When medicine isn't enough

I haven't exactly kept it a secret from anyone that I suffer from Bipolar Disorder. It runs pretty heavily in our family. Formerly called manic-depression, bipolar disorder is a kind of chemical imbalance in the brain which leads to alternating states of depression and mania (euphoria, agitation, risk-taking). Like most other illnesses, it can be managed with medication. I have tried several different kinds of meds to find what works for me. The key is to stabilize the mood swings and take the edge off without hampering thinking, creativity, functioning, etc. Most people who meet me (even some who've known me for years) have no idea that I have this disorder.

Over the years, I have found that there are several components to handling an illness like mine.
1. Face up to the fact there is no cure - you have it and you must now deal with it!
2. I can't manage my life without the aid of medication. People with bipolar often talk themselves out of taking their pills - big mistake!
3. Being open about my illness helps me manage it. Friends and family are often the first to notice when I'm having problems and can help me.
4. Whatever I can't handle, I must trust God to help me with. He's not going to cure me or take my problems from me, but he can give me the strength to go on, the clarity I need for making decisions, and the peace I need so very much.

Right now I am on an emotional rollercoaster. Joy from finding my dad. Anguish from remember the past. Pity from seeing what my dad has become. Deep sorrow at seeing him suffer. Hope when he responds to having his children with him. Sadness when I hear that his condition is deteriorating. This is one of those times where the emotional overload is more than my medication can deal with and I must pray for extra strength. I survived going through this when my mom died, but this almost seems harder.

Trophy

While I was dealing with things in Washington last weekend, Dexter was competing in a debate tournament. He won and got this awesome trophy! He has really been enjoying his debate classes and events this year. Emerson's remembering back to when Squeak used to own the debate floor.

Blessings

Life doesn't always seem fair and that's just the way things work. Many horrible things happen to absolutely wonderful people for no apparent reason. Without going into details, I will just say that I have had my share of bad things happen in my life, especially as a child. It wasn't my fault, yet I had to make a choice of what to do with those experiences. At first, I made some poor choices which led only to more hurt and sorrow. Eventually, I learned to move on with my life, keep the lessons learned, and let go of hurt, anger, etc. I am who I am today because of my experiences - good and bad. It would be easy to be mad at those who hurt me or be mad at God for "letting" it happen, but I do not choose to handle it that way. The concept of the Atonement has helped me to know that someone else has felt my pain and that I can get past it. I can forgive others and go on with my life in peace. Sad memories still exist - forgiveness does not erase the past - but I can look at it in a different way and know that it truly is in the past and I am not a slave to the sadness. Our lives are too precious to be tangled up in old hurts and angry feelings. I look forward to glorious new days and opportunities to be a better person. This weekend I had the wonderful experience of offering the peace of forgiveness to someone in pain. I share this in case any of you are struggling with pain in your own lives and hope you will be able to find your own peace.

A Sad Reunion

It's sad how families often get so spread out that it takes something tragic to bring them together. We found out on Jan. 30 that our dad was critically ill and in the hospital. I haven't seen my dad in person for 22 years and I haven't talked to him since 1999 when my mom passed away. He has made some poor choices in his lifetime, one of them being to stop communicating with his family. He recently befriended an LDS missionary who let us know where Dad was and how sick he was. I flew out to Bremerton, Washington, (Seattle area) to see him. My brothers and sisters all came to the hospital as well. We've had quite a rollercoaster of emotions with locating our dad after all this time and then not knowing if he will survive. Dad's body is shutting down in many ways and he's not very neurologically aware. He did open his eyes some when we talked to him and tears came out of his eyes when we told him we were there. Only time will tell where this goes from here. The prognosis is not good. I have to fly home tomorrow morning. Rick and Holly headed home tonight. Bill and Tina are here until Tuesday. Kathy will probably go home tomorrow. Sharon is staying as long as necessary and being our spokesperson. A lot of blessings and sadness this weekend.

New Year....New Stress

Welcome to 2009! I'm still struggling to put the right year on documents at work (and notes to Dexter's school). Emerson's back into his classes for his special education certification. I think he's especially frustrated with this semester's courses since they focus on teaching reading and math. Good skills to have, of course, but he's a P.E. teacher and it's much more challenging for him to develop lessons to use in his weightlifting classes that incorporate reading and math instruction concepts. The good news is that after this semester, all he has left is his student teaching and the Praxis exam.

Dexter is still looking for a job to pay for his choir tour. His crazy schedule for the play and then the choir's winter concerts ended up costing him his job at the pizza place. Now there are just no jobs to be found. I'm realizing now how hard it is to be in high school, have a job to pay for these great opportunities, and attend all the rehearsals and performances associated with those activities. I'm behind schedule on tour payments myself now that there have been some budget cutbacks at work and I won't be able to earn extra money teaching training classes.

