To give pain or to take it away? That is the question!

I have recently seen a new specialist to get further treatment for my condition. {nothing new to me or my family} Well my new doctor officially diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, in addition to the P.O.T.S. With this new addition to my health she also prescribed me with a new medication that will supposedly help with the pain and the not sleeping.

Well this past week I have been suffering from a really bad cold, flu, or virus. The true identity of what is invading my body is unknown at the moment.

 All I know is that if it was physically possible I would have coughed out both of my lungs and possibly a kidney. Not very enjoyable I must confess. Well all of the coughing and losing the voice all started on Thursday. Soreness in my body began on Friday and so I began to take my new medication. Let me tell you, that was the best sleep that I've had in a long time. It was nice deep, uninterrupted, and nice dreams kind of sleep.

So my family and I were pretty dang happy when we found out that it worked so great. Well on Saturday I began to have a dull pain in my hips [which is normal with the P.O.T.S and the fibro] so I just waited it out as I normally do but this time it didn't get better with time. I found this odd but didn't give it a second thought, because I thought that maybe it was not going away because of the cold.

The pain then started to move to the back of my hips {which was completely new to me} and then the pain started moving up on the scale by the second. I went from a 2 to a 10 within five minutes. It was the most pain I've ever been in ever. Then the weirdest thing stared to happen {something that I've never experienced before} the pain started moving down my legs. The next thing I knew both of my legs, from the hip down to the foot, felt as though some one had poured rubbing alcohol on them after they cut it a thousand times over. It is the only way I can explain it that makes any sense.

So I took my pain/sleeping pills {like 5} plus an ibuprofen 800 mg, and a pain patch.{not in that order} these things were not working so I took a really hot bath.... don't do this unless you have someone to keep an eye on you. Thankfully I had my mom there to help me or I wouldn't have been able to do this. I sat in this hot bath for at least 10 to 15 minutes {felt like hours} and since I took 5 pain/sleeping pills I think you can guess what happened next. Yes, that's right I started to fall asleep in the tub. Thank goodness I have a good mom and she helped out of the tub.{practically picking me up and moving me around the bathroom}

I am pretty sure that for someone on the outside looking in would have found the quite funny. I know for a fact that if someone had filmed it and I could go back and watch it I would laugh. Well this happened Sunday night and again this morning {the pain, not the falling asleep in the tub} so my mom called my doctor and that turned into a trip to the ER at primary children's. Well the typical stuff happened I got in, got my iv, got blood work done, and got instructions. Then we were on our way home. This was the shortest hospital visit that the Slack family has ever seen in the history of all time.

Well my mom and I met this really cool guy while we were there. He was the tech who did my IV and the cool thing was is he did it one handed. Yes, one handed. He had an accident in November and he accidentally amputated his own hand. It was a cool story that came with gory awesome pictures. Well anyway that was my experience today. Oh and there is a new type of IV that is really cool and I absolutely love it!

Anyway, while we were at the hospital we found out that the leg pain could be caused by two things. Either the new wonderful medication that I am on or what ever has invaded my body. We won't really know until I am better and take the medication. It's going to be a wait and see kind of thing, I am really hoping that its this little alien that decide to invade my body and explore. So hopefully it is done with its exploration and get out of here. So with that my friends I leave you with my latest adventure and hope nothing but the best for all of you!
P.S. don't forget to wash your hands and stay healthy!
WARNING: picture of IV if you don't like IVs don't scroll down

Click, Click, Click, BOOM

Right before I took my very first shot

Jeff loading up!

So my brother Jeff took me shooting over the summer with his 22 rifle and ever since then I have been in love with shooting guns! It is so much fun and I recommend it for anybody!








Being the only girl growing up in my family guns were nothing new to me and I haven't ever really been afraid of them. I had always wanted to go shooting cause it looked like a fun thing to do. When my brother took me this summer I couldn't wait to do it again. I got pretty good with the rifle and I couldn't wait to try something else.

Double Tapping is very important with Zombies

2nd target

First target

 Then the Sandy Hook shooting happened and that got me and my family even more anxious to get us all guns and concealed weapons permits. I was very excited as we started making the plans of setting up classes for the CWP, but we found out that in Utah you have to be 21 or older to get one. I was way bummed out I am not going to lie, but my mom got a gun and I can go to a gun range with someone 21 or older and shoot it anytime so that made me feel a little better.

