National Lump Day...

I'm breaking my blogging silence today for something that I feel is very important. It is actually 3:00 AM (or was when I started this) and my boys will be awake in a few short hours and I am going to be zombie mom.... because I can't sleep with these thoughts flying through my head. What is so important that I am losing precious sleep over???

It's National Lump Day today. 

Yes... I just made that up (I did google it first to see if it already existed).

July 31st is forever marked in my life as the day that I discovered the lump in my neck that was cancerous.

It's been five years since I discovered this strange lump on my body. I was sitting in this very seat in my car driving through the middle of Overton, Nevada, when I discovered it. The lump was right wear my hand rests in this picture, just peeking over my collar bone. I knew from the moment I found this lump that I had to find out exactly what it was before I could move on with my life, and I am so grateful that I did. I've learned a lot about lumps since that day. I would like to say that no I am not a doctor, I have no medical merits to my name that are worth a bean... but I have some life experience under my belt that I would like to share with you today about you guessed it.

Lumps.

Who came up with the word lump anyway? The word lump itself is super awkward don't you think? Well, I'm about to get all sorts of awkward here so hold on tight while I talk all about lumps, m'kay.

As girls (or anyone with nipples for that matter) we've heard to check our lady lumps (see what I did there) for any abnormal lumps, dimples, etc. often. Monthly! Do your self breast exams! They are so important! But boobs are not the only places that cancerous (or non cancerous) lumps can form. I would say that any time you discover a lump ANYWHERE on your body where there didn't used to be one before should be checked out by a health professional. But especially places that your lymph system is.

The most common places to find enlarged lymph nodes are anywhere along your neck, from behind your ears, your jaw line, front and back of your neck, to that little space above your collar bone. Lymph nodes are also in your arm pits and crotch/groinal region (groin... and crotch... other awkward words. You're welcome). So sometime in the next 24 hours go take a nice warm shower and lather up! Check all these places out for abnormal lumps. Don't forget the front of your neck where your thyroid lives and check for any nodules on either side of your thyroid. Not sure where your thyroid is? Touch the front of your throat and swallow. Go ahead and do your monthly breast exam while you're at it (it is the last day of the month after all... time to get that in).

**One more word on lymph nodes. It is normal for lymph nodes to become enlarged when you have been sick. That means they are doing their job. But once you are better, they are supposed to shrink back down to their normal size. If you have an enlarged lymph node and you have not been sick recently, that is concerning and should be checked out.

Here are a few myths about lumps...

If it doesn't hurt then it's probably nothing. Cancer is supposed to be painful.

Nope. Wrong. Actually, from what I have heard and experienced... the early stages of cancer are not painful (depending on the type of course). The lump I found in my neck didn't hurt at all, whatsoever. I would say that a lump that does not hurt would raise more of a red flag to me than a lump that did hurt.

Tumors are supposed to be hard like a rock.

Wrong again. I'm sure that many tumors are hard masses that feel like rocks (or grains of rice... peas) but the enlarged lymph node I found was not hard at all. It felt like a large grape under my skin. It was movable, I could slide it around even. It was not hard like a rock.

Chances are it's not cancerous.

Chances are it may not be. But you wont/can't know that unless you get it checked out. I've had several dear friends and family members (including my own husband) discover lumps on their bodies in the past five years since I found the one in mine. None of them ended up having cancer. NONE! Thank goodness!!!! I was the unlucky lumpy one so far. But you absolutely can't know that unless you have the cells inside of your lump biopsied and studied under a microscope. *** So just after I posted this I remembered that I do have a relative that has undergone treatment for thyroid cancer in the last few years. But to be honest I don't know if they discovered this from a lump or not, we never talked about it.... anyway, check yourself!

My own personal experience with this one. I saw a family practice doctor three days after I discovered my lump who felt it and said, "Ya, I would lose any sleep over that. It's probably just a cyst." and sent me on my way. Had I gone with his "opinion" who knows how long my cancer would have grown before I would have had it checked again. Thankfully my gut told me otherwise and I sought a second opinion. I was told by the nurse practitioner who helped me that the only way to find out what this lump was, was to get a CT scan and a biopsy. Your body is YOUR responsibility. Doctors are very skilled and trained humans, but they are just that... human. Sometimes they make mistakes and it's up to you to be an advocate for your own health.


