2013 Year In Review

This year brought a lot of major life changes and new beginnings for me. Mostly positive ones. I moved to a new home in a different location and am now (finally!) comfortably settled in here. I am living within walking distance to a major doctor's office, lab and my physical therapy clinic. I'm also extremely close to groceries, gas and restaurants. The convenience of not having to drive everywhere has simplified my life a great deal. The appointment running has calmed down a bit too with the exception of physical therapy and dentistry that is. The dental work I've had done and am still having done has tried ever fiber of my being this past year. I only have seven more fillings and five more crowns to go before I am completely cavity-free. I have had a grand total of three root canals, one crown and three fillings done this year. The physical, emotional and financial stress of dental work is enough to drive anyone clinically insane. I realize I have to keep plugging away at fixing my teeth to avoid future root canals and extractions, as those are not an option for me.

My physical therapy appointments though tough, are also rewarding. I don't look at physical therapy as just another appointment, I view it as an integral part of my weekly routine. I am already seeing results in the strength department. Luckily I build muscle pretty quickly which is helping to stabilize my ankle along with the rest of my wobbly body. I am lucky to live right next door to such a great physical therapy clinic with a therapist who also happens to suffer from hypermobility and TMJD herself. Doing physical therapy as a teen saved her from having TMJ surgery and that experience was what led her to the field. I feel optimistic about the progress that I am making and feel myself getting a lot stronger each and everyday. I only go twice a week but have an intense home exercise program that I do daily, sometimes in my living room and sometimes at my apartment complex's on-site gym, which is another nice feature of the new place.

The first month after I moved was fraught with major challenges concerning air quality. I had selected and moved into a ground floor unit, but unfortunately the complex was built on a wetland and as soon as the rains started in my apartment reeked of a strong, sickening mold smell. So much for life in a "luxury" apartment. A home humidity monitor I purchased revealed that the internal humidity reached 75% everyday. A normal internal humidity level is between 30-50%. Anything above 60% provides ideal conditions for mold growth. I fought with the complex to let me move to another unit. An option which was totally feasible considering it was brand new construction and only a quarter of the units were occupied. Their corporate management initially denied my request calling the mold smell a "subjective" complaint since they couldn't pinpoint the exact source of the mold. Upon conducting a bit of careful research and calling the city building inspector it turns out that the problem was much larger than bleach or exhaust fans could have ever fixed. In order to remedy the problem, the building would have had to have been torn down completely. Because apartments are technically classified as commercial space (even though residents inhabit them as their homes,) the city allows them to build on concrete slabs without crawl spaces. They didn't allow the concrete slab to cure long enough in the construction process which resulted in a subsequent sponge-like effect on the foundation every time it rained. Every time it rained that damp moldy smell crept up into my home from the concrete floor, through my carpet and into the living space.

I finally moved into a new apartment in the same complex at the beginning of October after enduring a month of hell in a moldy apartment. I am now living on the second floor of an apartment that doesn't smell of anything other than whatever I have been cooking in the kitchen. My sinuses are much better now and I can actually breathe out of my nose in the mornings again. Something I had wondered if I would ever be able to do again. Although sinus surgery may become an inevitability down the road due to a deviated septum and bone spurring, for now I have dodged a major bullet by avoiding surgery. And I am happy to put it off for as long as possible unless it becomes a necessity. My new apartment feels much healthier and I can breathe easy here which is a huge relief.

I am doing decent in the health department at the moment (aside from a nagging, two-week old mystery upper right quadrant and back pain that landed me in the ER for bloodwork, an abdominal ultrasound and a HIDA scan to no avail and is currently being investigated by my primary care doc). My health is something I do not take for granted at all. For the most part my POTS is controlled and doing much better now that I've removed myself from the moldy environment of the other apartment. Earlier this year I had a scary bout with benign positional vertigo that finally subsided after taking a month round of Augmentin antibiotics for my sinuses. It was a scary time for me. Every time I layed on my right side or flat on my back I would get the spins. This continued for a few months with my doctor telling me it was "just some inner ear virus," and an ENT insisting it was benign positional vertigo spurred by spending too much time in a dental chair as I had a scary incident where some heavy duty dental drilling back in the chair spurred a major attack. Whatever it was, it is no longer happening to me now and I am so thankful. I had a follow-up with a new ENT the other day and luckily they were not able to trigger the vertigo in his office. Because of my history with rotational vertigo during dental work though, he wants me to undergo a more sophisticated test called a VNG early next year to measure eye movements during different positions and then conduct a repositioning procedure in the office to resposition any inner ear crystals that may have become dislodged.

