Progress

Ok, so, the day after my silly one mile walk test, I was in pain again. A lot of pain. Which means whatever it is that was hurting me before only quit because I was doing nothing, and when I do something, anything, it hurts again.

It's nice to be able to eliminate certain problems that would have been easily diagnosed during surgery, and to be honest, as I'm healing up, I feel more evened out every day. Evened out, as in, I am only ripping Josh's head off once or twice a day instead of all day long, and which I can tell is helping because he's hiding from me a whole lot less. :)

The problem of the returning pain has inspired me to start another elimination/cleanse diet to see if flushing my system of some of the toxic stuff I consume helps. Considering the pain is activity aggravated I am not super hopeful, but I think I'll feel better without grains and dairy and sugar in my diet for awhile anyway.

I am also coming to terms with the fact that I have to start exercising again, regardless of the pain. I can't keep letting my muscles atrophe and my blobbiness expand, because the reality is I'll probably be in pain no matter what but I'm letting a whole new realm of issues creep in. Needless to say, the prospect of any workout is extremely non-fantastic, and makes me want to take a really long nap.

I have virtually no pain from the surgery itself, which, for three weeks out feels pretty good. I've also noticed my appetite is way smaller and my face isn't breaking out as much. Maybe incidentals, but who knows. Even after a week of brewpubs in Hood River I don't feel massively bloated and horrible. It's been way easier to quit eating when I'm full. Unless it's mushroom bruschetta from Cebu Lounge at the Hood River Inn.

I'm back to full on work now, my Doctor's orders expire on Tuesday and I have no more whimp out excuses. I am not looking forward to the ramifications of that, because 9 hours of almost anything COHVOPS makes me pretty crabby by dinner time. Although I do notice the pain is usually the worst about 24 hours after I do something physical. Luckily we have lots of events coming up so all I have to do is drive around and smile at people. So that eats up work hours.

I hate to admit I'm secretly excited to finish my internship and move on from this job. My brain is tired of doing nothing. Speaking of events, I'm sitting in the truck at the China Hat ISDE which stands for some sort of motorcycles race, watching tons of people run around on dirt bikes excitedly. It almost makes me wish I rode. Almost. Mostly it makes me want to take a nap.

BTW, in spite of all the nap talk, I have noticed my energy is much better - and I haven't been taking my vitamins! I have been going to bed earlier... Gosh I feel old some days.

Guess I'll go find my partner who is running around with his dirt bike buddies, and pretend to work for awhile.



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So, I should have gone to work today. Or rather, I COULD have gone to work today. It is my "scheduled day off", since we work 5/4 9 hour days, except that I missed Monday, and Tuesday, and part of Friday last week. So the hours would have been good. But then I wouldn't have had time to take two quizzes and a test, and drink my coffee out of a real mug, and change my clothes three times, and watch video clips from the new season of The Office, since I feel guilty watching any real episodes without Josh.

But it is nice. So nice, to have a day to get caught up on all the laundry - which Josh already did. And the housecleaning, which I am successfully avoiding. And the errands I am going to run (any second now) with poor MacKenzie who hasn't left the house all week and thinks she might grow lichens soon if she doesn't do something.

The sun is out. That, in and of itself makes it a good day.

I have been hurting more, again, maybe because I am trying to move more, do more, push myself, and maybe the pain on my left side went away because I was doing absolutely nothing for several days. Maybe that's what I am supposed to do always, absolutely nothing. That is one thing I am good at.

In spite of the returning old pain, the surgery stuff is getting exponentially better: I can sneeze now without cussing. I can get up and down almost all day without wincing and moaning (although sometimes I do it just for dramatic effect anyway). And I got new jeans. Which makes EVERYTHING better.

I have been trying to be careful what I eat in some useless attempt to cut back on my calories and start trying to whittle away at all this extra weight in lieu of all the exercise I am not getting. It is VERY discouraging. And I am NOT good at it. Because I like food and I love to eat. Mostly good food. Not healthy, skinny food. I like gravy, and dairy products. I have been successfully weaning myself off of most of the pain killers, but weaning myself off of delicious foods that do me Absolutely No Good is something I am not sure I can do.

