August 16, 2016

Greetings My Friend, I woke up feeling a tightness in my chest, tiredness from 2 weeks of going to appointments and a desire not to be coming down with bronchitis. I take my medications including my maintainance inhaler and I add the salt inhaler to my medications. My 2nd cup of tea is one made to help me breathe easier and slowly my lungs begin to clear. I thank God and realize it has been 9 months since I have had bronchitis, the longest I have gone in a few years. I am grateful for all the conversations God has allowed me to have with Him with Him pointing out my triggers, ways to cope and now the time that is legthening between bouts. While I am in this reflective mode I see that the anxiouness I felt about the weakening in my legs leading up to the wheelchair usage when I am out has settled. The past few days I notice my gait is weakening again and I am concerned but not anxious. I know that soon I will see my PCP and she will be referring me to an university hospital so that they might do more in depth looking into what is causing my weakening leg mucles to work right. I pray asking that God would enlighten the doctor's and put me on the right path to healing or managing of my symptoms. I know that today I will work slowly at building my energy level back to it's new normal. I was surprised that a few days of laying low has not perked me up fully yet. At the potluck yesterday I found myself tired and leaving early so we could go home and take a long afternoon nap. I was sluggish after the nap and did a few things but mostly I watched TV and did puzzels on my tablet. My reflections turn toward how many women my age are struggling. We are the generation of women who went back to work when our children were young. We tried to do it all, be married, raise our children, keep up with their activities, keep the house in order and go back to school and volunteer. As we eneter our older years it seems we are faicing dimished health earlier because we tried to burn the candle of our lives at both ends. I also see that by having so many irons in the fire that we did many things but I also see that what we did was not all done well, things went lacking in our lives and a lot was no down time, we had to cut corners sometimes our homes were not up to our standards or our children were put at the bottom of our priorities. For the most part our employers did not make it easy for us to be family focused and we wanted/needed to work. I remember thinking that if both the husband and wife worked that there would be more time to give to the children because the father may not have needed to work as many hours to support the children. What really happened is that both parents were expected to work the long hours. Many times we chose to work the hours so we could make more money to give to our children when we should have chose to give them more time. I myself did not choose to move way up the corporate ladder. I tried to stick to my 8 hours as much as I could so I would be able to take my children to their activities. I felt I could move up the corporate ladder when they were grown. I started thinking about that possibility when I found myself divorced but chose not to go much further. I had met Junior and I wanted to be with him, to grow with him. I worked for another 10 years after we were married and retired. I am grateful for the years we had early on for traveling and building our marriage. Since retirement I have dealt with my health. Junior has been beside me which helps. I also strive to help Junior with his health and even with our health issues I find that we are a team. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet