Serendipidy

I went shopping this weekend.  I enjoy getting a few new items for my wardrobe when a new season rolls around.  I also need new shoes.  Caveat?  I dislike shoe shopping. Oh so much!  You know that little known fact that all women love shoes?  Not for this one.  I think it probably stems from having such a hard time finding shows that fit.  My feet are odd.  They're small, but they are wide.  I also can't stand to have anything between my toes, so those shoes that have the toe separator, drive me nuts.  When I finally find something cute, it's not wide enough for my foot.  It's really frustrating.  But I needed shoes, so I tried on several pairs.  Didn't find anything that fit, or that I liked.  Looked at boots too, because I need a pair of winter boots.  I found this cute little pair, and figured, why not, try them on.  So I looked for the right box.  Well, when I found the box for the corresponding boots and saw the name.. I just knew I'd be buying them.  Like fate, they fix like a glove.

 

So on day 26 of my 30 days of gratitudes challenge, I am grateful for serendipity.  Thankful for flukes, and coincidences that happen to us throughout the course of our days.  The happy accidents of fate. 

 

Serendipity is around us and sometimes we are just too involved in our every day lives to notice.  Funny that I had a thought today at work.  Slow down.  Slow down to avoid the mistakes.  Slow down to take notice.  This is something I think we all could do a little more of every day.  Brett and I went to Lowes a week ago to buy something to cover the garden with this snow was in the forecast.  As we exited the garden center, a noise caught my attention, so I turned around to see a great horned owl.  How majestic!  I had never seen one.  The pictures aren't great because it was hard to get close to the owl, but it was still such a strange thing to see at the hardware store!  Yet, it felt like such a blessing to see something so magnificent.  It's wing span was so huge.  I'm thankful for the chance sighting!

 

I promise myself to slow down more often for the off chance of stumbling into something amazing.  Something that makes me feel blessed to be alive.  Something that makes me feel awe at our amazing world.  Our world is filled with wonders and we don't even notice.  Don't let the amazing things pass you by, you just never know, when they will be gone forever.  Preston was one of those wonders and I am fortuitous to be able to call myself his mama.  The wonderment of seeing him again one day is limited to the kingdom of Heaven.  In the meantime, I will rejoice in the serendipity around me... they might all just be signs from my son saying "look mama, isn't the world beautiful?"

Raindrops (day 18 of 30 days of gratitude)

Not a great picture, but I didn't have another one which had rainfall or raindrops.  It's from our road trip through Oregon in 2007.

The rain is so different in Colorado than what I was used to for 25 years in Montreal.  The rain is light.  The rain showers usually have a short duration.  The rainclouds appear out of nowhere and make way for a clear blue sky just as quickly.  At least, that's the way I knew rain for the past 5 years.  This year, the rainfall has been more common.  What was often a drizzle has been more of a heavy shower.  What usually lasted 10 minutes, now stayed for half a day.  Sprinkles, now sometimes downpours.

On day 18 of my 30 days of gratitude challenge, I am grateful for all the raindrops that keep falling on my head.  Rainy days in Montreal sometimes occurred for a week straight and that often affected the mood of others around me.  It made people grumpy.  It made people more irritable.  I've always felt pretty immune to that.  It takes a lot to get to me, usually anyway.  I probably have a shorter fuse now that I've gone through the horrific experience of losing my son Preston.  But the rain, it soothes my mood.  It creates an ambiance of sorrow where I feel, I guess warranted to feel sad.  It creates softer sounds, like a filter of sorts.  Rainfall radiates tranquility.  The sound of raindrops falling on the tree leaves is pacifying.  Even the sound of drops on the roof bring a sense of peace for me.

I often wonder if we've had more rain for a reason this year.  Have you ever heard the metaphor that states that when it rains, it is because God or Jesus is crying?  If it were true, could it be that He wants us to know that He shares our pain.  That He is sorry for our pain.  Is it perhaps Preston, telling us that he missed us, or him sending this feeling of peace to us?  So many similar thoughts cross my mind, and while I will never know, it's nice to think about sometimes.  All my dreams with Preston are broken, but these thought help me find a way of incorporating him into my life.

