Onward

I can’t sleep…and it’s troubling since I need to be at school by 8. This year has been a whirlwind of crazy changes. I don’t think I could have ever imagined where I’d be now a year ago. Gogone was dying. My job was slipping away. The world felt like it was collapsing. I feel like I’ve breathed fresh air in a way…and in others, I feel like I’m drowning. I am an honors student. I am a nurse. I am a pothead. I am a post-menopausal woman at 30.
Three decades on this planet, and I feel like I’m only awakening now. I have never felt so fulfilled in my life. I feel like the girl with a hundred grandparents. When I’m at a clinical site, I can rarely keep the smile off of my face. In six months, I’ve seen the gamut of human emotion and been transformed. I have seen love so beautiful and pure…pain and agony so chilling. Knowing something in your mind can never live up to experiencing it first hand. I was holding the hands of one of my favorite patients the other day as she rocked back and forth on the toilet. Constipated. Again. She was gripping my hands so tightly. I asked her if I could give her some privacy, and she looked up at me with a pained smile and said, “No. I need you. I want you here with me.” She is 82 with dementia, among other problems. It’s silly, I know. But, for that one moment I knew that I had made her day a little better. How much would it take to go from a fully functioning adult to an elderly lady, straining on the toilet, feeling so miserable that you just want to hold another human being’s hand? I walk into every patient’s room as if they are a dear relative. I look into their eyes. I sing with them. I listen to them. I assess them. I’m learning this new language…and suddenly it’s like I’m everything I ever wanted to be…an actress, a psychologist, an anthropologist, a detective. I don’t feel like I’m working and it’s absolutely amazing.
Then there’s everything else. In growing as a human being, I feel like parts of my life are irreparably changing. I feel now more than ever the shortness of life…the futility of anger, resentment or hostility. For the first time in my life, I actually can say that I love myself. I am a kind, intelligent and funny woman with patience and compassion. I have friends…honest to goddess friends who would pull over to check on you at the side of the road…or call you to make sure you’re ok if you don’t show up to class. I’m working on my relationship with my parents, and I think I’ve finally truly forgiven them for the past. I know myself and I trust my gut. Sometimes, though, all these good things can turn my life upside down. Sometimes these changes within me put my marriage to the test like nothing else.
In the first week of school, one of my favorite instructors warned us that nursing school will change everything. She said that we’d all be best off if we leave our families until the program is up. From what I’ve seen in the lives of my classmates, she was frightfully accurate. I find myself questioning everything to its very core. I suppose I’ve always over-thought things, but this seems different somehow. I feel like I’ve finally grown up into the woman I want to be…on the path I want to be on. Who knew it would be nursing?

 

Stigma and the wacky uteri

These last few years have been shit in the reproductive department. Although, I guess it’s really been shit for more than that considering how long masses have reared their ugly heads from my ovaries. It seemed to be the final straw recently when the left one decided to join the party. I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that my doctor cut into it during my last surgery because it appeared to be an odd shape. I imagine all of the free floating endometrial flotsam found its way inside. I really don’t know. Either way, the new mass is large enough to make removal necessary…and I have to ask myself how many goddamn surgeries I’m willing to have during my reproductive years in the hopes of preserving a tree that will never healthfully bear fruit. I used to think that I would have to try IVF for myself one time or I’d wonder for the rest of my life. But, even if I did get pregnant, I really can’t imagine that a uterus fused to intestines would be a good environment for a developing human being. Given all of my problems, I probably shouldn’t be shitting in the gene pool anyway. The line my parents created surely should not continue. Maybe that’s all rationalization.
I made the decision, nonetheless, to have a total hysterectomy. It was an incredibly difficult decision that I’ve been preparing myself for over many years. Given all that I’ve been through with this disease, I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m fighting a losing battle. So, I’m raising my white flag. I surrender.
Odd as it is that I finally have come to terms with this, the one thing I didn’t prepare myself for was the reaction of others. It is mind boggling how our society views hysterectomies with such disdain. Some give me the ‘you gotta do what you gotta do’, but many act as if I haven’t given this any thought whatsoever and if I had, I surely would come to a different decision. Even the nurse who was scheduling my surgery asked me how old I was and explained to me what a hysterectomy was all over again as if I had no idea. What do people expect me to do? Should I suddenly change my mind with a new realization that I’m having a major organ removed? A hysterectomy isn’t an EASY procedure?? Oh my God! It’s like when people inform you that the east coast is going to be cold when you travel in winter. When I told my mother, she shat several bricks…although that’s really not a surprise. She said, “No! They’ll be taking out everything that makes you who you are!”. I informed her that it’s not a lobotomy. Hell, she’s insane anyway. But, still. My alternatives are to keep my organs and be on hormones to slow the painful progression or lose my organs and be on hormones to stave off menopause symptoms. Pain…hot flashes…pain…hot flashes.
Why does our society have such a warped view of our reproductive organs? We remove them from our animals without a second thought. I’ll never use mine for what they were intended, so what’s the big deal? I’ll adopt a baby who needs a family instead of having my own. I’ll stop having periods…no big loss there. I can’t imagine how anyone would think that it makes you less of a woman. It’s not like they’re removing my genitalia while they’re there. Although, it would be nice if they could remove some of my belly fat.

