The good, the bad and the EMBARRASSING!

My dear friend Hannah is having this fun thingy-ma-bob (I never know what to call it! Hehehe...). It's like a giveaway ten times over, a blog party, and just a get-to-know-each-other. There's sweet prizes - if I don't win one, I'm going to be veeeery sad.  (Oh, and I apologize for posting TWICE today - but I had to do this otherwise honestly I would have forgotten)

AND! Before I go any further, my hemoglobin is up to a smashing 11which is fantastic!! Three units of blood raised it six degrees. SO awesome. And get this (just have to brag about my misfortunes a liiiitle more): if I hadn't come in when I had, I would have gone into a coma. A COMA. That is so freaky.

Okay, now, before I start rambling about something else, I will return to the thingy-ma-bob. Planting Chums. THERE! Finally got the name. Hehehe. I'm supposed to give you four things about myself. This is going to be boring for those of you who have followed my blog for a while - but for those awesome new followers, read on. :-)

1. I love those little kid shows, like Backyardigans (though the characters confuse me...what's a moose doing, riding a horse?).

They make me feel so nostalgic. Plus they have plots that require no thinking whatsoever - so that's always nice, right?

2. I am terrible at board games. Or any kind of games.

I cannot win anything. I can't even win War because I'm so unlucky. I always get the 2s and the 4s. Never the Jokers. But games are different from SPORT games. I'm so competitive there, whereas with other games, I couldn't care less. Anything with a ball and two teams and a field just gets me going. :-)

3. I cannot fake an accent to save my life. Anything that I try to accent comes out sounding half-British half-lunatic.

It's true. Ask my siblings.

4. Sometimes I am VERY overdramatic (not to mention I exaggerate everything and say "like" aaaaall the time).

My dear friend and I were reading one of our old chats once when we got into a big fight - and I was SO overdramatic it was not even funny (actually, it WAS really funny :-). I would show you some of the things I said but it's really embarrassing. Haha. I'm laughing just thinking about it. Okay, I'm probably going to regret showing you this, but look (me =  me, obviously):

me: you know what, im DONE with talking to you. just LEAVE me ALONE!

And we were literally fighting over the LITTLEST thing. It was HILARIOUS. And believe me, it got worse.

Haha. We've had good times and we've had bad times.

Appreciating the LITTLE Things:: "Oh this? This is my Sansa!" :: a cute video

My younger sister Ab has this Sansa. It seems to be a theme with the younger girls...a few of my friends have younger sisters with Sansas. A Sansa is a cheap really cheap music player. It has like one GB of storage, so it's not good at all.

But you know what? She is in love with it.

There is an iPod touch and an iPod nano in the house. Yet she is perfectly content with her Sansa!

Again...I have so much to learn! As I'm writing this, I'm overwhelmed by how much I can take this and apply it to my life. It's all persepective, you know. You could look at having a Sansa as opposed to an iTouch like this: "Why does he get an iTouch? And I am stuck with this stupid thing?!"

OR. You could look at it this way: "For a long time, I didn't have any music player. A Sansa isn't the greatest, granted, buuut. It's something."

That goes for everything. Life is so much easier if I take a step back and re-adjust my perspective. Having a good attitude makes it easier on me and on those around me.

Soooo many times have I had to check myself and change my attitude. I never realized how whiny I can sound until I took the time to listen to the words as they came out of my mouth. I never realized how crushing a simple remark can make until I took the time to notice what impact my words had on others. I never realized how ungrateful I can sound until I took the time to step back and re-adjust my outlook on things.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. Hebrew 12:28

Ungratefulness is a BIG issue. Paul (or whoever wrote Hebrews - thats a controversial subject) was aware that people were struggling with it two thousand some years ago! And that sure hasn't changed since...You know, we're sponsering a child. And Eugene has nothing. It helps a lot to remember a personal name when trying to change my ungratefulness to thankfulness. "I'm complaining about what we have to eat - Eugene doesn't HAVE anything to eat!" That helps more than, "I hate what we have to eat. But people in Africa dont have anything to eat." It helps a lot if you sponser a child.

