clickmom

Cry me an ocean

Something that doesn’t make any sense to me is that, as a young adult, I would’ve liked to have behaved how Matt is behaving. Matt hasn’t talked to me since June. But that was because my mother didn’t love me and didn’t want me. But I chose to take what I thought was the high road. And I never cut my mother out of my life. Even when she said horrible things to me. Like how having children was her biggest regret and how what she really wanted was to be a career girl. In her warped head she thought she could have a been a real mover and shaker in the advertising world. Haha. And I thought that as long as my kids knew how much I love them and how much I only ever wanted to be their mom but they wouldn’t resent me the way I resented my mother. Boy. I was so wrong. It’s a punch in the gut every minute of every day. I didn’t know I could cry this much.

Sent from my iPhone

Too hard.

So, update: when they back in for the biopsy it wasn’t what they thought it was. It isn’t scary. It isn’t even cancer.

Every day I drive myself nuts searching for visual clues. Is he yellow today? Too pale? Are those dark circles under his eyes? A new bruise? Did I see blood? Note to self: his hands are trembling today. Note to self: more confused than usual.

Tonight he fell in the kitchen. I went outside with sweet pea and he went in search of carbs. He fell so hard (With a baguette in his hand) and made such a clatter that sweet pea jumped in the yard and I thought a wild animal had run into the back door. (Of course that’s what I thought. Technically, I’m afraid of nature) I headed for the house after recalling the precise location of the emergency wild animal baseball bat and air horn bursting through the backdoor shouting something about a wild animal when I saw his legs laying on the floor sticking out from the area between the sink and stove.

He can not for the life of him figure out how he fell. He often says he tripped when what he does is lose consciousness, but his amazement at hitting the ground is really unsettling. He doesn’t know he was probably (as is typical) overcome with dizziness and frozen, unable to think or move before just blacking out until he hit the floor. Thats just how it happens to him every time. Unless I’m there to body slam him into the wall (annoying the beejeezus out of him) while directing him to bend his knees and slide down to the floor. if I’m right there I’ve got not covered. The fear is when I’m not in the house. Or at least watching him.

Oy vey.

This is so hard. Too hard.

Sent from my iPhone

Worrying

So. Yesterday was quite the roller coaster rid.

First I was suppressing my own personal heart attack when the surgeon asked me if it was ok to do a biopsy on what they thought was a cyst on the husband’s pancreas. The husband’s brother died from pancreatic cancer so of course I said to do the biopsy.

Then I sat in the reception area with tears streaming down my face for another 45 minutes before the husband was out of surgery and the doctor told me that when they went to do the biopsy what looked like a cyst turned out to be a collection of blood vessels so no biopsy and no cancer. I definitely have cancer PTSD. What a nightmare freaking disease.

So I was happy. And I called the husband’s primary care physician to make sure he had been given the update from the surgeon and he started to tell me how medically fragile the husband is and how worried he is about the husband undergoing the gall stone removing procedure he is having right now as I peck this post out on my phone. The doctor said that because of the husband’s state of (lack of) health that all the things that can go wrong after a surgery were so much more of a life threatening reality for the husband. Back down the roller coaster.

Part of me wishes he could just live in the hospital.

He was quite funny after yesterday’s procedure when he thought his doctor’s name was Mengele and kept on (loudly) announcing that he couldn’t believe he let a doctor named Mengele touch him and wondering if now he’d be cloned and wanted me to tell the doctor that he should leave him alone because he didn’t have a twin. Hilariously embarrassing. Poor Dr. Mengele

Apparently last night he had trouble sleeping so he decided to see if he could recall the names of all my stepford friend’s husbands. When I walked in today the first thing he asked was what one of those names were. Weird thing to do.

And, this afternoon, Mr.Dementia was feeling emasculated after I told the anesthesiologist that he has neuropathy in his internal organs and might not feel pain. Then he insisted he could climb 2 flights of stairs without getting winded. Then he insisted he could ride a bike for half an hour. I mean..... they know he is a heart failure patient. He has an implanted defibrillator!!!

I don’t know which is more heart breaking: watching him decline physically or cognitively. Everything about this sucks.

I didn’t tell him how worried his primary care physician is.

Sent from my iPhone

Normal

The husband is in the hospital again. I brought him in Saturday morning because he had vomited something brown the night before and had turned yellow.

