It’s been a 2020 of a year.

DECEMBER 19, 2020 / RACHEL / EDIT

2020 has been… hard. 

Health Stuff: 
I started the year feeling miserable. I requested fewer days at my job because my days off were spent recuperating or falling apart from the level of physical activity from the days before. Fast forward to the pandemic and the store I was working at closed permanently. 

I almost got a diagnosis of Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease, my symptoms align with UCTD but my lab work was negative for the markers. I ended up with a stomach ulcer in the spring followed by severe digestive issues that lasted from June-December. I lost nearly 20 pounds in two and a half months and I swear about half of my hair. So I asked the rheumatologist if this could be IBS related to something else I have going on. He said it might be IBD/Chron’s/Celiac disease, and sent me to a gastroenterologist and said I don’t need to return to their office unless my pain increases… To which I’m thinking, increases to what!? But basically they can’t do anything else and they’ve ruled out all the things they know to test for within their specialty. Other doctors tell me my pain is rheumatological in nature…. but apparently it isn’t because they’ve ruled out everything. 

The gastroenterologist didn’t listen to everything I was saying and made his own assumptions so I went for a stomach scope, which showed retained food after more than 10 hours. Followed by a gastric emptying study which was normal. I follow up next month, it should be pretty straight forward at this point as to what is going on. But knowing my luck they’ll send me to another specialist or send me away without a diagnosis at all. 

On the upside… All of the sudden things seem to be easing up but I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m hopeful that maybe I can slowly start adding foods back into my diet that I had to cut out entirely. This is not a new ailment at all, over the years I have had flares of digestive issues, usually not lasting long enough to necessitate seeing a doctor for… or so I tell myself because it’s not a primary concern, unless it lasts for months on end. 

My experience so far has always been, “well everything looks normal”. Ok, but why is this happening and still considered normal? 

Homestead Stuff: 
With all our time at home, we were feeling super inspired to revamp our little homestead and we had big plans. So we bought 25 Cornish cross chickens to raise and butcher. And the following week a dozen new layer hens because raccoons kept picking off our older hens all summer. The meat bird raising and butchering went really well and the meat is fantastic. I’d recommend it to anyone who has the space and the stomach for butchering an animal. 

But my body can’t do this anymore, not even chickens. 

Coupled with the fact that we’re always struggling financially to just exist and what that will mean for my husband’s retirement, or lack of. Leads me to my next point: we’ve decided to sell our house. No more chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, any of it. No more big garden plans, no more greenhouse dreaming, no more talk of building a barn. We loaded up the new egg layers and took them to my dad. Raccoons got to his flock as well this spring so he was glad for the new chickens. 

This chapter is ending. We’ve made peace with it. 
Really that’s all that you can do. 
Do your best and make peace with your decisions. 

I am definitely planning on putting together some videos for our inactive YouTube channel once we actually have internet service again. That stuff is just too hard when you’re trying to keep your cell phone’s hotspot from disconnecting every 20 minutes and trying not to use up all your data.