this unnatural fog {part 3}

read part 1 here

read part 2 here

Let me just say ... it's so good to be back.

After over a month of feeling trapped in my own skin, there is light again. I've been alleviated of the heaviness that had settled in my bones. As my thyroid finds its way back to balance, I'm delighted to see other aspects of my health follow suit.

The fog is gone.

When I left the naturopath's office that Friday afternoon, I bore inside me an odd mixture of hope and caution, of anticipation and wariness, of joy and sadness. These feelings kept bumping up against each other in my insides like pinballs, pinging across my body from bone to bone as I weighed the new information I had taken in. But within four days, I felt the light coming back. Within seven, I was practically bouncing off the walls with energy.

I've had so many health journeys in my life (the past two years have been especially rich) and as much as I continue to learn from them, they wear me out utterly. My tendency has been to bear these times with patience and watchfulness until I would finally reach a point where I had enough. Frustration and anger would escalate quickly, overriding every vestige of patience and rationality.

I'm continuing to learn much these days in this body God gave me; I don't think any one of these lessons is fully realized; none of them are things I can put in the past tense as in this is what I have learned, but these are all the seeds of some things and the development of some others.

I'm thinking of these as my lessons learning:

The world doesn't stop when I do.
While it was difficult to see my normal schedule and activities fall to the wayside, and while I most definitely grieved the loss of my spark and vitality, I am learning that it was okay for me slow down and some days, to come to a full stop. The world did not spin off its axis, the foundations of the earth were not shaken, and those who normally depend upon me to accomplish certain tasks got by just fine.

It's okay to feel like I'm falling apart.
There's a special prayer that the gorgeous Christianne-girl and I have shared for some months now in which we ask God, when it feels like we’re so broken we will never be mended, may you remind us that you hold all things (even us) together. It seems that during the course of our friendship, one or the both of us have felt this way: our lives and our hearts were utter messes, lost and in chaos. Nothing made sense, everything hurt. Sometimes we wondered where God was in the midst of it.

This was definitely one of those times for me. As awful as that falling apart feeling is (and as much as it really does seem it is all falling terrifically apart), there was a measure of freedom in knowing that there was no chaos as far as God is concerned: He is in control and He is good, and I'm willing to bet He doesn't see chaos when He sees my life. He's got it covered. He's holding all things (even me) together.

My worth is not tied to my ability to be productive.
This will always be easy to acknowledge in theory (and for other people), but I imagine there will always be some difficulty in allowing for the truth of it in myself. The three or four weeks that it was at its worst, my days were comprised of dragging my sorry butt out of bed, going to work, napping, having a small bite to eat, and then going straight back to bed. Jesus spoke into this, His truth running underneath the fatigue that had settled into my muscles and marrow. His presence was an undercurrent that ran deeper than my body's imbalance. I knew that I was still loved, that I was not being punished, and that my lack of ability to be in motion did not in any way impact my worth.

I am a whole person.
While referring to ourselves in terms of categories like body, mind, heart, spirit, soul can be helpful in certain contexts, these categories have limited usefulness. We are whole persons and bodies are an important part of that. I am as much my body as I am my soul; all these things bleed into one another and all are vital components of our personhood. When my body is slow and sluggish and heavy and hurting, you better believe my mind, my heart, my spirit, and my soul are all a part of that. They cannot be separated. And I believe it's all sacred territory.

When I can rely upon myself, I do.
This is especially apparent now that I am well. After spending a month of feeling as though I was beginning each day at the end of myself, I was calling on divine assistance for every moment. I don't really do that in a body that is well and filled with energy: I'm more inclined to rely upon my own abilities. When I insist on being strong, it limits the ways in which God's power can be made perfect in my weakness.

One body, many parts.
I had no idea how crucial the thyroid is until I first learned over a year ago that mine was severely out of whack. When Paul talks about the body in 1 Corinthians 12, he mentions that no part of the body is independent from another, that the parts that seem weaker are actually indispensable. I don't know how much medical knowledge Paul possessed, but I do know he's spot on. I feel the weight of indispensable.

The valleys are holy places.
Like most -- if not all -- people I know, I infinitely prefer it when things are going well: I feel good, I'm happy, my difficulties are few, and (dare I say it?) my circumstances agree with me. Jesus is there and those times are a gift.

