the life of me figure out why he thinks working as an acute pysch tech is the better option. 

but i mean. we /do/ call our unit the hotel california for a reason.

#karen's adventures in trying to sort her life out #this got longer than i intended whoops

[wellpersonsblog]

Dear Nolan: Months 5 -7

Dear Nolan-

Here were are again, way behind on your monthly updates. So instead of apologizing, I’m just gonna do my best to catch up and record what’s been going on with you lately. I shared your 3-4 month update the day after we got your tongue tie revised with a laser. That same day we went to your 4-month appointment and you had dropped down to the 9th percentile for weight and the doctor had given us a month to get your weight up.

So, later that week went headed to a lactation consultant. She said it didn’t seem to be a supply issue. We did a weighted feed and you took 4 oz, but only after I forced you to nurse both sides. You took 2.5 oz on the first side and typically you’re more of a snacker. You’ve never liked to eat for long periods of time and would be content with just one side so I often skipped the second side. The LC encouraged me to try to get you to eat on both sides at every feed. Over the next week, I did my best but sometimes you weren’t interested, sometimes you ate but then puked half of it up and sometimes it just wasn’t possible with your brother and sister running around. But a week later you had gained 7 oz so we figured that was the ticket. 

After that first week I got a little lax about pushing both sides and the next week you’d lost an oz at our weight check. I learned you’re kind of a lazy nurser and if I wasn’t fully focused and working hard to get you a full feeding on both sides at each feed, you were probably going to have some weight gain issues. That meant no sitting and scrolling social media while feeding you. I had to focus, keep you engaged, do breast compressions while you were feeding, etc. So, I started being really focused again and after another week you gained 5 oz. The LC looked at your weight gain since birth and you had gained more than the minimum amount for an exclusively breastfed baby. She suspected you were just destined to be long and lean like your mama was as a baby. Since it had been about a month since your last appt, we relayed all this info the pediatrician and she said to keep doing what we’re doing and come back for your six-month appt. 

After another 4 weeks, I took you back to the lactation consultant so we could get a weight using the same scale before we went to your six-month appointment because there was a definite difference in your weight on the digital scale at the LC’s office and the manual scale at the pediatrician. Since your last weight check, you’d gained 12 ounces. The lactation consultant told me the acceptable weight gain for your age (5-6 months) was 3-5 ounces per week for an exclusively breastfed baby. So you’d gained 3 ounces per week.

You were definitely smaller than your brother and sister were at six months, but we headed to your six-month appointment feeling ok about it. However, the doctor told us you’d dropped from the 9th to the 3rd percentile for weight which meant that for your first month of life you were in the 50th percentile and you’d trended down every month since then. Your height had also dropped from the 80th percentile to the 65th. Our pediatrician was worried and said that if something were wrong like your heart, lungs, kidneys etc were working too hard and burning extra calories, the body protects the brain first, which is why your head circumference stayed on track, and then height and then weight. So kiddos would often fall off the chart in weight first, then height etc and that could indicate a problem. So she wanted us to get some testing done. You got blood drawn to check your thyroid and other levels, and EKG to check your heart, we collected urine to get that checked etc and everything came back normal. She’d been debating between us seeing an endocrine or GI specialist and since all your labs looked good, she sent us to see a GI specialist just to get things check on their end.

With the stress of all the testing and weight gain issues, I could tell my supply had dropped. She didn’t initially recommend formula since we’d done some weighted feeds and you seemed to be intaking enough, but I wasn’t against supplementing with formula if I needed to. I started pumping and doing some triple feeds to boost my supply again. Meanwhile, you were quickly losing interest in nursing because of low supply and a slow letdown. The weekend after all your tests came back normal but before we got in to see GI, I started supplementing with formula. Even though my supply was coming back up, I knew in my heart that the doctor was going to recommend supplementing. 

During the waiting period, I was starting to get super anxious, trying to figure out which formula to choose, being overwhelmed with all the options, worrying because you were nursing even less than before and getting frustrated. So, to ease my own anxiety, I did some research and then just picked a formula (Enfamil Enspire) and started it! It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole and get overwhelmed when picking a formula so for my own sanity, I just needed to make a decision and get started. I continued to pump when I could to boost my supply, continued to nurse and gave you a few ounces of formula after each feed. 

By the time we saw GI later the next week you had already gained weight. You were handling the formula well, not getting constipated like your brother did when he started formula and my supply was also back up and I’d figured out a position to get a quicker letdown so you were nursing better as well. At the GI appt, they said all looked good and that it was likely you just needed some additional calories from the formula. The pediatrician pushed out our weight check out a few weeks so we go back mid-July for another weight check but you’ve definitely gained weight and we’re finally getting into a rhythm. You’re getting 15-18 oz of formula per day and nursing the rest. 

In the meantime, we’ve also started solids. It’s been a totally different experience than with your siblings. Your brother was ready to eat anything and everything at 5.5 months and never looked back. Your sister wasn’t ready until closer to seven months but also dove in and never looked back. You have been much slower to adjust to solid food. Pretty much everything that touched your tongue for the first 3 weeks caused you to make the most terrible faces. There’s a whole highlight saved on my Instagram if you want to watch his reactions (called Nolbot eats). 