The rain has been nice this year to keep everything so green.  To help Preston's Garden grow so fruitfully.  The rain has made for beautiful landscapes all summer, as opposed to just through mid-June.  I've often heard that Colorado is the state with the most sunny days.  I couldn't find anything to prove that, but I do believe it, when you take into consideration that rain showers usually last 10 minutes.  Except this year.

I love letting raindrops fall on my head, especially on a warm summer day.  I love the fog the rainclouds can create in the early hours of the day.  After the rain, comes a rainbow...  There are so many things to love about the rain.  I hope that I never let it sour my mood.  I hope that it makes me feel close to Preston forever.  I hope that the following years, continue to bring us rain that we so desperately need.

Remicade, doctors, nurses and modern medicine

How appropriate is it that on day 13 of my 30 days of gratitude challenge that I be grateful for Remicade, as I am currently receiving my treatment?  In that same vein (ha-ha), I am grateful for my doctors, nurses and modern medicine itself.

If you are unfamiliar with Remicade, it's a biologic that acts like artificial antibodies and it is administered intravenously to treat Crohn's disease (like in my case), rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and a couple other autoimmune disorders. The frequency of treatments can range from every 6 to 10 weeks, I believe.  Mine are every 7 weeks.

In 2012, I was oblivious to how much Crohn's had destroyed my body.  Here I was humming along, thinking everything was under control when in reality, I'd just been living with it for so long that it was my new normal.  Abdominal pain every month was normal.  Even when it happened every week it was normal.  Lack of energy, sleeping for extended hours was routine.  When I experienced my first blockage in May, I'd only experienced more pain once - when my gallbladder had gone septic in 2009.

And so, my GI doc got me started on Remicade in May 2012.  I'd heard of it, but I was trying to live sans medication, especially since we were trying to start a family.  After weighing the pros and cons, we decided that this was the best course of action for treating my case of Crohn's disease.  Unfortunately, the scar tissue had built up like crazy in my bowels after decades of inflammation and healing, and inflammation and healing, therefore narrowing the size of my bowels...  Because of that, even though I was on Remicade, I ended up with another blockage in September and made the decision that I should have surgery to regain quality of life.

I'd wanted to put off surgery for as long as possible.  When I was first diagnosed in '99, my doctor at the time had told me that once you have a surgery, it snowballs, and you just end up needing more and more, with less and less intervals between them.  After discussing this at length with my GI doc, my husband and a surgeon, we came to the conclusion that a) I needed some kind of quality of life, b) Remicade is a "maintenance" drug that should keep the symptoms, inflammation, flare-ups at bay and c) in order to have a healthy baby, we need a healthy mom = me.  To my amazement, this was a surgery that could be done laparoscopically, and my surgeon had been dubbed a miracle worker by my own GI doc (who's pretty incredible himself!)

I've been so blessed with wonderful doctors in the past years.  In addition, I've been blessed with extraordinary nurses.  I've come to learn that they are so under appreciated.  So if you are a nurse, know that the world needs more people like you - you have great bedside manners, you have empathy, you have patience.  You know your stuff, and your presence eases our mind when you are present.  My hospital stays have not been a fun time.  They've been filled with pain.  Filled with hunger.  Filled with feelings of entrapment to a certain degree.  When you are stuck in a room and you aren't on narcotics, but you can't do anything.. you start to go a little stir crazy.  My most recent stay was supposed to be a happy one - and while it had happy moments, it was really scary.  My son, Preston, was so tiny.  He had no meat on his bones when he was born.  He wouldn't eat when we tried to feed him.  Having him go to the NICU, at the time, was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do.  But, he thrived in there, making headway every day.  Getting stronger every day.  And I can't thank the nurses enough for giving him that chance. 

If it weren't for modern medicine, for the incredible doctors and nurses I've crossed paths with, I don't know if I'd still be here.  Perhaps I'd have no quality of life.  I probably never would have been able to have Preston.  I could be dead myself.  Preeclampsia, and high blood pressure have taken many lives I'm sure.  And while, losing your baby, can feel like total hell, I'm still thankful that I'm still here.  I'm thankful that I've had the strength (and help) to survive.  I'm thankful because it allowed me to have the most wonderful little boy in the world.  I'm thankful, because my husband needs me.  I'm thankful, because, life isn't always roses and butterflies, but every now and then, there are rainbows and bunnies...which makes life worth it.  Cherish every fleeting moments of happiness, even if they are few.  They can make a world of difference.