Puppies, Babies, And Death.

I had a fairly eventful week and weekend. Lots of doctor appointments, as usual, and it was my sister's birthday.

We also had an extremely unexpected and very tragic death in the family. I feel as though I am at a loss for words to write.

I think that blogging has been very good for me, it helps me process my emotions better, and focus on one thing fully. Which I am sure as you can imagine is difficult for me, because of all the things currently going on in my life.

This morning I had another doctor appointment, and me and my mother went to see the baby in my belly. Everything is measuring beautifully and she currently weighs in at 4 pounds, 3 ounces. We didn't get any photos to take home this visit because she had her arms over her face- again!

Last Tuesday she had to have an echocardiogram done, and the doctor was worried that one of her major arteries was massively too small, which would require surgery at birth, and all these things for Tim and I to think about, and stress over. We had an appointment at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia the following Friday to get it checked out. Turns out that the abnormal increased blood flow in her aortic valve is not cause by something like a tiny artery, the big concern, but could possibly be caused by a missing leaflet in her valve. A much more common heart defect.

I feel odd talking about my daughter's possible common heart defect in such a calm manner, because it is still just that, a heart defect. Ideally, she wouldn't even HAVE a heart defect.

But it is what it is and I can't change it.

If she does end up with a heart defect, I can't help but feel totally and completely responsible. Diabetics who choose to reproduce know full well that their offspring are much more likely to have organ and heart defects. I am selfish, and am willing to allow my child's quality of life to be lacking, simply because I want a baby.

I find myself downtrodden today. Sad, and lacking confidence, lacking conviction, and lacking motivation. I just want to lay in bed with my dog and watch netflix. And maybe eat a donut.

Death is tough to deal with. Everyone has their own coping mechanisms and outlets. But just the thought of it... I don't know. It leaves me feeling uneasy and angry. Mainly when the way is happened was violent, tragic, or just out of the ordinary.

Life is really really hard to deal with sometimes.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my cardiologist. They sent me home with a 24 hour heart monitor. I am wearing it currently. I have 3 hours and 27 minutes remaining, then I can take it off and return it to my doctor's office. I slept horribly last night, I was up most of the night.
It doesn't help that my dog has decided that he needs to go all the way downstairs every single night to use the bathroom. But I guess that is better than having to clean up an accident in the middle of the night.

I enjoy blogging, but I feel as though I am not very good at it. I feel scatterbrained, and random. I feel boring and uninteresting. I feel as though all my posts are the same.

I'm hoping to get more posts out there, maybe have a weekly quota I need to meet. Practice makes perfect, they say.

I think I'll go nap with my pup.

Peace, Mego out.

"There may be pain in the night, but hope comes in the morning."

This is harder than I thought it would be. As the week progresses, literally every day I have said to myself, "Well, at least it can't get any worse!"

What a joke.

I do not understand. Some people take this so lightly, pregnancy and carrying another tiny person, even just children in general. I have never felt such a heart tearing feeling in my life. Some shit has gone down before, some shit that will never get any easier... But this, this is different.

This is life changing.

This is my child.

I can feel her tiny legs kick with all the force she is able to muster, I can hear her tiny heart beating, and see the small but strong strokes of it when I am at my OB's office.

"There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning."

All week I have had this very real sense of peace, and comfort from God. But I can't help but feeling it all crumbling down around my head. I feel panic, I feel an overwhelming fear and dread. I feel like everything in my life is so different now than is was 3 years ago, along with my priorities and the things that matter the absolute most.

In the bible, one of God's promises is that when we get to heaven, we get a brand new body. Perfect, and without disease.

I have forgotten what that is.

I have no other choice but to believe this to be true, because I am drowning in my sadness with life and where I am, the state that my body is in. The anxiety that I cannot seem to control. The tears that never seem to run out.

The fear.
The hopelessness.
The anger.

I want to stop trembling, and I want to stop feeling the way I feel. I want to have complete hope in Christ, complete trust and total selflessness in Him.

And its so hard. I am weak and tired, exhausted from hanging on. I'm trying to let Him carry me. I am trying.

I've never been so afraid. I want my baby to not just be healthy. I am terrified of how I will deal with it if she isn't. If I'm feeling like this now, with no definite answers, what is going to happen if she needs surgery at birth? I always hype myself, and make things worse in my head. I'm praying that it is all ok, and I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I love her more than I've ever loved anything... And I don't know how to handle any of this.

