Sister Time!

This weekend was fun, but I am pooped! I had no trouble going to sleep last night. We arrived in New Orleans Friday night and got to start spending some time with my sister, Jennifer. We had fun shopping, floating in the pool, and eating food, food, and more food. It was so good just to lay eyes on my sister..it's been too long! I learned the streets a little better and finally got used to the streetcars in the middle of the road :) Here are a few pics of the girls...

 

 My favorite treats while I was there were the chocolate (and later lemon) gelato.  Free of milk, soy, and gluten!

And of course Beignets ;)   

We stayed until Sunday afternoon and kissed Jen goodbye. We will not wait that long to see her again!

Herb info and NOLA!!

Some folks have inquired about the cost, etc of the herbs I'm taking right now. Compared to the cost of the meds I've been on it is very inexpensive. My herbs had to be overnighted to me so the shipping cost was around $14, so the total cost for 2 weeks of herbs was $70. Very affordable. I also have some drops that were $35 and I don't know how long they will last (I'm thinking over a month). 

Great news for today...I'm going to see my sister tomorrow in New Orleans! YEA!! I haven't seen her since Christmas so I'm very, very excited. (The picture above is the most recent picture of us...how sad is that??) I can't wait to see you, Jennaboo! 

Have a great weekend!

Bitten on the Run

My husband has been getting healthy lately! One of his things is to go running after work every day. He usually goes the same route in our neighborhood, but yesterday's run did not go so smoothly. We have a new neighbor with a dog (remember, we do have a leash law in Gadsden) that has been terrorizing the neighborhood. Yesterday, he charged and bit my husband on the back of the leg! I took some pics to document this scary occasion...

I guess he will be running a different route tonight :( Poor thing!

Fathers Day and More Herbs

I hope everyone had a great day with their dads. I got to see my dad, father-in-law, and grandfather yesterday and had a great time with all of them. I'm so very blessed to have all my "dads". Here's my dad and father-in-law (you can tell which one my dad is since I look just like him!)

My PawPaw went to church with me on Sunday. It was so great to worship my heavenly Father alongside him. I love you, PawPaw!

I'm so blessed to have my husband. He handled Father's Day wonderfully (the cats gave him a card Sunday morning). He is going to be a great dad one day!

The saga of the herbs continues....Friday night I cooked a week's worth of herb tea in the crockpot.

Ashley was there to help me strain it. My whole house smelled like a hippie store that sells incense and pipes.

Yuck! I drink 3 cups of it everyday and it takes a lot of effort to get it down. If you drink it cold or room temperature you can drink it fast, but it tastes really bad. If you drink it hot it tastes better (not good..better), but it takes a lot longer to drink it. I put honey on my tongue to mask some of the taste, but it is tough to drink. (I'm almost wishing it came in an injectable form...it's that bad!)

The cats are still loving the box it was delivered in. Here's Ava hunkered down in the box.

I'm feeling much better. Most of that may be due to the lack of dairy in my diet. What a difference it is making!

In the "Paint the Town" world: We just posted our pictures for July. Here they are: 

I hope everyone is having a great Monday!!

Herbs are Here!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I was waiting on all my herbs to arrive and talk to Dr. Drew again. I read The Infertility Cure: The Ancient Chinese Wellness Program for Getting Pregnant and Having Healthy Babies he told me that I was having "Kidney Yang/Yin" issues as well as "Liver Qi deficiency with dampness". He sent me some herbs to boil and drink 3 times a day. I'm also on Reishi Forte drops, fish oil, and Vitamin B. I stopped eating dairy last Saturday (I miss you, milk!) and have already started feeling better. 

Before I left for Destin, I had my allergy testing redone to see how much my allergies have improved over the last 5 years of weekly allergy shots. I first had this testing in high school and had a score of 294 (if you have a score of 100 or more, you have to start shots). I did them for several years and gave up in college. After I got married and started working in Gadsden, I had them redone. Score: 990. My doctor said it was the highest he had seen. Started shots one to two times a week until the beginning of June. Retested to see the "improvement"....1,255! I got worse! Just call me the bubble girl. After hearing this, the TCM doctor informed me that it was related and we would be working on that as well. 

