It’s time to call in reinforcements.

Sometimes doing it alone requires a team.

I have thrown a white flag at life this week. Some unexpected health issues have turned my life upside down. In early October I went to the emergency room for what turned out to be a blood clot in my leg.

Now I can’t ride my horse because I’m on a blood thinners and can’t risk the fall. That had been my escape, my therapy, and my exercise all in one. Now I’m having my trainer ride him an extra day a week, a friend for another day, and I lunge him when I can. It’s working for him, but has been a huge change for the rhythm of my life.

And there’s more. Because it was estrogen that probably caused the clot, I can’t take the one thing that was evening out my brain fog, giving me energy, and making me feel like a calm, regular person again. This has had big consequences in my job as I try to navigate both the clot and the severe changes to my thinking, which I believe will adjust again (I hope).

But there’s more. It was found that I have a fibroid tumor the size of an orange. This makes the rather significant semi-dangerous symptoms that I don’t need to go into make sense.

The thing is, you can’t exactly say to people at work “I’m sorry, I’m not able to think clearly right now, my hormones are out of whack and I have a mass creating disorder and discomfort in areas you don’t want to know about.” No one really cares, and if they did they couldn’t understand, and at most they just don’t want to know.

So between the stress of trying my best to be 110% at work and failing, losing my regular routine of riding therapy, and being consistently uncomfortable at best, life has been hard. On the plus side, I’ve added more great students to my lesson program, and have friends who have really helped out.

But this girl is headed for trouble. So I’m starting therapy this week, and also am starting to work with a personal trainer. I figure a therapist that talks back might be good for a few months while I try to work this out, and a personal trainer might keep me moving in the direction that I want to get back to physically.

I’m exhausted, and I’m somewhat terrified. Under all of that though, is something that I have finally developed, and that is that no matter what comes next I’m going to be ok, and I’m going to be me.