Today’s Prompt: Word Cloud. Make a word cloud or tree with a list of words that come to mind when you think about your blog, health, or interests. Use a thesaurus to make the branches of your “tree” extend further. http://www.wordle.net/
I did a little bit of a different take on this prompt. I hope you like it.
Today’s Prompt: Six Sentence Story. In this day of micro-blogging – brevity is a skill worth honing. Can you tell a story and make it short and sweet? What can you say in six sentences. Check out some here: http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/
Wendy walked toward the ruins of the mission. She saw him standing by the entrance waiting with a smile. Once he took her hand she had no doubts, this was the man she would spend the rest of her life with. She saw in his eyes he felt the same way about her. They walked down the aisle together, a new future unfolding before them.
Prompt for today….Personify your health. If your health focus were a person – what would they be like? Describe them. Visually, emotionally, physically, and personality-wise. What kind of person are they?
I’m again using one of the Bonus Prompts. I liked this one more than the original prompt. However, once again, I took a different take on it. Recently I made a mask showing what I looked like on the outside to most people, and then on the inside I showed my true self. I felt this answered all the questions put forth in this prompt, but with a little creative flair.
Some of you have already seen this, but I think it’s worth repeating, and for those who haven’t, I hope you enjoy!
Prompt for today: 5 Challenges. 5 Small Victories. Make a list of the 5 most difficult parts of your health focus. Make another top 5 list for the little, good things (small victories) that keep you going.
I think this is a very good prompt, and normally I’d be able to write it very easily, but the depression I’m feeling right now will make this more difficult. (yes depression, but it’s deserved, I’m not clinically depressed at the moment. I’ve had a lot to deal with, and the loss of a loved one, so I’m depressed. Please no worries about my sanity. *smiles*)
5 Challenges – 5 Most Difficult Parts of My Health Focus
5 Small Victories – 5 list for the little, good things that keep you going.
We also take advantage of my good days. We even try hard on the bad days. We always show each other that we care. We curl up together, we massage each other (I admit I get more than I give here), we go for drives together….and on special nights when I’m really feeling good, we go on a date.
This was easier than I thought it would be. I do still have some positive outlooks still in me. Yes, I’m depressed, but I should be, as I said before. I think the only reason I haven’t been able to deal with the latest diagnosis (Intracranial Hypertension) is that I’m getting conflicting news from different doctors in my team. And I just don’t know what’s going on with this….my migraine specialist thinks most of my symptoms are caused by migraines. So the IH, may not be a big deal right now. But the medication for it is still helping, so that says I should have it….but I’m confused. So confused. But I’m positive, it will get better.
So yes, this was a good prompt. It made me think about my health issues, and it made me look deeper about things than I had been. I’ve only been dealing with the overwhelming emotions, not the thought process behind them.
So thanks WEGO HAWMC team for this prompt!
Prompt for today: Health tagline. Give yourself, your blog, your condition, or some aspect of your health a tagline. Make sure it’s catchy!
When I first read this prompt I admit I thought. Really? What you want me to write one line and that’s it?
Hope I came up with something useable.
So I already have a tag line…. My blog is called Picnic With Ants – I think my tag line would be “The Ants That Bite.”
It’s all explained in my side bar. I try to think of my life as basically good, a picnic…but then the ants arrive and a few bite me in the butt.
I have too many chronic illnesses to focus on just one. So the Ants focus on all of them, they all bite me in the butt….some more than others. Some literally, like the chronic tail bone pain – Whew is that a pain in the butt!
So I guess that’s it.
I saw this ad for a t-shirt a long time ago, and I think it personifies me to a tee. I will leave it with you….although it has nothing to do with ants. : )
Today I’m using a prompt from the Extra prompts they sent us.
Daily Schedule. Write a list of your daily routine from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed. Be honest!
Honestly, I don’t have a set schedule for any day. My days are ruled by my conditions. If I’m having a day filled with vertigo, or migraines I spend the day in bed. If my hearing is way down, I spend the day as alone as possible. I often have doctor’s appointments. My days change from one to the next, a lot. If I’m feeling a bit better, I do more….
Here’s a recent weekend day.
After a restless nights sleep I awake around 9am with a blinding headache. I’m seeing double, with shadow spots on the walls. I take the medication that should lower my CSF pressure(cerebrospinal fluid pressure), and wait to see if it will relieve the pain. My husband brings me some breakfast in bed, along with the rest of my morning medications. The headache has not eased. Finally, I decide I should take some migraine and pain medication also. I try to sleep some more, this time sitting up, hoping my CSF pressure will lessen.
