1/10/16: There is So Much...

Since it's been a few months since I last updated the world on the Rackham happenings, this blog will probably be chock full of surface-skimming summaries about all the areas of our life.  Sorry!  I wish I had energy and time to go more in depth with everything, but there is too much, so I will sum up :)

Dave-
He's still loving his job at GoReact.  And our marriage is loving his job at GoReact ;).  It is SO fantastic that when he's home he's done for the day with work and can focus on school or relax without having to be constantly connected to his email.  He's also making serious headway on his dissertation and it's really exciting, but super complicated and basically impossible to understand.  Like really, when I can't sleep I ask him to tell me about his dissertation and I'm OUT. Sorry Dave 0:)  So he's still doing school and making progress towards graduation requirements.  We're looking forward to when he's done with classes so he has more time to focus on writing his dissertation.  Actually we're just looking forward to when he doesn't have to be working and in school at the same time.  That'll be the day, right?

 He also got released today from the Young Single Adult ward bishopric, which is a big deal because it means now we are going to be back attending church in our Provo homeward!!  We're both pretty happy because it just means is one less thing on Dave's plate as far as time requirements.  He gets a whole night of the week back and his Sundays are much less busy--depending on his calling in our homeward, of course.  But we volunteered to be teachers in the primary and the primary is basically always desperate for teachers, so I have a feeling we'll end up there.  We're sad to leave the YSA's and we're not really sure if we contributed enough while we were there, but I know Dave had some really spiritual experiences with some of the kids, and I know I was able to teach some important lessons and at least help reduce the shame and self-criticizing in the ward, along with inspiring some kids to go to therapy (yay!).

I wish I could say Dave gets out pretty regularly to fish and rejuvenate, but that's just not true.  I've been pretty sick lately, so Dave has taken on basically all of the household duties--laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, errands, etc.  So every Saturday he always has a long list of to-do's to catch up from the week.  It's pretty sad and I wish there was a better system or that I could help more, but at least we don't have kids thrown into the mix right now.  I'm grateful we're not having to manage that just yet.

So I think that covers Dave's updates for now.  He's just the greatest husband ever, and I feel lucky every day to have someone so kind and selfless by my side through all of this craziness that is my health.

Erin-
My health pretty much dominates my life (surprise surprise...), but I'll get to that last or maybe in a different post since there's so much.  So...things other than my health issues...

I passed my first semester of my PhD program!!  In all my 7 years here at BYU, I don't know if I've ever legitimately had a semester that I was worried about failing, but this Fall I honestly didn't know if I was going to pass my classes.  I count it as one of the many miracles in my life that I passed Structural Equation Modeling and don't have to retake that class, haha.  But seriously.  In the last week of the semester Dave was researching for me and organizing my articles and helping me with my references list while I was seeing clients so I could write my two final papers.  It was a HUGE push and I couldn't have done it without Dave's edits and help writing.  Thank goodness I married someone well-versed in psychology and mental health, not to mention APA writing.  #phdlife?  So overall, super surprised and grateful I passed, woo!  Now onto Winter...

I'm still seeing clients one night a week at the Provo Center for Couples and Families and I absolutely love it.  They pay me really well and they have systemic perspectives and are well-trained so I trust my supervisors.  It feels very much like a private practice because I'm totally in control of my clients and schedule and stuff.  It's been neat to see I'm getting referrals from previous and current clients and I've had enough clients contact me to have a waitlist now!  I also see clients at the BYU clinic, but on the advice of multiple professors, I'm dropping my caseload there down to just 2 a week so that I can reserve my energy and use it where I need it most (since I don't get paid there).

  Other than that, my life basically revolves around my health.  So here goes, only read on if you want to know the details of what we've tried over the last few months:

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*tldr: I have crazy joint pain and inflammation, and nobody knows why, but the pelvic pain is feeling better after getting rid of surprise parasites we found.* 

So back in November I did the Candida diet--which was no sugar, no dairy, no gluten.  It was hard, but I had a lot of help.  It was actually a really amazing few months where I felt super supported by so many people with cookbooks, recipes, moral support, etc.  I didn't notice much difference from the diet except that my depression seemed to lift a bit, and my energy crashes seemed to lessen or disappear.  Once I had been on the diet for a while, though, I started to see parasites (Just like how the Candida starves, so do parasites, they live on the same foods. So they die and then pass through your body's detox system.) come out, which was FREAKY.  So we immediately got an anti-parasite medicine, and after taking the first one, I started to see different parasites, so I went on a second one (this was all a super emotionally charged, terrifying, and stressful few weeks full of my own research, my doctor's research, and the pharmacist at Walmart's research, mind you, since no one knows anything about parasites, apparently) and it was like magic.  I started feeling better the first night I took it, and then continued to take it for 2 full weeks.  I was passing parasites in droves and it was horrible, but felt very productive because I was killing awful things inside me!

