Vacation? Relaxation? Not in my life.

So we have not had a particularly busy couple of days, but it sure feels like it.

Yesterday we went shopping for some groceries. This takes a very long time when you do not know the language and need everything translated for you. We got home and my MIL made dinner. Salted ham, potatoes, and a cucumber salad. So I ate some of the salad and the potatoes, but salt is NOT my friend. I had already had a ton of salt Tuesday night and then again there was a lot at lunch on Wednesday. My whole body is swelling. My wedding ring no longer fits and I had to use soap to remove it as it had already left a welt on my finger that has cut open. So I decided against the ham (ok I snuck a few bites because it DID in fact taste good .. and it was there on the plate). So because of this today I am even more swollen and it is making my fingers ache. Also Butterfly chose to not go to sleep until 4:30 am. Have I mentioned that at 4:30 am it is light out in Sweden? This caused me to not get right to sleep and I ended up sleeping until 1 pm.

Sleeping until 1 sound good to you? Ah but we had plans for today that we could no longer keep because we were not able to get ready in time. Witchlet was really upset by this. Now I must admit that her reaction was much more controlled than it was before her new meds, but still she was not happy and everyone knew it. We ended up going to a park to play and I think all kids had fun there. My SIL brought our niece and nephew as well.

Then we come home to figure out dinner. Again we have the salt issue. It seems that most meals here are prepared with A LOT of salt and this is causing me extreme discomfort. At home I cook things fresh most often and adding salt to anything is very rare. So I had thought we would be getting some fresh chicken and some vegetables as well as some tomatoes that we would slice along with the mozzarella I bought yesterday. This seemed perfect, but apparently my MIL had other plans. Pancakes (different than the ones we are used to in the US, they are good but not eaten with syrup here) and some soup from a package. Well checking on the soup we learned this has 900mg of sodium per serving which is approximately 1 cup. That is extremely high considering I am on a low sodium diet. I made a comment that I probably should not have and said “this is why I hate leaving home” and he took it to mean nothing here is good enough for me. That was NOT what I was getting to. There are plenty of foods in that grocery store that are just fine for me. However, I feel like I have no choice at all over what I eat or what my kids are eating and that is hard for me, ESPECIALLY since there are food issues. I have tried to explain this but feel like I am not understood. My husband is feeling like I am rejecting his home country when I am really only rejecting this diet that I fear might kill me. My veinous insufficiency puts me at a higher risk for blood clots so aggravating it AND causing my blood pressure to increase with the salt when I need to sit in an airplane for about 12 hours (another risk factor for blood clots) in 11 days is not a good idea. At this point I am just feeling like I should just not eat anything at all and say nothing about it because the stress of the fight is no good either.