Back tracking a little to springtime, I saw my beloved Dr. Carol McMakin who is the guru or “yoda” of Frequency Specific Microcurrent. She is the one who, by using FSM, diagnosed I had a bulged disc in my neck after Kadie was born and I was able to treat it with my personal FSM machine and shrink it down.

However, I’ve still had chronic neck instability, and Dr. Carol wanted to find some more answers. She ordered an x-ray and found out that C3 and C4 in my neck slide forward a couple millimeters when bending forward, and also slides back a millimeter when looking up. And then C5, 6 and 7 don’t move at all. So rather than a nice curve when bending my neck, I have a 45 degree angle, with my spinal cord being pinched and facets hitting each other, and terrible headaches that don’t let me sleep.

Dr. Carol asked me if I’d ever felt disconnected from my feet, and I do recall making myself go dancing even though my neck and head hurt, and then feeling like I couldn’t really tell my feet or body where to go. I was frustrated that I wasn’t in control of my body, and now I know why.

Thankfully, my neck isn’t so bad off that I need surgery. A translation of 4 millimeters is surgery-worthy. So I’ve been pretty diligently going to my physical therapist and doing my exercises at home to try and strengthen my stabilizer muscles. If that doesn’t work, then I am faced with an injection therapy where they line everything up, then inject something like sugar to cause inflammation and a build up of scar tissue to hold my vertebrae in place. Apparently it’s a pretty painful procedure.

So back to the month of July, I made some poor choices to skip my exercises to get ready for Violet’s birthday, and go off my diet a little, and as a result, I hurt more. There was also some emotional things going on since I was sad my cousin, Wendy and her son, Ryan were going to move away at the end of the month.

The biggest raincloud was at Violet’s first year check up, when I found out that she had lost almost 2 pounds. They had to draw her blood out of her tiny arm, which took forever, and was horrible! I haven’t got results back yet, but the doctor and I agree that she must have leaky gut like Kadie does. Around the same age, Kadie had remained 16 pounds for 6 months. Violet had gone from 17 pounds to 15.

I felt devastated. A couple of naturopathic doctors had warned me that some of my IBS issues could be passed on to my children, whereas a medical pediatrician had told me that they would be safe from them. I wanted to believe the latter, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.

I had been through the process of doing a low allergen rotation diet before and I dreaded the thought of having to cook that much when I felt my own health declining. I had a very overwhelming feeling hang over me for a week or so, as I cried and prayed to God for help. I was angry at myself for not noticing Violet getting thinner. I knew she had started to refuse to eat more, and she was fussier. I guess I was getting absorbed in my heightened state of pain and fatigue.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I read an article that reminded me that happiness comes from outward circumstances, but true joy that comes from the Lord can be found regardless of circumstances. It was something I had known before, but it was a timely reminder and encouragement to me that God’s still in control and he’s going to make good come out of all of this.

After not sleeping well, myself, due to a painful stomach, head, and feeling something systemically (Candida was my only guess) spreading through my whole body, I decided I needed help. I sent an email to my close family and friends, and was blown away by the response! I struggled with feeling like being a burden, but was then brought to my knees in awe of the love and servant-hearted support from the dearest people in my life.

Alex brought us dinner the very next night. My dad and Wendy came over with tons of food, and helped me shop, and watch and feed the kids so I could rest and do my exercises. My in-laws cooked rice porridge and more food. Leah baked special gluten free, egg free, dairy free muffins and such. Rachel came over and cared for the kids, did my dishes, and not only folded my laundry, but put the baby clothes away in the drawers! Travis came and cleaned my bathrooms. Tiffany agreed to help experiment in baking more G free, D free, E free things for me. And we had many more offers of people cooking for us or watching the kids. Talk about blinding sunshine!

On a side note, God also did a miracle in my cousin’s life which turned my sadness to great joy. Without going into details, Wendy is staying until she and her man marry! So excited!

In the middle of all the help pouring in, I saw Dr. Carol again, and she and I deduced that the main culprit for my gut pain and all chain reactions stemming from it, was from the Tetanus and Pertussis (DTaP) booster shot I received the Friday between Violet’s birthday and mine. She treated my small intestine for those specific vaccines and I felt much better! I’m still not normal, but better.

