Thursday, March 22, 2007

Hanging in there.

Even though I'm relatively young, I've been to a lot of funerals and memorial services. This week I attended a memorial for a friend who died from complications related to a lung transplant that she received in 2004 (she had cystic fibrosis). I mentioned it in my other journal, and linked to her obituary, and I'm really in no place right now to continue discussing it. I've been crying on-and-off all week since I found out, got through almost the entire memorial service without bawling my eyes out, only to completely lose it in the end and start choking on my sobs and dripping goo from my face. So, instead, I will talk about funerals that I have attended. In case you didn't know--my entire family is Catholic. We are Irish Catholic and damn proud of it. One of my earliest memories is attending a funeral of a first cousin who was in some branch of the armed forces (Navy, I think) and was driving home late at night, after being deployed somewhere very far away, and he drove into a tree. I'm pretty sure his name was Randy. I think I was about five when this happened. Maybe six. I remember the rosary, and how completely boring it was for a kid, except for the fact that there was a dead body in a coffin at the front of the room. Luckily there were coloring books and things for the kids who did not want to recite the Hail Mary a thousand times over. At the end of the rosary, all of us kids watched the adults walk past the coffin. Since I was one of the eldest kids, and a big-ass loudmouth (which is still true), I asked my Mom what was going on. She explained about the viewing of a dead body. Then I worked out a dare, double dare, double doggy-dare situation for the kids, trying to goad them into looking at a dead person. Basically, the longer you stayed looking at our dear, departed cousin, the more points you got. I was pretty much the only kid who could handle it. My little brother had nightmares for weeks, and my parents yelled at me for daring little kids to look at the dead. Which I realize now means that we didn't have much adult supervision because, otherwise, someone would have noticed a group of ten, or so, little kids screaming in horror. Instead of waiting for their kids to simply find them later and cry about what I had made them all do. I was a horrible kid. After the rosary, everybody trooped back to the motel we were staying at, and the kids were herded into one large hotel room, where we were watched by our cool Aunt Pat, who let us all jump on the beds and make crazy forts out of pillows. Thus completely erasing the memory of scary dead bodies from our young minds, except for my little brother, who swears that he is still traumatized by that dare. My Mom still remembers how stoked my brother and I were to have such a cool relative who would let us JUMP ON THE BEDS. Aunt Pat (who was actually my Mom's Aunt, and therefor my Great-Aunt, but all of my relatives were Great's, so we just dropped the term) was forever remembered as the coolest Aunt ever. When she passed away when I was in my teens, all of the relatives came up to me and said how great it was that we loved her so much for letting us jump on those beds. It was seriously something that was never forgotten by the family. After spending most of the night jumping from one bed to another, we had to go to sleep for the funeral the next day. This was the first time I smelled incense, and I completely fell in love. Funerals to me still mean that great incense smell. It's soothing. As a kid, it was my mission to try and find one of those cool, metal incense shaker things, so I could perform fake funerals for my dolls. Then the graveside. I remember the guns. Since it was a service for a fallen member of the armed forces, there was the whole salute and shoot thing. We all thought it was pretty damn cool. Except for my little brother, who despises loud noises, and decided to hide under the coat of our cousin Danny, who was in his thirties. Danny came to both of our weddings and, of course, still remembers Johnny hiding in his coat while the guns went off. I was THRILLED when he brought it up at my brother's wedding reception to all of his wonderful new in-laws. I guess I'm still a mean kid. The reception was full of booze. We all went back to Randy's house, where there was tons of food and alcohol, just like any good Irish wake. I remember Randy's two kids (twin boys) had major lung problems, so they were always sitting on the ground, breathing from these strange machines that filled the rooms with medicinal smoke. But that was soon forgotten because once the adults started drinking, the kids could do whatever the hell we wanted. I actually wrote a paper in college about how my family celebrates death. The assignment was to write about something that is a family tradition, and either specific to your family, or to your family's culture. I picked Irish wakes. Granted, a funeral itself is very sad, but the reception afterwards can often be one huge party. I loved the fact that as the adults drank more, and more, the stories of the deceased went from sad, weepy tales to raucous, boisterous tales. With tons of drunken laughter. Everyone sharing stories that would have embarrassed the dead person, had they not been dead, but allowed the living something to laugh at during a time of sadness. As I got older, and attended more and more family funerals, I realized that this was true of EVERY family funeral. Which was why I call them our Irish wakes. Full of love, sadness and joy, but completely fueled by booze. Only a year, or so, after Randy died, another cousin died, this one a bit younger. In grand Irish tradition, he died as a result of being very drunk. He was sitting on a fence that bordered a cow pasture, was drinking massive quantities of whiskey, and accidentally tipped himself over the fence, into the cow pasture, where he got trampled by bulls. Seriously. Trampled by bulls. I realize that death isn't funny but my family has always tempered the sadness of death with lots of inappropriate jokes. You can only imagine the horrible, off-color jokes we made about the cousin who got trampled by bulls. We still laugh about it. After that, a bunch of the older relatives started to drop like flies. We were attending at least one funeral a year (sometimes more) until I was in junior high. So, in my memory, they have all become one huge funeral. With an even MORE boisterous Irish wake afterwards. In our family, if the deceased died of natural causes related to old age, then there is very little mourning, and a lot more celebrating of the long life that person lead. Unless that person was generally despised within the family, and then it was a time of great mocking. Again, the booze fueled the party. It was during this time of never-ending funerals that the family shared with us kids the Great Family Ghost Story. Apparently, the entire Catholic family strongly believes that the spirit of the deceased somehow gives a "sign" that they have passed on into the afterlife. This always happens sometime during the three-day Irish wake. Family members talk about lights switching on and off, strange knocks on doors but no one there when it is opened, and a whole slew of other "signs" that signal the passing of a spirit into purgatory. In fact, my Mom still talks about how angry she is that the spirit of her own mother chose to not visit any of her kids, but a strange distant relative instead. This is how seriously the family ghost story is taken within the family. After attending a funeral a year for about a decade, the entire process began to almost bore my brother and I. We had a very been-there-done-that attitude about death. Except then our Uncles began to pass away. The first one to die was Uncle Gene, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), so we all knew it was coming. I was in high school, I think, by the time he passed, and he had been diagnosed with it while I was in elementary school. To be honest, my brother and I hated Uncle Gene when we were kids. Probably because Uncle Gene hated kids. You might think I'm exaggerating