Mornings are the hardest

The mornings are the hardest.
I just cannot get out of bed, no matter if I've slept decent hours at night or not. It's partly due to depression, partly, well, me. This is the product of these past nine years of surgeries, illness and heavy medicines.

Can I hope that this will change?
Recently I don't hope for much of anything, to tell you the truth. I have it pretty bad.

I can still put on the happy face, though. But I know my kids feel the difference, I've been laughing less, enjoying life less, doing less for myself and them.

It is what it is.

It definitely could be partially the side effects from my migraine medicine. I take it every day, it's preventative. The good news is that it works; I haven't had a migraine in a good long stretch. Barely even a headache. The bad news, like always, is the side effects. It could be dragging me down emotionally and also making me feel so tired all the time. Those side effects are known about the medicine. At this point I do need the medicine, nothing else worked. The migraines, as we all remember, were horrific.

I kind of feel recently that my writing is useless... doesn't matter if I write or not. Goes with how I've been generally feeling about life, I guess. Useless. I know it's not true, it's just my mourning. My mother is gone, and I just watched Sabrina die. It's been a hard time.

they say that sometimes seeing a butterfly can remind you of a deceased person you loved

My physical health issues, for the most part, are much more under control than they have been since I had NF. Took a long time. The pain I deal with now is from two different places in my right hip... we don't know what is what. Endometriosis is one possibility, but un-diagnosable, and the other possibility is that my hip needs to be replaced. This is the right hip, from the surgery a year and a half ago. It's just hurting more and more every week. The success of that surgery didn't last very long, and although I need another MRI, I think it's completely arthritic, as it was at the surgery.

Tomorrow I head to Tel Aviv, to Ichilov, to my orthopedic oncologist for a follow-up for PVNS. That's the left hip... two different doctors for two different problems in two hips of the same person. I don't feel much pain with the left hip, so hopefully he'll just release me for another MRI in another year follow-up.

Skin grafts on Gapey are not happy- all dry and cracking, no matter how much I put creams on them.

I'm off to the northern beautiful city of Tzfat after my Tel Aviv doctor's appointment tomorrow. It's for my dear friend, Miriam Devora's wedding. Since I am in the year of mourning for my mother, I can only go to the ceremony part of the wedding (chuppah) and not the party, but I wouldn't miss it for the world. Robert and a few of the kids will come on Thursday for the wedding, too. Then we'll make our way back down south for Shabbat... and help other friends celebrate their engagement.

I am happy for everyone who I love and care for with the good things happening in their lives... and at the same time, the Jewish laws of mourning feel so right to me now (no public displays of celebration). I need that protection, mourning is an integral process of life and I feel fragile. So, I continue, as we all do, to search for balance in our lives, however that comes for us individually.