Back in the USA!

Just a short note to let you know DH and I are back in the US after 18 days in Russia!  Obviously, I did not have the chance to blog while I was away, and am severely behind on email and reading your blogs. That will come in time. Thanks to those of you that were praying for our trip and a special non-blogger/lurker who was saying her first novena for our trip while we were away.

I will update you with pictures in the coming days (I took over 1,400 photos), but just wanted to let you know all is well.  The trip was amazing and it was so neat to see how God has been working in Russia- especially since the fall of Communism. I enjoyed connecting with Christian brothers and sisters, even if we didn't speak the same language at times.  Shared faith in Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit is a powerful bond. 

Our trip went well and we had no major problems in Russia- all 8 of us on our team got along well, travel in Russia went well, colds were the only sickness we experienced, 10 and 15 hour time changes went surprisingly well, and our mission conference/leadership training in Siberia was a huge success.  Praise be to God!  I didn't do well on my diet, but I expected that to be the case with traveling.

Dh and I also celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary as well as my 33rd birthday in Siberia.  Definitely a unique experience.  It's hard to believe I'm so "old" and I still can't help but wonder if God has a healthy pregnancy in store for our future.  Those are worries for another day though.  

The only problem we had was a car that wouldn't start last night at the airport.  After a tow, a car rental, and a 90 mile drive home, we arrived at 3am to sleep in our own beds...only to have to wake at 8am to talk with the dealership and so DH could go to work for a bit.  It's back down to the big city today to drop off the rental car and I'm hoping our car will be ready for pick-up.  Fun, fun.  But-  I still can't help but thank God for our smooth travel in Russia.  This car issue in the US is only a minor inconvenience at the moment.

Enjoying God's Creation

We are packed and ready to go!  Sorry I haven't blogged more, but we've been frantically trying to gather up everything we need.  I had such great plans to post so many different things.  Sigh.  There's never enough time in a day for what I want to accomplish.  The good news is everything fits in our luggage and we even have a little extra space!  We're each taking a medium sized suitcase to check and then backpacks as our carry-ons.  That's all for 18 days!  And we have a lot of gifts we're bringing- cross wall hangings for the churches in St. Petersburg, materials and gifts for the women at the retreat, uno cards for the couples with kids, stole sets to present to the pastors in Siberia.  Let's just say we have a lot of room for souvenirs to bring home!

We leave early tomorrow (Monday) morning for JFK where we will meet up with the 5 others in our group, and then head onwards to Moscow.  I'm not looking forward to all the time spent sitting tomorrow (16 hours roughly).  It's still hard to believe our trip is here.  A trip that we've been planning and praying about for over 2 years.  It hardly seems real and probably won't be until we are walking the streets of Moscow on Tuesday.

I haven't a clue if I'll be able to get online and give you updates, so if you don't hear from me for 18 days, just know I'm out of the country, but still thinking of and praying for all of you.  I thought I'd leave you with some pictures of God's creation that I've taken with my new camera.  I've been trying to get out and practice using it in preparation for our trip, and so far I've been pleased with the shots compared with my little point and shoot.  I've only begun to play around with aperture, shutter speed, iso, and white balance, so most of these are taken from Program mode or Scene mode. Still, it's been fun to resume a hobby of mine that has been dormant for several years.  I also completed my 4 photo classes the past month in preparation for the trip as well.

My husband and I took a drive up our nearby canyon one morning to practice with my camera.  Waterfalls were plentiful as were budding wildflowers.  It was beautiful. Here's what my neck of the woods looks like:

Mountains and wildflowers- nothing more magnificent.

Numerous waterfalls due to all the snowmelt.

Budding flowers.

Flowers near the river.

Different layers of flowers and water.

The puffball flower (sorry, no time to look up all the official names).

This one might be lupine.

God's beautiful creation.  I love being out in nature and witnessing the creativity of our Creator.  I hope you get the chance to as well.  Next, I'll show you pictures of God's creation from another part of the world.

Blood Spot Results

Things have been so busy here.  5 days until departure, and I'm starting to freak out at all the things that I need to finish before we go.  Tomorrow we're doing a test pack of our suitcases, so hopefully I'll feel better once we've done that and see all the extra space and weight we have left (right?  hopefully it's true and I'm not just dreaming.)

I'm 5 doses into this low dose naltrexone, and it is kicking my bum.  I only started with 1.5 mg and take it before bed, but I am so tired during the day.  My doctor said this is a side effect that should wear off, but man, this is really messing with my preparations that need to take place.  I also seem to have had more headaches than usual since starting the LDN.  I'm wondering if something else is going on (maybe a UTI??) that I need to get checked out before we go.  I just hate that.

I got my blood spot results back this week and thought I'd share because I share all my other lab results here.  This was a CD 3 blood spot that I did from Canary Club (along with the saliva tests I posted about earlier).

Free T4: 1.8   range: 0.7-2.5 (optimum 1-2 ZRT lab says)
Free T3: 3.3   range: 2.5-6.5 (optimum 3-4 lab says)
TSH: 1.7    range: 0.5-3.0
TPO (thyroid antibodies): 14   range: 0-150
LH: 11.5 (high)   range: 1.6-9.3
FSH: 6.7    range: 2.4-9.3
Vitamin D2: <4   range: <4 if not supplementing
Vitamin D3: 55   range: 32-100

So what do you think about the results?

