Lupus: A Day in the Life

May is Lupus Awareness Month! Having been diagnosed with lupus five years ago, I felt it was basically my duty to write about it. If you would like to learn more about what lupus is, how it affects people, etc, I encourage you to visit lupus.org. This isn't a post like that. Lupus affects each person differently, and this post is about how lupus specifically affects me in my daily life.

7:15am --

• Wake up to alarm
• Take my medicine (only one pill this time)
• Go back to sleep

7:30am --

• Wake up again to alarm
• Time to test out my hands for the day. They hurt, but, spoiler alert, they hurt every day. My fingers and wrists are swollen and painful, which has been typical for the past few weeks.
• Get out of bed and make a mental note to seriously talk to my doctor about my hands the next time I see her.
• Shower in HOT water. This helps my stiff, sore hands and really loosens them up. 
• Attempt to do my hair. After I'm done brushing it, I opt for a quick bun because my hands are already too sore from the brushing. I need to save energy for breakfast and packing my lunch. 

8:00am --

• Time to make COFFEE!!! *insert cheering*. Coffee is a really exciting part of my day, but as of late kind of sad as well. I've noticed my hands getting a lot weaker. This makes it hard to hold and control my coffee mug in the mornings. I have to remind myself to go slow and use both hands, which is harder than it sounds.
• I quickly throw various food items into my lunch box and whip together breakfast.

8:15am --

• It's been an hour since I've taken my medicine, so I get to each breakfast now. Most importantly, I get to drink my coffee. 

9:00am--

• Time to start class/work/research/whatever is in store for the day.
• Some times during the school day I find it really easy to stay on track and keep up in class. Some times I am in pain, tired and just miserable. Those days drag on the longest.

3:00pm--

• This is when I typically head off to work for the afternoon. If I don't work, which is very rare, I sleep. Because, ya know, by this time I am usually EXHAUSTED.
• This also happens to be when I inhale various forms of sugar & caffeine. Whatever it takes.

6:00pm--

• Finally off work!!
• Now I come home, eat dinner, and take care of any housekeeping type things I need to do.
• More caffeine. 

7:00pm--

• Time to start on homework for the night. 
• If I don't have homework (unusual) I lay in bed or on the couch and watch TV. 
• At this point, I'm basically wasting time until it's somewhat acceptable to go to sleep for the night.
• The exhaustion. Is. Real. 

9:15pm--

• Assuming I haven't been eating up to this point, I either have a snack or a glass of milk. Or both. This helps protect my stomach from the obnoxious amount of pills I'm about to take.
• Time to take those pills. All 10 of them. Yup. I am now up to 11 pills for the day, IF I haven't had to take any ibuprofen. So, in a typical day I take over 11 pills. It's a fun life some times.

9:30pm--

• This is officially my bedtime. No jokes. If I have to stay up later than this for school, I am so dang tired! By this time I am so, so ready to be out for the night. My friends make fun of me but I don't even care.

There you have it, a day in my life with Lupus. One day after Lupus Awareness Month ended (: Some days are better than others. Some days I feel almost no pain, and other days I am confined to my bed. Overall, I have a great doctor and a great support system, and my lupus is pretty well controlled. Some days really suck, but I am actually really lucky and know that it could be worse!

--Kristen

Thoughts I had during my first official twenty minutes of graduate school

As I prepare to begin my last week of our three week long May term (and my first official term in graduate school--I was still technically in undergrad until now) I wanted to reflect back on my very first day. More specifically, the very first twenty minutes when we got the "you're in grad school now" talk that always sounds very scary and fills me with anxiety. Always something to look forward to. 

After that first day I was exhausted, but I still found the energy to type up a list of the thoughts racing through my mind during those first few minutes. (I thought I might like to look back on it and laugh one day. That still remains to be seen)

• I'm not smart enough for this.
• I should just go to graphic design school.
• After this, I'm NEVER going back to school.
• I really want my master's in strategic leadership.
• I know it's not supposed to be easy, but wouldn't life be so much nicer if it was????
• No, we did NOT overreact on our course evals, that was actually unfair!!!!
• Jesus CEO, we meet again.

And that, my friends, is how you ring in your first term as a graduate student. It can only go up from here (right???)

