My husband and I both used some PTO this week to help us slow down for a minute. Our lives are very full of obligations (work, health, etc.) all of the time, and we don’t take time off to rest as much as we should. We find ourselves saving our PTO as much as possible in case we have a “surprise” pop up with my health situation that needs us to use PTO. Operating in this way keeps us from actually taking time off to rest, because we always feel the need to keep our options open for future uses of PTO.
Last weekend, my husband went on a solo extended weekend trip to a neighboring state to mountain bike and spend time in nature to decompress. I spent the extended weekend alone at home recharging: sleeping, listening to podcasts, sleeping, watching mindless TV, sleeping, writing a blog post, texting friends, and sleeping. Being an introvert, I love people (contrary to popular belief), but I also need time alone to recharge. This means time away from all people including my wonderful husband.
After our weekends alone doing what we love and recharging, we took this week off from work. We had a lot of medical appointments and tasks to complete dealing with our home environment, but it was still nice to take away one of our full-time jobs in order to complete the other full-time jobs. It is amazing how much easier it was to only deal with medical appointments and home stuff without also dealing with work. It felt like a vacation even though it was far from a vacation. We are grateful to have PTO, because we are aware that many people don’t have the privilege of PTO.
Here is the latest update . . .
Physical Health:
I finally had the appointment that I scheduled last March with the holistic dentist in our area. The first available appointment wasn’t until October, so that is why we went to a neighboring state for the cone beam scan and cavitation surgery. Since I am still having issues with my gums, teeth, and mouth, I wanted to keep the appointment to establish care in our area.
This holistic dentist was very kind and knew a lot more about systemic health than most dentists. He has worked in conjunction with my main doctor (functional medicine chiropractor) to provide care for quite a few patients. My main doctor has made it clear that many of his patients also have mouth, teeth, and gum issues. Even though this dentist knew a lot more about all of the pathogens and environmental toxins that I am dealing with than most people (and sadly most regular dentists), he was still perplexed by my situation. I don’t quite fit into all of the symptoms that point to one main problem. He would hypothesize, and then I would kindly tell him the reasons why that didn’t apply to my situation. However, it was nice to have a dentist looking at my mouth with more knowledge than most.
There are a variety of issues happening in my mouth at the same time, but one issue is very clear. Due to my body fighting for so long, bad dental advice for over 15 years, and an ill-fitting mouthguard, my teeth and gums have been damaged. My body developed some behaviors to protect me regarding my mouth and now those behaviors have led to damage. In order to prevent more damage and allow my body to heal, I need to retrain my face muscles, mouth, and tongue to function normally using a special type of physical therapy. Then, I will likely need corrective action involving braces (hopefully not braces AND surgery). The part that is confusing is that my body is still fighting really hard due to pathogens and environment toxins, so when do I start this process? I don’t want to pay a lot of money for more treatment when my body will fight against the treatment. I want to do the treatment when the root cause has been handled, so that I don’t waste money before my body will gain what is needed from the treatment.
I am going to make some calls next week to gather more information about this process to determine how I will move forward.
I asked this holistic dentist if I did the cavitation surgery in May out of order with the rest of this, and this dentist said that doing the cavitation surgery when I did was a good decision. He said that they don’t do cavitation surgery in their office, and when they have a patient who needs it, they send them to the same practice I used for my cavitation surgery in the neighboring state. The practice I chose in the neighboring state is known for doing a great job. So, that was nice to hear. I made a bunch of good decisions in May without having any idea what I was doing.
There is not one area of my body that has been spared in this health journey. We know we are continuing to play whack-a-mole until we can treat the root cause and are able to stop the figurative and literal bleeding.
Speaking of blood, I was able to get my second IV iron infusion of this series of infusions this week, so that was a win!
Home Environment:
We had a long phone call with the mold testing professionals this week. The owner is the person who has been helping us since March, and he is super kind and helpful. We had already provided him with our testing results from the at-home test, and we were gathering more information from him. Out of 250-300 cases he is involved with each year, we are one of approximately 5 cases that require additional testing and remediation after the first try. (Of course we are. 🤣) We asked him if we should consider moving instead of continuing to spend money on this house, and he reiterated that he doesn’t recommend moving at this time. He has worked with a customer in a similar situation as me who did decide to move, and then it took her testing over 60 potential homes before she could find one that was safe for her to live in. At this point, it is still cheaper to try to work on our current home. I asked if he has ever had a customer who did more work on their home just to end up needing to move anyway, and he said he has only had 1 customer in all of his years in this business who still needed to move in the end. We are really hoping that we are not in that category.
We discussed all of the different paths that we could take to move forward, and we landed on more professional testing this coming week. He told us about some new technology that is being used by mold inspection companies in other states, and he thinks we should go that route in this next phase of testing. He would not charge us for his company’s time, but we would be charged for the actual testing that is sent to the lab. The cost of this testing depends on how much testing the customer wants to have completed. We will probably spend $3,000-$6,000 for this round of testing, but we won’t know for sure until that day. We are going to give it a try. We have no idea whether or not this new testing will provide us with more helpful information, but it seems to be the next step in this very expensive process.
Emotional Health:
I am proud of how my husband and I have taken care of our emotional health this week. We took some time for ourselves as individuals and as a couple to emotionally recharge. We had time to rest in between appointments and thinking about our next steps with the current information we have. It is amazing how much easier it is to work on the other parts of our life when we can remove work stress for even just a week. I am grateful for this time to slow down and emotionally recharge.
Brutal. Having every single part of my physical body impacted on this health journey. Paying exorbitant amounts of money to treat each of those parts since 99.9% is not covered by insurance. More mold testing.
Beautiful. Finding health professionals who have seen cases with some similarities to mine and who all provide clues and some helpful tidbits to help us move forward. Finding out 5 months later that I made some really great health decisions in May. New technology for mold testing. Having PTO to be able to take time to rest and recharge when we are in the trenches.
Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.
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This Brutiful Life 