September 24th - Negatives to Positives

Before I begin my actual blog for this week, I want to stop and say thank you to everyone for their encouragement and support in this tough time in my life.  While I created this blog with the intent to help me process my struggle and help others along the way, I am still a long ways away from recovery.

That being said, these past few days have had some interesting break throughs but some other steps backwards.  First, the steps backwards have been that my migraines have began to show up a little more and I have not been able to pinpoint what the exact trigger has been as they have been both occurred whether I have eaten or not.  So between doctors and myself, we are trying to figure that mystery out.  On the eating front, things have actually improved a little bit as I have been able to get into a little bit of a routine in the mornings with my son when he eats and then dinner intake has been halfway decent.  Overall intake has still be around 1500 calories but it has been fairly consistent which is an overall improvement.

The one interesting breakthrough that I do want to share is one where I am still processing and reacting to but it definitely struck a chord with me that has been able to kind of snap me out of this funk I have been in about being constantly down and always focused on negatives.  To elaborate a little more, I watched this movie called Courageous which was directed by Stephen and Alex Kendrick who are the same brothers who directed the movie Love Dare and the movie that recently opened in theaters called War Room.  It is an extremely powerful movie that I highly recommend to for anyone to see.  I won't go into the details about the specifics of the movie.  But, the final scene is the four main characters who are fathers that worked throughout the entire movie to establish a resolution they would sign and commit to their children, wives, and God to serve as better fathers.  I have put the link to the final scene of the movie that is what really hit me and got me thinking.   Let me know what you think of this scene and/or the movie if you have seen the movie.

Adam's Speech from the movie "Courageous"

September 17th - Don't Know What To Do Right Now

It certainly has been quite a long time since I have posted a blog entry and my has it been a roller coaster of a month and a half.  My migraines have certainly improved in frequency and intensity as I am at the max dose that my headache specialist wanted me to get to.  I still get them frequently but nowhere near as bad as before.  However, when they do come, I still have to try and get my school work done around the pain and side effects.

What has actually become more of the issue is the eating side of things.  Because of the decreased appetite side effect of the Topamax that I am taking, the binging episodes have definitely been interrupted.  However, I have now been experiencing more anorexia than binge eating.  On average, I have been eating 1000-1200 calories per day and have lost quite a bit of weight.  What is difficult about this is that I have absolutely no hunger cue and will go the entire day with out feeling any desire to eat even a small little snack.  To describe the little hungry cue I do get is only later in the day around dinner time'ish if I haven't eaten anything then entire day.  When I do get that cue it is only equivalent to what most people have around what would probably be mid to late morning as they head towards lunch time and have already had breakfast and just feel a little bit hungry.

What is frustrating with this is that I know that I need to eat and am feeling the effects of not having the proper nutrients and nourishment my body needs.  However, I literally have to force myself to eat when sometimes I literally feel like I have no desire or urge to consume any food whatsoever.  The only thing that has been helpful to eat has been Catie cooking meals or having easy grab and go food.

What keeps eating away at me is that I have so many activities and things I would like to do.  But not matter how hard I try to work at getting better, it seems like I just keep taking steps backward and it just makes depression build and build and build.  I guess the next step is to keep trying to find more ways to find positives big or small to build off of and build from there.