How Do You React to a Bad Health Report?

By now, you've read last week's post about my most recent doctor's appointment.  And how I learned some less-than-awesome stuff about all the ways pregnancy can go wrong when you have a transplant.  I wasn't feeling so great afterwards, about myself or my situation, so I decided to eat a bunch of junk food when I returned to work after my appointment.

And that got me thinking about all the ways that people might react to a negative health report.  I've had plenty of negative health reports in my short life.  Off the top of my head, there was my diagnosis with FSGS; the news that I was rapidly heading toward kidney failure; then I found out my sister wouldn't be able to donate her kidney to me.  After that it was the news that I would have to postpone my honeymoon so that I could start dialysis.  Oh, and the news that my kidneys were f*#@ked up, yet again.  

So, I started thinking, how do I typically react to this bad news.  What's my M.O.? 

Kidney Update

It's been a long time since my last health update. And I don't want this blog to be solely about what I eat, what I do on the weekends and how much I love my husband.  However, I haven't been able to write as many kidney updates as I would like to  because I only visit the doctor about once a month now, and I haven't had any major issues (Praise God) recently.  But I did go to my regular nephrologist today so I thought I'd provide a little update about what's going on inside the new/old transplant.

Last Day of 27

For the past two years, before my birthday, I've written a post on what I've learned in the previous year.  I have to say these are some of my favorite things to write.  So here goes another one. Enjoy, and, as always, thanks for reading!

Welcome back to this year's "The More You Know" post.  I call it that because the older I get, the more know about the world and myself.  Before I start these posts, I always like to read what I've written the year before.  Before turning 26 I felt the need to offer up an explanation about why I thought Ben and I were still together. This was important to me then because I remember getting a lot of questions about how we managed to work out after all we've been through.  Reading it back now, I'm not sure if I did a good job explaining why. And before I turned 27, I'd gone through a little "multiple personality" crisis. I'm not saying I had multiple personalities but I was essentially trying to figure out how to become more likeable.  

So, pre-28, what do I know now?

A little pre-28 picture of me, at work, because this is real life. And in real life, sometimes you have to take pictures at work and not at...the beach. 

How S.A.D. Are You Right Now?

We still have a month and a half left of winter.  And really two more months until it's what I would call "comfortable" outside. 

Winter is coming. No, wait! It's here.

I'm not winter's biggest fan. It's so damn cold outside and add to that the daily duty of dealing with a chronic illness.  It was two years ago, in January, that I started the process of getting a new kidney.  I wrote depressing essays like this and this during what seemed like the longest winter ever!  Gosh...what a time.  

It was only a few years ago that I realized that I may be borderline S.A.D.  Not just sad as in "I'm so SAD it's winter."  But I was showing some symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's a type of depression that's related to the changes in the seasons, most commonly the shift from lighter, brighter happier seasons like spring and summer to the darker, colder, bleaker seasons like autumn and winter.  When this happens, some S.A.D. people start to feel tired, irritable, low-energy, and withdraw from most if not all social interaction.   Combine this with wintertime kidney failure and you basically have an emotional train wreck/hermit.