 Anyway, there is a point to this post. It is to tell you how cool my family is! My cousins came up this week from St. George and they had gotten guns for Christmas and we all wanted to go to the gun range and have a party. So that's what we did yesterday, we went to a gun range and shot till our hearts contents. Something you should know about this range though... it was... OUTSIDE!!!! Yes, I said outside. We live in Utah, it's in the middle of January and we went to an outside gun range. We are the epitome of crazy. And on top of this we went in the morning so we didn't have the sun on our side either. Like said we're crazy people.

So we wake up all excited and we layer up knowing that it's going to be cold, but I didn't expect it to be that cold. I think the high was 12 degrees outside. It was insane!! With my POTS I don't keep body heat so I was freezing. I literally thought I was going to get hypothermia or something. I ended up having to sit in the car with the heater running on full blast in between my turns because I couldn't stop shaking. When shooting a gun, that can hurt people, shaking is bad so I just sat in the car to warm up, got out took my turn, and went back into the car. To further your understanding of how cold it was I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, a hoody, a heavy coat, tights, jeans, socks four hand/feet warmers in my shoe, and a pair of gloves. Yes, I was still shaking! It was that cold!

The cold made my body hurt and the shaking wore me out but I wasn't going to let the POTS win that day. No sir, I was going to shoot those guns and nothing was going to stop me. I ended up shooting my brothers rifle again, my mom's 380, my cousins 38 revolver, my dad's friend's 22 pistol, and my personal favorite the 9mm Beretta. This was such a fun day and I am surprised that my mom liked it. She shot almost every gun and she did very well! So I am pretty sure this is the last family you want to mess with, because momma bear is packin heat and she is a pretty dang good shot.

Here are some pics from our Frozen Tundra shooting experience of 2013:

 This is me with the 9mm Beretta. I really liked this gun, the kick back usually scars people or turns them off but it was my favorite part of the gun!

On the right is my mom with her 380. It looks small but that thing packs a punch! 

This is my uncle Dave with the 22 rifle

This is my aunt Cynthia with the 22 rifle

Mom's first target! Not bad at all

My dad shooting something.... can't see it with the glare but it's still cool!

Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

Today has seriously been an amazing day!! The beautiful flaming ball of gas that we call the sun FINALLY decided to grace us with it's wonderful warming presence. It has been weeks since we have had a beautiful sunny day as we have had today. So that is one of the many things that the good lord has blessed me with today! I was also blessed with sooo much energy! I have been able to do all of the things I have needed to! After the past few weeks that I have had I can't tell you how thankful that I am to be able to feel this great. I was surprised this morning when I woke up that I didn't feel exhausted like I usually do. Last night I got the opportunity to ask one of my guy friends to the girls choice dance that is coming up here in February. I hung out with some of my closest friends and we just messed around like normal seniors in HS do.  Normally when I do this I crash pretty hard the next day, but today I didn't. That is such a big blessing that I am so grateful for!!

At school today I learned that I got 100% on the human anatomy and physiology test that I had on Monday so that made me very happy. Also today was the talent show and that took like 30 or more minutes. Which means short classes and since I got to the local technology school in the afternoons that meant even shorter classes for me today. What senior in HS doesn't love not having to spend all of their time in class? So I got a long lunch and when I got to my MA class our teacher told us that we were going to be learning how to suture. I was on cloud at that point and nothing could bring me down.

I am not your average 18 year old American girl. I am the only girl in my family and I am also the youngest. That means I was raised with three older brothers. I was raised with thinking that blood and guts are cool. My favorite sport is hockey and my favorite part of that sport is watching people get into fights. I like war movies and I didn't know that the barbie wasn't supposed to get eaten by the T-Rex till I was 5. So when it comes to blood and guts I have a bring it on and the more the merrier mentality. That's just me, I like this kind of stuff!

So when class got out and the chicken that I had, had been stitched and stapled the first thing that I thought was "I can't wait till one of my brothers or friends does something stupid so I could stitch them up." So my friends the moral of this post is enjoy the little things in life. Sometimes great things come in small packages, and if you enjoy the little things and let them make you happy then you will find that you have an amazing life!

WARNING: If you don't want to see a chicken breast with stitches in it then don't scroll down!

The top four stitches are epidermis stitches and are easily seen the other stitches are a running stitch and the are in the pink area, the little orange lines are the suture, they are harder to see

My superpower on bad days...

