(sigh)

Another Update: Have an appointment with dr. tomorrow. Gonna talk about a rx change. I don't think adjusting the dose is working so well.

Update: Spoke with co-worker. Feel worse than ever. Sometimes I really really don't like myself. Going to go see psychiatrist tomorrow. Maybe a medication change will help.

Sometimes I wonder, are friends really worth the effort? Is it worth the fights and frustrations and misunderstandings? By the time I get over whatever made me mad, and I wasn't just frustrated I was pissed off, then the other person is pissed off because I was pissed off. Now I wait for the other person to stop being pissed off, I apologize and then we move on.

Is this what marriage is like? because if it is, then I think I'll just stay single and adopt a couple of kids.

I've come to realize that my short fuse is because I haven't had a significant break from work in close to a year. I took off work in April for my grandma's funeral, but that wasn't anywhere close to a vacation. So I have tried hard not to take my frustration out on my friends, but I haven't always succeeded. In fact, in recent weeks I have outright failed.

I am taking the week of Thanksgiving off and the week between Christmas and New Years and the week in January for the cruise. By February I should be good to go for several more months.

Now, I also realize that this puts some of my coworkers in a bind, because they will have to pick up the slack when I'm not here, and that sucks so they (she) might be frustrated with me for taking the time, and that makes me feel a little guilty. But they (she) can tell Dr. C that they need a break, too, and schedule around the time I'm still there.

A bit of a catch22 all around.

Oh well. Anyway, 1 week in November, 1 week in December and 1 week in January.

YAY VACATION FOR SANITY!!!

I thought I was being all slick...

Ok, so I have allergies. Not so bad as to disrupt my life, but a pain in the butt all the same.

I used to take claritin. worked great. Then they came out with Clarinex! That worked even BETTER! I never had stuffy runny nose or sinus headache, it just went away! Then, the terrible day came. Claritin went OTC. The idiot doctor I had thought that this also meant that Clarinex would go OTC, also. Apparently, it didn't.

I've been using Zyrtec for awhile. It works OK. I sometimes have to take a pseudofed or nasal rinse, but overall it works ok.

Zyrtec has stopped working so well, so I went with OTC Claritin. Wow, it worked pretty well! My overall stuffiness was markedly decreased. So I went to the pharmacist and asked them if the Clarinex was available, too. They said, No! Clarinex was NEVER OTC! WHAT???

So, being all slick, I called my PCP and asked her to fax in a prescription for Clarinex. She Agreed! YeAH! Effective Allergy relief for the first time in several years!

Then I got my bill from Medco, the mail order prescription place. $90 for a 3 month supply of clarinex. I can buy a 90 day supply of generic zyrtec for $35, and 3 monhts of the generic Flonase for $20.

Damn. That was short-lived joy. I get 3 months of Effective Allergy relief. Then, back to the 'It will have to do' plan.

It could have been sooooo much worse

I got home too late on saturday to have The Talk with mom and dad. So I went with my bro and sil and niece and we trick-or-treated! A friend of my brother's lives in a nice little subdivision that is mostly circular, so some of the adults (me included) herded 7 or 8 kids around the neighborhood. Emma was shy the first couple of houses, but by the end she was leading the charges up the drive ways. She had a blast! Then we stopped and saw grandpa and grandma and hugs and kisses and visited a few more houses in my home town. By the last house, Emma says, "Do we have to go trick-or-treat again?" We took that as a sign to go home. I had promised my niece that I'd sleep with her, so I slept with her last night. She rolled and kicked and moved and talked and groaned and cried once or twice, ALL NIGHT LONG. I'm freaking Tired!

So, the timing worked well, Bro and SIL came over and we all sat down, I started with a prayer (Remember we are a family and we love each other and help us to use soft words and have open hearts). There was cursory annoyance and irritation, but once that was past, I think Dad was relieved that something is being done. He agreed that he wasn't doing such a good job cleaning, and that he had planned on paying my SIL's mother to do it, but we agreed that a professional would be better, and she could come once a week for 2 or 3 months, and then we'll address the issue again. I made a leap of faith and had a lady from a nearby town come give us an estimate to clean the house. She said $175 for the whole house, that's oiling all of the woodwork, moving furniture and cleaning under it, the whole 9 yards.

We repeated the whole thing with mom's health, and that we think she needs a home-health care nurse once a week, maybe more. He agreed to tell the doctor that they need a prescription and we'll go from there. At least the idea is on the table, and that's more than a step, that's a freaking LEAP in the right direction.

