Thyroid Ultrasound Update

On Thursday I went to the endocrinologist and they went over my history, symptoms, took my blood pressure (which was much lower at 140/90!), did an ultrasound of my thyroid and pulled lots of blood.

All of my thyroid blood panels had already come back at normal levels.

On the ultrasound they confirmed two nodules that were side by side on my thyroid about 1.5cm each.  Normally they would do a fine needle aspiration biopsy right then to check them out as they were not just fluid filled, but had solid parts.  However, this doctor suspects that it might be possible that I have a rare adrenal tumor called a paraganglioma on my thyroid.  Basically a paraganglioma is an adrenaline producing tumor.  If they were to biopsy this, it could send out too much adrenaline and have....well, unfortunate results for me!  So, he wanted to be extra cautious and do some more bloodwork that would help determine if that is what this is. 

I really saw God's hand in this, because the doctor relayed to me that they had had a case like this last month and he had really been reading up on this condition and discussing with other doctors about the best course of action should they come across this diagnosis again. 

They put me in a dark room in a supine position for what was supposed to be 15 minutes.  However, they must have forgotten about me, because about 40 minutes later (although I really had no idea how long it had been and didn't want to get up to go check because that would ruin the whole lie-still-so-we-can-take-your-blood-and-get-an-accurate-reading thing)....I finally prayed, "God, please let me know you are with me in all this and send a nurse in within the next 60 seconds so I know you haven't forgotten about me!"

And I started counting down with confidence....Sixty.

Fifty-nine.

Fifty-eight.

Fifty-se........*knock knock knock*

A nurse walked in the door to take my blood!  Yep, even though I was confident God was listening, I was somehow still surprised he answered that prayer so quickly!

So she took my blood while I was so calm and that should give a good idea as to whether adrenaline is pumping through my body when it's not  supposed to be; thus suggestive of the paraganglioma.

Here is some more information on these tumors, in case you are interested.  I was so glad this doctor took the time to write down all this information because my brain could barely keep up with all the information he covered in a short amount of time, much less was it able to spell or even remember the word "paraganglioma"!

http://adrenalcenter.org/paraganglioma.html

Of course this would be something that is rare....because all of my issues turn out to be "really rare" and "this will never happen twice" and "surely it couldn't be this because you've already had x, y and z".

I should get the results back Monday or Tuesday and then they will let me know how we should proceed.

My symptoms are:  lightheadedness, high blood pressure, very strong pulse, pulse skips a beat, nausea, eating less, constant dull headache, irritability, times when I just have no more energy.. and I could go on! 

I did ask again about what I should or should not be doing in the meantime, and the doctor just said, "Don't run a marathon!"

Ha.  Don't worry about that.

My mom sent me a really encouraging psalm and I just loved reading it yesterday.  I am not too worried about this....God has it all in His hands. 

Psalm 16

¹ Keep me safe, my God,
    for in you I take refuge.

² I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.”
³ I say of the holy people who are in the land,
    “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
⁴ Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
    I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
    or take up their names on my lips.

⁵ Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
⁷ I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
⁸ I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful^[b] one see decay.
¹¹ You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Photo #5 Putting away Christmas

We packed up all the ornaments today. 

This is one of my favorites.  Divino Nino, the Divine Child. 

A gift from my mom.

Thyroid and blood pressure madness.

Yesterday I went to see a new doctor.  She is great.  She is an NFP only practitioner which means she does not prescribe birth control and I knew that I wanted to become a patient of hers to support her in this, because I feel morally, that is the only way to go.  But it was hard for me to think of leaving the OB/GYN practice that I have been with for almost 10 years.  They have seen me for 8 pregnancies.  I knew exactly where everything was in that office.  I knew office staff.  I knew the routines.  I was comfortable there.

I told Rob I was nervous about leaving and going somewhere new, and he told me that sometimes God wants us to be uncomfortable.  Doing the right thing is not always comfortable.

And so I made my appointment after nearly 2 months of having a bounding pulse.  My bounding pulse is not a fast heartrate, but a insanely annoying throbbing of my pulse which I mainly feel in my neck. I can usually see it pulsing on my wrist as well.  So that was my impetus for making this appointment.  It felt like last February when I was in the hospital for the partial molar pregnancy and my blood pressure was high and my thyroid was hyper.

I left my kids with a paid babysitter (for the first time ever I think)....and went to the office.  When I got in there the waiting room was small and I thought, "Oh boy, was this a good idea?"  But once I got back with the nurse and doctor; my opinion of the place greatly changed.  They were so nice and the doctor ended up spending 30-40 minutes I think, talking to me and discussing my history.  One of the things I noticed right off about the doctor's office was that she had a huge picture of Jesus with little children gathered around Him.  Right there, hanging on her wall.  No wonder I had such a sense of peace.  That and beforehand I prayed that this office visit would be fruitful and that I could adequately relay all that had been going on with me physically without forgetting or getting "brain fog".  And God gave me the grace to do that!

So on to the health stuff....the nurse took my vitals and noted that my blood pressure was high.  Like 166/100 high.  They ended up taking my pressures 6 times and it was high every time and with 3 different cuffs.  I was told to go about my daily routine but not to exercise/overexert myself.