but I'm really not, he despised children. He only ever had one kid in his life, (our cousin Steven) and Steven commiserated with Johnny and I about how much his father hated kids. Uncle Gene was married to our Aunt T. and they lived in Lafayette, which is a cute little Bay Area town. Mom and Dad would often drop Johnny and I off at Amtrak, call Aunt T. and tell her that we were coming up for the weekend. Or, if it was summer, coming up for the week. I have a ton of great train riding memories from when I was a kid, and we were incredibly young when we were alone on the trains, starting way back before Amtrak had double-decker trains. They were still using the dingy, dirty, seventies era trains back then. Which were always having mechanical problems, so there were constant delays. And one time, the train ran over a homeless person's cardboard house. Thankfully, the homeless person had taken off for the day. But it was pretty cool to see all of the Amtrak employees take axes and hack away at the cardboard home. So, when Uncle Gene fell ill, we were just a bit sad. As he got sicker, and sicker, he became completely paralyzed and was confined to a hospital bed. He had round-the-clock nursing care, and was only able to communicate through blinking his eyes (he had a talking computer at one point but he didn't get to use it for very long before he lost the ability to move any part of his body, so Aunt T. let Johnny and I play with the talking computer, and we mostly used it for prank calling purposes). This was how I learned to suction a trach. Most of the nurses were pretty cool, and one of them, Brother Love (yes, that was his legal name, this was the San Francisco Bay Area, so most people were a bit odd) was so cool (and we later learned that he was a heroin junkie) that he often let me wield the plastic sucking thing, which was stuck through the tracheotomy device and suctioned all of the saliva that got caught in the throat. Fun times. You would think that a paralyzed Uncle Gene would be easy to handle, except he was still a bit of a jerk. He would send the nurses into the room Johnny and I shared when we stayed there to tell us that our Uncle was blinking furiously and that we were being too loud. The nicer nurses would tell us to just quiet down for a little while, until he fell back asleep and they could administer his sleeping meds, and then we could be as loud as we wanted. Other nurses felt compelled on our Uncle's behalf, even if he had fallen back asleep, to try and quiet us down every fifteen minutes. It never worked. Uncle Gene eventually died, as I said, and it wasn't a particularly sad funeral. The wake afterwards started off pretty raucous, and we kids mainly talked about how mean Uncle Gene was to all of us. We were upstairs, in a strange house (one of Uncle Gene's somewhat estranged brothers set up the funeral and wake) playing card games. We were just sitting on a landing at the top of the stairs, in front of a bunch of closed doors. Behind one of the doors there was a LOT of loud, banging noises. Since we had all been briefed on the family ghost story by this time, we were convinced that it was dead Uncle Gene coming back to yell at us for having too much fun. Perhaps I had something to do with spreading fear amongst the other kids. Have I mentioned that I was a bit of a meanie? Once I had gotten the kids sufficiently frightened, I began daring them to open the door. Except none of us would go near it, not even me because I'd managed to scare myself along with everyone else. So, we all went screaming to the adults that Uncle Gene's spirit was locked inside an upstairs room and he was banging to get out and COME AFTER US. We were hysterical with fear. Which meant that some poor adult had to find a key to the noisy room (it was locked, which only fed into our fear of a ghost being in that room) and open it up, unleashing upon all of us kids a really sweet dog. That's another family story that gets trotted out every once in a while, "Remember when you thought Uncle Gene's ghost was out to get you all and it turned out to be a PUPPY? Huh? Do you remember? That was GREAT." Then my other Uncle, the really nice one, came down with renal cell cancer, which is basically kidney cancer. It was incredibly advanced by the time it was found, and he died less than two years after his diagnosis. That was a sad funeral. Uncle Tim was universally loved within our family, especially by my Mom and Aunt T., his two sisters. Although the adults still talk about our cousin (not related by blood, but marriage, and she was part Uncle Tim's OTHER family, whom everybody tried to like for the sake of Uncle Tim, but I don't think any of his blood family really liked his in-laws) and the fact that she had some sort of ceremonial job during the funeral and chose to wear see-through white pants that were at least two sizes too small, and a bright blue thong underneath that was visible to everyone in the church. The family still talks about how I was pretty much the only teenage girl who dressed appropriately for the funeral, and what an upstanding young woman I was for not wearing something that showed off my underwear. (Now that I think about it, family members always pull me aside at family functions to tell me how nicely I dress myself. Even at my brother's wedding, I was the only bridesmaid who wore black nylons and closed-toe black heels with our black satin dresses. The other girls wore no nylons and had on flip-flops. Although my favorite memory of that wedding was the fact that they took dozens of posed, family shots, as is common at all weddings, except no one bothered to tell me about them, so I'm not in any of the big family shots. I thought it was hilarious because I hate posing for big family photos, and my sister-in-law is still apologizing for it. I'm sure it will be another story that we will never forget, and will feel compelled to mention at family gatherings, "Remember when you got married, Johnny, and we took all of those family pictures with relatives three-thousand times removed but you FORGOT TO GET YOUR OWN SISTER? The only sibling you have, and you completely forgot about her. That was GREAT.") Anyway, back to Uncle Tim's funeral. Just as the funeral was ending, and the Priest was talking about how he was out of pain, and with God, the air was suddenly filled with an annoying cacophony of beeps. The alarm of every single car in the church's parking lot had gone off. Every single car. Uncle Tim's wife, my Auntie Vita, started sobbing that it was The Sign. That Uncle Tim was telling us that he was fine now, and ready to move on to heaven (I think the Catholic church had dropped purgatory by that time). It was that moment that solidified the family ghost story for me and my little brother. We now firmly believe in The Sign. Uncle Tim's wake turned into the most drunken wake I've ever seen in my life. And you all know from this post that that is saying quite a lot, since I've seen my fair share of drunken wakes. My brother and I figured that the drinking was in direct proportion to how beloved the dead person was--if they were not particularly liked, like Uncle Gene, people would get a little toasty, but if they were completely adored and loved, like Uncle Tim, then there was much drowning of sorrows in alcohol. Which was a bit funny because the wake was organized by Mennonites, and I don't think they like falling-down drunks. But they provided fantastic food. Of course, by the end of the wake, everybody was so completely drunk that they were sharing Uncle Tim stories that were definitely inappropriate for teenagers. (Mostly involving the multitude of cars he destroyed in high school while driving drunk. My family might have a bit of a problem with alcohol.) But nobody cared because the alcohol had made them jolly, and they wanted to share that joy with the world. You would think that with all of this readily-available alcohol, I would have tried my hand at drinking but I never did. About a year after Uncle Tim died, my paternal Grandmother passed away. By the end, all of her savings had gone to her care and for the