Smile and eat gelato

Oh hello, Monday, here you are again.

The weekend was very low energy, fighting fatigue and more pain. My left shoulder has consistently hurt for almost two weeks now, and every day another body part joins the party. Yesterday it was my right foot. Tomorrow it will be...? Oh the suspense!

I started my RA drugs last Thursday night - yay!! But I forgot how lethargic and blah they make me feel. I don't remember them hitting me this hard last year, yowza. I remember feeling tired the day or so after taking them, but soon bouncing back to my normal self. Fingers crossed that my body quickly adjusts.

Despite all of this, I'm so very grateful I have those little yellow pills again. Putting on deodorant, washing my hair, grabbing the oh shiz bar on the bus without wincing? Yes, please.

Despite just wanting to lay around in my sweats, drinking tea and reading books, life goes on and weekend chores had be done so the week has even a dash of sanity. Thank God for my husband and his strong muscles and big heart. Lugging around 15 or so shopping bags on and off the bus, and then several blocks home to our apartment, is probably not his idea of a relaxing afternoon. But he did it with a smile, and then cooked me dinner and made dessert. I am deeply touched but not surprised. He always jumps in to help me before I can utter a request. He is a good man.

On Saturday, after wrangling our budget for the month (a week late, oops!), he took me out on a date. He knows exactly the way to my heart: gelato. Samoa on top (yes, as in the quintessential Girl Scout cookie), nutella on the bottom. Best for last.

Love the patriotic cone paper. America.

I woke up feeling more human and less zombie today, hooray! Monday, let's do this. I know the gelato helped.

Here's to another full week...

Happy Monday!

xoxo
J

Waiting in the wings

Let's take a pause from all these Hungry Dancer posts, shall we? I mean, I have all kinds of HD posts in the queue and more being conjured up in my brain at the rate of my Twitter feed. But let's take a moment to discuss the reason for this blog's existence in the first place: DANCE.

Until last week, the last time I danced was the end of July. The dance hiatus has made me feel like I don't have much to talk about. Which is silly, really, considering there are all kinds of dance-related topics I could cover. More truthfully, though, my lack of dancing has some crazy negative psychological effects, which then affect my blog productivity. Namely, I start questioning if I can really call myself a dancer if I'm not currently dancing, so if I can't call myself a dancer then how can I write about dance and life as a dancer if I'm just one big fraud? Oy.

It's all complete baloney, of course. I know this. But as we all know, sometimes it's really hard to turn off the internal trash talk.

Also? I'm up against a couple of real-life obstacles that are making things difficult.

Numero uno: money. Long story short, I have yet to find employment, and until I do, we're living on Hubs' grad student stipend. As such, there is zero wiggle room in our budget beyond the basics. That means no dance classes, no social dance nights and no seeing dance performances (and there are all kinds here in the 'Burgh that I'm itching to check out!). Boo, yes. But reality bites sometimes.

Numero dos: my health. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) earlier this year. RA is an autoimmune disease that can be lived with pain and symptom-free, provided you're under a doctor's care. Another long story short, my medical care and medication was interrupted over the summer. Thus, my RA started flaring right about the time we arrived in Pitt. This RA business is no joke. Oh my goodness, the pain. For example, say my shoulder joint is inflamed. It feels like someone is trying to tear my arm off of my body. And the daily recommended dose of ibuprofen barely touches it. It's terrible. My doc back in Colorado graciously extended my prescription for me for a couple of months until I find a doctor here. It's starting to help, slowly, but it is still a toss up every day whether I'm going to wake up pain free or not. This one's a toughie, y'all.

So. Spending freeze. Pain. Bad little voices in my head. I'm up against some serious biz here, but I'm learning some important lessons along the way. For one, I'm learning to roll with the punches. Life is what it is right now. While I have no control over some of it, I do have control over me. How I react. My attitude. What I do with my time. Time is a precious, elusive gift - how often do we complain that we don't have enough time?? I've been given this gift and I'm not going to take it for granted. I'm also getting to practice patience, understanding that my time will come when the time is right.

Stretching and waiting to dance... and for the bus.

While a dancer waits to go onstage, she stands in the wings, preparing for her entrance. She mentally reviews the choreography and timing and the emotion she is to convey. She continues to move to keep muscles warm, supple and ready for action. She is alert. Waiting is not passive. It is eager and anticipating. Waiting in the wings is significant as it determines what happens onstage.

Up next: Africa saves the day. Again.

xoxo

J

Small victories

2012 has been a bit of a rough ride so far.

