So many times we ignore the symptoms until they actually smack us in the face.
I'm going to use poor Madison as an example here.
Madison has bladder/kidney issues. We found them when she was about five, although they'd probably been around for a little while. We had everything looked into and treated things aggressively for a little while, and then gradually backed off as she grew and her body and mind matured. She's generally fine now, knows her issues and handles them well.
But every once in a while, things will flare back up. It's usually a gradual thing. She'll have more "urgent" situations where she needs to drop what she's doing and take a restroom break ASAP. She'll wake up with a wet bed. She'll be generally uncomfortable. None of these things are huge issues on their own, so we'll find ourselves ignoring them. Sometimes, she won't let me know, for whatever reason.
Then, we find ourselves smacked in the face with a big flare. An infection that needs treatment, a public accident that leaves her humiliated. She's upset, I'm upset, and what makes me the most angry is that we could have handled things incredibly easily if we'd just dealt with them early.
I do this myself. I've been more prone to headaches at the change of season, when the pressure in my ears and sinuses goes haywire. If I grab at those issues right away, I can usually stave off a bad headache. I can flood my system with water, I can take a decongestant, I can use my homeopathic and natural remedies to keep things at bay. Or, I can ignore them until they turn into a headache that makes my eyes twitch and sends me to bed with a light blocking mask.
I do it with everything. Car stuff. House stuff. School stuff. When little issues arise, I just sigh and work around them. I deal with the tire light, the sluggish WiFi, the glitchy program. I can't think about getting the issues actually looked at and taken care of, especially when they seem like minor annoyances, so I just put them off instead of diagnosing them and getting them taken care of.
This month, in the midst of my slump, I want to make sure that as I crawl my way out, I'm actually fixing the issues I'm running into. Diagnosing what's actually going on, and what I need to do to keep things running smoothly. Maybe, by April, I'll have a smooth running life again, with nothing shaking me off course!
