Chronic Rants

We all have our coping methods. Some are healthy, some less so. When I found out I needed to have surgery, I threw together a gluten-free chocolate cake mix, baked it, added on the frosting, and proceeded to eat just over half the cake in 4 days. Suffice it to say, that was one of my less healthy ways of dealing with stress.

I’m stressed out. My distrust of and anxiety around doctors and anything medical has been growing exponentially lately. It was a problem even before this surgery, but now it’s worse. It doesn’t help that the doctors didn’t handle this whole incident correctly to begin with. On top of that, my thyroid levels are off, not something you want as you head into surgery. And if that weren’t enough, my sleep doctor just emailed me about my most recent sleep study. I was so hopefully that maybe, finally, I’d get some consistently good sleep. At least! I was so excited! His exact words were, “Your breathing was a rhythmic mess. We have our work cut out….” No reassuring.

Sometimes I wish I drank. This is one of those times.

But I don’t. So I need to find another way. What always makes me happy? That’s easy: dogs! If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ve heard me mention my parents’ awesome Sheltie from time. Looks at these photos…. isn’t he adorable? And other dogs make me incredibly happy, too. I stopped by a local pet supply store the other day just to maybe see some dogs. The store doesn’t have dogs, but customers often bring theirs with them. I didn’t see any, and as I headed out of the store in defeat I saw him: a puppy! Petting that puppy cheered me up immensely.

So I did the only logical thing: I posted on Facebook and asked my friends to share cute dog photos and videos with me!

The outpouring has been fantastic. A lot of friends want to help me but they can’t because they’re too far away or because they have their own health problems, but this is something they can do. A few even posted photos to their own walls and tagged me, asking their friends to share their own photos, so their friends did, too! Every day there are more cute photos and videos. Some are my friends’ dogs, and some are random internet findings. I don’t care, they’re all wonderful!

And that’s why today, when I was messaging with a friend on Facebook about my current medical issues and feeling stressed out and overwhelmed and on the verge of tears, I suddenly found myself laughing at a video of a Shiba Inu digging in the sand that a friend had posted to my wall.

So now I’m asking you to do the same. Please share a link in the comments, tweet me at @CIRants or email msrants at gmail.com. I’ll gather up those photos and create a post of them to share with all of you!

So that’s how I’m handling stress this week. What about you? How do you handle impending stress?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2015 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Healthcare, Medication, Raves, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Support, Thoughtfulness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.