My first COVID shot

My COVID shot experience from yesterday:

I'm sharing this because I know some people are hesitant to get the shot.

I received my first shot yesterday at approximately 11:35 am because I am employed by the local school district.

No anaphylactic symptoms.

Within four hours, I did feel fatigue and body aches severe enough that I just went and laid in my bed. My body felt like I had the flu, but my head did not. (You know when you are really sick you get that brain fog where you just fall asleep and don't care if you die.)

Today I feel my normal 47-year-old aches and pains.

Since I spent a lot of time in my car yesterday waiting for the shot, I had plenty of time to think. 

Here are some of those thoughts:

I. I don't know what is in the vaccine

A lot of people say things like, "I don't know what is in the shot; I'm not putting that in my body."

That isn't an unacceptable reason, really. 

What is unacceptable is that I ate an english muffin with peanut butter, drank my coffee with flavored creamer, and took an antihistamine and my Lexapro yesterday morning before I went to get my shot, and I do not know what is in all those things that I put into my body.

I put toothpaste in my mouth; I don't know what is in that.

I rubbed deodorant on my armpits, and I have no clue what is in that canister.

The argument that you may have about not knowing what is in a vaccine falls apart when you realize that you don't know what is in ANY of the stuff you regularly put into or on your body.

II. Chemicals aren't natural

Chemicals are totally natural; most of them derive naturally in the earth (or in space).

Everything that is in the world came from the world (or space).

We often combine lots of natural things to make synthetic things. And here is where we go back to the foods, beverages, and medications I mentioned above, most of which are a combination of natural things and synthetic things that I happily and without any thought put into my body every day.

III. I'm not taking this vaccine to avoid sickness

I don't look at any vaccine as something that is 100 percent guaranteed. Nothing is 100 percent guaranteed.

I think of a vaccine as insurance. I hope I don't get sick, but if I do, I hope the vaccine keeps me from getting so sick that I end up hospitalized or dying.

That is the ultimate goal, especially with a virus that is so weird and new that doctors have no real idea why some old people get it and die and others get it and are fine. Why do some younger people get it and die? Why do some people get it and have extremely long-term complications?

They don't know.

So I'm not getting the COVID shot to avoid getting the sniffles or even achiness and fatigue and a big freaking headache.

I don't have car insurance because I may get a little $200 ding in my bumper; I get car insurance because if I get my car totaled, I've got more protection.

I insure my house not because I may get a small roof leak or I the plumbing may clog. I get it to have some protection should my house CATCH ON FIRE.

I have medical insurance not for the strep throat or the ingrown toenail. I have it for the unexpected appendicitis.

IV. Would you take the shot to go on vacation?

Someone I know who is a nurse in a nursing home said that she was hesitant to get the shot until she realized she would have to have it in order to go on a cruise this coming summer.

And when she realized it could jeopardize her vacation she knew that her "reasons" for not wanting the shot were bullshit.

I thought this was a great litmus test for whether a person really has legitimate concerns or bullshit concerns about a shot.

If you travel to certain parts of the world, you are supposed to get immunizations.

In 2022, N and I will hopefully be going to Ecuador as part of a school trip. These are the shots we'll need, and I will happily get them if it means I get to safely go visit another part of the world.

So.....

I didn't feel great last night, but I know it was my immune system having a response to the vaccine making it so that if I meet the COVID virus "in the wild" my body will have a memory of what it is and how to fight it. 

And I'm happy to do it if it helps me avoid hospitalization and helps keep other people whose are older, younger, weaker, stronger, whatever a little bit safer. 

Myopia that has nothing to do with eyesight

I am near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other eye.

I like to think this is a reflection of my personality, too, because I try to see both sides.

That doesn't mean I agree with both sides, but I try to understand where people are coming from.

I understand the desire and need parents have to send their kids back to in-person school.

I understand the feeling that one's kid(s) is doing nothing except playing video games right now in the summer so the idea of doing more screen stuff for the foreseeable future as "school" is not appealing. 

But I have to laugh at the notion that kids, suddenly, now during the pandemic, are for the first time in their lives going to bed at all hours of the night and not keeping a normal schedule.

There is a global pandemic.

Everything, for lack of a better term, sucks. 

But while the pandemic is making things suck more for a lot more people, it doesn't mean that school and everything "normal" made life right as rain before.

And if we suddenly go back to school in person that children's lives will once again be precious and special and whole.

In-person school caused an awful lot of kids stress, for one, whether that stress was teacher-induced or getting up early-induced or not understanding school work-induced. 

And I knew PLENTY of kids who would stay up all hours of the night playing video games and then come to school the next day. 

Just because they were in-person in a school building did not mean they were getting anything like an education. 

They were checked as physically present, but they were emotionally and intellectually not on the premises.

There were many times that I watched students do absolutely nothing. 

Yes, that was with me, a sub. 

But I know from their teachers that they still did nothing. 

EVEN WHEN THEY WERE IN THE FREAKING BUILDING.

They would sit and not work, even with their teachers. 

One teacher I know said one of her classes would get maybe, if she was lucky, 2 days of work in a 5-day period because they just played around and had no interest. 

So I do get my panties in a bunch when adults act like kids were a-ok before pandemic but now are suffering depression and anxiety because they aren't at school.

That appears to be correlation, not causation.

Maybe they are depressed and anxious because there is a GLOBAL FUCKING PANDEMIC.

AND THE ECONOMY IS IN TATTERS BECAUSE THE US, especially, HAS ACTED LIKE WE CAN JUST GO ABOUT OUR BUSINESS AND KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON. 

