Highs and Lows

In high school, my favorite part of youth group every week was at the end of the night when we went around the circle and shared our "highs and lows" or "glads and sads" from the week with each other. It gave us a few minutes to celebrate the happy things with each other and sympathize with each other on the not-so-happy things. Last week was the ultimate week of highs and lows, and since I obviously don't go to youth group anymore, I will share them here.

I don't want to recap the "lows" in too much detail because I don't want to relive all of it right now, or in the future either really. Last week, my Grandma passed away. She was one of the greatest people I've ever known and she was the best Grandma. My sisters and I were lucky to grow up 15 minutes away from our Grandparents and got to spend virtually every holiday and birthday with them, spend the night at their house often and go over for brunch after church or dinners on the weekends. You know all the good Grandma-like things that Grandmas do, like let you have an extra piece of candy after your parents said no, or take you shopping with them and spoil you? Well she did them all, plus more. Not only did she treat us like royalty, she was also funny as heck and a fiesty little woman. She loved all of her family fiercely, especially my Grandpa (and her 6 daughters, 16 grandkids, 25 great-grandkids, and 2 great-great grandkids!) and we all loved her back just as much. So Chuck and I cancelled everything in Boston and bought last minute plane tickets home to be with family for the memorial service.

When we arrived at my parent's house, we found out that our family dog, Lucy, was sick. After a few days of medication and no improvement, we took her back to the vet the morning before the memorial service. My dad got a call right after it ended saying that Lucy was not going to get better and it was recommended we put her to sleep. So, my parents, sisters, Austin (Sami's boyfriend), Chuckie and I went to say goodbye to her at the vet, immediately after saying goodbye to my Grandma.  It was pretty much the worst. We got Lucy when I was 15 and we all had our own special relationships with her. She liked to drive Dad crazy by running through his newly raked leaf piles in the Fall. She liked to give Mom "hugs." She liked to crawl on Sami on the couch. She liked to sleep at the end of Laura's bed. She liked to flop down in front of me and force me to rub her belly, a trick I accidentally taught her that she never forgot after the very first time. Lucy loved everything about her life and her family. She was a good dog.

Lucy and I still kept in touch even when I was in Boston.

If all of that, plus lack of sleep plus stress wasn't enough already, Thursday night when we had only 3 hours to sleep before we had to head to the airport, Chuckie got violently ill and stayed that way, even while we were traveling through airports all day. I've never seen him this sick in all the time we've been together. It was like a nightmare that wouldn't end. 

Friday afternoon we got back to Boston, along with my sisters who have had plane tickets to come up and see us for months. We had a whole weekend planned in New York City to celebrate all of our birthdays- specifically Sami's recent 21st birthday and Laura's quickly approaching 30th birthday. The weekend just also happened to be my actual birthday so we celebrated that too. Friday We used Friday as a day of rest so we could actually try to enjoy our weekend in New York. We slept most of the day, showered, went to the grocery and bought all kinds of food and then went home and ate it while we watched Newsies. It wasn't quite the day we had planned for months but, it was necessary down time.

The "highs" of the week came Saturday and Sunday when we were in NYC. There is something so energizing, no matter what state of mind you are in, about being in THE big city. There's just nothing else like it. Our cousin and her boyfriend met up with us Saturday and we did some sight-seeing, had dinner and went out. I can't remember the last time I (personally) had as much fun as we did on Saturday night. Sunday we met up with more cousins for brunch (at a place with bottomless sangria...yum) before some more sight-seeing. The weekend was busy, funny and a great way to celebrate our birthdays. I have a lot of pictures so I will post them in a separate post soon.

Again like I said earlier- we had some of the lowest lows and highest highs all in the same week. Thank you to everyone who was there for our family last week and has reached out to me or them. It means the world. And thank you to New York City, for giving us one of the best weekends ever, when we needed it most.

"Hagan Luck"

So there's this thing in my family called "Hagan Luck." I'm pretty sure my grandpa had it, I KNOW my dad had/has it, and now I seem to have inherited it.  "Hagan Luck" is basically Murphy's Law.  Whatever can go wrong, WILL GO WRONG. This applies to any normal, supposed to be super easy and painless, situation. Sometimes it's the grocery- you get in the shortest line but it ends up taking 4 times as long to get through than all the others because all 3 ladies in front of you are extreme couponers. Sometimes it's traffic- you decide to take a different way to work than normal and you end up stuck behind a wreck and show up an hour late to work. For me, it seems like anything I try to do ends up becoming an event and a story. Nothing is ever just EASY. It's just like my dad, who goes to Chicago for the first time ever and while there, gets stuck in "The Worst Rain/Thunder Storm in Chicago in 30 years!!!"

Call the bank to order new checks? I'm on the phone for 45 minutes, transferred to 6 different people, and told things like "You've never ordered checks from us before," even though I'm holding my checks in my hand as I speak to them.

Go to the doctor because I think I have the flu? Wait in the lobby for 30 minutes, then get moved to a storage room that used to be a patient room because they are out of regular rooms, get forgotten about, and only remembered when I go out into the hallway after another 45 minutes of waiting.

