I'm pretty much letting this blog go. I have moved over to this one: http://justshyofcrazy.blogspot.com

I kind of decided to take my blogging on a new path, and felt a newer blog was the way to go.

So, here's where things stand...

Back at the end of October I had the nerves burned off my neck. That gave me some relief from my headaches, not gone but not nearly as bad. My sinus infections continued to rage on however, so at the beginning of February I had surgery to open them up and allow for better drainage. The first few weeks after the surgery were not as easy peasy as I had thought they would be. Facial pain and just did not feel good. But here we are 5 weeks out and my sinus' are so much better! This has also at least gotten rid of the sinus headaches. So yay, one type of headache gone. However the main headache the one where everything hurts, even my hair is still there. In January I went to see my Ortho doctor thinking that the nerves were already growing back. When I explained the headache to him, he said it sounds like your occipital nerve. He touched a spot on the back of my head, just at the base of my skull, and wham the pain was instantly worse. He gave me a steroid shot at that spot of my head and within an hour the pain was so much better! Not gone but almost something I could learn to live with. However the effects of the shot began wearing off just over a week later. Three weeks after the first shot I had another one, that one lasted about a week as well. I haven't gone back in for another one because I can only have three in a six month period, plus if the effects only last for a week whats the point? My family doctor feels I am still having a lot of tension in my neck and if we can get that under control it will help with the occipital neuralgia. So here are all the diagnosis that I have gotten since this all began on March 30:

Chronic Sinusitis
Hypothyroidism
Migraines
Tension Headaches
Occipital Neuralgia

Add that all in with my clinical depression and insomnia, and it's no wonder I couldn't even function most of last year! So while I have yet to go a day without a headache since March 30, 2014, at least I know what is causing them and ways to try and calm them down. It's not a pain free life, but I have doctors I trust and that makes a huge difference in how I am dealing with this mentally.

Relief....

So I haven't updated this lately. On Monday October 27, I finally had the procedure done to burn the nerves off my neck. Dr. K burned off the c3 to c5 nerves. I am still experiencing pain in that area of my neck. After all he did burn area's of my neck and it will take time for that to heal. My headaches are for the most part gone. I tend to have one at the end of the day after work. Especially a day like today where I work the drive-up. I wear a headset and the pressure from it on my big melon head causes a small headache. I have not had a sinus headache or a migraine since last Monday! Neck mobility is greatly improved, which leads to less tension in the neck muscles. All definitely a good sign.

As I told you in a previous post I fell at work. I banged my left knee up pretty good and am now seeing an orthopedic doctor for that. It's workers comp and they agreed to let me see a doctor at ONE. I am seeing the same doctor who did mom's knee replacement in August. We are treating it conservatively at this point. A shot in the area it was hurting the most and 4 weeks of physical therapy. Then we will go from there. I'm just lucky I have found such great doctors at ONE!!

Last week on Tuesday (October 28) as we were leaving Church mom got dizzy and fell. She hit her head really hard on the concrete and ended up with a huge bump on her head. About the size of a softball. I made her go to the ER. They kept her over night for observation but she is doing pretty good. Head still hurts but no stroke or anything like that.

I really like working at the bank. The people I work with and the customers are all very nice and make me feel very welcome. I still miss David every day and doubt that will ever change. He was after all the love of my life. =)

Let me tell you about my Friday....

So this past Friday (Sept. 19, 2014) turned out to be one of the best if not the best day since I lost my David. So my short term disability extension had been denied. From June 9th through August 20th, that is the extension that was denied. It was because my doctor did not submit the paperwork by the date required. Fine, I appealed. I sent the paperwork back the very day I got it. Should have had a decision on Aug 15. But for reasons unknown (and even though I called to check on the appeal several times) the paperwork was not sent to the appeals people like it was supposed to. I got a phone call on I believe it was Aug 12 telling me my case had just been assigned to an appeals person. They were going to need to extend when they issued a decision until Sept 29th. Sure why not, I had already been living off my savings, which was rapidly dwindling, why not wait another 45 days. Well on Friday morning I got a phone call, 10 days earlier then they had said, telling me my denial had been overturned and the extension had been approved!! So basically ten and a half weeks of back pay will soon be coming my way! What a relief!

