Hello... It's Me

See what I did with the title there? I can't believe it has been since Thanksgiving that I last posted! I say I can't but to be 100% I know exactly why I haven't been blogging and while I have missed my time away... it was completely necessary. Allow me to explain why...

If your not a new reader around here you know that I was diagnosed with liver disease this time last year. It's an autoimmune disorder called Primary Biliary Cirrhosis and pretty much means my body does not properly expose and deal with bile the way it should. Sounds pretty harmless but it comes with some pretty annoying symptoms including extremely itchy skin, fatigue, bloating, and just generally not feeling like myself. Over the past year my doctors and I have noticed that my main symptom appears to be itchy skin which unfortunately there are not many treatment options for. Now I know what your thinking, itchy skin... how bad could it. Imagine your whole body covered in mosquito bites that itchy constantly and staying up 3-4 nights a week because you are unable to sleep. Yea... its that miserable. Here's where it got a little scary about a month ago...

 About a week or so after thanksgiving I decided to try out a new medicine that might help the itching as I was on day 4 of no sleep. About an hour after taking the medicine I felt dizzy, confused, and extremely lethargic. Soon I wasn't able to form sentences and couldn't even grip a pen to write down for my coworkers what I had taken. Luckily, I work at a hospital and was quickly taken to the Emergency Room where my blood pressure was 157/117 which is extremely high for me. I spent the night in the ER getting test after test, most concerned that this medicine had induced stroke like symptoms. I was discharged from the ER once my blood pressure had come down and my speech was back to normal and pretty much diagnosed with an adverse reaction to the medication. I am now on a new set of medicines and so far no stroke like symptoms and things have been slowly improving. Some days I am crazy itchy and spend nights not sleeping but others are fine and I barely notice it. I have my moments where I don't want to deal with any of it and hate the amount of medicine I put into my body every day. However, I remind myself that this is something I will have forever and I am fortunate to have the rest of my health that allows me to workout, have a job, and live my life. 

In other news, I also drew the lucky straw on being in charge of coordinating and organizing Christmas   this year at the Children's Hospital where I work. Each year we receive between 80-150+ donations from individuals and companies in our community that allow us to provide Christmas presents for our patients and their siblings. It is truly humbling and amazing to see how generous and thoughtful people are around the Holidays and while it was a lot to deal with, I am so grateful for all that people gave. Once we have met each donation, we set up a few rooms with the gifts that are organized by age categories and gender and then allow parents to come down and Christmas shop for their children, an event we call Snow Blitz. We then take all the gifts that have been chosen and wrap them for Santa to deliver to the patient on Christmas Eve. While I  worked 11 days straight leading up to Christmas, each 12 hour days... it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever been a part of, let alone in charge of. 

Once Christmas at work was over, I was able to head home and spend a whole WEEK with my family in Maryland! I can't remember the last time I was able to spend that much time at home with my family, I am already missing them and looking forward to my next trip home. Later this week I plan to do a post on a few of the goodies I received for Christmas! 

If you made it through this whole post, you are a saint and I can't thank you enough for listening to my rambling. This week I have a few posts scheduled and I am excited to get back into blogging after a too long break away! 

Hope everyone has a great week!

Yours truly, 

Emily Ann