Greetings from the Land of Should

Actually, I'm stuck in the Checkpoint Charlie between the Land of Should and the Land of Reality - which side do you think I'm trying my damnedest to get into?

I think any wife or mother has a problem when she is sick - when you spend a great portion of your time taking care of someone else it's very hard to ask for help and let others take care of you. For most, this involves a token resistance and then just laying back and accepting it. Not for me - it involves fighting it tooth and nail, much thanks to my upbringing and my own personality disorders. I actually tried to convince John to let me go to the grocery store this afternoon so he could get a break. Walking three blocks to sit for an hour and nurse a cup of coffee almost completely wiped me out this morning, but walking five blocks in 100 degree heat to the grocery store was somehow going to be different.

I hate seeing John struggling. Michael has been dealing with this wonderfully all things considered and it could always be worse. His way of coping with my absences and my not being hands-on is to become hyper. John is not used to dealing with Michael for extended periods, add to that the worry about me and his own sleep deprivation you do not get the most patient parent. This, unfortunately, only seems to exacerbate Michael's hyperactivity. So we are getting stuck in this downward spiral of feeding off of each other's emotions, and I'm not helping.

Barring locking myself in my room I don't know what to do. Logically, I know I need to turn off the "shoulds" - even under the best of circumstances they really have no place, under the current ones they need to be stoned and then burned out of existance. I'm hoping now that I'm no longer dependant on narcotics for pain control, my base mood will get better and I can put a tighter leash on the "shoulds".

Mental illness and narcotics - two great things that go great together.

Thank you everyone for your kind words, as you can see by my above diatribe/whine I am home and in one piece, although with several small holes around my belly. The surgeries went very well and everyone loved my "super-value-sized-surgery" joke. I am told they removed a "ball" of scar tissue from my pelvic area and that all of my other parts were in working order. The worst part of the whole experience was waking up with the NG tube still in - which caused my vitals to go through the roof. Not that they have any idea I've had to have several placed without the benefit of anesthesia (many, long, long stories), there still was no reason why it should not have been removed before I woke up. My only other complaint is that my GYN is on vacation, for the next three weeks and I have to follow-up in two. I am really pissed about that, and if his partner doesn't have a copy of my surgical notes and report, I may let them know how pissed I am too.

Supersize me!

Not much going on except the mad rush to prepare for the surgery. I am happy that the GYN portion includes fixing anything that can be fixed while he's in there - adhesions, scar tissue on my ovaries, ovarian cysts and any blockages in my fallopian tubes. I'll probably be under for almost four hours - 1.5 for the gall bladder and a good two hours for the pelvic lap.

It's great that they can do all of this at the same time but it still scares the shit out of me. The recovery and my two year-old scares me even more.

Wish me luck, I'm going in...

Playing around

I made some changes to the skin for the Knitty Keen blog. I still have a bit of work to do on it, but at least something is up.

****Update****

Padding, must add padding!

I'm not sure of the easter-egg colors - may have to play with that a bit. The problem comes from the fact that I'm doing the bulk of my designing on a laptop and the colors always look very washed out there. Maybe something more blue than purple...

Oh, and I am so totally screwed - Michael is still asleep and it's 4:30. Ah well, I can get some good knitting in tonight.

Come to us....

I just looked over today's mail and say a flyer advertising a free women's razor. I guess they don't know that it's been well over a year since I actually shaved, and now all of cyber space know this as well ;)

John: "You feel obliged to share this with the world, eh?"


Yes. Yes I do.

Well, it's done

I am officially done with the newsletter and have probably pissed off the executive board to boot. I'm still taking the high road and uploading all of the files I have for it, but the silence that I have received from the president is really evidence enough of their feelings.

All in all, my being done is a very good thing. The club is nothing like I wanted it to be when I started it last year and I'm just as happy to be shut of them. The club is now like the classic dysfunctional family, all form and no function. On paper they look fantastic - a whole slew of members, a great website and message board, a professional looking newsletter, and a full calendar with events almost every day of the week. The reality is that of the forty plus members on paper, only a dozen or so are active, there are even less posting on the message board. The calendar is full of events that no one goes to because the executive board doesn't bother to commit. I stopped maintaining the message board on the website a few months ago and now the whole site may be going soon as well, and you already know about the newsletter. When I was still on the executive board I tried to address many of these issues, but was met with the response, "it's just a moms club," and that I was being too keen (my description, because who in this day and age uses keen?). The best part was because I held myself to this high standard, they did as well. When things started getting flaky around the edges I wasn't only dealing with the guilt I was putting on myself for not keeping up but a healthy serving from them as well. To be fair, some of that was just perceived, but to be fair to myself a decent amount was truthfully coming from them.

