About Me

Hi, my name is Caroline. I am 32 years old and live in Scottsdale, AZ where I grew up. I have 6 wonderful cats and a large aquarium full of discus fish. I am close to my family and have many online friends, sadly, most of my in-person friends have moved out of state.
---

My life is defined by pain. There is no nice way to say it. I have chronic migraines (4-6 days a week on average), chronic daily headaches (every single solitary day since I was 17, I am now 32), other types of headaches I have are cluster headaches, cluster-migraines and hemicrannia continua (predominately on one side or the other, me = left side; but these are now less then they used to be); all to a lesser degree then the others. I also have Fibromyalgia, Temporomandibular Disorder (aka TMJ), Stage 4 Endometriosis. Plus several other minor problems your average person has. None of these will kill me, but they all lower my quality of life.

A major part of my life has been affected by thyroid problems. I had severe hyperthyroidism (too much thyroid) when I was 18-22 and had my thyroid killed with radioactive iodine. Now I am severely hypothyroid (not enough thyroid), which affects all my other illnesses and so much more. Your thyroid is like is like the clock that manages your metabolism, having hypo is like your body slowing down until you are where I am now, nearly stopped (according to too many blood tests). I have depression, I heal very slowly, my hair is falling out, I am always tired but have a hard time sleeping, my taste buds don't work as well as they used to and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Technically, having hypothyroidism can kill you, but it probably would never happen, modern medicine would catch it and you would take medication for the rest of your life, but you wouldn't die. Basically, if you were on a deserted island, you might eventually go into a coma and die, but it would take awhile.

---

More pleasant things that my life centers around are my cats, reading, watching movies, being online with friends and makeup:

~I have 6 cats, yes 6. All rescue kitties, 4 I raised from a very early age. Calvin, Millie, Lizzy, Favorite, Cheesy & Smudge. Strange names, I know. Favorite, Cheesy and Smudge are 3 of 4 litter mates I rescued but never found homes for, their temporary names became permanent after awhile when they all started to answer to them. Favorite was my favorite of the 4 kittens, he warmed up to me in less then an hour and I probably would have kept him anyway. Cheesy was the one the vet choose to draw blood from (for feline AIDS and Leukemia testing) and it took 3 legs and 11 sticks to draw, so he was like Swiss cheese, hence Cheesy. Smudge, or Smudgy as it has become, is a Siamese mix and when he was young the points hadn't come in yet, just a small smudge of dark on his nose. I love all cats and am partial to Siamese.

~I love to read and to re-read books. Books I love are like old friends coming to visit, I like to read them more then once. I read every day (if my headaches allow it) and find pleasure in turning others on to favorite books and authors. Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" is by far my favorite book. But I also love things from Shakespeare to Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter.

~My movie watching is down from where it used to be. I went to film school and learned an appreciation for the finer points of movies. I enjoy nearly everything, except maybe silent movies, can't get into that. Love old movies and *good* westerns (John Ford was a god!). But I'm not any fun to watch movies with, I'm too into the technical and have been know to grab the remote and rewind to see a great camera pan again. Unfortunately, my migraines have made watching movies in a theater with others nearly impossible. So now I watch from home and can rewind to my hearts content.

~I am a make up and nail polish addict and proud of it! Some people know me from MUA, makeupalley.com, a wonderful place to visit if you have never been before. MUA has opened up a new and fun world to me, the sharing of a love of makeup. I have learned much in the last several years and hope I can help others with information and pics. You could say that I like make up or you could say I was a collector, both would be true, but both would be severely underestimating it. I have *tons* of make up and nail polish! I love it and collect it. My blog will probably be 95% about make up. And no, too much is never enough...

.