More. Big. Hairy. Balls.

After my last post I really thought I couldn't handle one more thing. The big hairy balls had done me in.

Well, I guess Karma had something else in mind for me, that bitch.

Turns out I can handle more balls

Especially when they come in the "my husband is in the ER with a cardiac condition" flavor. AKA the biggest, hairiest ball of them all.

So, instead of my husband telling me he has been feeling his heart race and do weird things for a few months and getting it checked out, he decided to wait until it was not only racing and jumping, but he was dizzy and short of breath. Fortunately, he works at a hospital and one of the nurse practitioners listened to his heart and immediately sent him to the ER.

I was in the middle of a meeting with Noah's behavior specialist last Thursday afternoon when he called to tell me where he was headed. 

I told him I was on my way and on the drive managed to call our neighbors and ask if they could get Noah off the bus, call school and let them know so they could tell Noah to go to the neighbors and let the bus driver know who was going to meet Noah, and call daycare and let them know I would be getting Kiel later than usual. (juggling those balls)

To make a very long story just as long a little shorter, Rich was in the ER with atrial flutter, a hemoglobin of 9.1 (normal is 14 - 16, 8 is when they start to transfuse) and a positive test for blood in his stool. The initial thought was that he had a GI bleed. The GI doc came though and said his anemia was not consistent with an active bleed and whatever was going on was a chronic condition. One doctor was telling us the atrial flutter was from low blood volume from the bleed, but then the GI doc said there was no low blood volume and the flutter was something separate. GI doc did do an upper endoscopy on him the next morning.  The endoscopy did not show anything clinically significant.

Cardiologist was brought in and sent Rich for an echocardiogram right after the upper endoscopy. The echo showed the right side of his heart was enlarged, which the cardiologist couldn't make sense of, so he sent him for a CT scan to check for pulmonary embolisms. If he was clear of blood clots in his lungs the plan was to do a cardiac ablation to zap out the bad signal that was causing the flutter.

At this point I freaked out and called my mom and told her I needed her and my dad to come out and help. They were surprised, but thankfully they packed up and drove from Michigan to help with the boys. I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't been able or willing to come.

I waited to have my freakout until I was in the parking garage of the hospital getting ready to go pick up Kiel from daycare.  As I left the garage I handed the attendant my ticket, which he handed right back to me and said no, I need the blue ticket, this one is for the other garage. Of course I was crying, and that just sent me over into the ugly cry. I tried to find the ticket, but could barely see. By this time I was holding up cars behind me and the attendant was looking at me with a mixture of horror and disgust. He finally just said to forget about it and waved me on through.

The CT scan showed no clots in his lungs so they decided he could come home for the weekend if he wanted, and go back in to the hospital Monday morning for the ablation.

He came home for the weekend and I held my breath the entire time. Every time he moved he was out of breath and he could feel the funny rhythm in his chest. When he was sleeping if he stopped snoring I woke him up to make sure he was still alive. I was a nervous wreck.And I also realized just how much he does do around the house between taking care of the boys and cooking.

Then the next ball came along and Friday night I realized it was time to take "the cat that would not die" to the vet where he would lose the word "not" in his title. :(

Fortunately a friend of mine took Noah to karate Saturday morning and he spent time with her son, while I took Stel to the vet.

The vet sucked, as it always does when you are putting a loved animal to sleep. It was time though, and I knew that. 

They sent me home with a paw print made in "clay" that I had to bake to harden.

A friend of mine, Bella, my angel, came over to help me crisis clean for my parents visit. I can't even describe to you how awesome it was having her here with me and how much she did to help! 

As the paw print was cooling on the counter Noah thought he would help by microwaving it. The in house fire alarm went off as the house filled with toxic black smoke. We were all upstairs and raced down to figure out was what going on (including Rich, who should not have been running). We sat outside on the deck for an hour and a half as the house aired out.

Bella and I stayed up late drinking wine and talking. It was very nice!

The next morning we woke up and our neighbor knocked on the door to tell us I had a flat tire. All I could do was laugh, really laugh. I mean really. Karma was losing her touch if that was all she could give me.

My parents arrived Sunday afternoon and the boys were just thrilled. I think they were happy to see the boys as well.

Monday morning we were back at the hospital for Rich to have the ablation. The procedure went well, but they found an atrial septal defect (ASD) during the procedure. It is a congenital condition, but since his heart has started to enlarge and he had the arythmia, they suggest he have it corrected before anything worse happens. We are waiting to find out if he can have it done via catheter (non-invasive) or if it will have to be done as an open heart procedure.

A hematologist came in to talk about Rich's anemia and they determined it was due to chronic iron deficiency from malabsorption.  They gave him an iron infusion and will again weekly for another four or five weeks.

He came home Tuesday morning, well tuned up, but with future repairs needed, which we will figure out.

