Anxiety and panic...

It comes and goes in waves. I could go weeks without any form of anxiety or panic, then BAM! I start to worry about something such as an ache or pain, turning it into something more sinister in my mind. Then it takes over my entire being and I end up a wreck.
The last 2 days have been focussed on my fear of a heart attack. To some that may sound far fetched: a 31 year old woman at risk of cardiac arrest? no way. But unfortunately it is yes way. I have type 1 diabetes and it is a fact that heart disease is one of the many complications that can affect a diabetic. And the scary truth that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in people with diabetes is starting to hit me bad at the moment. I am scared s***less about this. I have no idea why I have all of a sudden focussed on this. Which makes me wonder if it's intuition and it's something I need to follow up on or whether I am just letting my neurotic crazy head get the better of me. Either way I have become proactive about it and am getting all the necessary blood tests done and an ecg.
I have a feeling my worry is born from being a mother. I would not have thought of these worries 10 years ago. I need to be 100% healthy for my children's sake. They need their mum to be able to care for them, and not just in that generic way. I have Liam who literally needs me for everything. EVERYTHING. It would be selfish of me not to be selfish lol. That is how I have to look at it. I have to put my diabetes management first so I can put my children's needs next. If I don't then I won't be able to do ANYTHING for my children. This is hard as a parent, because we naturally want to put our children first and everything else follows. I am going to have to re-evaluate this...

This is also applicable to my mental health. I need to be gentle on myself. This seems to be another aspect parents find difficult. Us parents tend to push our mental health needs to the side and hope it will all be ok. But that doesn't serve our children well. We need to be stable for our children to feel stable. At the moment I am not seeing any professionals for this. In some way I would like to, but then I think about the bad experiences I have had in the past with counsellors (how some had made me feel worse!) and I decide against it. Instead I choose to speak about it with my husband or a friend. This is an important step for anybody with mental health issues to do and one in which fellow blogger Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum is very adament about. So please if you are suffering from depression, anxiety, fear, panic, deep worry... SPEAK.  Words outloud are in a safer place than words stuck in your head, that can swirl and whirl, fester and feed on further fear and darkness.

Fanfare and fireworks...

Ok so I don't know what I expected at that moment when our paed said Jack has Autism. Was I expecting fireworks? Trumpets? Some dudes to jump out of the side door yelling "surpriiiiise!". Nope, it was so fricking unceremonious. As are all these defining moments in our lives... In fact Liam's diagnosis was given to us in that exact same room, with no fanfare, no fireworks and no "surpriiiiiise!". Although I remember the Doctor handing me tissues. There was no tissues today. Strangely I was laughing, Byron was wrangling the kids, Doctor was shaking his head with a smile.
In fact I was officially diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in that same room too, by the same doctor. Although my memory of that room on that day was darker. How funny. Not so dark today. In fact today was exciting because Jack started 'roaring' like a dinosaur and I felt and still feel quite proud about that. He picked up a dinosaur toy and roared. Makes me smile. May not be much for some people, but damn he might as well won the Noble prize according to me.
I have been told that after diagnosis your child is still that same child. Nothing has changed, other than access to more services to help. But there is a change. A change that only those who have gone through this can understand. I am not saying it's a negative change, but things will never be the same and that is a fact. These things can not be undone.
Please don't get me wrong. This is not doom and gloom, but it is something that changes your life and shapes your being. I am speaking for all who have a child with 'DIFFABILITY' . And in my case, more than one child with 'Diffability'. The crazy thing is, I'm not the only one with more than one child with 'diffability'. I have several friends who are in a similar boat. And these people are probably the last to whinge and complain. God bless them.
Thanks for reading these posts tonight. You are now on this new journey with me *cue evil laugh* , now you must come along and enjoy the ride....

Where to start???

Okay so I have no idea how this will pan out, or play out... sounds like my life really lol. Oh dear I promised myself there'd be no 'lol'ing.
It's probably best I start with who I am...
Purely and simply... I am a 31 year old woman, married to my Knight in Shining Armour, with whom I have three beautiful and amazing children. The 'stranger than fiction' part? Oh well that's here, there and everywhere. Some of my life has been 'the norm' but I would have to say majority of it has been a wicked rollercoaster ride. The ride I think began in my teens when I suffered from Eating Disorders (ok that's probably more the norm thing these days eeek), and got the shock of my life at 15 when I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. My mum actually thought that the diabetes saved my life (from the anorexia and bulimia) but I did have relapses over the years. After the Diabetes diagnosis at 15, my whole family got the worse news ever when my mum was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. I was 18, my mum was (ok I won't disclose her age, mum would not be impressed, she liked to keep that one 'mum'). Before I got to graduate from High school my mum passed away. She never got to see me graduate, go to uni, get married, have kids... something a lot of people tend to take for granted. I distinctly remember her saying to me as she was wasting away "The saddest thing is- I will never meet my grandchildren"... that has rung in my ears everyday of my life and has become louder since having my children.
After I graduated from High school I went on to university to study teaching. I partied extremely hard, which 90% of that partying I do regret, but I think that was my way of escaping the pain I felt from the loss of my mum. I suffered great bouts of depression, not knowing what I wanted in life, feeling lost and hopeless. I transferred degrees, then went back again to finish what I started. In that final year of uni I met a much younger man (I was 24, he was 18) and fell head over heels in love. We planned to be together for ever and so I decided to propose to him. Lucky for me, he accepted. Two months later we got a huge surprise... we were expecting a baby (to be born in Sept 2005)!
This was the start of the more major journey we weren't expecting...
The birth was traumatic and had complications. Our first born, Liam started having seizures and apneas after the emergency c-section. Months later we were to discover that the trauma at birth had caused a lifelong disability, severe Spastic Quadraplegic Cerebral Palsy. And so the beginning of an entirely new road... a road only the minority of people will experience.
We thought that our bad luck and traumatising experiences were over. Hmmm not bloody likely.. We wanted a sibling for Liam and fell pregnant in 2007. Half way through the pregnancy my waters broke and I had to give birth to my little boy Dylan, who was too young to survive outside the womb. My heart was broken. What had I done in a past life to get all this bad luck??? Ha! Well that was just the beginning. We became pregnant again in 2008. I was very worried but the pregnancy seemed to go well. Jack made an early appearance at 35 weeks, but he seemed healthy and happy. And we were extremely happy. Until we found out at 4 months old he had a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. The only way to fix it was with Open Heart Surgery. I couldn't believe it! So at 5 months old little Jacky had his OHS.
Now for another surprise... this time a good one lol. We were expecting another baby! Jack was only 9 months and we were in shock to say the least. As I neared the end of the pregnancy we started to worry about Jack's development... So he started Speech therapy at 15 months old.
Evangeline was born September 2010 and she was and is perfect! But I think my two boys are perfect too! Just a different kind of perfect. As Evy was blending well into our family, it became more obvious Jack was the 'black sheep'. Now we are on the journey of Jack being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
I know this is a heap of info to read in a first blog entry. My apologies. But I needed a kind of nutshell thing to keep you up to speed as a blog further. I will hopefully have entries organised in themes etc. So you don't have to pour through each individual entry if there is only one or two things you are interested in reading such as info on Cerebral palsy or Depression or Open heart Surgery or... you get the idea.