Monthly Archives: July 2012

You Gotta Have Faith

Posted on by Michelle

In the immortal words of George Michaels, “You Gotta Have Faith”.  And while this song wants to make me jump up and down and wanna dance around making a fool out of myself, I am not exactly in a lyrical or musical mood today…Ok, I am always in the mood for music, but not at this exact moment.

I’ve been thinking more spiritually lately; well as much as I’ve been able to think!  Which hasn’t been much.  I have had conversations with a couple of friends on the same subject and they have actually been the ones to bring it up.  Its funny how life works that way.  And I think they might know each other, though I am sure they are not friends now.  We all worked in the same night club in Hawaii together, “back in the day” haha.  One of the waitresses I know started a conversation with me about Spiritual Awakenings a few days ago.  She told me that she was not religious, and that she was seeking the help of a healer in South America, when she had a vision.  The vision was clear to her and then she just knew.  She knew that the Lord was with her and believed.  I think that is amazing.

I had a separate conversation with my Twin Soul.  Or as I like to refer to her as my TS.  Its a timesaver.  She too went through an awakening herself.  Though not quite as dramatic.  I’ll spare the details.  But her sister is going through quite a rough time, and has been trying to turn her life around.  There has been a lot of lying and deceit involved.  Its has been more than hard on my poor TS.  Last week her sister went to church, and it wasn’t quite her thing.  The minister was asking people who were having a hard time to come forward and receive a blessing.  Her sister, is incredibly shy, and would never do this.  Her sister claimed that she felt a tugging on her shoulder.  And the more she denied going up, the stronger the feeling became.  She eventually went up, listened to the tugging, and received her blessing and her spiritual awakening.  She knew everything she had been doing was wrong and had clear sight of what she needed to do to make amends.  She believed in God, and that He was looking out for her.  She was finally ready to receive the help that she needed to get well.

Now I might have some of these details wrong.  The past week or so, my cognitive abilities have not been stellar to say the least.  But I know I have the gist of everything.  I think all this is amazing.  And I’m so happy for my friends that they have the presence of the Lord with them.  But, they haven’t always believed.  I have gone to religious schools almost my whole life.  UCLA obviously isn’t a religious school.  I went to chapel 3 times a week until I reached the 8th grade, and then in high school we had mass.  Growing up, I have always felt His love.  There have been times where I feel like He’s abandoned me.  And wondered why He’s put me through certain trials.  But I do know that He loves me.  During my conversation with the first friend, she was saying that everyone goes through a Spiritual Awakening.  And I was wondering, will I go through one?  Since I have had faith my whole life?  How does that work?  I don’t have the answers, but I’m sure He does.  Its all part of His bigger plan, that we cannot see…

Glory

Posted on by Michelle

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As of yesterday, Candy took a hike…I’m not too sorry to see my sweet friend leave 🙂

I’ve had two too many muscle relaxers, so I’ll leave it at that.  PMS + Back Problems = One Nasty Bitch LOL

It took 3 months and 1 day.

Posted on by Michelle

“The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” John Bingham, No Need for Speed: A Beginner’s Guide for the Joy of Running 

Yes, I quoted Mr. Bingham about miracles and running for a very particular reason today.  With the assistance of my new cane, I took the first steps I have in three months!!!  And these were not my normal shuffled steps, where I inch along, trying to pick my feet up off the ground have have “false starts” going back and forth until I gain some forward momentum.  No.  Today with the handy assistance of my cane, let’s call her Candy because the progress is just so sweet.  I was able to take normal steps.  The type of steps where I would normal work up to taking in weeks possibly a month after not walking for three months like this.  I am beyond thrilled.  This doctor at Templeton, is AMAZING!!! He really knows his shit!! LOL I tried walking first without Candy, and I did have the false starts, and a bit of balance issues.  I weebled, and I wobbled, but I didn’t fall down.  That’s kinda my thing, haha.  But once I had Candy in my hands, I was an old pro.  Kinda like I’d been doing this my whole life 🙂  Nothin’ to it.  Hallelujah!!