There was blood in the vomit. They’ve got him in surgery right now. He has a stone in a bile duct that they will remove in another procedure tomorrow.

But they also found a cyst on his pancreas and since he Was admitted to the hospital all I could think of is brother who died tragically, three years after getting his new heart, from pancreatic cancer.

I’m sitting in the surgery waiting room while they see if they can safely do a biopsy of the cyst and I fee like I’m made of lead and sinking onto this waiting room chair. My head feels big and small at the same time, like maybe everything is turning into cement.

I can’t breathe anyway because I’m into week for with this upper respiratory infection but right now I feel like I’m taking that first breath when you step off a cold air-conditioned plane into a hot tropical climate and suddenly the air is hot and wet and it feels thick like pudding.

I just can’t get my head around the possibility that after everything else the husband has been through the last 10 years that he may have cancer also. I’m also upset because I think that cancer is among the worst ways to die. I’m thinking about my mom And my dad. And how they tried so hard to just live normally
...... despite. And I’m thinking about him despite all of the husbands illnesses and his cognitive decline how he just wants to look normal and feel normal and pretend that everything is normal.
Sent from my iPhone

Touched

This morning I was out in the woods with sweet pea when Josh was puttering around the kitchen, toasting a bagel while listening to a movie. In the movie a man was attacking a woman, there was the sound of shattering glass, the man yelling and the woman screaming.

The husband, who was fast asleep, heard the noise and thought I was being attacked in our kitchen. He jumped out of bed and headed towards the noise ready to take on the intruder he thought was hurting me.

This is adorable and hilarious. You can pretty much knock the husband over by waving your hand in front of his face. It’s kind of like the old dude who tries to box with the young whippersnapper. But, still, there he was, Mr. Disabled rushing to what he thought was me in distress.

I’m so touched.

Sent from my iPhone

Freaking post

Evan graduated college on Sunday.

So many things happening in my head during this time

First. I’m sick as a dog with some kind upper respiratory thing. And this time around I’m angry about being sick. Like really angry. I mean, I seem to get a big freaking cough illness every winter but this year it just came at such bad freaking time. Mostly because it came after a surprise post menopausal pop up period, which necessitated an ultrasound, blood tests and a biopsy (everything is normal) and all the stress that comes along with refusing to worry about it because I AM NOT GETTING FREAKING CANCER ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE. So, I barely got a break and then cough cough cough. And all I’ve wanted to do for the last 10 days is curl up in bed while someone brings me warm soothing drinks. But instead I coughed my way around the dog park, coughed while making and serving food, coughed driving the 6 hour round trip drive to Josh’s school and back and coughed onto the plane for Evan’s graduation ceremony, all over the arena where it was held, in various restaurants over the weekend, in the arena during the ceremony and back on our return flight.

The one upside was that Josh and the husband were so alarmed by all of my coughing that they shared a hotel room and let me sleep in my own room.

Speaking of the husband..... he’s been less steady than usual (which is pretty freaking unsteady) so he agreed to use the wheelchair that pal gave me after his husband died, so I got to push him around while trying not to cough on the back of his head all weekend. No one offered to push. I think it freaked the kids out a bit. It was hard for the husband to try and be engaged all weekend and it really highlighted how freaking out of it he really is. It was alarming, to say the least. Normally he can kind of fake things because his life has become so small and house centered but when he tried to be part of a bigger conversation or even just casually remark on what we were seeing when driving around ( he had never been to Evan’s school before) He was like..... in a different reality or on some other planet. I totally sounded like the impatient/emotionally spent/psychically exhausted family member snapping back at him when he said something ridiculously wrong or for the fifth time. I don’t like being that person.

The husband very much didn’t want to be in a wheelchair and was anxious to hop out of it at any given moment. That was hard to cope with since he can’t just hop out. Someone would need to carefully fold the foot rests out of the way and then brace the back of the chair so that when the husband leaned back to hurl his weight forward to help his freaking weak self to get out of the chair the chair didn’t tilt over backwards. Totally nerve wracking. Just it like it was when the husband freaking free fell into the chair when he got into it and also had no strength to slowly lower himself down and would just fall backwards into the tippy chair with the wheels on it. I had visions of him cracking his head on the cement sidewalks.

