Sick.

Generally I try to keep my blog lighthearted, not really diving into too much heavy personal stuff. But truth be told, that's not at all reflective of my life. Heck, that's not really reflective of any ones life is it? Things happen, courses are changed, and often times life in general gets in the way. That's how I feel today.

I've been fairly open about my anxiety problems here, talking about my panic attacks and the assorted other symptoms that go along with it. Basically, it sucks. I get bent out of shape over small things that otherwise shouldn't and wouldn't matter to other people. I take medicine to try and control it, but really that only does so much and often times I'm left feeling like I'm in some sort of fog separate from everyone else. I apologize if this blog is a bit scattered, that's pretty much how my thoughts have been lately and I'm sure this will be reflective of that. It'll probably be loaded with grammatical errors too ... but this subject matter is such for me that I don't think I could go back and proof read it. Living it once was enough, let alone writing and re-reading it.

Over the past 6 weeks or so I've totally stopped sleeping entirely. I would try and try to relax and get comfortable and sleep, but I literally couldn't thanks in part to the random little things that would pop into my brain at night. Before I knew it the sun was rising and any chance at sleep that I had was long gone. I'd usually try and grab a nap (aka totally crash out of sheer exhaustion) for an hour or two after Mike got home from work.

Not sleeping is not fun. Not being able to sleep no matter what you do is much worse. This isn't the first time that this has happened to me and because of that I just brushed it off as part of the anxiety, hoping that the insomnia would pass in a few days as it always does. This time it did not.

After a few days not only was I tired, but my muscles and bones started to horribly ache and I was constantly cold thanks to the lack of circulation in my body. And I was irritable (although my husband would probably choose another choice word). My balance was off and I was finding it harder and harder to even walk across the house. I chalked it all up to sheer exhaustion.

Late last Tuesday evening at around 7pm I attempted to lay day and sleep. My upper arms and legs were throbbing, I had a horrible headache, and I needed to rest my body. So I crawled into my big comfy bed, fluffed my pillows and laid my head down to sleep. And like always I couldn't. Sleep just wouldn't come.

I'm not proud to admit that I freaked out. I was so tired and sore and all I wanted was to sleep and I just couldn't. I had a panic attack of massive proportions, so large that Mike had to take me to the Emergency Room where they pumped me full of medicine to calm me down.

The next day I finally went to my family doctor, after Mike called their office and insisted I go. Chances are if he wouldn't have done that I wouldn't have gone. Bad, I know, but doctors also give me panic attacks and to me not sleeping was the lesser of the two evils for those 6 weeks because I will go to extremes to avoid a panic attack.

My family doctor gave me some new medicine to take in addition to what I am already taking, one of which will help me to sleep at night. So far its working wonders and for the first time in what feels like a life time (it's funny how time passes when all of your days and nights run together) I feel rested.

My family doctor thought that it would be wise to run some additional tests as well, because what I was experiencing could be from more than just sheer exhaustion. So for the next two days I was in and out of the hospital, lab, and assorted doctor offices, having tons of blood work done not once but twice and an MRI.

Yesterday the doctors office called.

I have a tumor in my parathyroid gland.

A tumor! I blanked after that and dove right into another panic attack of massive proportions.

After calming down and talking to the nurse at my family doctors office I've found out that something like 96% of all parathyroid tumors are benign, thank God. I will need surgery to remove it at some point, but as long as the tumor isn't growing and the symptoms (all of which I had been experiencing and blaming on insomnia/anxiety) are not growing worse, removing it isn't going to be rushed.

Your parathyroid glands, which are in the front of your neck, regulate your body's calcium and other hormones. The reason behind my body aches, dizziness, and loss of balance is that my body is absorbing its calcium outside of the bones, leaving my bones weak. I have too much calcium in my blood right now and not enough in my bones.

So for now I'm playing a waiting game. I have to have more blood work done in a month to see if my calcium level has come down at all and then figure out surgery options, to see removing the tumor is something that has to be done right away or if I can take special vitamins and hold off for awhile.

In the mean time I just have to hope and pray that I'm not one of the other 4% of the people with Parathyroid Disease whose tumors are cancerous.

Chances are, it's not. Rationally I know that. But I worry, its what I do. I freak out so much over little things, that when a big thing like this comes it literally rocks my entire world.

I am humbly asking for as many prayers as I can get.