many surgeries she had, so there wasn't much left for a funeral. There also wasn't much left when it came to family (on Dad's side, every funeral I've talked about was for a relative on my Mom's side of the family), so it was an incredibly tiny funeral. Mom and Dad even let me pick out the casket, and it was springtime, so I picked a light green casket. Yes, seriously. It was pretty. Only two other family members came, and a handful of Grandma's friends who were still alive, and the family members made snarky comments about the green casket. My Aunt who is still alive but dead to us for many reasons (One of which was calling up my Dad after he had his third heart-attack and second by-pass to tell him that she hoped he would have another heart-attack, except that it would be the one to kill him, and when she called again a few years later to tell this same horrible sentiment to me, simply because I had answered the phone, my little brother I decided right there that she was no longer a part of our family. No one says horrible things like that to her own brother, and to the children of the man in question.) called us the day after the funeral and left a screaming message on the answering machine about how we were such a horrible group of people to have given her beloved mother a GREEN CASKET, and that she hoped we would ALL die, and that she would make sure we would all get GREEN CASKETS. You see, the only other family member to show up was my cousin Terry, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's daughter (SWMNBN has four kids) and, apparently, she had called her mother and told her about the funeral. We just laughed at the evil phone message because at least we organized the funeral and, you know, actually attended it, unlike SWHNBM, who didn't feel the need to attend her own mother's funeral. (She also hated her mother, so it was pretty funny to us when she took such a great interest in the color of the casket, since she had also told her own mother that she hated her and wished she would die. We had set Grandma up in an Assisted Living home, and she had her own room with her own phone, and SWMNBN would call Grandma up, in the middle of the night, to scream and yell at her about how awful a mother she was and how much she deserved to die. At first, the nurses didn't know what was going on, only that Grandma would have these severe anxiety attacks at night, and was refusing to go to sleep. Finally, one of the nurses managed to intercept the evil call, and after that, we decided to take the phone out of her room. The only person who ever called her was SWMNBN, anyway, so there was no point in keeping the phone around. After a while, the anxiety attacks stopped and Grandma started sleeping through the nights again.) (Aside: The evil woman eventually tried to make up with our family. After she wouldn't stop calling my Dad with death wishes, and was calling Grandma with even more death wishes, I called her up and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was dead to us now, and that if she ever called my father with death wishes again, that we were going to file a restraining order and I would make it a personal mission to get her jailed for harassment. Everyone else was too scared of her to call but all I cared about was getting the point across to her that she could NOT treat my father like that, and that NO ONE can treat my father like that. That was almost ten years ago. We never heard from her again until I started sending out my wedding invitations. I sent them to my cousins on that side of the family, the children of SWMNBN, with a long letter explaining that I was not inviting their mother or father, but that I still loved them as cousins and wanted them to know that they would always be welcome in my home, and that I had wonderfully fond memories of their kindness from when I was a kid. None of them came to the wedding but they all sent gifts and nice notes in response to mine. Obviously, the cousin who ratted us out about the green casket, decided to rat me out about the wedding invitations. I ended up receiving a card and a gift from SWMNBN, which I didn't even open, and just mailed it right back to her. Which prompted her to leave a rambling message on my parent's phone about how she doesn't understand why I hate her so much, why do I hate her so much when all she's done is love me? And on, and on. Obviously, the woman is mentally ill, but she's been refusing help for it for longer than I've been alive, so I don't really have any sympathy for her problems. I called her back and reminded her that I would file a harassment suit if she ever called my parents again, and when she tried to tell me how much she loved and missed me, and why did I hate her so much? I just hung up on her. She pulled the same shenanigan when my brother was getting married. Except he's a whole lot nicer than I am, so he kept her gift, read her rambling letter, and even sent her a small thank you note. It's fine by me if wants to bury the hatchet but my parents and I have no desire to have this woman in our lives, and I doubt that will ever change. She's simply a sick, toxic woman who desperately needs help but refuses to admit that she has a problem. Maybe if she started going to counseling and really started working through why she is such a heinous bitch, then I might be able to forgive her. But that's never going to happen. We're also not the only family members who refuse to speak to her. Out of her four kids, only one is still on speaking terms with her. Obviously it's the Rat Cousin, and two of her siblings aren't even talking to their sister anymore because she rats everybody out to SWMNBN. The four cousins, and their families, are scattered around the country, and they went through massive amounts of therapy to try and deal with their mother, and they were all told that the woman is unbelievably toxic, and that she was poisoning their lives. Every single cousin was advised to not speak with her until she realizes that she needs help, and checks herself into a mental hospital. In fact, on September 11th, 2001, my cousin John--who graduated from West Point and joined the Marines--happened to be stationed at the Pentagon. Almost all of his platoon was in the part of the Pentagon that the plane hit, and they all died. Cousin John and a few of his fellow platoon members simply happened to be in the other side of the building, and so they survived. John didn't even bother calling his mother to tell her that he was still alive. He called everyone else--including my family, even though we hadn't seen him in years--and simply let his rat sister tell their mother that he was fine. That's how evil this woman is--she messed up her kids so much that most of them will never speak to her again, no matter what happens.) Yikes. That was a long aside. The only funeral that I neglected to mention was for another cousin, named Rio, who drowned. Yeah. I'll bet you can just imagine the horrible jokes that were made about the cousin named Rio who DROWNED. The reason I didn't mention it is because I do not remember the funeral at all. I'm not even sure if it was one that we attended. (With so many relatives dying in the few short years between the end of my 6th grade year and the beginning of high school, we literally only had enough time to attend a maximum of two, MAYBE three, funerals a year. I'm sure Rio died during that time and since my parents had only met him once, and my brother and I had never even met him, his funeral was not on the top of our list for that year. Which sounds horrible except for the fact that we were attending an insane amount of funerals, and really shouldn't feel guilty about not attending a few here, and there.) The strangest thing is that, once I reached the legal drinking age, our family funerals pretty much stopped. Which means that I have yet to partake in the drunken revelry of our Irish wakes. (Knock on wood. Because I'm not wishing for a family member to die just so I can get drunk. Although, honestly, some of my family members are such drunks that they wouldn't be offended by that statement at all.)

