I have chemically induced amnesia. It’s apparent in most of my posts that I dare stay awake after popping my pill for the night, that I am under the influence of something, but this medicine seems to have no mercy. No matter how long one has been on this medicine, it induces amnesia, there is no building up a tolerance, and the amnesia comes at irregular intervals.
Last night’s entry is the perfect example of that.
Part of me wishes that I had spent that time working on my new Theme because that was a fairly frustration for me. I’m trying to make a theme that matched my old MoveableType layout, but so far I have had no luck.
I also, apparently, ate a bag of potato chips and have no recollection of doing so. The positive side? I don’t have any guilt in inhaling a bag of potato chips, simply because I don’t remember doing so!
I’m planning on seeing my doctor at 4:30pm today. Happy thoughts for me? Warm thoughts? Prayers? I want to be healthy for a change!
Getting Back In The Groove
My back hurts this evening. It was so bad that I called my doctor and left him a message and he actually got back to me, suggesting that come tomorrow morning, I come into his office and get back on my anti-cancer routine. I’m not looking forward to getting chemotherapy again, because I have felt so much better this year without it, but I also feel the pain creeping back into my life. I can’t have that. I can’t take the medicine, nor can I take the pain of having to deal with cancer and anti-cancer drugs.
I wish I were strong. I wish I could take all that has been laid out before me with grace and courage, but here I sit trying to find a way to get out of all of this. I went so far as to suggest that we leave state. Go somewhere where they don’t know of my diagnosis. But I can’t run from my body, no matter how hard I try.
My friend James says that he’s coming to see me sometime before May. I don’t know if I want to see any friends after going through a round of chemotherapy.
Pity Party, huh?
There are certainly more people out there that are suffering far more than I am, and they aren’t whining about it in their online journal. I don’t know why I feel that I need to whine about this constantly. It’s not like crying about it can or will change my future. I wish this were a novel and that I could pick up the book and cheat by looking at the back to see how things turn out. Do I get to live well and into my prime, or do I have an early death? Will I get to see what my children grow up to be? Or will they read eulogies to me before they are out of high school?
I shouldn’t be thinking about these things. I should be concentrating on Zinnia’s growth, my Mother’s Day projects, and making up with my mother. My therapist says that in the past seven months I have progressed better than the eleven years I have been in therapy. He says that there are no more pieces that he wants to cover with me, and that by the end of June I will get a certificate that I am well, mentally. I will be staying on the medications, and continue to work on myself in the privacy of my own home. But I no longer need a leader to help me along the way. We came to the conclusion that Roxanna was the reason I couldn’t get well. I considered her one of my bestest friends, and she made me cry every night with her insults and teasing. She knew that she was making me cry, and she never quite stopped.I gave her permission to hurt me and she did. That really broke my heart. The ones that we give our hearts to will never break them, They will never cause us any pain or tears. I felt like I was breaking up with someone whom I had dated. Now, I think that I should move to another state where people won’t know what I have done as an adult.
Some of the people who are mad at me as the people who want to see me naked, and that’s really none of their business, and when I explain that to them, they get a little irate. Let them get irate. Pissed, Pissed off. Angry. I can’t help their emotions.
I do have a new close friend online, Mandy. Perhaps she could take the place of Roxanna as being the friend who doesn’t make me cry from how badly I am to them, make me cry because I have such awesome friends out there who truly care about me. For twice in my life, I have had some “friends” who would see how much I was being helped, and they would turn away because they “couldn’t compare with that,” over the price of an iPod. The gifting wasn’t a contest or a bragging right. God will love you the same if you brought in canned food for the family to eat on for a month or so, or of you brought your stuffed animals you out grew and there for passed them down to children who were sick, dying, injured or they just want something to comfort them. You don’t back out of a donation-a-thon because someone else did better than you.
I remember giving so much to the dying children. “battered” teddy bears where we all sewed up the bears and make cuddly toys for the little boys and girls. There is no drugs allowed and there there is no such thing and a donation that is too small!
Roxanna has no power over me???????????????!!
The Warmth of the Sun
It was hot enough to run the air conditioner today. And we dyed Easter Eggs, in the part of the house that had no air conditioning. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Do something like cook hard boiled eggs in an already hot kitchen and then dye them. After all, tomorrow’s Easter, and we weren’t planning on celebrating, with my knocked up and due any day now (C’mon baby! I’m ready to meet ya!), we were going to do a small celebration, but now I don’t think we’re going to just have some toys and coloured hard boiled eggs around the table. I’m not that up for any hard boiled eggs. I can’t stand them when I’m not pregnant.
So I’m five days overdue today. I feel as though I am five years overdue. I feel like I have been pregnant forever. Worse, I feel like I am wasting everyone’s time with being pregnant, because nothing is happening.
I picked a bad time to try and blog. Dennis is due for his medication, and we’re going over double the dose, triple to be exact, and he’s just as scared as I am as to what this new dose is going to do. So here goes nothing. Happy Easter, in case I don’t get back to posting until Monday or so.
