clickmom

I mowed the lawn today

I AM BACK, BABY!!

Just kidding. I was feeling it towards the end. Dear John Deere, how about power steering? Please?

TISMF

Someone emailed all the grads of my MFA program to let us know XXXXXX was leaving the program and asked if we had and fun stories to share at his farewell gala. A friend asked me if I was going to share any stories: 

How about the time the whole cohort ended up standing outside the foul smelling hovel we were forced to stay in while in San Francisco and XXXXXX strolled over from his luxury accommodations to see if anyone had procured any drugs and was willing to share with him 

Or the many times he drank so much at lunch in Berlin that he’d fall asleep when our guest speaker came in the afternoon and how he’d have these adorable hissy fits if we took a quick snapshot of him passed out during the lecture. 

How about the session that he was so vicious to the group that was hosting us that they turned the tables and we were all so stressed out that our entire fractured cohort returned to the hotel at the end of the day unable to speak and we all locked ourselves in our rooms for a couple of hours to decompress before emerging simultaneously and we ended up going to dinner together and trauma bonding by getting so plastered half of us needed support to walk back to the hotel? That was a fun night 

I could write a long essay that as a survivor of child abuse/neglect I had him pegged as the broken human being and twisted narcissist he is at the first session and how I used my carefully honed trauma skills to fly under his radar for two years. 

Oh gosh. So many choices 

How about you? Any fun memories of XXXXXX?

TISMF

Some emailed all the grads of my MFA program to let us know XXXXXX was leaving the program and asked if we had and fun stories to share at his farewell gala. A friend asked me if I was going to share any stories: 

How about the time the whole cohort ended up standing outside the foul smelling hovel we were forced to stay in while in San Francisco and XXXXXX strolled over from his luxury accommodations to see if anyone had procured any drugs and was willing to share with him 

Or the many times he drank so much at lunch in Berlin that he’d fall asleep when our guest speaker came in the afternoon and how he’d have these adorable hissy fits if we took a quick snapshot of him passed out during the lecture. 

How about the session that he was so vicious to the group that was hosting us that they turned the tables and we were all so stressed out that our entire fractured cohort returned to the hotel at the end of the day unable to speak and we all locked ourselves in our rooms for a couple of hours to decompress before emerging simultaneously and we ended up going to dinner together and trauma bonding by getting so plastered half of us needed support to walk back to the hotel? That was a fun night 

I could write a long essay that as a survivor of child abuse/neglect I had him pegged as the broken human being and twisted narcissist he is at the first session and how I used my carefully honed trauma skills to fly under his radar for two years. 

Oh gosh. So many choices 

How about you? Any fun memories of XXXXXX?

interesting and lovely

Yesterday I had a surprise call from the wife of my step sister. My step sis has been endearingly concerned about me for a while now, even more so since the diagnosis. They're both caring people. We ended up talking for almost 2 hours, during which she began to talk about how my relationship and feelings towards the husband must have evolved over the past decade of his health crisis and dementia. Thinking about how strange the last decade with him was I responded with It was interesting... and lovely. And, as I typically do, I carefully chose those words with intent for accuracy and honesty and she responded in turn with a big response. I didn't think those two words were remarkable in any way, just accurate but she seemed to think there was something special there and she suggested I do some writing about the last decade, so HERE I AM!! Buckle up audience. We are going for a ride.

Part 1: Interesting. Why would I choose the word interesting? Guys, I was with the husband for over 35 years. In those 35 years there were three distinct phases. The early years, the angry  years (on both of our parts) and the dementia years.

In The Early Years I was deeply in love. It's been so long now that is hard to remember, but I know for sure that in those early years I felt completely safe and cared for and I was in love. Life was an adventure, we moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn to Stepford. And even though each move was his idea and his timing was the worst (He made me apartment hunt the entire last trimester of both pregnancies) I felt like those moves were his way of taking care of me. I would have stayed in the tiny apartment. It just would not have occurred to me to move until I was at my breaking point. Our tiny little one bedroom would have been insane with a baby so we got a tiny 2 bedroom, and then our tiny 2 bedroom would have been cramped with baby #2 so he told me that moving to the suburbs was just what people did when they had their second babies. I let him drag me around seeing house after house even though the only thing I wanted to focus on during that time was not being anywhere near the kind of situation that allowed the medical malpractice and disaster of my first attempt at childbirth to happen. I was laser focused on having a trauma free experience the second time around for five days a week. The other two days I was looking at houses I spent miserable in the car walking through houses I did not want to live in. I didn't even know how to look at houses. I was an apartment girl. I knew nothing about the suburbs.