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

For now, everything stays the same.

We are not ready to even discuss me getting pregnant. Which is something we are both more than fine with; I'm not ready because I've only had a few years to wrap my mind around the idea that Devin wants a biological kid (at least the one) and less than a few weeks to wrap my mind around the idea that I'm HEALTHY; Devin's not ready because even though he was the one with the deadline, that was not REALLY a deadline, and more like a future point at which he might be ready to be a father. We are focusing on keeping me healthy. Thanks so much to everyone who helped remind me (and I reminded Devin for you all) that being healthy is the true reward right now, and the baby stuff was just noise in the air. I'm starting to cut back on the painkillers (trying to get myself off opiates for the first time in over a decade), which is hard, but good. I'm re-reading Elizabeth Wurtzel's More, Now, Again because that is truly one of the best drug recovery books I've ever encountered in my entire life. (Which is saying a lot for me because 1) I read a ton of drug/alcohol recovery books and 2) I despise everything else Elizabeth Wurtzel has written, and I'm fairly certain that the reason I like More, Now, Again is because she had a new editor, who was VERY vocal about trimming down parts of the book, as much as I love Betsy Lerner, she really could have done far more trimming of Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, and Bitch.) Although I don't think I could handle an NA meeting in such a small town. One thing about Narcotics Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous, is that in the big cities, it is fairly easy to remain fairly anonymous. Not so much where I live. My detox is also not particularly clinical. My doc and I have worked it out, for the most part, and I know what to look for as I taper down (and then off) the opiates, that might mean I'm going into withdrawal shock, or whatever. This is what sucks about having a physical dependence on Vicodin (I stopped taking Percocet a few months ago, which was also a good thing). My body could get really sick just from getting clean. We opiate addicts are really nuts. At least, I know I am. I know that my physical tolerance for opiates is damn near unreal. Especially for someone who's never done heroin (for obvious reasons--I would like it way, way too much and all of my friends know about this, so it has not been offered to me in years, since I stopped hanging out with Josh and David). Out of habit, I called in my Vicodin refill even though I was supposed to be quitting (I've got another painkiller, Darvon, that had been working fantastically well). But. Well. I'm an addict. I didn't even think about trying to get a Vicodin refill, I've been doing it for so long that I just called it in and it went through. Except Doc halted the other painkiller, Darvon. Which means he really has been listening to me when I've been talking about my addiction to painkillers. Although I learned this from his office staff, who explained to me that the Darvon had been stopped because I just got the Vicodin, and to call them when I'm done with the Vicodin. The somewhat nice office staff lady then said that I should be calling in about a month, right? "Well. You want me to call when I'm almost done with the Vidodin, right?" I ask. "Yes, that's what the doctor said. He might even want you to come in for an appointment, I don't know. So, about a month?" She asked again. "Um. No. About two weeks." "Excuse me? Didn't you just fill that prescription a few days ago?" "Yup. Doc and I have talked about this. One of the reasons we're phasing me out of the Vicodin is because I can take up to three times my daily limit and not feel a damn thing. Conservatively speaking, I'm probably taking double my daily limit. Which means I'm calling you back in about two weeks." "Oh. And the doctor knows about this?" "Yup. We've talked about it." "Okay. Well. Give us a call and I'll get you an appointment." I didn't ask for clarification about how I went from maybe having to see the doctor, to definitely having to see the doctor: I'm an addict. Doc likes to check up on me and make sure that I'm not resorting to my old ways (foolishly trying to get the Vicodin refill) or about to die from withdrawals. What I've read about most opiate blockers is that, while they work, they also contain lactose, for some reason. My Crohn's is really touchy with lactose. So, I'm just going to have to detox the old school way. And hopefully not die. The painkillers are for my knees, just in case you all were wondering. These first few months of the year are the worst for my arthritis, to the point where my knees painfully swell and, when the swelling eventually goes down, they are surrounded by bruises because the swelling was that bad. Most people with arthritis can take anti-inflammatory drugs, which are better for arthritis than simple painkillers, but I've also got an inflammatory disease of the intestinal tract, so anti-inflammatories are a BIG NO for me. It can make the Crohn's go wacky and actually trigger a flare (in me, I'm not sure about the rest of the IBD world on this one but this has always been true of me--I can't even take over the counter Motrin). Doc will probably work with me on the painkiller stuff if I agree to go back to physical therapy. UGH. He's brought it up a few times this year and I've just said I didn't have the time. Well. I better make time for it now before summer starts, otherwise I really won't have the time. Although the last time I went to physical therapy, they had me doing so much work that I fainted right off the elliptical machine. Scared the hell out of the entire place. I was fine on the stationary bike, but something about having to stand up on a machine and move my legs around in strange circles, had me dizzy and passing out within ten minutes. I think it was because they programmed the machine a certain way and when I needed to stop to catch my breath, the machine wouldn't let me, and kept forcing my legs to go in those freaky oblongs. I remember coming to on the ground and the crazed machine was still going. Never again am I getting onto a pre-programmed exercise machine of any kind. People need to realize that if I can't breathe, then I can't remain conscious. It's a heart thing. (Huh. Speaking of. Wonder if I should call my cardiologist. The guy was a bit of a jerk, though. Probably do need to find a new cardiologist. I've also got appointments with my trio of eye doctors to make--retinologist, opthmalogist, optometrist. Although my range of vision has been great since the surgery--no apparent relapse, which makes me happy. I should still get it all checked out since it's been almost a year since I saw them all.) I guess more of the same right now means more doctor appointments for Katie. Now that we know the major stuff is under control, it's time to start checking out the rest of me. Make sure the apparatus holding my left eye together is still doing it's job. Probably time to update my prescription glasses. Find a decent cardiologist and make sure that my fainting thing is what the other cardiologist said (after I failed the tilt-table test), that my blood circulation is damn near stagnant when I stand for too long, or am standing and not able to catch my breath, then I just conk out. By the time I left Starbucks, I was fainting there about once a week. As most longtime readers know, it was the fainting at Starbucks that most likely lead to the detachment of my left retina. Hit my head on the floor one too many times and tore a hole in my eye. But now I'm at a job where I can sit down all day if I want to, so I haven't fainted in over a year. Yay me and my stagnant blood circulation. (I'm trying to think if I'm leaving any specialist out. This is when taking care of myself starts to get nutty. I could easily fill the rest of the year with doctor appointments. The eye docs I'm calling today. I've already called my Nurse Practitioner for the pap smear, and already have an OB/GYN ready to accept me as soon as I get pregnant, so that's out of the way. Might just go ahead and call my orthopaedic doc and make that appointment instead of going through my Internal Medicine doc first. Find new cardiologist. Or maybe see old, creepy cardiologist. Thankfully have never needed an ear/nose/throat guy. Have a dermatologist but I never go to him because my skin is great and I am decadent when it comes to my skin care regime. OH YEAH. Dentist. Chipped tooth. Hurts a bit. I think that's all of them.) I can only imagine how much worse my doctor load will get as I age. I'm already seeing more doctors than most old people that I know (and most of my doctors have waiting rooms full of really old people, never anyone close to my age). I've got the health insurance, and I want to make sure I'm super-duper healthy, so I might as well use it. Especially before summer starts and the pool business becomes so