 

Tough Decisions

These last few years have been a veritable shit storm. It seems like one awful thing after another keeps befalling us and I don’t have a clue how to get through it all…other than taking one shit-tastic step at a time. My Fruitpie has been sick for months, my boy just had another surgery. I don’t feel so bad having put him through it now that it’s over. The tumors were hurting him so much and aside from hating his lampshade, he is a happy boy. I’ve been trying to pass the time while waiting for school to start…and trying to ignore the increasing pain from this goddamn endo for the last few months. I finally broke down and made an ultrasound appointment only to discover that I have a 4cm cyst on my left ovary. My “good” ovary. Even when the right one went to shit, I told myself that I still had the unscathed left one. Now the cosmos has made the decision for me. I’ve been in emotional denial over not bringing life into this world through my own body. I kept thinking that maybe someday there will be a breakthrough. Maybe I could get good eggs and save them until then…even though I know that I have shitty genes and probably should never have a ‘little me’ running around. Still. I wanted to feel life inside me. I wanted to see pieces of myself reflected in another human being…even though I know that there are precious few good pieces of myself and my child would probably not get any of them. So, I give up. I can have surgery to remove the cyst, take birth control pills and “wait to see” or just take out the whole goddamn mess of faulty equipment. I’m seriously leaning toward the latter. I’m tired of being in pain…and I’m tired of expending so much energy hiding the fact from myself that I am in so much pain all the time. I try to mask it with enough ibuprofen and naproxen to kill a horse every day and yet it keeps getting worse and worse. If I keep this up, I’ll probably just cause catastrophic damage to my other organs from the goddamn pain killers on top of everything else.
I’m probably just feeling sorry for myself. But, I think I have a little room to. I’ve lost one of the few things I really looked forward to as a child. I always thought I’d be pregnant someday. I can’t explain it. I know everyone says it’s miserable and more trouble than it’s worth…but, I wanted to have it. I wanted the whole damned thing. But, here I am. 29. Shitty genes. Defective body. I may as well just take it all out now and save myself more years of pain and suffering for want of something I’ll never have. I’ll have my babies. I just have to find another way. Goddamnit.

 

One more time

It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged. Maybe I’m just over it. Maybe I’ve found it best to leave my streams of consciousness locked in my mind. I don’t know. It’s been months since I lost my job and I don’t think the feeling of unemployment has really sunk in. I feel like things have been nonstop nonetheless and it’s these quiet, early mornings that make me realize that I really have nowhere to be…except home with my family. School starts in June and will probably just in time before the lonely days start to drive me mad. I think it’s high time for a career change…it’s not like I hadn’t been thinking about it for a few years already. I still have the sneaking suspicion that even when I am nursing professionally, I will still be sucked into the net that technology buffs often are. Only this time I will understand it from the clinical and technological perspectives…which could be dangerous if I don’t do what I can to avoid it.
I am a little worried about going back to school. I did so badly the last times and have never been a very good student. I always wanted to learn things on my own terms, in my own way. If a topic interested me, I wanted to study that and not progress on the ordained route. Now I need to grow up. I need to buckle down and do what needs to be done to get where I want to be in my life. I hope this new path I’ve chosen doesn’t wear thin in ten years’ time. But, I guess that’s likely to happen for anyone. I just want to be good, do well and be happy. Fruitpie says I have a lot of potential…and I’m not quite sure what that means. I have a hard time grasping exactly what potential is…definition aside. I am not sure if it is something that can ever be fulfilled…or if I have just spent my past sabotaging myself before I surpass the precipice. I know I am young, but I feel old. I know that I have plenty of time to figure out what I want with my life…and all of these changing variables will invariably lead me in many directions as time progresses. This is just one of many precipices that I will be perched upon…and failure is not an option. I know I can do this. I’ve thought about doing this for many months. I just want to get started instead of having three more months to think about it on my quiet, unemployed, housewife mornings.