When Evan came along and we hadn't found a house I had told the husband that I would not be house hunting until I stopped bleeding from the second delivery about a month later. I vowed that I would not even travel in a car for the whole month. He was so annoying to have around the house that on day 5 I pleaded with him to please return to work. He said he couldn't go back to work because the people at work would tell him to go home because his wife just had his baby so he grabbed my Dad and took him house hunting in Stepford for the day. And that is how four days later I ended up packing my 9 day old infant,  and my bleeding self and my 4 year old into the car for the hour and a half long drive to Stepford to see the house that the husband thought might "be the one" (it was) against all better judgement and everything I asked for. I couldn't believe I had spent every weekend of the last trimester of both of my pregnancies looking for a new place to live. Even the real estate agents were more concerned about pregnant me that my husband and father of one kid and the child I was growing inside of myself. Also, after Evan was born, I didn't have PPD or PTSD, let alone both at the same time like I did thanks to the demon OBGYN of fleet street who butchered me and my innocence, and without the crying fits and flashbacks I could look back at the years after Marion was born and wonder how anyone could live with me and say absolutely nothing as I struggled for two and half years. I cried myself to sleep next to him in the bed for an entire year and he never said a word or reached out a hand. I got nothing. And I realized that we were walking down parallel paths, that may have been beside each other, but that he had no intention of stepping onto mine to lend a hand. I felt like me and the kids were decorative, like some possessions on a check list of things he always wanted to buy. This was the beginning of my own little pool of resentment. This was when the early years began to slowly transition into The Angry Years for me. For him the The Angry Years began quite suddenly around 3 years after the move. 

The Angry Years for him didn't start right after the move. We were so busy with two kids, buying furniture, making the house our own,  getting settled and making new friends (I made new friends, he didn't have any friends), and he was so busy at work where he felt important and needed because I was handling everything in the house and he thought that the only thing he needed to do was bring home the bacon,  that there was no time for feelings. Until... here comes the until.. UNTIL he got angry. The man was angry 24/7 it was unfucking believable that one man could be so angry all of the time. Now, at the same time we were doing a huge renovation to our house and naturally I got pregnant a minute before the renovation started. We had agreed that 3 kids was the goal. Three kids was what I always wanted. He very thoughtfully said to me the day before I peed on the pregnancy test stick that maybe 2 kids was right for us and we shouldn't go for the third. So I chalked his bad attitude all up to stress. It wouldn't be shocking for him to be stressed to the max. We were overshooting our budget on the house, third kid on the way, etc... Living in the house while we renovated was miserable. When he was home he sucked all the air out of the room. It sucked. And then the renovation was done and our sweet baby Josh was here, he actually started making even more money so that area was all good and everything looked like it should be peaches and cream from the outside and this dude was still walking around with steam coming from his ears. He woke up angry, he left for work angry and he came back angry too late to have dinner with the family and then he angrily ate his plate of home cooked food in front of the TV until he angrily stomped up the stairs for bed and then it would start again the next day. Why didn't I leave, you may be asking. I wanted to leave and I interviewed 4 different divorce lawyers all of whom told me that he would get the children every other weekend and Wednesday nights for dinner even though he would never feed the children, change a diaper, give a bath, tuck a kid in, read a book or do any other caretaking at all. When I LEANED FORWARD AND EXPLAINED THAT HE WOULD NOT FEED THE KIDS those bastard lawyers shrugged it off and told me how many lazy dads turned into super dads after their wives left them. I couldn't get a single one to agree to force him to take the psych eval I wanted him to take. I knew there was something wrong with him. (Personally, I believe this was the beginning of his dementia journey) When I told the husband I wanted a divorce he begged me to give him another chance and I made three demands. He needed to see a therapist, probably get on some meds and manage his diabetes. He only ever did the first 2. I don't know what he talked to the therapist about but it definitely wasn't his lack of parenting skills. Nothing about that changed at home. I think he talked about work. The meds took the edge off of the anger and I looked at my little defenseless kids and decided to stay so I could protect them until they could fend for themselves as far as food was concerned and also from the anger, need be.

