Fixing Myself

Okay, I don't know about you other moms, but my body is, well, in my opinion, broken after having children. I'm not talking about the usual bladder problems and stretch marks. I have those too, but I have the back of what I think might be a 65-year-old. And I'm 37. When the big girls were 18 months, I went to an orthopedist to have it checked out. Basically the synopsis was tendonitis. They gave me some meds and I made some adjustments and the pain just moved to a different location. Then I went through about a year of it locking up on me. Now I know what people mean by that.

Then set #2 came along. I surprisingly did better for a while, after a heavenly 90-minute massage on a ski-trip that slowly started the healing process. Then as the new babies got bigger and became toddlers, of course the back kept hurting. But I've noticed since they turned 3 (and now they are 4), that nothing is getting any better. In fact it's getting worse when I expected the opposite by now.

So I've decided I need to fix myself. I joined a gym when the little girls were 18 months. At least a step in the right direction. I go once or twice a week. At least right now it's something. But now I've started seeing a chiropractor. I really didn't know much about what they did but it's more like I'm in physical therapy than anything. It's hard fitting in appointments and I had no idea how often I would be going (twice a week).

But the last few weeks I've done a lot, and ever since I started strengthening exercises (not fun), my back has not been burning like it was before. So they are helping me fix myself. Now we're starting to work on posture. If I don't do something about all this I'm going to be a hunchback grandma. So hopefully it's working but time will tell.

On top of that I have a bladder condition called interstitial cystitis. Yep. That's right. Doesn't that sound fun? I basically feel like I have a chronic bladder infection. That being said, in the past year it has gotten tons better. During the whole Fifths Disease thing, I guess it was aggravated because it was miserable for about 4 or 5 months. And it comes and goes these days but it at Christmas it flared up again. So I finally went to a urologist (because we had ruled out bladder infection a year ago). So that was my diagnosis. Basically the lining of the bladder is deteriorating. So all the things I love to drink along with a few other good things cause irritation. So I have to limit those things. The good news is the doc gave me some very expensive pills that can slowly rebuild the bladder. It seems to be working because it's not bothering me too much. But we'll see. I ran out of pills last week and the irritation started coming back, but he said it takes about 6 months and I'm probably not taking them frequently enough anyway. There are surgeries and things for people as a last resort but mine since it has gotten much better after the Fifths Disease doesn't seem to warrant anything like that at this time. At the same time it is a chronic problem but I guess I'll deal with it.

I love the comedian Brian Regan. He said in a bit one time about how now when you start feeling something wrong physically you can just count on that for the rest of your life. Quite true a lot of the time!