Faith

Faith is the constant belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept, or thing.

This word came up in discussion this weekend and it’s stuck with me as I started this post. In high school basketball we always had key words for the season that we came up with at a team meeting at the beginning of the year. Those from Lee’s Summit or familiar with the notorious LSN girls basketball program might even remember our bucket of rocks that we carried that had our words on them. There’s a lot more meaning behind this concept but it’s long, so just go with me here… For the last few years “faith” has been my own personal word. I don’t necessarily mean it in a religious sense but many ways. I always remind myself when I am going through a difficult time or am questioning something to have faith. Faith in myself and my capabilities (I’m a bit of a self doubter), faith in God’s plan for me, faith in the choices made by me and for me by others, and faith that I will be ok in life. It’s been really important to us lately as we have told ourselves many times to just have faith that things will work out, we just have to keep doing whatever we have to do. So right now I am asking that you all have faith in our decisions because we are changing our game plan but we have faith that it is our best option right now.

First let me say this: I love amazon and the amazon app on my phone. Not kidding you, love. I used amazon for school books in law school but I appreciate the ability to buy cheap books even more when the reading is for pleasure… or when I’m researching the issues with my health! Thanks to Gail I was introduced to Amazon remembers on my phone that lets me take a picture of a book, upload, read reviews, compare prices and buy it on amazon while I stand in the bookstore with the book in my hand. Amazeballs! Yes, I stole Rachel Zoe’s word because despite the ridiculousness of it I find humor in saying it and it is the only word that adequately describes my enthusiasm.

Scott thinks I may have gone a little book crazy lately… no such thing in my humble opinion. But why is this important? Well, part of my zealous book buying has focused on my health issues and I FINALLY feel like I have learned a few things. Such as why I have been craving sweets/carbs (ok, the carb thing was nothing new, I’ve been an addict for life) and why I couldn’t lose the weight I was putting on no matter what I did. Things are much clearer and my research is the reasoning behind our new plan.

My research pile... and my active reading tools! My former students would be proud that I use the methods we discussed in class.

Ok, a couple of the books in this stack are from my Mom because she is wanting me to read a certain series of books. So that makes the stack a little bigger...

Our first priority is my health; why would we pay tons of money to get me pregnant when I don’t feel like my body is actually healthy? So right now we are focusing on managing my PCOS and insulin resistance (IR). Based on what I’ve read the three major aspects to regulating my body again focus on diet, exercise and stress. Seems simple enough but there’s a little more to it all, especially the diet portion!

The stress part: it’s improved greatly even since January! Amazing what a job will do for you… But like all things it is a constant work in progress so I’m trying not to stress the small things in life.

Exercise: puh-lease! Don’t ever question this part. I’m good; this aspect is covered. The biggest concerns we have about my exercise is whether or not I’m going to hurt myself running and if my running shoes are holding up.

I hate the diet word; it may be the worst 4-letter word ever. Dirty word. I’m not on a diet in the sense of weightwatchers, by diet I mean more of a nutritional plan. My body obviously isn’t handling food like it used to (both the PCOS & IR are to blame!) so I have to change the way I eat. Meaning more than just knowing the calories I intake I have to actually pay attention to carbs & protein.

If you know me and my eating habits you know a few things. I LOVE carbs; I believe carbs make me happy… so now imagine me with restricted carbs and say a quick prayer for Scott! I’ve been known to take the meat off of a sandwich and give it to whichever normal recipient is around me (used to be Jeff, now its Scott or one of the pups) and eat the bread portion of the sandwich. That’s exactly what I should NOT be doing now. I should also mention that I don’t do change very well.

I’ve been changing my diet for the last couple of weeks and it has been going well. I’ve dealt with the changes but I have definitely noticed some side effects—tiredness and my brain seems to not be dealing with the change very effectively. I’ve been processing things a little slower than normal which is always interesting… 

I have an appointment with a nutritionist that specializes in endocrinology and lists PCOS and IR as areas of experience. I had to wait a couple of weeks for the appointment but since insurance is only covering a couple visits I wanted to see somebody that actually has experience with my particular conditions.

I also met with a health & wellness doctor for acupuncture. Yep, this needle-phobic person is voluntarily being pricked with needles! I had one treatment in Chicago when Gail was here for work (she actually works for Pacific College of Oriental Medicine so she has tons of information regarding the helpfulness of acupuncture and supplements for PCOS, IR and infertility) and it wasn’t bad. It’s actually kind of relaxing! What else can you do when you are laying on a table with needles sticking out of you but take deep breaths and relax?!

My doctor also has me doing a food journal so we can examine the shortcomings of my diet. Lucky for me technology has an answer for everything. Praise the iPhone for my handy food journal!

A big part of the new plan has an Eastern medicine type of theme. With the acupuncture and supplements the goal is really to just regulate my body. I know a lot of people are skeptical of this approach but we’re comfortable with it and have faith in the potential it has to help.

We aren’t stopping fertility treatments, we’re just pausing them for right now. I’m still on the metformin (love it!) but I decided against taking birth control right now. We’re going to get everything else under control and see what happens before we fully commit to IVF. And by fully commit, I mean write out a check J

Ok, so I wrote all of that Monday and was planning on posting Tuesday after I re-read it (I wrote it late at night and I needed clarity of a new day) but then Tuesday got a little busy because… I GOT A JOB!! I’m sure you’ve all read about it on facebook or heard from us personally so I want to say thanks to everybody that has been praying for us and thinking of us during my job search. I don’t know my exact start date but I will be working as an assistant state’s attorney in Winnebago County (Rockford). Which means I’m a prosecutor. It’s a GREAT position because it will give me tons of courtroom experience. Most attorneys in private practice don’t see the inside of a courtroom for years and even then they aren’t handling their own individual cases but as an ASA I will be in the courtroom daily and have a huge caseload. I did my internship with the SA (state’s attorney) and loved it. Never a dull moment! It’s hard work but definitely worth it! We’re pretty excited right now- a career job (versus my retail job right now!) and a place to hang my degrees & license!! Thanks Mom & Dad for having those framed, now I will have an office to proudly display them in J

Ok, I’m also attaching a couple of links for articles about acupuncture and pcos courtesy of Gail and Kelli Dean. Thanks girls!

http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp121.cfm

http://attainfertility.com/article/acupuncture-infertility-treatment

Oh, and some of you may have noticed the new “badge” on the blog (look at the left side of the page under our profile type thing). During my research I realized there’s a lot of support for PCOS patients and research, so much that it even has a ribbon! Actually the teal ribbon is for most cervical “disorders” but the PCOS community is also included in that.