Hello Everyone,
I want to start by saying, I am better now and I am back on the right path to recovery. With that being said I wanted to explain why I have been missing on here and most of my social media outlets. I want to share what happened so that others can speak up, find comfort, and hopefully start their journey to recovery.
In April I noticing my lack of energy, physical exhaustion and weakness. I should mention I have been diagnosed with ADHD and so my energy and work levels are usually higher than the average person. I tend to throw myself into work and rarely sleep. Well, one week in April, I was sleeping more than I was awake. I decided to just go get everything checked when I finally started to feel worse.
I went to the ER several times, but each time they said nothing was wrong. Eventually I was given antibiotics and said that should work. After completing the antibiotics, nothing got better. I just felt worse.
I then got a hold of my PCM and made an appointment. By this time it was late April. I prepared myself mentally for a fight, as I feel most doctors just don't believe me when I say "something is off and I am not really sure why." I have to tell you, I was shocked! When I went to my appointment and explained my ER visits and all that I was experiencing. I also told her that my husband noticed a weird band of (what looked like) extra fat around the base of my neck. In the end she believed everything I was saying, was listening and ordered a bunch of blood work and tests.
The blood work was to be repeated weekly for a few weeks. Which I did. In the mean time I set up an ultrasound for my neck. The first blood work did show some changes from my ER blood work. The second one showed even more changes, and the third one, the week of my ultrasound, showed extremely high levels.
My thyroid, which is what the ultrasound was looking at came back as looking somewhat normal. I was a little frustrated as I was hoping it would show the reason for all my issues, and the weird band around my neck. Well, when the ultrasound information plus my blood work all came back is when I got the shocking news.
I have HYPOthyroidism. Which is not what you probably are use to hearing. Usually you hear about HYPERthyroidism, which is an overactive thyroid. I had the opposite. My thyroid was barely functioning and causing my exhaustion, my nausea, my loss of appetite, my weight loss, my weakness and so much more. The lump around the base of my neck was probably due to my glads swelling from having to over work due to my thyroid deciding to not function.
Over the last month I have been on medication and I go back soon to have my levels checked and make sure all is well. After almost 3 weeks on the medication I am finally starting to get my energy back, which is great. It has been a long two months of symptoms, diagnoses, tests, medication and recovery. I am still in recovery mode, but I wanted to share this with you all, in hopes to help others speak up about their bodies and hopefully you can also find the correct answers and diagnoses.
However, this is not the only medical issue I have been dealing with. I sadly, have been dealing with more knee pain. If you have known me longer than a few years, you will know I have had knee issues going on, all the way back to middle school. I injured my knee, and ever since have had pain, discomfort and even a surgery. In the last year I have had similar pain to the point of not being able to walk down the stairs without that pain, falling down the stairs a few times and just full pain when walking. I went into have it looked at, went to physical therapy, had an MRI and found out my ACL was completely torn and my inner meniscus was once again torn. My instability going up or down stairs is more than likely from my ACL. So, after some long months of working through pain and strengthening my muscles, I finally have a date for my ACL and meniscus surgery.
My surgery will be at the beginning of June and I am telling you all, to be transparent about why my custom orders, my social media and my uploading of patterns has been slow and lacking. This will probably still be the case in the beginning of June as well. I will do my best to focus on getting myself back on my feet and back to my normal self, but only time will tell.
I share this with you all in the hopes that you have compassion enough to understand that I am human, and I have dealt with a lot these last few months, all while taking care of my family, kids, having family visit, and maintaining a continuous work flow. I can only ask that you please be patient with me as I return emails, DMs, private messages and comments. I promise you that my work is still a huge part of what I love to do and I hope you all love it just as much.
Thank you to all who have supported me and continue to support me.
If you are still looking for a custom order or a specific pattern, please feel free to email me or use the contact sheet and send that to me. I will get back to you as soon as I can. I appreciate everyones orders and emails.
Thank you all,
Sarah