Once I finished that first round of parasite meds, I started to feel pretty horrible again, so I did another round of 2 weeks of it and this time, my pelvic pain went away!  Oh and this whole time I've been sort of on and off the diet because it really makes me nauseous to stay on it 100% strictly, but during this second round, I tried to be perfect on the diet and I think it helped get rid of the parasites.  They say you can never get rid of them fully, but at least I can say they're not coming out of me anymore.  I have NO idea why the medicine helped my pelvic pain, but I've had a lot of days lately where I have none!  Even if I sit all day or something!  That's been amazing.  Just feels like a dream.  But then if I eat something with dairy in it or anything that upsets my stomach it seems to come back a little.  I'm still trying to figure it all out, but something about that second parasite medicine made it disappear for a while.

Unfortunately, throughout all of this parasite madness, my arms and joints have started to kill me.  They just burn and burn and ache and ache and I can't really correlate the bad pain days with anything like activity or food, so I just sit on the couch with ice packs on my wrists and elbows and sometimes cry because I feel like my body hates me.  And if we're being honest it's not that rare that I end up in a total WebMD spiral and end at the result of I'm dying and I have every cancer in the world.

I have now been tested for Lyme, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Sjogren's, Candida, Parasites, Thyroid issues, Adrenal gland issues, and lots of comprehensive blood tests to test hormones and vitamins.  Everything always comes back mostly normal, except that my adrenal glands are not functioning, so I take a supplement called Adren-All which helps regulate my sleep and energy levels, and my body wasn't processing Vitamin B, so now I take a type of B vitamin that my body can process, I guess, and my Iron is crazy low.  I also have some inflammation in my body, but not enough to be officially diagnosed with Lupus, they don't think.  But I have random big bruises all over my legs and arms that come from nowhere, and the fatigue is out of this world.  I feel like I have the flu--ALL the time.  It makes adulting pretty hard, but I don't want to take a medical leave from school until I absolutely can't do it.  Right now I worked my schedule so I have break-days in between school and client days to recover, so I'm able to do it so far.  We'll see how the semester goes.  I'm trying to be honest with myself about maybe needing to take a break if I'm in too much pain later on, but I really don't want to if I can help it.

So since the pelvic pain was gone for so long, I started weaning off Gabapentin (my previous miracle drug) slowly to see if it might help with my fatigue.  Gabapentin definitely makes me tired and I'm on an incredibly high dose.  The withdrawals are messing with my sleep, which is a bummer, but it should level out here soon.  Other than that, everything is pretty much the same with my medicines--lots of supplements, eating healthy and definitely avoiding dairy and sugar, and I feel like they're all helping and doing what they're supposed to, we just can NOT figure out this arm pain.  It's getting really bad :(.

So my life is basically lived from the couch, in a constant brain fog, struggling to be productive with anything, and once in a while feeling good, but way overdoing it so I end up back where I started--on the couch.  It's not super great, but I have a really checked-in doctor (like he texts me over vacations to check in...) and I feel like we're at least working on all the variables and maybe getting close to figuring it all out.

You're amazing if you made it to the end, that's the update for now!  Thanks for reading!

10/5/15: Finding Self-Compassion

Lately it's felt like my life is just one big loop that keeps repeating itself.  I can vividly remember a visit to my physical therapist 2 years ago after the first week of my master's program where I was on the verge of tears telling her that I didn't think I could do this.  I couldn't sit in the chairs in class for more than 20 minutes without being in severe pain and it was so distracting that I could barely take anything in.  She gave me a tens unit--a portable stim machine--and it was a lifesaver for those first few months of grad school before we found some medications that helped minimize the pain.  

Since then, we've tried about a hundred different combinations of medications, procedures, surgeries, physical exercises, mental health support, emotional work, etc., and we've seriously diminished my pain to the point where I was almost pain free for most of last year.  Unfortunately, when I started the PhD program, my pain came back with a vengeance.  It's been ramping up all summer, but it got so bad the last two weeks that I decided I needed to go back to my doctor for help.  We're not exactly sure what's going on, except that we know endometriosis spreads when you're not on hormonal suppression, and I've been off for a year now, so there's a good chance there's more endometriosis triggering the pelvic pain.  Unfortunately, it feels different this time.  I've been having serious fatigue and all-over body-aches, which are tell-tale signs of fibromyalgia.  Now, all of the conditions I've been diagnosed with so far (and there are a bunch) are in the same family as fibromyalgia--they're functional somatic pain syndromes--so when I asked my doctor about it he casually said something to the effect of, "Of course you have fibromyalgia--at least you're on the spectrum--but whether or not that's an official diagnosis won't change the way we treat it, because we're already treating you the way we would treat someone with it."  

This was quite a bombshell for him to so casually drop on me.  I think he saw the shock on my face (he's a pretty observant and emotionally in-tune doctor) because he quickly reassured me that even though this might be something I struggle with my whole life, there will be good times with the bad times, and there are things we can do to manage it, etc.  This didn't make me feel any better, though, because I just heard, "You're going to struggle with this your whole life."  That's really different from, "You shouldn't be in this much pain, and we're going to find out why and fix it." which is what I normally hear from him.  

Needless to say, it's been a rough week over here.  He talked pretty frankly with me about making sure I only keep good stress in my life, and cut out the bad.  I've had to seriously consider my schedule and if a PhD is plausible with how much pain I'm in.  It's the most frustrating thing to be limited physically when mentally I have SO much I want to accomplish!