I'm not sure sending them back to school in a building with its public health rules and the potential for quarantine when someone turns up COVID-positive after two days in the building (hello Charlestown HS) is gonna reduce that anxiety/depression.

For all we know, it could make it worse.

And by saying all this, I'm not suggesting that the kids who stayed up all night and played video games and were just zombies in the building was alright. 

I didn't like it, and it's not right, and I know there are ways to resolve it with enough funding and enough work and making class sizes WAY, WAY smaller than 30 kids or even 15 kids in a class. 

But it is super pollyanna-ish to act like putting bodies in a building is going to make life normal.

Quarantine(ish), Day Whatever

I bounce from Facebook to Twitter, and I hope between the two, I find some balance.

Right now Facebook is all "let's share pictures of our weird little pinky toes" and other try-to-feel-light in this moment of definite not-lightness.

Twitter is all "THE WORLD IS ON FIRE," which I think is actually more true and realistic.
But I'm already sad and scared, and I really do not need or want to ramp it up to suicidal.

I am not even remotely trying to keep a schedule beyond everyone getting ready for bed at 9 pm and still reading to the boys.

I am asking them to do a little school-work each day, and I mean a little.

I am trying to do a little of my own work each day, and I mean a little.

There is absolutely no sense in attempting to keep anything normal when nothing is normal.

If there was ever a time to ask, "Will this particular minuscule thing matter in 5 years or 5 months?" now is that time.

The only thing that matters is keeping my family safe.
Food, shelter, clothing, and sanity.

How far ahead or behind they are in math? Doesn't matter right now.
Whether their MAP score was higher in inference or main ideas? Doesn't matter right now.
Spending too much time playing video games? Doesn't matter right now.
Eating more Girl Scout cookies than I'd like them to? Doesn't matter right now.

I'm content with meeting the red and orange in Maslow's pyramid.
The fact that we are all together in our house forces us to deal in the yellow.

I'm very good at handling one crisis at a time.

When my mother was diagnosed with her first case of breast cancer in early 1997, I put mine and D's wedding on hold.
I could not proceed with a wedding until I knew what we were dealing with for mom.
Once I had a handle on that, I could move forward.

Life with COVID-19 is much the same.
I am doing what I have to do with meh effort.
Once I (and everyone) has good information, I can move forward.

How quitting the gym is healthy (for me right now)

It seems strange to connect my decision to end my gym membership with health.
It isn't like the gym was costing me a ton of cash ($15.89 per month).
But the gym membership was costing me psychological energy.
It was causing me psychological stress.

As the kids have gotten older, my mental energy load has increased what feels like a thousand-fold. (It probably is actually a thousand-fold and not just a feeling of that being the case.)

I'm trying to keep up with all their things:
field hockey practices
science fair paperwork
student council schedule
homework
Girl Scout events
doctor visits (which feel like all the time, given G is seeing a psychiatrist once a week for ERP and M has a plantar wart that has been needing twice-monthly visits, and M has orthodontist appointments once a month, and the boys and I need allergy shots anywhere from 2-3 times a week (me) to every 2-3 weeks (the boys).

Plus, there are my jobs---subbing, cottage school, tutoring, consulting, freelancing.

Plus, there is the podcast which is my hobby right now.

Back in the days of yore, I was home a lot with the kids. Nap times made afternoon outings impossible. I yearned to be out doing something.
At that time, getting out of the house was a treat for me, a much-needed opportunity to speak to adults and get away from my children.
It was my me-time.

But now, I'm rarely home, and when I am, I don't want to leave.
I don't want to get in the car and drive somewhere I don't absolutely HAVE.TO.BE.
I am happy to go for a walk on the treadmill or take a walk with D during his lunch break when he works from home or do some yoga stretching on the floor of my living room.

Having the gym membership was one more thing that required my attention and needed me to remember it.

To have it off my mental to-do list makes me feel so much better.
And that is worth a lot more than the $200 it was costing me every year.

The lice learning experience

If you think when you're 45 years old, you won't need your mom anymore, you're wrong.
You will probably need her to check your head for lice on a Tuesday when your son has lice on a Monday.

If you think you have learned all there is to know when you're 45 years old, you would be wrong because on a Monday your son has lice.
And you've never experienced that before.
So you jump down a rabbit hole of online information and get very confused.
Should you pack your unwashable items in a sealed bag for 3 days or 30 days? Which is right?
Should you dry your pillows in high heat for 30 minutes or 45 minutes? Which is right?

You send your husband out to get RID, and you start what becomes a seemingly never-ending hair-combing extravaganza.
You put everything you own in garbage bags and seal them with packing tape.
You could build a fort in your dining room with all the bags.
But you don't because you're too busy combing hair and disinfecting the combs afterward.

You end up on the phone with your friend, who you know has experienced lice once, and then she tells you her family has experienced it 7 times.
And she got valuable information from a mutual friend who has a Ph.D. in public health.
And when she suggests you check in at the lice clinic, you do.

So by Friday, your heads are clear.
But you keep combing anyway because when you're 45 years old and you have anxiety, a little extra combing is what you need to avoid drinking all the wine in the city because you've now got a little PTSD from those approximately 96 hours of lice.

Colonoscopy (I hate poop and all things related to poop)

Maybe everyone hates poop, I don't know.
But I really, really hate poop.
I always attribute it to my OCD--it is definitely one of my triggers.

I'm an equal opportunity poop-hater.
I hate my poop, and I hate your poop.

When the kids were in diapers, I could handle changing them and cleaning up poop UNLESS it was poop in the bath.
Oh my god--call hazmat.
Nothing set me off like that.
My hands would bleed from the bleach and the cleaning I did of the bathroom after that.