Noon – The headache is still there but much better, I’m hungry, but not sure I’m steady enough to go down the stairs. My husband brings me lunch. I decide to check my email, and do some things on the computer. Focusing up close is much easier than focusing at a distance.
2pm – Time for my next CSF pressure pill. I’m feeling much better, and steadier. We decide to take advantage of this time feeling a bit better. I want to go to the local Co-Op to pick up vegetables and meat for dinners for the week. We had a good trip to the store, and a nice ride home.
4pm – Home. I’m tired just from the little bit of shopping we did, and the ride. I help put the groceries away, and start to plan dinner. I turn and feel the world move. Oh no.
5pm – 9:30pm I have vertigo. This vertigo is caused by the Intracranial Hypertension, not the Meniere’s. I can tell because if I keep my head in one position and concentrate on something still close to me I will stop spinning, but if I move, the vertigo returns. If I was having a vertigo attack from Meniere’s I would not be able to stop it, no matter what.
9:30pm I am completely exhausted from the vertigo attack. Finally, I can move. I eat a little something, and head to bed….with a lot of help from my husband. Take my nightly medications, and try to sleep.
This is a somewhat normal day. I don’t always have vertigo. I do normally wake up with a blinding headache that often takes hours to get under control. And we always try to take advantage of any time that I’m feeling well enough to do something. (I know going grocery shopping doesn’t sound exciting to most, but I love to cook, so shopping for food is exciting to me.)
Bonus Prompt: I keep writing because… Start your post with this sentence and, as the title says, keep writing. Free write for 15 minutes without stopping and see where it takes you.
(today’s original prompt was to post a Health Mascot. My dog Sandy is my mascot, but I couldn’t right about that today. She died April 18th, one day I’ll write about what a brave, and wonderful dog she was, how many health issues she had and over came, how she was as the vet often called her, “a Wonder Dog”. But not today.)
I keep writing because…recently I keep writing because I am determined to finish this challenge.
Actually, I’ve begun to wonder, why I keep writing. I know why I started, I know I have made some good contacts, friends, and my heart has been here. This blog has really helped me through some tough times when I felt no one else was listening. I’d write, just to write, and I found there were others out there, others who felt like I did, others who needed to have that contact too. Now, I’m hurting so much. I’ve had so much loss this past year. I felt I dealt with each one, I was strong, and positive. I was told I was the most positive person someone knew. I was proud of myself and how I was looking at life.
Then another diagnosis came earlier this year, and it has been hard to deal with. I couldn’t be that positive about it. I’m still a bit in shock from it, and simply not sure how to look on things positively. I’m larger than I’ve ever been, and the doctors just seem to be ignoring it, yet they tell me my triglycerides are high, and I’m borderline high blood pressure….ect….but they all say, don’t worry about the weight right now, you have to focus on this. I’m afraid I’m on my way to diabetes. I read all these books on nutrition, cut out soda, all High Fructose Corn Syrup, snack on nuts, cheese, fruit, veggies, eat at home more, cut out gluten….all these will help you lose weight…but I do all of that. so why can’t I lose weight? I need help, I’ve been to a nutritionist, no help. Most don’t even know what fructose intolerance is….I know more than most of the “professionals”. I’m grieving for the loss of what I used to be, what I used to look like. I now have no energy, can’t exercise because it will raise my CSF pressure, I can’t walk for long because of my hips, I can’t even enjoy sex.
I’m grieving because I lost everything that I gained early last year. I can’t drive again…but I have a cute little car. I can’t be a foster parent, even though we went through all the classes had all the references…everything…but no, I can’t because it wouldn’t be fair with my health issues to bring a child into this. And frankly I don’t think I’d pass the physical now.
and worst of all I lost my best friend, my little baby dog. A HUGE part of me died with her. I have to find a way to make that part live again. To put the pieces of my life back together, even if some of the pieces are missing
Why do I write? Because I need to.
But I also need to take a break.
I may write sporadically for a while to let you know what is going on, but I need to take a break from the internet. I won’t be reading other people’s blogs as much or commenting as much. I need to take some time to focus on me. I may write about it, I may not. right now I’m simply trying to figure out how to get past all the grief of things I’ve lost this year, or how to grieve without losing myself. I need to focus more on the spiritual side of me. I need to make some huge decisions. My husband and I need to grieve over our Sandy together, and figure out how we will carry on with our family now that such a huge part of it is gone. We may end up moving. As I said a lot of decisions….and a lot of needs.
But yes I will write again. Because I must.
End 15 minutes…plus a little to put in the photo. : )
Today’s Prompt: Health Activist Choice Day 2! Write about whatever you like.
Needing Strength
The losses, so many losses
my mind struggles to comprehend.
The year has been a blur
I cannot keep up with the grief.
