My Chronic Life

I just had to do it. I couldn’t resist. The temptation was just too overwhelming. Please don’t think I’m egocentric because I nominated myself for a Shorty Award for Brain Fog.

And yes I did it twice because I forgot that I did it the first time. Come on Chronic Illness bloggers, let’s get us some of our categories and get this Twitter based contest rolling!

The Shorty Awards are for “The best producers of short* content in 2008.”

*140 characters or less

It’s getting down to the wire, just 14 more days until Christmas. Just 5 more days until my daughter’s birthday. Just 17 more days until my wedding anniversary. Just 19 more days until my daughter arrives here from Kansas. I’m just tired writing all that!

My Christmas wish is a vacation after Christmas. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d go for a trip to Branson. If I go then we can keep our promise (hopefully, if Mother Nature agrees) to show my youngest daughter snow. We’d have more of a chance of that happening if we chose to stay at the Cabins at Grand Mountain.

If my wishes were to keep on coming, I’d go with a package that includes our accommodations, some meals, show tickets and even a shopping spree. After all what’s a vacation without going to a mall? This is a family friendly area so the shows would be just perfect for us to take our daughter. I’d love to see the Amazing Pets show and the Acrobats of China. My husband would like the Dixie Stampede and the Happy Trails Museum. And I know our daughter would pick the Silver Dollar theme park. While my dd and I go shopping, my dear could play golf.

It sounds like I have all this planned in my head. Now to see if I can make my wishes come true. Anyone have a magic lamp I can borrow?

As I continue on this road of life with multiple chronic illnesses, I am learning more about myself than I may have if I wasn’t sick. The lessons at first were too difficult to face. Sometimes even now I feel like I’ve had enough learning, but the lessons continue. Most of them when things are going badly.

For example each new diagnosis, almost every flare up, and some setbacks have had me sad, depressed at times and angry. The anger is the worst. That anything can trigger me to have an outburst feeling.

Yes it’s been that bad. I recently wrote about working on my bad attitude toward my family. But this anger issue is even worse. I find myself getting frustrated easily and just blow up. Usually I’m alone when this happens. This is so unlike me and it scares me too.

So next on my list of things to work on is finding out why I am easily angered and what to do about this. I’ve been praying about this and am going to talk to someone about it if it continues to be a problem. I haven’t been feeling stressed, so I’m wondering if it is the sleeping problem I’ve been having. I hope so as I don’t like being this way at all.

For those of you who are beginning to blog or considering a move to monetizing your blog, one of the most important decisions you can make is a what company will host your blog.

I know that many of us start out with a free site like Blogger. But as you begin to look towards earning money by writing paid posts you will need to look into getting your own domain. Most companies will only approve your blog if it is not on a free site. Webhosting is a topic that you will want to research as soon as you have been blogging for about 90 days.

At that time, you can begin to submit your blog to paid blogging companies. There are many things to look into when you chose a host for your blog. You want unlimited web storage space, bandwith, multiple domain hosting. You also want 24 hour customer service and constant server monitoring.

Look at customer reviews, ask other bloggers (be sure they are not affiliates and are giving you honest answers), check on the blogs you read all the time, especially if you haven’t seen any down time or other problems and ask that blogger who he or she uses as their host, and research on your own.

Compare prices but keep in mind the quality and the service you need. You will lose money when your blog is down or you have other problems.

Blog hosting is an important step in your move to earning money.

I realized that I haven’t been keeping up with commenting on the blogs in my blogroll. I guess when this blog was down I got out of the habit. It’s easy for me to lose track of things I’ve realized. My memory has been getting worse. Someone asked me when my older daughter moved to Kansas and I couldn’t remember. I kept thinking that it was close to a holiday so I said January. How could I forget something like that?

Instead of getting frustrated I decided to figure out why I’ve been more forgetful than normal. One thing I’ve realized is that my sleeping pattern is not good at all. I fall asleep easily but I don’t stay asleep. Now this is new to me because I usually have very bad insomnia. I’m normally not able to fall asleep, but lately I’ve been hitting the pillow and zonking out.

I find myself waking up a few times a night. I’m not sure if it’s due to pain or not. I’m going to wait a few weeks and if it’s continuing then I’ll talk to my doctor about it.

But for now, my fellow bloggers, forgive me if I’ve missed you. I’m going to make the rounds soon.

Cryo-Cell International Inc.is now partnered with the National Institutes of Health to research treatment for Breast Cancer using stem cells taken from menstrual blood.

Cryo-Cell is known for storing umbilical cord blood. It currently stores more than 160,000 cord blood samples. It is an established company known for its ease of use and for the education and care of patients. With this new venture Cryo-Cell is striving to help women in the future as it moves forward with brand new research into treatment options for Breast Cancer.

This research study is using magnetic resonance imaging also known as an MRI to track the stem cells in menstrual blood. This procedure is non-invasive meaning that there is no need for surgery of any kind. The stem cells are tracked even before they are in existence. This holds great promise for treating diseases.

I use Cryo-Cell to store my daughter’s cord blood and have been pleased with their service from day one. The information provided to me while I was pregnant and to my doctor helped me make the decision to use this company and go ahead with the procedure.

Learning that they are now working on treatment of a disease that is foremost on every women’s mind makes feel even better about Cryo-Cell.