I sincerely hope that none of you find lumps on National Lump Day. But... I sincerely also hope that you will check. Give yourself a pat down, breath a sigh of relief that there was nothing out of the ordinary, and go have a stellar day!

Unless of course you do find something. And then go find a health professional to do the rest of the work. Now before you drive yourself over to the Mayo Clinic and start checking out wigs... who is the best type of health professional to have a lump checked out by? Well... it depends. I would recommend a family practice doctor or your own personal physician. Your best friend, partner, mother, local pharmacist, or neighbor that's a nurse can not tell you if your lump is something cancerous or not. If you don't have a doctor, find one that will get you in. What if you don't have insurance? This is a tricky one that I don't have great advice for... other than it's still important!! And doctors/ natural health practitioners will still see you if you don't have insurance. I had a friend recently who was in this predicament... and I am so proud of her for taking her lump seriously and finding a way to get it checked out. I'm sure it was a financial and emotional burden to her, but now she knows and she doesn't have the fear of the unknown anymore and she put her health first.

What about going to the ER? My advice on this one is that the ER might not be the best place to go unless you are actually having a serious medical emergency. When I worked in the ER as a physician's scribe there were lots and lots of people who would come in because they found a lump somewhere. Most of the time the doctor would say, "Yep... you have a lump. Here is the name and number of a doctor that you can follow up with to have that checked out." I'm serious. Why would they do that? Because chances are there is someone in the next curtain over who is having a heart attack or was just chewed on by a dog that needs immediate medical attention. There was only one situation when I worked in the ER where a patient came in with a lump and the abnormal cells showed up on a CT scan and they were diagnosed and admitted. Now of course if the ER is your only option then by all means go ahead and go! Or if you are having other symptoms besides a lump (extreme pain, shortness of breath, etc, etc), but just be prepared that you may walk out the door without having your questions answered and a referral to somewhere else.

Maybe you don't want to know if your lump is cancerous or not.

Ignorance is bliss.... for a short amount of time in this case. Cancer doesn't go away if you ignore it. It absolutely will not. The month I spent trying to get my lump diagnosed was one of the most stressful and fear filled times of my life. But knowledge is so powerful! Once you know what is going on with your body you can make a plan to deal with it. Knowledge is power! Even though my answer was that I had Hodgkin lymphoma, I felt so much peace. I felt peace in knowing that there were ways we could take care of it and we made a plan. And I am here five years later to say that it was so worth it.

Why is this so important? Because you are important!

 YOU ARE IMPORTANT!!! And early detection of any type of cancer gives you the best odds of beating it. Don't sit around and wait to see what happens. Do that under a doctor's supervision if you have done the other diagnostic tests already and they have come back negative.

Knowing I would be writing this post I did a little lump hunting myself this morning... being National Lump Day and all. You know that feeling when you are on a roller coaster and it's climbing a huge hill, about to plummet you down to the earth and whip you around till your head spins? That feeling of your gut dropping to your feet during the ride is how it feels to me to look for lumps. I dread it. I get all nervous and sweaty... because I know what it's like to find a lump. But I do it anyway. I also pay a very skilled oncologist to go lump hunting on my body twice a year to check for any recurrent lumps. Thankfully there have not been any, but it still humbles me every time with the possibility that there could be one somewhere. I know it's hard to do, but this is as much a part of taking care of your body as adequate sleep, exercise, and healthy eating is.

Thank you everyone who took a few minutes to read this today. My whole point in sharing this is to just bring awareness to our bodies. Life is busy and checking your body for lumps might be the farthest thing from your mind. But DO IT! Today. Do it because you are important and people love you and want to keep you around. Please feel free to share this with anyone you feel it might benefit.

The coop and the ladies...

 We have the coolest old root cellar in the back yard that is original with the house. But up until this point it has just been cool to look at, not a usable space for us. I was always afraid to go in there because I was sure it was full of black widows or something.