My life has been about strength,
never staying down for long.
Now I am broken, the pieces are scattered,
missing pieces never to be found.
The light in my soul is barely a flicker,
the flame will not light the way.
Until reached, no one knows what their “breaking point’ is,
now I know mine.
I can lose many parts of me,
always finding the strength to change and carry on.
Add the loss of a love so dear,
and I cannot find the strength.
If not for the love of another,
my life would have no meaning.
Grief, anger, love, tears, memories…
all things we share, with each loss.
We lean on each other,
each needing the strength.
The strength to live with,
all the losses.
Today’s Prompt Health Madlib Poem. Go to : http://languageisavirus.com/cgi-bin/madlibs.pl and fill in the parts of speech and the site will generate a poem for you. Feel free to post the Madlib or edit it to make it better.
A big break for the normal health talk, and such….
My husband got the biggest laugh out of this, and we felt it went great with Edward Gorey so here it is:
sad husband’s, sad husband.
slovenly i have never go, quickly beyond
any doctor, your wife have their mad:
in your most loving home are things which stay me,
or which i cannot change because they are too loudly
your wanting look eagerly will unresist me
though i have fight myself as carpet,
you love always window by window myself as dinner hate
(expecting easily, quietly) her hurting egg
or if your garden be to hope me, i and
my chicken will do very lovingly, longingly,
as when the illness of this doctor don’t
the sunshine hopefully everywhere jumping;
nothing which we are to bounce in this birds cut
the dog of your cautious girl: whose cat
blow me with the house of its grass,
runing hospital and food with each walking
(i do not fall what it is about you that sleep
and believe; only something in me adapt
the money of your wife is callous than all dinner)
insurance, not even the work, has such nurturing noise
– wendy & e.e. cummings
Today’s Prompt: 5 Dinner Guests. Who are 5 people you’d love to have dinner with (living or deceased) and why?
I thought and thought about this prompt and could think of 5 people, but realized after I invited 2 of them it wouldn’t be fair to the other 3 to have them in attendance, unless they just wanted to talk among themselves.
The first person I would invite would be my mother. She died in 1993.
The second person I would invite would be my husband.
The two most important people in my life, never met.
This is the dinner party I would like to have, I’d like the man I love, to meet my mother.
Of course, now I’m crying and have no idea what else to say in this post…..I’ll try and muddle through…
Let me tell you a little about my mother. My mother and I were always very close. When I was a child we played together, as I got older we told secrets, she always knew when I really needed to talk and she’d take me for a day trip to the beach. I didn’t realize if until years later, but those trips were huge bonding experiences for us. Never did we leave to come home without me unburdening to her whatever was on my mind. She was the kind of mother that all the kids wanted to be around. I often came home to find a friend talking with her. They hadn’t come to see me, they wanted her advice.
I think back over the past 19 years and for many of them I simply can’t believe she wasn’t here. I actually remember her at different events. I can almost hear us planning my wedding. But alas, she wasn’t there. My husband’s mother died just months before we were married. We had an empty seat for both of them beside our fathers. We walked down the aisle together, when we reached our parents I gave one of my flowers (I carried Calla Lillis) to my Stuart for his mother, and I had one for mine….we put them on the empty chairs, and kissed our fathers and continued up the aisle to become joined as husband and wife.
The next day we came back to the park we were married in to have photos taken, they were catching and tagging humming birds. Both of our mother’s loved humming birds. So much so we included the theme in our reception to include our mother’s presence. While they were tagging the migration they allowed me to hold 2 hummingbirds. Yes, I actually got to hold them. You see after they are caught they have to give them sugar-water and they sit in your hand a moment to warm up before they can fly away. We took this as a sign that our mothers were pleased with our union….a little hello if you would.
Can you blame me for wanting my mother to meet this incredible man who has taken care of me so unselfishly, so lovingly for so long now? My mother was my hero growing up, my husband is my hero now!
I know they would adore each other. But to have one dinner together, can you imagine?
All the stories about me growing up? The silly stories Stuart would share with my mother?
The proud moments a mother likes to share.
To share our wedding photos with her….to tell her all about it….
My mother finally seeing me stable (I had been diagnosed with Bipolar I before she died, but I was not completely stable until after she passed away.)
My mother seeing me happy, finally very happy, in spite of what my body is going through, I am happy most of the time……that is if I could stop crying!
and to have my mother hug me and tell me that everything is going to be alright…..oh what I wouldn’t give for that.
I know many of you will say she does see me, and she is always here with me….yes, I know.
But to have my mother and my husband actually meet, and have dinner with me…..that would be the ultimate dream for me.
Picnic with Ants 