And don't even get me started on trying to drive or fly somewhere. Like the time I blogged about before, when Chuckie and I came to visit LGO for the first time. Or like the time we tried to get home for our wedding. (Chuckie swears he never has a single issue with flights unless he is with me.)

So you won't be surprised to hear that we are flying to Seattle tomorrow to live there for 6 months, and Boston is expecting a "Historical Storm." More snow than they've seen in years. One to make the record books. Schools are already closed for tomorrow. Businesses will probably be closing. Travel will be "nearly impossible."  You guys, Boston has not had more than a couple inches of snow since we moved here. So why on earth would an all out BLIZZARD happen on the one day we are scheduled to fly to Seattle so Chuck can start his new job on Monday?!?!?!?!  I can tell you why. It's Hagan Luck.  Poor Chuckie. He's stuck with me and my unfortunate luck forever.

Here. Just read this article for the full effect.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/02/07/snowstorm-may-be-one-of-biggest-in-new-england-history/

Seattle

I can finally share some big news on the blog....

We're moving to Seattle for 6 months!

 

Part of the LGO program is a 6 month internship at one of the LGO Partner Companies. There are several partner companies including some places you may have head of like Nike, Amazon, Caterpillar, Boeing, Zara, Novartis, and a bunch more. Students can choose if they want to interview for what is called "off-cycle" internships which go from February-August, or "on-cycle" which goes from June-December. Chuck chose to interview for a couple of "off-cycle" internships because he was very interested in the projects. He interviewed and then had to rank the projects in order of his favorite to least favorite. Then the companies rank the candidates and they generate a match.

Chuck will be working on a project for Amazon at their headquarters in Seattle!

We have known for a little while but I couldn't post anything until I broke the news to my boss at work. We will move to Seattle in early February and come back to Boston at the end of August for Chuck to finish up his final two semesters at MIT!

This is both extremely exciting and extremely stressful news. I am SO excited to experience West Coast living for the first time but also stressed about moving AGAIN- and this time even FARTHER across the country- leaving my job at MIT, finding a job in Seattle, finding a new job once we're back in Boston, and about a million other things.  And I have never been to Seattle before so the thought of moving to a city I've never even visited kind of scares me. But only a little.

On top of all the excitement and stress, Chuck and I are also sad to be leaving all of the LGOs. We will be away while most of them are still in Boston taking classes for the Spring Semester. Then when we get back to Boston in the Fall, they will be gone on internship. So we go almost a year without seeing most of the LGOs we've become good friends with! Sad!  The good news is two other LGOs are going to Seattle for their off-cycle internships, and a few more will be starting there in June, so we won't be completely alone out there.

Here are the only things I knew about Seattle before doing any research:
- Birthplace of Starbucks

 

- "Home" of Meredith, McDreamy and the rest of the Grey's Anatomy characters.

 

- Close to Canada

- Hometown of T-Will (who you may remember from THIS previous blogpost)

- It's rainy. Although I read that Boston has a higher annual precipitation average than Seattle.

I knew my rain boots were going to get lots of good use when I bought them back in September!

That's about it.

I'm sure I'll know much more soon. One thing I do know for sure is we have a lot to do before February!

So, you know what's coming next... My attempt to make everyone come visit us all the time:
Start planning your Spring Break and Summer Break vacations for the West Coast, friends! I know all of you have just been waiting for a reason to visit Seattle, right!? We'll make sure we pack our air mattress just for all of you. :)

Medical Rollercoaster

 

For the past month and a half, I have been on a medical roller coaster. In and out of the doctor's office and blood lab so many times I am now a familiar face around MIT Medical. Before anyone gets worried and skips to the end of this post to see if I'm dying, I will tell you that I am fine and in the end I was diagnosed with STRESS.   I don't want sympathy from anyone and I'm not trying to make something small into a big deal by writing a blog post about it. I’m simply writing about this because this blog is supposed to serve 2 purposes: 1) To keep our family and friends from home up to date on what’s going on with us in Boston and 2) To serve as a record of our lives here on this adventure so one day when we’re old we can look back and remember everything we experienced during these 2 crazy years of LGO. 

Back in October I made an appointment for myself to have a physical and have blood taken. I had not been feeling like myself for a while and thought maybe it was the stress of moving, the wedding, etc. But once all of those things were over and I still felt crappy, I thought maybe it was something more than that. So I made an appointment.

When my blood results came back, I was not too surprised to find out that something came back abnormal. The doctor thought I might be developing hypothyroidism, due to high TSH levels. At the time I did not know what TSH was or what hypothyroidism was,  but I knew that the thyroid is not something you want to mess with. After a lot of googling I found out a lot about hypothyroidism and saw that I had a lot of the symptoms and that the only treatment is medication FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I was very unhappy but tried to put it in perspective. Big deal, so I have to take a pill every day. I should be thankful they didn’t find something much worse in my blood results. As much as I hated the idea of being medicated forever, I knew it wasn't THAT bad. So for the next month I mentally prepared for the hypothyroidism diagnosis.

