Hi Mousse, welcome to our home!!

Thank you for the lovely complement!  It´s nice to hear!  

Mousse, you haven´t lost yourself, not yet sweety.   You´re just sick and like any wounded animal, you´re going to retreat into yourself trying to protect yourself for you are hurting.   We ALL know exactly what it´s like to be in that very spot of yours. Trust me!

Mousse, we each have our strengths and weaknesses, but when we start our journeys seeking for answers to our health problem we are all the very same as you are feeling now - frightened to death, sick as dogs, and totally miserable!  Let's not forget igonorant as all get out!   Yet, slowly the answers come and the reassurance returns with them because with the answers comes treatment and then relief and slowly but surely you begin to understand and deal with your sickness.

So, don't dispair, you'll find your way back down the yellow brick road and you'll see that it's more rosey than you thought!

If there is one thing I've learned, it's how damaging ignorance is!  I'm an educator and I fully believe in the liberation that learning gives.  The more I've studied, the more I've understood my body, the more control I regain and the more confidence as well.  With all of this the fears diminish!  

Masto, and any disease, will indeed rob you of a lot, but only if you really allow it to.  Besides, it's really an exchange, you gain a great deal with it too!   I'm must more understanding of people with chronic health problems now and am able to consider myself much less than before.  I've also gained so very much personally in that I've seen what a strong and even intelligent woman I am.  I've gained so much in self-confidence that I almost don't recognize myself, but it's not an arrogant kind of self-confidence but more like a self-realization, which is much healthier!  The victories outweight the defeats, the gains overtake the losses!

Masto will rob you, but only if you allow it to.  Any disease will rob you, but again, only if you allow it to.  Your body is what is dying, but not your spirit!