In December, I tried my best to give my kids a “normal” Christmas, but of course, I overdid it. Even though I kept cutting back my ToDo list, I couldn’t keep up. Of all my ambitions, many weren’t realized. For instance, I had planned to put an adorable hand-knit hat (or scarf) on the head (or neck) of many many a close friend’s young child! But I only ended up finishing 1 scarf in time to give for the actual day.

I did most of my shopping early, I did a lot of it online. I started wrapping early. I set lower standards for myself (like “only” making 12 handmade cards). I tried to “pace” myself as much as I could (I still have not learned if that’s an official thing you can learn and apply to pain in a unique way, but I just spread things out in a common sense way!). But still, I totally crashed…

Week before Christmas, I was in bed to pull myself back from the edge of total breakdown. I camped out there for a few days, starting with the Sunday after our annual open house, which was so wonderfully busy and FULL (of caring and dear friends, of busy children, of sweet babies, of adorable toddlers), it made me feel real happiness, which cut sharply and bravely through the pain and exhaustion. I hung onto those feelings, even the next day when I barely left my bed or my room.

Christmas Day, my son woke insanely early and was in and out of our room. We got up with him and went downstairs at a more reasonable hour and I put on my usual happy face for the kiddos. I’m so very very good at that now. Not first thing in the mornings, usually (my DS has literally screamed at what he calls my “scary morning eyes” – bleary, dark, can-hardly-open-them tired eyes), but as I get going, I can look almost normal. I dressed all up for the traditional brunch with the family. It was nice except that I missed handing out half my cards when I went to lie down in my parents’ spare room bed.

A few days after Christmas, I found myself having severe chest pains. They lasted hours and hours, even when I took myself right to bed at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. It was hard to tell if I had any other new symptoms – after all, I frequently experienced headaches, was sometimes short of breath or dizzy, was always having aches and pains, was exhausted round-the-clock and had been regularly suffering from increased nausea for weeks due to medication changes anyways! Still, when my DH looked up the chest pains, we became worried my heart was involved and most of the information out there will tell you: DON’T take the risk, get to a hospital right away!

My heart passed all the tests there, which was a relief but also meant I would get bumped down the priority queue and would wait for many hours to find out what was actually wrong with me. I finally got an answer at around 10:30pm (still having these severe extra pains this whole time!). The doctor was very informative – she gave a Dx of Costocondritis, which is apparently very common for women who have Fibromyalgia, especially women who have larger breasts (and my DDs hadn’t exactly been well-contained in my bras with all the fighting against gaining extra weight as of late!). She advised me it would take a few days for that particular episode to calm down and prescribed heat and ibuprophen (while dropping my regular anti-inflammatory medication to not destroy my stomach too much).

I did get that episode cleared up, but it has been back very regularly since over the past 4 weeks. Lovely! Isn’t another side effect of everything I have going on *just* what I needed? An online friend in a Chronic Pain group used a term that I am totally adopting now because it is just the perfect word to describe everything that has happened to me the past few years: collateral damage. This domino effect of all these events and circumstances that have followed the collisions… like those cars didn’t just hit me: they bumped into my LIFE and started knocking over everything, piece by piece, area by area. Health, fiances, parenting, marriage, volunteering, hobbies, social life… and now nothing remains untouched.

Anyways, I hadn’t intended to vent about how miserable I am (I’ll save that for my therapy sessions, which I’m finally finally doing at long last – carving out time for myself to heal a little!). Point being: I went through this and it sucked, and I wish I’d know about it before. Obviously I’m not a doctor so even if you are someone suffering from Fibro, if you think you have something going on that could possibly involve your heart, you need to get checked out! But now you can have this to hold onto like “maybe it’s just this…” so you’re not, say, worried the whole time that you might die and leave your husband and children behind to look after themselves without you. And that maybe they might not do that very well because even though you *think* you only take up space on the couch knitting all the time and not cooking anymore, you actually do a lot for the family with planning and organizing and what not. Just for example, if you were someone like that.

Next point is that I can barely crawl to my home office to update my blog. Or post pics of my knitted works. Or pics of cards (not that I have created all that many new ones lately anyways). I have been considering closing or changing it again, just as I have been considering closing or changing my small business, KStar Design. I’m so behind on life things and health things and real things that I don’t know why I would want to keep trying to keep up online as well. I officially stepped down from my Young Mommies Boards recently and it felt so sad but it was also very necessary.

More on all this later (hopefully?), but change is in the air…

ETA: the original version of this entry was glitchy, only the re-posted version (Jan 31st) is the full copy

Also another time for our annual donation to the March of Dimes for the work they do with families with premature babies, NICU babies and those who have lost a baby or fetus. I know their Berreavement package was very helpful to me when I was grieving my losses, and I want to make sure that good work can continue.

Previously, you may remember, I had created one for our 2nd lost baby, willow… This year for our donation, I created a band for sienna:

sienna’s band

Next year I will try to remember to create a third band for our other miscarried baby so that they all have one.

If you are someone who makes regular donations to charities, please consider making a donation in the name of one of our angel babies, or just towards the March of Dimes in general.

When we lit our candles this year, I sent a little prayer up to them in heaven and told them I hoped they were playing and happy. I asked them to please help watch over their brother and sister here on earth. I told them we still missed them so much and thought of them often.

In our new home, I have created a little “nook” where we can store some of our memorabilia for our angel babies… Each of their cross-stitches hangs there now on the wall and there is a little shelf that holds some of the little knick-knacks that I bought when I was pregnant and/or grieving. The little baby shoes have their birth-stones, as do the other little statues. There is also a calendar photo I had laminated and wood-mounted that reminded me of them – the 3 babies are wearing colours that are similar to the genders we think the babies may have been (1 boy, 1 girl, 1 undetermined).

When I was talking to my son about lighting the candles and explaining why we do it, he seemed to understand more this year (although he also seems to have mostly forgotten the conversation, 2 days later! lol). I know it is a bit sad for him to grow up knowing that he has 3 angel siblings watching over him, but he also has some awareness of the knowledge that he is such a miracle, it took 4 tries for Mommy and Daddy to be able to have him and keep him!

We are still sad when we remember our angels and we will miss them always and wonder “What if…?”. But we definitely count our blessings: one, two!! Our living children are amazing, smart, and healthy, and thank God for all of that!

I updated the description of my pain/disability category to the following:

“After being hit twice by careless drivers (once in 2000, once in 2008), I’ve been left with permanent spinal injuries and with daily chronic pain. A 3rd collision in 2011 caused by another careless driver added to the psychological trauma and fear of being a magnet for bad luck.”

JUST what we needed right?! And this time I wasn’t alone in the car either, my husband and daughter were with me, so now they are hurting directly too, not just indirectly through losing my care and attention…

It’s hard to say what ranked higher on the scale of “freaked out”: my mind or my muscles… This newest collision was minor compared to my first time getting hit and was even maybe less of a “jolt” than the 2nd collision a few years ago. But it has taken all the work I’ve done on battling the fears of being out on the road and brought it backwards.

As for the muscles, everything has been very flared up. I went right to my massage therapist the day after we were struck and he said that even laying his hands gently allowed him to felt my muscles twitching. One session calmed them down, but even within that same afternoon, I could feel them acting up again.

So here we go again, adding something on top to recover from. I keep saying “Once I recover from __, I can get back to work recovering from ___”, but now things are stacked up SO high on top of one another, I don’t even know how to get through this pile or if it is even possible anymore!

My body and mind have been bashed at so much from all angles, they just feel like giving in and giving up. I’ve always been a fighter, but there’s only so much one person can take!!!