June 9th is World APS Day.  Who decided this was the day for this event exactly I am not sure, but it has gotten me thinking this week about the impact that having APS has had on my life.  And I was thinking that it would be easy to sit back and have a pity party, because this is a chronic disease that has affected my life in ways I couldn't have even begun to have imagined before I knew about it.  (And still could affect my life in ways I still haven't imagined, but that's another post for another day!) 

Thankfully, I skipped the pity party and let the second thought take residence in my mind:  being grateful that I was diagnosed with APS when I was.  A lot of the reading I have done leads to a general belief in the medical community of doctors who are educated on the disease that there are many more people who have it than are aware of it.  There are probably several reasons for this, I think. First, because it is a fairly recent autoimmune disease (mid '80s) to be discovered.  Not all doctors know or are educated about it.  Also, the main symptoms can hide behind other more common diseases or issues.  The blood test for the lupus antibodies is not entirely accurate as a diagnostic tool due to the body's normal fluctuations of the antibody levels.  So usually something like a stroke, heart attack, or several miscarriages has to happen as well for doctors to really start taking a look at causes.  And even then it is not the first place they look. 

I was very blessed to have a cardiologist in southern Utah who had a oncologist for a husband.  She was perplexed as to why all of my tests kept coming back normal, on everything.  But she kept digging anyway and happened to mention it to him one night, which led to the blood test eventually coming back positive.  I am lucky - I suffered no damage from my cardiac event leading to my diagnosis and  this puts me in the minority.  I am grateful for a doctor who took the time to help me and not just dismiss my problems.

I have been so blessed with great doctors, both here and in southern Utah.  Since I take blood thinners everyday to reduce the chance of blood clots occurring, I see some of them fairly often.  I am grateful for their knowledgeable help and patient concern with me as I struggle through this disease with my allergies, asthma, pituitary cyst and the host of everyday issues that always seem to come up.

One of my greatest blessings throughout this has been my husband.  He has patiently and lovingly taken care of me and been my constant support in every way.  I have the hardest time asking others for help because I like to be independent and do things myself.  Learning that I can't do everything and that I do have physical limits now has been difficult.  But David and I are a team more now than we have ever been before because of it and I am grateful for that. 

I am grateful for my family and their unconditional love and support.  They are always willing to jump at the chance to help us out in any way possible.  I am learning firsthand about the ways that service knits people together and that being the one who is being helped is also a growing experience.  I am grateful for the example of perseverance in my father, who is struggling through some even more major health issues, in my opinion.  Yet his example stands in front of me daily and I know if he can do it with the kind of pain he lives with, then surely I can do it too.  Dad has always been a great example to me of doing what needs to be done, even when it's not fun or enjoyable. 

I am grateful for the Savior's Atonement and for a Heavenly Father who is always ready to listen when everything just gets to be too much.   I can go and lay my struggles at His feet and know that the Savior has already struggled through this for me and that I can make it.

These tremendous blessings that I am so grateful for make any reason for a pity party look so, well, pitiful!  It's almost like seeing the rainbow after the rain -  although I know that there are still struggles to come with the APS, so I think I will just keep looking for the rainbows.