Lifestyle Lowdown: Introducing Me…

As a side note/backstory, I feel compelled to tell you that I have sickle cell anemia. In case you do not know what that is, which most people don’t, I have a whole video dedicated to it on my youtube channel, which you can watch here. Basically, it is a blood disorder in which, instead of being round, one’s red blood cells are sickle shaped, or shaped like a half moon. This leads to the cells getting stuck in various veins, causing many serious problems, but the most prevalent one being pain. I’ve had this all of my life, as I inherited it from my parents (thanks mom and dad! ;)). In 2008, I was hospitalized with pain over Christmas, and the doctor didn’t fully understand my illness so he gave me two blood transfusions, and when he didn’t think my hemoglobin was high enough (which is a whole other story, one that I won’t get into today), he ordered another transfusion, despite the fact that neither my parents or I wanted me to have one. Literally, all I remember is at 3 am, the nurse came in, saying that the blood he had ordered had arrived and that they were going to start transfusing me, and then I fell back to sleep. I woke up at 4:08 (exactly, I’ll never forget that) with a massive headache, and it was a kind of headache that I had never experienced before. Despite all of that, at 9 am, my doctor sent me home (headache and all). At first I was thrilled, as it was Christmas day, but I still felt rotten when I got home, so I took a nap, my mom beside me. Long story short, 3 seizures and lack of the ability to speak (I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but couldn’t get the words to come out of my mouth) later, I was rushed back to the hospital to discover that I’d had a brain haemorrhage .

Photo from here.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010, where I had returned to normal living (basically as soon as it happened, as I went back to school and graduated high school on the honour roll and with some awards in 2009). I had started my university life, but as it was summer, I got a summer job. It was a connection of my dad’s, as his business contact and friend, had offered me the job. It was pretty far away from where I lived, and I had to take a long subway ride and a bus to get there, but I didn’t care. Life was good! At the beginning of June, I’d already started the job, was liking it a lot and was getting into a routine. I got sick with a bit of pain and a cold, so I stayed home for 3 work days and then the weekend. On Monday morning, as I’d been sick the week before, my mom offered to drive me to work. So, I woke up early and got ready as usual, feeling slightly weak in the process, but as I had been sick the week before and therefore hadn’t eaten much, I thought nothing of it. Now, to provide even more backstory, I have to tell you, as much as I love her with every fibre of my being, my mom sucks at directions. We had done well until we had basically gotten to a fork in the highway, and took the wrong road. So, we got off the road and pulled into a gas station. My mom asked me to pick up the directions (Mapquest is my mom’s best friend), and I couldn’t really lift my arm, so I somewhat managed to do so by lifting my elbow first and then dragging the rest of my arm up. My mom, being a nurse, immediately noticed and freaked. She literally turned right around and drove me to a hospital. I had had a stroke due to sickle. I stayed in the hospital (this one a much better hospital than the one I’d stayed in in 2008) for a week, as I had to recover from the stroke and then returned to normal function and life. Three weeks later (after my birthday, thank god) I had a second stroke. This time, I had lost the ability to speak (worse than with the haemmorage) and had the same weakness. A week later, I had a cerebral artery bypass, or in simple terms, brain surgery. I have (obviously) returned to complete normal function, but two things that I have noticed is my ugly scar (which is totally obvious if I don’t part my hair on the side) and my memory, that has gotten worse in time. I’m not joking when I say that it was severely affected and I hate that because I used to have an excellent memory (not that I’m bragging, honest). But, oh well! I am alive and all is well (for the most part) so, I really, truly cannot complain.

Photo from here.

Photo from here.

Okay, so getting back to getting to know me…

Photo from here.

Another one of my passions, if you can even call it that because one wouldn’t be alive if they didn’t do this, is food. Food, in general, has proven to be one of my biggest weaknesses in the last few months. I enjoy food WAY too much, and I mean that completely, and utterly sincerely. Since my surgery, I’ve gained a fair amount of weight, and I didn’t really understand why until maybe about 3 months ago. I used to say, “I don’t get it because I’m not doing anything different”, but then finally it clicked. That was exactly the problem! I wasn’t doing anything different, I was eating the exact same way that I had my whole life, but since, post surgery, my doctors got me to do a red blood cell exchange (similar to a blood transfusion, but instead of all of the properties of the blood, they just take out my red blood cells and replace them with someone else’s) once monthly, my red blood cells were healthy and could do their job properly. This meant that in all of the fatty foods that I could get away with eating before, all of the nutrients (or lack thereof), were getting transported around my body. They weren’t doing that before, because, in a nutshell, I was unhealthy. But, as I’d lived the unhealthy way my entire life, I wasn’t used to eating healthy, thus leading to weight gain. Does that make sense? I hope so. 

Spaghetti Carbornara, photo from here.

Nevertheless, I love to cook and bake. My mom is a great baker and my dad is a fantastic cook, so I guess I just adopted it from them :). I’ve grown up in an environment where there has always been something delicious smelling/looking in the fridge and a fresh batch of cookies on the table (even though my mom has slowed down with the constant baking as she gets older). Also, my parents have always been there to teach me how to cook this or bake that, so I pretty much started to love it from a very young age. My favourite thing to cook is Spaghetti Carbonara or a “Spanglish” sandwich, which hopefully I will do a post on (let me know in the comments if you would like to see those)! I also love baking (pretty much anything; it literally brings me peace and/or calms and de-stresses me) cupcakes and Victoria Sandwich Cakes! Mmmm….delicious! *licks lips* 

Beautiful, isn’t it? Photo is from here.

My last two passions, well at least the ones I would like to talk about in this post, are sewing and photography. I learnt to sew at a very young age (another thing that my mom taught me) and ever since then, I have loved it. It’s one of those things that I don’t do often anymore, but when I do, I just get completely consumed by it. I put so much effort and love into everything that I sew and to say the very least, I love it! There was a point where I liked it so much that I sewed my own clothes (oh yea, picture a 8-9 year old rockin’ her own designs in elementary school; I was that girl ;)). When I have the time, I sew random things and it makes me so happy.

Lastly, I absolutely ADORE photography. I’ve always had this problem, one where I love looking at beautiful things but could never re-create them (I suck at art, and I’m being completely honest and I’m not afraid to admit that). The closest that I come to recreation is makeup, but even then, I like to do it, but I’m not very good at it. I think there is nothing in life, nothing at all, that can trump a beautiful photograph of the New York City skyline at night, or even something as simple as a beautiful flower. I really do appreciate photography and hope that one day, I will attain/improve on the skill of photography. Last summer, I participated in a 30 day photography challenge that I found on pinterest (check it out here!), and hopefully, I will do another one soon, as it was a lot of fun! 

Alright, so there you have it, all of the deets on the things I love! What are your passions? Do you share any of mine? Leave a comment below! 

xx,
S♥