With 3 kids, volunteering for all the school stuff and working part time at the paper I was busy enough. Then we got utopia and I was deliriously happy up there during summers and vacations, and then I just got used to being in an unfulfilling marriage with a kind of semi-angry man, and then I agreed to move. That was so freaking stupid on my part. I had no concept of how hard it would be to resettle and start over. I had no idea how much I loved my stepford house and how much I would hate the house I live in now, and how embedded into the community I had become and how lonely I could feel. And so begins the dementia years.

The Dementia Years. Not long after moving to new town I started to notice that the husband couldn't follow story lines on TV or at the movies. I would wonder to myself how he could be functioning at work when these things were getting him confused. Originally I thought about getting a solid start in new town and rethinking about divorce a year after the move. Marion was off to college, Evan was 14 and Josh was 10 when we moved so basically old enough to demand a meal and also tell me if something awful happened. Once we were all moved in and settled in new town something strange started happening to my angry husband. Suddenly he didn't seem so angry anymore. For the longest time I completely fought it. I'd say "I can't trust that relaxed attitude. I just lived with an angry guy for 12 years. He isn't fooling me" But he just kept getting softer and softer. And there I was mired in a dozen years of pent up resentment and bitterness. It wasn't a pretty look and I am afraid the kids will recall that version of me when they look back in time.

Then I realized it might be handy to have him around while I was in grad school because then I could use him as back up even though he still never cooked or cleaned. He wasn't that same angry dude, he was getting more neutral (I thought it was neutrality, but it was actually apathy sneaking in) by the day and the kids knew how to order a pizza for delivery and to be honest with you , the first couple of times I left for grad school I paid someone to come over and spy and make meals for them. (recalling that my grad school consisted of 7 two week long intensive destination trips over the course of two years and the rest was on line) They all hated being spied on. They wanted two week take out food binges instead so I gave in. Then just as I was about to finish grad school the husband completely fell apart and I am not the type to kick a man when he is down. In 2017 when he had his first episode of heart failure one of the doctors told me that with the right medicine he could live another year or two. I told myself I could handle another year or two. I don't abandon ship, I take the high road so I took care of him for what ended up being 9 years total, 7 after his 2 year maximum life sentence, and he died 9 years to the day from when he stopped working. During that period we had to break my heart and sell utopia, where I dreamed about being the place I would grow old in, and live full time in this house and in this town that do not make me happy.

Then came mother fucking covid and it was just him and me all day every day. And he kept getting less angry. After 30 years of wedded bliss he started to thank me for the home cooked dinners. That was weird. The last couple of years a couple of times while driving him home from a long hospital stay he told me how much he appreciated how well I was taking care of him. To be frank, that was so surprising to hear that I never knew how to respond.  Guys, you know me. It doesn't take a lot to satisfy this girl. I will tragically settle for crumbs. (working on that.) Can you imagine the tears that came to my eyes when this man finally gave me some appreciation? In a world where we remember the huge things that happen- the best and worst - I can tell you that I remember every single time the husband said some words of appreciation to me. It was not an everyday event.

Part 2: The LOVELY ending to our story 

The part where he finally let the curtain down/took off the mask and I let go of all the bad feelings became the part that that was LOVELY. It happened gradually about 2 years into our covid lockdown. Then came the last year and a half of his life. He was so weak and so frail. Don't get me wrong, at times he was frustrating as hell insisting that he was fat (he'd squeeze his loose lifeless skin and scream PINCH AN INCH! at me) or could do things by himself when he clearly couldn't, but he needed me on a level that he would have never admitted to accepting and he let go of pretending and accepted (for the most part) my help and my directions. And he got.... nice. He'd actually smile at me and we had inside jokes again. I'd tell him about the characters from the dog park and every time I heard about something outrageous happening in the world I couldn't wait to share it with him. And there were days that we'd be sitting in front of the tv wasting the hours away and I'd have to have a talk with myself about releasing my own anger and resentment for my own good. I made myself relax and enjoy. So I tried and I did it as much as I could and somehow I got to that place. I let it go.

