****Mama's Hip Tips****

Hey, my friends, it took me a long time to change my blog new. But I felt I grow out of my old blog MamasHipTips. My new blog new is Nicole's heartbeat. I'm ready to share moments in my life a heartbeat at a time. To me, this means step by step. I know I shared things bit by bit this last couple of years with my health and more. But I was always scared to show more. I started my blog when my son was a baby and now he is 8 years old.

The way I live my life is so different now then it was then. I had to change my life so much after I had my surgeries. I feel like I'm not the same person I was then. But it is a good thing I have grown so much. My family as grown so much. I felt like my old blog new was not me anymore.

I'm going to blogging about all my things still and much more. I want to be more open now and now it feels right. Thank you again for all your support

Here is the start of my long journey on Nov 10th, 2014 was my first surgery. I knew I would have to set the date for my second surgery because you can't do both arms at the same time. I can explain why I had my surgeries in a simple way because it's a long story. I have thoracic outlet syndrome I talked about before here before I was getting no blood flow to both arms and it causes great pain. If I was not to have the surgeries I was at high risk to get blood clots and lose my arms. Also, the pain was getting worse every day and I made the choice to do this because everything else I tried to control the pain did not work.

So I want back to work in Jan 2015 but part time. But my other arm was getting worse and I needed to have surgery again. So I had surgery in April 2015, I had Julian 4th Bday party early so I can enjoy it for him Meanwhile I told my job of almost 10 years I needed to have surgery again and they let me go due to me leaving to have surgery. I was so upset and now I have no job. But that's another story. I went forward with surgery and I was in the hospital for a whole week. So again the recovery time was long.

Now we are in Sept 2018 I can't believe how time is passed I still deal with pain in my arms but it is manageable and I'm not at risk of getting blood clots now. But I still have to take nerve pain medication for now. Nerve medication helps my nerves calm down. You see I have all these nerves I never used and now it feels like someone is shocking me or my arms get very sore and I have to rub my arms very hard so the pain can go away.

But the reason I tell you this is before I had my surgeries in 2014 I had a bad quality of life. For example, I would do one thing like go to the store and then pick my son up at school and I would be so tired and weak. This was because I was not getting the right blood flow in my body. But now I have more energy.

I do struggle with different emotions feelings of sadness still but it is not every day. The beginning of all my surgeries it was very hard mentally. No one tells you how hard mentally it is having two major surgeries and the recovery time with your physical pain. But time heals everything. Now 2018 I have some hard times. But I had to change the way I think and know I can't overdo it some days. Some days I have to still take it easy. I realize this is my normal. I struggled for a long time comparing myself to everyone around me. But now I take it day by day. I enjoy every little thing now like how pretty the Arizona sunsets are and how I'm blessed to see them every day.

The reason I'm sharing this is I want to tell anyone if you are going through something like this their is hope. In the future I will share more. I'm still get a bit embarrassed about all of this. But I choose to share more because if I can help one person that is all that matters.. Here are some of pictures through the years. I tried my best to find pictures in 2015 and 2016 but those were hard years. I hope to find some I like. Thank you again my friends for supporting and reading this. I going to share more and not be embarrassed to blog like I use too...