I want peace. I want understanding. I want the damn rapture to come and take us so God can give us what he promised, brand new bodies in a perfect place, for ever and ever.

I am afraid. Writing helps. A little bit...

I need to sleep. I need to pray... I need a cup 'o noodles.

Peace, Mego out.

Mother Of Pearl

I seem to be having more bad days than good lately. I didn't want my blog to be a downer sad blog in which all I do is complain about my terrible doctors and poor health, but at this point I'm just discouraged and feeling like a downer, if we're being honest.

It's like everyday is just more bad news. Sometimes the bad news turns out to be my doctors over-reacting, and other times (most times) it's real bad news. And it's really discouraging. Angering. Saddening.

All of these feelings are not healthy, but all of these feelings are valid... I struggle with this daily. As a Christian, I want to have the ability to lean on God and let myself be comforted in the strength of His power, but in my flesh I struggle with negative feelings that are of this world. Stress, anxiety, feelings of helplessness, lost hope, bitterness, hatred, feelings of "Why me?" Among many other things.

It is so much easier to curl up in bed and cry about your life, and the shit storm it feels like its turning into, give into all the negative feelings. Cry out to the heavens, "WHY ME?" Hell, I do it all the damn time. I get little blessings throughout the day, or week, and maybe I just need to be better at focusing on them instead of the negatives.

 I don't know.

I don't know anything anymore.

I feel like I've got it somewhat figured out, then the hits just keep on coming. I said to my husband tonight, "What a week, huh?" and then he proceeded to inform me that it was, in fact only Tuesday.

Mother of pearl, let's coma this out until Friday, yes? Who's with me?! I do NOT want to deal with the rest of this week unless all it has in store for me is visits from people who I love, boxes of chocolates, and LOTS of takeout food.

On a lighter note, I should probably wait until I have people who are actually reading my blog, but you know... I'm impatient.

After you use the lavatory, do you wipe while sitting, or wipe while standing? I do it one way, and my husband does another. As do the rest of his siblings, same as him. (At least the ones I've actually ASKED.) It's kind of a private, personal question, I guess.

But anyway, I'm intrigued to say the least, to find out just how many people do it differently. I honestly was so shocked to find out anybody did it differently than I did! It had never crossed my mind.

Leave me a comment, or whatever else you can do on this here bloggy blog.

Peace, Mego out.

Eating Again, Little One?

Today I was looking through the thousand and something photos from our wedding and engagement shoot that I just figured out how to put on our new laptop, and I just kept thinking how pretty I was and how skinny I was and how badly I wish to be that size again.

And then it struck me how sick I was too.

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes just shy of 2 months after my "Happily ever after" day.

Should I do a little backstory? Probably. Here goes!

In September of 2014 I was hired at a local bakery called Delicious Orchards in Colts Neck NJ. They weren't supposed to keep anyone after the holidays, but ended up liking me and a few other people so much that they kept us after Christmas.
 It was amazing.
 I've never had a work experience like that before. I know a lot of people says it's like "Another family" but these people really were like my 2nd family. We laughed, we cried, we confided, we fought and we loved. I met some people who I will never forget, and I also met some people who I'd rather not ever see again, thank you.

Anyway, enough sappy shit. Where was I... Oh yea.

So when I started I had some pretty long days filled with lots of physical labor. I went from sitting on my couch watching netflix to working 5 days a week, 7 am to 5 pm (usually) if not later. Then after the holidays things started to slow down, as they usually did at the Orchard. But my hours changed. I started going in around 5 most mornings, it was time to make the donuts! Some mornings I wouldn't have to be in until 530, and others I had to be in at 4 or 430- depending on the donut  expectations during the week.

I hadn't really been feeling too well the past few months, and it intensified when my hours changed and I started my workday at 430-5 am instead of 7am. I thought I had just never adjusted fully to the whole working full time gig. But when I started working earlier, man oh man was I pooped. My head pounded constantly, I was always achy and had a lot of back and neck pain, and pain in my abdomen. I honestly thought i was just getting abs that you couldnt see under my pooch i have always had. Then I started losing a lot of weight, despite the amount of food I was eating... Looking back I can't believe how we didn't know something else was happening. How we didn't know something was wrong. I ate so much I don't even know how to describe it. Let's just say that EVERYONE in the whole place knew me by how much I ate. All the older ladies would always tell me to "be careful, it will catch up to you someday!" People who I didn't even talk to would walk by me on break and say "look at Megan! Is she eating again?? It's only 10 in the morning and I've seen her eat 3 meals already!" I'd just give them the finger and tell them they wished they could eat like me. Ha.