Thank you God, for the right words. Thank you for all of your blessings, for the blessing of good parents, and good children. Thank you for my brother, in spite of all of his faults, he loves mom and dad and looks out for the best for them. Amen.

Here's another depressing-ass family post

It has become apparent lately that my parents are not taking care of themselves very well anymore. Dad has let the house get way past dirty and is venturing into unhealthy.

My mom isn't taking good care of her personal hygiene, she doesn't always remember deodorant and while she washes, it must be a cursory wash, not a good scrubbing. She has a sore on her neck where the trach collar is rubbing a sore spot.

I must go home tomorrow with my aggressive, undiagnosed Bi-polar brother and his wife and we all, mom dad, bro, sil and me, have to sit down and talk about this.

Yeah, that's going to go so well. Dad, you can't clean the house, we're going to bring strangers into the house to clean it. Mom, you aren't taking care of yourself good enough, dad isn't noticing, we're going to bring strangers into the house to help bathe you.

Shit. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I want to wake up in the morning and have it all be ok. it's not supposed to be like this. I shouldn't be having to do this when they're only 60. I'm only 34, this is shit that's supposed to happen when I'm in my 40's. I'm not equipped to handle this right now. How do I walk in and start to tear my family apart?

I keep falling apart. I don't know how I'll even manage the drive. I don't know how to do this. How do I do this??

Dear God, give me the words because I don't have ANY IDEA how the hell do to this.

Lumbar Puncture

So, the Lumbar Puncture went ok. I didn't realize it was just a spinal block in reverse.

Ok, that's a stupid comment on my end. It isn't JUST a spinal block. It's still something that sucks being done.

They numbed her with a couple of shots which, judging my mom's expression, HURT. Probably didn't hurt as bad as the spinal tap itself would have, but still. They numbed 1 spot, they couldn't get to the correct spot to fluid, so she had to numb 1 vertebrae higher. Mom was a trooper. I'd have been crying, but she didn't. But then, she didn't realize what they were doing today until she asked why we were in the Brain and Spine clinic. So she didn't have a bunch of time to dwell on it, either.

All in all, it was an ok day. For as bad as it could have been, it wasn't. And I'll take that today.

Large Cancer Hospital

I'm not sure if I've posted this before, but I've thought it. So if you've already read this, my apologies. Apparently it strikes a chord every time I go with the folks to the LCH.

I was with mom and dad at the Large Cancer Hospital this morning. Mom needed an MRI of her spine and she shakes so much they had to sedate her. This is a separate unit from the regular MRI unit. Because it was a sedated unit, there were people of all ages. The youngest was under 10, the oldest possibly in her 80's. But that was hard to tell, mom looks about mid 70's, and she's just now 61. There was a young girl, maybe 7 or 8, bald as can be. When she went in, her mom pulled a blanket over her head and took a nap. No telling how hard her life is, how many hours has she spent curled up in a waiting room chair trying to sleep for a few minutes. There was a young woman, her shirt said 'Senior's 2010'. She was on crutches, but I wasn't in a position to see why she was on crutches.

While the MRI was going (it took 2 hours) dad and I went down for breakfast. It struck me, as it always does, that cancer has no boundaries. Not age, sex, finances, weight, education, race, religion and any other distinction you could come up with. At the cafeteria it's sometimes hard to see who the patient is. My dad isn't a patient anymore, but he looks like he could be. In the hallways it's a little easier, patients are often the ones in the wheelchairs.

My mom has a Lumbar Puncture (aka spinal tap) on thursday. I'm more worried and scared than I think mom is. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go in with mom. I wouldn't want to do that without someone holding my hand. I know they used to not give anesthesia for that procedure, and I don't know what to expect. And then I think about how crappy this is that it's my mom going through it. And then I think that it doesn't matter who it is, it's just crappy that ANYONE has to go through this. I'm normally sort of resigned when I think about my getting cancer. The genetics are definitely against me, it remains to be seen what kind of cancer I'll get first. But once in awhile it really hits me, and I get scared witless.

It was raining when we were done, so mom and I waited at a door and dad took the bus to the car, then came back to get us. While we were waiting a guy with a throat speaker, the thing they use when the vocal chords are destroyed, usually throat or lung cancer, was being wheeled out by a transportation person. He told her, 'You have to take me somewhere I can get a cab'. And I thought how REALLY crappy it was that he had to take a cab home from the cancer hospital.

