Making Plans and All that Jazz

It has been over ten years since I have started to look into holistic health programs. I’ve always felt that the key to living a healthy life is through prevention and otherwise treating the body (and soul) gently when things come up. I’ve done short classes here and there over the years (the Alternative Medicine College of Canada, Vintage Remedies), but have found myself longing for more (most notably the freedom to travel to Europe where there are actually proper schools for homeopathy and herbalism, but yeah, that will be in another life time). Over the past several years I have given myself fully to my children and as a result (at least partially) my health and mood have been suffering. While I do enjoy teaching my children at home and feel it is in important and worthwhile thing to do, it isn’t easy. I’ve been really feeling the pull to start working on my own personal goals again. I will not always be a homeschooling mom. Within ten years (TEN YEARS!!!) two of my three children will be mostly grown and off on pursuits of their own. I also think it is important that I don’t make a martyr out of myself, by being the one to do everything for my family while totally neglecting my own wellbeing. It’s so challenging to be the one and only (more or less) and without taking time to recharge myself by doing something that gives me energy and life I can see myself ending up feeling really resentful and well, just generally unwell. The desire to be doing more, was just slowly eating away at me on the inside.

So, despite a whole lot of fear and uncertainty, I have made a promise to do everything I can to allow myself to take the Registered Holistic Nutritionist program through The Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. I believe that this is a career that I can make work even if I live a bit aways from most people. There is so much consulting that can be done online these days and there are so many people out there that need support in slowing making changes in their diets to benefit from lasting change. There is so much food out there that would be more rightly called food like and it saddens be to see a whole generation of people that don’t really know about real food, not to mention how to cook it. We are used to everything being quick and easy and I want to bring people back into their kitchen (with there children) where they can see that it doesn’t have to be near as complicated as it seems to be.  My husband and I have thought about me offering little seminars or classes at farmer’s markets, but I really feel that I want and need to complete more studies to feel comfortable doing so.

Unfortunately, being a real school, The Canadian School of Natural Nutrition is rather expensive so I will have to work to slowly get the money that I need to start these studies. With that in mind, I have decided that I will give becoming an independent distributor of essential oils through Young Living. Essential oisl have always been a passion for me and I spent quite some time making lotions and massage oils when my middle child was just wee. Unfortunately, my oils had a mishap when we moved in 2009 and I just never restocked them. I am looking forward to getting back into it. I would love to talk to you about how essential oils could work in your life. I hope that given time, I will be able to make up the tuition that I need to attend The Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, but I am not expecting miracles and I will be happy just to be doing something that brings me joy as I work towards this goal. Please take a look at the Young Living site and let me know if there is anything that interests you or if you’d just like to chat about essential oils. You can also find me and more information on Young Living and essential oils in general on facebook (give me some time, the page is less than 24 hours old, but I’m hoping for good things!)

I am also still an independent consultant with Epicure Selections and am still in love with their products. You can check out my personal website and order directly from it with the items shipped directly to you (as always) if you are in Canada. I’d be happy to answer any questions and still believe that their spice blends make healthy eating easy and flavourful.

I will use any of the money I receive from either of these ventures to go towards my further education so if you want to give a girl a hand while treating yourself to high quality products it would be so much appreciated. I would love to talk to you about either of these companies (and as always, I welcome your questions about health and nutrition and am happy to chat, even without a few extra letters after my name!)

Friday’s Fave Five – April 4th, 2014

Yeah, it is April! I am just about ready for spring like weather and  maybe even sitting out on the deck under a blanket. We’ve still got a ways to go as we were hit with a blizzard ice storm for the first half of this week. Nonetheless, April means spring in my books and that’s good after a long winter.

I know that I said that I was taking part in the 100 Happy Days challenge, but I did not keep up with it. I am not tied to my camera phone and I went about a couple of happy days just living life only to realize when I got into bed that I didn’t actually take a picture of one of those happy moments. There were also a few days last week when I was feeling pretty far from happy. I’ve been finding the isolation on country living harder this year. Last year, my husband would leave for three weeks at a time and I would be stranded here, but there was always excitement when he’d come back and we’d get out together during the 4 or 5 days that he’d stay. I find it harder when he gets to go out to work each day and see people and I am trapped at home. I haven’t gotten to know anyone. I only ever leave the house when we have errands to run (about once every two weeks) and we don’t even go to the same stores or go to the city so we never, ever even have the same cashier. Anyways, I am sure all this will improve for me when the snow melts and I am able to spend much more time outside. At least then we will be able to see the neighbour more. I love winter, but this has been a long one (definitely worth investing in snowshoes next year :p )

Anyways, all that to say, that while I haven’t been very good at 100 Happy Days, there still have been little blessings in my week and I am happy to share them as part of my Friday Fave Five hosted by Living to Tell the Story.

1. Sharing a bottle of wine with my man, while brainstorming ideas that could help connect me with other people in a helping manner. I don’t think we even remotely came close to coming up with a plan, but it was an enjoyable experience and I have some starting points now.