So I get to work, in a really good mood. I am doing what I do, plus trying to finish some online training I need to work on, between customers. I'm busy reading whatever it was I was studying when one of my co-workers asks me if I have checked my email lately. I hadn't, so I open it, and there is an email from our manager to all of us. PNC like almost every business I know of does customer surveys. Now Kohl's and other places I am used to have the survey attached to your receipt. It is up to the customer to take the time to call or go online to do the survey, and at least at Kohl's we never know who helped the customer. It's more of just a general survey. Now at PNC they do it differently.  They use a service that calls random customers who have been into the branches. We don't know who is called and we have no clue who waited on them until the results are sent from the service to PNC. I'm not even sure if there is a set number of surveys per branch per week or what. But the results are sent to our managers who then let us know how good or how bad we do. It is a better system, I think. Because you find out how good or how bad you are doing. There is no way to keep unhappy customers from taking the survey. No getting your numbers up because you tell your employees not to give out surveys to customers who aren't happy with the service they got on that particular day. You know an ethical way to do survey's, who knew it could be done ethically? Anyway so I have worked in my branch for 3 weeks now. This was the first email I had gotten with specific results in them. Now like all survey's the scores range from a 1 to a 5. Five being the best and ones being the worst service. This email from our manager was a very good email. Three people at our branch had survey's done the week before and all three had perfect 5's! I was one of the three people who had a survey done the week before. My very first survey and I got all 5's!!! So my day went from good to great!! Knowing that even with all my nerves and self doubt I still managed to do my job. I made my customer feel special and important and I showed him or her that I know what I am doing.

God is very good!! =)

Light at the end of the tunnel?

So a lot of things have happened in the last few weeks for me. I have been at my branch as a teller for two weeks now. I still make a lot of mistakes, but feel like I am getting the hang of it. I like where I work and the people I work with. There are only ten of us at my branch and compared to Kohl's it is so much smaller! My new family doctor is amazing, she is working with me to get a handle on this thyroid problem I have. She also is able to talk to me about the procedures being done to help me with my back, neck, and headaches. Such a difference! She like talks with me, not at me, or worst not at all. The two procedures had helped my back so much! I say had because well, that's a story for later in this post. The one procedure in my neck definitely took care of the pain that was shooting down into my pinky finger. The other one helped a little but not as long as we had hoped. So last week on Wednesday these guys came into my branch to take out the old carpet and put new carpet it. They have been giving my branch a touch up if you will. The carpet is that square stuff were you take out/put down one square at a time. They were taking up all the old squares before putting in the new ones. My co-worker and I go to leave for the night after closing the branch. The area right outside the tellers area, they had already removed all the carpet from there. Even though the glue was old it was still extremely sticky. So sticky that my shoes literally stuck to the floor. I tried getting one foot/shoe up to keep moving forward and well my body did indeed move forward, while my shoes did not. Next thing I know I am lying flat on my face. Really? Why does it have to be me? I manage to roll over. My whole left side is already hurting. The carpet guys immediately came to my aid. They managed to get me in a sitting position, after my hair managed to get unstuck from the stupid glue on the floor. Thank goodness my hair is really short right now!! Two of the guys then try to help me get up. First of all I am always extremely self-conscious when anyone tries to help me up. I know how over-weight I am and worry about hurting someone who is helping me. But then problem number two enters the picture, my pants are stuck to the floor. All I can say is thank God I wasn't wearing a skirt that day!! They do manage to get me up and I move slowly barefoot over to where there is still carpet down. After pulling as hard as they can they get my shoes up from the sticky floor. I slip my feet in and instantly know my left foot is going to be a problem. By the time I get home my left side of my body is swelling in various areas. I have multiple bruises and a huge knot on my knee. Headache is also now at a 10+. I work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So thankful I can sit as much as I need to! I alternate sitting and standing because my back is once again hurting a lot. On Friday my manager gives me info on doctors I can see and encourages me to see them. She also was so apologetic about the whole thing, like she had anything to do with it! Seriously differences between this job and the last one.... Saturday my left ankle is swelling, a lot! So after I get off work I go home change and then head to the hospital on the list. They x-rayed well almost my whole left side. The good news is nothing is broken! One of my toes is sprained and that is what has been causing the swelling. My knee is badly bruised, along with my hip as well as my shoulder. I also had some dizzy spells from hitting my head, but those have stopped! Monday Dr. K did a diagnostic procedure on my neck. He did an epidural block on several of my cervical joints. If the pain improved or even went temporarily away he would know he was working on the right spot and then would get my insurance to approve him burning off the nerves in that area. Luckily my family doctor explained the whole thing to me. Well the block worked! I didn't have a headache for 7 hours and the block helped my neck pain as well as the new shoulder pain! So today was my followup with him and he is starting the ball rolling to schedule the burning off of the nerves! I also told him about how much pain my back is in from the fall. He asked me which injections I had had already and I told him. He then started putting pressure on my spine asking where it hurt, when he hit the spot I nearly jumped! OUCH!! He asked if I wanted to try another injection back there and I said yes! I am amazed at how the injections worked. I honestly thought I would just have to live with the pain, I'd been living with it for so many years already. So now I just wait for the two procedures to be pre-approved by my insurance. And I am so lucky! I have Mondays and Tuesdays off from work and Mondays are one of the three days Dr. K does these procedures. God has been so good to me lately!

