About Soul of Las Vegas

Hello You!

I am so excited for you to be reading my blog!  I have been journaling since almost as long as I could write and I hope that I can transition well into having you as my audience.  I guess I feel like I had always been too busy running around to actually be able to just sit and take the time to write, even though I have been thinking about it all the time.   But my life has recently changed and I am excited to say that I am making lemonade out of lemons and really fulfilling a passion of mine by writing.  

      I used to be a very active girl who exercised and played tennis almost every day.  It all started with a pain in my back a few years ago that would keep me from exercising for a few months at a time. It all started January 2012 while playing in my first season tennis match.  It was a long one and I think we were up 5-2 in a ten-point tie-breaker when I went for a ball and felt what I would describe as a funny switch in my lower spine. It didn’t bring me to my knees like previous back injuries, but tears filled my eyes and I knew it was something bad.  I barely finished the match and of course we lost.  I still remember driving away from the court that day crying and knowing that something really needed to be done to fix me.  It took a few weeks, but slowly my pain got worse and worse until I could barely walk. The worst part is, it hurt more when I would sit and lay down; consequently, I felt like I never got any relief from the constant ‘burning’ I felt.  Went for an MRI and when it came back, they told me that I had a disk my L5 S1 area that was basically dead and it could be where my pain was coming from. 

      For a year after, I tried all kinds of things to try to alleviate the pain - anything from PRP (taking my blood out and reinserting the plasma rich proteins where the pain was) to physical therapy to cortisone injections.  Nothing worked.  I suffered from this pain for over a year before I finally had enough and serendipitously I met a wonderful doctor that believed he could fix me with surgery.  I had heard so many bad things about having surgery, but I decided I couldn’t live like this anymore and recently ended up with a spinal fusion.  That now brings me to this point in my life.  I believe God has plans for all of us and I am just on a new path.  I will be unable to do the things I love to do the most (movement and exercising) so I am looking for another outlet that keeps my brain occupied and keeps my soul alive! 

 I have always loved to write (which seems to run in my family) and figured this is a great opportunity to spread my wings and share the things I am interested in.  Besides exercising, I have always been excited about fashion so my blog is going to be a little about both and a lot about things that are in between.  I would like to write about people who have been good to me, who have inspired me, made me laugh, shown me kindness when I was at my worst (anyone with chronic pain will know what I am talking about). But I would also like to write about the new trends, styling, make up, some of our wonderful places in Las Vegas that I love to go to, and hopefully many new ones that I will be able to visit in the future.  Throwing in anything else along the way that interests me, and hopefully interest you too.  

As it so happens, I am lucky enough that I can to go back and forth between two great places, Las Vegas and Okoboji, Iowa, so I should have plenty of things to write about.  But, please....if you feel I should check anything out or look into and write about anything that inspires you, let me know.  I am always up for a new challenge and learning new things.