2. This dog.

 

She is a total pain in my rear and I just had to rearrange my bedroom because she’s taken to trying to eat through the gyprock in one area. She also only has interest in us while we are eating, but she is super bright and I’ve started training her again this week and that gives me great joy. She certainly loves doing tricks (or rather, so loves the food rewards). She also gets me outside playing in the snow each and every day and that always cheers me up. She’ll never compare to my sweet Penny, but she’s a pretty decent dog.

3. Chatting with a friend about Young Living essential oils (among other things). I used to be quite passionate about blending oils and creating massage oils and lotions. It is something I am looking at getting back into at some point and I think Young Living would be a wonderful supplier of oils.

4. Seeing the kids up and at it this morning (not on electronics), drawing elaborate art for their Dad’s birthday tomorrow. Shhh, don’t tell him! They rarely work quietly on projects together so this was nice to see. When the have free time they are usually either off on their own devices (or reading books) or running through the house crazy hyper and oh so loud so it was nice to see them doing something together and quiet. I now know that it can be done!

5. The sun coming in window right this very moment. We are setting up a picnic in the granny suite and plan to enjoy sitting in the sun even where there is still three feet of snow outside. It’s so lovely to see the blue sky after nearly a week of messy weather!

Tomorrow is the Day

Tomorrow I am going in for a procedure; a simple two minute procedure that should have been completed nearly two years ago. I’m finally having an endometrial biopsy. The endometrial biopsy that is supposed to be done when a woman comes in with undiagnosed mid cycle spotting/bleeding. For eight months in 2012, I fought hand, tooth, and nail (and subjected myself to needless GI testing) in an attempt to get a second opinion from a gynecologist. You can read the beginnings of that story here. You can also read some of the ridiculous comments made to me at Atlantic Canada’s major trauma and emergency center that I took a 5 hour trip to because I was sure that I would be taken seriously there (and was the first night, until they sent in a neurologist to see me the next day) here.  I did learn some things that you can read about here. However, in the end, I never got the opportunity to see a gynecologist – even when abnormalities were found on CT. The last that I saw of my family doctor was her passing me a referral to see a psychiatrist for my hysteria. I was looking forward to seeing that psychiatrist with my medical results and my pictures and measurements, but we moved and after a few months on trial birth control (where I bleed constantly), I felt I was doing better. Yes, there was swelling and pain. There was some mid cycle spotting sometimes – but by the end of my 8 month fight for a doctor, I’d gone from mid cycle spotting to definite mid cycle bleeding  most months and going back to spotting some months definitely seemed to be improvement.

Flash forward to January 2014, when I have two near hemorrhages within two weeks of my period. The second time I highball it into emergency. Within an hour, the emergency room doctor has an actual gynecologist on the line (imagine that!). I start hormones that definitely slow the bleeding some, but do not stop it and am seen a couple weeks later by the gynecologist (which I have been told is surprising…the emergency room expected to see me back there before I was seen by gynecology). It took him all of two minutes to tell me that the first thing that is done whenever there is midcycle bleeding is an endometrial biopsy. Duh. I knew that, but I couldn’t find someone to do it. A simple pelvic exam revealed uterine “abnormalities” that would be consistent with abnormal bleeding  (and oddly enough, those CT results, go figure) and I got the comment “of course, we would expect sometimes heavy bleeding in cases like this”. He also felt that there was the possibility of endometriosis on the top outside of the uterus (oh, yeah, I never would have suspected endomentriosis. *head desk*).

I’ve had three weeks from that appointment and I’ll admit that there have been times where I have driven myself crazy with the “what ifs”, especially when my bleeding increased substantially when I changed my hormones over to his “miracle” variety that would have me no longer bleeding with one dose. I worried about the time it took to be seen and taken seriously. I mean something showed on a CT in October 2012. Whatever that was could have spread or grown, couldn’t it? What if my husband’s fears of 2012 were true (he was pretty convinced it was cancer and the doctors were going to let me die)? I’ve had a couple mostly sleepless nights. I’ve talked myself back down to a more rational place now and my husband and I talked through the “what ifs” and am a pretty convinced that they will find a very simple hyperplasia that can easily be taken care of (though, my doctor did stress that if I remained unresponsive to hormone treatment that a hysterectomy would be the next step (and said doctor’s receptionist made me feel like I wasn’t doing my part by continuing to bleed when their miracle drug increased the bleeding “Don’t you know he is just trying to save your uterus?” Uh, yes, sorry, I’ll just tell my body to just stop bleeding for him).

I am so, so, so, so ready for this to be over. This simple test, that should have been done nearly two years ago, better bring me answers. No matter what, though, I will so, so, so, so be encouraging women to keep going at their doctors if they do not think they are getting the care they need. I have read sooooooo many stories were young women were dismissed and things did not go well for them. This will not be the case for me (I’m totally into the simple solution to a simple condition right now), but it has to stop for all of out there. We are women. We know our bodies. LISTEN TO US!

Spring?

This was last year on this date:

 

Coffee outside on the deck. Bare feet. 

Mud! It was must definitely spring. 

This year:

After a two and a half day blizzard/ice storm we now have more snow than we’ve had all winter (I told my son about a week ago that we would soon be able to get his favourite car from this shed….well, he may have to wait another couple weeks!)

There is hope, though:

Oh, yes, spring in Canada, eh?