One door closes, another door opens!

God does answer prayers. Not always the way you think he will, or how you want it. But he does answer prayers. I still have my headache, day 136 and counting. They are either getting more manageable or better, not sure which? I have had two injections in the lumbar region of my back, which has helped my back so much!!! I have had two sets of injections in my neck. One at the C7 spot and then several from C3 to C6. The C7 one has helped considerably with the pain in my arm. No more of that electric shock type pain shooting down my arm into my pinky finger. The other injections, it hasn't been a full week yet, and I am not sure if it helped or not. My neck feels slightly better, but I also still have the headache. It was really bad the night of the injection and again today it has been so painful. Sometimes I honestly think I will never have a headache free day ever again! =(

So I posted on facebook last week that I had informed one of my managers that I would not be back when my medical leave was up. The job was/is just to stressful, and it really shouldn't be. It's retail for pete's sake, not brain surgery!! However with my hypothyroidism, and Hoshimoto's disease, stress is one of the worst things I can have in my life. And obviously no one can be stress free, it's like completely impossible! However leaving a job that makes you cry x amount of days on your way home from work because you feel like such a failure. Well it seemed pretty clear to me that the job was one of the things that had to change. You have to truly love your job to stay with that kind of stress. And I liked my job and loved so many of my co-workers, but that didn't/doesn't make up for the daily stress I have to deal with. Today I went in, dropped off my official letter resigning and got to say some goodbyes. I will still visit (and shop!) because there are several people I will want to see! So now that I have put it in writing for Kohl's I feel like I can finally talk about the next chapter in my life. I will start training at PNC Bank on Aug 25! My training will be at the bank in downtown Fort Wayne for one week, I will then be moving to my bank, which is the PNC  in New Haven! It is literally 5 minutes from my house to the bank. I will only be working part time, which will help with the fatigue I am still dealing with from the hypothyroidism. I will be getting paid more per hour then I was at Kohl's and it comes with benefits; medical, 401k, PTO, bonus', and paid holidays. And that is a lot of paid holidays!! I will be working as a teller, the amount of angry customers compared to Kohl's will be significantly smaller. It also isn't a large branch so I don't feel like the "customer runs" will be nearly as bad as when you are at the Service Desk and you see the line stretching to the escalator! We also close at 6 Monday through Friday and Saturdays we are only open until noon! Closed on Sundays!  No Black Friday!!!! I will be able to enjoy Thanksgiving for the first time since, well since before David died to be honest. I will also get to enjoy Christmas knowing I won't have all that retail stuff to deal with. Oh yeah and no inventory to deal with on my birthday like I had to last year and a couple of years before that!!! I know my experience I gained by working at Kohl's helped me get this job and I will always be thankful for that.

So here's to a new job I hope to love and to headaches finally going away!! =)

Just so tired all the time!

For what feels like forever I have felt tired, all the time tired. Doesn't matter how much or how little sleep I get, I'm always tired. It was happening for years before David died. It's why he called me the Queen of Napping! I did worry that I had sleep apnea, but the original neurologist had me do a sleep study and that was ruled out. So he did do some good, I guess. I know now that it was my thyroid that has caused so many of my physical problems for years. It's most likely the reason why David and I were never able to get pregnant. I will have to come to terms with that at some point, that my worst fears that it was me who failed us are true. But I can't change the past. Now I just need to focus on feeling better. My new general practitioner doctor (whom I LOVE) has upped my thyroid medication and we will do blood work in the future to see if it needs adjusted further. Her goal is to have me physically able to walk a 5k on Thanksgiving Day! Right now I can't even walk around the grocery store without needing to rest and wishing my joints would stop hurting. But she is positive that with the right medication I will get better, and feel better. I am so thankful I was able to get in with her!

My ONE pain management doctor is also helping me a great deal. I have had to lumbar injections and feel even better after the second one I had two days ago. The pain is so minimal right now I have a hard time believing there were days I couldn't even turn over in bed without crying. I have only had one injection in my neck, and am pretty sure I will need a second one for it to show any real improvement. The injections aren't bad. But with the one in my neck I am sedated and that is a really weird feeling. It's like being there, but not really being there.

There was one half hour on Wednesday night that I didn't have a headache. It only lasted 30 minutes, but it gives me hope that the headaches will go back to, I don't know more normal? I know I will always have headaches, I just don't want them to last for days on end. That isn't that much to ask, is it?