Goin through the Big D and I don't mean Dallas... or divorce.

So amidst my other adventures in recent months, I really began to have trouble keeping up. I chalked various physical symptoms up to this or that... such as the insomnia and incessant hot flashes - hot flashes that were less hormonal surges than pyroclastic hormonal clouds ripping down the mountainside, laying waste to everything in its path in an incandescent flash. My doctor shrugged and suggested perimenopause and I gritted my teeth and thought evil thoughts about the whole thing.

Fatigue became my constant companion. That, too, was easily brushed off. My mom's going through a hellish cancer treatment, there's always some other family drama happening, my job was getting stressful and I have a preschooler. The common response? C'mon, say it with me. All together now: DUH.

And then I noticed joint pain constantly swelling lymph glands and began to suspect there was something else going on... Unfortunately, most doctors attributed this combination of factors to "Stress" and "You're a woman".

Stress? Seriously, they have NO IDEA what kind of stress I can take in the teeth and keep on going. This was not stress.

Luckily, my insurance changed and I had to get all new doctors. And finally started getting taken seriously. This was good, because I started really going downhill. It got so bad that if I tried to vacuum an 8 x 11 rug, I had to lay down for two hours. I really wish that was exaggeration. The joint pain was overwhelming - every single joint felt like it was filled with molten lava mixed with razor sharp broken glass.

And lets discuss the brain fog, the incredible haze of stupidity I found myself flailing in. Or rather, lets not because that was the most humiliating aspect of the entire experience.

This went on from December until the end of June. Each week brought me lower and lower. By the time I was sent to a rheumatologist, I really had to fight to be able to get out of bed each morning. Worse, most people thought I was making everything up, that I was just being lazy or looking for attention because there was nothing apparently wrong. Nothing they could see, therefore it could not really exist.

Let me point out that I am not telling this story to fish for sympathy, not at all. I am telling this because sometimes something small, something unseen but something ridiculously common can lay your ass out like Mike Tyson.

After months of blood work, they finally tested my vitamin D levels. Guess what, I had almost NONE in my body. Who knows why... but the result? It messed me up something fierce.

I had not known that Vitamin D does a hell of a lot more than allow you to absorb calcium and help strengthen your bones. Vitamin D deficiencies can bring some friends after a while, including: high blood pressure, increased risk of certain cancers , multiple sclerosis, several autoimmune disorders, type 1 diabetes, cognitive impairment - including that damned brain fog - and a host of other issues.

Symptoms of a deficiency? Yeah. Pretty much everything I had, including a burning muscle pain. And it took more than 7 months for someone to order this blood test, even though they also told me that the deficiency is becoming more common.

There may be something more going on, but in the meantime, I take massive amounts of D3 for another month or so, and then a lower dose until November, when I'll have the bloodwork run again. I also take my blood pressure medications since I developed hypertension, and my medication that allows me 6 or 7 hours of clear thinking and a respite from the muscle pain.

Pay attention to what your bodies are telling you, folks. I wish I had pushed harder when the first set of doctors blew me off.


****

And now for something completely different. Are you familiar with LOLcats? Jacob MUST have my lolcat book when he goes to bed. This has been going on since Christmas. That book and his stuffed lamb, every night.

I'm pretty certain his preschool teacher thinks I need professional help.

Can I Get a Witness?

I'm driving home this evening on a fairly busy intermediate county road. Its one of the few roads that connects the eastern and western ends of the county directly, so it gets a respectable amount of traffic.

I'm setting the scene here, see?

And as we're traveling along, I see a person standing in the ditch up ahead... the state has really cut the budget for roadside mowing, so the weeds? They are tall. And thick. And dry and probably scratchy and all that. In short, why in the hell would anybody be standing in the middle of the weedy ditch???

Oh.



OH.



Yeah, as I get close to the guy, I see its a teenager - about 17. And I see why he's standing in the ditch.



He is having a pee.


In the weeds. In the ditch. On the side of the road, in front of dozens and dozens of cars.




Klass. Ur doin it rong.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

My kitchen table is exactly two and a half steps away from the countertop. Not long ago, Short Stuff and I were sitting at said table. I was finishing a cup of coffee and he was drawing pictures with washable markers. I finished my coffee and got up to set the cup on the counter.

