HELLP syndrome and your pregancy

HELLP Syndrome and Your Pregnancy

What is HELLP syndrome?
HELLP syndrome is a rare but serious illness in pregnancy. This illness can start quickly, most often in the last 3 months of pregnancy (the third trimester). It can also start soon after you have your baby. HELLP stands for Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzyme levels and a Low Platelet count. These are problems that can occur in women who have this syndrome.

Women who have HELLP syndrome may have bleeding problems, liver problems and blood pressure problems that can hurt both the mother and the baby.
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Who gets HELLP syndrome?
Doctors don’t know exactly what causes HELLP syndrome. They also can’t predict who will get it. Any pregnant woman may get this illness.

Most women who will get HELLP have blood pressure problems before they get HELLP syndrome. (But you can get HELLP syndrome even if your blood pressure is normal.)

You’re more likely to get HELLP syndrome if you’re white and older than 25 years of age. You are also more likely to get it if you have had children before or if you had a problem with a pregnancy in the past.
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How can I tell if I have HELLP syndrome?
If you have HELLP syndrome, you may feel tired. You may have pain in the upper right part of your belly. You may have bad headaches and nausea or vomiting. You may have swelling, especially in your face and hands. Rarely, you may notice bleeding from your gums or other places.

Because many healthy pregnant women also have these symptoms late in pregnancy, it may be hard to know for sure if you have HELLP syndrome. Your doctor may order blood tests if you have these symptoms or if your blood pressure is high.
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How is HELLP syndrome treated?
The main treatment for HELLP is to deliver your baby. This may have to be done before your due date. Most women who have this illness start to get better a couple of days after their babies are born.

If you aren’t too sick, your doctor may wait a few days before delivering your baby.

You may have to take a steroid. This medicine helps both you and your baby.

If you have bleeding, you may need blood transfusions or other treatments in the hospital.

Some women who have HELLP syndrome get very sick. Rarely, this illness is fatal.
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What can I do to prevent HELLP syndrome?
There is no way to prevent this illness. The best thing you can do is see your doctor regularly and tell your doctor about your symptoms at every prenatal visit.

If you have HELLP syndrome during one pregnancy, you can have it again during your next pregnancy. The illness is usually less severe the second time.

2013 in one word “BROKEN”

After such a whirlwind 2012 with meeting Oprah Winfrey, hosting a successful Jamie Oliver Food Day Revolution, Starting Ignite Health No one could have prepared me for the reality that 2o13 would knock me down and keep kicking at me.

January 2nd my daughter who has already faced more than any child should have to with health issues fell down 12 stairs. She broke her 4th toe on her left foot. Sounded simple enough but here we are April 8 and that toe has not healed and we are going back to the Orthapedic surgeon on Friday. At our last appointment in March the surgeon looked at Megan’s xray in shock. Turned to us and said I have never had to operate on a toe before. Megan’s body doesn’t heal. I know this intutively but can’t seem to get any doctor to look beyond their area of expertise to the bigger issue below the surface.

Since January 2nd I have been taking care of Megan’s needs for showering, for all meals delivered upstairs before I leave for work. Also Toby my 2 year old labradoodle has had to count on me for all care. In that regard I took him to the Dog park on Good Friday. He had a blast there was water in the pond and he was soaking wet. I decided after an hour that was enough and i needed to get him out of there before he got any wetter! Toby is a very rambunctious! He is enthusiastic and still ALL PUPPY! I got him on his leash with the promise of a treat. He was fighting me as i had to drag him out of the dog park. I thought we were through the worst of that and all of a sudden out of my periphreal vision I notice an arm being raised. Toby noticed it too. I felt him tense and all of a sudden he pulled…..I went with him and landed very hard on my chest on Left side.

I now have a broken rib and a bruised kidney to add to the complications of taking care of Megan. I am learning how to do laundry, cook, sleep on my back , how to drive to my job, how not to stretch, laugh, cough, sneeze!

I ponder if God is laughing again, or if he is sending me a message that I still don’t have priorities right? I have a good sense of humour and it helps a lot.

I will be starting therapy on April 12 officially. I need help to understand why I keep beating myself up, picking at my skin, and I send up my white Flag!