Husband got the idea that it would be cool to turn it into a chicken coop. So he asked our awesome landlord if we could do it... and she said sure! I was thinking that he would wait until springtime when the new baby chicks come out. Nope. He got right to work cleaning out the root cellar. It took a few days, he said there was a squirrel nest in there with a dead squirrel in it (RIP little squirrel) and it was FULL of walnuts. Anywhere a squirrel could have possible stuck a nut there was a nut there. So he cleaned out all the old nuts and stuff that had been stored in there for 50+ years and built a roosting shelf for some chickens.

Then he looked on KSL to see if there was anyone who was trying to get rid of some hens. Sure enough, there was a lady who had five hens that were a year old that they were done taking care of. So he went and picked up the hens for super cheap and we now have five ladies residing in the root cellar...

 They are super tame and pretty birds. They are really great with Blue which is wonderful since he likes to pick them up and carry them around. Now that we've settled on some names for them, here are the ladies.

And for the inside of the coop. I think it's the coolest chicken coop ever! I love that we can use this space for something now. Trent has built a big feeder and turned our old cooler into a watering station so we could leave for a while and they would still be fed just fine.

We've put hay down on the shelves and wood chips on the ground so that when it comes time to clean the coop we can sweep everything up and replace it with new stuff... hopefully it stays less stinky that way. I think that it's pretty awesome!

First morning after we picked up the ladies the boys went out to check for eggs... none yet!

But we've since been getting 3-5 eggs every day and they are beautiful! And yummy! I'm glad my husband was willing to do all the work since I've decided my only job in life right now is to nurse a baby.

In other news...

I have one more bean recipe that I want to share... but in the meantime I felt like sharing something else instead tonight...

WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A BABY!!!

We are expecting a baby BOY at the end of the summer!! I'm due August 30th and am 14 weeks right now, and starting to look a little "questionable, so I thought it would be a good time to share our news. I'm still in a little shock that we already know it's a boy, but I guess it's just more time to prepare right? 

We are all over the moon excited about this. Especially little Spiderman there, who really wanted to have a little brother. I'm just feeling super grateful and blessed that our fertility efforts worked, and that we are finally going to be having another baby. 

I'm also excited to share this news with all of you!! So many of you have been so incredibly supportive to our family over the past few years. It feels good to finally have some great news to share with everyone!!

And now that I'm out of my first trimester coma... hopefully I will be around this space more!

Bread or Baby?

 

Hi my name is Meg... and it's been 14 days since I've had a baked treat.

And that last treat was a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie...

I grabbed it on my way out the door to my appointment. I had every intention of eating a good breakfast that morning, but time got away from me and I needed to grab something quick to make it there on time. I finished it before I even left the neighborhood. I almost turned around to go get the other two that I'd left on the counter but I knew if I did I would be late. So I did not... and I completely regret that now.

I had been told a few months before upon the confirmation of my PCOS that I needed to change my diet. But I had put it off. It was birthday season after all. And turns out I'm a complete emotional eater and took up quite the Dr. Pepper habit after my ectopic pregnancy in August. Every day I said, "tomorrow I will eat better" but it never happened.

Laying back on the hard table having an ultrasound done to see the state of my poor ovary the need for this change was confirmed. My midwife said, "Good news, your ovary is back to normal. But it's very polycystic. We need to make some major changes here to help you have a baby."

Then she said something that no health care provider has ever said to me before.

"How's your weight and eating going? {flipping through her notes}. You've gained 3 lbs since I saw you two months ago. You haven't changed your diet yet have you?"

I told her what I believed to be true. That I felt like I was completely addicted to sugar. I eat it everyday. I feel like I'm addicted to crack (not that I know what that would be like but I'm sure it's close).

Then we had the conversation that immediately got me off of this sugary substance...

"No more. You can't do it. Sugar is so hard on your body, especially on girls with PCOS. You need to cut all sugar. No honey, no agave. Nothing baked. No bread. No potatoes. No starchy foods whatsoever. You also need to be eating protein four times a day. Oh... and no cheating. This is not a diet to lose weight, you have to do this everyday. You don't get a cheat day or a cheat meal... this is everyday."

Next week is Halloween... I dared to mutter.