I can’t believe I let myself get talked into getting the shot! I’m mad at myself for knowing that people with IBS or other immune problems can have adverse reactions to vaccines, and I still got it! Dr. Carol said to don’t even get her started on the subject of vaccines. She is the person people go see when they’ve had bad reactions to them, and that no level of mercury is safe for human consumption. Yet some vaccines still contain it! My naturopath, Dr. Dramov was also shocked that I had gotten the shot and said that fibromyalgia can be induced from vaccines. A lot of other ingredients, including aluminum, are toxic.

These are the things that are never told to mothers when they find out they are pregnant. Vaccines are an issue I never wanted to dig into because there’s such conflicting information and I couldn’t figure out what to believe about them. Now I know enough to be careful with my girls and myself, especially since we have immune system problems.

Another raincloud that came to hover was a virus that Kadie caught, and I think I did too, that is similar to chicken pox. She had itchy bumps for a week, and she and I shared GI crud, more than I already had going on.

To sum up, I’m on the mend, Kadie’s bumps have disappeared, and Violet is a little more comfortable since avoiding certain foods. A small, yet so huge of a victory, is that she’s gained 2 pounds and 5 ounces in under 2 weeks!

Thankfully, Violet still nurses 4 times a day, and I think the extra probiotics and fish oil are helping as well. I started giving the girls some special food powder from Mannatech, and am hoping for results similar to a fail-to-thrive baby’s success story I heard about with it.

David’s gotten me out of the house a bit more so I can have a breather between all the feedings and cooking I do each day. And everyday, I’m so thankful for all the rainbows God has made from the struggles and triumphs of our current health journey as well as many past journeys in my life so far.

So my running joke I had with Jennilyn when I bought the collector’s edition, which is a huge splurge for me since I’m not a big collector nor spender on video games, was that instead of getting a harley or a sports car, my mid-life crisis was the StarCraft 2 collector’s edition. I’m glad she plays along and encourages me to partake in geeky gamer endeavors.

I actually haven’t stuck with StarCraft for as long as my brother and some college friends have. They still play it from time to time to this day whereas I’ve moved on to different games. However, the game StarCraft teleports me to my first year in college where I played it every Friday with my dorm mates as we did laundry. Thank God for the ability to pause during multiplayer matches while we switched the laundry to the dryer.

But my favorite memories of StarCraft were in the years after, when there were at least eight of us who were StarCraft multiplayer regulars on the same floor in the dorms. At some point after dinner, some one would get the urge to play and go down door-to-door and say “Craft at 9?” And homework would take a back seat to the intergalactic war that ensued.

In my database class, my final project was to create a web interface to review StarCraft statistics that were collected on the fan-made Battle.net game service alternative bnetd, which we lovingly called it Cattle.net (I’m not aware if my friend knew that Blizzard has an fixation on cows).

My project partner ran a Linux server with bnetd so that our multiplayer games would be less laggy than doing it over IPX, in the days when TCP/IP protocols were becoming more of the norm. Anyway, the final project allowed me and my friends to see our gameplay statistics in the games we played. I could say that StarCraft got me into web development because the project introduced me to the PHP language and MySQL databases. How’s that for a game-changer?

Back to favorite moments of StarCraft, and I’ll finish with one memory or else I’ll be typing instead of gaming, one particularly fond memory I had in StarCraft was actually a competitive multiplayer match. Although I preferred cooperative games where all my friends would battle the computer artificial intelligence, which by the way, was extremely lethal and a threat throughout, we had too many friends playing to do cooperative matches exclusively.

In one long match, my friend Matt had completely decimated my main base, but I had expanded to multiple bases. For those who don’t know, in StarCraft, the winner is determined not when the enemy army is destroyed, but when all the enemy buildings are destroyed. So, in theory (and practice in my case), your enemy could have a massive army and lose if you wipe out all their buildings. I used that to my advantage as a mighty technical tactician (ahem).