 

Sweet Little Man

On a cold and lonely November night
You stuck your little paw through your cage
and snagged a piece of my heart
You’ve given me love
You’ve brought me laughter
You’ve given me joy
You’ve brought me tears
I don’t know how to say goodbye to you
But, I know that the time draws ever near
You are the sunshine on my darkest days
You are my shining star in the gloomiest nights
I will never know how to say goodbye to you
My sweet angel kitty
But, you will always have that piece of my heart

 

Spinning Wheels

This has been the work weekend from Hell. There are new regulations for Medicare billing going into effect on January 1 and our software vendor just released the upgrade that will bring us into compliance with the regs. I decided to upgrade this weekend so that our biller can have as much time as possible to get used to the changes. This is a pretty big change to the system, and since it’s our mission critical database application, that can be taken even less lightly. I got into the office around 10:30 to get the upgrade going. It turned out that the backups I scheduled didn’t run because the server was out of disk space…something I had been warning management about for months now. I even submitted the most efficient and cost effective solution I could devise. First, they put the requisition back on my desk asking for more quotes. Once I got the quotes to prove that the original quote I submitted was still the best, it’s pretty much been sat upon. Not only are the quotes invalid now, the system and all of the other locations I have pulled from for a little relief are maxed out. I fought this fire for hours yesterday…freeing space, running backups, checking system integrity. I finally got two 1T hard drives from Best Buy for our large media files…one to save to and the other to mirror the data to. Well, it’s not really mirroring. I have to write a script today to copy the data from one device to the other. Come 7:30, I still hadn’t started the upgrade. I called it a night and have to go back this morning to finish what I was supposed to start yesterday. What a pain in the ass.

 

End of Eras

My Fruitpie and I decided to move our office upstairs and turn the downstairs bedroom back into a guest room.  We’ve probably done this three or four times since we moved here, but this time the office is moving to the great room upstairs.  She has been working hard the past few weeks, going through old boxes we never fully unpacked and throwing out trash.  Lately, I’ve just been feeling like getting rid of everything.  All of those pieces of who I once was…what my life used to be…they have no place here anymore.  I don’t need symbols of memories cluttering up my house.  They are already locked away in my mind…brought back to life in an autumn breeze or the scent of hot chocolate.  These are things I do not need.  I am not that person anymore.  We made donation piles from one of the closets, and I decided to include my leather jacket from high school.  Hundreds of memories are attached to that thing…and it was so well loved that the lining is ripped, the leather is worn and tattered and the once black buttons took on a pinkish tinge.  I guess it might have been better suited for the trash than the donation pile, but who knows what value others may find in it?  I did away with a lot of other things, too.  It felt almost like a mission, really.

It’s strange how life continues without you.  The places you’ve left fill in the empty space like you never existed…as it should be, I guess.  Otherwise things would fall apart…and they do fall apart, but usually for the people and not the places.  Sometimes I wonder how my life looks from the outside to the people I used to know.  How do I look from afar?  It’s like we are constantly on this search for ourselves…and probably for some of us, end up being a hundred different people in a lifetime.  Maybe I wanted to be an actress so I could get through the spectrum more quickly and seemingly sanely.  Maybe I’m just talking out of my ass as one does in those early mornings, fueled by two cups of coffee and guilt that I should be working out right now.  I feel disgusting.  Ugly, fat, mediocre.  Inconsequential, maybe.

Sometimes I think of my adolescent dream of buying a ranch in the northeast, learning to weld and becoming entirely nocturnal for a year.  I would forge creations to sustain myself…to keep me wam, fed, afloat.  It seems impractical, but romantic in a desperately lonely sort of way.  Part of me still wants to move to a colder place where the snow falls in winter.  I could raise sheep or alpacas and make yarn from their fleece.  I could grow my own vegetables and fruit.  My Fruitpie would be a mechanic or a pilot…dusting crops or fixing old cars.  I’d take in old strays, saying that I’m fostering and she would roll her eyes because she knows me better than that.  Or, we could sell everything and buy a yacht instead of a house.  We could sail the caribbean and I could overcome my fear of waves.  I could become a chef  and Fruitpie could rent kayaks out on the beach.  Or, we could become innkeepers and I could bake little treats for our guests every day.  I could learn to make yarn from sugarcane fiber…after, of course, learning to make fiber from sugarcane.

I need to get ready for work.  My muscles are sore from sleeping funny and I am craving a cigarette like mad right now.  I feel morbidly obese…and should have worked out this morning…but, I conveniently spent too long daydreaming about what could but likely never will be.  Now I have nothing to do but make some sense of my hair and figure out what I could put on that won’t make me feel like a walrus.