I need help to understand what I am doing right and what I need to change, what survival techniques from my childhood are helping me and which ones need to be removed.

We are broken and we are trying to get up!

Depression and a New Focus

I have been depressed. Absolutely without a doubt It started a few weeks ago when we learned that Megan’s foot is not healing and continued as I realized that in order to face the rest of 2013 I will have to back out of my passions in 2012.

My intentions with Jamie Oliver Food Revolution was to spread the word about eating whole foods and making sure our kids are healthier in the future by stopping the craziness now!

I got asked to become a volunteer in April 2012 and I accepted that challenge with excitement, I focussed a ton of my energy and support into creating a wonderful event in May 2012, I got lots of media coverage and the event was an amazing success.

My intentions with Ignite Health Ontario was to take the food revolution a step further and focus on the whole body experience, we need mental balance, spiritual balance, exercise, we need to eat balanced. Any of these factors being out of balance can cause illness and we always need to remember that.

I was inspired by Ignite London and additionally the creation of Ignite Culture where a full night of topics was related to arts and culture. If that could be done why couldn’t we create a night of health related topics. I was geared up and excited. I shared the idea in an ignite london talk and I had a number of great people come to me afte that to tell me to get in touch with them about this event.

We ran this event in October 2012 and it was a great success. I am very proud of both of these events and the work I did for them.

What I stopped paying attention too was the fact it was impacting my own stress levels, my ability to focus on work and now that we have no way to predict when Megan will be able to walk again I have to raise my hands and scream UNCLE!!

I decided that I need to shelve or back out of both Ignite Health Ontario and the Jamie Oliver food revolution for at least 2013. Making that decision broke my heart I am dousing the flames of passion with my tears. So over the last 3 -4 weeks I have been sleeping a ton, I have had a number of migraines and flus hit me. My Chronic Skin picking (dermatilomania) is at a level that I am struggling to get back under some control.

I have open sores on my arms. hands, chest, face and scalp. They are sore and begging me to stop. I am having so much anxiety around what I do with my life now. How do I translate that passion to taking care of my own health needs when I have never taken care of myself. Where do I start? How do I learn at 44 how to love myself when my entire life has been focussed on helping others. How do I get passionate about work again. There are quiet times that I need to fill with projects and I need to get excited about that and just do it. How do I keep the man beside me who has come into my life as a blessing and I can barely see with the challenges of working full time and being full time caretaker to Megan and the dog too.
I have been crying a ton and finally hit my breaking point last week . I made a doctors appointment to get Megan some more Tylenol 3 for pain and at the same time I asked to have my antidepressant Effexor increased from 75 MG to 150 MG.

I do feel lighter in my thoughts, I am not crying as frequently and do not feel as emotionally lost. I am now having insomnia instead of sleeping too much, I am having cold sweats but I assume thats related to upping my dose of Effexor and it won’t last long.

I have decided that I will focus on work, my health, my daughter, my boyfriend and I will refocus some of my energy to provide direction to Fatty Liver Disease support again. There are some demons that I will need to address in some counselling sessions and its time I took that step to take care of myself again.

I am not out of the woods but I will not hide the fact that yes I am dealing with depression again. I am also taking steps to fight back against its control on me. So 2013 will look very different for me but I hope to have some positive news for you all soon.

Hugs

Michelle

Guest Post – Heather Von St. James – Wife and Survivor of Mesothelioma

Heather asked if I could share her story and I am more than happy to!!

Heather Von St. James
Courageous Mother, Wife and Survivor of Mesothelioma

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
-Mark Twain

I hear it often from people, how brave I am and how much courage I have. Sometimes I just have to laugh, because, going through what I’ve been through with my mesothelioma battle, I don’t feel very brave. At times, the fear was so overwhelming, all I could do was cry out to God to help me. I would love to say that through the last 7 years, I’ve learned to conquer my fears. After all, Lungleavin Day, our celebration of the anniversary of my extrapleural pneumonectomy surgery, is all about overcoming fears. But I still have my moments, more often than I would like to admit. I have the usual fears creep in, my “scanxiety” I’ve blogged about before, little pangs of fear before I fly, but the biggest fear I struggle with is the fear of something happening to my daughter. This is something that has plagued me since she was born.