I realized through all of this that even when I think I've reached my limit I can manage what I have to.

I ain't afraid of no BALLS!


 

Big. Hairy. Balls. That require juggling.

There are so many things I want to write about, but finding the time to actually do it has been difficult lately. Instead, I find myself writing just the titles for a blog post, with a short bit on what I want to say so I'll can come back to it. Unfortunately, by the time I get back to it I either don't remember what I thought was so funny/interesting/important about the topic, or it is no longer timely.

I want to write about last weekend, my second year at the Early Trauma and Attachment Meeting (ETAAM)in Orlando, with the most awesome mommas ever! But I'm still decompressing and I'm not ready to share yet. I need to keep the awesomeness close to me for another day or two. 

Today I need to write about stress and mental and emotional health.

I remember a graph in pharmacy school when we learned about mental health disorders. It was a very simple graph, with stress on one axis and depression (I think) on the other. Essentially it was describing the linear relationship between the two, and in very simple terms saying that when the stress gets high enough everyone eventually has a breaking point.

I always thought I had a lower breaking point than most, considering I've been dealing with depression since I was a teenager. Recently though, in one of those "light-bulb moments" I realized that I generally deal with stress just fine as long as it is the life is busy, lots of deadlines, too much to do kind of stress. It is emotional stress that really gets me.

I actually do better at work when I have the pressure of deadlines and an over-full project load.

I do just fine juggling Noah's appointments and therapy, and managing to get all of us to karate at least once or twice a week.

I even make sure we all have clean clothes despite being so busy that the rest of the house suffers. Let's be honest, a clean house has never been a big priority for me.

But add in emotional stress and I hit the overload wall pretty quickly. And right now, I feel like I slammed face first into it. So much of the emotional shit right now has to do with Noah (big surprise, right?) and how I am dealing with him: problems with school, frustration with his psychiatrist, worrying about his lack of friends, realizing that his IEP is not acceptable and we are going to have to fight the school district over it, accepting that we are seeing more behaviors and learning disorders as a result of the fetal alcohol exposure, and just the general trying to accept that he is always going to struggle and we can't fix him.

I'm also dealing with a dying cat that doesn't seem in any big hurry to actually die, but continues to pee on things around my house. 

And, I'm more than a little worried about Rich and how he is handling all of this, and what it is doing to our marriage.

To put it simply, I'm juggling a lot of big hairy balls right now. I'm usually OK with a couple balls, even if one of them is big and hairy. I can do two if I know it's short term. But when it becomes four and five, and most of them are filled with emotional crap, I find myself wanting to scream "get me off this ride."

It's not easy for me to say I can't do it all, but I know that if I don't put at least one ball down (gently, with assurance to it that I will be back soon) I'm going to find myself either dropping all of them or sitting in a parking lot somewhere yodeling and sending messages on Facebook that I'm not ever going home. 

I know I need to make some decisions, and I need to make them now. Obviously there are balls I can't drop (like work, Noah's therapy, Kiel's speech therapy, getting Noah through school every day, and the big one for me right now - fighting the school district for a more appropriate IEP and the necessary services).

Things I could theoretically drop: bathing, cooking (oh, who am I kidding, I didn't cook before) sleep, testing for my black belt in April (instead I would test next fall).

Considering I drove to karate class today and sat outside in my car crying, and never actually made it inside, I think I've made at least one decision. The one ball that is just about me, is the only thing right now that I can set aside. I feel a combination of guilt and resentment that this is what it is coming down to, but also a little bit of relief.

*It's also about to push me over the edge that I can't figure out why the font is changing when I add a hyperlink to the word.

Facebook, vaginas, and asshattery

 I was an early adopter of Twitter. I jumped on the Facebook band wagon a bit later. Over time I stopped using Twitter regularly and found I preferred Facebook.

I think there was a learning curve as I figured out Facebook.  Instead of my blog friends I was interacting with real life friends and family. I had to decide what I wanted to stay private; I took a couple years before I linked it with my blog. And I made a few comments over the years that I regretted later. 

So now I have a few guidelines I follow:

• I don't criticize people on their own posts, even when I disagree. Even if I have to practically sit on my hands so I don't.
• If someone comments on my post though, I reserve the right to respond.
• If you say something on my wall, or comment on my post, and it includes asshattery I reserve the right to remove it. I control my wall. I control my blog. Kind of like how I control my body.

So imagine the fun I had this morning when this post that I wrote last night:

I missed a portion of the debate. Did anyone ask why the men think they should have the power to control my vagina?

elicited this comment from an old school friend this morning:

How exactly does birth control control your vagina? Are your opinions not inflicting control over others as well? Is there really a difference on what your are complaining about? Are you not in judgement of other women who feel that they should not have to purchase other women's birth control and pay for their abortions??? What exactly is so wrong with valuing life at all stages??

