Untold Story of My Medical history / Part 1

I will be back, wish me luck! :)

I have been slowly recovering from the angiogram, but I am scheduled for my routine procedure today. Sigh... the pain in my leg is getting worse each day and I know that the procedure will help to relieve some of the pain after the procedure. I will be off soon, but in the meanwhile, I decided to write the "Untold (partial) story of my medical history" while I am recovering and stuck in bed.

I know I have never shared with you exactly what it is that I have, so I have decided that I will tell you about a small part of my medical history. The part that I got extremely sick after being married for few years, to finding the special treatment to improve my quality of life tremendously... let me give you little bit of history, just in case you are here for the first time on my blog.

The medical condition I have is called "venous Malformation" and it is pretty much all throughout my right leg. My leg below the knee was so bad that the doctors told my parents that if I don't have an amputation I will die soon. My parents went to see many different doctors but they all said the same thing. They waited until I was two, and there goes my right leg (below the knee). I still had venous malformations in my thigh but it was not as bad as below the knee, also, if I lost my whole leg, it would have been much harder for me to learn how to walk. So they decided to keep it.

Basically what it is, is that the veins in my leg are very wide, tangled, and have offshoots that I am not supposed to have. When the symptoms act up, my whole leg gets very hard, and I have tremendous pain. It is the kind of pain that I have hard time explaining, because it is not something you will experience from bruises, cuts, burns etc. The best way I can describe it is that it can be a very sharp pain, or dull pain. Also, sometimes I feel like someone is putting their hands around and squeezing everything inside.

It is the kind of the pain where I will be bed ridden, cannot even crawl to the bathroom without crying. Even rolling over cause’s crazy pain so usually I will just stay in one position and pretend that I am dead so I don't feel the pain. I have high pain tolerance, but even then, I can't help the tears flowing down.

Also, for some reasons, I will get extremely anemic to the point that I will need blood transfusions if it's untreated. The pain and the anemia go hand in hand without fail. Even the doctors don't know why they are related.

Growing up there were no treatments, so all we (I mean including the doctors) could do was to wait for that to pass. That is why I was always in and out the hospital, anemic most of the times.

After 3 years of being married and living in America, I became ill. There is a whole lot to this story but I am not going to write it here. Seriously I could write a novel if I go into details! Usually, in two to three weeks I get better, but this time it didn't. We waited, and waited... after three month later it was evident that I was not getting any better. In fact it was getting worse. My hematocrit dropped to the point where I had a hard time breathing on my own. I was hospitalized in a local hospital (not U of U).

There they gave me blood, but my body kept rejecting it. They didn't know why... then, a doctor came in to my room in the morning. Let's call him Doctor D. He was flipping through my chart as he came in to my room. He introduced himself and asked me few questions than said:

"hmm... you are losing blood because you are pregnant."

What?! I was stunned! Mr. TRH and I were trying to start our family and a few month previous to that I stopped taking the blood thinner (Japanese doctor put me on to control my VM somewhat) and switch to daily shots. So it will not affect the baby.

So in an instant I had mixed feeling of joy and doubt. I was thinking "What? Am I really pregnant? But how does he know? They haven't done any tests." I still remember my feeling then, though, I was happy if I was pregnant, but I also desperately wanted to get better to protect the baby.
As I was thinking all these things, I said,

"Am I really pregnant?

Then you know what he said?

"Oh, you are not?"

Then he started flipping through the chart again.
I have been sick for three month. Living in the U.S for about three years, I understand most of what people were saying but still had difficulty speaking and describing exactly what I wanted to say back then. Also I was away from my family in Japan. My stress level just reached the limit when he said "Oh, you are not?" I wanted say to him "What do you mean; oh you are not? I am not pregnant? What are you saying?!"

Instead I just started to cry. The feeling of worry, scariness, sadness, tiredness, frustration and everything... I just couldn't take it anymore.

Dr. D was looking down at me with the chart in his hand and asked me,

"Why are you crying?", in a very strange and cold voice.

I couldn't say anything because of the crying... I didn't even know what to say.

Then, he just grabbed the Kleenex tissue box and threw it on my chest, huffed and stormed out the room...


To be continued....

Tutorial ~ She Wears Flowers

A few weeks ago, I did a guest post for Tatertots and Jello and shared this tutorial. In case you missed it, I am posting this on my blog today. Enjoy! :)

I am sharing a cardigan refashion today. If you have some old cardigans in your closet that needs a little facelift; then, this tutorial is perfect for you!


This is one of my favorite cardigans; I wore it for several years. I love the 3/4 sleeve, the open neckline, and the color... but I had this idea in my head to change the look of it, and I really wanted to give it a try.



{You will need}

A cardigan

100% cotton fabric that would match the cardigan (it doesn't need to be the same color, but it needs to either blend in with the cardigan, or have contrast and match with the flowers that you will accessorize the cardigan with)

Various fabrics, wool, and buttons

Matching thread

{How to}

{Assembly for the cardigan}


1. To make the bottom part, I cut the fabric like I am making bias tape. I used 36"wide muslin. Make a large square, fold it in half vertically. Cut 4 1/2" strips.