It seemed like this was a secret world that we were living in because I had been so resentful that it was impossible to hide, and he had been so angry and uninterested in being an emotionally attached husband for so long that we had become that couple and to be honest with you I don't think I'd believe someone who told me that things had changed. Now we were living without the bad stuff but it felt like I couldn't explain how it happened. I don't blame people, I mean , if I spend a decade telling you what an undeserving schmuck he is you're gonna be all up in your feelings and pivoting is hard. Don't I know it!  I didn't have to energy to explain to my friends how his behavior and my feelings had evolved and now we were different together. I mean, I lived it and if you told me that 30 plus years into a tense marriage everything changed I would wonder how accurate that assessment was. I was feeling the kind of concern and affection one might feel for anyone who was suffering, and suddenly all the little positives from our lives together were more clear and all the negatives seemed understandable. Looking at my dying husband helped me to see the scared and unhappy little boy who grew up to be that angry man. He felt more tragic than anything else. I didn't want to see him suffer because I don't want to see anyone suffer (current white house occupant excluded)  and all my energy was being directed towards getting US through his last stage which was undeniably coming sooner rather than later. In the last 6 months especially, I had two focuses: getting him to the end without unintentionally causing him harm (I so desperately needed to get through this with a clear conscience) and without stressing myself out so much that I ended up sick. (sideways glance from the current "cancer survivor" who is still recovering from her brutal freaking surgery) 

So LOVELY comes into play because in relation to him, my husband of 33+ years and the father of my 3 fabulous children, I found the purely caring side of myself, let go of so much and for the first time in years was able to be with him in place of relaxation and peace without all the bad stuff that I had been clinging onto in order to protect myself from more bad stuff. I let me evolve into the caring decent human I try to be even though there was history. I was able to change with the tides, and go with the flow in a way that I, the overly cautious control freak, usually push against. I was able to get to the better place with him before he left this plane of existence and in the end (and this isn't the part that I saw coming) I am the one who is benefitting. I would have performed all the care even if I did it while resenting him and churning with old anger and resentment, but I didn't and now as the person who is left standing in the end I am the one reaping the benefits of doing all that personal healing while he was still here with me. I am the first friend to advise people to settle their differences with their dying loved ones before they die. I know it is the way to make their passing easier and I did it even though I would have never guessed it was possible for me to get to that place. I'm so proud of myself. I want to be able to say that I take care of myself as well as I take care of everyone else and this was a big deal for me. So, it was LOVELY and I am grateful that I ended up in there.

 

3 weeks 3 days

Irritable.

That's how I am. I just want to hit someone. Preferably someone who deserves to be hit. If I could get a big solid punch off, the kind that looks insane in slow motion when the recipients whole face slides to the side I think I would feel a happiness that could sustain me for days. If I could use the aluminum bat that I keep around for times when I suspect there are threatening creatures of the night outside and sweet pea needs one trip outside before bed then I would happily suffer the pain set back a good full swing might cause me. But here is the thing, because I am me, with all of my childhood baggage the only way to know to know that I am irritable is for me to very sweetly announce that I am irritable. I understand that for the average viewer it might be a bit confounding. The cues are not there. I am not snarling. I am not shooting daggers from my eyes. I appear, for all intents and purposes to be my own normal every day self. And yet here I am, having similar homicidal fantasies to the ones that I had every single month when I was likely experiencing PMDD and just assuming that everyone woke up 2 days before their period hoping that some stranger on the street would give her a reason to kill in self defense because I woke up and thought "I want to kill someone."  Here is the funny thing. I was wondering if the absence of Edgar was affecting my stress hormones. I mean, there are barely any facial flushing episodes happening, I don't think I am as bone tired as I was before surgery, (hard to tell since I am doing nothing) I haven't been sweating buckets upon waking or at 10PM, (TMI ahead) no more diarrhea, which is mind blowing. A girl gets used to the life she lives and then when things change ... WOW, is this how everyone lives? Insane. It's doubly annoying since the pulmonologist, who is the only one who took me seriously, said "let's wait until after your surgery to discuss" and now, 3w3d later (as in too late to tell? I dunno. I didn't go to med school) I am pouring my pee into a big red plastic jug for 24 hours to see if I had the thing that gets resolved from the surgery but... whatever. I know me and I know how it's been. Do I really NEED the validation? No. But I WANT it. Validation equals satisfaction. It's all I ever want.