Bad days, we all have them. Of coarse like with everything else in this world some people have more than others do.On my bad days I have this amazingly awesome superpower! Do you want in on my little secret? Well when I have bad days I just can't help but lay around and convert oxygen into carbon dioxide all day. It is really a tiring task and it takes all day, and by the time the day is over I am amazed at myself for doing that all day with out stopping. It is really a big accomplishment if you think about it. I mean can you think of how many trees I am saving by doing this?!?! It makes me feel like I am superman or someone cool like that! ;)

Okay, I guess that I will get somewhat serious now. Today was a hard day for me.. they are a part of life, I mean what would life be without opposition? Boring that's what!  All I was able to do today was sleep and lay in bed and contemplate life. Okay, that sounded really deep and cool but all I was really contemplating was if I was indeed hungry enough to actually get out of bed and get something to eat. Eventually I had to eat and take meds and what not but on days like this I wait till I feel like I am on the brink of starving to death or till I feel like I have walked across the Sahara desert with out water. Dramatic I know but it gets my point across, and I like to think that someone that is reading this might crack a smile. If you are smiling you probably have felt this way some point in your life and know exactly what I am talking about. 

 So today is one of those days where I am physically and mentally a jelly like substance. Like in the second Harry Potter movie where Harry's arm has all of his bones removed from his arm by Gildaroy Lockhart after the Quiddich game. If you haven't seen the Harry Potter movies and my visual doesn't make sense to you than just imagine jello or something flimsy and that's how I feel. This always happens after I do too much. This was the first week back to school after the two week winter break. Let me tell ya, even though it was only three days those days wore me out. Don't get me wrong my break was way nice and everything, most of the time, I really wish we didn't have such a long time off. It has been extremely hard to bounce back after the break. The weather hasn't helped at all either. I live in Utah and it has been crazy weather lately and that just kills my joints and messes up my BP (blood pressure). 

On top of the P.O.T.S I have been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, Tendonitis, and Bursitis. All of these things are effected by the weather changing and the temperature. Really hot weather and really cold weather are not my friends. The heat makes me sweat and lose water in my body that I don't have and I dehydrate to easily. Being dehydrated makes me really tired. When it's really cold it makes my tendonitis and bursitis flare up and its really painful. What happens is the tendons and bursae (the little sacs that hold fluid for your joints) become inflamed and when that happens they cause pain in the joint area. At first the docs and I thought that it was arthritis because of the amount of pain I was in, but when I went to see the Rheumatologist he saw that it was to close to the surface of the skin to be arthritis. Anyway, this effects my shoulders, hips, and knees. It is the worst in the hips and because of this reason on bad days, like today, I really can't move that much without being in severe pain.

A couple of months back I had seen a hip specialist at our local orthopedic office here in Utah because of the pain. They had do some x-rays on me but they weren't telling the doc what he wanted to know so he had me do an MRI arthrogram and a steroid injection into my hips. When getting and MRI arthrogram they have to inject a dye in to the area they were looking at. To get the machine to pick up the dye and get a clear picture they have to inject the dye as close to the bone and joint as they can. This means they take this really long hollow needle that has a cathader in it, like the ones they use for epidurals, down to where the femur meets the hip bone. They do inject a numbing medicine into you so it doesn't hurt until the get to the bone, that's what hurts. You are probably wondering how do they see where they are going, well they are taking multiple x-rays at the same time. They then inject the dye and the steroid, they do both at the same time so they don't have to poke you more than necessary. They have to do on hip at a time and this process is about thirty minutes than forty-five in the MRI machine. Its a long processes, and the reason I told you about this is because the steroid stopped the pain for a little while but it has now worn off.

 Now you know how I spend my bad days and what makes them so rough. I am thankful for every day that I am alive even though sometimes I would rather not be. When I have this moment of weakness I always think that someone out there has it a lot worse than I do. That humbles me and makes me thankful for the life I've been given. I guess that is the moral of this post, someone has it worse and they are making it work. I will end today with a quote that applies to everyone. "Don't let  a bad DAY make you feel like you have a BAD LIFE". So my friends I leave you with this and hope that you have many good days coming for you.

 

Goodbye 2012! Hello 2013

So last night was the last night of 2012 and I am glad to see it go! Of coarse I had my good times but it was also a very hard year. There was a lot of heart break and lot of stress. For some odd reason I was in the hospital a lot in 2012. It wasn't the greatest year but it did make me and my family closer. It made us all realize how much we need each other. Last year I learned two very important lessons. The fist, life is to short to be worried about the little things. Be with people you love and make everyone you meet a friend. I learned this lesson after my friend Brandon died in a car accident. He was a really good friend of mine and it was hard to say goodbye. He has been the third friend I have had to say "See ya on the other side." My dear friend Kenzie also passed away in a car accident that school year. It was in 2011 but it was still a very hard loss. The other friend that I lost was Zach. He was a good guy. We weren't very close and we didn't talk much but when we did he treated me like I was his best friend. Because of the influence of these three I have decided to look at everyone as a friend and to be nicer to everyone.

