Surprise time...

If you know me in the slightest you know I love surprises.  I love planning them, but love receiving them too.  SO, I've been keeping a pretty big surprise hidden for a few weeks now.  Some have slowly found out, but others have not.  And it's finally time to come clean on the blog/every other social media network out there {although I'm only on facebook.  No twitter/instagram/whatever for me...yet.}.

Back to the surprise.

Are you ready?

drum roll please...

I am back in Oklahoma and actually have been for two-ish weeks.  

Yep.  I'll go ahead and let that settle in for a little bit...

So, why am I here?  Pretty simple answer: my health.  I wasn't recovering as quickly and as easily as we would have liked for me to from mono/pneumonia.  Here's the overall gist of the story:

You might remember that during the months of February and March, I was really sick.  Really, really sick.  I would get better, but not 100% better...and then get sick again.  It was a continuous cycle.  And I was sick about 95% of that time with random illnesses {viral infection/upper respiratory/whatever} that we thought were getting treated.  Well, I never really got better.  And then I got pneumonia.  And then when the docs did my blood work for pneumonia, they saw that I had had mono at some point.

"Mono?!? I've never had mono!!"

That was my exact reaction.  I guess when you have mono, a certain type of blood cell stays in your body and it never really goes away.  So, when they did the pneumonia blood work, they saw that.  We assumed it had been way previous in my life, even though I had never been known to have it.  I got better after getting the correct antibiotics for my pneumonia.  But, my energy levels were still way low. Horribly low.  And they haven't gotten better.  It was at that point that the docs decided that maybe I had actually had mono the entire time I was sick in February/March.  That would explain how my immune system was weak and I got pneumonia.  

So, my PC doc thought it might be a good idea to send me back to the states to recover for a while.  Simply put, it's hard to recover on your own...especially in a foreign country.  It was a continuous cycle of, "Should I stay here and try to recover?  Or go back to the states?"  My mind changed decisions what seemed like every 5.4 seconds.  It wasn't a sure thing that I would be sent back to the states.  We had to get approval from PC headquarters in DC.  They wanted a follow-up chest x-ray.  I obliged...and by 7 pm that night, I knew that I would be stateside in less than a week.

I left Ukraine early Saturday morning, April 28, and made the {incredibly} long journey to the states, arriving in Oklahoma late that night.  I've been in "hiding" since then.  My activities upon arriving in Oklahoma have included: 

*Trying to adjust to this time zone.  

*Resting.  

*Eating more Mexican food and Chick-Fil-A than is probably healthy for a person to consume in a two-week period.  

*Resting.

*Basking in the glory of my giant bed with 15 pillows.

*Resting.

*Slowly surprising random groups of friends.

*Resting after surprising said random groups of friends.  

This is why I've been pretty absent from the blogging world.  And why I've been slightly not telling the {whole} truth in blog posts.  My biggest apologies for that.  I've needed to stay incognito for as long as possible to get some good rest and really get adjusted to this time zone.  Still working on both of those  parts...

I am currently on what is called "Medical Evacuation" which is also known as "medevac" in PC lingo. This is a time period of up to 45 days where I can return to Ukraine without too many hiccups along the way.  Right now, I'm focusing on getting better.  And it's a slow, slow process.  I feel like I take teeny tiny steps each day, and then have a bad day and go 10 steps back.  It's super frustrating because my brain is telling me it's ready to do things.  Walk around the block.  Go to the store.  Eat a meal out.  But as soon as I get home from that activity, I'm wiped out and usually collapse for a few hours.  I'm an active person who likes doing every opportunity that comes my way...and this has been by far the most frustrating part of this entire recovery process.  

SOOOOOOO, now that this is the longest blog post ever {without any pictures}, I'll show you one other surprise that we found in my parents backyard today.  

little bunny foo foo {approximately the size of a hamster}

there are at least 5 of them in the backyard...

My mom was mowing the lawn...and one darted out of some high grass. They are the most precious thing EVER.  Can't wait to play with them more tomorrow...

Much love, this time from America :)

Lyd