If I have to plunge the toilet and a sprinkle of toilet water gets on my sock, I have to change the sock because I will be able to feel that place on the sock for the entire day, even when it is dry.

My dislike of poop has a long history.

My dad had ulcerative colitis for over 20 years.
He started with it in his forties and eventually had his colon removed in his sixties.
(He has been much happier since then. I wouldn't have waited nearly as long to take that step.)

The house we lived in when I was a kid had one bathroom, which means that whether we liked it or not, we all were very much aware of my dad's condition.
You couldn't take a bath or a shower without him needing to use the toilet.

I spent years of my young adult life worrying that I would develop ulcerative colitis.
What I did have was irritable bowel syndrome, which was its own kind of literal pain in the butt.

Once I went on Lexapro, the IBS went away.

Fast forward to now.

I'm soon to have my first colonoscopy, and I am pissed about it.

You would think that someone would have discovered a better, less invasive, less time-consuming way to check the colon.
I'm pissed because I hate medical procedures in general.
I'm pissed because I hate not being able to eat for an entire day and a half.
I'm pissed because it is bad enough having to poop as part of life, but taking concoctions to make yourself poop is disgusting.

But I'm doing this because the American Cancer Society has now changed its recommendation that instead of age 50, people should have their first colonoscopies at age 45.

I'll be 45 in September, and I'd rather get this shit (literal and figurative) done now before school begins.

Plus, I think age-related hormones are making my bowel habits change, and I just want to ensure it is hormones and not anything more serious.
Like I need more reasons to hate perimenopause.

Plus, plus, the gal I subbed for regularly buried her 49-year-old husband in May. His cancer started in his colon and spread to his lungs and liver.

Another friend of mine is dating a guy who is 50 and has been diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.

Because I'll be hangry and moody, I've told D to just drop me off and come back for me.

I'm liable to say embarrassing things to nurses and doctors because, although I'm generally an easy-going individual, when you make me fast AND make me poop AND then want to jam a tube in my rear-end, I'm not a nice person.

All things related to poop are a dignity-suck, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm making them put a note in my chart that I will go ballistic if the doctor even thinks about sending me home with photos of my colon (which is what he handed me a year ago when D had his colonoscopy).

Who the f*ck wants a picture of their colon?

Weight gain--the good, the bad, and the anxiety

Last week, when I went for my annual girlie appointment, I had gained 7 lbs from the previous year's visit.

To say that this fact is now taking up valuable real estate in my brain is an understatement.
I am, more or less, obsessing.

I'm not overweight, which many people would say precludes me from being able to fret about this 7 lb gain.

Those people, if they are reading this post, should probably stop reading now.
Because I am fretting about this 7 lbs.

I weigh 148 lbs.
My BMI is 23.2.
Totally "healthy."
Totally normal weight.

My doctor told me not to worry about it.
But I am worried about it.

Because I cannot gain 7 lbs every year.
I am this close to 45-years-old.

And I have been slacking off on my health.

In one sense, that is the good part. That I have allowed myself to not worry about what I'm eating or how much I'm exercising.
That is also the bad part.
And now, I'm in the anxiety part.

I began fretting over my weight, in one form or another, in 2003, when I was pregnant with N and developed gestational diabetes. When I was put on a super strict diet and lost 7 lbs during my pregnancy. When I began walking 45 minutes every single day on the treadmill.

The day I delivered N, I weight 141 lbs.
The day I came home from the hospital, I weighed 120 lbs.
Between breastfeeding and walking nonstop on the treadmill, I dropped even more weight.
Six months later, I weighed 112 lbs.
When I began not eating as a result of depression, being 112 lbs was not a good thing.

My therapist at the time (prior to medication) asked me if I had an eating disorder, and I guess in some sense I did.
When you are obsessive, you find things to obsess about.

Gradually, with medication and therapy, my weight increased.
Two healthy-weight pregnancies followed.

After M was born, my mid-section bothered me, so I began working out regularly.
My mid-section dropped to 29 inches.
Over the years, it has increased to 33 inches.
Partly, this is due to working more and not having the energy to want to work out.
Plus, I began to snack more and have an occasional adult beverage more than just one night a week.
(When you drink good full-calorie beer, having an extra 1 or 2 a week can make a difference.)
I'm also not lifting 25 lb kids all day long, as I once was.

So I am refocusing on my health, which I hope will result in the loss of the 7 lbs.
Perhaps not all 7, but maybe 5?

I'm having to fight the urge to buy a scale (which I haven't owned in years).
Because I'm already obsessing; I don't need to buy tools for my home that will help me obsess more and better.

I'm having to tell myself that cutting out chips and after dinner snacks and walking every day and increasing my strength training will probably be "good enough."

I wish I could burn calories by obsessing. 

OT free

After 3.5 years of once-a-week occupational therapy and probably close to $10,000 in cost, G has been released from care.

G and Miss Jenny, his OT

When we began his OT, he didn't yet have an OCD diagnosis so we were dealing with a lot of unknowns without any tools to help him. I didn't understand how one issue fed into the other and how difficult it would be to understand, at times, what was sensory/balance and what was OCD/anxiety. That continues to be a challenge.

I stuck with OT every week and doing the at-home assignments as much for myself as for G. Of course, it was always for his benefit, but I didn't (and don't) want to ever look back and think to myself, "I let x, y and z go. Maybe if I had stuck with them longer, he would...."

I haven't gleaned as much wisdom in 43 years as I would like, but I have learned that I don't regret anything I did although I do regret not doing things. When it comes to G, or any of my kids, I don't want to think that I didn't do everything I could, in the way of professionally-recommended things, to help them.

