catching up

My niece is HOME.  She made it out on absolutely the first possible day and after major surgery and several days of NPO (no oral feeds) she managed to bounce right back into nursing and meet her homegoing requirements.  She looks better than she has in her whole 4 weeks of life.  She finally has color.  She's beautiful.  I expect we'll get to see some smiles soon.  I don't know how we will ever take even one of those for granted.

Emotionally this hit me hard once she was finally safe.  Yesterday I spent nearly all day in bed and slept for huge chunks of time.  Today I at least got dressed and sat on the couch.  But I am still emotional and exhausted.  I hope to get past this soon because I keep getting overwhelmed by feelings and not communicating well.  I was so upset trying to tell my mother that she couldn't reasonably expect to leave me to watch a puppy who wakes up 2 hours after I go to sleep.  I hate that but it is true.  So he's at the kennel until my mom gets home from helping them settle in.  It sounds like that's probably tomorrow; things were going well.

I got upset another time today because I looked out the window on the way down the stairs like I have since my mom moved in here to see if the cat was on the porch.  But he's been dead for a week.  There were tears.

I also just have been overly sensitive.  It's just what happens when emotions run high then don't need to be (plus I had some symptoms of elevated lithium last week and so had a few days off it to make my level drop drastically which is good in that it was effective and bad in that my body likes lithium).  I'm also so frustrated because I have gained weight this summer.  I'm tired of clothes not fitting and I'm tired of having to buy new ones.  For some reason I didn't pack the jeans that fit last year and so now I have a pair that doesn't fit at all and one that doesn't fit well but can be worn sort of.  Tomorrow I have to buy jeans.  In a bigger size.  I know that when I am in my new home I can probably lose some weight fairly easily but for now it is frustrating.  It also isn't just the less healthy foods I've eaten this summer; I have had a lot of med increases in the last 9 months and I'm sure they are part of the 5-8 lbs I gained.  That sounds like not much but it's enough to make me feel huge.  Apparently it is also harder to lose weight in menopause.  It makes me scared to try.  However I know for sure that better eating and more exercise would fix this.

I don't know what else I feel emotional about.  Everything in a way.  As it seems to do anytime I'm upset lately I start feeling like Dr. Mind is going to leave and that I can't bear that thought.  I wrote that 8 years is good but it is also bad.  I can't imagine him gone and I can't imagine what his leaving would/will be like.  So I pray that I can accept God's will if this is what happens and then I cry more because I don't want to have to pray that.

I think I need a bunch more rest and a few more days of my real lithium dose.  I need to have time to absorb everything that has happened in the last 3 weeks.

So much.