But He's in the valleys, too. And I think it's in the valleys that I confront myself in a way I can't on higher ground. I couldn't escape from the truths of myself that forced me to let go (one white-knuckled finger at a time) of those pieces to which I so desperately clung. In the fog, I saw myself as I was and got a glimpse of who I'm meant to be.

And that's a gift, too.

Thank you friends, for loving me in this place.

photo © 2008 jen fox photography

i heart summer!!

No offense to the Christmas season, but I do believe this is the most wonderful time of the year.

kaari soaks up some sun

I'll be posting part 3 of the this unnatural fog series soon, but wanted to share some yummy summer goodness first. :o)

Happy first week of summer!!

all summer-y photos by kirsten.michelle

this unnatural fog {part 2}

Read part 1 here.

On the morning of Friday, June 6 at a quarter to five in the morning, the annoyingly cheerful chimes of my alarm steal into my sleep. I roll over and hit snooze once, twice, and a third time, muffling a groan with my pillow: I must get out of bed.

I move slowly these days, as if wading waist-deep through murky swamp water. Lying on my side, I press my palms into the mattress, pushing my torso away from the bed. The cool air pricks my skin, gooseflesh rising on my arms almost instantly. Begrudgingly, I swing my legs out from under the sheets. Like the rest of me, they are stiff and heavy, reluctant to obey my rather unconvincing mental order to move. I yawn and let my head fall toward my chest.

Just one thing is crystal clear in my mind: I don't want to get up.

The last call I received from my family doctor tells me that second blood test shows my thyroid levels are normal. Normal: an appallingly nebulous and strikingly inaccurate word for whatever this is. This doesn’t make sense. I wonder if this is all in my head. I’m anxious to hear the results of the blood work the naturopath ordered. My head is foggy and empty and I can’t remember what he had tested. So many long words have passed over me these weeks, medical terms with too many syllables and not nearly enough vowels.

I rub my eyes and lean forward, standing to my feet. When I get to the bathroom, I look in the mirror and see dull, empty eyes staring back at me. I cannot see myself anymore. I’m not sure where I’ve gone. I've never felt so disconnected from my own flesh.

When I get to Dr. W’s office later that afternoon, I inhale the familiar scent of the old brown house and burning herbs. I sit in the waiting area, thumbing disinterestedly through a natural health magazine. It’s not long before he comes into the office holding my file and a clipboard casually at his side.

Get back here Kirsten, he says with his usual dry humor, gesturing toward his office. I follow him and take a seat in the familiar chair covered in navy velvet. I set my messenger bag down on the hardwood floor and wait as he pages through the yellow sheets of my file and asks me how I am. He should know, I think. I let go of the breath that has gone stale in my lungs, looking to the shafts of sunlight streaming through the window and puddling on the floor near my feet. He keeps turning the yellow pages back and forth, scanning them through his dark-rimmed glasses.

He looks up at me. Your iron is good, your T3 and T4 are fine. Your TSH is within normal range (again with the "normal"). But you’ve tested positive for thyroid antibodies, he tells me.

I’m not sure what this means, not having heard this term before. This alerts me to listen carefully. He explains to me that the supplement I’ve been taking over the past fourteen months to treat my hypothyroidism may have been working too well, stimulating the thyroid to produce TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). Interpreting the increase as an unwelcome invasion, my body zealously produced the antibodies to subdue it. The fog has a name, then.

Unable to comprehend fully what I’m hearing, I am nonetheless relieved to have an answer and a direction to go with it. I would research antibodies more later and read that their presence typically indicates that an autoimmune failure is just around the corner. As I sit with this new information, it strikes me how utterly dependent I am in this place: that the right tests are ordered, that the right questions are asked, that I trust my physician to be thorough. How long might I have lived in a body at war with itself? What might have happened if I had waited too long? I don't want to consider it.

I leave his office carrying two white bottles: a thyroid support supplement to replace the one I have been taking, and another that is designed to enhance my immune system's ability to function appropriately while also diminishing the extreme antibody response. I hold them in my hand and peruse their labels. Dr. W has been spot on with my health every time before, one physician willing to get at the root cause of my health issues when some others were dismissively prescribing anti-depressants.

I lay awake in bed that night, my mind turning over facts and thoughts again and again; I am restless, unable to fall asleep. But in a good way.

