My family is perfectly imperfect and not a day goes by without humour, tears or tantrums. Blogging is the modern version of keeping a diary so feel free to read along while I share the good the bad and the ugly aspects of being me!

Monday 8 October 2012

Keep Calm And Eat A Cupcake



Over the years people have asked me how I seem to cope so well emotionally with the stress and problems that life tends to toss in my direction and the answer is simple - I eat.
When I'm happy, sad, angry, bored, overwhelmed you name it I deal with it by eating. I celebrate every milestone and heartache with food and my body has paid the price over the years.
Food became my friend and I loved it... I still love it but I now understand that we have a passive aggressive relationship and I can go from feeling wonderful to resenting myself in the length of time that it takes to swallow.
What feels great in the moment quickly turns into a feeling of self loathing which results in self sabotage and binging. Not the healthiest lifestyle to lead.
I have always struggled with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, like my food choices I tend to binge with diet and exercise. I find a purpose such as pregnancy or needing to fit into a dress for a wedding and work towards it like a fiend and when that's done so are my healthy choices.
I realized the other day that I am now five pounds heavier than I was when I delivered Maxwell. That throughout Nicks illness and Maxwell's health problems I have gained close to 30 pounds over the last two years.
That realization came life a kick in the ass - its time to fix this problem.
I thought about the last time that I was at my healthiest and the answer is when I was pregnant. I ate properly and I exercised and I got enough rest.
Its time to get back to that mindset. Over the last two weeks I have been going to the gym and following the routine that my trainer gave me, I restarted my medication for poly cystic ovarian syndrome and was more conscious about my food choices. Despite my efforts the scale only showed a two pound loss, I was frustrated but focused on the fact that its still a loss. I know that to see the real results that I am hoping for I am going to again have to start following the "PCOS diet" that yields the best results for those with the syndrome according to my nutritionist. I previously lost 60 pounds on that "diet" but I didn't feel to great while following it.  I think that the biggest struggle for me is going to be learning to evaluate health based on other factors aside from numbers on the scale or on the tag in my pants.
I'm a work in progress but I am excited to get started (as excited as a girl that has to resist cupcakes can be)

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Funk & Information



I am again today adjusting the sails but the path remains unchanged.
Yesterday was rough, I spent most of the day glued to my cell phone waiting for the cardiologist to call with the details of the previous day's video conference between MUMC and Sick Kids. This would be the call that would tell us for sure if Max needed open heart surgery or if they thought they could correct the ASD using the catheter procedure.
Finally around 4:30pm the doctor called..... do you have time to talk now or would you like me to call you tomorrow she asked.
She said that as we suspected the rims of his heart look small and they all agreed that open heart would be the best method however there was a hiccup.
All of the doctors agreed that with Max's GI problems unresolved it is too dangerous to perform surgery on his heart. The possibility of infection is too great and could cause serious complications if there is any bacteria in his body.
The surgery will have to wait. 
Dr. D was very quick to reassure me that clinically Max looks stable and doesn't appear to be at risk of heart failure. I understood their worry and putting my child at risk isn't something that I want to do either but as you know if you follow my blog we are now almost a year into the GI quest and we aren't much further ahead, if GI is what we are waiting for then we may be waiting for a very long time.
Dr. D said that she agrees with me that GI needs to get a move on and she said that she will be personally contacting them to try and motivate them into action.
I spent much of the night in a funk, I was out of ideas and I felt like I was failing as a mother.
Not only is my child always uncomfortable and ill but now he has to continue to live with a hole in his heart because both hospital departments are not wanting to be the one to go first.
Today I kept my routine as usual but while on the treadmill I found a new sense of determination.
Armed with my ipad and iphone I scrolled my contact list and left emails and voice mails for both the GI booking clerk and the nurse.
I manged to get Maxwell's January appointment with Sick Kids moved up from January to the middle of November and I got an email back from the GI nurse with some informative information.
While Maxwell's abdominal nodes are still enlarged they are not as large as they were in December and therefore lymphoma isn't something that I need to be concerned about, it is likely as we suspected an indicator of their being a bowel problem.
She also gave me some blood work results which could be pointing us in the right direction; one of the tests ordered is called ESR (Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate), this test detects inflammation in the body. A normal range is 1-10 and Maxwell's results were 12. The other test was a common one, a white blood cell count. These cells act as the body's defense and are usually elevated when there is a problem or infection.
The normal level is 5-12 and Max's results were 11.7 
These test results combined with the enlarged nodes and GI symptoms are good indicators of something called Inflammatory Bowel Disease (the main types of IBD are Colitis and Crohn's).
From what I was told the best diagnostic tool for this is a colonoscopy and so I will be pressing for this to occur in the near future.
I wont get bent out of shape over the fact that Dr. Dummy was supposed to do this when he was doing the endoscopy. I will just consider this as another confirming sign that the move from MUMC to Sick Kids was a wise choice. 

Click here to learn about Inflammatory Bowel Disease