One of my close friends, we can call him Rozwald, this wonderful Italian man with the sweetest accent in the world would always jab me in the ribs with his elbow and say he couldn't believe how I ate. "Eating again, little one?" We would sit together at lunch and breaks every day and he would watch me eat and shake his head in disbelief.

And despite how incredibly much I constantly ate, nothing could quench the hunger I always felt, and nothing could quench the thirst. I would drink close to 2 gallons of water every single day. And don't even get me started on how often I peed. I was blessed to work with certain people who actually liked me, because when I say I was heading to the bathroom every half hour, I was heading to the bathroom every half hour. I used to joke and say they were going to fire me because of how many bathroom breaks I would always take.

Besides the constant pain I was in, plus the headaches, the eating and drinking and peeing, I was so exhausted. Which again I contributed to the fact that I just didn't get much sleep and I had to be up early for work. I honestly thought all of this was normal. And so I dealt with it. For months I dealt with it. Almost crippling tiredness, pain, sluggishness, moodiness, and weight loss. I thought this was normal stress related, teen stuff. After all, I was planning my wedding at the same time.

Fast forward to my wedding day. Everything went so well. There were some not so great things here and there, but overall, simply wonderful. I couldn't have asked for more in a wedding day!
Then we honeymooned, (which is a completely different blog post in itself) and returned home to our normal lives.

A few weeks after we got back, my husband and I filed for life insurance after the prompting of my wonderful parents. We were young, totally healthy and it would be cheaper the healthier we were. So we figured why not?

I remember a few nights after we filed, I came home after being out somewhere, I don't remember now. I walked into my living room where my parents were sitting just the 2 of them. Which is weird for my home because of all the people living in it. My mommy told me to sit down so I did, close to her. I said, " Come on guys, who died?" with a little chuckle. they smiled and said nobody died, but they got an unsettling phone call they had to tell me about. They said that the rep from the life insurance company, (also a family friend) called them directly and said I was rejected for my life insurance because I was a health risk and they couldn't risk insuring me.

I was rejected. I was rejected for life insurance out of nowhere.

The reps aren't supposed to call you, and it was odd that he did, so I knew it was serious. "Am I dying? Do I have cancer? Why would they reject me?" My mind was spinning.

My mom told me that my long term blood sugars were very high and I needed to go to the doctor and have them checked out.

My A1C was 12.3 And I was very sick. My doctor was baffled that I wasn't hospitalized. I count myself blessed because for many other type 1's, they find out they have diabetes because they end up in the hospital for days with syrup running through their veins instead of blood.
I know I was blessed. But It's still hard to feel sometimes when you're stuck with this lifelong disease that touches you every single day of your life.

My DO family was so good to me, so understanding and gracious about the whole thing. My doctors said that I shouldn't be working in the state that I was in, and I told the Orchard that, and everything was ok. I'm not saying that it wasn't an inconvenience to them because I'm sure that it was. But they were just so good to me and told me that I had a job when I wanted to come back.

3 months after I was diagnosed, we found out I was pregnant. to the shock of my doctors, I had gotten my A1C down to 6.9 and was seemingly healthy enough to carry a child.

My life was falling apart, but my dreams were coming true at the same time. I will admit, I wasn't in a good state of mind since my diagnosis, and only recently came out of that. It was the hardest year of my life and I felt very alone. Very sad and alone and abandoned by God and thinking thoughts that I am afraid to even admit to myself.

Sometimes I can only think, thank God I got pregnant when I did. Because I value this tiny life inside of me more than I value many things in my own, and I truly believe that through God, she saved me.

At my doctor visit last week, I found out my A1C is now 5.7 and my numbers have been alright. a few highs here and there but nothing I can't handle. (I say this now, but if we just keep in mind my last blog post, I'm sure I'll recant that in a few days.)

I wonder if my life will always be this roller coaster of happy and sad, or will it calm down and I'll mature a little (or a lot) and be more stable? Not that I think that I'm unstable, I just think that I'm only 19 and still have some growing to do.

I think it will be better when Maggie is here.

I can't wait to hold her in my arms.

Peace, Mego out.