An Open Letter to my High School Friends

Dear SOTTDP,

As I prepare to finish my undergrad degree and say goodbye to the familiarity and predictability of the last four years, I've been thinking about you a lot. Can you believe it's been four years since we were all together last? It feels like an eternity ago that we were running around in the Arizona sun in our bikinis and tan legs taking ridiculous photos that now make me cringe, pool crashing, hot tubbing, and making milkshake and Taco Bell runs. But really, it's only been four short years since we were immersed in the special hell that is IB exams, EEs, IAs, and let's not forget ESS. 

Now we have all grown and changed so much, we wouldn't be able to go back to that time even if we wanted to. We have new lives, new adventures, new special little hells, and new squads. Even though we have spoken less and less as the years go by, know there is still a place in my heart for you. You all adopted me into the group at a really rough time in my life without any hesitation, and you will never know how much that meant to me. 

I LOVE and look forward to following your lives on Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. I cheer for your triumphs and root for your success. I am excited to see where life takes you! I wouldn't trade our years of friendship for anything. After all, you can never really get rid of your hometown friends.

With love,

Kristen

A Prayer for a Tired Heart

I'm tired. 

I am so, so tired. I'm frustrated and I'm weary and I just want this life to be easy! 
I feel like a threenager that is way past due for her afternoon nap. 

I am having by far the most challenging couple weeks of my college career. I feel so discouraged and I need HELP. Like, so much help-I can't do it alone-praying every second kind of help. I realized last night that even though I've been praying and telling God I can't do this, I haven't really been letting Him help me. I'm asking for help, but I haven't let go of my worries and doubts and really, truly given them to God. 

So last night as I'm laying in bed over-analyzing life's difficulties, my heart was filled with this prayer. And I prayed it over and over. And then I typed it down in the notes section on my phone. And then I was instantly filled with peace. We've got this. Jesus and I together, we've got this. I can't do this alone. My new prayer isn't that I do well on my exams and pass. My prayer is that God grants me the grace to allow myself to give my worries to Him. This is the prayer of my tired heart. It's all I have right now, but it is enough for Him.

Dear Jesus,

I have nothing to give you right now. I'm so empty. My heart is a crazy, jumbled, chopped up bowl of fruit salad. All I have is my discouraged heart, a little sliver of hope, and You. Please give me the grace and the courage to give my heart to You. Take it and break it and make it new. Make it into something we can both be proud of. Let me trust in You. In YOUR name I pray.

Amen

Give me grace, give me courage, give me peace.


Kristen

It's Not a Bad Life

I had a really bad week. Like one of those "I'm dropping out of grad school"  and I'm gonna cry at the drop of a hat weeks. I barely slept and survived on diet coke and coffee. I babysat four nights in a row. I woke up exhausted every day. I had the grossest dark circles under my eyes. My lupus is flaring. I finished two assignments like five minutes before they were due. I didn't read the journal club article. I was so behind on life and I sucked. I did well on everything that went on school wise this week, but I sucked. I was snippy and overly sarcastic to my friends. I came up with at least three new backup plans for my life (to add to my ever growing list). I wanted to punch everyone in the face.

So, yeah. This week sucked and I've doubted my ability to be a competent OT several times every day. I have seriously considered taking my degree in university studies at the end of April and running. I told multiple people that I want to run away from my life. Even in all the bad there were really good moments too, like my friend's birthday and baby snuggles at work, and fun new babysitting jobs. God constantly reminded me that He is here and He is good even when I don't deserve it. So even though it was a really bad week, that doesn't make it a bad life.

Kristen in Progress: Take 2

It's been about two years since I first started this blog and about a year since I've last posted. I've been thinking a lot lately about coming back to my blog. I just haven't known what to do with it. Well today I logged on and just deleted everything. I was going to change the URL and title and everything, but that is pretty symbolic of my life as of late so I decided to keep it. I did, however, jazz it up with an ellipsis (which is even more symbolic of my life right now).

To be honest, I hated the old blog. It wasn't me, it wasn't real, and it just sucked. It was everything I didn't want my blog to be. I want my blog to be my real life honest ramblings, thoughts and dreams. I want to be able to share my real life doubts and hopes and prayers. I want this to be me with all my mistakes and weird quirks included.

So, here it is:

Kristen...in progress