 The second lesson was something my mom always told me, but I never really believed til after the summer. That is "show me your friends and I'll show you your future." Last year I wasn't making the right choices and I didn't care who I was rude to or what the felt as long as me and my group of friends that I had were happy and having fun we were going to do whatever we wanted. I started mistreating my parents and didn't care for their rules. I was turning 18 and they couldn't tell me what to do anymore. I was almost an adult and I was going to do what ever the heck I wanted to do. I broke curfew, I stayed up all night texting, I didn't do my homework til the last minute, I talked backed, and worst of all I changed my personality to fit in with these so called "friends". I am not telling you these things to make you feel bad for me I am telling you these things because hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and never make them yourself. I was going down the wrong path and no one could get me to see that what I was doing was wrong. I didn't realize this until summer was almost over. My parents did all they could to help me see that but I didn't listen and I wish I would have.

Now I didn't do drugs or get pregnant but if I stayed on the path that I was going down it could have led to that. I am not going to release any names because it's not my place, but I will tell you the stories. The person who I thought was my best friend made me believe that premarital sex was alright if you loved the person. No, thankfully I never did this because I always thought it was wrong for me at the time. I am very thankful for my parents raising me in the gospel so I had the firm foundation that I have. I knew that I could talk to my parents about this and I did, but it was to late for my friend. She had used me and the boyfriend that I had at the time as an excuse to go out and be immoral and I was okay with that. I had lied to my parents, other friends, and her aunt for her and I wish I didn't. Like I said I didn't care who I hurt if my friends and I were happy that's all that mattered. I was very selfish. I let this boy who manipulate my feelings and emotionally abuse me for three months and I thought he was the one I was going to marry. My parents did the best they could to try and teach me the lesson I needed to learn but I decided to learn the hard way. I let this boy get me so stressed that it made my illness worse and I got really sick. Stress is never good on anyone but excessive stress on a person with an illness can put them in a hospital. That is what woke me up from the delusion that my life of being selfish was wonderful and what I wanted.

This is how I made myself so sick. Like I said I am not telling these stories for pity, but out of hope that i can help someone who is maybe going through similar struggles and they can learn from me. One day my friend had revealed to me that she might be pregnant but I wasn't to tell anyone, so I didn't. We had made plans to get her a pregnancy test, because I was 18, I could buy her one. I had that sitting on my shoulders and i new that it was wrong but I couldn't say no. I ended up telling my mom this before we put those plans in action and my mom helped me say no. Then on top of this my boyfriend at the time didn't like me spending my time with anyone but him. But I love my family and they always came first so one night I told him I wasn't going to hang out with him because I was going to be with my brothers. He then through a fit and threatened to commit suicide. Like an idiot I kept it to my self that night and cried myself to sleep. I would have gone into my parents room that night and told them but I talked him out of it and it was very late and i didn't want to wake them up. So I told my mom the moment i woke up the next morning.

The thing about my mom is she always knows when something is wrong. That morning before I could say anything to her she looked at me and said something around the lines of you are keeping something from me, what is it? So I then started to cry and told her everything. About what the boy had threatened the night before and what my friend had told me the week before. Because of all the stress I put myself into I made my heart race way to fast and everything went down hill from there. My mom then talked to me and held me as I begged for forgiveness. She didn't hesitate one second to say that she forgave me. We then talked to the boys father and after that I went to the hospital. My dad gave me a blessing and I knew then what I had to do. Later that week I broke up with the boy and told my friend  what I really felt about her immoral activities. Because of the gospel and the amazing parents that I have been so blessed with I was able to overcome these trials and begin to be the real me. I am no longer hanging out with this certain group of people but I am still nice to them when I see them. That is the best thing I can do.

 These are all in the past and I wish I didn't take the hard way but I did. I've learned from my mistakes and I hope that you can learn from them as well. The moral of this story is never lie and keep secrets, it's always better to tell an adult who loves you or someone that you know can help. Now the happy stuff! Last year the friends I neglected last year thankfully didn't judge me for who I was last year and still included me. This group of friends came over last night and we all just talked laughed and had good clean fun! We celebrated the love and support that we all had for each other and brought in the new year. I can't wait to make more of these good, happy memories this year. I wish you all a happy new year!!

My wonderful friends

The girls that I would die without