I’ve always had what I jokingly call puke-aphobia and, with having a kid, you know it something you have to deal with. This year has been particularly brutal on the gastroenteritis front for my poor Lily. Three times she has been sick this year in as many months. When she got sick the third time, the fear reared its ugly head in a big bad way. So much that I took her to the doctor and insisted he do a battery of tests to rule out anything. The thing I was most afraid of? Yep, cancer. Having dealt with cancer myself, and knowing so many others, my hypochondriac mind went right to the worst-case scenario. My husband, bless his heart, is always able to bring me back around to reasonable thinking. Although he understands why I go to the worst-case scenario, he doesn’t indulge it, and his voice of sound reason helps so much to calm me. Except in this case. I could not shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. Turns out he was right. She is a perfectly healthy 7-year-old little girl. Every single test came back as normal as normal as could be and, for some reason, she has just gotten sick a lot this year.

The fear is crippling. The anxiety it causes makes my life miserable and those around me even more so. It is something that I have vowed to work on this year to not let the fear get out of control. Someone told me once that the word “FEAR” is an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real”, and when you think about it? It is TRUE!! The fear is almost always worse than what I’ve imagined and blown out of proportion in my mind. I did something this time that was not easy for me to do. I asked for help from people who I trust and admire, and their guidance and prayer really helped me overcome this obstacle. They gave me some tools to use to stop the cycle and basically send that fear packing. Frankly, God is the one who gives me tremendous peace. I find that prayer and reading His word, writing scriptures that speak to me, and keeping them in a little notebook for my use is a way for me to keep grounded.

With Lungleavin Day coming up, the opportunity is here to write our fears on a plate and smash them into the fire, I’m going to once again take control of my emotions and overcome. I know I have the power to do it; sometimes it is just making the choice to do so.

I hope you too will do something on February 2nd to overcome your fears in the spirit of Lungleavin Day. If breaking a plate is over the top, I find that a paper plate works great, and burning it, or tearing it into hundreds of pieces. If you struggle with fear, no matter what it is, taking control, finding the root of it, and addressing it helps takes it away. I also find humor is a great way to conquer fear, hence “LUNGLEAVIN DAY” It was born out of the desire to make something funny out of something tragic. It is the day my lung left my body.

For this, my 7th Annual Lungleavin Day, I’m conquering fear by surrounding myself with amazing people and sharing our night with anyone who wants to join in. I hope you can join us. Go to my Facebook fan page to join the Lungleavin Day Event and we will be live webcasting on the night of February 2nd, 2013 6:00 pm to whenever the last plate is broken (Central time).

I hope you, too, find something healing about the day just like we do. Together, we will make 2013 fabulous.

Read more: http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/heather/fear.htm#ixzz2J0nHx1ru

Hiding behind a wall – Shutting down emotionally

I have been experiencing an awakening of sorts over the last month. I have become aware that I shut myself down emotionally about 2 years ago for a number of reasons.

I have been very successful at doing presentations and showing my passion for causes I believe in, I have made many friends at the acquaintance level and I would say I am well liked in London, Ontario.

But I started realizing a few months ago that I do not cry in movies anymore and that was something both my kids would tell you they looked at me during movies for.

I have cried in the last month a fair amount, a lot of that is about my sister and my worry for her, some of that was stress related and has been dealt with. But most of it seems to be a crack in the brick wall that I put around myself a couple years ago.

I can place a couple reasons for that initial shutdown, first i lost a best friend and it hurt me deeply, making me not want to open myself up to anyone that much again.  Second, my child was sick and doctors and everyone was giving up on her, calling her a liar and I was constantly battling for her to never back down from any of the naysayers I knew my child was sick and no one would convince me otherwise.  3rd my choice in men had brought me nothing but heartbreak.

I know that shutting down emotionally happened gradually.  I remember complaining that I felt so alone , that no one was really there for me. But no one heard me. My child who was sick was suffering so much worse than I was so i swallowed those emotions down and eventually grew cold.

I know I shut down as a little girl, it was the only way to survive the drama and violence in the home around me.  If I didn’t let it bother me then I could withstand anything.