"You're right! And then Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Valentines Day... then throw in all the birthday's that happen. There is never a good time of the year to make a change like this. You have to do it right now. Today. This second."

 I looked her in the eye and said, "Okay, this is it. No more."

I'm not sure what it was that flipped the switch for me, but I really did decide in that minute that I was going to completely change my diet and see if this will work. There are lots of things that we are trying right now to help me get pregnant, but this is one thing that rests completely on my shoulders. Every time I open my mouth and eat food I say to myself:

"Do you want bread, or a baby?"
"Do you want a donut, or a baby?"
"Do you want pop, or a baby?"

Baby has won out every single time.

I'm so grateful that I had a full five days of doing this before the first Halloween party hit. It was hard, standing there looking at the delicious spread on the table and not being able to eat a single thing. I almost cried tears of joy when my sister in law came in with a plate of deviled eggs (thank you Nicole!!!) and I was finally able to eat something that wouldn't be cheating.

Halloween was fine. I am still in awe that I sat around our house for days with candy everywhere and did not take a single bite. I love candy. But I want a baby more. It really took about a week and now I am not tempted at all to eat these things.

Something else I feel I need to mention. I pray. A lot. I pray that I will be able to resist food temptations. That I will be able to stick with this and eat healthy. I think that has made a world of difference as I've gone through this change.

So here's the deal. Girls with PCOS have higher levels of a male hormone (androgen's) which causes them to not ovulate, have irregular periods, gain weight, have acne... etc, etc. There is also a link to insulin resistance which they think causes this hormone problem. So eating a low glycemic diet and taking a diabetic medication (yep... on that too) is suppose to help girls like me get pregnant.

I've bought a book called The Glycemic Index for Dummies and now that I've learned a little bit more about it it's not so bad. For example, I can have dark chocolate!!! Hallelujah! At the end of the day when I've been super good all day and eaten what I'm suppose to I get a tablespoon of peanut butter and cover it in dark chocolate chips. It's pure heaven people.

As of today I am even down 7 lbs. The weight is literally melting off. This weight I've been carrying for three years is melting away!!! And to think this is all because of bread and sugar!?! Insane...

I've always tried to eat healthy, and I thought that I was being healthy by eating whole wheat bread. I ate a lot of bread. For breakfast I used to have whole wheat toast with peanut butter and fruit. Lunch, a sandwich. Dinner a lot of the time would be whole wheat pasta or something in a whole wheat tortilla. Turns out whole wheat is just as bad as white when it comes to raising your insulin levels. I had no clue. It makes me sad to think that this could be part of what has kept us from having more kids in the last 1 1/2 years. Something as "healthy" as whole wheat bread...

I've always been against diets that make you cut out food groups (like the Atkin's diet). So I just want to clarify that I am not cutting out carbs. I'm just cutting out carbs that have a high glycemic index. I still eat oatmeal and brown rice daily. I eat quinoa. I've made naan with spelt (a low GI grain). So I am not cutting all carbs. Our bodies need carbs, so I'm learning about what ones I can have and what I can't.

I realize that this might not be a "cure all" for me, but we're giving it a shot. And even if I'm not able to have a baby this will make me healthier, help me lose weight, and hopefully help me be a better mom and wife for my family.

So I'm saying goodbye to my runs through the McDonald's drive through to get a Dr. Pepper. Goodbye york peppermint patties that jump into my pile of groceries on the conveyor belt at the grocery store. Goodbye whole wheat bread. Goodbye Twix. Goodbye my beloved pumpkin chocolate chip cookies... Goodbye, and good riddance!

photo from here

Home...

I've always daydreamed about living in a little quaint cottage somewhere in the mountains. I have a pinterest board dedicated to the cute little homes that I find. I showed them to my husband once and said, "I want to live in a little home in the mountains someday like these." His response was, "Do you realize how little those houses are? They are really really small." Yes, yes they are. I don't know, I've never wanted to be in some huge house somewhere (mostly because I don't want to have to clean it). There is just something that draws me to these little cottage homes. So cozy, so cute, so homey.

