Ups and Downs: It’s All Cycles

I haven’t written in a while, because life has been a lot of quick cycling ups and downs lately. School is in session, and has been for a few weeks now. The challenges of school for Little Man are ever ongoing. Trying a medication to see if it will help his ability to maintain focus and concentration, is an exercise in frustration for me.

First, going back and forth between the doctor’s office, the pharmacy, and our insurance, was a joke, trying to find a medication that our insurance would cover with a reasonable copay. (Continuous, long acting meds are prohibitively expensive, so we have to dose during the middle of the day.) For each different prescription that I actually tried to fill, or did fill, it entailed a 30 minutes drive to the doctor’s office to pick up a paper prescription (these are controlled drugs, so no faxing the script), followed by the 20 minute drive to the pharmacy to see if we could afford the copay, and to see if they even had the drug in stock, followed by the 15-20 min wait to fill the script, and then the 12 minute drive home.

And then, after bumping up dosage (and taking care of corresponding paperwork for the school with each dosage change), we finally get to what should be an effective dose, and I notice NO change whatsoever. Oh well. We march on. Haven’t given up yet.

I met with a woman who will be tutoring Little Man. Meeting her was like a dream come true: she’s warm and inviting, has buckets of energy, is trained in a handful of dyslexia programs (2 of which I have researched and like a lot), is a teacher who is actively teaching now (mornings), and has a son with ADHD so she truly understands that facet of Little Man. Two days after we met, she sent an e-mail postponing all her tutoring appointments in order to take care of a very scary and mysterious medical condition that popped up with her husband. I am hoping that things with her husband’s health will be such that she can resume tutoring this coming week (as stated in her e-mail).

For me, I’ve been working on myself. Found that a neighbor is a masterful massage therapist, but isn’t licensed here in the US, so she can’t open a practice here. With her interest in Reiki, we set up a trade. She gave me a wonderful, deep massage, and I gave her some very relaxing Reiki. This trade will definitely happen some more- and perhaps on a regular basis.

I also decided to have a wonderful Energy Therapist do a session on me (over distance); and I definitely feel more peaceful in every way. Check out Roger’s website and order up a session!

With the return to school, comes my birthday month. I try to schedule by annual checkups during this time. So, the other week when I realized that recurring headaches might be influenced by hormones, I had a chat with my ND (naturopath). The first thing she did was pull all the hormonal support that I had been on, and gave me supplements that are supposed to increase my body’s natural production of them. Let me tell you, girls in your 40’s, when you get 4 day long headaches every time your hormones drop at one certain time of the month, do not let your doctor take your hormones away!! Within a few days of this change, I started to feel like crap: exhausted, depressed, and after 3 weeks, the headache. (That’s part of why I haven’t written in a while). I went right back on my support, called my doc for an appointment, and got things squared away with her. This bod of mine needs to be fed hormones regularly, with no weeks off.

Finally, we have a new member of the family called Lightning: the world’s cutest guinea pig. We adopted Lightning from a local shelter, where he was born in late July (at least we think it’s a he… the jury is still out on that).

Lightning, aka. Piglet