insane that my father-in-law will get cranky with me for not dealing with all of these docs BEFORE the busy season hit. Which makes sense. Time to make some calls. P.S. It's late and I can't sleep, so I thought I'd fill in all the fun doctor news. I know you all live for this stuff (or I live for this stuff). Apparently, after having such a major eye surgery, my retinologist wanted to see me every six months, so I'm quite a bit behind in my retina appointments. The receptionist must be new from the last time I went because she didn't remember me at all, and once I gave my name, she did the whole, "You had a detached retina at TWENTY-FOUR?." Of course, she didn't even wait for me to respond because there wasn't really much for me to say to that, so she plowed on with, "and how could you FORGET to keep up with your eye appointments, how many times have you had eye surgery?" Which sounds a lot meaner than it was, she was mostly shocked that once I was told my surgery had taken and that I was recovering beautifully, that I just stopped thinking about dealing with it at all. Didn't even try to explain the Crohn's to her and that the eye is just one more thing I have to deal with, and that I hadn't noticed any problems, so I honestly thought that I didn't need to bother with appointments. I just hope that the examination does not involve sticking things into my eye. I've had more than enough of that to last me for the rest of my life. (Or at least the next thirty years, which is when the apparatus holding my eye together might fall apart, or start peeking through the eye socket, which seems a bit freaky. The plastic buckle--scleral buckle, to be precise--might edge itself into visibility, so I'd have plastic bits sticking out from around my eye. FUN.) I was able to rush a dentist appointment for early next week (they love me at the dentist), which is good because I could use a nice, happy nitrous morning. I've got some minor filling work to do that I put off earlier this year, so they're going to do that and deal with the chipped tooth at the same time. Which is good. If I'd gone in for only the chip, I probably wouldn't get the nitrous because it would be an in-and-out appointment. So, I had to work it around to get my nitrous. Of course. It also happened to overlap with the pap stuff. Which I got rescheduled pretty easily. Dentist more important than having cells scraped off my cervix. Because they don't give you nitrous for a pap smear even though they REALLY SHOULD. Devin and I are cooking at home, and taking lunches to work. Part of our getting healthy thing. It's working out better than we could have imagined. We both work on cooking dinner, we both chip in on the clean-up, so we are actually spending more time together than we were before, when we would both scrape together our own (unhealthy) dinners, or just grab something while we were out, and retreat to our private spaces. At least now we cook together, eat together, clean up together, and THEN split into our separate spaces. Except for tonight. Tonight was "Casino Royale," which was much better in the theater, but still a good Bond movie. Love Daniel Craig. Eva Green, not so much. It had the "Spiderman 3" preview, though, which makes me giddy every time I see it. If the movie can live up to that preview, then it is going to KICK ASS. Summer is going to be nuts. The Simpsons MOVIE. "Spiderman 3." The last Pirates movie (which I'm a BIT excited about, compared to the rest of what's happening during the summer). THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK. There will be insanity. There will be mourning. There will be MADNESS. I am trying to not think too much about it, even though I need to get on with re-reading the entire series. Which I simply HAVE to do before the last one comes out. While in Cayucos, the other Katie and I bonded again over our complete devotion to the Harry Potter books, and she told me about the hotline that's being set up for distressed fans after they read the final book. She said I was the only person who responded to this news with a hearty, "THANK GOD." And I actually meant it. Devin had to calm me down after I finished reading Half-Blood Prince because I was alarmingly distraught. Also the next Ocean's... movie. Eh. I like these mostly for the cast, and not the complete lack of plot (which is pretty much true for all of us who see these movies, I think, we all just LIKE those guys, so we're fine with watching a movie that is really not much more than them hanging out together). Good lord. Forgot that the movie version of Order of the Phoenix is ALSO coming out this summer. Damn. I need to start saving my money now because the must-see-movie list is getting rather long. Have to see the new Harry Potter film, of course, even though Order really kicks off the dark, angsty teenage years for Harry and the others, making it not as much fun as the others. Even though Goblet ends on a very sad, depressing note, it still ENDS that way. Order can be surprisingly depressing from the get-go. That's how the books are going, now. J.K. Rowling is being very true to her word and properly aging the books with the kids, consistently tackling more adult problems, and showing the kids growing into teenagers, and by the end of the last one, probably young adults (the one who SURVIVE, that is). It's had a lot of parents very angry because now the cute, fun series about wizards is now more scary, and depressing. Anyway. Good lord. Order of the Phoenix this summer as well. Although, thankfully, I do not care at all about the "Fantastic Four" sequel. I thought the first movie was crap and, after having seen it a few more times, still stand by that first impression. Jessica Alba might be hot but her face is less expressive than a mannequin's and, for some reason, her little girl voice bothers the hell out of me. The only one I liked in that movie was Michael Chiklis as The Thing. Unlike Alba, who has no excuse, this guy actually managed to emote even when he was wearing the heavy Thing makeup. Same goes for "Live Free or Die Hard." Devin's all crazy excited about a new "Die Hard" movie but I'll have a good giggle at the name, and that's it. No desire to see that one. Same for the sequel to "Bruce Almighty." Never saw even saw the first one. Ditto for the "Rush Hour" movies. But a new "Bourne" movie? Will probably have to see that one. Devin and I are HUGE fans of the Bourne movies, Devin to the point where he is actually reading Robert Ludlum, but I just appreciate their glossiness, intense action, and cool mind games. A "Bourne" movie is always a good movie experience. Damn. That's a lot of movies to see this summer. Luckily it's easy to consider going to the theater a necessity during an oppressively hot Central California summer--you make up the ticket money in free air conditioning for a couple of hours. But in order to make all of this happen, I have to get the doctors out of the way NOW, otherwise all of my spare time in the summer will be spent with doctors. Plus, you know, there's fixing up the house and finally having that garage sale before summer hits. (Summer is dead time for two reasons: 1) the pool business will be insane, Devin will be working crazy hours, I will probably end up doing some over-time myself just to keep up, and we are both going to be cranky as hell because of it, and 2) remember last year? ten straight days of triple-digit temps out here in California? yeah. that happens a LOT for us during the summer. the lethargy it produces is legendary, we would all rather lie around and moan about it than try to get up and do anything.) Oh YEAH. I have to get my application for counselor for sick-kid camp in by the end of the month. Sick-kid camp is sometime in July. Which. I just realized. If it coincides with Harry Potter then there are going to be major problems. Some summer camps are taking field trip to bookstores if they are in session when the book is being released. This had better be true for sick-kid camp. We are sick people. At the Paul Newman camp, fer cryin' out loud, WE WILL NEED OUR HARRY POTTER. Oh, thank goddess. They have managed to time the two sessions of sick-kid camp so that they BOTH miss Harry Potter Day. The first session ends the day before, which might be a bit rough if I wanted to go through with the camping-out-in-bookstore thing for the last book, but I could probably managed it. The next session starts two days after the release. But it doesn't end until AFTER "The Simpsons MOVIE" comes out. Well. Now I have a lot to think about. I wouldn't NOT go to camp for either of these reasons (I hope), so I think I'm going to have to deal with not being able to completely camp out in a bookstore for the book's release. Since "Simpsons" opening weekend is not something I'm willing to miss (we've already got a whole group of us ready to buy tickets as soon as they go on sale, and we're making a huge party out of the weekend). Okay. If I can really pull all of this off, this is going to be the best summer EVER.