Bored.

The boredom is next level. I am so bored that it's making me irritable. See above. Have I done anything to reconcile that boredom? NO, why no I have not. I am in fact, kind of afraid to move too much since taking two slow strolls last weekend caused me to be in so much pain that I had to temporarily increase my pain killer consumption. I think I am waiting for some kind of signal that alerts me to the possibility that I might be able to get away with walking without the overwhelming pain. Don't ask me what the signal is. I'm just sitting here trying to figure things out one day at a time.

Over It

So, speaking of overwhelming pain, I am not in fact in overwhelming pain. But I am fucking over it. I am in probably level 2 or 3 pain (with occasional flashes of 4/5 if I stretch my arm out in the wrong direction or twist or do anything that uses the muscles on my left side, like hold a frying pan while I scrub it or open a tight jar lid) depending on if I need to take a pain killer in the next 30 minutes or if I took one an hour ago. I know they pain killers are necessary and working because I can tell what time it is by the sensations radiating out of my left side rib cage. I can normally tolerate level 3 pain fairly well, however, there are a few considerations here that is making this level 3 pain more fucking annoying than usual. First is that I gave myself that setback last weekend and the thought of another set back is somewhat terrorizing. Another one is the amount of time I have been in pain (my personal max for acceptable pain windows is 5 days. After that you're just a mother fucking musty ball sack of human torture) and another is the location of the pain. The majority of the pain comes in right under the left boob and to the side of the left boob all the way to the shoulder blade. And you know what needs to hug me super tight in that area? Any bra with an ounce of support. In a better world someone with pendulous boobs like me would be given the option of a breast reduction along with the Edgar excising and then another optional 7-10 day medically induced coma in order to shorten the post operative pain period. A girl can dream, right? I am over having to sleep on my back. I am super over having to use mouth tape to keep my mouth shut because I have to sleep on my back. I am over this fucking cough, which apparently can last for over a year. God fucking dammit. Now I am gonna be a coughing freak? "Hello, cough cough, sorry, I cough because I only have cough cough half a lung. When was my surgery? cough cough Oh, a year ago, I just cough now, all day cough cough every day. The smell? Oh, It's cough cough not an arthritic cough cough rub, it's the mentholated cough cough cough drops that spoil the cough cough taste of anything else I cough cough might put in my mouth, cause me to cough cough burp up menthol, rot my teeth, gave me diabetes, but do seem to quiet the cough for a few minutes at a time. cough cough cough Why are you cough cough running away? Come back! I'm not contagious I just wanted to talk to you!!" That sounds like a possibility for my future.  Also, I am over needing to keep my torso straight to avoid pain. No twisting and turning for me. You would be shocked at how often you twist and turn. No reaching out my left hand to push the microwave door, or open the fridge or turn a doorknob. That baby stays close to home base. I am over it/ I am over all of it. I just want to wake up and feel whole again. 

Follow ups

Did another X-ray today. I feel like I’m going to start glowing in the dark from all the radiation. They gave me three X-rays in the hospital and this is the third set of X-rays since getting out.

Then I had an appointment with the pulmonologist. She was pleased. She checked out my X-ray and did an ultrasound and thought everything was coming along just fine.

She did prescribe me a cough suppressant so that my rib cage can heal from the surgery without all the new coughing trauma. I took one this evening. It worked for sure. Which was so freaking nice. Except now I’m taking an uncomfortable (to me, many others wouldn’t even blink over this) amount of medications. It’s five. Three prescriptions, ibuprofen and acetaminophen. I’d rather take an unlimited amount of supplements than five medications. I made the mistake of reading the drug interaction/ side effects list tonight. Gotta get better fast so I can ditch these.