According to my health chart, my (asshole!) doctor, and other resources, I have exactly one more week of pregnancy left. The idea of a vaginal birth scares me to death, especially since I’ve read up in medical texts that the vagina is least likely to go back to its original, pre-birth size afterwards. I feel as though that particular change won’t settle easy. I know, I know, it’s really shallow for a man to leave his wife because her pussy’s too big, and while I’ll be the first to admit that Dennis is large, I have a bad feeling about the whole post-birth situation. That and I know it’s going to hurt like hell. Stretching to the point of tearing, stitches in the vagina. Not really something I want to go through.
It gets a little crazier than that, though.
We want to do it again. Six kids. That’s our goal. Six. Years ago, you couldn’t budge me to do one, never mind six. But we talked it over, and we want to have one more, and then stop completely. Oh goodie. I get to do this all over again!
Chloe is having a fit because she doesn’t want a little sister. She wants to be the only girl. Maybe she will get her wish? 
My doctor did lay down some harsh words to me the other day: “I hope you’re not expecting this child to live much longer after birth.” He has this crazy prediction that Little One is going to die within minutes of birth. He even gave me abortion pilled last Monday, and told me to be sure and have taken them by Thursday, because he was going to check. What kind of idiot makes that big of a medical malpractice mistake? If Little One were born on Thursday, they could have lived. They are capable of living outside the womb, so abortion at this point would be murder. But my doctor actually gave me a hard time over the lack of narcotics, opioids and the abortion pills, at Thursday’s appointment.
This week is Spring Break for the University. I am going to use much of the spring break to catch up on my writing. My goal is to have Book #20 finished before Little One is born. I want Book #21 to be about Little One’s birth, bringing them home, naming, and the first couple of months recorded. I’m sup-titling it “A Baby Story.” Here’s hoping that Little One’s story is a happy and joyous. 
My doctor insists that Little One isn’t going to live long after birth, but I hope he’s wrong. I have grown attached to Little One since they are showing reactions to the environment. When people yell or scream, Little One jumps away. When people laugh or sing, Little One tends to be joyous. Little One responds to her father’s voice, my voice, our touch, and has actually shown sleep patterns that are like our own. Little One recognises her father singing, her mother humming, and her older sister complaining about homework. Little One may not be born yet, but they are a full part of the family now.
My doctor never told me that one of his concerns would be the radiation, narcotics and opioids that Little One was exposed to, being a concern for the baby. No, his “worries” were because I was pregnant, I couldn’t, legally, be subjected to his surgery. I really don’t care these days, except I would like to have a constant physician in my life.
I was told that we might go somewhere for spring break, but I’m not sure about that, now. I’m not officially going back to work until the end of August. Here’s hoping that I don’t get lazy and want to stay away forever. 
)
Oh, and I joined this site. Don’t know what the craze is, but add me and all that good shit. D
Moments of Despair
Today I am completely exhausted. It started with just looking at my schedule coming up, and the adventure I had yesterday in tracking down an AT&T store to replace my iPhone earbuds. For some reason the left side of my earbuds always dies. I think it’s because I fall asleep wearing them all the time.
I finished my nineteenth book today. It’s going in the mail tomorrow for those who want to read it. There’s still time to get on the list, so let me know if you want to read it. After book twenty, there’s going to be some slight changes, such as larger books with more time progression in them. That means that you’ll get fewer books in the mail, but when you do get a book, it will be thicker, with better writing, more photos, and longer chapters.
One of the many times that I do my most writing is when I’m at the doctor’s office, in their waiting room, or when I am at treatment. I go into better details when I have one of my books than when I am sitting at the computer. The reason for that is I am used to writing about things as they are happening. When I’m sitting at a computer, to write, even after all these years, I still think that I am writing for someone such as a teacher or submitting an article. My brain just won’t wire a different way, and that really annoys me sometimes.
My schedule is littered with doctor appointments, a CT scan, treatment plan updates, more doctors, medication changes, more scans, and general annoyances that I would give anything to be away from. My doctor is mad at me for getting sicker. My depression doesn’t seem to be improving, even though my therapist suggests otherwise. I just don’t feel better, emotionally. I have to push myself to do the littlest things, such as make my bed and change the sheets, take my medications and check my vitals. The University has asked me to get a better grip on the schedule and get the students to do more assignments. I wish I could just ask them to read more chapters in their text books, but then I would have to give quizzes on the content, and I don’t want to dig through text books every night, mostly because I am so damned sleepy all of a sudden.
I go in for my CT scan on March 11th. The oncologist will be looking for abnormal swelling in my brain due to the Gamma Knife procedure done on my tumors. I feel as though my skull has shrunk considerably. My vision is still blurred, and my eyes get tired after watching TV or reading for just a few minutes.