 

Night Sounds

It has been a rough couple of months and this week seems like one of many that have passed that feels like the last straw.  The infertility struggle feels like such old news, but it still weighs ever more heavily with each passing month and every failed cycle.  With both of us busy at work and pumped full of our own separate hormones, it’s been like cats in a bag at times.  One minute we’re snuggling peacefully and the next we’re head over tail, claws extended.  Well, I really picture myself more of the arched back, fluffled up, circling cat and my Fruitpie the one in the middle with a paw at the ready.  Today was a good day between us, but everything we lack control over seems to push in ever stronger.  Every night this week, I’ve found myself in a knitting frenzy.  I’ve made Fruitpie two pairs of gloves, one for myself and a baby hat…and I’ve finally mastered the proper way to hold the yarn.  The clicking of the needles seems to calm my nerves.  The clicking, the rhythm, the soft fiber feeding steadily through my fingers.  It’s something I can actually control…and it produces something productive.  I think I might actually tackle a sweater when I’m done with my christmas knitting.  I’ve pretty much done everything else that I found intimidating before…lace, intarsia, cables.  If I’m still around in January (I always feel like I’m going to be the next one fired), I am slated to teach a knitting class on one of our wellness wednesdays.  I don’t really feel qualified since I’ve only taught myself and only been knitting a year at that.  But, I can at least show the basics, I guess.

The office environment has been tense as ever.  My friend the receptionist got fired a month ago and they had a replacement the following week.  Now the volunteer coordinator is leaving because they told her she had to work five days or none at all after five years of a three day schedule.  It’s such an odd thing to me after having lost a day out of the week.  It’s been such a rough year for everybody.  Usually I try to take stock of all of the good things that have come to pass, but all I can think of right now are the bad.  We lost Mable, Tucker lost his leg, my hours got cut, our mortgage is going up, we only have one more shot at IVF, my BCPs aren’t doing what they’re supposed to, Fruitpie is miserable with all of her hormone meds and having to come off of the pain killers, the kid and all of the drama that came with her…the list really goes on.  I’m trying not to dwell on it, but I guess I just have to get it out of my head and off into the chasm of cyberspace.

My dreams lately have been disturbing at best.  Every night I have at least one that involves my parents in some way.  Last night it had something to do with speaking Hebrew with my dad and watching a horrible video tape of a bris wherein the disembodied foreskin was put into a meat grinder with other pieces of foreskin from the day and baked into a pie.  In the dream, I vomited.  I’m glad I didn’t in reality.  Somehow this led to me being a black man with a finger that shot bullets like a gun.  All I had to do was point at someone and they’d be dead.  I blew up a car full of people I shot outside a convenience store and a hoity toity christian woman came running in saying that she called the cops on us.  I told the clerk to kill her, but he chickened out and stabbed her with a swiss army knife.  I got annoyed, grabbed a blade and slit her throat.  When we heard sirens, I hid under porches…which were actually over pools of water that I tried to quietly wade through.  I finally got under a treehouse where the man who owned the property took me in and hid me in a false room inside a closet.  At that point, I took on the persona of several former occupants of the house.  It became a home for orphaned mentally ill children.  The dream progressed through our childhood into adulthood.  We had a strange dynamic, but it somehow worked.  I became the leader of the group whose dream was to go out into the world with the people who lived across the street…who happened to be the entire cast of midgets from the wizard of oz.  I somehow managed to make myself a shiny, metallic gold to impress them and mustered the courage to go across the street one day.  There were normal people there and they were laughing at me.  I was confused because I didn’t understand anything beyond the strange society that had developed in my bizarre household.  I went back home defeated, but pretended to be victorious so nobody else in the house would be disheartened.

I wonder what Jennifer would have to say about that bizarre jumble of subconscious phenomena.

My head is pounding and I’m actually a little afraid to go back to sleep tonight…not that the dreams last night were bad, per se.  I just don’t know what my brain has in store for me and that is always a little frightening.  My Fruitpie just drained the water from her bath and I can hear the TV through the ceiling.  I want to start working on the lil devil baby hat so I can get it to our little nephew in time for his first halloween.  I have no doubt that I’ll finish it, but I still worry that I might not…and I want to give my girl a chance to fall asleep before I go up.  I know she needs her rest and we just keep each other awake when we’re in bed.  We can’t keep our hands off each other, even if it’s just to cuddle.  Not that I’m complaining.  I am so in love with my wife…even more with each passing year.  It’s hard to believe that it’s been over six.  We have been through so much together and I just hope that there will be some easy, happy years ahead…and not in hindsight.