Two and a half steps.


One one thousand, two one thousand aaaaand turn around.


And in that amount of time, this happened:







I looked at my little Picasso and asked "Jacob, what did you DO???"
"I color mah FACE!" (thinks a minute) "It a snake."

And with that we learned the next Life Lesson. Washable markers? Not. so. much.

'Scuse me while I whip this out

Mom went to the emergency room last night with some complications and they decided to admit her for a couple of days. And when the night nurse came on duty and was checking things over, she remarked on the ostomy mom still currently has after the bowel resection last Halloween. They're planning on reversing it next month.

"I had cancer too," she told my mom. "I had breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. I had reconstructive surgery and they did a really great job."

wait for it.






waaaaaaaaaait for it.




"See??"



Yes. She. Did. The nurse, understandably proud of being a cancer survivor, and feeling that she was encouraging my mother in her battle, and I don't know, maybe feeling some sort of Surgical Sisterhood going on... she pulled the top of her scrubs and her bra up.

And displayed her bare breasts to my startled mother.


And this serves to illustrate that the trait of having the most bizarre things happen is clearly hereditary.

I'm finally ready to admit this. Last week I almost killed a b*tch. With a tampon

Another glimpse into the embarrassing world I live in.

So there I was in the Super Target near my office... and it was THAT week. And since Jacob was born? It has gotten progressively worse to the point where you wouldn't be surprised to find out that my period is actually one of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, moonlighting. It requires strict measures to deal with the horror for at least 3 or 4 days. I'm not going into specifics, just trust me when I assure you that my body does some really horrific things with itself. Not for the faint of heart.

And as I waited in line with my stuff, I realized that we were reaching Critical Mass and there was a limited amount of time before Total System Failure and there was NO way I was going to make it back to the office to deal with it.

Nope. I was going to have to brave the Target bathroom.

Grimly, I scurried into the first stall in time to avoid disaster. And it was... bad. REAL bad. I pull a new tampon from my purse... now, I must admit that things are so bad I have no choice but to use the purple OBs. The Ultras. THE BIG GUNS. These are to your average tampon as a howitzer is to a bb gun. (Even these only last me 30 minutes, so I am totally out of options)

I unwrap it and do what I need to do to prepare it for use. I don't need to share the detail there... I'm sure a lot of you get it. And... I dropped it. And it BOUNCED. It bounced and rolled to a merry stop between the high-heeled wedges of the chick in the next stall.

What do you do? Do you laugh heartily and say "hey, d'ya mind kicking my tampon back over? ha! ha!"?? Do you ignore it? Do you gasp and clutch your pearls?? And as I am running through my mental catalogue of Etiquette for Stray Tampons and coming up with nothing (and hoping to god I had another one in my purse - not that I'd dare use the migratory tampon anyway, yuck)... girlfriend next door finished her pee and stood up.

She was wearing those tight skinny jeans, the kind where you have to do the little dance/hop to get them over your hips? And as she did that, she stepped on the tampon in her high heeled wedge and slipped and fell HARD into the stall wall. And she looked down and started shrieking.

"OMG, what the f***? That's a tampon, omfG somebody left a f***ing TAMPON on the floor and I stepped on the f***ing thing and that mother f***er is HUGE, OMFG, what the f***" yadda yadda yadda as she slammed her indignant way out of the stall and washed her hands and stomped out the door, still cussing and going on about the horror of the enormous tampon she'd nearly broken her ankle on.

Ok and that was bad enough. I finished my business and zoomed the hell out of there and back to work. I called a friend and told her and she howled.

But it got worse. Today? I'm sitting in my office working on expense reports and I hear.... THE VOICE. I told myself it was surely coincidence, but I looked out in the hall and see one of the new contractors talking to someone. And... she's wearing the shoes. Its the chick from the Target Bathroom. I am never leaving my office again, it can only end in tears.

I can't wait for menopause.

He's either got a future on stage or perhaps insurance fraud. Tale of a Toddler.

Short Stuff, as I have mentioned, is something of a clever monkey and we keep a close eye on his actions lest he, I don't know, disassemble the television or something.