In the end, this abrupt cessation was the only way I could get myself out of it. I didn't want to do it this way, but I can't do what they want me to do any more and I can't stand to see the club I started as a way to connect with other moms turned into a clique. When things calm down and I have a better handle on life, I may try again, probably a different organization or just starting my own from scratch. I know what to do and most importantly what not to do. I got what I wanted out of this - proof that I could do something like this, experience, and two fantastic friends.

!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!!!!!!!!!

Edwina must die.

I see his point...

but it still sucks.

I went hat in hand to see my psychiatrist today. In between Michael's squeals, I was able to communicate why I continually go off my meds and how I really need to be on them right now. He wrote me a scrip for the same dose of Welbutrin I've been taking for the past week and told me to come back in a month. The problem is, I'm not sure if that's enough to hold me. I told him this, again in between Michael's blatant disregard for "inside voice", and he told me that I have to get stable first, then we can increase the meds. He then went on to tell me some of the dangers of going off meds cold turkey (of which I am very aware). So now I've got to suck it up for the next couple of weeks and prove to him that I'm serious this time.

The first time in the past five years I want to be on medication, no scratch that NEED to be taking the psychotropic feel good happy coctail that is antidepressands and mood stabilizers, and I get the compliance, quitting cold turkey speech. I know, I know - this is what noncompliance results in. This is also what insurance not treating mental illness as the REAL medical condition that it really is results in. I've seen this man about a dozen times over the past five years and even on an intake appointment, the one that's supposed to last 45 minutes and get a detailed history and picture of your current mental state, I've never been in the room with him for more than 10 minutes. I have no relationship with him, so he knows nothing real about me or my history. He has no idea that the fact that I was even there today with cranky todler in tow was a sign of how serious my situation is right now.

I wish I could say that this was an isolated event, but I've dealt with many docs like this in the past. These are the docs for whom you are just another diagnosis from the DSM. The docs that I would tell, "I've had a bad reaction to X in the past. It caused A, B and C," who would then write me a scrip for X and send me on my way, because X is what is used to treat my diagnosis. If you think family docs and peds don't give you credit for actually knowing something, psychiatrists are worse. If I'm still having problems in the next couple of weeks, I already know the drugs that he is going to suggest I start taking - ones that I've taken in the past and either haven't worked, made things worse, or caused unliveable side-effects. I can see myself protesting, and giving detailed explainations as to why these drugs aren't for me. I can, unfortunately, see him dismissing my concerns, writing my scrips, and telling me to come back in four weeks.

Why do I continue seeing this man, you might ask? Because my insurance contracts with ONE mental health provider that I have a chance in hell of getting to. I think there are a few others out in the 'burbs, but for the city, this one is it. A city that has four medical schools in it. An insurance company that is supposed to be one of the best. I have to get treatment from this ass.

Hopefully, it won't come to this. I'm removing as many situational stressors as I can right now and after this weekend I don't owe nobody nothin', no how. I see my therapist tonight, and will get a lecture about how it's ok to call her outside office hours (which I do know and have done, just not as often as I should). At least she'll be an advocate for me if things warrant a more agressive pharmaceutical approach.

Well, bed awaits...

******Edit*******

Check your facts!

I just got done looking through my insurance company's mental health provider's listing, and there appear to be three other practices in that I can choose from. Even though it's more than the one I thought, I still stand by my outrage that there are not more covered providers.

Swatches abound

Since I've been in a big design mood recently, I've been doing a lot of knitting and a lot of frogging. Now, I'm concentrating on just swatching - I can get an idea of how it's going to look without putting hours of work into it and ripping it out when I see it's not working. I'll post pics soon.

Well what do you know.

I just IMDB'd Seth Green and we share the same birthday.