And once again, Ab is teaching me so much. She is begging Momma and Daddy to let us sponser another child! She said she is willing to give up her allowance in order to sponser another child. Wow. She once gave fifty dollars of her own money to buy Christmas gifts for Eugene.

I will leave you with this cute video.

And about my health issues: I'm going this morning to the doctor again to do ONE more blood-draw. To check my hemoglobin, just to be safe. Only one more blood-draw. Again, I LOVE YOU ALL! Thank you so much for all your SWEET comments! Okay. With that over, I leave you again with this adorable video. :-)

Oh, and ignore the "related vidoes" that pop up after the video is over...I have no idea who they are from and what about. Watch at your risk.

It's Over. That what I need to remember...it's OVER.

Thank you all so much for your beautiful wonderful comments. As I was laying in the hospital bed crying because my head and arm hurt so bad, I read your comments from my phone...and it made everything so much better. Like seriously, I can't tell you how much they boosted my attitude. I knew that it was gonna be okay because I had all of my crazy awesome blogger friends praying for me. :-)

So let me just start at the beginning, when everything started going wrong and we had to go to the hospital. I was bleeding abnormally long, and so that's why we went to the doctor in the first place. Doctor Albert checked my blood, did some tests, and sent me home. We got a call a few days ago saying that everything was normal.

But my momma was concerned because I had been feeling so weak, and looking so pale. So she called the office and they told her to bring me in. The first thing the doctor said to me was, "Oh my gosh, you are SO pale!" She even went so far as to say I looked like a ghost, and coming from a doctor, that can't be good.

I took some pictures of myself before I went, and looking at them now, I am amazed. My face was literally dead white, my lips were the same color as my skin, I had purple bags and red eyes. I can't believe I even went in public with my color the way it was.

So Tuesday afternoon, Doctor Albert told me I needed to get some more tests. So Momma and I walked to the lab, and I remember wishing that I could go home and go to bed. My vision was cracking and my knees were wobbling, my head aching. It wasn't that great.

I entered the lab, was seated in one of those big chairs, and the nurse got one of those scary knifes hidden in a box. She slid the tip of my finger into the rounded corner in the small knife-box, and clicked a button. The blade gashed my finger, and the nurse squeezed it to get blood out. Finger-pricks don't sound very painful, do they?  But your fingers have many many nerves on the tips, because they touch so many things. So yeah. It was painful. It was to test my hemoglobin, and she got the bottle with my blood and gave it to the doctor to test.

Then she got another box thing with a hidden blade, and cut my arm this time, right next to my other cut from a few weeks ago. She timed how long it took for me to stop bleeding.

Normally, it takes eight or ten minutes. Ten minutes max. It took me sixteen minutes to slow down, and even then the bleeding didn't stop completely. So the nurse was concerned about that. But before she could do anything, she got a message from the doctor, requesting that we go back to the room immediately. Which means something isn't right.

Doctor Albert said that the normal hemoglobin level is 12-18. My hemoglobin was 5.3. Which is EXTREMELY low. She said I needed to get wheelchaired to the emergency room immediately and after that, ambulenced to Minneapolis (about an hour away) to the Children's hospital to get more speciliazed care. I didn't know what that meant, all I heard was "ambulenced." I was really excited, I gotta say. I mean, seriously, AMBULENCED? How awesome! Mmm. Not. (Thankfully, I didn't end up being ambulenced to Minneapolis.)

I was wheeled to the ER. I was put in a side-room, and was told to undress. I had already gone through so much and was in so much pain I didn't even care. I was dressed by a nurse in a hospital gown, and hooked up to an IV, which is where they put a needle in your arm and then stick a tube in there so they can pour whatever they need to pour into your body.

A  woman doctor came in, and took my blood pressure and temps and such and then left. I waited there forever. Momma and Daddy came and sat with me, and Grandma too. Hours crawled past. My doctors appointment was at 3:30. I got to the ER at 5:15. A lot of nurses came and went, asked me questions, felt around, took my blood pressure/temps, etc. I had to go get an ultrasound to make sure there wasn't anything in my ovaries. I felt like I was pregnant. Ultrasounds, IV, those stupid hospital gowns, that annoying "Hugs" bracelet to make sure I didn't sleepwalk...I had it all.