After the ceremony and obligatory post graduation dinner Josh sat me down for a little talk. He called me out for needing some kind of therapeutic support and maybe even an anti anxiety medication. He made good points and I so appreciated how hard it must have been for him to switch roles with me and play the adult and give me some advice. I agree about the therapy. Maybe not so much about the medication. But I’m open to a professional opinion. I just believe that medication is for when the feelings don’t match the circumstances and in my case it’s all so justified that medication would just be a way to be in denial with the aid of chemicals. But like I said. I’m open to a professional opinion.

I was so incredibly proud of Evan. I can still vividly recall sitting in the court watching other people be there alone with no family or support and feeling like the other people were doomed to that kind of life and telling myself it wasn’t going to be Evan’s future and that I’d do everything in my power to put him on a better track. Of course, he’s the one who had to swallow his pride and do the work. And he did!! I couldn’t be happier for him. As the parents we can only support our kids the rest of it is their job. Evan went from obnoxious teenager to driven adult in record speed and I am so happy he is ready to have a good life.

Sent from my iPhone

Lamps

In my childhood apartment we didn’t have ceiling lights so there were lamps scattered all over the place. At the end of each evening my mom would go around turning off each lamp one by one. The room getting brighter and then darker with each click of the three way light bulb. How many lamps were there? Three maybe? And maybe a “reading light” directly over one big chair. It seems strange to me that three lamps offered enough light. But they did and for some reason it suddenly seems much cozier than glaring white light streaming down from holes in the ceiling

I think I may lamp up and stop using the overhead ceiling cans of light in my current family room. I feel like I need the soothing glow of incandescent bulbs and the ritual of walking around the room deliberately transitioning into darkness.
Sent from my iPhone

Pork chops

For the life of me I can not figure out why last light I had a dream that I was (in incredible detail- right down to selecting fresh herbed bread crumbs and just the right sized plate to put them in) preparing to make breaded and fried pork chops.

I woke up just as I slid the most perfect looking tray of meat out.

I feel like I should eat a pork chop now.

But why? I’ve actually never made pork chops that way. What could this dream possibly mean?

Sent from my iPhone

only somewhat off putting

I know don't often tell sweet stories about the husband here. To be honest it's from lack of material. However, there was a thing, and it was very sweet so I figured I'd go ahead and share on the slim chance that I'm dead and my kids are looking through these pages because they aren't about to pay typepad to keep this blog alive after my demise and are just browsing through to see if I've humiliated them in writing somehow and need to talk about it with a therapist. Just kidding. I'm perfect. 

So, on Monday I actually went for a little part time job interview. It's so local I could walk to work in a fix and also at a place that I would not mind getting to be a part of. The position as they advertised it was for an educational coordinator and as an ex- NYC public school teacher and everything else I have done with my life (creating that art history program for the elementary school in stepford, and getting my 2nd Master degree at age 50 in order to teach college) I went into it knowing I was probably a bit over qualified. But I didn't announce that or anything. If anything I with held information because I didn't want to jinx the interview by being too enthusiastic about it. 

Anyways.... I had the interview (I thought it went very well) and then ran around doing a few errands when my phone rang and it was the husband who said "So????" I asked "So, what?" And he said "SO, did they offer you the job on the spot?" And I told him that I was the 5th of 10 people they were interviewing and they were going to decide next week because thats what they told me. And the husband, who is generally neutral no matter what, got a wee bit irritated and he could not believe that they'd meet me and then go on and interview other people. He thought for sure I'd get the offer on the spot. It was so ..... sweet. I mean, who knew he thought so highly of me? Not I. And that (sweet) is a word folks do not use about the husband. Let me tell you. Probably not since he became verbal has anyone used sweet to describe him.  But his reaction was sweet, so I'm going to give it to him, and let you, my viewing public of 1, and my future orphaned children know that one day in 2019 their dad was incredibly sweet and their mom recognized it, even though she couldn't manage say so at the time because it was completely out of character and somewhat off putting. 

I better get the freaking job offer. 

Everything disappoints.

I just voted. The kids from the elementary school were having a bake sale. I bought what I thought was a rice crispy treat. The little bastards made it out of lucky charms. My disappointment is infinite. Also, that’s heresy.

Sent from my iPhone