He is, at this point, proficient with stairs unless he gets distracted, but for safety is not permitted to be on them alone. The following incident has occurred three separate times:

The J was playing with his assortment of cars and trucks in the family room while I loaded the dishwasher. Our house has an open floor plan, so the kitchen and family room are kind of like one long room. After a minute or so, he silently got up and trotted down the hallway towards the front door and the stairs. I followed to see him sit down on the bottom step, nodding to himself. Seemingly lost in thought, he patted the carpeted stair and nodded again. Then he bent at the waist and leeeeeaaned forward slowly, until he slid off of his seat and was lying on his stomach a the base of the stairs.

Then, he lifted one leg up behind him and placed it on the stairs. The action was repeated for the other leg, after which he spread both arms out to the side and then put his face straight down.

And then? He began to moan and groan.

If I had not stood there watching this entire set-up, I would certainly have assumed he'd fallen on the stairs and apparently that was EXACTLY what Short Stuff was thinking.

"Nice show," I told him, "You do know I was watching the whole time, right? Cut the drama, silly man."

And he scrambled up and giggled and ran off to play some more.

Don't ask me where he got the idea to do this.

Managing my stress is stressing me out. But who's hungry??

Some people manage their stress through meditation or crying or painting or racquetball or eating or drinking or whatever. Me? I am prone to handling stress in two ways. If its the minor-but-annoying sort of stress, I dye my hair. If its the I-think-my-head-is-about-to-pop-off-and-roll-down-the-hall kind, I go crazy in the kitchen.

This weekend? Was a go crazy kind of couple of days.

It resulted in two batches of snickerdoodles, lemon lamb ragout over noodles, meat pie, chicken soup with homemade spaetzle, roasted and pureed butternut squash, sweet potato pudding and buttermilk biscuits.

And although this made everyone else delighted, it wound up creating three dishwasher loads of dishes, plus all the things that needed to be handwashed, sweeping up the flour I spilled and cleaning the counters 9 times.

And I seriously need to wash the kitchen floor now.

I need to find some way to manage my stress that doesn't make more work for me.


Also... Short Stuff has been sick this weekend. Not surprising, since I caught the current office plague midweek last week and it knocked me on my tush. Friday night started off badly, my husband and I getting into a rolicking, loud, painful argument after J was asleep that resulted in bitterness and hurt feelings... a horrible, wet sounding coughing from Short Stuff's room around midnight put the argument to rest for good as we both responded to his whimpers. Now, I know better than to stand behind both horses and cows. You'd think by now I would have also learned not to stand behind my husband when he picks up a sick child. Alas, both for J and me, he was immediately sick to his stomach. What is it about motherhood that turns you into someone that might once have covered your eyes in horror at a hangnail, but now lets you embrace a whimpering child without flinching at the vomit coating both of you?

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep after that. By the end of the weekend, we had to make a trip to the after-hours pediatrician and Short Stuff has a humdinger of a raging ear infection and strep. My poor monkey has not had a good weekend.

But the only part of it he's complained about? The part that distresses him to the core? Not the high fevers, not the pain in his head, not the coughing that kept him up all night. Nope. He's horrified and I mean absolutely APPALLED by the fact that he's gotten "boogies." "Is TEWWIBLE!!" he tells me, waving his hands around for added emphasis. Go figure.

And after all that, the thing I felt most like doing was cooking. Clearly, the stress is getting to me.

Oops, all fresh out of supposedly witty titles.

Rock on with myself. But I have a working, REALLY working, computer of my own now AND a internet-capable cell phone where the keypad is not peeling away and the keys really work. It bites when most of your communication tools take a flying leap at the same time. I had to resort to my old standbys... smart mouth, mostly. It didn't get me far.

Mom's finished her radiation and first round of chemo and had her first surgrey on Halloween. She came home from the hospital last week and is doing well, all things considered. The surgeon said he was very pleased at the outcome of the surgery and he's pretty certain he got it all. For now, she recovers before the next round of chemo.

In which we learn something...