2. Piece them together. Fold the bottom less than 1/4" twice and saw.


3. Sew the top with largest stitch setting on your sewing machine. Pull the thread to gather the fabric. For this cardigan I didn't want lots of ruffles, so just a little to have flare. :) The bottom of the cardigan measured 30"all around, so I used 45" long bias and shrank to 30" long.


4. Pin the bias ruffle all around the bottom of the cardigan. I used zigzag stitches to sew it on. Fold the ends and zigzag to finish it off.


5. Add wide lace little bit above the fabric ruffle using the same technique as step 3 and 4.


6. I wanted to give more interest to the back, so I added a second row of lace ruffle. I cut 14 1/2" lace, and folded the both ends and zigzagged them prevent fraying, made a ruffle and added it in the back.


7. Cut 1 3/4" x 6 1/2" lace, and sew it on the waist line too. Make sure to center it so that both step 6 and 7 line up nicely.


8. For the sleeves, mine was 8 1/2" around. I cut 14" long lace and sewed the ends together, zigzag the ends to prevent fraying. Using the same technique as step 3 and 4, make ruffles and sew it on the bottom of the sleeve. Do the same to the other sleeve.



{How to make flowers and Yo-yo's}

*Folded fabric flower
1. Cut 8 - 3" x 3"squares and fold the squares according to the picture.



2. Using two strands of threads, put through each petal, don't forget cut off the excess.



3. Tie the ends to form a circle to make a flower. I like to sew each petal to each other to secure them.



*leaves
Cut 1" x 2" rectangle first, and trim them so they look like leaves. They don't have to be perfectly unified.



*Flat flowers
Cut 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" square and trim it so that it will have four petals. Cut small circles for the middle.



*Felt flower (Light green)
1. Cut 6 - 1" x 2". Trim them so that they have round top.


2. Fold the bottom in half and pull them through the thread to make a flower. I stitched them together several times to secure them better.


*Felt flower (muted pink)
1. Cut 6 - 1" x 1 1/4" rectangles, trim them so that they will have rounded top.
2. Using the same method from step 2 on felt flower (purple), make the flower.
3. Cut circle for the middle and sew.
4. Sew yo-yo on top of the small felt circle



*Yo-yo

I used 3" and 2" circles to make yo-yo's. Smaller ones on the felt flowers are made with 1 1/4" circles. If you need to see how to make yo-yo, you can go to my tutorial.

{Assemble}


In my opinion, this is the most fun part. Just lay down the cardigan and lay down the flowers and yo-yo's to see what you can come up with! It is better to deiced where you want to bigger pieces go first than diced on smaller ones.
Pin them to see if you like the lay out. If you do, it is time to stitch them onto the cardigan.

I used some DMC floss to do fun stitches on the flowers and leaves. I did lots of slip stitches around the yo-yo's.

After you are all done with above, you can add buttons and such.

I had lots of fun making this, but wearing it was even more fun.






Why I am smiling? I have other ideas that I can't wait to try with more fabric and wool flowers, thinking about the possibilities makes me so excited!


I LOVE how it turned out! It will be fun to have some colors under the fall & winter gloomy sky; it is one of my ways to brighten up the day a little. :)
NOTE: Since I am having another procedure this week, the link party is cancelled. Sorry.

Link Love No. 71!

I don't know what it is with me, but lately I have been sewing like I am possessed. I am taking it easy, but if I have any time left, I will be sewing.

I am slowly recovering from the angiogram, and I guess subconsciously I want to squeeze in as much as sewing time as possible before having another procedure.

The thing is, I am enjoying sewing so much so that I keep forgetting to take pictures of the process for my tutorials. I am sewing to sew. I will share the finished pictures later (probably after I get better from the next procedure).

Link Love No. 71 had lots of fall decorations and goodies; have you all visited them?

Ok, here are the link loves for this week.

I can't believe Christmas is only a couple months away... around this time I am always thinking about what to do for Christmas gifts for my girlfriends. I was thinking about making coin purses like this one... Originate and Renovate, used a pattern from Amy Butler's book and made such a pretty coin purse. Looking at her pictures made me wanna make this coin purse even more!


Have you ever wondered how to make rock candy? I have! Glue Sticks solved the mystery for me and shared how to make rock candy. What a fun project to do with kids! Thank you for sharing.


I am not big into Halloween decorations, but I fell in LOVE with this crow garland shared by Homework. What do I love about this garland? I love her use of colors, the circles, and the crows add a "Halloweenish" feel without being over powering.

I would love to have it on my mantle.


Another fun Halloween decoration that caught my eye was shared by Just Peachy. What? Did I mention FREE printables? Yes, isn't she so nice? She has more printables on her blog, but these are my favorites!


I AM IN LOVE! Restore Interiors shared her beautiful and unique letters with us. I hopped over to her blog, and saw many beautiful things that totally speak to me. :)


Thank you all for sharing your creations. Happy creating!