Nifty 90's

A couple weeks ago, my friend Shannon sent me a link to a whole page on fun stuff from the 1990's. I had so much fun browsing through that list that I decided to make my own. Here are my favorite things from the 90's:

NSYNC was, by far, my favorite boy band in the 90's. Many sleepovers were spent discussing which of these boys we thought was the hottest, which usually ended up with us deciding that it was impossible to choose who was hotter between Lance and JC. 

Caboodles makeup cases were so cool! It seemed like every girl had at least one of these in the 90's. If you had enough makeup to fill more than one, you were really cool! 

When Beanie Babies first came out, I HAD to collect all of them. I remember waiting in front of stores with my mom and dad to go dig through new shipments of these things! I think I collected well over 200 of them before the trend died out. 

At one point, my backpack was covered in these things! I was obsessed with feeding and playing with my GigaPets. They were pretty awesome.

I lived for new episodes of "Full House." I think I have actually seen every single episode of this show at least 20 times. 

"Titanic" was the first PG-13 movie I was allowed to watch. I remember going to the movie theater with my mom and dad and thinking that it was probably one of the coolest movies I had ever seen. 

"Clueless" is one of those movies that I have watched over and over again. It was a favorite at many sleepovers and continues to be one of my favorite movies. 

"So tell me what ya want, what ya really really want..." My friends and I knew all the words to Wanna Be and thought the Spice Girls were pretty awesome! 

I got a Sega Genesis for Christmas when I was in 2nd grade, and I thought it was one of the coolest things I had ever been given. I remember spending hours playing Sonic the Hedgehog Pinball and Dashing Deperados. 

I watched "Tiny Toon Adventures" every Sunday morning and did an awesome impression of Elmyra! Too bad this show isn't still on...

"Pinky and the Brain" was a great show! It's too bad Brain never succeeded in taking over the world... it might be a better place if he had. 

I miss the days when having the most LipSmackers made you the coolest girl. I do not, however, miss the boys in my class stealing and eating my LipSmackers, though. That was pretty nasty!

I have so many other great memories from the 90's, too! It was a fun time, where I loved talking for hours on the phone with my friends and had no cares! Yup, those were the days!

Adventures in Gynecology: What Makes Me Unique

Warning: This post contains some very personal information about me. If you are at all uncomfortable with reading about my women's health issues, this would probably be a good post for you to skip. 

Lately, I feel like almost all of the women I know who are close to my age are either pregnant or have just had a baby. In the past 16 months, 18 of my friends and family members have become new moms.
This sudden rush of babies in my life has caused friends and family members to start asking over and over again, "So, when are you and Ryan going to have a baby?"
For most people who have been married almost five years and are still childless, this is a fairly normal question. For me, though, this question hurts a little bit.
April 9, 2011, I thought I was possibly pregnant. Home pregnancy tests were negative, but I had skipped my period and was starting to have signs that many of my pregnant friends had. I had steadily been gaining weight without any reasonable explanation over a few months, my hands and feet became incredibly swollen, I had a strange feeling in my abdomen, I was exhausted all the time and I often felt sick to my stomach. Overall, I just didn't feel well. I was really busy with school at this point in time, and since the pregnancy tests I took all were negative, I decided to wait things out until graduation. I told myself I would go to the doctor the week after graduation if I was still having those symptoms.
On my graduation day in May, I started bleeding. Since every pregnancy test I had taken had been negative, I just assumed that maybe I had miscalculated when things were supposed to start before and went on with my life. Then things got strange.
A month after graduation, I was still bleeding and was in constant pain. My feet were swollen to the point that most of my shoes didn't even fit, and my stomach was so bloated that I was having problems fitting into my clothes. After a lot of pleading from my family and friends, I finally made a doctor appointment.
The doctor gave me both good news and bad news. The good news was that everything I was experiencing had nothing to do with a pregnancy or miscarriage. The bad news was that she didn't have an explanation as to why all of these things were happening to my body. I should have known this doctor wasn't good when I had to plead with her to give me medication to help me stop my bleeding (I bled for over six weeks total before I was finally given medicine to help me stop it. The medicine I was given made me sick to my stomach and had side effects that were almost worse than the problems I originally went in for) and for her to send me for an ultrasound.
Ultrasound day was probably the strangest day I have ever had in my life. Ryan and I checked in at the ultrasound place in Omaha around 1 p.m. By 1:30, the ultrasound tech had a puzzled look on her face and pulled in a supervisor. I was informed that I have not one uterus, but two uteri, and that I only have one kidney. Apparently, I was born with this strange uterine abnormality and without a left kidney, and I lived 25 years without ever knowing it.
My strange ultrasound findings led me to a gynecologist in Omaha, who turned out to be yet another waste of time. Test after test and visit after visit with this doctor led me to a possible diagnosis of interstitial cystitis, but no reason for my abnormal bleeding and continued severe abdominal pain. This doctor was unwilling to listen to me, and I really feel like he blew off my concerns. After months without any answers and continued pain, swelling and weird bleeding, Ryan, my family and I made the decision that I needed to see another doctor.
At the end of August, I made a trip to Minneapolis to see a doctor at the OB/GYN clinic my grandma works for (this is actually the same clinic I now work for, too!). With  my permission, my grandma had shared a lot of what was going on with me with Dr. Haislet, who specialized in endometriosis (sadly, he recently retired in June of this year). He agreed to see me, and after my first appointment, his recommendation was for me to undergo surgery to get an accurate look at what was going on with my body.
September 19, Ryan and my grandma drove me to Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis for my first surgery (other than my wisdom teeth). I underwent a laparoscopy, hysteroscopy, D&C and myomectomy. Dr. Haislet found answers to much of what had been going on with me. He found:

• I had four uterine fibroids, two of which were fairly large. It's very possible that these will eventually grow back and that I will have to undergo surgery again to have them removed. It's also possible that more will show up. 
• I definitely have a bicornuate uterus, meaning that instead of one uterus, mine has two separate horns, divided by a septum. However, I only have one cervix (the GYN in Omaha had informed me I had two). This condition occurs in about 0.5 percent of all women in the United States. 
• I have a non-patent left fallopian tube, but have a normal left ovary. This means that my left ovary produces eggs, but they don't have anywhere to go, which often causes me pain. A non-patent tube with a normal ovary is apparently very rare. 