I'm really excited to get started. He told me that after the "harmonizing" herbs I'm doing right now, I'll have a set of herbs for each part of my cycle. Very cool. Now if I can choke down this tea three times a day we will be doing great! Here are some pics of the herbs after they arrived and of my cats reaction.

 

The herbs (one bag is for 2 days of tea)

  

"What do you think?" 

"I Love it!"

TCM Visit

I'm writing this from my phone so it will be short. My visit went very well! It started out rocky because we were a little late but he started in with all the questions. Dr. Drew (no, not that Dr. Drew!) was so nice and engaging. Everything he said made so much sense! He thinks there us direct correlation between my allergies and infertility. He also said there was a correlation between my gut and my overall feelings and the blood stagnentation in my body. He is doing what no one else has done.... He looked at the big picture.

I left with mushroom drops, a new diet of do's and dont'ts, a book recommendation (The Infertility Cure), herbs in the mail, and a great feeling of relief.

We skipped the acupuncture because I'm not going to be a regular patient and he wanted to spend more time talking (and feeling my pulse and looking at my tongue). He said my herbs would be mailed to me because he needed to spend some time thinking about all my info. He appeared to be a very glass half full person. I feel he is going to try to fix my overall health. He is going to call me later to give me more info. So exciting!!! I'll add more info later :) Thank you for your prayers!

Great Anniversary and looking ahead...

Thank you for all the anniversary wishes :) We had a wonderful evening just hanging out. My sweet husband did the cutest thing yesterday. The emails started a little after 8 and arrived every few hours doing his "play-by-play" of our wedding day (awwww....). I am so very blessed to have him. We watched Avatar and I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it. 
I'm looking forward to our trip this weekend. We will leave whenever I get off on Friday and make the 5 1/2 hour drive to Destin. Our appointment is at 7:15 and I've got my paperwork filled out and ready to go! The questionnaire had the weirdest symptoms to check off such as "Thinking and worrying excessively" (which unfortunately I had to check off) and "descending sensation". Even "Indecisive" was on there! (should I check it or should I not check it ;) 
Even if the appointment is a bust, at least we can see the ocean and let me stick my toes in the sand for a little bit (not to mention that the clinic is right next to the outlets...I feel some retail therapy coming on!)

Anniversary

I've been a terrible blogger! Today is our 15 year "dating anniversary" and tomorrow is our 7 year wedding anniversary. Where have the years gone? 

When we were in the second grade, we wrote a contract (in purple magic marker) that we would always (spelled "allways"...we were never the best spellers!) be boyfriend and girlfriend. 

I cannot express how blessed I am to have my wonderful husband. 

Happy Anniversary, Sweetie! (sorry the pics are so blurry! I'll update later ;)

A New Turn...

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! We went to the lake with around 16 of our friends to eat, eat, eat some more and lay in the sun :) So much fun! Thanks John and Margaret for hosting us! (I can't believe I didn't take a single picture!)

On the fertility front, we have made a decision. This morning I made an appointment for June 12th at The Tortoise Clinic in Destin, Florida (the clinic my friend used). We are going to try Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for a while. High FSH has been shown to improve with it, so it is worth a shot, right? 

Our reasoning behind trying this is mostly that the medication that I've been on for the past few years has actually hurt my body more than helped it. If you think about it, I've had the same surgery two times in six months to remove things that wouldn't have been there if I had not done the fertility drugs. Basically, if we jump into IVF and it doesn't work, I'm looking at another surgery. I would rather try TCM right now. It will not do anything but improve the state my body is in right now. Not only to try to conceive without doing IVF, but get my body into the shape before we tried IVF.

One thing that I'm looking forward to with the TCM is someone looking at the big picture of my health. Right now, I'm getting 1-2 allergy shots a week (and take 3 allergy meds every day), I'm on blood pressure medicine, and I have a terrible gut. When I told this to the clinic this morning, she said that all of that could be targeted because it is all connected.
I'm so excited (other than the fact I can't brush my tongue until I go...Yuck!) To top it off, We get to go to the beach for a couple of days! Thank you, Kala and Taylor, for giving us this opportunity!
One more thing...today was my MawMaw's birthday and I miss her so much.

Happy Birthday in heaven, MawMaw! (and yes, that is me as a blonde...) 


If anyone has any experience with TCM or acupuncture....Let me know :)