Why can’t I just be well? Why must I be subjected to being this damned sick all of the time? Why must my pain get so bad on some nights that I have to triple my pain medication? That I must cry and tell myself that it will pass? What if one day it doesn’t pass? What if one of my children should find me in that situation? They know I am sick, they just do not know just how sick that I truly am, as it is the one thing that I have kept from this my entire journey.
I will continue to fight. This is my fight, my battle, and it’s the one war that I will win. Against all odds, I will beat this, and then life will return to normal. I won’t have to wear a mask and pretend that my life is normal, I won’t have that nagging worry that something is terribly wrong, because I will be well. I just wish I had a little encouragement along the way.
I have a parenting question that I would really appreciate an honest answer to.
Since she was a new born, my daughter, Chloe, has always urinated when she is submerged in water (ie: sitting in waist-deep bath water, in a pool, ocean, river, etc). She does not urinate if I wash her hair with her head bent over a sink, but she always does when anyone, including herself, brushes her hair.
We have taken her to a doctor and ruled out a deformed or defective urethra, sexual abuse, bladder disorders, phobias, and temperatures in the water or hard hair pulling.
Chloe doesn’t seem she’s aware that she is doing it until after she has done it, and lately she cries over it.
Our next stop is psychological, and then we don’t know what to so. Neither Dennis, not I ever had this problem, nor has any of our other children. We have tried having her go pee before getting in the water or having her hair brushed, but she still urinates quite a bit while she is being bathed or brushed.
Has anyone ever had this problem with themselves, a friend, or family member? What was it? How was it treated? What caused it?
Full Circle
Today Dennis was released from the hospital. I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t expecting him to call me and say that he got a ride back to our place. Getting that message at 6pm, I packed up what I could from Vance’s place, gathered my little ones, wrote a letter to Vance explaining where I was going, and left. He’ll find it at about 6am, when he gets home from work. It was harder to leave Vance than it was Dennis. Vance always kissed me good morning, good night, hello and good bye. He kissed me for no apparent reason other than I was there, and he felt like being affectionate. Dennis, on the other hand, thinks that by marrying me, he never has to tell me that he loves me anymore.
My mind has been wandering tonight. First from the medical tests that revealed Stage III cancers in two more places, to discussing surgery, alone, in that huge hospital, to knowing that I am going to have to see the therapist tomorrow. My tits are sore from the mammogram and the biopsies. My armpit is sore from the biopsy. I feel as though I will be alone in my battle, had I not gotten back together with Dennis when he called me. Vance would not miss work, no matter what, even the day that I had my Gamma Knife surgery. He dropped me off at the clinic, went to get coffee, and came back in about two hours and picked me up, distorted and disoriented. I was essentially alone. Today was a horrible reminder of this.
The thoughts that raced through my mind kept me anxious. When I heard the technologist tell me that lumps were found in my breasts, that a lump was found in my side, I wanted someone there, someone familiar, to hold me. I wanted someone to be there to tell me that yes, the road was a frightening and strange road, but that I was going to get well, and I didn’t have to go down it alone. That would have made the entire procedure 100% less frightening for me. The only person there was the technologist and I, and I certainly couldn’t hug her. She was so cold and sterile. The x-ray machine was cold and sterile. My nipples bled during the procedure. I was shaking by the end of the procedure, wanting to sit down between shots, but the technologist kept telling me to stand there, we were “almost done.” Forty minutes later, and much blood on the x-ray machine, I was told we were finally “done.” I was shaking. I’m not used to standing that long. I’m not used to something squeezing my tits that hard for that long, in those exotic positions. But I survived it. Alone. In that huge, cold, lonesome hospital. As I was walking back to my car, I saw that it was pouring rain out. I walked slowly to the car, feeling embarrassed that I had just shown my tits to a stranger, and that I had to face said stranger. I also felt as if the hospital was going to swallow me up, with the twists and turns and such. I just wanted to get home, change, and sleep it off. But then Dennis called to tell me that he had been released from the other hospital, and was at our house.
Gamma Knife surgery was as bad as the new diagnosis. They screwed a box to my head. Underneath the skin. The box was to keep my head still, and only allowing movement when the huge CT-esque machine was ready to move my head. Couldn’t they do this some other way?! I could feel the screws grinding against what I could only logically assume was my skull. I wanted to faint, but I’m not wired that way. I stay awake for the whole gore-y situation. No matter what is being done to me. The same thing happened when I got my root canals done a few years back.
Somehow, things just feel like they should be this way, you know? I feel as though I should be here, in this house, digging through a mountain of laundry, lightly teasing Dennis, while we watch worn-out, has-beens in rock. It just seems like this is they way things should be. Even though my heart is craving kisses and smiles and someone who doesn’t scream at the kids at every opportunity, the Continuum is no longer in danger of Chaos.
If you don’t get that last reference, it means that all life as we know it would cease to exist because I wasn’t playing my part in the Universe. Now that I am, I have saved mankind, somewhat. Be thankful.
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