At about 7:00, the main doctor finally came in, and asked some questions. Then he took a blood sample again, in my other arm that wasn't hooked up to the IV, and then came back a while later, and said that my blood type was AB+. AB- is the most uncommon blood type, but AB+ was the next uncommon. They didn't have my blood type in the "blood bank" (what a COOL name!) so they couldn't pump blood into me, so they needed to get the blood from a different state's blood bank. It was five hours before the blood even arrived at the hospital, and another hour before it was screened and tested and ready to pump into me.

At around midnight, they hooked me up to a blood-pump and began giving me blood. I received two units, and it takes two or three hours to pump one unit. It was about five o'clock in the morning before all the blood was finally in me. I slept a little bit during the blood transfusion, but not much because it was very uncomfortable. I remember laying there on my bed, just staring into the darkness. I fingered violin songs on my bedspread to keep my arm from going numb. I repeated verses that I had memorized in my head to keep from crying. (It was very hard to lay there, feeling blood pumping into you, remembering having to expose your whole body to complete strangers and letting them feel you and poke you and stick their fingers  and their needles and probes everywhere)

The doctors have to wait four hours before they can test my hemoglobin again and get accurate readings. So at about 8:45 that morning, they came in, shot a needle in my arm and drew blood. My momma and I waited around the whole morning, watching I love Lucy and Little House on the Prairie (I love both of these shows, but they get really old REALLY fast). At noon, a doctor came in, and told me I needed one more unit of blood. That was so hard. By that time, I wanted out. I didn't want to stick around for another three hours.

But I didn't really have a choice. My hemoglobin was still pretty low, and I wasn't completely out of  the woods, so I needed that extra unit.

You know what I hate about the hospital? You have no control over your situation. The doctors need to poke you with needles, undress you, take your blood? You can't say no. It's for YOUR health, but its YOUR body, you're the one who has to deal with uncomfort and pain. I hate when doctors pull a huge needle on you and say "this will only pinch for a second" and then give you the worst shot of your life. I hate when doctors ask you personal questions, and talk about your bleeding like they are discussing the weather. I hate hospital food. It almost made me throw up. I HATE hospital food. I had next to no food throughout my long stay there, and I lost two and a half pounds.

These last few days have been hard. The worst days of my life. But you all helped through it, Hannah left me a sweet voicemail that I listened to at least five times, Jenna texted me through the whole process and stayed up super late even though she had school the next day, and the nurses were kind. I have bruises and gashes and pokes on my arms, but my lips are re-gaining color and I can RUN up the stairs without being out of breath (believe me, that is SO nice). Even though I'm technically not supposed to ("absolutely no physical strain whatsoever").

I'm exhausted. But I feel better. I have to forget the needles, the pain, the awkwardness, the probing, the tests. I have to remember your AMAZING comments, my nearness to God, my amazing friends, my amazing family.

What really made me feel bad about this whole thing was that yesterday was Ab's birthday. Momma had to be at the hospital all night and wasn't there to wake her up by singing happy birthday. She wasn't there to take pictures of her eating doughnuts. She wasn't there to take her for ice-cream early in the morning. She wasn't there to pamper her and make her feel special because she was with me at the ER. And yesterday was Daddy's BIG presentation at work. He got no sleep two nights ago, and little sleep Tuesday night (staying with me until like midnight), so he was tired for his presentation. He did really well, but I'm sure he would have done even better if I hadn't been shipped to the hospital. It wasn't my fault, I know that, but...you know. I can't help but feeling bad.

You guys have helped me SO much, and I just want to give you a huge HUG for being there for me! :-)

All that I have to do now is take it easy and get my hemoglobin up there again. No more needles and blood. Hallelujah. :-)

Simplicity :: How we make life SO complicated...

