I’m Still Here I didn’t mean to scare anyone with my last post, no I’m not closing my blog, I have just been feeling a little low lately and it’s been hard to put words together and write coherently. A little depression has gotten hold of me, but I’m coming out of it. I tried looking at everyone’s blogs today but my reader is not working right. I’ve been terribly homesick, I have a friend back home who has been extremely ill for months now and I can’t be there with her and it’s breaking my heart. I can only hope that my virtual support is helping a little. My sister hurt her knee pretty bad, I’d like to be there for her, but alas I can’t. I’m kinda sure that she wouldn’t allow anyone to take care of her, but I’d sure like to try. She’s taken care of me time and time again, it’s time for me to be the carer. And I really miss Spring in the Carolinas. Spring in the desert is beautiful in it’s own way, but it’s not like it is in the Southeast. There isn’t this sudden explosion of life everywhere! You open your door and flowers have bloomed overnight. Trees are suddenly green. It’s magical. I didn’t think I’d miss it so much, but I do. Stuart says he will miss the fall, so we have decided to go to Charleston, SC for our anniversary this year in September. Hopefully he can see a little bit of Fall weather, and we can see people we love. Looking forward to that makes me a bit less homesick and I think it helps my depression.

The Move and Service Dog About us moving…no we aren’t moving far away, we are still going to be in Tucson. This is just an inconvenience, but how we were told about it really pissed me off. Right now we are renting a house that we didn’t expect to be renting but a few months until we found a house to buy, but it ended up that we needed to wait a few months before we could commit to buying a house. We can start looking again in June…or July, I don’t remember which. Our landlord has been working on the guest house and told us he did not expect to have it completed by the time we would need to move. On Friday I was standing out by the pool talking with him for a long time about us going to meet with a dog breeder about getting a dog to train for my service dog, this has been in the works for a long time and he knew all about it, he has been excited for me. Nothing was mentioned about the possibility of then wanting to sell the house soon, or us having to move. That evening our utility bill was left on our door with a note on the envelope that said our lease ends April 30th and the guest house should be finished by then, so we need to discuss options. My stress meter jumped WAY HIGH! The thought of moving again and then having to move again a few months after that, simply threw me for a loop. I don’t blame them, it is a financial decision, not an emotional one, but it sure leaves us in a lurch. There is a possibility that we won’t have to move. They need to do some work on the house that may go into the summer, and they believe that if they don’t sell during the summer they will miss their window for the best profit because it has a pool. People don’t like to buy houses that have pools in the winter….weird. We will know in about a week, if we do have to move we’ll have at least a month to move. We will then have movers move our stuff to a storage locker and move into furnished corporate housing for a few months, that way it’s really only one move. We’d just just have our clothes and stuff, everything else would be packed and ready to go. After we came to that decision the stress was totally lifted. We decided to wait on getting a puppy right now to train, hopefully we can get one this winter. I’m still looking for just the right dog for me. I will be training my dog through HandiDogs here in Tucson, AZ. They are a hands on training facility helping you to train your own service dog. I will have a hearing and balance dog. I will talk more and more about this experience as it happens.

Migraine Specialist I saw a new neurologist who specializes in headaches. She was wonderful. She had read all of my chart before meeting me, she asked all kinds of questions that I can’t remember being asked before. Like “does sleep make your migraines go away?” I’ve had it suggested to me to try sleeping when I have a migraine, but no one has ever asked me if it worked. It doesn’t. I wonder what that means. She asked if I ever get a migraine when having a bowel movement. Sometimes. So many questions!! At the end of all the questions and realizing that I’ve tried everything out there and still have over 25 migraines a month we decided to try one of the new CGRP blocker migraine preventative medications. I chose Emgality because it has been shown to help cluster headaches too, but it is not approved by the FDA for that use yet. This medication comes in an injection that I give to myself with an autoinjector. I had the first dose on Friday, March 29th. I will write a post soon explaining more about what this medication is and my experiences with it. Please wish me luck with it. My doctor told me that her story is much like mine. I not only have chronic migraines, I have a constant daily headache that I’ve had since I was 11 years old, the day I first started my period I got a headache that never went away. My doctor told me that with this new medication she still gets migraines, she gets much fewer migraines, but she does get some. However, she no longer has her daily headache. At that moment I burst into tears. I was so thrilled for her, and the thought of not having pain every day constantly, I simply cannot fathom that.

On a completely different note, I’m getting my hair cut on Saturday. You may not recognize me. I have long naturally wavy, slightly curly hair, but it’s fine. It used to be thick until I went through menopause, sigh. The length is doing nothing for me. I wear it in a ponytail most of the time. So I’m getting it cut! Not sure exactly how short yet, I’m going to need advice from my stylist, but I think it’s going to be pretty short. I’m getting new glasses soon too, I’m just going to look so different. A new me.

Well, I’m up late because I’m fighting a gastritis attack, again. I finally ate some real food today for the first day in a week, and now I’m so nauseous I can’t sleep. I’m off to take a Phenergan and try to rest.

“Change is the only constant.” ~Heraclitus