As of today, Dwayne is the proud owner of a netbook (really tiny, lightweight laptop computer without any CD or DVD drives). Sharon gave him her laptop for Christmas, but it turned out to be woefully inoperable. He already had his brain geared up for having a laptop, so he just had to get something. Dwayne now has Sundays off so he can prepare for his mission. That dropped him to part time and then they cut another one of his shifts because of the budget cuts at work. He is the first to be called to fill in for people, though. He had a few early mornings this week to fill in for the baker.

I have been coming up with plans to reorganize our church library - not physically, but organizationally. The checkout sheets are doing absolutely no good since people forget to bring stuff back to the library and nobody can figure out who had it last. I stocked up the library with a lot of stuff near the end of the summer, but now it's all gone! Crayons, scissors, chalk & erasers, pencils...probably at the bottom of people's church bags. So frustrating!!! We're restocking again and I'm working on a plan for tracking things better. Three wards use this library and we all need the supplies.

We are in the middle of an exciting time at Heritage - our Joint Commission survey. As a behavioral health care facility, we work hard to be accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Every 2-3 years, they send some people to visit in person to check up on us. It's a three day process where paperwork, policies, files, and buildings get examined thoroughly to see if they meet the standards. People at every level of the treatment process get interviewed. I'm normally not involved in this since my job doesn't relate directly to the treatment of our clients, but we had a personnel change with who handles making sure we comply with all policies and standards. I've been helping her with a lot of different projects to get ready for this survey. The surveyors arrived Tuesday morning and people have been scrambling ever since. It's actually a very helpful process, but nobody enjoys being put on the spot and having their mistakes pointed out. I even got interviewed this morning about the results of our client satisfaction survey. Tomorrow is the last day and they will give us their report with any warnings, recommendations, etc. after they finish meeting with our management team. I think I'll miss the chaos when they're gone since I've kind of enjoyed running around making copies, locating items, delivering documents, creating documents, and providing the occaisional stress relief for everyone around me.

Christmas Joy

Nothing says Christmas like love at home. I'll never be too old to crawl around on the floor and play with our dogs. Dexter snapped this picture and the dogs kept trying to climb on me and lick my face. They are still fascinated by the snow and love to play in it. When I open the door, though, they run inside fast! The heater is close to their beds in the living room and they love to bask in the warmth.

Since Dwayne has a job, he had fun buying presents on his own with his own money. That large stack of presents in front of the tree is all his. He was very generous and we are proud of him for all the time and effort he put into purchasing gifts. Everything was absolutely perfect!

Dwayne had to be at work at 9 am, so we had an early start on unwrapping presents. After he's done whipping up a fabulous Christmas dinner for the kids at Heritage, he'll be coming home to play with all his new toys.

The boys got creative with their gift wrapping. Dwayne added drawings and captions to the wrapping paper. Dexter takes the ultimate prize. He wrapped his gift to his dad completely in duct tape, including a duct tape bow. Beautiful and manly!!

Dwayne and Dexter have rediscovered Rubik's cubes and are pretty good at solving them. Dwayne's gift to Dexter was a 5X5 cube which has Dexter completely perplexed! In this picture, Dexter is also modeling the coat we gave him. He loves it and we're hoping that means he will actually wear a coat.

Dwayne decided to be goofy for the picture, but he really did like all of his presents. Dexter gave him an emergency kit for his car (including jumper cables), but Dwayne didn't remember to take it with him when he left for work. He needed a jump start to get home from work last night, so that may have been a poor choice to leave the cables behind today.
I had one of the most wonderful Christmases ever. With the declining economy, it was nice to see people scale back and really think about the gifts they're giving. It was a relief that more neighbors just said "Merry Christmas" and didn't leave us with plates of candies and cookies. The gifts I received were wonderfully chosen and I felt like each person really knew me and what I liked. Emerson gave me the most incredible set of jewelry, the most beautiful I own or will probably ever own! Santa got me the "Mama Mia" DVD (singalong version) although the family says I'm not allowed to sing along. Dwayne gave me a heart-shaped jewelry box, some sterling silver earrings, and a gold and silver heart necklace. Sharon made me a beautiful and very warm scarf (pictured). Kathy got us a fun family game to play on the Wii. Dwayne gave Emerson an XBox 360 and Dex gave him Gears of War 2 so they can network game systems together and play against each other on different tv's (don't ask me how all that works). It's snowing outside and soon we'll have to find our sidewalk again. It looks beautiful, but we'll be buried in it soon enough.