So, what does this all mean for me? First, it means that I'm special and unique. I am one of the one in every 750 people who has been born with only one kidney, and I am one of the 0.5% of women in the United States with a bicornuate uterus. 

Second, it means that, while not impossible, having children will be difficult for me. Because I am unable to release eggs every month like a normal woman, my chances of getting pregnant are reduced by at least 50 percent. If or when I decide to actively start trying to have a child, there is a large chance that I'll have to use an infertility drug, such as Clomid, to help me with producing enough eggs to give me a fighting chance. 

Third, if I ever become pregnant, I will be classified as a high risk pregnancy from day one. Having one kidney means that I will have to be checked regularly to make sure the baby isn't putting too much stress on my kidney. My bicornuate uterus puts me at a higher risk for preterm labor and a breech baby. I am almost guaranteed to have to deliver via C-section if or when I ever have a child. 

Why does the "So, when are you having a baby?" question hurt me? It hurts because, while I have been told that technically I should be able to have a baby, I know that both conceiving a baby and then trying to carry a baby to term is going to be really difficult for me. I'm not going to have the easy time that so many of my friends and family have seemed to have with getting pregnant, and I don't think that many people understand that having a child isn't always simple for everyone. 

I know that this information was personal and probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about me. But, for me, it's important that people know why having children is such a touchy subject with me. I have gone through different phases with dealing with knowing that I have all of these gynecological issues, from being depressed, to being embarrassed, to being almost fascinated and wanting to educate others on these issues. 

I don't know what the future holds for me in this department. I don't know if I will ever be blessed with a child or when that might happen. For now, I'm still working on figuring out some of my medical issues that have remained a mystery, and I am thoroughly enjoying watching my friends and family's children learn and grow into amazing little people. 

Thanks to my family and friends who have been so supportive of me as I have worked on sorting out these medical issues. And thanks to my readers for allowing me to be open with you on this subject. 

The Dark Side of Facebook

In the past couple of weeks, I have become well-acquainted with the dark side of Facebook. What started as me browsing through various pages and writing a few comments here and there turned into me being sucked into a deep, dark hole of negativity.

My trip to the dark side started with a picture that a friend posted of another lady breast-feeding. In her post, she called people who didn't share her opinion that public breastfeeding was OK hypocrites, stating that people shouldn't be OK with seeing low-cut shirts if they weren't OK seeing a woman openly breastfeeding. Soon, this picture popped up on several of my other friend's pages. I shared my opinion on this and soon found myself sucked into a heated conversation about whether or not women should breastfeed in public without covering themselves.
While I'm sure most of my friends who are mothers were simply trying to share their points of view, I felt attacked by many of them and decided that take it upon myself to share my opinion some more and find even more people who agreed with me. This is how I found myself commenting on everything any of these people posted about breastfeeding, shoving my opinions down people's throats and getting a sick sort of high every time someone would click "like" on my comments.
After getting sick of educating everyone on what I view as being proper public breastfeeding etiquette, I turned my attention elsewhere. I got sucked into more posts about whether a parent or society is responsible for sensoring what a child sees and hears. I was called a "judgmental bitch," which just fueled the fire. I refused to stop posting until this person I got into a Facebook war with could see how I was right and she was wrong.
Somewhere around the five-millionth post (OK... five million might be a tiny exaggeration), it hit me that I honestly didn't even care about the subject I was fighting over with this stranger. I was fighting and being negative simply for the conflict, and I had no idea why.
Face-to-face, I very rarely fight with people, and I certainly never fight with people I don't know. I avoid conflict at all costs, trying to resolve issues before they even start. On Facebook, though, not being able to see how I was affecting other people gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted without being worried about having to come face-to-face with the people I was upsetting.
I never called people names during my Facebook battles. I never even cursed at people on there. But, I did knock other people's opinions down simply to prove my own point, which is sometimes even worse than calling names.
I'm not a nasty and mean person, but I let Facebook turn me into an online bully. Thank goodness I had a break-through, and now I can end that nasty cycle! I'm leaving my negativity in my head and focusing on the happy part of Facebook. I am very happy to say that I'm back from the dark side, and my online future looks pretty bright. 

Guess Who's Back...

I have wanted to come back to my blog for a long time now, but I wasn't really sure where to start. Most of the blogs I follow focus on one thing, so I felt like I had to only focus on one thing. But, what was that ONE thing going to be?
I spent hours making lists of all the things I could possibly write about, but I couldn't seem to choose just one topic. Finally, it hit me: I should write about all of my topics!
Everything I had on my topics list is a part of who I am. So, I suppose from this point on, this blog is all about me. Exciting, huh? I promise I'm not as self-centered as this statement makes me sound...
Who am I? Well, I am a wife, a daughter, a writer, a clarinetist. I am a perfectionist who stays up too late most nights and drinks WAY too much caffeine. Most importantly, though, I am me. No more no less. I gave up trying to be someone I'm not a long time ago.
Welcome to my life. Come back often and join me as I try to clean out the cobwebs in my brain. It'll be fun... I promise!