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.