A photo and a reminder to say thanks

A soldier from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment, plays rock, paper, scissors with an Iraqi boy…DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Sean Mulligan, U.S. Navy. [link]

Say Thanks

I’m lucky–the two closest to me who were overseas are now safely back home.  Welcome back, and thank you both for bravely serving our country in Kosovo and Iraq!

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“Friends”

My mother-in-law sends me several forward emails a week.  Yes, they’re often cheesy.  But it’s nice because it’s a way for us to feel like we’re staying in touch…and I don’t feel like I have to read my email right away if I’m busy.  The latest one was just so cute, I have to share it:

A sharp tongue cuts me first. 

If I want my dreams to come true, I mustn’t oversleep.

Of all the things I wear, my expression is the most important.

The best vitamin for making friends… B1.  

The happiness of my life depends on the quality of my thoughts.

The heaviest thing I can carry is a grudge. 

One thing I can give and still keep is my word. 

I lie the loudest when I lie to myself.

If I lack the courage to start, I have already finished. 

One thing I can’t recycle is wasted time. 

Ideas won’t work unless ‘I ‘ do. 

My mind is like a parachute… it functions only when open.  

The 10 commandments are not a multiple choice. 

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a lifetime!

It is never too late to become what I might have been. 

Friends are like balloons; once you let them go, you might not get them back. Sometimes we get so busy with our own lives and problems that we may not even notice that we’ve let them fly away. Sometimes we are so caught up in who’s right and who’s wrong that we forget what’s right and wrong. Sometimes we just don’t realize what real friendship means until it is too late. I don’t want to let that happen, so I’m gonna tie you to my heart so I never lose you.

 ~

Over the past several years I’ve slowly been losing a very special childhood friend. 

Unfortunately,  I took our friendship for granted and thought our relationship was completely hunky dory.  I’m all too much like a guy, I guess, in that I’m not a constant chatter-er.  I’d call her up to chat, oh, once a month or so, and we’d catch up as if the last time we’d talked was the day before.  Or so I thought.  I forgot how much effort a friendship needs in order to stay strong.  And sometimes honesty isn’t the best approach–I have the tendency to be overly honest. 

So for the first six months or so I was silently losing my friend without realizing it.  When I got engaged, asked her to be my maid of honor, and she declined–at the same time spilling her guts that I had been neglecting our friendship for quite some time–now that was my wake up call.  And by that time, it was too late.  By the time I knew enough to say anything, it was too late and–in her mind–there was no longer anything worth being said.  Since then, I’ve had to watch my friend fly away, realizing that it’s not as simple as tying someone to you to keep them forever.  Once you’ve hurt them, it’s too late.   

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Speaking of spring…

(and yes, I’m a bit early!)

I love this photo, it just says “mother love”.

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Hello, my name is Alverna

and I am a migraine sufferer.    

There, I said it.  It’s something not many of my friends may know about me, though my utterly devoted husband has become all too familiar with my migraines (especially during the past few months).  Call this the beginning of my coming out, if you will.  It’s really not something I’m very comfortable with, frankly.  I’ve always been a tomboy, and lately I feel like my body is failing me.  I don’t like being labeled as ‘sick’, though it’s nice to finally have a ‘diagnosis’ for several years worth of pain, nausea, asking Tim to turn down the TV, cringing at oncoming headlights when driving, etc.  At my husband’s urging, I went to see my general practice doctor a year and a half ago for my severe, almost daily headaches.  And after going through three different doctors, several other diagnosis, a nasty car accident that certainly didn’t help matters, and finally seeing a neurologist in November, I’ve been diagnosed with chronic migraines.  It turns out I’ve had them for at least three or four years.

How can you not know you have migraines?, you ask.  I should clarify.  I’ve had several what I would consider crippling migraine attacks–horribly throbbing head, severe nausea, intense photophobia and phonophobia–that put me in bed for the day.  So yes, I knew I had migraines.  I’d get them once or twice a year, until this year.  This year I’ve had five or six of those.  However, I was under the impression that the daily headaches I was getting where “regular” headaches.  Yes, they were bad and I wanted to puke and crawl in bed when I got home at the end of the day, but I was under the (misguided) assumption that you had to be in an immense amount of pain for the headache to be a migraine.  Migraines are actually defined as vascular in nature, not by the amount of pain they generate, though they generally are quite painful.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine)

 My diagnosis leaves me working towards findings a treatment program that works for me.  Unfortunately, this is a frustrating, trial-and-error process.  My doc originally put me on Topamax (another story) as a preventative, and has now added Pamelor.  I take Imitrex as an abortive (i.e. when I feel a migraine coming on).  I also get to make lots of fun lifestyle changes, like limiting how much cheese, pizza, and wine I eat.  Of course, all my favorites!  Meanwhile, I’ve done a lot of research and found out how scary migraines are.  From a physiological standpoint, a migraine is very similar to a stroke, and migraineurs are more likely to suffer a stroke at some point in their life.  What the medical community doesn’t agree on is how much more likely, but it’s between 50-80% vs. those who don’t have migraines.  (http://headaches.about.com/cs/education/a/hp_ingore_not.htm)

On the upside, I have a wonderful, supportive husband who loves me very much and will stand by me through anything.  They say the first year of marriage is often the rockiest (if that’s a word).  Time will tell if ours has been, but we’ve grown a lot together.  Our families (and friends) have helped us a lot, too, but mostly it’s just been the two of us.  We rock!  And I’m looking forward winter being over (I’m not a fan of winter, it’s a blue, cold time of year for me), and spring to be here!

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I’m going to try this (bloody) blogging thing…

(and no, I don’t have a cute accent, I’m just pissed off, sorry.  I wrote a nice little post that started off about how I didn’t want to write about anything too personal right off the bat, and I’m not afraid of a little controversy… so I wrote about how the USDA just approved cloned meat–beef, pork, and goat meat–last week and what I thought about it.  And it got deleted when I went to post it.  Nice.  Welcome to blogging!)  Anyway, here’s the link:  

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01776.html

And a chart:

And I will try real blogging again another day :~)

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