…when, if you don’t stop, your body will stop for you.

I can’t believe I let it happen to me again, but I did – and yesterday I suffered the consequences.

With the hormones, the demands from work (and a lot of demanding people), suddenly having to figure out how to do Australian income taxes, a stack of Christmas cards yet to finish and send out, financial woes, and just wanting nothing more than to sit down and write… Well, all that stress bubbled up and came out yesterday.

After walking out of the tax office (an appointment we had to put on our credit card), I sat down on the steps and just cried. Poor Bloke was great and helped me to calm down, but I was in full on panic attack mode just trying to breath and not think about anything other than being in that exact moment. Every time I started thinking about something else we had to do, I couldn’t breathe again. So I had to sit and not think about any of it.

Not exactly an easy task for a woman who runs her to-do list through her head almost constantly.

I managed to calm down and make it through the day, but getting the rest of my work done involved frequent breaks because I couldn’t sit for long doing it before I’d start to tear up and have trouble breathing again.

Today is a bit better, but I still have to layer my work with task, non-work something, task, non-work something… (This is one of my non-work somethings.)

I was in denial. I was in denial about being exhausted, about being strapped for cash, about having to declare a no-presents Christmas because we just can’t afford it, about the fact that not having a ‘proper’ Christmas broke my heart because it’s ‘my’ holiday, that I was freaking out over having to learn taxes because we can’t afford an accountant, about… a million and one different things.

I’m so tired of feeling like I have to justify my stress because someone might scorn me for having it better than they do.

So no more justifications, no more denying that I want to give my husband a gift on Christmas even if I have to put it on a credit card and no more feeling like I have to keep my mouth shut when they treat me like crap.

I’m done with all of it.

This week I have hormones on the brain and, apparently, coursing through my body.

I have PCOS, which basically means everything is harder. Feeling good, feeling happy, getting (and staying) fit, losing weight and makin’ babies. I went into the doctor yesterday not only to get to know a new female doctor I’ll be seeing but also to discuss some problems I’ve been having lately.

From headaches to cramps to annoyingly super sensitive nipples, I have been scoring better than a hormonal trifecta over the past two weeks. While these signs might be happy little warning flags to many women, for me, it’s just another reminder that my hormones are out of wack and I’m not doing enough to set them straight.

Thankfully the hormone gods have granted me some reprieve. While I’m usually a sweet-tooth kind of woman 100%, I have been totally digging the salt lately. While I have to be careful about getting too much of that as well, I’m just glad not to be desperate for chocolate or other sweet things.

So if I’m a little grumpy this week, blame my hormones. I do.

Unfortunately, the onset of so many things at the same time has my doctor directing me to go back on the pill. There are a lot of reasons why I don’t want to go back on the pill, but whether I do or not depends on how much longer I can tolerate what’s happening to me…

So, about that tattoo…

Tattoos are a bit of an interesting subject. I love talking about them and showing mine off, but not everyone appreciates that. So I tend to operate on the basis of shy being better than throwing things right out there.

First off, there is a picture of my bare back coming up. But more about the tattoo itself.

I’ve always had three rules when it comes to tattoos (rules I decided on before getting my first one):

1. No names.
2. No dates.
3. Must mean something significant to me.

Number three is the reason that five years have passed before me getting my second tattoo and getting my third. So much has happened to me that I knew I would not be able to express and commemorate this new life I have built with a single symbol like my previous tattoos. I knew it was going to be complicated and I knew it was going to be big.

Over the years, the elements came to me.

First, the chakras. Encompassing balance, healing and stepping out one’s body to something more, the chakras were the first and easiest element to decide on. The same goes with their placement. Though it will be extremely painful, I want them running down my spine, starting at the back of my neck. Crossing from my mind, over my heart and down towards the centre of my sexual being, I couldn’t imagine them going anywhere else.

The next elements took longer to imagine and work into a single design. At first I thought about a phoenix. While it is beautiful and appropriate, it wasn’t quite me. It didn’t quite ‘get there’ in my mind, especially because I already have the butterfly on my right wrist to symbolize my new life.