So it's no surprise the LH is high given my PCOS.  I've often thought that the reason I don't ovulate during most cycles is because my LH is so high all the time it never increases to trigger the release of an egg.  It's hard to get pregnant if I don't ovulate.  That's why Clomid helped us get pregnant, I suppose.  The FSH seems high to me because the last time I had it tested in 2008, it was 3.4, but it wasn't done on CD3.  Does FSH increase with age?  My Vitamin D has gone down from 67 when it was last tested in February, but Napro dr. said we'll retest when I see him again and see where it's at then.

So my questions are....how do you decrease LH?  And how do you decrease DHEAS?  Mine was dreadfully high (like off the chart high) from the saliva tests.

Back to Russia prep.

Quick Takes: Saturday Edition

I had the best of intentions to blog yesterday, and it's very clear that didn't happen.  I have so many blog spots I want to write, I even made a list of them all!  Yes, I'm a nerd, type-A personality.  Even though I'm not working at the moment, my days are full and my list of posts grows longer and longer.  But I'm here now- better late than never.

1. Cycle news: Thanks to those of you that commented or sent sweet emails asking whatever happened with my cycle.  AF showed her ugly head one week late. It was a crazy cycle.  I did my CD 3 blood work on Monday, but it meant I didn't have the results to show my Napro Dr. at my appointment on Thursday.  I'm still waiting for those Day 3 test results.

2. Napro appt.:  I had a follow-up appointment with my Napro Dr. on Thursday.  It's been 3 months since my last appointment, and we talked through the food intolerance testing, my saliva test results, and my wacky, late, brown bleeding cycle.  For whatever reason, he was really compassionate at the appointment talking about how frustrated I must be since I've been at this for so long (2 1/2 years seeing him).  He admitted that we're heading into uncharted territory because everything that usually works on patients hasn't worked on me.  In other words, I'm a special case. Lovely.  I'd rather not be a special case.  I did joke that he's getting lots of extra research practice with me because he's a research professor.  He laughed and agreed.

3. New medication: Because of all my brown spotting lately, we talked about doing antibiotic cycles for my dh and I as one option to see if the brown was due to infection.  Or the other option was to try low-dose naltrexone.  I was fine with either, so he suggested the LDN because I still have some fatigue in the afternoon.  We're going to try it for 2 cycles and see what happens.  I start with 1.5 mg in the evening for 2 weeks, then I go to 3 mg for another 2 weeks, and finally I'm at 4.5 mg indefinitely.  I remember reading about LDN from Dr. Boyle's research as well as some of your blogs, so I was familiar with the name of the medication at least.  I know it's used to treat autoimmune issues, but I'm curious as to what some of your experiences were with LDN.  What did it do to your cycle?  Other things to be aware of?  Let me know.  As with any new medication, I'm hopeful that this might be the magic pill to get my health in order.  I can't not have hope when a new treatment begins.  I thought Cortisol or T3 would due the trick, but they didn't.  We'll see if LDN does.

4.Napro blogs: My doctor was surprised I was familiar with LDN and I told him it was because of Napro blogs!  He was very curious and wanted to know more.  I talked about how supportive the community is and how I learn more about Napro through other girls experiences.  He wants a few of the blogs to look at and possibly refer other patients to for information or support, so which ones do you suggest I give him?   I'm not giving him mine, but which blogs speak about Napro the most/best?

5. Weight loss: I'm currently at 7 pounds lost in 6 weeks and still going strong on my gluten-, dairy-, sugar-, and egg-free diet. I've actually cut back on my exercise because I've been losing so much weight.  I never thought those words would come out of my PCOS mouth!  Now I try to get in 30-45 minutes of exercise (walking, Zumba, or resistance training at Curves) 5-6 days a week, but that's all.  I'm down to a size 4, which I don't think I ever have been in my entire life- at least not as long as I can remember.  Less chub equals better hormone function, in my opinion, and the doctor said I'm still in a healthy weight range and could lose up to 15 more pounds before he really would get worried!  15 more pounds...I don't think I could do that, nor am I going to try.  

6. A free concert: Friday night dh and I were able to enjoy a free concert from the comfort of our front porch thanks to the direction of the wind.  A popular group from the 70s-80s was in town to play at the fairgrounds, and since we only live a mile or two from there and the wind was blowing the right way, we could hear most of the concert and the talking clearly.  It was so fun. We made margaritas and sat out front enjoying the cooler night air and listening to songs we knew most of.

7. 4th of July on July 1st?: Last night our local town had its 4th of July concert and fireworks show.  They never do it on the 4th, or on a Sunday or Monday, and I'll probably never understand why (it's a predominant religion thing).  On a day when Canadians were celebrating Canada Day, we were celebrating American independence...ha, ha. We went to the concert- a Christian country music group- and the fireworks display, so now we're done celebrating the 4th and don't have celebrations planned Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, which seems so strange.

8. Packing: In our free time, we've been trying to pack for our trip.  Russian airlines have different baggage restrictions than US airlines (think smaller and lighter), so we're trying to pack to meet the Russian requirements.  In the US, we could check a70 pound bag, have a carry-on and one personal item with us on board.  In Russia, we can check a 44 pound bag and have one carry-on and no personal items.  So we're trying to pack for 2 1/2 weeks into a 44 pound suitcase and one carry-on.  Quite the challenge, but I'm finding it's best to pack clothes, shoes, umbrellas, etc. that will not come home with us because we throw them away or donate them to the hotel staff. In other words, we might look a little tattered, faded, or mismatched in our travel photos, but we'll have plenty of room in our bags for souvenirs to bring home!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!