I told mom that It was both reassuring and terrifying that if I ever get cancer dad will take care of me, whether or not I want him to. She laughed. She also told me it was easy as long as she was so tired. She didn't care, so she let him do what he wanted. I told her I couldn't wait for her to have enough energy to fight with dad, because after several years of dad doing what he wanted, when he wanted it and how he wanted it, they would have some HELLA good fights. She laughed again. I hope I can laugh when I'm in her shoes.

Dear God, Please give me the peace and strength to handle what you put in front of me. Thursday will need a great deal of each, I think. Amen.

a peaceful post

So it turns out last week when we were both so pissy, my friend mlk and I were both pms-y, in addition to being overworked and WAY TOO TIRED. She's not on birth control, and I recently got off the pill (because I didn't think sex once every 4 or 5 months really warranted a pill every single day), so apparently we're cycling together. That should make the middle of the month pretty interesting for awhile.

I had some friends over to my house friday night. It was fun, we watched Shaun of the Dead. With the 2 1/2 year old with us. It has become apparent that we must now begin to watch a little more kid-friendly movies. We can probably still get away with PG13 until she's a couple of years older. Don't know what we'll do then.

But, I cleaned my house, and I mean I CLEANED my house last friday. It's staying clean, too. It's very nice. I like it when my house is clean. It's peaceful for me to walk into a clean and not cluttery house. I feel a little more at peace with my world now that my house is presentable again. I may do it again this weekend, too. Maybe saturday this time? You just never know...

I'm sitting here listening to my grandmother clock tick (like a grandfather clock, but smaller). The clock works, but the striker doesn't hit the bell, so it doesn't ring like it should. It will cost me a bit of money to have that fixed, so it will just have to be this way for awhile. But it's reassuring to listen to it tick and tock. Plus I get to wind it every sunday. I like doing that. It takes me less than minutes, but I like the habit of it. There's a sense of being connected with previous generations who had to wind their clocks every week, too.

I think that's it for the night. I just wanted to put something positive on this page, it's been full of negative and unhappy lately. I'm trying to be a little more positive, a little more 'glass half full' than 'glass half empty'.

YAY! A Trivia friday!

It's time for WTF Friday Trivia

Three diseases (besides influenza) that killed a lot of people at one time: Smallpox, plague, measles

Three over-the-counter medicines that once required a prescription: zyrtec, claritin, yeast infection cream?

Three vaccinations that many people receive as kids: measles, mumps, rubella (german measles)

Three non-medicinal treatments for flu-like symptoms: chicken soup, mentholatum, nasal sinus rinse.

Three generic symptoms of no particular illness at all: low-grade fever, chills, nausea

Three antibiotics (brand name or chemical name OK): Ampicillin, levofloxacin, tetracycline

Two diagnoses that once appeared on "House (hint: it's never lupus**): Rabies, radiation poisoning.


Standard trivia rules apply: no Google, no cheating, no calling your readers who are pharmacists and/or infectious disease researchers (HAHA! That was meant for me!!) and/or nurses for hints, etc. I'll post my answers on Monday night after 5pm. Good luck

My grandma's China hutch.

I filled my grandma's china hutch yesterday. It's about half full of grandma's, and half full of mine. I stepped back from it and it made me cry. I'm going to send pictures to my mom and my mom's siblings. It fits the house so perfectly.

The design on the china is a wheat stalk with a blue-green edge. The gold wheat stalk matches the yellow walls. It looks like it was done on purpose.

Every time I looked at it last night I thought of grandma. But I smiled when I did.

A long week

You ever have one of those weeks where things just don't seem to go right? You do A, you're wrong. You do B, you should have done A. You do A again, you should have done D. You go to Z, they tell you you went too far.

I can't win for losing.

And I internalize things. So if I'm wrong about A, then about B, then about D, I start to think I can't do anything right. So in an effort to stop being wrong, I stop doing anything, and that's wrong, too. Then I look back and see things that I should have been able to see, account for, or predict, and I blame myself for those things, too.

Plus, somehow I got the 8AM and 8PM (well, at this point it's 8AM and 6:30PM) antibiotic doses. I'm really tired and my brain is moving slow. I'm PMS'y which makes me a little sensitive, too.

And I keep pissing off my friend. I hate my friends being mad at me. But I hate more when they get mad at me several times over the course of several days, so that by the end they are ANGRY with me. I hate that.

Anyway. That's my week so far. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.