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Posted by Katie. at 9:05 AM | | 4 comments | links to this post  

4 Comments:

johnqcasual said...

"I thought the first movie was crap and, after having seen it a few more times, still stand by that first impression."

Haha, how many times do you need to see it to affirm that it's crap?

I thought the previews for Fantastic Four looked pretty crappy, myself. I was surprised that anybody actually thought it was going to be good.

And yet, I must admit that the Silver Surfer looks pretty cool in the new one. If the reviews are good, maybe I'll aactually see it. (Or, more likely, I'll just say I'll see it but then never get around to it, just like every other good movie that has come out in the past three years.)

 4:34 AM |  

Katie. said...

Heh! I know! Well... I might have been a bit stoned (okay, a LOT stoned) when I saw it in theater the first time, so I didn't really remember much beyond thinking that it was crap. But Devin talked me into giving it another chance when it came out on DVD, so we got stoned at watched it again, it was even WORSE.

But Devin likes it. He either ended up buying it (I hope not, what a waste of our money), or borrowing it from a friend and convinced me to try it a THIRD time, but this time more sober.

Which was an even WORSE idea. I didn't even make it half-way through the wretched movie. I also had to get really, really stoned to try and wipe the sober memory of it from my mind.

Oh yeah. Forgot about the Silver Surfer in the previews. Eh. Devin can go see it in theater and I'm sure he'll make me watch it when it comes out on DVD. (Have you noticed the insane turn-around time we've got on movies coming out on DVD? All of the holiday releases are already coming out on DVD, so I figure "Fantastic Four 2" should be on DVD by the end of the year... I can definitely wait that long to see Jessica Alba NOT act her way through another movie.)

That is the last time I let Devin try and talk me into giving a crap movie a THIRD chance at redemption. This is the guy who fell asleep during his first viewing of "When Harry Met Sally," and all he said when I woke him up was, "They finally got together, HUH?"

One of us has completely crap taste in movies sometime. And it's not me.

 9:13 AM |  

johnqcasual said...

Turnaround time on DVDs: YES! I've noticed that too! I couldn't believe it when I saw a commercial for "Rocky Balboa" on DVD. It couldn't have come out in theaters more than two months ago!

Also, while skimming over your post again, I found it funny that it talks about all of this serious stuff and all I could think to comment on was Fantastic Four sucking. I'm so lame!

So to be on the serious side, 1. congratulations for being healthy, and 2. although babies in general aren't very cool, having your OWN baby is awesome! I don't want to be one of those people who encourages everyone to have kids before they are ready(you know the type), but I do want to say that all experiences with my baby have been very positive. Plus, no matter how much money you make or how old/mature you are--you'll never be 100% "ready" to be a parent. Sometimes you just have to go ahead and just do it before you turn into an old couple with too many pets.

 5:07 AM |  

suzanne said...

oh my lord katie! please please please include me in your simpsons movie plans! what day does it get released, and will there be a midnight showing-type thing?

 3:33 PM |  

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

I love my husband, even when I don't understand him.