That is a funny line....the professionally-recommended things, but there is a very big difference between a parent doing "everything they could for a child" and doing "everything that is professionally recommended for a child."

Sometimes doing what you think is best for the child is actually not in the child's best interests. Sometimes, with a parental bias, it is difficult to parse out what is best for the child and what is best for the parent. There is a lot of ego involved in parenting. I know all too many people whose children's physicians or counselors or teachers or administrators recommended counseling or some kind of therapy and whose pleas fall on deaf ears. I get why this happens, but I also don't get it, especially when a parent simply cannot admit that their child has a problem.

OT was a headache for me, for us, in all kinds of ways. Driving to and from. Scheduling every week around his appointment. Taking him out of class. Paying all that money.

But the alternative of not doing it, of not following through, was not and is not acceptable to me.

For my own piece of mind, I need to know that I tried.

And I did try, and I did what needed to be done based on my own feeling and the professional recommendations of others who have far more knowledge than me and a larger frame of reference of what is "normal" behavior for children.

So G's "graduation" is, of course, a celebration of the work he has done in OT, an acknowledgment of how much he has improved for the better. We are proud of him and were happy to get him a cookie cake when we asked what he'd like to do to celebrate and he asked for this pretty simple thing.

But his "graduation" is also a celebration of what I have done, and what we have done, to help him.
An acknowledgment that from speech to OT to psychiatric evaluations to medication management appointments, we have done our best to use expert guidance to help us guide G to be his best self.

The not doing that motivates me to do

G began occupational therapy when he was six; he is now nine-and-a-half.

He was reevaluated in December and has made significant improvements over the years, but we are in the midst of another six months to see if we can make headway in some specific areas.  With him, there is often overlap between what is sensory and what is OCD, and it is often difficult to parse out which is which.  He could take OT for the rest of his life, but it really wouldn't make a dent in what is OCD.

He is also unbelievably stubborn.  There are probably many things he can actually achieve but he just doesn't care that much to do them, and so he doesn't work very hard.

There is also the role of simple development---he might make great leaps in OT but that might have more to do with him hitting growth spurts than anything actually accomplished in OT.

Finally, there is the likelihood that some things he will never be at an appropriate age-level.  He scores lowest in terms of balance/coordination, and that has a lot to do with his vestibular system.  I am coordinated but have a shit vestibular system---I get motion sick swinging on a porch swing.  I feel pretty certain that I would fail the vestibular portion of the testing he undergoes in OT.

I'm really very done with OT.  I would have liked to quit a year ago.  Every week for three-and-a-half years is a long time.  Paying $85 a week for three-and-a-half years is a lot of money (let's go low and say $10,000).

I have refused to quit, though, because I have watched other parents quit intervention for their children and pay what I think is a heavy price.

I know of parents who stopped OT because it was inconvenient---which it totally is.
I know of parents who stopped intervention because one parent was on board and the other parent didn't think their kid had a "real" problem.
I know of parents who blamed the school system and moved to other counties for a different school system, and yet the child and her problems remained the same.

Over time, the child's situation usually worsens without intervention. Parents are often very poor judges of whether their kid is "normal" or not.  Some err on the side of "my kid is definitely not normal" (this is where I land) and fail to realize how normal their child actually is.  Some err on the side of "my kid is normal" and fail to realize how abnormal their child actually is.  Parents really want to believe that a lot of things are "just a stage" and will resolve on their own.

G's issues are, in the great realm of things, really mild.  Friends who don't know he does OT are often surprised when I say he does OT and has sensory issues.  He is friendly and well-mannered and plays nicely with their kids and doesn't give off glaringly "odd-ball" behaviors.

There are other families whose children have much more severe issues, who have spent far more time and far more money, in helping their children.  This is not my pity party. Those other families are tired of everything related to OT and intervention that I am tired of.

But it is the situations I've seen in which intervention stopped that have motivated me the most to just suck it up and keep going until the professionals tell me we've reached a good stopping point.

He's seen my uterus; I've seen his colon

Marriage has all kinds of phases and milestones that I never, ever would have guessed were a thing when D and I wed almost 20 years ago.

Our "honeymoon" period ended, I think, pretty much immediately after our honeymoon when my "having a difficult time adjusting to marriage" phase began.  It lasted about six months and seemed to dissipate once we got our cats and I entered my MAT program.

We had a good run of years in which things seemed normal.  We worked; we traveled.

In 2003, we entered the "babymoon phase" which lasted all of 38 seconds and was soon eclipsed by my "something terrible is going to happen to this pregnancy" phase, which lasted until N was safely born.  At that point, D entered his "can't cope with fatherhood phase" and I began the "must be the perfect mother" period.

I lived in the "untreated anxiety" stage for a good 18 months.

When the boys were born, we hit the "husband has seen his wife's uterus flopped up on her abdomen" milestone.

Yes, that is a thing.

Since having children, D and I have moved back and forth between the "we are so thankful for them" phase and the "why the f*ck did we have them?" phase.  Running this gauntlet lasts awhile, I think.  

D has had his fits and starts of the "I'm not happy in my job" phase, and I've dealt with the "I feel like I want to contribute more in the professional world but not too much" stage.  We've gone through one "I lost a parent" stage.

Today, D had a colonoscopy, and I hit the "I've seen photos of my husband's colon" marriage milestone.

That whole endoscopy thing is all kinds of awkward, and maybe the nurse thought me a little strange when I asked if I should shake him or kick him to try to wake him up from his post-scope stupor.  Maybe other wives phrase their tenderness differently?