 

On and on

I am almost done with my first week back and already it feels like I was never gone.  My boss left everything for me…including the important things that I expressly asked her to do.  It really annoys me, even though I am not the least bit surprised.  She’s a lazy woman and not too bright.  It’s irritating that the only way to get anything done is to do it yourself.   I suppose I’ve always known that, though.  My dad left me a message the other day asking for money again.  I called him back and left a message (after a rum & coke and a cigarette), but he never called back.  He probably already knows that the answer is no.  I am not a font of riches and I shouldn’t have to worry about my parents’ finances.  I’m almost thirty years old…I have my own family to worry about.  He said he has to pay the DWP $1500 or they will shut off the utilities and they don’t have money for food.  I feel sorry for them, but I just can’t oblige them every damned time they get themselves in this mess…and they always manage to.  I’m sure my brother will rush to the rescue again and he will be their hero for a few months until he does something to piss my mother off.  Thankfully, he didn’t call me this time.  Last time I asked him how many more times we’ll have to save them financially if we give them the money for their mortgage and he said, “As many times as it takes”.  I am not of the same mind.  But, it’s easy for him to say from the other side of the country with nobody but himself to take care of.  I don’t know what to say to my dad anymore.  Lisa said he should be ashamed of himself…and he probably is.  He’s just not ashamed enough to refrain from asking his children for another bailout…and too prideful to get public assistance.  When I talked to him last, he was complaining about his financial situation, yet he was on his way to Whole Foods to buy my mother something.  If times are that desperate, I can’t believe they are going to one of the most expensive grocery stores for food.  I can’t respect that.  I don’t want to hurt him, but I just can’t condone what he is doing…and it hurts ME that he put me in this position.  I love him, but it’s high time he grows up and starts taking responsibility for himself.

 

Goings On

It’s been such a crazy year.   I don’t even know how one would classify it with all the good and bad mixed together.  I’ve been away from the office for two weeks and am not even remotely looking forward to going back.  St.Thomas was absolutely beautiful as always and I cannot believe how well everything went.  It always feels like home when I am there and now I feel like part of the family, too.  Taking care of Gogone scared the shit out of me for the weeks leading up to the trip.  The first few days of learning the routine didn’t help in the least, but I took good notes and I feel like another part of me took over when I was finally on my own.  Not one hour after my Fruitpie and her parents had left for the airport, the water went out.  I was afraid that it was a bad omen at first.  My girl called me from the plane as they were waiting to take off and walked be through switching to the cistern.  In retrospect, it was probably a sign that I could handle anything.  Not that the water going out was catastrophic, but even small emergencies feel huge when you’re on your own.  Gogone took to me almost immediately, it seemed.  She reminded me so much of my own grandma…minus the French, of course.  As the days went on, I began to anticipate her needs and even though I didn’t understand her French, I somehow understood what it was she wanted.  By the time everyone came back from Miami with the great news of MIL’s lack of a tumor, I didn’t want to leave.  I haven’t worked so hard in I don’t know how long, but it is so fulfilling when it’s family.  I wish I had gotten a chance to say goodbye to Uncle Ralphie, whom I had made plates of food for every day and insisted that I ‘take a rest’ every afternoon as we waited for my sisters -in-law to come home.  I usually sat down for an hour and fell asleep for half of it.  In the early morning hours, I dreamt of Gogone blowing her whistle for me and it always got me up before the alarm.  Our little nephews kept me on my toes most of the time.  Jacob is the happiest baby I have ever seen.  There is always a smile on his face.  His was the first diaper I ever changed…and apparently it was an even bigger deal that he had pooped.  He just started eating semi-solids.  Dillon was an absolute handful at seven years old.  When he wasn’t being mischevous, he always wanted to help.  I usually obliged even though it doubled my work.

Leaving was tearful as always, but I felt the emotions even more strongly.  Gogone was crying, and I had the hardest time leaving her room that last time.  At the airport, MIL hugged me and said that she loves me and I was absolutely blown away.  They watched us until we got to the customs desk.  I wish I was still there to help.  I wish we could move this entire house to the island and live there.  Hopefully it won’t be long now…once we have a child if we are so blessed…and maybe if the houseing market turns around.  We’ll sell as much as we can and move the rest.  It’s good to be home with the kids, but I feel like St.Thomas is where we all belong.  It won’t be easy, I know, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.  At least, that’s my experience.

Now I have to switch gears to work again.  I’ve never been very good at picking up where I left off.