I’d jump around and dance, but I don’t think I’m there…yet 😉

And I couldn’t have done this without this without the help of  Leina How and her distance reiki healings.  We did one last night, and I’m not so sure its a coincidence that I was able to make this big of a jump without her tremendous help!! After my first amazing reiki session with her, my pain level went down tremendously.  I forgot to put one of my Flector patches back on, and normally that would devastate me by the end of the day.  That day, I was fine, and I didn’t even need my “extra” helper, Mr. Tylenol.  She’s amazing.

 

3 Months

Posted on by Michelle
Today I had my three month follow up with Planned Parenthood.  It was really quite a simple visit, I gave them a sample, and answered a few simple questions, and I was off!! I was there probably 30 minutes.  I have never been in and out of an appointment there so fast!  In the next week or so I will get the results of the test, and see if I’m VD free.  I’m crossing my fingers, praying to God, and doing anything else that will result in a negative test.  But I just have this feeling in the pit of my stomach, that it will not come out that way.  Call it women’s intuition, call it being in touch with my body, whatever you will.  I just don’t think this one is going to go my way.  And this is the one time I would love to be wrong! And because of this dark feeling I have, I’m not going to worry myself silly, be anxious or lose sleep over getting the test results.  The phone call will not devastate me like it did the last time.  My life will continue on.  I will get another dose of antibiotics, though I’m not sure what they may be this time around.  But I do know that after all the injections I have been giving myself, it will be no big deal.  Hell, I might even grab the syringe from the nurse and inject myself because I know I can guide the needle in painlessly!  But I’m pretty sure that’s not legal!  LOL
But three months…what is it about time?  It is kind of like distance.  It measures how far we have come.  In these past three months since I got that phone call from PP, I spent one miserable week with all my major joints aching all over, but still able to walk.  One week later, I couldn’t even climb in bed, and have been using a wheel chair, and pretty much been confined to my “little island”.   I am getting a lot stronger, my white cane (the one blind people use) arrived today from Amazon – how much do I love Amazon btw? – so I will start working with that tomorrow.  I have already had my “excitement” for the day! Peeing in a doctors office – WOO WOO!!
My, how my standards of excitement have changed in the last year!! LOL  I think this time last year, I had just finished the one of the best vacations of my life to Colorado, where we did everything.  River rafting with level 3 rapids, horseback riding (well, I do that all the time, but the sights were great!), fishing in the back yard – the Colorado river was 10 feet from the back of the house!!  Cocktail hour…yes, I loved that!  Learning to rope from a living legend; Ted White, John Wayne’s stunt double.  The most famous person alive today in the Western community.  He received the Silver Spur award last year.  If you feeling insecure about your age – I suggest attending that awards ceremony.  If my ex and I hadn’t been there, his parent’s would have been the youngest people in the room!  One guy got up there to perform, it took him a good five minutes to realize where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.  I think he was well into his 90’s.  But yes, time as a means of distance and progress, it can be cruel.  It can also be wonderful.  If I just look at that one slice of life, I can say, how wonderful life was.  But in the big picture, I was in an unhealthy relationship.  If my tracking skills are correct, this same time last year, is when I had my first relapse.  I had just gotten the clap.  So I am happy that I am not there now, but I’m not exactly thrilled to be here; that I’ve stopped going down rapids, riding horses, and throwing ropes around wooden birds.  This is my life, my island, and I accept it.  I will come back in a big bad way.  I just hope the world is ready for me 🙂

Reiki Insomnia Surprise

Posted on by Michelle

 

Last night, no surprise, I couldn’t sleep.  So I got on my computer and caught up on some correspondence with a friend of mine.  My best friend in Hawaii, my old roommate had put me in touch with this girl Leina How, because we both had health problems and she had been traveling all over the world seeking alternative solutions.  She’s an amazing person simply put.  He thought that we could be a good resource for each other.  He also thought he might know each other because we both worked at the same night club in Hawaii – we all worked at this one night club.  The turn over rate was very high though, and when you have worked there a long time, its very hard to keep track of who was there at what time.  I think Leina and I must have just missed each other, because we know all the same people, which is nice.  And we also get along really well.  We have never met, but I think its fair to say that we would get along fairly well if we ever did 🙂

Leina and I had lost touch until I sent her a message about my blog; I let all my family and friends know about this so they can keep track of how my health is doing.  I also sent it to her because we at one point were discussing our relative health status’ and I thought she might like to know how I was doing.  She sent me a long message back, and informed me that she had become a reiki master, and would like to try to do some on me.  I am all for trying new things, especially if they are going to improve my health!  And the most interesting thing is that she didn’t have to be here in Los Angeles to do it!! She lives back in Hawaii and was able to do distance healing.  I will admit, I was skeptical.  How was she supposed to manipulate my energy from over 3k miles away? Now I’m not at all an expert on this, and she could answer your questions better than I could possibly even try.  But it worked!!