In 2014, I still have plenty of work to do. I would like to make more strides in the health and fitness department with an emphasis on healthier eating. I definitely have some work to do in that department. I am fortunate to have a wonderful boyfriend who enjoys cooking for me, the problem is he enjoys cooking tasty comfort foods without worrying about things like nutritional content or calories. Oh well, I can't complain too much. I know how lucky I am to have someone who cares about me and takes good care of me. I am finally in a healthy relationship, one that I don't have to change myself for. Compared to my verbally abusive ex, this experience has been night and day and I am so thankful.

So to sum it all up, this year has brought some health ups and downs, but overall I'm in a good place health-wise. I'm in a good place location-wise after finally moving into a healthy apartment. And I'm in a great place relationship-wise with someone who loves and respects me. Next year I intend to get my body in peak physical condition and hopefully start to renew old hobbies one by one without destroying my body in the process. For now I will have to say no to ballet but may take up pilates and yoga again in the new year.

Other Side Of The World

The last few weeks have been considerably tougher for me than usual. Not in a health sense but in an emotional one. My father, who lives on the other side of the world, contacted me recently. He has essentially been a stranger to me for the past twenty years. I finally decided to "do the right thing" and write him back even after a lifetime of no effort on his behalf. Although I felt and still feel that it is too late to salvage any sort of a real relationship, I wrote him the letter. And writing it proved to be somewhat therapeutic for me. I did not resort to using profanity or overt insults like I wanted to, but I did give him a piece of my mind in a very direct yet tactful way. I received his response via snail mail and it did not contain any shocking surprises, just tired excuses. It was clear by reading his letter that he is every bit as self-centered as I had imagined, inquiring very little about me or my situation in life. He is clearly very focused on himself and always has been. The one good thing that has come out of this whole communicating-with-the-estranged-father-thing is that I finally learned a little bit more about my health history on that side of the family. He does not know how sick I have been for the past three years and how hard his sudden decision to contact me out of the blue has been on me. When I was a child, he was always out of sight and out of my mind. He admits in his letter that I was probably better off without him growing up. And he is probably right. Throughout my childhood I kept hoping to witness the slightest ounce of effort on his part. No birthday cards, no Christmas cards, year after year. Absence.

So its no surprise that lately I have been questioning a lot of things in my life, including the impact that his absence has had on me as a person. He certainly made life more difficult for my mother and I both financially and emotionally, and when I really think about it, I realize how lucky I am to have turned out as normal and well-adjusted as I have (although I certainly still have my issues, who doesn't?) His leaving at such an early age left me with very limited faith in relationships and marriage, and makes me very skeptical of any guy who tries to enter my life.

Over the last few weeks I have decided that I need a change in my life. A big one. A change of scenery, a move. I want to move to the other side of the water (about an hour away) to be closer to my family I have here in the states, the only family I have ever known. I also need to be somewhere that is more centrally located, so living near a ferry is a prerequisite, as is being within walking distance to a business/retail district where I can take care of light shopping and errands without always having to drive for miles. Ideally I will find a place that is newer construction but still has character, and also a separate space I can designate for my home office. Although I love my new job working from home, there are many elements of working in a conventional office environment that I really miss--especially the social aspect of always having coworkers nearby. By the time I finish my full-time work for the week, I am usually exhausted, my eyes hurt from staring at the computer screen all day, and the last thing I feel like doing is going out. But yet I miss it so much. I think living in a new place would provide a nice change of pace, and being closer to things would enable me to at least leave the house on lunch breaks with more minimal effort. Where I currently live, I am too far away from most places, and the fact that I can't drive very far due to dysautonomia makes me feel trapped in a tiny bubble that I am ready to escape from. I am sure many of us have felt that way at times, but lately I just can't shake it. I haven't felt like myself. Sometimes I wonder if I may even be a little depressed. However, this time I don't think it's anything therapy sessions can cure. So it's time to take matters into my own hands and make a sensible change to snap myself out of this rut.