It's because I’m hopeful. And that is everything.

Part 3 is coming...

sunlight photo by kirsten.michelle

Please note: I understand there are many schools of thought when it comes to how to manage one's physical health. I kindly ask that you refrain from posting comments containing disagreement with choices made by me or by my physician. The purpose of these posts is to share my journey through the health challenges I face and to describe how I am choosing to pursue wellness in a manner consistent with my convictions and my own ability to assess what is best for my body.

this unnatural fog {part 1}

I've been trying to come up with a way of describing what the past few months have been like. In a previous post, I mentioned some of the medical issues I was having; without regurgitating details from my ever-thickening medical files, suffice it to say I've had a number of issues to contend with. Or as my doctor told me at my last visit: you've exchanged one melodrama for another.

Or a few others, rather.

Unless you've spoken with me on the phone, you may not have noticed much of a difference. Or maybe you have. I did my best to maintain a presence here, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do. It wasn't so much out of a sense of obligation as it was out of a desire to maintain some semblance of connectedness, to keep my head above the surface when I felt pulled under.

Over the last several months, I've felt a slow descent into what I can only describe as a terrible fog. At first, I was just a little more tired than normal. Less energetic.

About three or four weeks ago, the descent sharpened and picked up speed. I became forgetful, my head cloudy. It required all the abilities of concentration I possessed to maintain my focus visually. My limbs and my body felt unbearably heavy; every movement was laborious. Getting out of bed seemed especially impossible. Unless I paid particular attention to it, my speech became slurred and slow; even my jaw and my tongue felt too heavy to move. I spent all my waking hours in a stupor, feeling as though I was heavily drugged. It didn't matter how long or how deeply I slept. Every day felt the same, my state of being residing in an odd place where feelings of inebriation and profound exhaustion intersected.

I watched my calendar fill with more and more medical appointments: follow-ups, ultrasounds, blood tests. I held carbon copies of lab slips and sat opposite white walls on which clocks ticked away the seconds, oddly colorful gifts of pharmaceutical companies eager to sell little pills with impossible names. I can still see the little holes trailing above a river on indigo on my arm.

For the most part, I stopped caring about everything. I didn't care that I wasn't exercising, that I wasn't blogging (or writing anything for that matter), that I wasn't taking pictures, that any food I prepared all tasted the same -- the things that once mattered so much to me were gone. I learned to fake it: to calculate and make up the distance between my fog and the self I remembered, but distantly.

My days passed and these things I remembered enjoying at one time sifted easily through my fingers like sand. I'd let my hand drop with a heavy thud at my side, not worrying about picking up those things I'd lost. I was just too tired to care, shrouded by a heavy cloak of apathy. Wanting anything seemed a distant possibility; the ability to do much but exist had ceased. Separated from desire and will, I found I wasn't left with much. I felt as though I had been hollowed out. I knew God was present, but in a very cerebral, distant memory kind of way. I wasn't sensing Him – or much of anything -- at all.

I had moments where I seemed to emerge from this, to rise above the surface: to get excited or angry about something, to want to work on a writing piece. Most of the time, these bursts of emotion and life manifested themselves as full and unrestrained tears. My defenses dissolved, I always returned to this place where I felt the throbbing pull at my ankles dragging me under toward numbness, weighing me down. It was a strong and steady undertow that I was too weak to resist.

I was empty. And even now I wonder if it's honest to write any of this in the past tense. But somewhere in the distance, I think the sun is coming up and that maybe it will burn the fog away; I want it to come up.

evening mist photo courtesy of freefoto.com

Please note: I understand there are many schools of thought when it comes to how to manage one's physical health. I kindly ask that you refrain from posting comments containing disagreement with choices made by me or by my physician. The purpose of these posts is to share my journey through the health challenges I face and to describe how I am choosing to pursue wellness in a manner consistent with my convictions and my own ability to assess what is best for my body.

Read part 2 here.

love-joy-squeal fest

As if it weren't lavish & glorious enough that Christianne is coming to see me, this gorgeous girl is coming too. At the same time!!

You should see the pinch marks!! Not sure what God is up to here, but whatever it is, I can tell you two things: it is very good, and it humbles the heck out of me.