She went over all my symptoms and history and checked my neck.  Only to find that I have a thyroid nodule.  So that could be what is causing my blood pressure to be high.  Or I could just have developed high blood pressure based on my familial history.  Or I could be stressed from all that I have been through and not properly grieving Francis Marie.  Or it could be something else.

I am being referred to an endocrinologist to check out the nodule.  They will determine without it is solid or fluid-filled and whether or not it needs to come out.

In the meantime I had a ton of blood drawn and she is running thyroid tests and who knows what else.

And I have to go on P+3, 5, 7 and 9 of my cycle to get blood drawn.

This doctor is on top of things. 

I am to call her if I get a headache that won't go away, shortness of breath, more chest pain, vision changes, etc.

So that's where I'm at.  I'm not really nervous about any of it....this doc really has me confident that we can get to the bottom of this and get it straightened out and then we can try to conceive again.

And in the meantime, here is Photo #3 and #4

 

 

Photo #2: Can you spot the big problem?

If you said, "Baby in the bathtub with her clothes on!"......you win!

She and Ian took a bath together and when she was done, I dried her off, put her in a new diaper and stuck her in pajamas.  She proceeded to walk back to the bathroom and to Ian's cries of "Nooooooo Baby!!!" climb her fully clothed body right back into the water with him.

*sigh*  A mother's work is never finished....even after she finishes it!

New Year's Resolutions... Photo #1: Licking the batter

My husband laughs at resolutions for the new year, and I seldom make a true resolution, but I saw one challenge that I thought looked enticing and it made me realize that this would benefit my relatives too!  It is a 365 day picture challenge.  I have been very bad about taking and posting pictures of the kids, and for relatives who live far away, this has been very unfair and something I resolve to work on!  Starting today, I will be posting (hopefully a picture a day and I will number them so that I can see how many I wound up with by the end of 2015).  This will hopefully give my camera some adequate use this year and maybe improve my picture taking!

Now I am starting a couple of days late, but being late is a Holmes tradition.

So for your viewing pleasure, here is Photo #1: Licking the batter

Happy New Year and Pick Your Saint for 2015!

Happy New Year to anyone out there who still reads my updates!  It is my hope to start blogging a little more often than every 2 months this year.  Three young kids, homeschooling and a mini-farm sure do keep me busy!  We are so blessed and I am so thankful for my life, my family, my homestead, my friends and everything that God has provided for us.  He is so good.

It is hard to believe that it will soon be a year since I was in the hospital with my last pregnancy that ended in February.  I've been thinking about Francis Marie more often these days and the ache in my heart for another baby has already started as we have been blessed to cuddle lots of new bundles of joy in the last month!  Our prayer is that the Lord will bless us with our own new bundle sometime in the next year.

During Advent I used the Saint Name Generator  (courtesy of blogger/author Jennifer Fulwiler) to pick a saint for me for 2015.  Why choose a saint?  Well, it is a new person of God to study and learn about, a new intercessor in heaven whom I can ask to pray for me....the question is why not choose a saint for the year?  We are all striving to become saints!  Surely I could use some tips from someone who has gone before me! 

So who did I get???

Drum roll, please.......





Blessed Angela of Foligno!  She is actually Saint Angela now, declared a saint on October 9, 2013 by Pope Francis.  So why did she pop up as "Blessed" under the saint generator?  I can only guess it is because she was declared "Blessed" (or beatified) on July 11th, 1701.  Mine and Robert's wedding anniversary is also July 11th.  Had she popped up as "Saint Angela" (Canonization is when one is declared a saint), I might have never seen her beatification date and made the connection...and so I leave that as a special, mystical reminder from Our Lord that He wanted me to know of this connection.  Saint Angela had no shortage of sorrow as her mother, husband and children all died within a close period of each other.  It will be interesting to see what I will learn from this saint this year, and how she intercedes in prayer for me before the throne of God.

I certainly recommend that you try the Saint Name Generator and see who you get!  If nothing else but to read up a little on a person who might draw you closer to Christ!

Haven't posted since August? Time for an update...

So my last post wayyyy back in August was "Meet our New Goats" and I could really repost that title right here in November, because a lot has happened since then.

Goat Update

The very long and emotionally charged story can be summarized in the following paragraph:

Our sweet goats had a disease that was missed by the breeders and thus had to go back to the breeders for a refund, because it is a virus that we just cannot have on our little farm (read goats would have needed separate living quarters if they had remained here as "pets").  It was so hard, most of all for me.   I was so worried about how the kids would feel after falling in love with our goats, but they did so well with having to send them back.  I was the one that cried like a baby for days. 

God worked it out that 3 days after returning these girls to their farm, we were able to bring home 2 other Lamancha goats, and while they are a little older and have different personalities than our first two, they are really growing on us and are going to be a great new start to our venture into dairy goats.

So meet Amaretto and Cameo!

 

 

 

 

These two girls were bred before we bought them, and it appears that their breeding took as they have had no signs of heat.  So that is really exciting and we should be looking at March goat babies! :)  We are really excited about this and have been watching youtube goat kidding videos to prepare. 

