Directly across the street from my acupuncture clinic is my favorite shoe store. Inside that shoe store is a brown pair of Dansko boots I have wanted for over year (to match the black pair I bought with my 2008 Christmas bonus – I have loved and nurtured those boots but they need friends for when I wear brown!) That pair of boots costs approximately what two weeks of acupuncture will cost me.
And that is sacrifice.
I saw Teeny today, and she is concerned about my kidneys. Apparently my kidney pulse is very low. The truth is, I’m not surprised. I mean I’m surprised my kidneys have a pulse of their own (who knew?), but I’m not surprised said pulse is low. I’ve been told there is a lot of endo on my kidneys. I’ve been told there is not much they can do about it without risking additional scar tissue (and when an organ is meant to filtrate, you don’t exactly want it hindered with scar tissue). I’ve been told it may or may not be something I need to worry about.
There is a reason I have to give a urine sample every time I step foot in my doctors office.
OK, so the full disclosure is that the reason for the urine cultures may also be because sometime last year I wound up in the hospital with a UTI that I discounted as endo for days until it was so bad that I was writhing in pain and peeing blood. It’s possible I haven’t been trusted to assess the state of my urinary tract ever since. I’ll give them that. I have a lot of scar tissue on my bladder and it has been uncomfortable for me to pee for at least 7 months – I honestly couldn’t tell the difference until it was really bad.
And I'm kind of a rock star when it comes to pain tolerance!
(yes, I am sickly proud of that)
The point is, I’ve known my kidneys are hot spots. Part of me has wondered about what that means for my future, but I’ve never heard of anyone who has had kidney failure from endo – so for the time being I’ve shoved it to the back of my mind. My dad is always telling me not to buy trouble, and I guess I just figure this is one of those issues it would be buying trouble for me to worry about. If my kidneys are going to fail at some point because of the damage caused by my endo, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it now. I’ll deal with it when it happens (if it happens), but in the meantime I’m just not going to waste a lot of time thinking about it.
But Teeny is worried about my kidney function during a pregnancy, and I can see her point there. We probably should worry about that.
Which is why I let her stick needles in the bottoms of my feet.
THE BOTTOMS OF MY FEET.
Even typing that right now made my toes curl.
Sacrifice.
She told me what she was going to do, and then she had me take a deep breath and cough to distract myself. It wasn’t as bad as I would have thought, but it still freaks me out to think about. I’m pretty good with needles, but needles in the bottoms of my feet? Not so cool.
Sacrifice.
We also talked about my diet. She is worried about my belly fat (and how great is that – I got called out on my belly fat by my acupuncturist today!) because belly fat produces estrogen. I had to point out the irony of that to her – I’ve never had belly fat in my life until I started on a drug that shut off all my estrogen, and now I have this lovely little reserve that is just hanging out around my mid section. My pant size hasn’t changed, the number on the scale has actually gone down, but I now have belly fat. No estrogen = belly fat = more estrogen. Wonderful.
So we’re going to work on getting rid of that belly fat before IVF time. I can get on board with that. I eat pretty healthy as it is, so there isn’t much I’m going to need to change. I do eat a lot of fruit – which I know is high in sugar. Teeny wants me to cut down to 2 servings a day, mostly berries if possible. I also am not a huge carb person, and what I do eat is always high fiber and multi grains; but she wants me to cut out anything other than whole grains if I can. I think I can do that. I’m going to pick up a book she recommended to get some new recipes though, since I’m just not sure how to make meals out of whole grains. I’m not too concerned though. Changing my diet feels like something I can do fairly easily right now. As a matter of fact, I’m going to pick up my first crab this weekend and try to figure out something to do with it. Apparently crab is good for stagnant blood conditions, which endometriosis is.
Sacrifice.
Other than that, Teeny was actually getting me really excited. She was talking to me about the treatments we’ll do up until IVF to get my body prepared, and then those we’ll do once I’m pregnant to get me to carry to term. She was talking about it like it will all be so possible; like we can totally make this work.
Like all it will take is a little bit of sacrifice for one really big reward.
And let me tell you; I can sacrifice.
ADSPACE