Also: Thank goddess for the internet and online journals and, most importantly, thank you laura and anonymous. After talking to Devin on his lunch hour yesterday, I was even MORE confused about the whole baby thing. At some point in the afternoon, my Mom calls to see how I'm doing because I had called her crying last night and generally freaking out. "I'm... fine." I'm not sure if I want to go into the whole Devin-thought-I-was-trash-talking-him thing right now. It still makes no sense to me. Except my Mom can tell from my voice when something is bothering me. She presses me saying she KNOWS something is wrong, and what is it? Tell her about Devin and talking to the guys in the morning about my freak-out and making it sound funny, then telling me that it was my own fault for trash-talking him to my Mom. "WHAT? You didn't say a bad word about Devin! In fact, you even said that he's agreed to give up his game room if it came down to you two needing a nursery! You were NICE!" My Mom can always be counted on for being completely on my side, even though this time it was actually warranted to be on my side because Devin was going crazy. "Oh GOOD. I thought I was losing my mind. I had no clue what I said that made him so mad." "YOU WERE NICE. Do you want me to tell him that? Your brother heard the whole thing and he can back you up on this, too." "Um. Thanks. But I just wanted to make sure I'm not the crazy one right now. I'm not going to sic my family on Devin as if he's on trial and lied under oath. This isn't a trial. This is supposed to be a HAPPY TIME." We talked a bit more but I was glad to have cleared that up. Okay. I'm not the crazy one right now. That's a shocker. Finally Devin gets done with work and comes sit with me in my office. We're both glaring at each other. I ask him what he heard me say, and he says something about how I said that it was all MY decision and I'm not respecting HIS feelings and that it's HIS decision, too. Decided to not go down "It's My Body, My Choice" route because that's not really how I feel. Explained that I said that I was scared that we were having to make a decision now and that I'M SCARED. Said I didn't think he'd appreciate me telling my Mom about his feelings because, right now, I have NO CLUE what he is feeling. Yet again, this was not a good time to talk about this, he wanted to go home. Alright. Fine. (There's that fake "Fine" again. Perhaps I just need to scratch "fine" from my internal dictionary.) I'll see him when I get home. Except by the time I get home, I'm pretty much not talking. At all. Just quiet Katie helping clean up the kitchen and start some laundry. Devin is cooking dinner. Which I realize is a peace offering of some sort but I'm still mute. "Are you going to be snarky like this to me all night?" Devin inquires. "I haven't said ANYTHING. That's not snark. That's SILENCE. THIS IS SNARK." Cue exit, Katie, stage left. Dinner is taking a while. I sit down with the new copy of "Newsweek" and Devin sits down with me, staring at me reading. "What? Are you ready to talk now?" "I was freaking out." Wait a second. "What?" I ask him. Maybe he meant YOU were freaking out. "I was freaking out. I didn't know what to say. About the baby. And being able to start NOW and not some far-off date in the future." When Devin has his sheepish, aw shucks expression on, he looks about sixteen years old. "You're kidding me, right? I mean. You were the one with the schedule. Long before we got married you made it abundantly clear that you wanted kids before we were 30. YOU were the one with the cut-off date, and I was the one who had to wrap my mind around that. Now that I've come to terms with having a kid before we're 30, you are now FREAKING OUT? How is that even allowed?!" "I KNOW. But 30 seems like far-off, distant future..." "Devin. We're going to be 30 in four years. I thought this was what you wanted." "Oh, I do want to have a kid. Or two. But right now? I don't know if I'm ready for right now. So, I freaked out. I figured that I had to say SOMETHING positive about all of this, so I just..." "...Started talking about what time of year you want me to birth a child? Then ridiculed my freak-out to your family?" "Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. I just didn't know what to say. I was freaking out." This is where I am so grateful for reader comments to my last entry. laura made me realize that the anti-anxiety drugs are WORKING and I'm being fairly calm (and laura's known me since high school, so if she says I'm being calm, she knows of what she speaks). That made me feel better. And Anonymous talked about Devin being on another planet and I just needed to give him time to come back down to Earth. I kept running that advice through my head last night when he's explaining to me that his freak-out results in crazy, verbal diarrhea that can last for a day, or two. All I could think was that 1) laura said I was being calm so take deep breaths and stay calm and 2) Anon was right. Devin is totally on another planet. "Babe." (We call each other "Babe," and I've never seen the pig movie so I have no cartoon animal associations with the word.) "Why didn't you just tell me that you were freaking out? I had no problem telling YOU that I was freaking out." "I know. I just thought that maybe one of us should pretend to be ready for this... thing." Yeah, the "baby" word is very, very scary. I agree with Devin on that one. Then he started re-iterating all of the fears I'd told him I'd had last night, which was rather nice because then I just got to give him the responses he gave to me. Calm down. Our parents will help us with the money to buy the thing clothes and diapers. The thing isn't coming for at least another year, assuming we start trying right now and we're super successful, so we can worry about getting a "family car" later. Devin started to get that frustrated look on his face, I could tell he wanted to tell me to be quiet except I was only telling him all of the things he told ME last night. "I'M JUST NOT READY." He said, very firmly. "Good. Neither am I. So glad we got that cleared up. Do you want me to cancel my appointment this month for my pap?" Both of our Mothers might think it's odd that I tell Devin about everything that's going on with my body, even the baby-making parts, so he knows what a pap-smear is and how annoying they are to me. I doubt my father-in-law knows anything about pap-smears. "Oh. No. You said you needed one. It's been like... two years? Or something?" "Yup. About two years. Sexually active women, even monogamous sexually active women, should get papped at least once a year." "Didya know that cervical cancer is caused by a VIRUS?" He's laughing now. Because he knows how much I detest those idiotic HPV commercials. "Do those stupid commercial women even know what CANCER IS? OF COURSE cancer can be caused by a virus. It can be caused by all sorts of things. It's just a bunch of strange cells in your body that are either benign, or malignant. STUPID COMMERCIAL." Now he's really laughing at me. Which is fine because the entire world probably laughs at me when I go off on a virus rant. I would laugh along with him except I really, really hate that commercial. "Alright. I'll keep the pap appointment. It's only a week, or so, away." "And making doctor appointments gives you some control over your life." Devin is a smart guy, except when it comes to being able to articulate a freak-out. "Exactly. We don't have to make any decisions right now. I'm only on my first week of my new pack of birth control pills, and all of the literature says that you don't just STOP taking birth control in the middle of the month. Kind-of like steroids. And Vicodin. So, we have a few weeks before deciding if we want to start trying NOW for a kid, or I can just get another