Intro to me

Well hi there!  My name is Lauren and I am a mother of 3 girls.  9 yr old twins and a 3 year old.  I have a wonderful husband who I love dearly.  My life may seem perfect as I realize that I am truly blessed.  However, as we all know, no life is perfect.  I have my own problems as everyone does.  I set up this blog as a way to talk about it all and get it out as I tend to bottle things up and then it just explodes and I look like a crazy woman!!  I have always kept journals so this seems natural.  Now having people actually read these is a little unsettling.  But here we go.  I don't even know if these will be read.  In that case I have a new way to keep a private journal!!  It's a win win for me :) 
     I think of myself as a good mother with a lot to learn.  I think of myself as a good wife but not a perfect one.  I'm not Donna Reed or the perfect housewife.  I am emotional. I am a little crazy.  I lose patience.  I laugh at things that are sad sometimes.  I cry for no reason sometimes and that feels wonderful.  I get extremely overwhelmed as a mom and wife ALL the time and then get mad at myself for it.  But yet I am very proud after all that I have been through to be where I am now and I think I am doing a good job at what God has given me to do.  I do my best and that's all I can do right?  
     Ok, here is my medical issue.  Well I should say issues.  I have been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and have had that since being a teenager.  I have recently been diagnosed with chronic pelvic pain syndrome and interstitial cystitis.  The pelvic pain started during my pregnancy with my 3rd child who was a very large baby.  It progressively got worse and about a year and a half ago it became so bad that I could not get out of bed. The pain was constant and I finally decided I had to seek treatment.  With no insurance and not much extra money as we are a single income household, that was not an easy road to go down. After starting out with an OBGYN at a low cost clinic and ruling out a couple of possibilities for the pain, she suggested surgery.  I decided to get a second opinion and found myself at another clinic that was able to send me to get a low cost ultrasound of my pelvic area.  Everything came up normal there.  They told me I could possibly have IC. Interstitial Cystitis for those of you who are not familiar is a chronic bladder condition that is hard to diagnose and hard to treat.  It is also incurable. www.ichelp.org Anyway I will refer to it as IC throughout this blog.  Well after a year and a half of going to doctors and emergency rooms with no insurance I was just forced to manage the pain only.  I have noticed that doctors do not like dealing with IC.  They are all very quick to pass you on to someone else.  And when you ask for pain medications they look at you like a drug addict.  That was frustrating to me because I really was in extreme pain and there was nothing anyone could do about it.  I had cut out a lot of bladder irritants but the pain pretty much hung around through everything I tried.  Finally a year later we were able to get insurance through my husbands company and I went to see a urologist who told me I could possibly have IC but it may also be pelvic floor dysfunction.  She sent me to a physical therapist.  I am in the beginning stages of that process now.  No relief so far :(  My primary care doctor who was also treating my anxiety told me he was sure it was IC and to go back to the urologist and request a cystoscopy.    http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/cystoscopy-16692  Not sure what happened to my font here but oh well...I tried to fix it.  Blah!!! 
Tangents are another thing you will see on my blog!!  Ha!!  Anyway, I am waiting to make the appointment for that.  It costs money that insurance will not cover all of so I am waiting to come up with that.  That will give a firm diagnosis of IC.  That doctor also decided to take me off of my anxiety medication all together and made me feel like I was beneath him.  This was a doctor in a clinic that I began to see during the time when I was uninsured.  I think his respect for women was a little non-existent.  I just saw a new doctor yesterday and was very pleased.  My 3 yr old was with me and he was very patient with her as she was climbing all over the place and kept chatting while he and I were talking about my condition and treatments.  I am laughing just thinking about it!  Silly Sophie.  That's her name.  You'll get to know her pretty well.  So the new doctor, who I will call Dr T., put me back on my anti anxiety medication and also added some things he thought would help with both conditions.  He gave me a prescription for lexapro, which is for depression and anxiety and works very well when combined with your regular anxiety medications.   He also gave me a strong anti-inflammatory which combined with the tramadol I have been on is supposed to work well.  So today is day 1 of this treatment route.  I guess I started this to keep track of how well the treatments are working and how I feel day to day.  Can't hurt right?  As I said, no one will read this I'm sure.  But if you do and you find it remotely interesting then thank you for reading and if you want to send any comments I think that you can.   Right?  You can comment on here, I assume.  This is all new to me.  
     By the way, I am 36.  I adore my kids and I'm going to post some pics of my family because I am proud of them and they are a part of me.  After all, this is designed to let you, any readers that may be out there, let you know about my life..."The Life of Lauren" :)