But I am not a child anymore and I am incredibly sad knowing that I left myself that way for 2 years as an adult. It did let me focus on my job and making a difference in the community. But if you ask me what I like or what my favorite things are right now , i truly have no idea.  I am a giver by nature I have always been good at reading other peoples needs and filling them.  This was again a critical skill in dealing with mentally ill parent and alcoholic parent you had to read the signals to know if you were safe to speak or if you needed to just disappear and hope they didn’t see you.

So I have to break the wall down, it will take a bit of time and it will not be easy. I will not run Ignite Health Ontario in February now that I have figured this out. It is time for me to find my own balance and open my spirit up to the world again. I need to focus on learning what makes me happy and how to balance myself now that my daughter is healthier and stronger.

I have been my own best friend and my own worst enemy in so many ways. I am my best friend in protecting who i love, and making a difference in community because I know those things make me very very happy.  Now its time to let tears flow, to appreciate myself and love myself. I am my worst enemy in disregarding my feelings and disregarding my own wants. I am my worst enemy in taking care of everyone but me.

I am sorry to those I have been cold too, I was not fully concious of this in myself and you have only seen a small sliver of who i really am. I hope you will stick around for the discovery.

Hugs

Michelle

What if the bully is your mother?

I am reflecting on my 15th year of life after watching #RIPAmandaTodd’s video. I was not bullied in the traditional ways at school I worked very hard to keep a smile on my face and pretend that life was perfect. I kept my distance just enough and avoided controversy by trying to be LIKED by everyone.  This was crucial to my survival at school because I was being bullied by my mother at home.

When I think back on my 15th year today I am actually trembling. This didn’t strike me as one of the worst years of my life but clearly my heart and soul remember it vividly to create anxiety in me at 44 years of age. I look around and my mother is not in my life, she can no longer manipulate my friends by pretending to be the best mother and telling them what a liar , slut and bitch I was.

A bit about that year as I think back this morning. My mother was miserable and had borderline personality disorder or some other nasty mental illness that made her jealous of her 15 year old daughter and planning to destroy her. My mother would take my purse or backpack and dump it out looking for drugs or condoms when  I got home from school. I was not sexually active yet, I was not doing drugs…but because I smoked cigarettes that meant I was evil and doing other things too. I drank alcohol with my friends at school I skipped school to have happy moments in my life. I was attracted to the bad boys and the rocker girls because I was being told I was one of them at home.

Other nights my stepdad would be away on business and my mother would force me to sleep beside her in bed telling me that she would likely die overnight and she wanted me to check to make sure she kept breathing. So I would never sleep on those nights, if i drifted off i would wake with a start and make sure she was breathing.

My mother would call my friends and be their support system, manipulating them, making them question why I was so miserable. If I shared anything about the things happening in my house my friends would roll their eyes because my mother was acting so perfect to them.

One night i was asleep in my bed around 2am. My mother woke me up and demanded i get out of bed because someone was on the phone for me. I got up blurry eyed and picked up the phone… I said hello wondering who would be calling for me at 2am…On the other end of the phone all i heard was you are such a BITCH. Then they hung up.  I burst into tears and my mother sent me back to bed.  I cried the rest of the night and got up for school in the morning. I remember so clearly looking at all my friends and wondering which one of them was on the other end of the phone. I had recognized the voice but didn’t get enough of it to be sure who it was. All my friends denied it, Clearly I was insane.  I stopped trusting my friends that day. I felt incredibly alone and my mother had worked very hard to make sure I was.

I was then in a place where I knew that my friends didn’t truly care about me and my mother hated me. I had no one, nothing. This was one of the very first times i considered suicide. I had a mother who was plotting to destroy me. How does that happen? Was I crazy, maybe I was the reason she was so miserable? Maybe I wasn’t worth talking to or being around? 

My 15th year peaked with another night where my mother was threatening to kill herself. This time she locked herself in her bathroom with a suitcase of drugs. I was screaming and pounding on the door begging her not to kill herself and asking her to open the door. She yelled back FINE you want to watch me kill myself you bitch….go ahead come in. My mother was sitting on the floor , she had poured all her pills on the floor and looked up at me and said which one do you want me to take next?  I begged her to stop. she told me that this was my fault anyway, I was the reason her life was ruined, I was the reason she was killing herself. I was frantic I yelled for my stepdad and he called 911.