Fast forward to November 1. My doctor had me come in again to check my levels after a month to see if they were better or worse before jumping too quickly into diagnosing me. More blood sucking occurred and then I was scheduled to go back in exactly a week later to discuss the results with my doctor. When I went to meet with him he had great news! My TSH levels were back to normal and I did NOT in fact have hypothyroidism! Apparently high TSH levels can also be caused by stress. However, this time around, something else came up in the results as a cause for concern- high cortisol levels. 

My doctor explained to me, this can be caused by one of four things- high stress (imagine that), the time of day your blood was taken (as levels change throughout the day), the kidney creating too much cortisol on it's own, OR maybe a TUMOR in the pituitary gland in the brain. WTF?!!! 

So the next day I was back in the blood lab having blood taken for the third time. The lady at the front counter in the lab recognized me. PEOPLE. There are a lot of places I would not want to be recognized due to frequent visits, and the blood lab is definitely one of them.

Three days later, my doctor messages me and says my cortisol levels were still high, so he wants me to (I bet you can't guess) come in for YET ANOTHER blood test after taking some kind of steroid and then meet with an endocrinologist. Again, WTF!!?!? Against my will, I obliged. By this 4th test, the blood lab ladies and I are basically BFFs. The day before I went in for the test, I messaged my doctor and reminded him that my life has been kind of stressful lately- and could he not just assume that these levels were all high from stress? In the past 6 months I've moved to a new city, got married, moved into 2 different apartments, started a new job and have a lot of stress still coming up in the near future. He messaged back that he understood but that this steroid test would tell us if it was just stress or something more serious.

This morning, I had the following message from my doctor in my patient online inbox:

"11/19/2012 8:41 AM

Your response to the dexamethasone suppression study showed entirely normal physiology. The a.m. cortisol was low and the ACTH was low as well. We need not pursue this any further. The elevated cortisol from the prior studies is probably a result of physiological and or psychological stressors as discussed."

Soooo basically I just need to chill out and take more dance classes and bubble baths. The end.

The Dance Complex

I've found my favorite place in Boston. It's not a restaurant. It's not a historical building. It's not even an ice cream place. It's- The Dance Complex.

After some recent blood tests, it was suggested by my doctor that I take better care of myself and try to reduce stress over the next month before I come back in for more blood tests. It's a long story, but I'm fine- just a couple of high levels on some things in my blood results that could either mean there is an issue with my thyroid or could simply just mean I'm stressed.

So in my effort to de-stress, or get out of my "funk" as I like to call it, I've started doing some things like taking bubble baths, baking, and aromatherapy.  And in my latest attempt to de-stress, I attended a dance class.

I took dance from ages 4-17. Jazz, ballet, tap, modern, and even some pointe for a little while. At one point I was taking dance lessons two nights a week and was also in our dance company's traveling performance group which met often rehearsing all day on Saturdays and Sundays. I was by no means an amazing dancer, but I LOVED it. I loved being in the studio. I loved learning new dances. I loved the atmosphere.  I loved the people. And I loved performing.

A girl at work recently told me about this place called The Dance Complex that offers several different types of dance classes at all skill levels throughout the week. There is no early sign-up required, no weekly commitment, and no validating your dance background. You simply show up when you feel like it for the class you want to take, pay the $11-$15 (depending on the class) and dance your heart out for 1-2 hours. You guys. THIS IS MY DREAM. And the best part? The Dance Complex is ONE BLOCK from our apartment.

Have you ever seen the movie Center Stage?  No. Most of you probably haven't. It came out in 2000 and was my favorite movie all through middle and high school.  It's a dance movie, and since the cast are all real dancers and not actors, the acting is kind of bad and the plot is a little silly and really it's just not a very good movie. But the dancing is awesome and when I was growing up, I wanted this movie to be my life. (Just the dancing parts, not the drama.)

My favorite scene in the movie is when the main character, a ballet dancer in school in New York City, goes to this cool studio and drops in on a hip hop/jazz class just for fun and to get away from her really intense ballet classes.

And because this is a movie, I didn't think this type of experience actually existed. But it does! I walked in to the Complex and there were people all over the lobby in dance clothes, stretching, chatting, putting dance shoes on... I was pretty nervous, considering I haven't danced in a class since I was 17. My nerves weren't helped either when the lady at the desk saw what class I was signing in for and said "Oh you're taking THAT class? You have some dance experience, I hope?" Once we got into the studio though I was calmer. The teacher had us warm up and do some exercises to get our bodies moving, and then for the last 45 minutes, taught us a combination. Then we (like the lady says in Center Stage)  danced the s#@* out of it!

I left feeling so energized and happy and like myself. And then I realized, since we moved to Boston, I have not had any arts in my life for the first time. Growing up I was in piano lessons, dance classes, band. In college my major was Arts Administration, so half my classes were theatre, art and music classes and I practically lived in the Fine Arts building at UK. When I graduated, I worked at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts for three years and lived and breathed the arts daily. Since moving to Boston, I have not worked in the arts, been to a performance of any kind, or participated in any art form myself. I think I found the solution to my funk, and while this might not cure all my stress problems or my blood results, it is definitely going to make me an all around happier person.