I don’t recall if it was in a dream or a daydream, but I saw the Rod of Asclepius (the medical symbol) and knew that to be the base of the design. But I didn’t want snakes. I don’t particularly care for them and they don’t mean much to me. But dragons? Chinese dragons in particular… The tattoo really began forming in my mind.

On the right side, I wanted a dragon looking forward to the future and coloured blue/green, symbolizing luck, fortune and a bright future. I also wanted a dragon on the left side. This one I wanted red to symbolize youth, passion and love. This dragon looks back at you and to my past.

Both dragons wrap around the chakras, the strengths and beauties of my past and my future all wrapping toward the goals of balance, understanding and peace.

Last but not least, cherry blossoms. Now, they weren’t in the original design nor did I mention them to the artist. However, he took artistic liberty and added a couple in there. When I saw the first draft of the art and saw the cherry blossoms (one of my favourites), I knew it was meant to be. Symbolic of passion, beauty and femininity, they were everything I wanted to say with the tattoo.

There you have it. The story behind the tattoo. And here she is. This is only the outline and only the right hand side.

At the heart of it, my change of direction is not only for my immediate health but to answer the big question in my life:

Why don’t I want to lose weight?

This may seem like an odd question coming from someone who has been trying (and losing, and gaining back) weight for so long, but it’s the question that has been bothering me for a long time now. I can lose weight. I know how to and I know what to do. But what keeps me from doing it?

Why do I, instead of ‘falling off the wagon’ and getting back on, fall off the wagon and roll around into the mud while trying to dig myself such a deep hole that it’ll suck the entire wagon inside, never to be ‘gotten back on’ again?

As much as I try and succeed, there is a part of me that wants to pad itself with weight and never see the light of day again.

I have gotten past all the anger and shame to do with the question, leaving it more of a matter of curiosity than anything.

I’m sure it has to do with control; I don’t want anything being taken away from me. I am also on a journey to learning to self-soothe without food, which is a biggie because food was the only thing I could depend on for most of my early life.

With those kind of things standing in my psychology, I’m attempting to be patient with myself.

Did I mention patience isn’t my virtue?

…that if I can go through what I have to go through just to get a PAP test, then whingy women of the world can harden up and get it done, too. Statistics say that you won’t be like me with a woman playing treasure hunt in your lady bits for a half an hour in more positions than I get with a good night with my husband.

If I can do that, you can look after your health, too.

Just saying.

And I didn’t even get a cookie.

I love the word ‘gobsmacked’. It so accurately describes what I felt when I saw how few calories I was getting and how I am feeling now, losing weight when I’m eating more!

After deciding to meet minimum calories this week, I am already experiencing the benefits. I’m losing weight (nearly a kilo all up), I feel like I have more energy, food is no longer the enemy to be avoided. I’m not making optimum choices all of the time, but that will come with time. At the moment, my body and my mind – and my emotions, really – are happy to be getting in plenty of yummy food.

Yesterday was a tough one. I was almost hit by a jackass driver who didn’t want to stop at the pedestrian lights, and the experience put me into shock. After The Bloke talked me through it and I had a few hours to calm down, my body went into ‘I want carbs and nothing but carbs’ mode. I managed pretty well, though I did get a little cranky with The Bloke when I wasn’t giving my body the bread and ice cream it wanted. Haha.

Today is a much better day and I’m looking forward to seeing how things go when I increase exercise along with getting enough calories.

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately, and I don’t like it. But I’ve been a bit ‘on hold’ for the past week while I wait for test results and deal with my body the best way I can.

I went into the doctor yesterday for some test results and found out that I don’t have a UTI and I don’t have the bacteria the other doc thought was causing all of my nausea and heartburn.

The doctor I saw yesterday got rather goo-goo eyed and became convinced I’m pregnant. She ordered a blood test (thankfully they still had my blood for the previous test so I didn’t have to give anymore) and told me to take it easy.

Right.

I got a bit goo-goo eyed myself for a while before I got back to reality and the enormous list of things that would prevent me from being pregnant right now. Namely, blood. Now, I’ve never had ‘spotting’ or even a ‘light’ period, so I don’t know what those are like. I imagine it’s similar to what I’m having now, though. So the whole baby theory is likely my system just playing up again and being to lazy to function enough to have even a period.