4 police cars pulled up to my house that night. It actually took 4 police officers to pull my mother out of the bathroom. She fought them tooth and nail. She was taken to the hospital and I was taken to a temporary foster home. I was a mess , and I was put into a co-ed home. This was a mistake for a completely destroyed 15 year old. Boys gave me attention and I lost my virginity that summer because I had no self esteem. I didn’t even like the boy that took my virginity I just thought i might as well do this since my mother said i was a slut anyway.

I was put on birth control that summer which was the right thing to do by the foster family. I actually loved the freedom I had at this home. I started to calm down and they had a big pond that I could sit by and be soothed by the water.  I was having supervised visits with my mother as she was being treated at the hospital and had been there 6 weeks. After she got home I received a call from my mother…and all she said on the other end of the phone was Why did you steal my frozen spinach pastry puffs? I was mystified, I told her I did not steal them and I hung up. Then I started laughing and I knew that my mother was actually crazy. This was the clear line for me.  Why would anyone steal a frozen pastry puff? I was not even living at home to steal it.

In actuality , she was obsessed with me, she needed to control me, she needed to make sure I didn’t love anyone more than her. I was sent home to return to school in August of that year, I decided that when I went home I would no longer respond to her attacks. I would treat her like she was normal and refuse to feed the craziness in her.  At 15 I completely understood mental illness.

She went back to school that september and started volunteering for the college newspaper. She moved into a happy period of her life and thats why my 16th year was actually pretty good.

Amy Todd was bullied to the end of her rope. She didn’t know anyone was there for her, she didn;t have tools to find inner strength and peace to guide her back from the brink. I was lucky that there has always been something in me that was a fighter, I refused to be totally destroyed by anyone. I refused to make my mother happy by killing myself!

At 17 she actually chased me with a knife and wanted to kill me, but thats another story and its in another blog titled the night my mother tried to kill me.

No child should ever feel this alone in the world, Someone should have stood up and helped Amanda stand up to her bully. Whoever that boy or man who constantly manipulated her and stalked her from town to town should be charged with murder. Where was her family? Were they supportive, did Amanda listen to them? She was 15 only 15…..

My message to teens is YOU have NO idea what is going on at home for a child you are bullying. For all you know they have a mother like mine. Are you really willing to be the person that pushes someone to the edge of considering suicide. Be kind, be supportive, don’t rush to judgement. Everyone has a story and everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone deserves to have someone in their life they can turn too.

I survived my mother’s bullying and I wish strength to any child who is dealing with a bully in their home or in their life outside of home. You are not alone. Many of us have been there and know your pain.

Hugs

 

Michelle

 

 

Back Spasm creates Heart Attack Scare

Yesterday was very eventful in my life. On Saturday afternoon, I had a middle back spasm that came out of no where. I hadn’t stretched the wrong way, or tried to move furniture, or lift something too heavy. The spasm felt scary. One of those where you know if you make the wrong move you will be laid out and unable to move. I took it easy for the rest of Saturday. Used Robaxect and hoped for the best.

Sleeping Saturday night was almost impossible, every position hurt, on my back, on the opposite side of the spasm or even on the side of the spasm. I had to get up a number of times and was frustrated.

Sunday the pain seemed to settle into my right side and I was able to keep the pain at bay with Robaxect during the day. Once again at bedtime the worst of it made itself obvious. The Robaxect did not seem to be helping anymore and i was starting to feel clammy from the pain. The pain seemed to now be moving to my chest and settled just under my ribcage.  I got up Monday and headed to the office. Sitting upright in my chair made the pain under my rib cage very obvious and i decided I needed to call Telehealth to get their advice.

Telehealth is a free service in Ontario which allows you to speak with a registered nurse over the phone to discuss your symptoms and they will direct you to your best choice for taking care of it. I explained what I had experienced and the nurse was quite concerned. The base symptoms of the pain below my rib cage with the spasm that started midback and spread across my upper body is also a symptom of a heart attack. She told me to call an ambulance. I assured her i was ok to drive to the emergency department which was 5 minutes from my office. She told me to get someone to drive me to the hospital. I knew I had just driven the 20 minutes from my house to the office without any issue and did not feel any worse than i had an hour ago. I chose to drive myself to the hospital.