But inside my heart, in spite of the awkward, I felt something special about this colon milestone.  It felt special to me that we're on this shared path to old age.  That we are there and have been there for each other.  I helped him put on his underwear in an anesthetic fog, and he has picked me up off the floor when I vasovagal-ed while on the toilet.

There is nothing pretty about it, and it isn't glamorous or exciting or really anything that I would willingly submit to if I knew in advance what was coming.  I cannot, in any way, feel sentimental about this because it is in large part ugly and messy and disgusting.

And yet it is a little tiny miracle, I think.  A little something holy.  

Let's talk about how much I hate dentists

I used to be the type of person who didn't mind going to the dentist.  I'd get them cleaned, it didn't cause discomfort, and so it was no big deal.

For 36 years, I had no issues with dentistry at all.  No cavities at all.

I am this close to my 43rd birthday, which means the last 7 years have been a sheer dental nightmare.  That might be a little hyperbolic, but not much, especially for a person who for nearly 4 decades had NO DENTAL PROBLEMS.

I can't tell you how many cavities I've had filled in the last 7 years.

I had to have a mouthguard made because of teeth-clenching, which I blame completely on having 2 sons.

Last year, my dentist fixed messed with a cavity that wasn't bothering me, wasn't causing me any pain, which caused me to develop an abscess and led to Root Canal #1 and a crown.

Root Canal #1 and a crown led to us getting the "much better dental insurance" this year.

And thank goodness!

This year, the day before my 43rd birthday, in fact, I will be having Root Canal #2 at the endodontist's office.

My dentist, like she did last year, fixed messed with a cavity that wasn't bothering me, wasn't causing me any pain.  And now it is causing me considerable pain. I am taking an antibiotic and tossing back ibuprofen and acetaminophen like candy.

This led to me inform her on Thursday that from now on she is not to fix mess with any cavities of mine until or unless they are causing me pain.  I'd rather just have it get bad and go straight to root canal.  These little dinky fillings are leading to full-blown root canal and crown, which in my untrained, non-dentist mind, is complete bullshit.

Apparently, I have high pulp and with my chronic teeth clenching I'm wearing down the enamel on my teeth, making it likely that I'll have problems with getting fillings.  I saw on an x-ray that I've nearly worn a filling down flat from clenching during the night when I sleep.

So while I don't think my dentist is "making shit up," I also think her insistence on getting these fillings "fixed" early is simply making me having to deal with pain and discomfort a whole hell of a lot sooner and more frequently than I might otherwise have to.

A different kind of falling apart

William Butler Yeats' poem, The Second Coming, must really resonate with me because I started thinking about it and writing about it on this blog, and it seemed like deja vu.  It is.  From here.

But now I'm writing about a different kind of falling apart.  Not marriage, but my teeth.

This morning I had my first root canal.  The center is not holding.

I apparently had a weird reaction to the numbing agent, which I've never had for a regular filling.  My vision became blurry, my hands began to shake, and I had a weird out-of-body type experience.  It was troubling and oddly fascinating at the same time.  I could hear the music in the room, but my brain felt like it was asleep, so I was both aware and out-of-it simultaneously.

Nitrous oxide to the rescue.

My dentist said a whole bunch of gunk came out of my tooth, so I am hoping the infection is gone and if there is anything left of it, the antibiotic will knock the rest of it out.  The procedure began at 8:30; it is now 1:30, and I still don't have full feeling in my mouth.  She really had to load me up.  She anticipates I will feel much better, even with post-treatment soreness, because my mouth was throbbing so much prior to it.

In five years' time, I've gone from someone who didn't mind dental appointments to someone who loathes them.  Mere anarchy has been loosed upon my mouth.

I jest, of course.....a little bit.  Certainly a poem about war and civilization's destruction can't be related to my incisors.  But maybe it can to what seems to happen to me every fall, a cyclical motion of sadness that comes, a time of fretting that repeats itself.

It has happened every year at this time since 2004.  It almost feels like PTSD, but without nightmares or panic attacks.  It is a low-grade sadness that pervades me.  I am good at hiding it most of the time, except when my head has been messed with from numbing agents.

I can even enjoy this balmy, blue sky day because I feel desert birds circling.  

School lunches

Once a week G hassles me to come eat lunch with him.  So I do.

And sadly it is sort of a treat for me to eat a public school lunch.  

I dislike kitchen work to the extent that I don't even want to fix myself a sandwich.  

(For those of my friends who are amazed at how much "energy" I have because I write and read books and do house-related projects, I want you to let that sentence sink in: 

Too lazy to fix own sandwich.)

School lunches get a lot of flack for being tasteless or unhealthy, but I haven't found them to be that way.  

I'm in no way suggesting it is the stuff of Michelin-starred restaurants, but they are better than some of the crap I see kids bring from home.

Today I noticed the boy across from me was eating a Lunchable that included Oreo cookies.  

Now I am not a fan of Lunchables mostly because I can give my kids pepperoni and crackers for WAY less than $4.  I also don't think they are a terribly healthy choice since if they come with a fruit or vegetable at all it is an overprocessed one.  (N is allowed 1 Lunchable per year; G and M don't know what they are.)

But one Lunchable in and of itself is not the end of a kid's nutritional life.  

However, what I really noticed was that the kid also had a container of Hunts puddling, a sandwich baggie of Fruit Loops, and a package of fruit chew snacks in his lunch box.

It was at that point that I thought, "Holy f*cking cow!  That is a lot of junk in one lunch."

I'm a label reader for one reason:  my gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with N.  It changed me for life.  I also happen to be writing an article about kids and nutrition for a local magazine, so it is on my mind.