I'm with you, Sarah: I think I must be dreaming.

six more random things

Because he makes me laugh and calls me his gluten-free friend, I am taking 23 Degrees's tag-back request to share six more random things. :o)

First, a correction to a random thing in the original post.
I was 2 or 3 years old when the robin egg eating incident occurred, not 5 or 6, and I thought you should know. Thanks for keeping me honest, Mom!!


1. The latte diet took a detour.
I had to switch to decaf because regular coffee was making me break out like a thirteen-year-old. Sadly, even the so-called Anti-Acne Blend that Caleb was good enough to send to me – that he roasted himself at Yaks, by the way – resulted in several facial eruptions of the pimply kind (but that dangerously dark roast is so stinking delicious, I almost didn’t care about the zits). Sometimes I sneak a few fully-leaded beans into my morning grind because 1) it would be tragic and irresponsible of me to let perfectly good coffee beans go to waste, and 2) I’m rebellious & fond of testing my limits.


2. No dish needed.
As far as I’m concerned, this is on my Top 10 List of Things I Love About Being Single. I bought it, no one else eats it, no one else has a right to complain about it, and there is just no sense in dirtying the dish (I do, however, use a spoon). So yes, I am going to be so audacious as to stand in the kitchen & eat Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss Mint Galactica ice cream Straight From the Container.


3. Gasp!! Where is my French homework?!
It would be exaggerating to call them nightmares, but several times a year, I have the same dream that I’m back in high school & have forgotten my French homework and my locker combination. The anxiety that attends these dreams is such that I wake up tense, frantic, my heart pounding with dread, wondering how in the world I could be so irresponsible as to forget my French homework (gasp!!). Incidentally, I never forgot my locker combo, & the one time I forgot a homework assignment in high school, it was for a government class (American government to be specific, which did not involve any guillotines as far as I recall).


4. Gladiator love.
When Christin and I were roommates in our senior year at Biola, we fell in love with the movie Gladiator. We saw it no less than three times in the movie theater, primarily because we were so enamored of the character Maximus (aided in no small part by the fact that he was played by Russell Crowe). Seriously … what’s not to love about a fierce warrior who, when asked how long it’s been since he has been home with his wife and son, replies, “Two years, two hundred and sixty-four days and this morning”? Aw …


5. A trouble-maker, even in utero.
My havoc-wreaking days on this earth began before I even exited the womb; just ask my Mom. I certainly kicked as babies do, but I did kicking one better. I became fond of sticking one of my feet up in between Mom’s ribs. She would push it down and I would put it right back. She would push it down again, and I would shove that cute little foot right back into the same place in those ribs. Over and over again. She was still sore long after I was born because I had managed to break three ribs and tear some cartilage. Ow. Sorry, Mom!


6. Car trip countdown.
If you’ve seen my sidebar, you know I’m a fan of countdowns. On one now infamous family vacation to the Oregon coast when I was about 10 years old, I asked my dad how long it would be until we arrived at our destination. He told me, about two hours. And I asked, how many minutes is that? He told me it was 120 minutes. I would periodically pop my head forward to the little digital clock taped to the dash of the old Chevy Citation and announce: 119 minutes! 118 minutes! 117 minutes! 116 minutes! I think it was at about 114 minutes! that Mom had had enough and ripped (ripped, I tell you!!) that little clock right off the dash.

Whew! For now this gluten-free-eating-decaf-coffee-drinking-standing-in-the-kitchen-eating-coconut-milk-ice-cream-French-homework-dreaming-gladiator-loving-troublemaking-rib-breaking-countdowning girl is going to wrap herself in some red flannel sheets and call it a night.

Peace to you all, and have a great weekend!

pre-grad photo of christin & kirsten {may 2000}

coffee photo by kirsten.michelle

to see her again

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. ~ Henri Nouwen

God smiled on me today. I asked Him for this.

And now my friend is coming.

My squealing may have woken the neighbors. The windows shook when I danced. I feel light, expectant. Hopeful.

And that, in itself, is a kind of wellness.

She has offered words to heaven when it seemed every prayer I uttered fell in a tattered heap at my feet. She has cried with me, prayed with me. She laughs with me and celebrates with me. Somehow, she sits with me across the miles. I love her.

And we will be together again soon. Such a gift. Read her beautiful words here.

christianne & kirsten photo by kirk
{february 2008}