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A Repeat of an Old Post, This Time with New Answers

I posted in April 5 Challenges/5 Small Victories and thought it would be a good one to repeat today.

5 Challenges

1. Keeping up with appointments.  In the next month, I have 3 speech/respiratory therapy appointments, 1 endocrinology appointment, 1 neurology appointment, 1 ultrasound, and 1 dentist appointment.  All that while working 3 days a week and dealing with a chronic illness = more than a full time job.

2. Being Calm.  If I'm not at work or at an appointment, I'm worrying about what will happen at that appointment and what surgery is next and what that diagnosis means in terms of all of my other diseases.

3. Being on time for work.  I seriously have a hard time getting up in the morning.  I always forget about the 5-10 minutes I need to add to get from the parking lot to work via the shuttle.

4. Having a new diagnosis of hyperparathyroidism and dealing with what that means (more surgery, MEN-1?)

5. Taking medications every day.  I have a weird inability to swallow pills all of a sudden, so trying to swallow them ends up in gagging and chugging drinks and eating something right after to help everything go down without coming back up again.  I apologize to any coworkers or friends who have had to witness this.

5 Small Victories

1.  Going a whole day without crying is a regular occurrence now.

2.  BEING 159 (yes, you read right) pounds! That's a HUGE victory!

3.  Not untagging every single picture of myself on Facebook,  I sometimes like how I look in pictures now.

4.  Only 2 overnight hospitalizations in 2012!

5.  Reaching over 16,000 views on my blog in 1 year!

Expect a lot of appointment updates soon, this week my homework includes "open throat breathing",  which is hard to do without yawning at 2am, so I guess I'll practice more tomorrow.

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