It is my nature to internally rag myself about what I could be doing better as a mom and as a person, in general, which is probably everything.  

But I now try to use comparative analysis to help me feel like I suck a little less.  

When I feel like I'm not a very fit person, I read this, even though I know it is geared to an older population.  But hey, I'm 40 now.  

When I feel like a terrible dresser, I read this.  (Although I should probably review my state just to make sure I haven't actually made the site with my own brand of "I don't care what I throw on.")  

When I feel like a terrible mom for fussing at my kids, I read (WARNING: if you have postpartum mood issues and aren't in full recovery, you better skip) this.  

And evidently, when I feel like I'm not feeding my kids all that is good and wholesome, I just need to go eat lunch with my kindergartener.  

OT update and pursuing psychological tests

G has been doing OT for about a month and enjoys it, which is good since there is no convincing I have to do to get him to go without a fight.

I was finally able to speak with a high school friend of mine whose son also has sensory issues (we had been trying to coordinate a phone chat but snow days kept hindering our ability to speak without little ears around).  She was willing to lend me her expertise, which I appreciate tremendously.  Based on her suggestion, I have decided to pursue psychological testing, if for no other reason than to rule out what G isn't experiencing and make sure we aren't missing anything, like a learning disability.

As hesitant as I am to "label" him with anything, I also know what a relief it was for me to finally get a "label" at age 30 when I was diagnosed with OCD and generalized anxiety. It gave me a place to hang my hat, in a sense, a way to know what to manage in myself and how.  For me and D, I think knowing a diagnosis will help us better understand how to help him and hopefully keep us more patient.  Plus, the only way for G to get help, if he needs anything beyond what we're already doing, like an IEP at school, is to have that clinical diagnosis.

The other thing we're going to do is have G's occupational therapist work with him on feeding issues (another suggestion my friend made).  His food repertoire is terribly small. For health and social reasons, it will benefit him to expand his palate.

As much as I appreciate my friend's advice, the bigger thing I appreciate is her empathy.  I have a terrible tolerance for handling things (hmmmm, I wonder where my kid gets it?), but I don't always think people understand how challenging it can be to have a child with sensory issues, especially when the child seems relatively "normal" out in public.  I have much greater understanding of parents whose kids are more on the "weirder" edge of normal spectrum.

In the battery of forms you fill out when a child is experiencing developmental issues, there are constant questions about what the pregnancy was like and what the birth was like, all of which intimately involve me.  For better or worse, a mother can't help but wonder, "What did I do? What did I not do that I should have?"  For me, because of my antidepressant use, there is always that worry whether those impacted G in some way.  My friend was very quick to remind me that 1. it isn't me and 2. living with kids who have these issues is a challenge for anyone.

Thursday morning, after Monday's snow day and Tuesday's early dismissal and Wednesday's snow day, was a nightmare.  A full 40 minutes (not 5 minutes that feels like 40) was a screaming, crying, hitting and kicking at me tantrum by G who said repeatedly, "The roads look exactly the same as they did yesterday when we didn't have school!"  I couldn't argue with him because the roads did look exactly the same, but factors beyond his control and my control (the school district) decided school was a "go."  It took both D and me to wrestle him into his clothes.  G's frustration sends him directly into his id, his caveman instinct to fight or flee, and it takes much time and patience to get him back into homo sapiens sapiens mode.  (This is why I'm wearing an occlusal guard so I don't crack any more teeth.)

This caveman behavior is typical in a 3-year-old.  It lessens as a child gets to be 4 and 5.  But in a tall kid, half my size who is 6, he needs to be moving more into better ways to funnel his feelings, and he is not.  On top of this is the sensory persnicketiness.  Screaming if shoes aren't tied tightly enough.  Tantrums if clothes rub him the wrong way.  Certain perseverating behaviors that will drive a person who already has OCD almost insane.  Hence the OT and the psychologist visits and the move for testing.

Raising a child is always a balancing act between tending to his/her needs/issues while still keeping the parent's needs/issues in check.  Any kind of anomaly or abnormality or difficulty ramps that challenge up.  

The OT evaluation

G is my riddle wrapped up in an enigma, but the OT evaluation makes me think that his sensory difficulties and tantrums are not just a figment of my imagination.

He was given the BOT-2 test, which examines a number of motor abilities and gives the age equivalency of the child's skills.  Out of 6 categories, G is below age level in 5, although in most he is barely or not too far behind.

G's age is 6.3 years.

His fine motor precision age equivalency is a 5.10-5.11 year old child.
Fine motor integration= 5.6-5.7 year old equivalency
Manual dexterity= 6.0-6.2 year old equivalency
Upper-limb coordination= 5.8-5.9 year old equivalency
Bilateral coordination= 6.6-6.8 year old equivalency
Balance= below age 4 equivalency

That balance score surprised me.  I was half expecting the OT to tell me G is just a turd for me and otherwise perfectly fine.

I don't fully comprehend how vestibular issues can lead to sensory and behavioral challenges, but I'm taking the OT's word for it and will proceed with therapy for G one a week for 6 months.  He and I will continue to see the psychologist for the time being, about twice a month.

There is a part of me that keeps thinking, "Maybe it is a maturity thing.  Maybe he will grow out of it.  Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.  Maybe he just has a prickly personality."

I'm not sure if this is denial or what, but if it is, I'm not going to let it stop me from trying some things out in the hopes they will help me handle him better.

In the "little tiny" cancer club

I have had a spot on my right arm for years and years.

