2016, A Recap

2016 started out with so many unknowns. We knew we were moving to Nevada, but beyond that we weren't quite sure what the future held. But enough with the introduction! Let's move on to the month by month recap!

One of our biggest motivations for leaving Dallas was to escape bad drivers. All doubts of moving were erased when I got into a car accident driving to my last day of work. A lady in an SUV drove her car into mine as we were coming off of a red light. I am very thankful to say I avoided the hospital, but oh did I have to increase my cortisol! I was amazed at how much the car accident shocked my system. I was showing signs of low cortisol hours and even days after the event. Dallas, thank you for your fitting good-bye. You can keep your crazy drivers!

Our move lined up quite nicely with the FRC Build Season. Teams of high school students from all over the world are given six weeks to build a robot to acomplish a specific task for competition. Given the fact that we were unemployed engineers, my husband and I had no problem volunteering five to six days a week. When another adult mentor learned that I used to work in the semi-conductor industry, he passed my resume on to a few key people. A couple interviews later, I landed a job! Although I was unsure of what I would be doing before I moved to Nevada, I was pretty confident something would fall into place. It did, with perfect timing.

March was quite the busy month! We started out celebrating our second wedding anniversary at the Grand Canyon with a brief pit stop to meet up with another Addy friend. Shortly after we returned, I began my new job. We also adopted a dog named Echo! My husband visited the local shelter where a sweet "retriever mix" captured his heart with her meek whimper. In between all the activities, we decided to throw in a random 5k. To finish the month, my husband and I met up with some friends from college for a spontaneous weekend at Lake Tahoe.

April started out with a trip to the Las Vegas Convention Center for the FRC robotics competition. It was a little bit challenging to guess how much cortisol multiple days of full activity would require. The second day of competition, I had to hide in the hotel room all morning until my low cortisol migraine subsided. I was nervous that the high school students would view me as diseased and unreliable. When I finally was well enough to show up to the convention center, none of my fears were realized. They were happy to see me feeling better. Later in the month, my husband started his new engineering job. April also marked the official kick off of Action for Adrenal Awareness, where four of us hosted a live broadcast to raise awareness about adrenal diseases. Check it out here. I start speaking at around minute 46.

For Mother's day, my parents visited us. While I greatly enjoyed the time spent with them, I did end up getting sick, requiring a 100 mg emergency injection. A few weeks later, we hosted my husband's parents for dinner. We took great joy in being able to show our parents the life that we are building together in Nevada. Towards the end of the month, we took the dirt bikes out for a spin. It was my first time back on dirt bike trails in seven years.

During the month of June, we had a friend from Texas fly out to complete a Tough Mudder with my husband. I enjoyed watching them, but the altitude mixed with dehydration equated to another emergency injection later that night. We also BOUGHT A HOUSE! We were not expecting to put an offer on the very first house we saw, but we immediately fell in love with it. We submitted our official offer on June 28th for an August 12th closing.

I took a spontaneous trip back to Texas for Independence day while my husband did a solo backpacking trip with the dog. To celebrate my husband's birthday, we attended a Philip Phillips concert, in which we realized we are now way too old to stay up late. July was also filled with multiple home inspections. I am incredibly grateful for both our Lender and our Real Estate agent. They worked together and guided us through our first home buying experience to make the process as stress free as possible. This was quite important, given my Adrenal Insufficiency.

August started with a trip to Austin, TX for an engineering conference. Later in the month, we took the dog and the dirt bikes and met up with friends for camping in Northern California. August 12th came and we closed on the house without issue. To celebrate, we welcomed in two additional adult cats to our Clearly Alive family. If you had warned me in January that our fur-ball household was to increase from one to four, I would not have believed you.

My parents and my aunt and uncle visited as we showed off our new house over Labor Day weekend. On September 8th, my husband caused a minor car accident in my truck. A few days after the accident, we joined my family in California to celebrate my parents' 30th wedding anniversary. We left from there and immediately embarked on separate adventures. I had the pleasure of attending my former college roommate's wedding in northern New Mexico while my husband went to Wales for a business trip. 

When he returned to the house, he realized that my dirt bikes had been stolen off of the new property. Because they were not properly insured, all I got was "Too bad, you get nothing. And by the way, your homeowners insurance is canceled. Find a new policy provider." I immediately installed a home security system, which severely angered him. But I wanted to protect myself against more of my property being damaged.

Thankful, October slowed down a tad. We purchased our dining room table and immediately christened it by carving pumpkins to celebrate my birthday. Friends from Texas visited and we had the pleasure of showing them the beautiful blue lake of Tahoe. We continued our work on the house, making it our own. We finished up the month by greeting trick or treaters with Wonder Woman and Santa Claus.

At the beginning of November, my grandparents visited from Florida. I loved being able to spend time with them and show off our house. My grandfather used his handy-man experience to teach my husband some things (like how to get electricity back in the kitchen when an obscure GFID outlet trips), and my grandmother fed us an amazing home cooked meal on our dining room table. I also participated in a project by a local photographer called "Beauty in the Desert" to celebrate my blog's fourth birthday.

Two of my husband's friends from college visited. I ventured to California for an Engineering certification exam, an Ikea adventure, meet up with college friends, and the ability to greet a fellow Addie sister, Debby. We finished up November with a Thanksgiving / Christmas celebration with my family in Arizona. I had a disease flare Thanksgiving afternoon and ended up requiring twelve hours of sleep, several zofran, and almost a triple dose of my solu-cortef the next day to stabilize. Got to love the holidays with autoimmune disease unpredictability.

My husband was sent to Wales again at the beginning of December. He returned to America just in time for us to attend his holiday work party. My parents also drove up to visit us for Christmas. I was horribly embarrassed as I had them visit my apartment, where I had been living alone since the purchase of the house. The kitchen was growing things, the cat litter desperately needed to be scooped; I could not attempt to hide the chaos.

A loss of a job, an out of state move, the leaving of in person support networks, the start of a new job, the purchase of a house, the addition of three fur-balls to the family, the mental checking out of a husband - these are a lot of changes for people with working adrenal glands! They left me to where I was just barely treading water, just barely staying afloat. Many times this year, it felt like I was absolutely drowning.

I broke down crying as my dad cleaned my kitchen and took care of the cats. I felt like an utterly incompetent adult, unable to handle just basic life. 2016 was a hard year, not necessarily because of hospitalizations or disease flares. It was just hard.

But you know what?

I'm still Alive. I had zero hospitalizations or ER visits. I have a stable job. I am beginning to establish friendships.

May 2017 bring stability!