Well, I have some rather exciting news!!! (It's exciting to me anyway). We are going to be moving in about 2 weeks to a cute tiny home!! It's not up in the mountains, but it's right next to some mountains, and we are so super excited about this. It's much closer to my husband's new job (he's been commuting about 75 minutes to and from work each day) and it has a large yard with fruit trees and room we can garden. The house is pretty tiny, under 1000 square feet. And it's almost 130 years old! It was a pioneer home built by some of the Mormon pioneers in the late 1800's. It's been updated since then (no outhouse mind you...  but still no dishwasher) with big windows that let in the light, still very tiny. And cute. And perfect for our small family at this time in our lives. Nice and cozy but with a large yard that we can spend time together in the great outdoors. We are so excited!!!

I'm going to have to buckle down and get pretty organized so that we can fit our stuff in there, but it will be a good move for our family. I can feel it. It feels good to be excited about something like this. Time to start packing up my stuff at my in laws and start fresh somewhere new!

Home 1, 2, 3

Introducing the "I'm going to eat fruit whenever I want" diet...

+

So remember when I talked about trying out the 4 hour body diet here. Well... I lasted for 2 1/2 days. Pitiful I know. But it became a moral problem that I had with the diet. You see, it's a strict one, and I tend to not agree with most super strict diets. But on this one... absolutely no fruit! No FRUIT! He makes a statement that our ancestors were not eating Florida oranges when they were struggling through a long cold winter or something like that... so we don't need to either.

So I went my 2 1/2 days without any fruit and I thought a lot about it. I have to say it was almost a spiritual decision that I could no longer be a part of such an act. I almost felt like I was saying...

Dear God,

You know these perfectly portioned incredible things that you placed on the earth for us to enjoy... fruit? How much variety you gave us, each contained in their own perfectly created peel. That ripen and rot quickly as if to persuade me to eat them often. Every color of the rainbow imaginable fruit. Some sweet, some tangy, that crunch in my mouth and spark every taste bud that I have. That keep us full and are packed full of healthy fiber. That give me just enough sweetness that I don't go running for chocolate at 3 PM on the dot every.single.day...

Ya those... well... I'm not going to be eating them anymore, I'm trying to get skinny.

I still love you and your wonderful creations though... promise,
Meg

You see... it just didn't work!!! I felt like I was going against something that I fundamentally believed in with every bit of my soul.

So that was that.

I really do love fruit, I find it completely amazing. Have you ever peeled and orange or a grapefruit and looked at all the little membranes filled with their juicy fluid? Amazing! I made a salad for Christmas dinner last year that had pomegranate in it, and that was the first time I've ever peeled a pomegranate myself before. It was the coolest thing ever!! All those tiny little seeds, plump and full of goodness. Not to mention that they are HEALTHY!

I don't want to live in a world or life without miraculous, amazing, fruit. 

I've spent the last few weeks re-vamping my eating habits and figuring out what I want my "diet" to consist of and I've decided that I want to feed my body good nutritious food that makes me happy. I want to NOURISH my body. Fruit is at the top of the list. Along with beans, vegetables, peppermint tea, honey, fish, chicken, quinoa, nuts, salad, cheese (especially the bleu variety) and... the occasional girl scout cookie {maybe not so nourishing for the body... but for the soul}.

What's my favorite fruit? Right now it's grapefruit. I like to peel it and divide it in half. I take out all the middle goodness and throw all the pulp away. Then I eat one half and put the other half in the fridge for the next day. I love it!

What's your favorite fruit? And what's your favorite fruit to eat to nourish your body?

I like being wrong sometimes...

Well, as it turns out we were wrong.
Dead. Wrong.

HE GOT THE JOB!!!!

We are so happy, excited, relieved, thrilled, ready to move onto this next chapter in our lives!

It's kind of a long crazy story why we thought he wasn't going to get it, but it's not a story that is fit for the blog. But either way, we are just so relieved and excited for this!

I'm so so grateful. It's in Utah but in a different area than we've ever lived so that will be exciting, we like exploring new places. And we will still be able to be around for family things and to be by our friends here, which is why we wanted to move back in the first place. So we are happy campers around here tonight.

Happy indeed.