On my drive there i started to think about the possibility that i had a heart attack . Megan was at school and i did not want to scare her until I knew what was happening with me. I however knew that I had better contact family in case i was admitted or surgery was required. I thought of the load of laundry that was in the washing machine and how i was upset at myself for not throwing it in the dryer before i went to bed the night before. I thought about how i might need clothes and how that would be almost impossible without the clothes in the washer! Then i thought about how i did not have any family within a 2 hour driving circle who could come be with Megan if I was admitted.

I called my ex husband and my stepdad and let them know i was at the hospital and that i was being checked for chest pain.  I warned them that the worst case scenario was that i may have had a heart attack on Saturday. Both were willing to help if needed. My stepdad said he would need to make a decision if he was flying to Calgary by 4pm and my ex was at work at the airport in Toronto. Both were on standby in the event they were required.

I started thinking about Megan who has been through 5 years of chronic illness and how my visits to the hospital have all circled around her and trying to find answers for her illnesses.  This would devastate her so much at a time when she is flying and doing so well. The last thing i wanted to do was worry her.

I decided i should let people know on facebook and twitter so that i might be able to find local friends who could step up for Megan before family arrived.

The hospital visit was impressive. I was immediately brought into the Rapid Assessment area of hospital, there was no wait for me. This actually scared me more. They were obviously worried about my symptoms too.  So i was put into a curtained room. I was given an I.V. and blood and urine samples provided. A doctor came in with my results for blood and urine within an hour! They decided by the reactions of touching my stomach and back that this could be my galbladder, but that with the test results and my reactions to touch they did not think it was heart. They ordered an ultrasound for my stomach to check liver, galbladder and pancreas.  They said their could be stones in my galbladder. My kidneys and heart were ruled out quickly. I was given pain killers intravenously to make me more comfortable while i waited.

I kept facebook updated as things happened at the hospital. My son Alex and my Aunt Pat were both quick to react. I thought my son would be in classes so i didn’t expect him to see this so early. I assured him that the chance that it was a heart attack had been eliminated and that they were now ruling out other causes of my pain. The last thing i wanted to do was panic my son who is a 2 hour plane ride away in Halifax enjoying his university classes.

2 local friends who really don’t know me very well since i have only been in London Ontario for a year both stepped up and showed what amazing women they are. So a huge thank you to Tammy Lee Marche and Tanya Park.  You both brought me a sense of peace yesterday knowing that no matter what the result was they would be there for me and Megan!

I want to also send kudos to the Ontario Medical system and Victoria Hospital in London Ontario. I have had bad experiences with hospitals and doctors for 5 years with fighting to find out what is wrong with my daughter. I was truly impressed with how quickly and efficiently i was cared for yesterday. This is what my tax dollars pay for and its clear the system works for specific cases of symptoms. Its cases like my daughter who is a mystery that don’t run smoothly in the system.  I could not have asked for better care yesterday and i was in and out of the emergency department in 5 hours . Fully tested with the results that my back spasm has actually morphed into spasms in my chest and this morning I can add the thighs and neck to the areas of spasm.

I was sent home with Naproxen and now i wait for them to start settling my muscles down and ease the pain throughout my body.

I felted completely loved and supported yesterday and despite the false alert I know I did the right thing by going to the hospital. Never ignore chest spasms or pain. It may simply be muscles or there could be organ damage. Get your answer and be sure!

 

I Got Hacked! and How I Recovered!

So I have been really busy getting the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Day together in London Ontario on May 19. That event is looking wonderful and its a free event for residents in my city to learn about nutrition and eating real food!

So Sunday morning I was meeting one of my terrific volunteers and I checked my email before leaving. My email inbox was completely empty.  I was also given a screen  that indicated my account had been accessed from Nigeria.  I went on Facebook and my instant messages started flashing. I didn’t have time to respond so i left and headed out to my meeting.  While I was waiting for her at the coffee shop I went on Facebook from my phone. I had 4 unread emails on facebook.

I opened the first one and they told me that they had received an email from me indicating I was in the Phillipines and that I had been robbed at gunpoint the night before. Apparently I was requesting 2000 to get home after my passport cash and credit cards were stolen.

