Healthline's Best Health Blogs Contest

Healthline is running a Best Health Blogs Contest and I was honored to be nominated!  For the next 32 days voters can cast a vote once a day.  First place is $1000, second place is $100, and third place is $50.  If you've enjoyed my blog and facebook page, I ask that you cast a vote for me each day through January 15th.  It's simple and quick.  Just click HERE then in the search bar type The Fibro Frog, then click on the magnifying glass.  That will bring my entry up.  Then, just click "vote".  That's it!  :)

Thanks in advance for voting for The Fibro Frog and sharing the link for more votes!  Sending gentle butterfly hugs to you all!

Love,
Amy

Random Thoughts

So many times in the past, I've found myself wondering if I did something horrible to deserve to live with the health issues I have.  I wondered if it was some sort of punishment.  Karma.  Tonight, as I sit here with a cold or the flu that's wrecking havic on my respitory system from my COPD, my mind wanders down that path again.  

I know that's a silly train of thought.  I know what kind of person I am, and what kind of person I've always been.  I've always had a good, loving heart.  Of course I have some bad qualities, and I'm certainly not a Saint, ....but overall I'm a good person.  I've never done anything bad enough to deserve to be sitting here gasping for air.  To live in pain every day of my life.  To never have any energy.

All of that thinking leads me in circles.  Circle after circle until my brain is dizzy and spinning.  Question after question pops into my head.  Why do good people die young?  Why do some really bad people get away with murder (literally) ...or rape  ...or child abuse.  They go unpunished sometimes by the legal system.  They also sometimes go unpunished by karma.  They have their health.  They a lot of times are wealthy.  What in the world could I have done to deserve a life like this?  Is there really such a thing as karma?  I don't think there's really such a thing as karma because if there is, it isn't making much sense.  

Is it all just random luck?  I've always heard that a person makes their own luck.  I'm not sure I believe that.  Sure, a person can do things in their lives to try and help give them an advantage ...but to truly make your own luck?  I don't know.  

I end up going back to punishment again.  Maybe, it's some sort of punishment for not taking advantage of all the opportunities in life that had come my way. Maybe it really is karma.  Karma saying "You were just slumping through life instead of doing what you were meant to do, so it doesn't really matter if you live life or not".  

Ever since I was a small child, I had wanted to be a doctor.  At the age of 11, my walls were plastered with posters of the human body.  Anatomy posters.  Drug rep posters.  Any poster that my doctor had graciously given to me, that he'd received from reps.  He knew my desire to one day go to medical school.

At age 12, my doctor asked me if I'd like to start coming in on Saturdays and shadowing him, to feed my never ending desire for medical information.  I was ecstatic!  Every Saturday from 9am-12pm I'd follow him around like I was really something important, and I'd take in his every move and every word to patients.  I can not begin to tell you my excitement when one day he asked if I'd like to assist him bereaving some skin from a burn on someone's hand (after getting their permission of course).  

Then a few years later I turned into a know-it-all-snot-nosed-teenager-who-thought-she-was-in-love.  At the age of 17, I informed my parents that I wanted to take senior english and senior government through independent studies so that I could graduate that year ...my junior year of high school.  I told them I wanted to graduate a year early, and get married in June right after graduation.  I had plenty of credits to graduate a year early, I just needed to have the mandatory english and government credits to do it.  

My parents about had a heart attack when I sprung this on them!  In my typical defiant teenager way, the tears started spraying and I started yelling at them that if they wouldn't sign for me to get married in June, that 5 months later when I turned 18 my boyfriend and I would just run away and get married.  Why my parents gave in to that tirade, I still don't know.  They finally agreed.  

Boy were we stupid.  He was a senior (where I was a junior) and he'd been accepted into an amazing college where he was going to major in engineering.  I had wanted to go to college for pre-med ..then eventually med school.  Instead, without a pregnancy even involved, we opted to throw that away in the name of love, and marry so very young.  Five months later, on my 18th birthday exactly, a doctor told me I was pregnant.  There went any dreams of college for either of us.

I worked hard throughout my life, but I was never very successful at anything. Without a proper secondary education I was at a huge disadvantage.  I worked one minimum wage job after another.  My marriage lasted for about 5 years, and 2 kids.  

That leads us to today.  I'm sitting home alone with my body killing me, coughing a lung up, running a fever, gasping for air, writing to you, and wondering why I've been dealt a crap sandwich for my health.  I'm never going to get the answers to my questions.  I'm never going to know why I have to live my life sick and in pain.  The only thing I *can* do, is keep smiling.  Keep hoping.  Keep believing.  Keep believing and hoping, that one day there will be a treatment plan.  

Hold on to hope everyone, and always try to smile.

   

Just For You Review Link Up

 

Along with Rahab to Riches & The Fibro Frog blogs are hosting a Product/Book Review Link Up. You'll for sure want to take a look at this with the holidays coming! Find some great gifts that you wouldn't have thought of!   Tweet it! Share it on Facebook!  Give it a post on Google +!  Anything you can do to get the word out.     Link Up your review post below.  For now we will not be limiting the posts and review/giveaway combo posts are perfectly fine.