This year I have thought a lot about Christmases past. Emerson and I have now celebrated 21 Christmases together. Our first Christmas was celebrated at his mom's house and his brothers were embarasssed when I opened a nightgown that was labeled as being from them (courtesy of their mom). The tree at our apartment was the cheapest we could find and it was so crooked we had to weigh it down on one side so it wouldn't fall over. We decorated it with our stuffed animals since we couldn't afford any ornaments. Then there was the year that Emerson gave me his mom's rocking chair for Christmas (I was pregnant with Dexter) and I gave him a used La-Z-Boy chair I bought from a friend. We both stored our special presents at the babysitter's house and she had to keep the secret. Emerson was too sick to enjoy Christmas day much and our tree was all dried out already and we got rid of it by the end of the day. Needles were all over the place! Last year was fun with both of my sisters here. I also loved the year Grandma Myers came out and we had my entire side of the family here (even Dan and Andrea). I remember Christmas mornings when I was a kid and how we had to have breakfast before opening presents. I also remember how Kathy and I were a profession gift unwrapping and rewrapping team so we could sneak peaks at our presents before Christmas. Dad used to go pretty crazy spending a lot on gifts and we spent most of the year paying them off. I'm much happier with the more sentimental gifts, the creative ones, and the handmade ones. Every ornament on our tree has a meaning to me - the Garfield and Odie ones that were our first ornaments as a couple, the baby's first Christmas ones for each boy, ones the boys made, ones from friends and neighbors, the cool Native inspired ones Loren gave us, the free ornaments from Black Friday sales at RC Willey, Mervyn's, and JC Penneys, the Broncos ornaments, the fishing boats from the tree we dedicated to my mom, the ornaments Kathy made for us each year, the beaded ones I picked up this year in Phoenix..... I hope the memories of these Christmases last on and on...

Who Says Mormons Aren't Funny?

A friend sent me this video clip from You Tube. It is from a church talent show and the men are doing a synchronized swimming routine. I laughed so hard when I saw it and I just had to share. Part of me is jealous of their creativity...

Facebook

All four of us have Facebook pages now. Dwayne and Dexter still refuse to be my friends, but I have found plenty of others who wish to be identified with me. It has been a fun way to keep up with friends and family and I have managed to get back in touch with friends from 20-30 years ago. I have gotten a little addicted to some of the games you can play on there. Kathy and I are probably a little too into some of the applications where you grow plants, adopt pets, decorate trees, send presents, etc. in that little make-believe environment. Right now we even have a George family scrabble game going.

Christmas is coming...

I managed to be too busy to deal with digging out the Christmas tree and decorations until this past weekend. The tree went up with only five days until Christmas. I hope I don't cut it this close in the future! We didn't have many presents sitting around, so there wasn't much pressure early on.

We have been hit by several snow storms recently. Most of them hit the west coast first, so Kathy and Rick have had to deal with them before we did. One of our storms hit Las Vegas first and Sharon was snowed in (ironic - Hell freezes over...lol). Monday's storm left at least 12 inches of snow at our house and Emerson had to help me dig out a spot to park when I came home from work. Our dogs have handled it well. They like jumping around in the snow and Scout seems to be searching for stuff by sticking her whole head in the snow. The snow is almost high enough to cover Shadow. I don't let them play in it for long since they aren't built for this kind of weather. They like basking in front of the heater as much as I do.

Let it Snow

It's finally looking like December around here. The snow is falling and is supposed to continue for about the next week. We're enjoying the snow, but we're a little on edge about Dwayne being out there and driving in it.

I thought I'd share some good news. Every year at our company Christmas party, they announce the Spirit of Heritage award winners. These are essentially the employees of the year and they receive a trophy and some cash. Emerson got this award about four or five years ago (much deserved). As involved as I am in so many projects at Heritage, I was sure over the past couple of years that I would get it. One of my coworkers even let me know she nominated me two years ago. Since I take things so terribly personally, I was crushed each year as I was passed over. The HR Director tried to make me feel better by telling me it was virtually impossible for me to receive the award since it would look like the executives were playing favorites. Unless people from many different departments nominated me, I was doomed to being recognized only within my department. I helped type up this year's awards and knew who was on the final list, only to have them surprise me and announce my name at the dinner. I won!! I have an amazing boss who always lets me know I'm doing a great job and that I'm appreciated, but it was so wonderful for him to tell the rest of the campus. I'm having a tough time facing my boss now without getting emotional (I'm such a cry-baby). The money will help me get closer to getting caught up on the money I'm paying to chaperon Dexter's choir trip to New York and I'm trying to figure out the best place to put my trophy.