Okay, so I’m a bit grumpy. I do apologise. I just don’t like all these reminders of how my female system doesn’t function properly yet.

I want some answers, some industrial strength stomach soother and the okay to get back on the Wii Fit to exhaust myself with exercise every morning.

I go for the results for the pregnancy test this afternoon. I’ve already decided that if it’s negative and they try referring me out somewhere for other tests, I’m done. Finished. I’ll bear the nausea and continue on because I’m sick of test, wait, test, wait.

I’ve started the new year lower than my highest weight and only half a kilo heavier for the holiday and sudden road trip indulgences, but I have also started this year with another reason to keep getting healthier.

As if I needed one more reason…

Sometimes it is easy to forget why we are doing this. Even when we’re wearing the pants every day that we only used to wear on our ‘fat’ days, we forget the benefits like lower risk for diabetes, heart problems, longevity, etc. I forgot a while back, but these past few weeks have been nothing but a big reminder…

If I were at a normal, healthy weight, I would happily tell you now that I think I’m pregnant. I have sore boobs, intermittent abdominal cramps, random and rampant nausea, heartburn (which I haven’t had since I was about eight years old), sneezing fits, heaps of tiredness, headaches, food aversions and more.

The big thing that was the last straw for me, and a big inspiration for this post, was the fact that I smelled some off food before my husband did. Our freezer got turned off at some point and some of the food spoiled. I smelled it from across the unit with the freezer door shut. And my husband, who was doing laundry right by the freezer and has a sense of smell at least ten times better than mine because I only have one functioning sinus, didn’t smell it.

If I was at a normal weight, I would happily tell you I might be pregnant.

But I’m not at a normal weight, and that’s what breaks my heart. The smell thing, I don’t know. But the sore boobs could be PMS. The cramps due to my cyst. Nausea, heartburn, tiredness, headaches and food aversions? Flu or stomach bug, perhaps, or just a reaction to the rich food of the holiday season. Sneezing fits? Tis the season in Australia.

If I were healthier, I might still have cysts, but I wouldn’t have such a large range of other things wrong with me that could explain what are also known as early pregnancy symptoms. Less would be a mystery and complication, and more would be symptoms of a single cause.

It’s not the right time for us anyway, with a move very possibly coming up soon, me so far from my goal weight, financial awkwardness, so on and so forth. But if I was healthier, I either wouldn’t have half the problems I have right now, or I might be able to tell you some good news in a while…

I am always excited about starting something new, but when it comes to my body and the difficulties of the past fortnight, I am being careful not to think of getting back on the horse as starting over.

Exercise is difficult right now, as the pain, doctors and such have pushed me past my stress limit. Get me past that limit and my body shuts down to the point of making things like just doing the laundry and walking down to the shops very tiring. The good news is that, as much as I get tired out by little things, I’m recovering from that tired faster and faster every day.

Once again I am grateful for my Wii Fit, as I can use it as the energy strikes (which would be difficult with a gym or even with walking given Melbourne’s ever-changing weather moods).

I’ve gotten my next set of three months of birth control, and I am using that as a goal to really make a dent in the weight loss and fitness levels. I want to get off birth control (I hate the idea of artificial hormones) and I’m hoping that the end of this prescription can mean the end forever.

I’m now taking milk thistle and have ordered some raspberry leaf tea to try out in an effort to help my lady parts sort themselves out naturally. The very fact that I have an ovarian cyst means my system is waking up (my system pretty much just did nothing for a long time), and I want to take this opportunity to do what I can to treat it right.

So I’m not starting over so much as adjusting while my body adjusts to things.

And the adjustments are focusing not only toward a healthier me but towards a healthier environment for future bubs…

My body decided to throw my for a loop by making me think my appendix was going to blow up. As it turns out, it was my sneaky ovary making all the fuss.

So I’m home now, but I’m sore, exhausted and having a bit of a hard time catching up with things.

Slowly but surely…