I opened the other notes and they all said the same thing.  I received a call on my cell from another friend worrying that I might have actually been robbed.

I realized that I had been hacked and that all my facebook contacts and email contacts had received this message.

I immediately changed my password on facebook and on my email account. Then  I went to Twitter and changed password there too.

Later that afternoon when I got home I found that the passwords I had changed things too had been changed again to something I did not set them too.

I went through the process of setting new passwords again and hoped that would be the end of it.

I determined that the reason this happened was likely due to a an email that was in my mail on Saturday night from Rogers telling me that I needed to upgrade to the most recent version of their mail . I knew that they had recently upgraded their email tool so it didn’t strike me as odd to click in that and then go to what appeared to be my rogers sign on screen to enter my user name and password.

  Well done scammers you got me! 

The next morning I went to access my new gmail account and found that my password was not valid.

I thought I was losing my mind. I no longer had access to my primary twitter account on my laptop and my new email account was acting up too?

Twitter continues to be a problem as it has my old email address in its records for me and keeps sending requests to change the password into an account I can no longer access! I no longer have any emails that you may have sent me and I don’t have anything I sent you! I no longer have your email address either!

I have with the help of my awesome technical resource at the office finally cleared this laptop of this trojan, worm or whatever it was!

I am going to provide the steps that I took to resolve this problem and everyone who received this email or who has dealt with this kind of email hack may want to try these steps before they take it to a company to reformat your computer.

1. I was using AVG Free anti virus. AVG scan did not pick up any virus or problems in my computer. I was speaking to a technician last week about anti virus software and he said AVG is the one to avoid. That every day there are users coming in with laptops that were infected by viruses that AVG did not find. He suggested AVAST if I was going to use a free anti virus program.

2 I deleted AVG free anti virus and then downloaded AVAST.  AVAST scan found a handful of errors and I had hoped I had cleared the problem. The next morning I went to  check my gmail account and once again my password was changed and I could not access it.

I spoke to my techie guru at the office and he suggested the following steps.

1. Download Combofix which is freeware and run that first.

I ran Combofix and it cleaned up a ton of errors in my laptop. It took about 10 minutes but clearly did a great job and I highly recommend it now.

2. Then download Malaware Bytes – Anti Malaware.

This took almost an hour to scan my laptop and it only found 1 additional problem that Combofix had not cleaned up.

3. After running the scans change all passwords one more time to complex passwords that combine numbers, letters and characters.

This morning I am happy to report that all my passwords are working correctly. My twitter account still needs the twitter gods to change the email address associated with that account and then I will have Twitter working correctly for me too.

This caused a lot of headaches for me and for my friends thank you for notifying me. I admit i was getting tired of repeating that I was not in the phillipines and that I was already aware I had been hacked.

But it did not stop me from progressing with the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution Day planning. I am on track and this event will be awesome!

Please if you are concerned that you may have a virus in your computer take the advice I used and try it before spending money on reformatting your machines!

Hugs

Michelle

Waiting to Breath! Megan fainted…

It was a beautiful Wednesday in London Ontario, I had a pleasant walk with Toby in the morning and laughed at his efforts to get the squirrel that had just teased him and went up a tree. I got to the office and things were quiet, settled in with my green tea and decided to contact Koworks London about doing monthly workshops on reading labels, designing grocery lists and the health implications in our grocery stores. I was making progress on many things and felt good that I had come out of my rut.

My phone rang at 11:40 a.m. Megan sounded out of breath on the other side and she said mom I just fainted. I asked how she knew that she had and she said she just got up from her bedroom floor where she had been putting her clothes on. Megan has not fainted since 2010.  I asked how she was feeling now and she said the dreaded word dizzy.  This is the word that strikes a nasty feeling in my gut.

Megan spent 10 months in a wheelchair due to Extreme Vertigo that no medical doctor could explain. The experience that we had during this time in the medical community destroyed any faith I had in doctors. The only doctor that took this seriously was the ear specialist who did full testing in her ears to ensure there was nothing triggering the vertigo.

Megan was put on Anti depressants and told this was all in her head. I took her off the anti depressants and we focussed on making her diet extremely clean and osteopathy. These were the things that made the difference. No doctor ever did.

