Attitude is everything!

This was my post yesterday on Facebook, 8/27

Oh my! Today is going to be interesting. Payten has already begun inconsolable crying this morning. It seemed to be getting better for her some, (SOME being the key word.) but we will see what today brings. We are suppose to have therapy at 12:30 and then Zachary has OT at 2:30, after that Payten has a 4:20 appointment with Dr. P to discuss sleep study results. (Praying those are good.) Then we have our monthly pack meeting for cub scouts @ 6:30, but I need to be there at 6 to help set up! Where does homework and dinner fit into this? I guess I will find time to make dinner this morning and put it away, all while cleaning the house for therapies at 12:30, getting Payten's medications, feed and keeping her comfortable and Emmett entertained, etc.! My brain is on overload thinking about all this! These are the days I dislike the most! I don't mind being busy, but this, this is too busy? But all are important things, so a forward I will go! ~ feeling overwhelmed

Now I share this with you because like everyone else I am human. I have my moments where I am overwhelmed, discouraged and negative and yesterday as you can see started out with me having one of my "human" moments of pity/poor me. But what I hope people understand is that I do not post these as a poor me, oh, I have so much to do, feel bad for me. Rather I post them, because it helps me. Venting and releasing frustration helps me and since I don't have much adult interaction through my days, I use facebook as my source of venting and frustration outlet. I know, probably not the best place, but hey it helps. And it definitely helped yesterday! Once I released my overwhelming frustrations of how busy I was yesterday, I was able to reevaluate and take a step back and say, Hey, I need to stop, take a deep breath and calm down! It will all be okay, I can do this and if everything on this list does not get done, then it does not get done, but at least I know I did my best and then the whole perspective of my day changed and it got better and better. Now who says attitude isn't everything?! Cause it is! But with that being said, I could not have done it on my own.

Shortly after I posted or rather "vented" my frustrations on facebook, a friend from my Church instant messaged me, saying, Kim, I have some free time this morning, can I come and help you out? Now, let me be honest, the first thought was, really? Oh boy! What did I do? I opened my big mouth and now everyone thinks I am a whiner and fishing for help. And the only reason she wants to help is because she feels sorry for me, etc. etc. Then it hit me, Really? Who am I? What am I thinking? Get over yourself! Yes, maybe people do think I am a whiner! Who cares. I am! Everyone at one point or another whines about something and today I had some good reasons to whine!  So get over it and move on. So what if someone feels bad for me and wants to help, let them help. You put it out there, deal with the consequences and swallow your pride and let people do what they can! So, that is exactly what I did. I got over myself and swallowed my pride and allowed this sweet gal to come and help me, which was truly a God send. Seriously, my day probably would not have been as good of a day, if it were not for this sweet gal and her kind act of service. It might have been a small and simple thing on her part, but it had huge impact on my life, which helped me become even more calm, cool and collected, able to see the positive side to a rather stressful, busy day.

With my sweet friends help that morning, I was able to accomplish enough to help set up the rest of my day to go rather smoothly and rather smoothly it went! I ended the day with this post on Facebook,

So the overwhelmed feeling faded today! And a day that seemed impossible, turned possible! It was a great day! A friend stopped by and helped me with Payten while I cleaned. Payten did have a seizure, however, she recovered okay and preformed so, so, during her therapy session. While Emmett was napping and Payten was having therapy, I was able to get dinner made, then I ran Zachary to OT, got home from that just in time to get Payten to the Doctors. In the meantime, Joseph, helped by putting dinner in the oven and having Zachary do "most" of his homework. I got home from the Doctors at 5, we sat down and had dinner together as a family and then I helped Zach finish his homework and off to Scouts we went! To top it all off, Payten's sleep study results were great! She went from having 150+ episodes of centralized apnea, to  only 2 episodes of central apnea and a few episodes of obstructive apnea! Can we say AWESOME?! Bye, Bye ventilator and Bye, Bye Trach, for good! Now if we can get these darn seizures under control, we will be doing good! Tomorrow we see Dr. Cook about the seizures and we have an IEP meeting for Payten. She will start preschool next week! So excited and nervous all rolled in one! Counting my blessings! ~ Feeling Accomplished

Now, what changed?! That is a HUGE difference from the post that morning! What changed in those few hours during the day? I tell you what changed, Perspective, Attitude and Releasing total control. I was able to see that as long as I asked for help from my Heavenly Father and I was willing to release control and allow others in who wanted to help me and change my attitude from woe is me, I am too overwhelmed, to, Okay, I got this, I am going to do my best and that will be good enough! I found that I can be Wonder Woman! Seriously, attitude, perspective and letting go of pride is everything. If you can find the right perspective, change your attitude from negative to positive and not allow pride to get in your way, you can and will accomplish anything! I am living proof!

Now, as for today, was it as good of a day? Not so much. Why, you ask? Because I allowed negativity and discouragement to get in my way. We had an appointment with Doctor Cook today and it was a typical appointment, but still hard because we were discussing the game plan for Payten and getting her seizures under control. Payten is still having seizures daily and this has been going on for three plus weeks. She has gone from a little girl who would wake up with a sparkle in her eye, ready to begin the day happy, wanting to learn new things and play, to a little girl who wakes up sad, upset, sometimes angry, not wanting anything to do with anyone, out of it to the point of little interaction/eye contact with others, sleeping the day away. It is truly affecting her quality of life and it needs to be handled. So after a long discussion with the Doctor, we decided to try to up her Keppra (AGAIN!) from 14 mls to 15 mls. Meaning she will be getting a total volume and 200 mgs daily per dosage to weight. That is a lot and it is worrisome because as much as these drugs help, they do have side effects that can be dangerous, so the higher the dose the more risk involved. We are hoping and praying that this will be the solution. He wants us to call him in a couple days and let him know if it has changed anything. If it has, then great we will keep going until it changes again, but if it does not help, then we will look to other medications for answers. It is an extremely frustrating and discouraging process, that becomes hard to remain hopeful and positive during. If the increased dosage of Keppra does help, then all we will need to keep an eye on her liver function, because like I said before, the more you go up on a medication, the more risks they have and Keppra just happens to have to risk of liver damage. So as much as I wanted to have a good day, it was hard because all I could think of was the discouraging, what if factors to Payten's seizure situation.

To top it all off, we made to hard decision to put off preschool for Payten, even though we know it will be good for her to go, we know that right now it is not the time to send her, for we need to figure out these seizures and gain control of them, before we send her into a situation where they are not fully equipped at dealing with them. Or at least dealing with them as well as Joseph and I are. So we canceled the IEP meeting that was suppose to be this afternoon and it is on hold until we can figure out these darn seizures! So again, though I know that it is all about perspective, attitude and letting to of pride, I am still understanding of the fact that I am human and I am still going to have days of discouragement, frustration and grief and that is okay, for I ultimately know that even though it may seem endless/hopeless now, it will get better. And though at times, I feel like these seizures might not ever go away, I will still remain hopeful that they can go away and will go away.  I guess what I am ultimately saying is, try to remain as positive as you can, keeping a clear perspective, relinquishing pride, for if you do, I truly believe it will lead you to a happy, productive, positive life,  but still remain open to the fact that you are human and therefore will still have bad days, so don't be too hard on yourself. Keep the faith and press forward my dear friends! We love you all very much and we asked that you please keep sending positive thoughts, prayers and energy our way, because it is felt and it truly helps!