Speaking of drugs, since I ran out of prescription pain killers I decided to stop taking them. Ok I was forced. They make life so much easier, but maybe my body will begin to heal itself and patch some things together if I can flush my system of the chemicals that pollute it. I have still been taking a dose of ibuprofen daily, once the pain gets bad enough that I realize I am really hating life, but honestly, it just upsets my stomach and doesn't do a whole lot for the pain, so I am reserving it mostly for bedtime to help me sleep. Since lying still is when the pain becomes paramount in my mind. I think there is always this curiosity in me to see if I can "get off" of prescription pain killers, in case I got addicted on this round. I like watching for withdrawal symptoms, and then when I get mean and snap at Josh I can blame Those Terrible Drugs instead of my own impatience and lack of self government. It is nice to have a scape goat. I don't really feel withdrawally, but I will retain the excuse just in case. Part of me would Really like to find a way to get my prescription refilled, because it just is easier. But part of me knows that it's so much better for me if I can do without. But one pill is so much cheaper and more convenient than a session with an acupuncturist, or a massage, or whatever weird thing crosses my mind to try to alleviate the pain. Like a yoga class. Or a bottle of wine (should that be a glass?).

I think now that I will go run those errands. Or actually drive them. But I might try to actually go for a "Walk" today, like a recreational one. For exercise. With dogs. It sounds painful, but sort of nice.

For the record, I do feel like I am evening out emotionally. I think the effects of the depo are finally subsiding and while I still have moments of absolute absurdity, it is getting easier to choose my responses. Part of that is just exhaustion after 9 hours of work and realizing I owe my family dinner and I just don't have the energy to pick a fight. In fact, I have been tired enough that we have eaten out almost every night this week, and I certainly haven't cooked anything. One night I went to bed without dinner. I guess I have made Kizzie cook - it's nice having Cinderella back. I can't say that the turmoil in our house is really subsiding (which I still take full responsibility for), but I feel like maybe I can see a light at the end of the tunnel that offers hope for some peace. I hope that light isn't the iconic beacon of demise for either myself or Poor Josh... I am pretty sure we'll make it. ;)

Day 4

So. I've been home from North Carolina for a couple of days. I've been sore, it's been hard to get around, and I've been frustrated and depressed. I'm attributing that entirely to the fact that I am A) a huge baby and intolerant of limitations and B) I'm extremely spoiled and demanding.

In short, about North Carolina, although I plan to write in greater detail about my experience there: Dr. Berger was awesome. He was inquisitive, he listened and for the first time in a while I felt like I found a Doctor Who was a little bit interested in my Whole Health, not just in making me fertile again (which was something I had feared, traveling cross continent to a Tubal Reversal Center). He made no promises but offered to do a more thorough exam than customary for their routine reversals, looking for the causes of some of my symptoms. While for the most part he found nothing he could pinpoint as direct issue when he did the reversal, the surgery went well and the resectioning was successful.

I am afraid to say it out loud, and I will admit I am still on ibuprofen and hydrocodone fairly steadily, but the burning pain in my lower left abdomen is either swallowed by the incision pain or (Lord God Let It Be) it is better. I mean, pre-op, this pain was constant and overriding in spite of heavier doses of painkillers. What if, somehow, blood flow to that side had gotten really tweaked and maybe, just maybe surgery helped? Have you ever slept with your ear bent against your head in a way it's not supposed to go for a long time and when you wake up, it Really Hurts as circulation tries to reinitiate. What if that was kinda the same thing, only it was part of my ovary that I slept on funny and it's finally getting the blood supply it's sposed to. I don't know. Maybe? BTW, I hope that ear thing isn't just me. But it hurts like a son of a gun.

I have had a pretty crappy attitude since I got home. I know feeling bloated and swollen and looking and waking pregnant doesn't usually perk women up, but I guess I should be trying harder to let the hope and the Slightest Tinge of a Feeling that things are getting back to good creep in and at least make me nice to people. I wasn't really expecting balloons and flowers when I got home but as I lay trapped on my back in bed the first morning home (try getting upright without using an muscles) I felt slightly abandoned. I made it out of bed, through a painful and wobbly shower, under Aspen's supervision, and somehow ended up on the couch, but most of the rest of Friday was a dopey blur. I knew Josh was going to work, but somehow the fact that he just left me, with my medicine worn off and no cream in the house for coffee, really sent me into a tilta-whirl pity party and I probably wasn't The Nicest Wife Ever when he came home. It wasn't like I got my tonsils out and deserved stuffed bunnies and Get Well Soon cards with pictures of severely dated daisies on them, but I guess I was spoiled by mom and thought somebody aught to at least get my breakfast for me.