When I arrived at mom's with dinner (slow-cooked apple-glazed pork loin, roasted ginger cinnamon butternut squash and roasted asparagus. Did I mention I handle stress with saucepans??) tonight, she was looking solemn. (also annoyed)

"I learned something important today," she announced.
"Do tell," says I.
"well... if you spend your days having your ass end nuked, and they tell you that Pampers Ultra Sensitive Wipes will make your daily business more pleasant? They are lying."
"Ohhhhkay."
"And do you know WHY?"
"Um. I am afraid to guess."
"I will tell you. It is because whatever is in the damn things leaves a film. Like baby oil. BABY OIL. Which serves to amplify the radiation and if you thought your parts were burned before???"

She trailed off, looking really, really pissed.

Boy is it hard to think of a response to a greeting like that.

reboot

We're in Week Three of chemo & radiation in CancerLand out here and it reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bites. Mom's holding up, I guess, but I've discovered something that feels worse than seeing your child weeping. Moms can comfort their children, making things "all better" with a hug and a kiss and maybe a Hello Kitty bandaid.

But when YOUR mom suddenly dissolves into tears? There just ain't enough Hello Kitty bandaids on the market to make that all better.

She's trying to keep hold of her sense of humor. Surgery looks to happen in October, and she'll have to have a temporary ostomy while she heals. Can't say she's looking forward to that, but my daughter (who has clearly inherited the family twisted humor) has promised to knit her an ostomy cozy. (Like a tea cozy. Only.... not.) She was going to make an octopus, but between the two of them, they decided an octopus was not suitably vile enough to fit the purpose and they have settled on a remora.

It's funny how your whole world can abruptly narrow down to The Disease and its eradication. Ok, its not funny at all, but you get the idea. Still, there are moments of hilarity in which we think we might get through this. For instance, she's opted for the continual infusion pump for her chemo. The port was surgically inserted into her chest, and she has a bag that holds her chemo. Every 2 minutes, it sends another burst of chemicals through the tubes and when it does, it makes a little squeaking noise.

Her cats? Think there's a mouse in that bag. They have spent the last three weeks trying like hell to find that damned mouse. We cannot seem to convince them otherwise.


* * *


My cousin was married this past weekend and mom was unable to go so the rest of us drove out to attend. As late as Friday, I still had nothing to wear, and dashed into a local TJ Maxx on my lunch break. As luck would have it, I actually found a possible dress and squeezed myself into their absurdly small changing rooms to try it on. I must admit that although I was wearing a good suit, underneath of it I was hardly dressed for success. My unmentionables were of a caliber that would probably inspire more laughter than racing hearts... but I had no plans to share them with the general public, so whatever. I'm confident that many a woman out there has done the same thing around Laundry Day.

So the dress appears to fit and I get it zipped most of the way... tug. tug. Oops. Huh. I can't seem to get it to move. Tug. Tug. Tug tug tug TUG. Aw hell. I try and unzip and.... nothing. Nada. It's stuck. I'M stuck. Tug tug tug yank tug. I am really really stuck.

I manage to snake one arm out without dislocating my shoulder, and contort myself and the fabric enough to see that the zipper is actually broken, and as I zipped it up, it was coming open beneath the zipper pull. Yep. I am well and truly stuck and will need assistance to get out of this.

I hold the bodice up and go in search of the 18 year old attendant. We do not fit into this little closet of a changing room together, so the girl stands in the open door and starts yanking on the zipper for all she is worth. I am trying not to fall on my butt, because this girl has got some serious upper body strength and I'm close to flying backward with every attempt she makes.

Finally, she gives one last savage yank on that zipper and it practically FLEW downward. And so, alas.... did the dress. She exerted so much force on that last pull, not only did she rip that broken zipper open, it pulled the dress clear OFF of me and it fell onto the floor.

Just as three women entered the dressing area.

And there I stand, trying to gather the shreds of my dignity.

Go figure.


* * *

Also? I don't think I hear myself thinking, lately. Mostly I just get this high-pitched humming noise that could possibly indicated that I've shorted out my brain. Overload. Syntax error, does not compute. In the family roles, I've apparently been cast as the worker bee, the "fixer", the problem solver.

I CAN'T FIX THIS AND IT PISSES ME OFF MIGHTILY.