About mid-January, I started experiencing pain in my joints. It started pretty specific, mainly in my knees and in of my hand knuckles. I didn't go to the doctor right away. I began regularly taking ibuprofen for inflammation and I bought joint supplements. I also {mistakenly} started doing research on WebMD... not that WebMD is bad in and of itself, but if you're like me you start reading about one illness after another and suddenly you've diagnosing yourself with all kinds of problems. I since have cut myself off from WedMD.

Oh the pain! Strangely, it migrates around... my left elbow one day, my right wrist another, my left shoulder on yet another, then a couple days later the other shoulder, the middle finger in my right hand, the pinky toe joint of my left foot... Some days are so bad that it hurts to simply walk, write my name or put on my coat, let alone dance.

So, what the heck is going on?? Still don't know. I finally went to the doctor and his initial assessment was arthritis. This might seem crazy as I'm not old but it's a legit possibility. My dad has rheumatoid arthritis, as did my grandmother, so the genetic predisposition is there. But he wasn't entirely convinced as my symptoms are asymmetrical and inconsistent - arthritis usually starts in the small joints such as the hands or feet, not the knees, and are equally on both sides of the body. So he ordered some blood tests. He tested me for all kinds of things, including lupus and a bunch of other things I'd never heard of. My blood work was normal. Well, the rheumatoid factor was the highest out of all, but it's still within the "normal" range. Now he's sending me to a joint specialist to see if he can figure me out.

I have three and a half more weeks of waiting until that appointment. The specialist was booked six weeks from when I called to make the appointment. Awesome, six more weeks of mysterious pain.

It has been really, really hard dealing with this. Like I said, it's so difficult to even want to dance when simple everyday movement is painful. But I push through. My dad told me that the best thing for arthritis, if that's what it is, is to keep active. So I take my supplements, my ibuprofen, I take my Epsom baths and sleep with a heating pad, and I keep showing up to class. Some days I have to back off and dance lightly, but other days I force a smile as I plié and pirouette. I will not give up.

Everyday in class we do a series of stretches after we've completed all of the barre exercises. In one stretch, we're standing on one leg as our other leg is bent in front of us, resting up on the barre. We then take our foot in our hand, extend our leg forward up off the barre and then bring it around to the side of our bodies. The goal is to hold that leg up at 180° - very few are there. However, ladies and gents, yesterday I pulled my right leg around to the side and it was pretty damn close. Maybe 170°...? I did not expect that but I was so happy. And that little victory made my heart soar above all the pain and frustration I've been dealing with for the last 8 weeks.

I will not give up.

xoxo
J

Lunch of champions

I know better, I really do. I've taken Human Nutrition courses, read plenty of legit nutrition scoop and even hired a personal trainer earlier this year to help contribute to my health quest. I've experienced first hand how much better I feel overall when I'm eating like a health rockstar. Being an athlete, I know the importance of fueling my body. I know what efficiently fuels my body and what's just fluff. I know my jazz.

But sometimes I don't do so hot, and this time the budget is the culprit.

A tricky budget is nothing new in my world, but I always figure it out one way or the other. I'm not always the wisest of consumers and I waste money on things that I convince myself I will die without, which then takes those funds from more important things or goals. One of the bigger goals being returning to student status in the fall and finishing my dance degree next spring (I took this last year off due to finances, for those readers new around here). I'm so close, only two semesters to go!

I've been chipping away at some hefty past-due tuition at the university over the last year and now that I'm down to the wire - two months until fall semester! - I'm in full-on penny-pinching mode. If I had forced myself into said mode months ago this wouldn't be so critical now, but c'est la vie. Long story short, I'm cutting corners and food is one of them... which means three days this week so far I've eaten cup o' noodles for lunch. Ah yes, so nutritious.

I know, I know... you don't need to tell me. But to help give myself some peace of mind, I give my cup o' noodles some oomph with half a tuna or egg salad sandwich (eggs and canned tuna are great cheap protein options, P.S.) and whatever fresh veggies were on sale that day at the grocery store. I keep snacks simple with more veggies and/or fruit and a protein such as yogurt or cheese. And Homeboy has saved the day by feeding me substantial meals for dinner.

I know I can do better than this. I know it's possible to eat on the cheap without sacrificing all nutritional heft. It simply a matter of getting creative and disciplining myself to meal prep better than I have over the last several months. And although I may know my jazz, I don't doubt that there are ideas and tips you all might have that are new and fresh to me... so please send your own healthy-but-cheap strategies my way!

Bon appetit!

xoxo
J