Goodbye and Good Riddance!

I am so excited for February to be over!  We're already counting down the days until 2014 over here. 

February was hard.  My lovely kidney stone infection experience triggered a POTS flair at the beginning of the month. (my heart always has a hard time keeping up with me, but when I have a big flair my resting heart rate goes to about 165 and even with that my blood pressure is so low I can't stand up without blacking out...so I have to spend the entire flaring time horizontal. This time it lasted almost 3 days. )  In the 7 years I've been sick I've only had 2 other flairs that have been close to this bad; and they only lasted a matter of hours rather than days.  Both times the stress from the flair left my body at an extremely lower energy level that took about 8 months and hundreds of hours of disciplined physical therapy to get over.  And even then I just get back to my normal sick level.  

So basically, I know what I'll be doing for the rest of 2013.  

It's just annoying. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a game against the universe, all the time knowing that the universe will get the trump card every time.  Plus this time it happened a week after the 'you can drop your classes and get a refund' date at school.  So I'm double annoyed.  

So that's our life right now. I've been scraping by trying to accomplish something at school... or at least get to class.  We bought a freezer and filled it with easy meals.  There were still Christmas decorations out until yesterday when Doug took an afternoon off to clean the house. 

But now February is over and checking off a big chunk of time makes me feel positive   Every time I get really sick, there are always great tender mercies.  This time between my infection and my flair we had a couple of normal days when we were able to get all dressed up and celebrate my birthday. (my favorite outing every year!)  Another night when I was especially sick we cooked up our Destination Dinner and had a fun Korean evening without having to leave our CFS friendly home.  Someone in our neighborhood has been secretly shoveling our driveway all winter long.  About a week ago I saw that they made a movie out of a talk I love so much I practically have it memorized.  (the movie is at the top of this post, the text can be found here-Mountains to Climb by Henry B Eyring) 

I feel like I am constantly amazed at what the human body is capable of.  This month I am so grateful that it is complex enough to be completely frustrated and extremely satisfied all at the same time.  What would we do without a bit of joy during our sorrows!?