First she asked if I was sensitive to energy.  Which I am.  I had a masseuse when I was in HS that helped when I first got sick, who used to use crystals and rocks to shift energy in me, and it was pretty cool.  But she was right there, you know, in the room.  LOL  So to get things started Leina said to get relaxed and that she was going to start in two minutes.  I put my computer aside, turned some relaxing music on, and laid down.  The next thing I knew, I felt this force thrust upon me, on my head and my chest.  It was suddenly very difficult to breathe.  Not impossible, but there was a pressure or force on me, and I knew the session had started.  At one point I almost felt like crying for no reason.  This lasted for a few minutes, and then this energy had shifted to my back.  Its so hard to describe the actual feeling, but it was like all the nerves felt alive.  Nerves were twitching all over my body.  It was the most interesting sensation.  I don’t know if I liked it or not.  It stayed there for a while, then it moved.  And at the end, I could have sworn I felt two hands touch me on the left side of my body on my arm and my left thigh, kind of like Ok, we’re done here.  Not two seconds later, Leina sent me a message saying that the twenty minute session was over.  I was absolutely blown away!!

I couldn’t believe everything I felt.  I definitely knew the minute it started, and the minute it ended.  And felt everything in between.  Either that was one intense reiki session, or the best placebo effect ever!!!  I mean it was 3:30am so anything is possible, right?  I choose to believe though.  And I can’t wait for the next session.  It still amazes me that all this was done from three thousand miles away!!  We chatted a bit about what happened, and then we went to sleep.  And I had a great night’s morning’s sleep.  And slept later than normal.  I haven’t noticed too much of a difference today, yet.  But I’m optimistic.  Hopefully later tonight I won’t have to take so many pills for the pain.  I have been starting to take two tylenol on top of the Rx strength of Advil and muscle relaxer to be pain free so I can sleep.  Hopefully, I will be able to cut that last part out.  And then slowly cut the others out or down with continued sessions.  My insurance won’t kick in until September 1st, so I just gotta grit down and bear it until then.  And insurance is now a whole other story!

Serenity Now!

Posted on by Michelle

Nauseated.  Light headed.  Tingling feet.  Vertigo.  Thank you body.  How did you know that this is exactly how I wanted to feel at 3 am?  I struggled all day with coherency, and staying awake so I could sleep tonight.  Battling pain, and the tiredness and fatigue that comes with pain all day only to be met with these symptoms when I try to sleep.  These symptoms are what keep me awake tonight.

The funniest thing is, I have so many thoughts running and racing through my mind – but I can’t remember a single one of them!! LMFAO!! Oh the body works in mysterious ways…

I would love to expand, but I simply can’t!!! hahahaha

I set out to write how I’m feeling, but I already forgot…

So here it is.

Insurance Woes

Posted on by Michelle

First of all, I haven’t been able to post anything or really read any posts because I can’t focus or comprehend anything.  Its the most frustrating feeling in the world.  Please forgive me.  I hope to catch up with all your wonderful blogs soon.

