Marriage, friends, and vaccinations

We're finally getting married! Hallelujah!

The pastor who has been counseling us told us about two weeks ago that he thinks we are ready to get married. We've been waiting to hear those words for a couple of months now! We've scheduled it for the 11th of November. It's just going to be a very small private ceremony - no guests, and that's just the way we want it. We're both looking forward to it and are counting down the days until the 11th!

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I met last night with one of the men from the church we've been attending. I'm in need of some good friendships/advice from Christian men, and I'm hoping last night is the start of what will develop into a good Christian friendship.

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I've been doing some research into vaccine safety recently. We need to decide what our plan is for immunizations once our baby is born. The easiest thing to do would be to just have him get all of the recommended immunizations at the recommended times, but I don't know if that's wise. A lot of people are concerned about various negative things associated with vaccines. Some people believe that vaccinations are linked to autism. Some studies suggest there is a link between the two; other studies suggest no link. Who to believe?!?

Hannah is in one of the high-risk groups for the H1N1 flu because she's pregant. When you're pregnant your immune system is greatly suppresed so you can catch illnesses much more easily, and once you do catch them they can easily develop into something much more serious, like pneumonia, for example. She found out earlier this week that the H1N1 flu shot would be available in our area today, so she called her doctor yesterday and found out that they were recommending she get the shot. (At her previous appointment the doctor said she didn't have a recommendation yet.) In my research online I had discovered that most of the H1N1 flu shots contain thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury - which some studies have linked to autism. However, a small set of H1N1 shots was being manufactured without thimerosal for those who are concerned about the potential negative effects of it. Thankfully the health department did have some thimerosal-free shots, so Hannah got one of those.

It's difficult to know what to do about vaccinations for our baby though. On the one hand we want him to be protected from all the serious diseases. On the other hand we don't want him to be affected negatively in any way from the vaccines, whether it be autism or something else.

Odds and ends

I had my six-month followup appointment with the sleep doctor yesterday. It was an uneventful appointment - the best kind. I told her that I've only been taking one dose of Xyrem per night, because the single dose works quite well for me and helps offset the ridiculous cost of the medication. She was a bit surprised, I think, to hear that I had been taking it that way, but gave her approval for me to continue taking it once a night as long as it is working well enough. She is very pleased at how well the Xyrem works for me, as am I.

We had the corn stove going earlier this week for a couple of days - burning wood pellets - to provide some warmth for the house. The days and nights have been getting quite chilly lately. The wood pellets don't burn very hot though. We tried turning the furnace on yesterday, only to discover that it isn't working. No clue what the problem is. Well, that's not quite true. It's flashing an error code of 31, which is supposed to indicate a problem with the pressure switch. Hannah called her brother this morning to ask if he would come take a look at it as he has some experience troubleshooting gas furnaces. He said he would stop by later today, but he hasn't shown up yet. We're hoping he can figure out the problem, because we can't really afford to call a service technician right now. In the meantime we try to stay warm by dressing warm and using blankets. Oh and we started the corn stove back up today. It is helping heat the living/dining/kitchen area somewhat. It was 55 degrees in the house when we woke up this morning. It's up to just over 60 in the main part of the house now, thanks to the wood pellets. We'll be buying corn soon and that burns a lot hotter than the wood pellets.

Last week we finally met again with the pastor who is helping us with pre-marital counseling. The meeting went well, and he gave us a series of videotapes to watch regarding the biblical view of marriage. We have yet to start watching them, but are planning on starting tonight.

Pre-marital counseling

My fiancée and I have been meeting once a week with the pastor of a local church for pre-marital counseling. Well, it's supposed to be once a week - same time every week. It's been 4 weeks since we last met with him together. We were scheduled to meet with him this afternoon at 3:00, but around 1:45 he called my cell phone and left a message letting me know that an emergency had come up and he would not be able to meet with us today. Last week the same thing happened - he had an urgent situation to attend to and couldn't meet with us. The week before that Hannah (my fiancée) became ill that day and so I went to meet with the pastor alone. The week before that he was extremely busy all week and just couldn't fit us in at our usual time. The week before that one is the last time we both met with him - and that meeting was cut short when an emergency came up and he had to leave.

It's very discouraging. Hannah and I want to get married as soon as possible, but we decided to wait until the pastor feels we are ready to be married. We decided that shortly after our first meeting with him, which was 6 weeks ago, I think. We certainly weren't expecting to have so many of our scheduled meetings disrupted!

The primary focus of the counseling so far has been to help us improve our respective spiritual relationships with God. This is something that we both needed - and still need. I had been a severely backslidden Christian for about 8 years. I'm slowly rebuilding my spiritual relationship - it's a never-ending process that takes time and effort and God's help. More about this in a future post. Maybe.

When we found out about the cancelation today, Hannah remarked that it sure seems like the devil doesn't want us to get married! That thought had occurred to us last week as well. Maybe we're giving the devil too much credit, but it sure seems odd for our meetings to not work out so many weeks in a row. The past couple of weeks in church on Sunday we've been learning about how the devil can interfere in the lives of Christians, so we're wondering if that's what's happening with our pre-marital counseling.