Back to the match, it was down to my friend Matt and I, all our other teammates were wiped out. He was Protoss and I was Zerg. He had a carrier fleet going through the game map destroying all my bases, trying to eradicate me. I had expanded very many times, but only had one base that was producing my army. I built a quick zergling army to do a strike at his only base. He was getting frustrated after destroying each of my expansion bases and still not winning.

As he searched for me with his carriers, I sent my zergling army up to his base, which was protected by several photon cannons and a high templar. The photon cannons and the high templar’s psionic storm would easily defend against my weak zergling strike, but I had two aces up my sleeve.

One, I had one remaining queen which I used its spawn broodling ability to quickly kill the high templar. Two, I had a defiler, which I rarely made use of, use its dark swarm ability over the photon cannons so that my zerglings could attack them unharmed by the cannons’ ranged attack. The strategy was so brilliant that I can hardly imagine me coming up with it.

I’ll never forget the screams and yelling I heard down the hall when I finished off his base before his carrier fleet could destroy my base. It seemed like a sure win until I outsmarted him.

Ah, the glory days…now, I just gotta click on every StarCraft 2 unit multiple times to hear all those funny sayings…

See a few more photos from StarCraft 2 Midnight Launch »

So when the Unreal Tournament 2004 modification Alien Swarm was released, I enjoyed reliving the funnier parts of the Aliens movie with my own experiences—surviving swarms of aliens bent on my destruction or infestation. The original Alien Swarm for UT2004 was a great mod; taking a 3D first-person shooter and going to a 2D-style, top-down gauntlet-like game. The modders made great use of the existing media assets from Unreal Tournament to deliver a scary and fun cooperative experience before “coop” became the trend it is today.

I played through all the campaigns in Alien Swarm for UT2004 on my own, which wasn’t as much fun as with friends, but I wanted to see what the modders came up with scenarios on my own time. The missions were quite tough and more so when I had to control all 4 marines by myself. Luckily, the bots controlling the other 3 marines with me had inhuman aim and I didn’t have to worry about friendly-fire.

In one evening in Oysterville with Jack and Clark, I remember a fun session when I finally got to play Alien Swarm with friends. It was intense as we were all scrambling from one place to another while aliens just kept coming after us. We would heal each other, weld doors shut to buy us time, and have climatic battles to the exit room. It would be a precursor to the survival stories we later had fighting zombies.

I remember reading on gaming web sites that the modders were stopping development on Alien Swarm for UT2004 and moving to the Source game engine, and it would be a commercial product. Quite a bit of time has passed and I discovered last week that Valve, the company that created the Source engine and the Left 4 Dead series, hired the modding team for Alien Swarm a while back. And then, they released Alien Swarm for Source for free yesterday.

Clark and I took a spin through it and I found myself not only nostalgic from the original, but also admiring all the subtle details they made to make the game more accessible and provide more tactical information without cluttering the user interface.

For example, the aiming reticule has a small stroke line around its circle that wanes as the ammo in the gun used is being fired. Most of the time, I am looking at where I’m shooting, so it’s a great place to visually indicate how much ammo is left without requiring me to look away from the action.

I also liked that they color-coded each marine’s visor, so that it’s easy to spot who’s who in the battlefield. In the original Alien Swarm, all the soldiers looked similar except for their weapons. The extra touch of color makes it even easier to differentiate the marines when there are aliens swarming all over.

Other areas of polish that impressed me were:

• Loading the game area before the lobby so that when the party is ready to start, the game is ready to go. No loading screen necessary when everyone is ready to go.
• The game world map allows players to draw on it, so players can plan out their paths through the alien-infested world.
• Hacking doors is a mini-game, kind of frantic but better than looking for keys on a level.
• Being a part of the Steam service is a huge plus. Having voice communications is a necessity in something this intense and tactical with other players.

The fact that the game is free makes it a great LAN party game. Too bad the player limit is 4 players, just like Left 4 Dead…speaking of which, since the free version comes with all the tools to create more content, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did a zombie conversion for Alien Swarm. That would be fun.