But right now, I am so extremely irritated with my insurance company. insurance.  I have been working since September to try to get insurance.  I was offered my dream job, the offer I had been waiting for since my graduation from UCLA in December 2008.  But the economy sucked, and getting a job in wealth management or anything along those lines was kind of out of the question.  For months it was “wait three months until we close this big deal, and then we’ll have the money to hire you.”  I got tired of waiting, and started my own company as a personal concierge.  I had worked with the company before, and they loved me.  They wanted to hire me to be the junior CFO of their company when I graduated.  Though they didn’t want me to leave to finish college at all.  Skip from 2008 to 2012, I finally got the phone call I had been waiting for all these years.  They wanted me!  They were going to give me benefits, complete benefits right from the get go.  And pay for them.  This company was very generous.  I can’t begin to list all the perks I got when I worked there before as an “intern”/associate.  But I also loved my job in the orthopedic office.  But I was part time with no benefits.  And I had plans to use this experience to go to PA school, or some other health graduate school.  On the other hand, I was thinking this is a career just waiting for me, that I was happy to have more than four years ago.  I used them to leverage better deals out of the other, and in the medical office, they agreed to provide me medical benefits, but I had to pay for most of my own.  And in the wealth management office, they were most lenient on the hours and days.  Knowing I could get sick or might need extra rest sometimes, that was important to me.  Enter the ex.  He convinced me that I didn’t actually like finance.  The truth was, he didn’t want me to make more money (a lot more money), or to be gone more days of the week.  He wanted me home, he wanted to control me.  Even if it meant always complaining I didn’t make enough money.

So in January I started to make my own company.  The insurance didn’t work out at the orthopedic office after all.  In California you only need two people to qualify you as a group.  I have been filling out paper work, legalizing myself, and doing so much work to make this happen.  I finally was able to apply for the insurance I wanted, that would meet my specific needs on my budget for a July 1 start date.  But because of an internal error, I will not be eligible to start until September 1.  You gotta love the inner workings of insurance!

Meanwhile, I am practically cried myself to sleep last night because I was in so much pain last night from my back, and they don’t care.  They were made aware of that fact, but they don’t care.  It was their fault.  But they don’t care.

Now I have the option of reapplying so the paperwork goes through a different underwriter, so I can get a August 1 start date, but that means putting together a whole new package.  I don’t know if I have that in me.  With the pain and the coherency.

Maybe I need  a different insurance company?  But again that requires putting together a new package.

I hate insurance.  Yet I need it and require it so badly.

Sleep, Where Art Thou?

Posted on by Michelle

“O Sleep, O Gentle Sleep, Natures Soft Nurse, How Have I Frightend Thee, That Thou No More Wilt Weigh my Eye-Lids Down And Steep My Senses In Forgetfulness?” – William Shakespeare

Mashed Potatoe Brains

Posted on by Michelle

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.”

―Woodrow Wilson 

No, that is not a typo.  Just mocking myself.  Not the former Vice President.  Well, kinda…haha.  I have had nothing between my ears for a while now.  I’m honestly not sure when this fog set in, but I’m not fond of it.  Last night was when it was at its worst!  I could hardly put a coherent sentence together.  I know what I’m feeling, but assigning words to them, well times like these, it’s damn near impossible.  Using hand gestures, really helps, or the ultimate form of communication, ESP.  Or as my brother and I like to call it ESPN – the ESPNetwork.  I mean everyone has to be on the same channel and tuned in to hear each other’s thoughts right?  Oh the grief and aggravation it would save me if this actually existed!! Oh….now I’m thinking of Sookie from True Blood.  Maybe not so much.  There are a few thoughts I would like to keep to myself 🙂 

Right now on a good day, I probably operate on 70% of what I used to before I was sick and on medications.  These bad boys, they slow me down, but to the point where I can’t really notice it unless I try.  Takes the edge off my intelligence a bit, harder to study.  I started these meds after I took a break from UCLA, and my grades took a hit.  I didn’t put two and two together for a while.  And I switched from the hard sciences (Biology) to the softer sciences (Anthropology).  That shoulda tipped me off right there!!  Currently I’m probably at 30-40% average.  That is noticeable!  I can’t wait for the day when I have coherency, when I’m am back to 100%.  I don’t know if that is possible.  But man, taking intelligence like that for granted, I’ll never do it again.  I know what its like to be on the other side, not being able to get through “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” because its “too hard” of a read right now.  All those Swedish name and places…!!!  Its frustrating.  As horrible, horrible as this sounds, send more Twilight my way!  LOL, I read that half conscious knocked out on Vicodin.  I think mentally I’m about there right now! 

More on New Shoes

Posted on by Michelle

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If new shoes can change Cinderella’s life, like I said in

 New Shoes – maybe a new pair will change mine too 🙂