Update Update Update

Hello!

 

So we had Halloween last week, it went really well!

We went to a friend in our ward's party, here are some fun pictures from that:

 

 

 

 

We were Hawkeye and Black Widow from The Avengers. I thought we did pretty good!

 

 

It was a good time and we both love getting all into character. Every year I think " Oh I will just do something easy..." Then I go all out haha It is just so fun to try and make everything yourself!

 

The next night after our friends party, my friend Randi and I threw our own party! We didn't take any pictures! Shame on us! But it was fun, we played Halloween Family Feud, and had a nacho bar and s'mores. I think everyone had fun! I even met some new people which is always awesome!

 

 

 

 

Chip's eye is doing A LOT better. He still isn't seeing super great yet, but he said the spot in his eye isn't grey anymore, it is now the color of whatever he is looking at! I will take that as GREAT news!

We still have a long ways to go with all of that but we are feeling hopeful and really grateful!

 

 

 

 

We have about 4 weeks of school left ( and then finals week). I am getting antsy, and lots to do, but also the end of the year jitters all at the same time. I think we will both come out awesome, but if I am a zombie for the next few weeks I'm sorry haha

 

 

 

 

Since my 2nd Puberty Post ( sounds weird doesn't it haha) I am feeling a lot better. I am amazed at how wonderful of friends I have.  Thank you all so so much for your love and kind words of support.

 

 Not 20 minutes after I wrote that post I got a call from a good friend of mine in PHX who told me to take a deep breath and that she and her roommate (another good friend of mine) went/are going through the same thoughts/feelings. I cried on the phone. I hate crying. It was just such a relief to know I am not the only one who doesn't know what the heck I am doing.

 

One of the hardest parts of all of this was writing it down. Making your "weaknesses" known to others seems like such a bad move to me. I felt so incredibly vulnerable, and I still do, all the time, anytime someone brings it up I literally shrink into a pile of rubble. I have always felt like if others know what your weaknesses are they will use them against you to make you look foolish. And writing that post I did feel foolish. I didn't really hear anyone else talk about what I was going through. I felt like I was the only one. Even after I realized I am not the only one I felt weak because I thought " Well I have never read anything about this, maybe I am the only sissy who needed to "talk" about it. Poop.".

 

The responses I have gotten from everyone range from awesome, inspiring, helpful, loving, to heart wrenching, disappointing, and lame.

 

On the one hand most of them said they have been through similar experiences, that they got through it and they are now great! This is great news! I'm not a freak! Well, not in that way at least.

 

The bad side of it is though that anyone above the age 29 said that these feelings come in cycles and I will have them intermittently for the rest of my existence, but for various reasons. This sucks. But on the other hand it will teach me to become stronger and show me better ways of dealing with these feelings. I am both hopeful that I will feel better and discouraged because apparently this happens for the rest of my life.

I just have never felt more love, and more loneliness at the same time before. Unfortunately I cry more now than I did when I first started birth control. And that was A LOT of crying. Poor Chip. He has been so great through all of this, he really is THE best husband EVER!

 

Not all of the tears are bad, actually since writing the post, most days they are tears of happiness and love and appreciation. I have had so many people show me love and support its hard not to get teary right now. My sister wrote me a letter ( ahem: book) that included some stuff from a talk by Elder Holland that was really helpful. If you have been feeling the things I talked about in my 2nd Puberty Post, read it. It will help. If you feel like it isn't helping, read it again. And then again, and then again after that.

 

A few things that have helped me:

 Getting outside, (Thanks O and A).

Reading a good book ( Thanks B).

Express myself, I am painting/sketching again and it helps immensely.

I am more focused on goals lately, I just took all the things I WANT to be and wrote them down, this isn't to say I am a Yogi master or a Picasso or Scriptoriun etc. , but writing them down makes me see my goals as more official.

 

I'm not "fixed" by any means, but I don't feel like I am going to burst into tears of confusion at every turn. As I am going back reading this I feel like a 14 year old kid who just got their heart broken. It sounds so dramatic and ridiculous. 

 

With that being said let me clarify a few things:

1.I am not in any way shape or form looking to be perfect. That isn't the goal here, and if that is what you got from my post you didn't understand what I was saying. I'm not looking for perfection I am just looking for Emilee.

 2. I am not trying to just complain about how hard things are for me right now. This is my blog and I am welcome to say, or share or express myself any way that I like, I am merely sharing what I am experiencing in my 21 year old college attending newlywed life. I know that everyone has things in their life that are difficult, EVERYONE! Even people who are rich, poor, beautiful, not so beautiful, poor, fat, skinny, any color, gender, race, religion, or political background etc. Everyone!!  They may seem like they have perfect lives  but they each have things going on, usually behind closed doors, that they struggle with every single day. I know that I have a beautiful and fantastic life with an AMAZING husband who I love more than anything. We have a great apartment, we get to work and go to school and we have nice vehicles, we get groceries on the table every week and we get to do fun things, we have awesome families and wonderful friends, we also have a knowledge of the gospel which is such a blessing. I know I am immensely blessed in each area of my life. This is not all to say that I don't struggle. We all struggle.