In two weeks she wants me to do one more X-ray set and then, if everything looks like it’s still trending in the right direction she doesn’t have to see me for a year when I get another round of scans.

She is going to refer me to a specialist for the carcinoid syndrome. And she is also going to find out if the pathologist can find any trace of foam insulation in the tumor so I can see if the cancer was caused by my recalled cpap machine.

I even went to the records department at the hospital to request a list of all the anesthesia and medications I received so that I can let them know why I already failed and will be failing the drug test the next time I check in with the depression study.

I was pretty psyched because today I felt like a normal person taking care of business. For the first time in a long time doing what needed to be done did not feel like an enormous insurmountable task. I just did it.

A part of me just doesn’t quite trust all the good “congratulations you’re cancer free” news. I’m trying to figure out if that’s because typically the medical field has downplayed my complaints and let me down or it’s my own anxiety still being revved up. I have a lot of topics to discuss in therapy at least.

TISMF

(This is from a few days ago.)

Are you ready for more dreams? 

So, I woke up last week having had a dream that someone was feeding me, crackers, and by feeding, I mean, tenderly putting the food in my mouth, which made it extra really strange. But even stranger, is the thought that I was dreaming about crackers because I’ve been strictly gluten-free since December 31, and usually I only dream about eating things like that when I’m in withdrawal. The eating something delicious and glutinous dreaming tends to happen on day 5 not 6 months later. 

But then a couple of nights later, I had a dream that somebody was hand feeding me canned peaches, which I really love. And then I woke up and thought “Oh it’s probably not about withdrawal.” Maybe it’s about the tender gesture of feeding me. 

Last night I dreamt someone was feeding me chocolate. (Note that right before bed I did see a video about some place in NJ where a person could create their own signature chocolate bars but I felt sad over it because I don’t get to eat milk chocolate) So clearly the dreams are about this gesture of somebody, feeding me and I am wondering what it all means. I had been trying to do some deep thinking and I did ask myself (without being able to answer) what was the driving force or more accurately the emotional reason that I was trying to fulfill by over feeding myself and I think I’m trying to give myself the answer in my dreams, which may be as simple as being taken care of in this very loving and caring and basic way. 

I also had a strange dream where I had to break up with a guy because he was dating other women and somehow the husband and Josh got in the car (and even in the dream I realized how strange it was to be dating someone when the husband was still around so I think I might be partially lucid dreaming) to back me up on my date when I ditched this cheating guy and the husband said “Let me drive” and I momentarily forgot he couldn’t drive so I got into the passenger seat and he started driving and was all over the road, I was so frightened, and then he tried to go in the wrong lane over a bridge and all the other cars were intentionally blocking him so he ended up driving towards the water that the bridge is going over and I start thinking that we are going to end up in the water and I am yelling OPEN YOUR DOOR OPEN YOUR DOOR to Josh so that we can escape once we hit the water and realizing that there is no way I’m going to be able to save the husband who is gong to undoubtedly be unable to save himself (!!!!) and then to my great relief the husband stopped just on the edge of the water and turned to me and made it seem like I was hysterical for no reason but we did switch places so I could drive, as if he was doing it just to get me off of his back. 
What does it all mean???

2 weeks!

I feel like I’m doing so much better two weeks after Edgar’s surgical removal than I could have ever dreamed. I kind of knew my obsessive worrying was over the top but I had no idea how over the top I was. Luckily I kept it all mostly in my head and now everyone around me thinks I’m some sort of woman of steel the way I’m navigating this. Hahaha. NO. Still whining to myself. I am reminded of how my mom would look so polished every time I brought her for the chemo (which made her incredibly ill) that the other patients would ask which one of us had cancer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dressing business casual like mom did, over here, but I am showering and blow drying my hair and looking pretty much like I do on any other normal day.