I'm just taking life one day at a time for now, and we bought another tens-unit to help me get through classes and homework, which is helping just a bit.  But mostly I'm working on not feeling guilty or bad for not being able to make it to all of my classes, or do all my homework, or research as much as I should.  I'm working on allowing myself to have self-compassion and sleep when I need to sleep, and work when I have the energy to work.  

Something Elder Bednar said in General Conference (the LDS Church leaders speak to us 2 weekends a year in this conference) really spoke peace to my soul yesterday--"When you cannot do, what you have always done, then you only do what matters most...Physical restrictions can expand vision.  Limited stamina can clarify priorities.  Inability to do many things can direct focus to a few things of greatest importance."  I know that I've seen this happen in my life.  I've seen SO much good come from my physical pain and limitations, it's just hard to remember it in the moments that I can't get out of bed for class, or pain is keeping me up all night, or I'm struggling to stay with clients mentally and emotionally because I'm distracted by my aches.  

Sorry for a tough post today, but this has all been dominating my thoughts for the past two weeks, and while we've also had some great days and fun with friends and family lately, I feel like this is what my life is really about right now--finding the balance.  

At Chalk the Block with my niece and nephew!

Also, as per request, Pepper found a jungle gym and I thought I'd share :) Enjoy! 

Why Am I Here?

Today was the first official day of my PhD program at BYU!  But before I go into that, I just wanted to thank everyone for the support I received after posting a couple of weeks ago about our miscarriage.  It was really an amazing experience for me to be so vulnerable and see how love and support was the unanimous response from so many of you.  Thank you for reaching out to me through comments and private messages to talk with me about your own pain and loss and how you got through it.  It meant the world to me to know that people out there cared about my struggle and pain and were there for me when I reached out for support.  I also learned a lot from each of you about pain, empathy, grief, and love.  So thank you, again.  It was such powerful experience for me.  

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So today marked the first day of my PhD experience (in Marriage and Family Therapy at BYU).  It felt like a pretty big deal even though all we did was sit through a few meetings and get oriented.  But I'm starting a PhD!  How did I get here?  I never thought I'd be pursuing a doctorate.  A masters felt like more of a possibility my whole life, but a PhD?  That was never for me.  Turns out I really like school, and I especially like school when it's about mental health and how to be a more effective therapist.  So here I am.  

I'll be honest, the entire process of applying for the PhD and getting accepted has felt a little automatic and mindless.  I haven't felt a very strong push for what exactly I want to do once I get in to the PhD, I've just gone through the motions to get here.  All summer I had conversations with myself and Dave that went something like this:

"Is this really what I want to do?  I don't want to do this because it's some goal I feel like I need to achieve to become a complete person.  I want to do it for the right reasons."

"What are the right reasons?"

"Well, I think the wrong reason would be to boost my self-esteem, or to convince myself (or anyone else) that I'm good enough and worthy of love.  But if I don't want to become a professor, why am I doing a PhD program?" 

And the conversation would end there--never resolved.  Eventually I got to a place where I was about 95% confident that this program wasn't about convincing myself that I'm enough, but I still wasn't exactly sure why I felt like I should do it.  Then about a month ago I gave a lesson in our church (a ward of young single adults) all about pornography and the atonement and how shame gets in the way of healing and progressing and what pornography addiction is really about--how it's emotional, not sexual, and how there is hope, etc.  It was one of the most powerful lessons of my life--not because the lesson was particularly powerful (although I think it was for some people), but because it reminded me of exactly what I'm passionate about and it became very clear to me what I need to do in the PhD program. 

Dave reminded me that night that of all the clinical populations I've worked with, pornography users are the ones that I consistently maintain hope for, which is unique because most therapists feel more hopeless with pornography than other issues.  I think as a church and mental health community, we don't understand the issue of pornography addiction as fully as we need to, and as it stands, we don't have treatments that work.  We have treatments that can make improvements, but we're missing something.  People who really struggle with a pornography addiction have usually seen multiple therapists and each one has tried something different--usually to no avail--and most of them have ignored trauma and emotional regulation as anything worthy of attention.  

I want to work towards figuring out what we're missing about pornography addiction--particularly in the LDS culture where we're ridden with shame about it.  I'm nervous because it's going to make for a tough dissertation, and a heavy topic of study, but I'm determined to do my best to help our community figure out how to help couples and individuals whose lives are being ruined by porn.  I'm feeling pretty energized and excited about the program now because I feel very very directed by God in this feat, and I think He'll direct me where I need to go with this over the next 3 years.  I've have a fantastic mentor who's supportive and happy to help me find the answers I'm looking for, which is not always a given in a PhD program, so I feel blessed and grateful for him.  

All in all, I'm relieved to feel like I finally have a direction for my program and confident that I'm going the right way (at least for now, you never know where Heavenly Father will lead you, right?).  We'll see how long this energy lasts, since this is all pre-homework, research, and stats classes...but at least for now, I'm feeling like I finally know why I'm here and what I need to work towards for the next 3 years.  Wish me luck!