Oh no, I am not even kidding.  Get it???? Kidding?!?!?

 

Angela Update

 

My update is that I have been continuing with my now monthly HCG blood draw checks, that is until last month when life just got busy and I skipped it!  I will resume this month and then have a draw in December when that should be 6 months of negative HCG levels and the doctor should give us the all-clear to try to conceive again. 

 

We started back to homeschooling in August and that is probably the other part of why I haven't updated this blog in several months.  Schooling has kept us really busy this semester.  Not only does Isabel have a heavier workload this year as a third grader, but Ian is doing preschool activities at home and there is a lot of prep for crafts and learning activities for his age.  And then there is the activity of keeping Caroline occupied while the other two are doing their schoolwork!

 

The garden kept us extremely busy in August and September with the end of tomatoes, okra and planting field peas.  Last year we had great success purchasing bags of black-eyed peas from Walmart and throwing them out into the garden and had an entire garden full of peas, so we did that again this year and just finished harvesting them before the first killing frost hit over a week ago.  And then of course we had to shell them, blanch them and freeze them.  But boy, they are worth it!   I had never imagined they could taste that good fresh!

 

Then there is the whole "I don't feel that great" issue....and this is complex.  I've long suspected that I could have fibromyalgia, but now I'm wondering if maybe I should actually go to a doctor and find out.  I don't sleep well at night (now this got better for awhile once we purchased a new mattress), but I still feel really, really tired.  Like a type of fatigue that I think other people don't feel unless they are doing something really physically exerting....I'm not.  I'm tired whether I exert myself or not!  And lately I've just had a lot of pain in my joints and just "in my bones".  This has happened for years (the joint pain) but there are periods where it gets worse and periods where it seems better.  And then there is the brain fog.....as in I can't remember what we did yesterday.  When someone asks me, "What did you do this weekend?"  I'm almost in a panic because I know it sounds really stupid to say, "I don't really remember"....but it literally is hard to remember what we did the day before.  I took a quiz this week to find out my brain age (okay here is the link, because I'm sure you will want to take it too)  Brain Age Quiz   Well, I scored the worst score.... I fell into the "0-11" category which told me I had a high risk for Alzheimer's and I could add 10 years to my chronological age to get my brain age.  *sigh*

 

I'm hoping to get a treadmill and start exercising early in the morning....yes, probably when I should still be sleeping! And my next plan is to switch from drinking a beer to drinking a glass of red wine.  Hey....just keeping it honest!

 

The Kids' Update

 

 

 

Isabel:  Poor girl gets her first two cavities filled this Wednesday!  Pray for her....she's nervous.  She is looking forward to showing the goats....at you know, a goat show.  We went to the NC State Fair in October and watched the goat shows and she was really captivated by it all and was taking mental notes.  I was so proud of her because she entered one of her pieces of art into the Fair and had it on display with hundreds of other pieces of art for all of North Carolina to see!  She was so proud to have a "participant ribbon" on her painting.

 

 

 

Ian:  Ian has been a challenge lately ;)  His strong-willed spirit has been popping up more often, although there are also times when he is trying so hard to make good choices and please Mommy and Daddy.  I think he has been craving more one on one attention with me, and I have to find a way to make that time happen in a way that is meaningful to him (which usually involves playing trains).  However the other side of that coin is that when he is done playing with me, the "end" of the time is usually really hard even though I prepare him with "okay in 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute I have to go make dinner...." or some other task.  There is usually a meltdown because the fun has come to an end.  We are working on trying to find the balance with him.  When he is not engaged or occupied he is usually trying to find a way to get into trouble.  Boredom = "let's go destroy something" to Ian.  He just lives very passionately....it's like 100% love, fun, rage, sadness, excitement, etc.....whatever he is feeling, he feels it very strongly ;)

 

 

 

Caroline:  Caroline has been tag-teaming with Ian lately. Sometimes this is really sweet and other times it is a lot of trouble! ;)

 

 

 

 I have really been thanking God that Ian and Caroline were not twins....there was one time when I just prayed and prayed for twins (and don't get me wrong, I do think twins would be double the blessings!) but boy, I just don't know if I would be cut out to be a mom to multiples! ;)  But I know God gives you the grace to handle everything with His help!  Caroline's favorite word at 19 months is "No!" and she says it even when she means "yes!" so sometimes it is frustrating for us both!  She has literally exploded in vocabulary from about 20 words at 18 months, to now at 19 months repeating pretty much every word we say.  It is crazy and it is fun, and it is also a lot of talking in our house right now! Hahahah!  She loves to sing along with the Frozen soundtrack as does Ian, she loves to throw balls, she loves to do "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Ring Around the Rosies", and she still pretty much can't stand to go for car rides. 

 

 

She also thinks she can do anything and everything her big brother and sister can do.  I think she must imagine herself to be a big kid trapped in a teeny tiny body!

 

 

 

And those are the activities, creatures and kids which have been keeping this mama so very busy these last 3 months!  Hopefully it won't be so long before I can update again.