With one exception. The bra. Good lord, does the bra cause me some discomfort. The whole rib cage area is still a fascinating combination of sore, numb, and spasming and the bra only makes it all worse. This needs to be resolved. I am going to see the Chiro tomorrow. Gotta bite the bullet and get to him. Not looking forward to the drive He might not be able to do anything about the pain or numbness but I’m banking on him helping out with the spasms. (Pause for a quick prayer)

I had a normal-ish day today. It’s the first day I did not nap, so woo hoo! I hope I sleep better tonight. I drove myself to the research study and back. Then I even managed to drag Josh out for groceries and then….. because I could not bear to eat takeout for one more night (no, the kids did not plan and prepare home cooked meals for me) I made a lovely dinner of arugula salad with a lemon vinaigrette,miso glazed salmon and eggplant with sweet potatoes. It was just what I wanted. However, It was a long day.

I have to figure out how legit this NO LIFTING ANYTHING MORE THAN TEN POUNDS deal is. I need to be more independent.

But none of this is what I came here to say. I came here to talk about how much I am struggling with simply being grateful that my doctor caught this cancer on the early side and I don’t have to worry about chemo and radiation and am likely 100% cured because he could have caught it years ago. I have been showing up with the same complaints for YEARS and listening to the same lifestyle/stress management/ and more recently grief lecture from him. I even figured out what kind of doctor I needed to see! I knew it was an endocrine issue! I was ready to pay for my own CTScan- which he tried to dissuade me from doing!!! If he hadn’t figured it out I would have a month later, so I’m not feeling terribly grateful. I’m wondering how my life would be today if he had taken me seriously and i had already had this operation and was able to cope with the last year as a woman with a healthy functioning endocrine system. I’ll never know.

I just don’t feel like elevating his status. His ego already needs to check itself. He dropped the ball too many times before scoring.

stitch free

The stitches are out!! Thank you thank you! What a fricking relief. Man o man, those things pulled. 

So, I found out that my surgeon does live in new town with me. I so very much want to bump into him out in the wilds so I can give him a nickname- to his face not like a nickname just on here. I want to call him Wonder Boy because I feel like that is the reputation he had around the hospital. In the two days that I was there a few nurses enthusiastically told me I had the best surgeon. I was looking at him today. He might have a touch of George Clooney back in the ER days je ne sais quoi. I feel like I want to "big sister" tease him. Why do I want to tease him? Why am I like this ?

Why do I want to see him checking out at the grocery store and slide towards him and say "Hey Wonder Boy! How are you doing?" so the cashier can look at him with raised eyebrows with that Wonder Boy?? expression? Do I want to embarrass him?  No, that isn't it. I just want to tease him.

Well. It took me exactly twelve seconds to find his wife on social media. He might be younger than I thought. Did I just let a baby surgeon remove half my lung? OH good lord. I have to get over my ageism and accept that babies in my eyes might actually be competent adults. I used to want my health care providers to be my age but I am afraid that the health care providers my own age are all thinking about retiring now. Jeez. How did that happen?? Maybe I was flattering myself by wanting to big sister tease him. Maybe I should want to Aunt Clickmom tease him.

My mom was already a grandmother of 3 kids when she was my age. Well. Now I want to cry. I am old enough to be a grandmother multiple times over and not even a teen mom hillbilly situation either. I guess I will go limp into the other room and take my seat in the recliner. 

PS I feel better every day now. 

11 days Edgardless.

I’ve definitely crossed into the better side of recovery. Now I’m feeling less pain and more restless. I don’t even think the Tylenol does anything. The Advil still helps a bit but not as noticeable as a few days ago.

I’m so over this. I want to curl up on my side. I hate sleeping on my back. It’s not comfy and cozy and I have to wear mouth tape. I don’t know if I shared this or not but in the weeks leading up Edgar’s and my divorce I spent a fair amount of time enjoying my own left side. I really appreciated how soft and smooth my unscarred side skin used to be. I really took notice how good it felt to stretch and move and curl up in bed. Just thinking about not being in pain makes me sad.

I’m still napping in the husband’s recliner every day. I think that is because I’m just not getting comfortable side sleep at night. Today while napping in the recliner I dreamt that my bra was shrinking while on me and I was dream panicking about not being able to breathe. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I need to figure out how to stop these painful rib tightening spasms. I’m sure the Chiro could help me out here. He fixed my trigeminal neuralgia pain. I just can’t do that much driving right now. Maybe soon though. This part of the recovery journey needs to be over.