Welcome to Day 2 of Jenna’s Commenting Challenge!

Today’s blog topic: Tell us about your blog. What do you blog about? Why do you blog? How did you start blogging? What kinds of things do you/are you willing to share with the world? Where do you find your topic inspiration? (Hint: Don’t share about your social media just yet!)

I actually have quite a few blogs going. Unfortunately, I tend to keep myself busy, so I don’t update them nearly as often as I’d like! 🙂 This particular blog is my “number two” blog. I created it not too long ago as a place to document all of my adventures.

I have a real passion for life and adventure. My mom said that from when I was a little girl, I would be willing to go anywhere with anyone. I would ask people their names, so they wouldn’t be “strangers” and I’d be able to talk to them without getting in trouble. Without really knowing what I was getting into, I joined the Navy. I have packed a lot of experiences into my life, and I like to think that I’m still fairly young. The world with all it’s beauty and delights beckons to me and I long to see and take in it all.

But.

About two years ago, I started noticing my capacity for running diminishing. I was getting short of breath very quickly. It was so bad that I could only run for maybe 2 house-lengths. I started having chest pain. I went to the doctor. Over the next several months, I became a frequent visitor to the ER. I was admitted one night and they kept me for a few days doing all sorts of cardiac and pulmonary tests. I had all kinds of scary diagnoses thrown in my direction as the doctors tried to figure out what was going on. Congestive heart failure. Pulmonary hypertension. What was it?

After ruling these out, my doctors began to suspect a mitochondrial process. At the time, I was working as a secretary for three surgeons at U of M. So, although the muscle biopsy which would confirm the diagnosis is normally performed by a neurosurgeon, I asked one of my surgeons to perform the operation. He’s always looking for something new and interesting, right? Just after Christmas, I went under the knife. Or, well, the scalpel. 🙂

I had the results read by two neurologists, one a U of M doctor and the other outside of the U of M community. Both came back with the same diagnosis: I have a neuromuscular disorder, a mitochondrial myopathy. There are different kinds of mitochondrial myopathies. Mine seems to be most closely identified with the one called MELAS. This disease looks differently in each patient, so there wasn’t too much specific information that could be offered me.

Except that this is progressive. And terminal. And there is no cure or treatment.

So, while I always enjoyed life, now I have more reason to document it. That, and I like people and I love sharing! 🙂 I hope you stay and poke around and see what trouble I get into next! 🙂

Oh. Wait. There’s more questions up there, isn’t there? Okay. Um. There’s not much that I *wouldn’t* share with the world. I mean, we are all going to be united in the Divine Life in Heaven, right? If we’re all going to be friends there, why not start now? Seriously. Why not?

Inspiration. Hmm. I guess I don’t really worry about this. Usually, I am either (a) busy or (b) sick, so I am back-logged on the things that I want to blog about. This has gotten so bad that I’ve even taken to writing what I intend to blog about on my to-do list on my calendar. 🙂