My sister did make me a get well present. Which I'm sure is in the mail. I'm pretty excited about it. It's a jean skirt made out of some of my old Liv jeans that were torn to shreds. But you know Em, she's a genius with a sewing machine.

I will say this, before I forget: North Carolina was beautiful. I really like Cheerwine, and in spite of my bad attitude, I do think that good is right there. Just around the corner.

Also, as an addendum, and to clear up any consternation, curiosity or budding rays of hope, Josh is fixed, so there will be no baby Westons in our future, barring a cruel trick by a mean God who seems to have it out for me sometimes anyway. ;)

On the other side

Have I told you about my mom? I am the first one to insist that there is no such thing as a perfect mother. If I believed in a perfect mother it would be ever so much harder to escape the haunting need to become that person, so for my own peace of mind I discard the idea altogether. I have to say though, I have a mom who comes pretty darn close. Not that she has always been so close to perfect - casting no unknown shadow or disparity on my mom, she is the first to admit her failures and shortcomings raising 6 children entirely at home without the reprieve of sending them away to school on a daily basis. She persevered through 6 children of highly developed intellect and opinion, perhaps to her credit, not a soft thinker in the lot of us. My mom foraged her way in the frontier of home education with 6 different learning styles and personalities, not all of them forgiving and certainly not all of them easy to understand or agree with.

Surviving the formidable 30 some odd years of this lifestyle, she warred through the difficulties of uncovering all of the solutions-turned-nemeses presented to parents in such a pursuit. Every next-best-thing could be the answer to child rearing or the key to blowing your family into a bajillion pieces. As a family, we encountered all levels. I know a lot of families. Families that shared our background, families as different from ours as one could imagine, and for all of the trying in every family to "do the best thing", I can honestly say for certain I have not witnessed one family get it all right yet. It certainly won't be my family.

But back to my mom. After enduring the heartache of losing some of her children to lofty and disgustingly human ideals, and some to pure physical tragedy, she is now, by and large, restored to all of her living children and each one adores her. Not without the memories of the blemishes that we all smudged the past with, as both she and we as her children have inflicted damage, but we are all here, voluntarily in happy relationship with her (and dad of course, but this is about mom).

The beautiful thing about mom is that somewhere along the way, she came to terms with the fact that failure and imperfection were unavoidable, but the one thing that she could have some control over was the impact she had on the world around her by the personal choices she makes, choices about attitudes and responses and priorities. I have watched my mom weep tears for each of my grown siblings, including myself, and know with no uncertainty that there is no length that she would go to to spare us of unnecessary suffering. Not that she would seek to shelter us from the natural consequences of our poor decisions -although I have seen her struggle with even that admission of pain to her children. But after years of pouring her life into us she still seeks ways to give of herself to make us happy.

I will always remember the indignance that my mom had at the sight of the bumper sticker On RVs that gloated "I'm spending my children's inheritance". My mom hated that attitude. She hated that idea. I love that my parents are finally financially comfortable, only through years of hard work and sacrifice on both of their parts, but I am secure in the fact that they would give up all of that comfort in a heartbeat if one of us was in jeopardy. And there is just enough Nancy Drew left in my mom that I know she has a back up plan for the whole family if this crazy world ever went bellyup.

I guess the fact that my mom shelled out $6000 and flew across the country with me for a long shot surgery that MIGHT make my life more bearable speaks volumes to me about where her priorities are. I feel loved. I feel special. I feel cared for. And although in this second maybe my brothers and sisters can't say she has done the same for them (all though most would), they know that there would be no question but that she would for them as well. And even if she didn't, for whatever reason, how could I not do the same for someone else, or any other one of us that she has helped so selflessly? Mom is the example of imperfect selflessness that I believe we all would like to become, and I am fiercely proud of her.

So I know there are no perfect moms, but I would submit, for the record, that mine is pretty dang close. Except we don't say dang.

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