Dionne likes posting all at once

so... normally i let Dusty do all the blogging for our family... and i have been asking him to keep this out of the blog... but Friday we got some more information on what has been going on and i am planning to blog through the experience and let everyone know what is going on... i will say i do not like having to capitalize and so... everything will be in lowercase letters... 

 

all i can say is God's timing is perfect... dusty and i have been talking a lot about when is the right time to start our family... although most of you know, just in case you don't, there is a 10 year age difference between dusty and myself... this means my biological clock is now banging in my head and finishing school is still looming in dusty's future... we had been talking a lot about when is the time right and now meeting on the same page... one day i went into the bathroom at pizza hut and just prayed... i handed everything over to God involving the timing and future of our new family... i told God this is just like when i was single for all those years and hated every minute of it and that i didn't want this to be the same way... i told him i was willing to wait the 10 years for the baby as well... as long as when i had him/her that everything went smoothly and there were no complications that that everyone would be healthy and well... (for those of you that also do not know, i started praying for dusty (my husband) at 18... i had seen all my girlfriends have broken hearts and hurt by their boyfriends and i just prayed that God would not have me go through that... i had never dated anyone in high school, and that freshman year in college i prayed to God that i would not date anyone until my husband... little did i know that he was 9 at the time and that it would take us another 10 years to find each other... it was hard to be patient that long and although i kept telling God... okay now, i didn't think it was going to take this long when i prayed that... it was well worth the wait, God brought the perfect man for me into my life and 10 years is nothing compared to getting to spend eternity with him...)so... i gave the timing to God and he took it in His hands to show me why nothing has happened yet... (and i am so thankful)...

 

it all began back in late November at the end of the living well bonus program at Chesapeake where i work... (this is a program where you can get an extra bonus for working out, taking classes, etc... ) one of the requirements of the bonus is to have some blood drawn and a work-up of several results (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc...) if you do not pass all of the tests then you have to have your doctor sign off on the tests you didn't pass and give you information on how to pass them the next year... well... i had high blood pressure when i did my work-up... i do not typically have high blood pressure, but these tests always stress me out because i know they are going to take blood and i am horrible at giving blood, nothing ever comes out... i went to the doctor to have him sign off on the high blood pressure, knowing that it would not be a large concern... he agreed... however, in the 20 pages of information that you get after the tests come back he found another number that he did not like... 

 

this was my CMV number... it was at an 8... i guess the "normal" low for people would be 34... he said "did you know you are extremely anemic?" i said "nope, never heard that before"... he asked all kinds of questions and wanted to run some more blood tests... (again with the giving of blood that i am horrible at)... 7 tries later (by 3 nurses) we finally hit a vein and he was able to get the blood he needed... he called the next week to let me know that i had iron-deficiency anemia... said "you have the type of blood of someone who has been in a horrific car accident and lost massive amounts of blood and is trying to rebuild their blood supply"... this is why i have such a hard time giving blood... there is no blood pumping through the veins to make them big, which means they are hard to get into... he said for me to start taking an iron supplement and eat a big steak and we would check back in 3 months to see where we were at... i told him that dusty and i were talking about starting a family (me really, but wanted to know the information none the less :)) and he said that he would discuss things with my "girl dr" and a hematologist to see what my options were... but that there is no way i could carry a baby right now, because i am not making enough blood for myself let alone a little one... but he was encouraging that i had options... blood transfusions... etc... not really things you want to deal with when you are pregnant... 

 

i started taking the iron supplement and about 5 days later woke up with a rash all across my stomach... i called the dr and he said to stop taking the supplement and he would just have me meet directly with the hematologist to see what the next steps needed to be... they scheduled an appointment for Christmas Eve... so... three weeks to wait... not a huge deal, because i had no idea that i was anemic in the first place, so it really didn't change anything... everyone just kept asking me if i was tired... (i kept thinking i am fat and lazy... isn't everyone tired... little did i know i could have something to blame it on this whole time... ) since i couldn't take the iron supplement, i increased the iron in my diet, hoping it would help... i quit eating much red meat about 2 years ago... thinking it would be healthier to use ground turkey, chicken, etc... so i started using real hamburger meat again and found that the gas station has a lot of food high in iron... pumpkin seeds (not be be eaten with the shell still on them... ), sunflower seeds, beef jerky, cashews, etc... work was crazy during this time with year end stuff and one of the weeks we had to wait was when dusty and i were in new york, so that was a good distraction... so the three weeks came and went and on Christmas Eve i went to meet the hematologist... 

 

this will continue in the next post... no pictures yet... but now that we are going to blog about it, i will take some...