The first time I had it looked at was after N was born when I was in the early stages of my mental decline (although I didn't realize it at the time).  I saw a dermatologist who said it was a porokeratosis.

I was convinced it was cancer, and I was going to die and leave my baby.
{Insert nervous breakdown here}

After M was born, maybe in 2011, I had my general practitioner look at it. He said the same thing as the dermatologist in '04.

Sometime between those two doctor visits I noticed it would get really red if I was out in the sun and didn't slather it with sunscreen.  It would also get crusty at the edges.

This spring, with my 40th birthday coming this fall, I decided I really needed to start seeing a dermatologist every year for a skin screening.  My mom and dad have had basal and squamous cell cancers removed more times than I can count.  My dad had melanoma in 2007.  Better to be safe.

I saw the dermatologist on Aug 16th.  She said she really wasn't sure what it was so she wanted to biopsy it.

Today she called and said it is basal cell cancer, the best kind of skin cancer you can get (if you have to have any kind of skin cancer at all).  There are 3 treatment options, and I chose the quicker one that will leave a scar.  If it was on my face, I'd be visiting a plastic surgeon, but I don't care about scarring on my arm.

Strangely, I'm not worried or freaked out or anything by this which could be because 1. my medication really works great and/or 2. I've seen my parents go through this so many times it is just no.big.deal.

Welcome to middle age.

Trying to eat whole foods has the potential to drive me nuts

I try to follow the "100 Days of Whole Foods" challenge up to a point, as well as do lots of the things Michael Pollan suggested in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma to eat more locally grown, naturally raised food.

As best I can, I buy foods with 5 ingredients or less.  We do a weekly CSA program to get local produce.  Ninety percent of the time I make muffins and biscuits from scratch.  I've even gotten to the point where I purchase a cage-free chicken, cook it, remove the meat for meals and boil the bones to make my own stock for soups.  I think it is helping my bottom line too, which is an added benefit.

Like any person with OCD, I have the great ability to obsess over things to an unhealthy degree.  Sometimes I find myself in the throes of an obsessive episode in the grocery store aisles.

Today, for example, I wanted to purchase polenta and pesto for our supper.  I got hung up on buying jarred pesto because it had more than 5 ingredients, and I know how to make pesto.  I usually make it in the summer when I can get fresh basil.  So I stood in the Italian food section for awhile debating whether I should buy it or make it.  I started to walk to the produce area, thinking about getting the basil and the spinach and the pine nuts and getting a little worked up because that means more.to.do.  I had to quickly talk myself down and just buy the damn jar.

When I see people in grocery stores chatting on their cell phones I wonder how they can possibly have a conversation when there are so many decisions that have to be made and so many ingredients to count and so many sugar grams to consider.  And on top of all that there is the cost and the coupons.

Sheesh.

It all gets a little exhausting.

The fine line between conscientious and obsessed

Way back in 2004, I developed a ductal yeast infection (and then mastitis) while nursing N, which led me on a path to panic attacks, insomnia, loss of appetite, crying jags, and general depression.  It was the proverbial straw since I was probably well on my way to experiencing those things anyway.  With the infections, I began battling an invisible enemy, and no amount of cleaning and bleaching and re-cleaning made me feel any better.

Fast forward eight plus years, and I feel like I'm in 2004 all over again.

In the span of 6 weeks I've had an infected cuticle that required multiple Epsom-salt soaks per day for weeks and a round of Augmentin, as well as an abscess in my armpit that is MRSA-positive.

I am looking at every little blemish on my children and worrying that it is MRSA.  I've bleached every door handle, every faucet knob, every countertop.  I've washed towels and pillowcases.  I've developed a new, highly sanitary razor routine in the bathroom to (hopefully) keep this from ever happening again.

My meds are a life-saver, but I am still having to talk myself down on an almost constant basis, telling myself that I can only do so much when it comes to being clean and cautious, that I will never eradicate every bug, that given my general good health and doing what my doctor said I'm probably not going to die because of this.

Being conscientious, taking care to disinfect and keep one's house and self clean, is a positive thing.  But in a mind like mine, it can (could and has) become something much more sinister.

Kinda like those germs.  

Bathing suits, weight, healthiness

Yesterday I went bathing suit shopping.  In general, I would rather eat glass than shop for clothes, and this is especially true when it comes to purchasing swimwear.

I admit that when I looked in the mirror, I was not too happy with what I saw.  Despite working out, there are some things....3 pregnancies and age....that are really hard to overcome unless you are willing and able to work out every single day with great consistency for at least an hour and give up a lot of things you love in the food department.  So I left the stall with two separates in hand feeling somewhat defeated.

I shopped a little more, with the intent of finding a new blouse, and looked at my fellow shoppers.  I managed to turn my psyche to my general thinking in life, a spin on "Is it better than what I have now?, which is, "Is my (weight, intelligence, hairstyle, insert whatever here) better than those of the people I see around me or the public at large?"

And I would be a liar if I said my weight/body didn't look better than most of my Kohl's shopping cohorts.

I realize that if I stood in a swimsuit next to a model (especially one who wasn't 38 and hadn't birthed 3 children) I would look crappy.  But next to average Jane who is the same age and has 3 children, I look pretty awesome, in my opinion (at least in my neck of the US woods, which has serious obesity/sedentary problems).

This thought didn't make me feel smug;  rather I felt a little sad.  It made me wonder whether I am prejudiced against overweight people.  Swistle's post, which I read last night, made me wonder even more.