I admit to being a little taken aback considering that really wasn't what I was asking in the question. So I responded.

Oh XXXX, there are just so many ways I can answer this! I'm not sure where to start! You are actually assuming a lot in my statement, but that’s OK. I have no problem responding to your assumptions.

First, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but I am also entitled to mine. My opinion is not preventing you from using or not using birth control; nor is my opinion preventing you from having or not having an abortion. I wouldn’t even presume to ask you if you use, have used, had, or have had either one. Therefore, I do not see how your opinion should be able to control my personal decisions. But, in case you wanted to know, how lucky for me that I do not need birth control or will ever have to consider an abortion, because I am INFERTILE. I am so LUCKY!

(And I’m not going to even get into the “who I should be allowed to love” debate. But I think that also has some relevance here considering that 50% of the time that also involves someone with a vagina.)

Second, since it is virtually impossible to get pregnant without your vagina being involved in some way, controlling a woman's access to birth control does indeed (whether directly or indirectly) insinuate control over her vagina.

Third, yes, I think there is a difference in what I am “complaining” about. I believe that I should have control over my body. It sounds like you believe you, and others that think like you, should have that control. Maybe I’m not “smart” enough to have my own rational, well thought out beliefs and values? Since I don’t know better I guess the government needs to make those decisions for me?

Fourth, I am not judging the decisions a woman makes for herself. You do what you want with your body. (See above.)

I’m curious though if you know what it is like to walk in the shoes of women that do have to make hard decisions for themselves and their families, decisions that involve very personal choices about their own body? It’s easy to pigeon hole you into an upper-middle class white family with two gorgeous girls that are both academically and athletically talented. You live in an awfully nice bubble. I’m happy for you! And I mean that with complete sincerity!

But tell me, do you know what it is like to work for a Catholic hospital and have a man in human resources tell you that if you can’t get pregnant that god must not want you to have children? Or that fertility treatment is on the same level of need as elective plastic surgery? Or, that if you do pay for treatments yourself, and do get pregnant, the insurance won’t cover the prenatal care of that child until the second trimester? So really, you should just adopt. But if you adopt, you don’t get to take maternity leave, because, well you know, it’s not like you gave birth. Well, I do.

I paid for my own birth control before I ever knew that there was no need. Oh, the irony. Seriously though, I was lucky that I came from a good supportive family that helped me get an education so I could get a good job. A job where I could afford to pay for the oral contraceptives that the Catholic hospitals I worked at didn’t pay for. I didn’t work at those hospitals because they were Catholic, I worked there because it was what I went to school to do – to help people.

Should we even mention the hypocrisy of insurance that covers Viagra and other ED drugs for men, but won’t cover contraceptives for the women those men want to screw?

I wonder, have you walked in the shoes of a mother with a special needs child that has to fight for every freaking service their child gets just so they can live as close to a “normal” life as possible? Talk about valuing life! And what if that woman gets pregnant unintentionally? Should she be allowed to consider if she can take care of another child? What if that special needs child has a genetic disorder that subsequent children would likely have as well?

Have you walked in the shoes of a young mother with four children already and a husband that can’t find work that finds herself pregnant again and doesn’t know how she is going to take care of the kids she already has? Or maybe her husband is in the military and deployed overseas? We all know how wealthy those military families are.

Or have you been the mother pregnant with a child with a genetic disorder that will not allow the child to live more than hours after birth, and those hours will be full of excruciating pain.

What about the young teenager that finds herself pregnant because her uncle/father/brother/next door neighbor is raping her?

In those examples, I’m not going to tell those women what they should do. But I do believe they have a right to make their own decisions.

And last, you ask about valuing life at all stages? I’ll have that argument with you when you can tell me that the children that are living and breathing in this country right now are all being cared for.

Next weekend I am fortunate enough to be able to go spend the weekend with approximately 90 other women that have adopted or foster children with special needs. Women with children like my son, and women with children that are so far beyond damaged that Noah looks easy in comparison. These are women that have to fight every day to keep their children safe. Women that have to make really hard decisions, decisions like how do I keep this child in my house when he is hurting my other children and trying to kill me? Women taking care of children that have such severe mental illness/FASD/RAD/PTSD/autism/physical disabilities etc. etc. that there is no chance of normalcy for them or their child, ever. Women that are doing everything to get help for their child and the system is failing them. Over and over again. And these are the families that care and have adopted the children that birth parents did not want or could not keep.

What about all the kids that don’t have families and don’t have someone advocating for them.

Yes, when all of those children are getting the love and care and support they need, then come to me and ask me about valuing life at all stages. Because right now, I find it hard to believe that we truly value the lives that are already on this earth.

Then my mother decided to get involved. *big sigh* Debating politics with my mother never ends well. 


But, all ended well, because a friend of mine posted this on Facebook and my day is now complete!