 My 2nd Puberty Post was about how I feel like I don't know what I am doing in life, and how often I feel like other people know exactly what they are doing, who they want to be, and what they want. I know those people struggle, I just feel like they deal with it better, and often people don't know they struggle.

Is this making any sense??? haha

 

Whew! Long post, but that is what is going on in our lives right now.

We hope everyone has a great week!!

 

Love, Em

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



Chip's Eye Debacle

So Chip's left eye is a mess.

About 3 weeks ago he started complaining that he had a funny spot in his vision. At first I thought nothing too big of it, when I get migraine's I get weird things in my eye and when I get some food and sleep they feel better and the spots go away. I thought he was just tired and stressed. Well it started to get worse and I started to worry and told him to go to the eye doctor. Once he was able to get an appointment he went to Dr. Bratcher here in Silver City and the doctor said they're was something definitely wrong with his eye. He said there was fluid, and it may be stress and would eventually soak back into the eye when he calmed down a bit (we had just had midterms, and we're broke, and we go to school AND work, it was a little stressful time yes). The other option Dr. Bratcher said was that there may have been blood in his eye which is bad and that it may or may not require surgery. So Dr. Bratcher referred us to a retina specialist in Tucson and we took the first appointment we could get. We got in on Wednesday.

So we got to Tucson and we get to the specialist ( nicest office ever!), and all of their equipment was super technologically advanced. We filled out their medical history questionnaire on this tablet that is linked to their computers so everything is linked all at once to all the computers in the office. Shmancy! We get in to the doctor and they dilate Chip's eye, and take a bunch of pictures and measurements. 

We waited for a LONG time after all the pictures to speak to the actual doctor and he wanted to take more pictures of the inside of Chip's eye before deciding exactly what was going on. 

They took Chip back, I didn't get to go with him at this point, but while he was back there they injected  the vein in his hand with red dye that went through all of his bloodstream in 20 seconds ( he got to watch it in the pictures go through his body, cool right!). then I got to go back and the doctor came in and showed us all the new pictures that they took with the dye in his system. 

Here is the juicy part, what is going on!

Chip at one point or another in his life acquired a scar on his macula. This is due to one of three things, or a combination of all of them. The doctor asked if Chip had ever lived back East, he lived in Pittsburg Penn. for 2 years. According to the doctor there is a bird that lives only in the Eastern United States whose poop carries a bacteria that if you come into contact (direct or otherwise) it can scar your vision. Stupid bird poop (thanks Tonya!). The second thing it might be is that at one point in time Chip got the flu and the virus scared his vision. The third option is that he was born with the scar. There is no way of knowing which one of these is THE one, but this is how he got the scar.

The second part to all of this is that the scar now has fluid and blood accumulating under the scar and causing the macula to bubble and distort (read: completely cover) the vision in his left eye. When the doctor looked at the spot in the fancy pictures he said that usually they would just do a laser surgery to drain the liquid and then photocoagulate it. Chip's spot is WAY too big to do this. If they were to try to do surgery right off the bat, there is a chance the scar from the laser would cover his entire vision and he would never see again.

This sounded scary until he said the next part: there is a medicine that can shrink the blood vessels significantly so that they CAN do surgery! Yay!

The doctor assured us that because Chip is so young that the medicine should work really well, and that if it works really REALLY well he might not need surgery at all!

Of course I was concerned that the scar was connected to some sort of bigger scarier problem and Dr. Schindler also assured us that it was JUST in the eye and not something more serious. Phew!

So they gave Chip his shot in his eyeball, and they had to disinfect it first which is the part that hurts the worst ( they numb his eyeball for the shot). He said it felt like he had a thousand eyelashes in his eye and that it itched and burned really bad :( Awful , and he was shaking and his eyes were dilated and all the stuff they cleaned his eye with was coming out of his nose, it was lovely.

He is doing SO much better today but his eye is still REALLY red and swollen. He will go back for his 2nd shot the 2nd week in December, and his 3rd shot in January. If he needs surgery it will also be in the new year, probably around the first of February (Happy Birthday Chip!). He is a trooper and we are both feeling really optimistic about all this. We are both really grateful for modern medicine and a kind and caring Dr. who gave us a really good deal for paying for everything ( Chip doesn't have medical insurance :( ). We are also really grateful for all of our family and friends love support and prayers. Thank you all so much! We will have an update about everything in about 6 weeks! 

Poor kid. So cute! ...and sad. 

Love,

Em