But each day I try to offer you a few tastes of a few things and you’re slowly getting more interested! It will be interesting to watch your feeding journey to continue to develop. We’re working on exposing you to the top 8 allergens and have covered wheat, dairy, peanuts and eggs so far.

Right around six months, you figured out how to sit up. You went from struggling to stay up for 1-2 seconds to sitting for minutes at a time in about 2 weeks. Now you’re at 7 months (as of yesterday), sitting like a champ, close to crawling and like to stand up with assistance for short periods of time. 

You don’t have any teeth yet but I think one might be coming in. You just switched to size 3 diapers this week. You’re wearing mostly 9-month clothes. Some six-month stuff still fits and some 12 month but most are too big. 

You’re a happy baby for the most part. You nap on the go almost always and still aren’t sleeping through the night but slowly making progress. 

You spend a lot of time in the Ergo and also like the stroller. We go to the pool a lot and you enjoy splashing in the water. Once you learned to sit I started bringing you in the shower with me and you sit and play happily on the floor. 

You LOVE your brother (and sister too) but Squish especially can always make you smile. We’re constantly telling him to be gentle but i think you guys are going to have a very special bond. You’ve started playing with some of our musical toys and like them!

You’re a mama’s boy for sure, but you love your daddy too!

I love watching you grow but also wish time would slow down a little bit!

Love you, 

Mama

PS. You can read Squish’s 7-month update here. And Lyssie’s here.

First found here: Dear Nolan: Months 5 -7

[evanmorgensternobsessivecomedy]

2018

Lengthy, stream-of-conscious (so, deal with it, Ben!)

My therapist likes to use the airplane oxygen mask analogy: "Make sure you put yours on before you assist anyone else". You can't assist them if you're passed out or, dead. As someone (and, not tooting my own horn) who tends to make sure everyone else in my life is OK before I check in on myself, I've tried to take that to heart. 

To call 2018 a giant shit show is an understatement; and, it seems to have been for so many of us. I've been saying 2018 started 2 years ago. I equate it to when I first saw my favorite college sports team get placed on probation and have the amount of scholarships it could offer talented players cut down. You didn't see the team do bad right away. It took 2 years to see the impact. The last 2 years in the current political climate have been horrendous, but, have been only getting worse as we see the effects continue and, gain momentum. 

Everyone's experience is different. There's always a reason to look at the bright side of things. I'm here, I'm alive, I have a great support system. But, my experience this past year has been not good. Ringing in 2018 was fun! But, there was no illusion of the next 365 being like that. This past month marked 15 years in NY, for me. This year has been ...something. Those who have mental health issues know that anxiety can trigger our actions that result from our issues. I've never used as much sanitizer in my life than 2018. The BadI had a foot surgery (I knew was going to happen the year before). Going in super early to work to start gaining leave time to use and, gimping around the city with a cane and walking cast was not pleasant. Nor was the time consuming and costly physical therapy. (I am super grateful for insurance). The workloads at my job have become increasingly overwhelming due to management's desire to take the credit and stand on our shoulders (they got a luncheon and medals, actual medals for OUR work on cases for Puerto Rico after the storm). I'm at my wits end and am actively seeking employment elsewhere, wishing I didn't have 9 years out of the private sector. An evening earlier this year found me having a nonstop stream of heart palpatations leading Nicole to take me to the ER where I stayed over night and, was diagnosed with a Supraventricular Tachycardia (arrythmia) leading to a Cardiac Ablation (long, heart procedure where, in twilight sleep I got to start coming out of it and very much feel when they sped up my heart rate -it felt like large steel beams pushing on my chest).A few searing laser procedures on my leg veins for circulation help. Lost and had to let go of some dear friends. My sports teams are all terrible! (OK, THATs not the end of the world). Deeply troubling things in my family and, close friend's families of which I can't even get into at this rate. -"Bury your idols": Doesn't just mean famous people but, people you've deeply respected and loved for years who have betrayed you and your family. There was the death of someone who, regardless of all things that have happened in our shared universe had been one of the most amazing people in my life. Some of the best people I've met after moving up here have been people who don't actually live here. Did I mention all the little things happening like my messenger bag breaking on a crowed subway full of wet people in from the rain while I had gone to a doctor's appt I was unaware wasn't happening?Watching friends and family suffer through physical, emotional, and mental anguish and, knowing all you can do is try to be there. The GoodAn incredible support system! I couldn't have gotten through all my physical issues without my loving spouse and, my mother who came up after the foot surgery. The Bowie exhibit! Seriously, what an awesome memory. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is so good! Wonderful strives in and out of school for my amazing nephews!Did I mention a lot of great new friends and friend experiences? I've met some great people this year. Nicole's surprise "staycation" stay at a very posh Manhattan hotel and a very nice dinner. Have I mentioned I'm married to the greatest person ever???San Diego Comic Con! FlameCon (So VERY proud of my wonderful spouse and, her becoming the President of GeeksOut)! NYCC! Trivia nights! None of us know what next year will bring. I'm going to try to be proactive for the good. My mother's friend who is confined to a wheelchair says, "I don't say 'have a nice day', I say 'make it a great day!' cause, while we can't always do so, sometimes it's on us to make it happen." 

#2018