While praying last night and this morning I asked God to please allow everything to work out today for our counseling meeting. Given how the last few weeks have gone I was worried that today would be yet another disappointment. Lo and behold, it was anyway.

So now I'm wondering - was today's cancelation caused by the devil interfering, or did God answer my prayers with a "no" because He knew we shouldn't go to counseling today for some reason unknown to us?

Is it nap-time yet?

I am really struggling to stay awake today. I haven't taken my Xyrem either of the last two nights and it's really affecting me today. I've stayed up too late the last two nights, and set my alarm to wake up and take the Xyrem approximately two hours after going to bed each night. Most nights I can fit in about 3 hours of regular sleep before waking up to take my single Xyrem dose - which gives me another 4 hours of sleep. Well, it seems that two hours into my regular sleep I'm sleeping so soundly that I don't really wake up when my Xyrem alarm goes off. Last night I finally woke up about an hour after my alarm started going off. I could have taken the Xyrem then still, but I chose not to because then I would have slept in an hour later than I wanted to. I'm regretting that choice now because of how tired I am. I just want to lay my head down and go to sleep! I'm working from home so I could probably get away with it, but it would be rather unethical so I'm not going to.

I'd pick the Air Force

(Edit: Okay, apparently Plinky doesn't include the question with your answer - the question that this post is an answer to is: "If you were drafted into the military but could pick your branch, which would you choose?")

(This is the first time I've made a blog post with the help of this Plinky site - I may do it again if I see another Plinky prompt that interests me.)

I love airplanes. I've been dreaming of flying since my childhood days. If I was in the AIr Force the odds that I'd be a pilot are probably ridiculously low, but I'd like to think that I'd have somewhat decent odds of being assigned some job that involved airplanes (fighter jets or otherwise) on some level. That's why I would choose the Air Force.

Every now and then during my late teenage years I considered joining the military. Part of the appeal to me was the adventure that I thought was inherent in any military duty. Another aspect that appealed to me was that of serving one's country. The main reason why I considered military service is because I figured the military could whip me into shape. I've always been underweight and out of shape and never put any serious effort into changing either of those. I'd sort of try, but would give up way too easily when I didn't see quick results. I figured the military probably wouldn't help me gain any weight, but they'd at least force me to get into shape!

I chickened out though. I didn't think I'd make it through basic training (and that would be downright humiliating!), and even more than that I couldn't bring myself to talk to my parents about it. I really liked computer work so I figured I might as well just get a job in the computer field - which I did.

Two months later...

It has been exactly two months since my last post. Time to get this blog moving again!

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I'm still taking Xyrem every night for my narcolepsy. A single dose each night is enough to control my daytime sleepiness rather effectively. Taking the instructed two doses each night would be even better, but as expensive as Xyrem is I just can't bring myself to do that. I can stretch a one-month supply of Xyrem into two months when I only take one dose a night, and that makes the cost a little more bearable.

I'm still amazed at how well the Xyrem works. I haven't taken any of my stimulant drugs (Ritalin/methylphenidate) for over two months now. Two months!!! I used to be heavily dependent on them to just get through each day, and now I don't even need them! Xyrem truly is amazing!

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I've been underweight for as long as I can remember - pretty much just skin and bones. I've generally disliked being underweight and would occassionally put some effort into gaining weight, but never had any success. I had more or less convinced myself that it was impossible for me to gain any weight, no matter what I did or tried. A couple of months ago my fiancee really encouraged me to try again and to put serious effort into it this time. She said to strive to eat more food at each meal, and eat more often between meals too. I started doing that and before long my weight started to creep up, ever so slowly. I started out around 121 pounds. After a few weeks of stuffing myself with food I reached my first target weight - 125 pounds. I was very happy! I kept working at it and got to 127 pounds - and then slacked off quite a bit in my efforts and hovered around 127-128 for several weeks. I recently started working at it a little more and my weight is slowly climbing again. My next target weight was 130 pounds, and I thought for sure I would see 130 on the scale this morning, but alas, I was just shy of the mark, weighing in at 129.5 pounds. I've been working on eating a lot today and am really hoping to see it pay off tomorrow morning when I weigh myself.

The downside to all of this is that since I've been eating a lot more my stomach presumably stretched itself out and it takes more food to fill me up now, and I get hungrier much more quickly and frequently than before as well. If I loved to eat food this wouldn't be a problem, but I don't love to eat food so being hungry so much is rather irritating. I know I shouldn't complain - thousands of people would love to have the problem I do - difficulty gaining weight.

First post in over a week. :-(

I've been struggling with trying to determine how much of my personal life I want to share on this blog. Here, I hide behind a stupid nickname because there are a few aspects of my life which I wish to keep hidden from a few people who know me in real life - people who do not know about the existence of this blog, but they could stumble across it at some point in the future. Problem is, I've already shared enough about me personally here for those people to discover who is hiding behind the Anemic moniker. So I think I'm going to stop worrying about keeping things hidden from certain people and start sharing more about my personal life, and eventually stop hiding behind a nickname, too. Hopefully the posts will be more frequent and more interesting as a result.