Lessons Learned

Over the last week I have learned several life lessons the hard way. Take them at face value, but I know if I would have followed this advice things would have been a lot easier for me right now.

1. When you have serious pain for more than 24 hours, go see a doctor. Listen to your body. When you take bottles of tylenol and advil and your pain does not go away, don't ignore it because you don't want to call in to work. Or you don't want to take the time and money to see a doctor because you have already been on google and self-diagnosed and self-medicated. I am so bad at looking at things on the internet and deciding what I have and what I am going to do about it. I am not a doctor. And unless you are a doctor, do not decide for yourself what is wrong with you and what you should do about it. It is so much better to be safe than sorry. That sounds so simple but I would say that most of my friends avoid the doctor until they are miserable when they could have just seen someone and gotten the proper care. So again- SEE YOUR DOCTOR WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL GOOD, K?!

2. Do not take ANY FORM of birth control that is in the same drug family as YAZ. I know getting on/switching birth controls is annoying but if you are on any of these BC's-- talk to your gyno and have them changed. Like yesterday. Im dead serious. Those commercials that warn you (the ones i thought were just people trying to get money by suing someone) are real. There are very real risks in taking these types of medications. And when it is known that some are more likely to cause clots- you should stay away from them! I know everyone has their own opinion  on this and you may disagree with me, but we will have to just agree to disagree I guess. Long story short, I have been on birth control since I was 13. No I was not having sex when I was 13- I just had very bad cramps and also have the tendency to develop ovarian cysts. Birth control helps with this and made my life a lot easier. I started out on the patch. Remember this thing? It was all the rage in birth control a decade ago, but then they found that it was more likely than other methods of BC to cause clots. So, after a few years i switched for that reason. To Yaz. Then, there were all those concerns about Yaz causing clots. So, I changed to the generic for Yaz: Gianvi. This is what I was taking at the time of my blood clot, and my doctors do think that it is very possible that it caused my clot. It is hard for them to be 100% sure, but since I am a very healthy 26 year old girl, most signs lead to this explanation. After all of this, I will never be able to take any kind of birth control again. It is just too risky, and I will have to deal with the issues of my cysts in other ways. I will cross that road when I come to it.

3. Sometimes you have to be selfish and focus on you and only you and not feel guilty about it.  Right now I want to be at my new job. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and stress not being there. I want to move into my new townhouse with my best friend, which I was supposed to do on Saturday. I want to go to target. I want to shower and clean the house and not rest. Shit, I want a glass of WINE! Which by the way will not be happening for 6 months. Basically I'm like a pregnant person minus three months. All of my friends just gained a designated driver for half a year. You're welcome guys! Anyways- I guess this kind of goes back to number 1 and listening to your body. Right now this is the hardest thing for me, especially because i am losing most of my pain and just dealing with other side effects. Thankfully, my new boss is the most calm, understanding, compassionate person ever and so patient with me. I'm not sure how all of this would have worked out if he were any other way.

4. BE POSITIVE. You aren't going to get very far in life if you are always thinking of the "what-if's" and letting setbacks in life get the best of you. Everyone has their own roadblocks to what they feel is being happy- and you have just got to get through it. I personally could not do this without my faith, my parents, or my friends. I encourage everyone to do a daily devotional to help get your mind right. This has been my saving grace over the past few days, and even through weeks where life in general got in the way and I was just anxious about one thing or another. The devo i use is called "Jesus Calling" and you can find it at Target FYI. My sweet mom got this for me for Christmas last year, and she also uses this devo. It's nice because we can talk about it. I don't know about you but sometimes one day of church is not enough to get me through some weeks! And sometimes I make other things priorities (like sleep) and don't even make it to church on Sundays. Tisk tisk. Must get better at this also.

5. Always, always take a shower before going to a hospital. I'm not going to get into details, but the whole shower situation really stressed me out. Oh and don't take shaving your legs for granted!

I guess that is enough lessons for the day, but in summary: listen to your body, get off YAZ immediately if you are taking it or anything like it--especially if you smoke, don't feel bad about taking time for you and your health, have a good attitude, and take as many showers as possible because you never know when you could have your last one FA DAYS!

Today is by far the best I have felt in over a week. Things are lookin' up people. Doctor tomorrow and meeting with UK HR to figure out all of my leave and insurance details. Praying that it all goes well and my new insurance plan can accommodate to all of my new doctors and issues. I just realized this is my third post of the day. I'm not bored over here or anything...