Since it is the holidays, I thought I would write a little about stress. We all have stress, some of us more than others. During the holidays it is a particularly stressful time. Of course most of this stress we put on ourselves. We want things to be perfect, the decorations, just so. We tend to plan more things than we should and with all the shopping and getting ready, we end up stressed. There are many things we can do to change this. Is it really necessary to make 6 different kinds of cookies? Why do we want to? Is it because of traditions past? Really is it good for us to eat all those sweets in the first place? One way to avoid some of the holiday madness is to shop online. Of course you have to plan ahead for this. You want to make sure the packages arrive in time. One thing that Chris and I have done, is to cut down on spending. When we were first together, I wanted to make Christmas a good one for all of our kids(7 of them, I have three, he has four). Well, this made things much more stressful. We simply could not afford it and really, we didn’t want the kids to think it was all about what they were getting for Christmas. It was a harder habit for me to break. I had come from a situation where I had more than enough money and we were quite generous when it came to gift buying for our kids. Over the years, we have simplified things and have cut way back on our spending and it really does help. If I don’t get the Christmas cookies made, it is no big deal, if I do, that is great! This year my main reason for wanting to make them, is to decorate them. I guess I need a creative outlet at this time.

Back to handling stress. My youngest daughter called me the other day and was almost in tears. She was so stressed out. It was partly due to a new job and how they were treating her, but also due to school and trying to keep her grades up etc. I think one of the most important things to learn in this life is how to handle stress in a good, positive way. It isn’t taught in school, though I think it should be a required course. I know for me, I didn’t learn any healthy ways of dealing with stress as a kid. And I was stressed a great deal of the time. I was a serious kid and often thought of all the bad things that could happen to me or in the world. Many bad things did happen to me. I was molested at the age of ten by some neighborhood boys. And this happened again when I was twelve with someone else. At the age of 18 I was raped, by my then boyfriend. No one even knew what date rape was and of course I didn’t tell anyone for fear that they would blame me. I don’t really know how all these things came to be, but in my mind subconcious or otherwise, I was the victim. Once you are a victim, you tend to go into “victim” mode when you are stressed or are facing something scary. At the age of 12 I started to have seizures. I was in the hospital for a week having all the tests to determine the cause. At one point, I was told by a friend that my family had talked about the possibility of me having a brain tumor. Nice of her to tell me don’t ya think? I was terrified. I thought I was going to die. They couldn’t find the reasons for the seizures, but put me on medication for them. At the age of 13, I started to have bad tension headaches. This headache never went away. It just got worse or better but was always present. I had this until I was 16. At the time I was put on phenobarbital for the headaches. So, I was on dilantin for seizures(nasty side effects too) and phenobarb for my headaches. Is it any wonder that I fell asleep in so many classes? In 8th grade, one of my EEG’s showed seizures. So, now they knew where they were coming from. I stayed on dilantin until my senior year when the seizures were getting worse and so they kept trying to switch my meds around. I was having reactions to many of them(no fun let me tell you) and while having an EEG, the neurologist injected me with something that was supposed to induce a seizure. I didn’t have one. He started screaming at me that I was faking and how could I waste his time etc. Well, what we didn’t know was that this test was not reliable and often caused people without seizures to have them and people with seizures to not have them and the test was later discredited etc. But at the time, they all thought it was “psychological” I had to see a shrink. She told me that what was happening to me was not unlike the “hysteria” that surrounded the witches in Salem and she had me read a book about the witch trials etc. nice huh. Talk about damaging to a young person. She also thought that I was having difficulties with my sexuality(being raised Catholic and all). So our sessions revolved around sex education–kind of a waste of time really and money come to think of it. Sigh, thus begins a pattern in my life. I have had doctors tell me I do have a seizure disorder and doctors who say they can’t find anything so I don’t have one. And, I know that the cause of seizures is often unknown. They just don’t know enough about the brain. Yes, medical science has come a long way, but they still do not have enough information about the brain and how it works. Stress has played a big role in my life in how I didn’t handle it well and how I am now so sick. So much of it is due to the fact that for many years I had constant stress, the kind that your body is in a constant “fight or flight” mode. Most of this was due to my marriage at the time. It was very stressful and I am a stuffer. I stuff my feelings until I can’t take it anymore and then I get sick. It is why my adrenals are no longer working right. They are responsible for dealing with these stresses and produce many hormones that your body needs to compensate. My problem is that they had to over compensate for my stress over the years and have now given out on me. So, I am taking hydrocortisone because my body no longer makes enough cortisol to handle these stresses. Of course this is a basic simplified version of it and it is way more complicated with many more hormones involved. My doc in AZ will no longer give me the hydrocort. I need to find a new doc but in the meantime I have been weaning off the hydrocort. It has been difficult at best. Once again I can’t spend more than 15 minutes up and if I do I get really sick. When I get sick all I can do is lay down. I can’t take more hydrocort like my body needs in time of stress, because I will run out. So, I am hoping that I can wean off without ending up in the hospital. This means I can not do very much. I spend most of my day in bed and much of that is spent sleeping. My bodies way of compensating I guess. I do have a lead on a good doc and will call her the day after Christmas. I hope she is taking new patients. I have learned ways of coping with stress that are healthier like meditation and just letting go of things I have no control over. I owe many of my coping skills to Chris. He has been a very good teacher. I hope that my daughters and son can learn some of these and soon. It is terrible to go through life dealing with stress in the wrong ways. It really does lead to all kinds of illnesses. I’m not saying that is the only reason I am sick, but it has certainly made things much worse than they could have been.

To be continued…