I don't think that overweight people are any less smart, capable, well-read, nice, decent than anyone else.  But I admit I do tend to judge heavier people about their lifestyle choices...the food they eat, how much and often, and how frequently they exercise.  I know that body types are fixed and beyond our control, certainly.  I am taller and thinner than most women, which has much to do with my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother being tall and rail-thin.  I know that people can be heavier and strong/muscular/athletic.  Skinny is no good either; there is nothing appealing about skin & bones, a'la Leann Rimes.  I want to be fit.

(Lest anyone surmise I only judge heavier people, I should note that I judge anybody who purchases nothing but junk at the grocery.  It simply baffles me how anyone can eat that much processed stuff.  I also judge people who smoke....cause that shit is just dumb.)

One of the questions I asked myself is whether I am prejudiced if I think to myself, "I don't want to become fat."  Because whenever I feel particularly not in the mood to work out, I need only to see someone overweight to give me the motivation to keep at it.

Because I had gestational diabetes during my first pregnancy and my A1C levels put me at high risk for diabetes until I began working out for 2 1-hour sessions a week, another big motivator is keeping my insides healthy.  I do not want diabetes if there is anything at all I can do to keep it at bay.

To be honest, I know I mention the unhealthiness of being overweight to my children.  I know I say things like, "We need to eat our healthy food first before we have treats."  I know I say things like, "If you overeat treats and don't exercise enough you may become overweight."  I don't want my kids to think being overweight makes someone a bad person, but it is certainly not optimal.  I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "I am so thankful that I am overweight."  In all honesty, I haven't thought a whole lot about how my children, especially N, think of what I say in this regard.  Maybe that is one of the luxuries of innate thinness.

Every woman has body issues; I would living in la-la-land if I thought N would be exempt from this.  When I was younger I wanted larger breasts.  Now I would like perkier breasts, less of a abdominal pooch, and for my thighs not to touch.  But I'm not going to starve myself to be that way, nor am I going to exercise constantly and forego the more important things, like taking care of my house and kids and enjoying life.

I have to remind myself that celebrities, who have trainers and chefs, and who work out often also have body issues.  They are real people who just happen to be airbrushed and Photoshopped to make the rest of us feel like our bodies are "less than."  How many times have I looked at the photos of Scarlet Johannsson in a bikini to make myself feel better about my back quarters.

So at this point, I'm still muddling through these feelings.  I don't have an answer for myself yet as to whether I'm doing N a disservice by feeling as I do and saying what I say.

Part of the reason I attempt to eat somewhat healthy

When I was pregnant with N, I had gestational diabetes, which I think played a HUGE role in my OCD kicking into overdrive and never quite leveling off again post-delivery.

I'm not quite sure if every ob/gyn practice is/was as Nazi-like as the one I went to during that pregnancy, but I got the impression that a pregnant woman with gestational diabetes is given a far more strict diet than a regular person of the non-pregnant variety.  I mean, I was told not to chew sugarless gum.  WTF??

Being the obedient patient who had already been told my baby might have Down Syndrome and who wanted a natural childbirth (but was warned gestational diabetes could make the baby the size of a small cow thereby making a c-section the only option), I followed the diabetes diet to.the.letter.  I never cheated.  I didn't eat cake at my baby showers.  I didn't chew sugarless gum.  If I was told to eat 2 Tbsp of butter a day, I measured out 2 Tbsp of butter and ate it (not by itself, of course, but on some bread).  My "treat" to myself was drinking a diet coke every Friday night.

OCD is a series of never-ending checks-ins.  Checking the car to make sure it is locked.  Checking to make sure you didn't hit a deer (even though you sorta think you would actually remember the impact of hitting a deer).  And gestational diabetes was a never-ending series of glucose and dietary check-ins.  Checking my blood sugar 6 times a day.  Checking my list of acceptable foods and appropriate measurements and ounces per day.  Checking in with the ob/gyn to give them my blood sugar levels for the week.

Even after N was born, I continued measuring my food and exercising for 45 minutes or more a day.  It is a wonder I was able to produce enough breastmilk for her.  In a way, the gestational diabetes kicking on my OCD actually led to a temporary eating disorder.  At 5'7" tall, 117 lbs is really not a good weight. And when I had my nervous breakdown it dropped to 112 lbs.  There is nothing attractive about nervous breakdown thin.

It has been 8 years since that pregnancy, and my A1C number puts me in the "higher risk" category which does worry me and is part of the reason I have tried over the past few months to reduce my sugar (both real and artificial) intake.

I grew up on sweet tea, but now I fix only unsweetened.  And if I get tea at a restaurant, I get half sweet/half unsweetened.  I no longer buy vanilla or fruit-flavored yogurt.  I buy plain Greek yogurt with the lowest amount of sugar grams and then add some chocolate chips and walnuts to it to jazz it up a bit.  I haven't drank anything other than diet soda in years (and I only get that if I go out to a restaurant).  I stopped buying it for home.  I do not buy cookies, except the once-a-year Oreos and Girl Scout cookies, which I put in the freezer and forget about until the following year when we get them out to eat before we purchase more to go into the freezer for a year.  I do buy ice cream, but not low-fat because less fat means more sugar.  But I usually only have a bowl of ice cream once a week.  I cut out orange juice (and all other juices) years ago because of the high sugar content.  I stopped buying dark chocolate (or any chocolate) mostly because I have had like 4 cavities in the past year but also because of the A1C levels.

I hope that these steps can bring down my number by this fall's health assessment at D's workplace.  They dropped by one point between last fall and this spring.  If I can get them into the "normal risk" category, I will feel relieved.

Diabetes is a scary disease, and for me the fear factor is because of what it might mean for my mental health.  It is bad enough to have a physical disease but when it worsens your psychological disease that really, really sucks.