I talked to Megan into the afternoon and the dizziness was replaced with light headedness. She has no idea if she had a seizure before she fainted or how long she was out for. Thats unknown and will remain that way. I took her to the walk in clinic last night and had her blood pressure and ears tested. Both were clear, this is such a familiar feeling. Nothing that doctors test for Megan comes back with a clear diagnosis. Everything with Megan is always gray.

So today I am holding my breath, waiting for her call, wondering if the light headedness has gone away, wondering if she is dizzy, wondering if she fainted again. If this happens again today I will take her to the hospital tonight for another checkup and any tests they need to do.

After work today I already have one appointment for Megan. She has finally admitted that she would like to talk to someone about her fears and concerns. I am happy that Megan has asked for this help as she gets frustrated with me getting upset about her health. This is her pain, this is her insomnia, this is her not being able to go to school and having no social life. I just hate seeing my child suffer like this. I will also start some counselling to help me cope with the constant roller coaster ride that this brings to our life.

I can’t escape the fear that this is the hint that she is headed back to extreme vertigo. That thought scares me so much. I can’t imagine another long period in a wheelchair for Megan. My 3 storey townhouse certainly does not make sense for us if she has this again.  I have to keep reminding myself to thoughts of now and not thinking too far ahead. But the memory of the time in the wheelchair does not want me too.

I made an appointment for Megan to see an osteopath in London in April. This is a good step regardless of whether the vertigo returns or not. I will keep moving forward no matter what the outcome is for Megan, but I sure could use your thoughts and strength for Megan to fight this!

 

Hugs

 

Michelle

 

Depression and Dermatillomania

After watching Darkness and Hope I now recognize a condition that is part of my life long depression battle. I am a fighter but this is a clear sign of the damage done to me in my childhood that has long term consequences no matter how well adjusted i seem!

I have a confession while I am clearing out emotions that need to be shared. This is the deepest darkest most painful thing to admit and I will use as many words as I can to avoid saying it and admitting it to you. As a little girl i was not given love from my mother or father. I was told i was rotten, that i was a mistake , that i was bad, that i ruined lives.

Somewhere deep in my pysche I flipped a switch and decided that I would self punish myself for ruining lives. I had excema as a little girl due to food allergies. I loved the feeling of scratching it raw. It made me feel alive and it made me feel power. It soothed me to know that I controled this level of pain in my life. While my mother yelled at me, my father screamed at her…I could hide in my room and focus on scratching my skin. It was less painful then listening to my parents.

This habit never left my side. When life overwhelms me it soothes me , when I am bored it give me something to do, when i am tired, it wakes me up, when i am anxious i can distract myself, when I am angry i can take it out on my skin! this is and always has been there for me.

Its a compulsion. One I am not aware of doing 90% of the time. I found online support so I know I can get it under control now. Its far more common than I thought it was. I have covered my skin when I go out , I have avoided wearing bathing suits, I have hesitated to explain when people ask what is on my skin. Its my deepest shame and I do this to myself.

Its a form of perfectionism, I think as a teen I was so lucky I did not get acne. So every time I find a flaw on my skin with my hands I feel an overwhelming need to get it out of me. If I tell myself not to scratch or pick my skin I get incredibly anxious, I feel like there are ants crawling all over my sin begging me to scratch.

I have so many scars from this practice in my life. I can’t change that, I accept this as a coping mechanism from my childhood that I have the ability to control now as an adult. I am not the rotten, mistake of a child I was told I was, I am not responsible for the behaviour of my parents. I have created 2 incredible children, I have incredible friends and I am loved by so many.

When I get the urge to scratch I have to fight through it like an alcoholic or drug addict has to fight through that urge to get a fix.

Its my deepest shame , its my deepest secret and now I have shared it all. I am scared to publish this post. Will you all hate me and judge me for this. Will you ever look at me the same once you know I do this? somewhere in me this was my way of proving to myself I am the rotten mistake of a child that ruined my parents lives by coming into it. Do you see the risk I am taking by admitting this? There are tears in my eyes. There is so much fear in me. I know my children hate that I do this and don’t understand why I haven’t stopped. Until now I have not truly seen that this was self mutilation, like cutting, or bulimia for others , this is destroying my body.

One day at a time depression is a life long condition and this is how it manifests in me!