Another week

A lot has been happening, & not so much.

I'm not very sick. I know i have been much more ill before in the past. Yet i'm very tired. And it rather hurts to breathe. I haven't been coughing much, but i can feel the stuff in my chest. I know that when the cough hits (& it always does as i damaged my lungs in the past) it is going to sound awful. I've not been suppressing any symptoms, but have been taking a number of supplements (Manuka honey, colloidal silver, Vitamin D3, Vitamin C, Calcium/Magnesium, Zinc, lemon in hot water, some herbal teas, a number of things) to help my body fight. The acupuncture doc gave me some herbs to use today, too. So, part of me is thinking i'm mostly fine, & another part only wants to snuggle into bed & not move.

And, i've not looked at a single blog i follow since Monday evening or Tuesday AM. Honestly, for me not to read the blogs i follow is unheard of. I'm not quite sure why. I miss them, yet . . . i don't know what is going on.

We have the issue with the Trooper to settle. In a nut shell, it didn't pass smog & in investigating it the guy found that someone removed one of the catalytic converters (this model is suppose to have two) & by passed it. I was surprised that hadn't been found before, but this guy said he had to look 3 times before he found the problem. It will cost us $500 plus labor to fix that. But he said he doesn't expect this vehicle to last much longer. He can see a number of problems. However, we don't drive it much. We've probably not put 1500 miles on it since we bought it 18 months ago. So it comes down to a gamble however we do it. And, since it is not properly registered, it will be a pain to sell . . . it is frankly a mess. I really messed up by not taking care of this on time.

We know a number of young women - daughters of friends of ours mostly - who either have just had babies or are pregnant. The parents of these women - grandparents or soon to be - are not too much older than Duane & i. I'm happy for them, i am, but i'm hurting. We revisited the adoption issues, but there are a lot more hurdles than we expected (& we were expecting quite a few). We're kind of at an impasse.

Then i got an email earlier this week which i found painful. I already wrote my girlfriends about it, but i want to post it here too.

This is how it occurred: I got into an email back & forth with someone whom i do not know well. It was about H1N1 & the vaccine. We didn't disagree, it was a pleasant back & forth. She did ask me if we have children. I don't usually answer "No," because that doesn't indicate much. However, i usually don't care to get into the infertility/miscarriage issue, so the answer "God hasn't so blessed us yet," is my way of saying, "No we don't have kids, we want them, it hasn't happened."

This is the response i got:

There are a lot of children out there just waiting for you to have them. Please don’t blame God… I am sure something from you or your husband has caused you not to have any and, it just won’t be. Not everyone is made to have children. I still would not give up.

I know from other folks in a similar situation to ours this is not an uncommon response, but it is one that causes a lot of pain to the person hearing this. I was rather in anguish over the whole situation even before this email arrived. Duane & i have looked at having children from every angle, adoption, foster children, assisted reproduction, etc. We have tried & tried to see if we could find a way to make it work for us. We don't consider adoption "second best." But adoption & the adoption process is very stressful for the ones going thru it for a number of reasons. It is something you can't consider lightly. Anyone who ultimately chooses "childfree/childless" & has been in a similar situation has been thru a lot to reach that point. There are a myriad of reasons we feel that we may end up not having children. It doesn't mean we haven't given it a lot of consideration. Someone else can't possibly understand the grief we have gone thru to come to this conclusion.

I'm not very confrontational. But i also know that anyone in a situation similar to ours finds such response/criticism painful. My girlfriends said i didn't open myself to such just by saying, "God hasn't blessed us so," nor did it indicate we blame God. I know from another article the comments of which i read recently that folks can be quite passionate, vicious, even vile in their responses to someone who states "adoption isn't for me." The rancor that simple statement brought was really ugly. I know, or i believe i do, that if someone who has been thru this is making that statement it is not said lightly, it is not an "indictment" of folks who choose to grow their families that way, it is not a statement anything more than, "for us it isn't viable." So i'm debating whether to be "confrontational" & try to "educate" this person or walk away from it. It hurts me, but this email arrived Monday, so if i respond it won't be a knee-jerk reaction, but an honest attempt to try to explain why such a (critical) response should not be made. But i still don't know if i will. Part of me wants to spare anyone in the future from this kind of thing from this person, but part of me thinks it would be an exercise in futility.

Oh, yes. The doc called me about the sleep study. She got the report. I haven't looked at it myself yet. It should have stated "inconclusive" because i only slept 2 hours, but evidentally it did not. The doc had no idea i'd only been asleep for 2 hours for this study. She was going to recommend CPAP until i explained exactly what this study did. She was shocked & quite apologetic. Said she knows of a sleep doc who will do it properly for me. I'm not anxious at all to repeat this. She said we can do it as a "second opinion" so that the insurance would pay for it. I may revisit this at a later point but not anytime soon.

Then frankly i'm distressed by all the media hoopla over the flu & vaccines. I believe a number of folks are being scared into taking a vaccine of which no one knows what it will really do. I've strong opinions about why "healthy" young folks are getting the flu. I've a friend who recently posted on facebook that his church is set up to give H1N1 flu vaccine this weekend & i'm appalled that a church would do something so irresponsible.

And, Duane's cousin's wife (who is about 32) just posted she has a blockage in her heart & "it runs in my family & so i can't do anything about it." I have to keep my mouth shut because no one wants my opinion. (Well, i did post a number of dissenting websites on the facebook thing.) I ache because so little real info is being shared about how to be healthy, really healthy - not just the lack of a diagnosable illness. But, so many don't want to know.

I'm sorry for such a post. Fighting whatever virus i'm battling seems to put me on the low side.

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