I slept over at Jenna's house a few nights ago. It was insane - like all sleepovers with your best friend are. :-)

She brought me to church the next morning, and afterwards, her daddy and my daddy tried to coordinate the exchange of my sleepover stuff. Her daddy got in his car with my stuff, my daddy got in his car on the other side of the parking lot, and it took literally twenty minutes for them to finally pull over by each other and exchange the stuff.

It was hilarious because this simple task took so long to execute. It could have taken five minutes, but instead it took twenty.

And it's like...sometimes, I wonder how much harder I'm making it on myself with life in general. Where I could have simplicity, I have complications. Stress, worry, anxiety - all these things are NOT of God. God is peace...

I walk up the stairs, and I'm literally exhuasted. My lungs are stinging, my knees feel like they are made of burning jelly, and I'm breathing as hard as I am after running three miles. That's what happens when I WALK up the stairs. Not run, but WALK.

As of three weeks ago, I could run three miles in 25 minutes (which isn't so great, but, you know, whatever). Now? I can't run up one flight of STEPS much less run three miles! I'm so...so...WEAK. It's like all I can do is sit at my desk and twiddle my thumbs.

Yesterday, it was pretty nice out, and my mom, Peter and I were doing a project outside. Afterwards, Peter snatched a squirt gun and began chasing after me with it. I ran for ten seconds, max, away from him. I was so out of breath that it was impossible for me to keep running. I pretty much just collapsed on the pavement and lay for about five minutes, gasping.

Ten seconds of running did that to me.

I don't know what's happening to me. For the last seven days or so, I have been able to do nothing of physical strain. I feel like a parasite or something, just sitting around, reading, writing, blogging, designing, taking pictures, texting. I used to run two or three times a week, and two or three miles at a time. I lifted weights, did stretches, went golfing, played soccer, did work projects outside - and now, what am I doing? Sitting around, doing nothing.

This whole thing...however blatant this may seem, I am FREAKED.

I had my blood tested a few weeks ago, if you remember, and we heard back from the doctor. My blood is apparently normal, but this intense exhaustion didn't start until a few days after the appointment. So we're going again in a few hours to get my blood tested again (nooo...more needles .__.).

What's happening with my blood is that, well, let's just call it anemia. It's where my body doesn't have enough healthy red blood cells, which account for "fatigue" (one of the main symptoms) and low iron in the blood, which can cause the body to be sick. That's what the doctor suggested, but that was before she tested my blood, so I'm not exactly sure what I have.

It's really just...making my life a lot more complicated. I'm anxious, discouraged, and it's a lot harder for me to laugh and just really enjoy life. It's making me crabby and down all the time...please just pray for me.

I may not be able to run, or exercise vigorously, for a few more weeks...but I just need to look on the brighter side of things. It'll give me more time for these things...

I just need to give all of this anxiety about this to Him...He can carry it a lot better than I can. Prayer would still be really appreciated...I'll keep you posted if we hear anything more. Meanwhile...I'll go help clean up the furnace room (our septic is clogged). Yuck.

PARTY TIME :: The Magic of ShrinkyDinks

Oh that picture is so pixelated it hurts my eyes to look at it.

Ever heard of ShrinkyDinks? They're MAGICAL. How does that relate to anything? Weeeeell...

My sister Ab had a birthday party a few days ago, and it was crazy awesome (I love birthday parties, :-). (It ended on a bad note. Ab's best friend went home early, and left my sister in tears)

There were beautiful decorations, fun games, lots of laughter, goofy pictures and yummy food.

 

Oh, and did I mention there were CRAFTS? Make the connection?

We did ShrinkyDink crafts, and it was rather stressful :: though very productive. :-)

First of all, there were four impatient kids and only one set of markers...

Then! The ShrinkyDinks wrinkle up when placed in the oven, and I got a panic attack because I thought they would stay like that.

I wasn't the only one anxious about them...the kiddos were huddled around the oven the whole five minutes the ShrinkyDinks were in there.

Here's the easy chair that's supposed to be a heart, a minute before you take the pan out.

(This picture is even more pixelated than the ShrinkyDink one)

The final product!

(this one is pixelated also, as it is a crop)

Now tell me that ShrinkyDink isn't MAGICAL!