pack of birth control pills and buy us another month to make our decision. The only people wanting to rush into this are..." "Our parents." We say together. This would be the first grandchild for both of our parents and boy, his Mom is beyond ready to be a grandmother. She even called me yesterday to say that she heard the "good news" about my health and how great it is that we can start trying to have a kid right now. (Speaking of being inundated with my in-laws yesterday. Devin went to all of them and told them to apologize to me, that he was wrong to make it sound funny and that they shouldn't tease me about it, or pressure me about it. Which definitely put him back into the Good Husband category, so I even did some of his laundry and changed the sheets on our bed. Which he was allowed to sleep in last night.) So, that's where we stand. Neither of us is ready to make a decision about when I should go off birth control, so we're just going to think on it for the next few weeks. See how the pap comes out. Just give ourselves time to wrap our heads around this crazy notion of having a baby. (By the way. The funniest thing last night happened when Devin was still explaining to me that he was just so freaked out that he didn't know what to say, so he said all of the wrong things. He was finally beginning to talk about what was freaking him out and he honestly said, "What if you really love being pregnant? Like Darrell's wife Amy? Or any of the other females in our group of friends? What if you just LOVE BEING PREGNANT? What if you want to get pregnant again RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT?!" Which is when I just started laughing. Which was a bit mean because that freaked him out even more. "WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? It could happen!" "Devin. I love you but I can almost guarantee you that I will not love being pregnant." "But what if you love growing a human being inside your body?" "Well, yeah, hopefully that part will be cool and just a bit freaky. But I do not anticipate enjoying the process of pregnancy. For starters, I have enough trouble walking around without stumbling, or banging into walls, and I'm not currently carrying most of my weight as a huge, heavy balloon in my abdomen. Also not looking forward to my breast getting BIGGER. Since that is just a cruel, cruel joke to a woman with a 32-DD rack." "Oh. No. That part's going to be nice." Yes, dear, I know that you can't wait for my boobs to inflate to the size of basketballs. Such fun. Devin continues... "Except after the baby is born, they're not going to be MY boobs anymore, they're going to be for the baby. Because you'll be breast feeding." "For the millionth time. They aren't your boobs! They belong to ME. And I haven't decided about breast feeding yet. Docs say that most women can take mild doses of certain medication even while breast feeding because the body tends to filter that stuff out of the breast milk. So. I don't know about that one. It would be kind-of nice to actually have a purpose for my boobs." "They already have a purpose in life. To make me happy." And they really do make him happy. Just thinking about them puts a goofy grin on his face. In the evening, when I'm changing into my pajamas, if Devin is in the room, he'll make a beeline for my chest as soon as it's exposed saying "Boobiesboobiesboobiesboobies" the entire time. Which usually means that I have to stand there, topless, while my husband gets his fill of fondling my breasts. I have been told that men never grow out of this fascination with breasts, and I will pretty much have to put up with it for a very, very long time.) Now that we're freaking out about this baby thing TOGETHER, it makes the entire task seem less daunting. (Also. Before I wrap this incredibly long entry up. I do not want to become a mommyblogger. I understand how great it is to talk about your kid, and how amazing your own kids seems to you but in no way do I want to dump all of that here. If I do decide to write about my kid--once we have one, of course--odds are it will be a private, password protected journal for family, friends and long-time journal readers. Not for the internet at large. That way I could write about it if I felt like it but I wouldn't have to bore people who just don't want to hear it. Or worry that some strange pervert is looking at pictures of my kid.) It'll be interesting to see which one of us is the first to be "ready" to have a kid. (Re: Comments for this journal. I don't know what I did but now the comments made on any entry are tacked onto the bottom of that entry as soon as I write a new entry. Making me wonder what in the world I did with crazy blogger, and I'll spend the rest of the afternoon trying to fix that so I can properly respond to comments. So, for now: To the other anonymous, you were right, it was just a minor bump in the road and we worked it out fairly quickly. Thank goddess. Even though right now our next step is to just wrap our heads around this idea and try to figure out if/when we'll be ready for a kid. And to johnqcasual: Thanks to you, as well, for the male perspective. I honestly didn't think that Devin was saying something and the guys were the ones saying it was funny. I simply thought that he was "in" on whatever joke those guys were making about all of this. He's got the message now that it's FINE to vent. I have this journal to do my venting. I'll bet that once I go off birth control and my hormones start going nuts, he's going to need to vent about me in order to stay sane. He's just now going to explain to the guys that they shouldn't turn around and tease me about everything he's said, or even acknowledge to me that Devin's venting his frustration about his sometimes crazy wife. On this one, my ignorance is bliss. I completely respect his need to vent, I just don't necessarily want to hear what he says in a silly telephone-like game. If he wants to tell me what he's saying, that's fine as well, but he can feel free to gripe about me behind my back all he wants as long as the griping remains mostly behind my back. I think that's a solution that works for both of us. Now I must eat lunch. Then figure out what I did with blogger and journal comments. I would actually LIKE for comments to look like they are part of my blog, and not some pop-up blogger window. So, I've done something half-right. Now I just need to figure out what the heck I did.)

Posted by Katie. at 8:37 AM | | 0 comments | links to this post  

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

After having a minor breakdown yesterday.

Devin and I went to see my gastroenterologist yesterday for my colonoscopy follow-up appointment. All of the news was good. Which is why my meltdown came as such a surprise to Devin. First of all. We had to wait two hours for me to be taken. I HATE sitting in doctors offices and waiting because it sometimes feels like my entire life has been sitting in doctors offices, waiting to be admitted into an exam room. So, I was already stressed and cranky by the time the doctor even showed up. Devin marveled at how far he'd gotten on some video game on his Nintendo DS Lite (I still have the old DS which makes me MAD because I want a DS Lite Noble Pink like you cannot believe) and tried to calm me down. Doctor finally shows up. "Great news. Clean colonoscopy. Even got into most of the small intestine. No signs of active Crohn's disease. Dr. Davis tells me this is a first for you." Dr. Davis was my pediatric GI and yup, having no signs of active Crohn's IS a first for me. Devin and I had already pretty much known this because Dr. Dhillon had told my Dad all of this after the colonoscopy itself (they never tell the patient any of this because the Versed that they give us as part of the sedation process would make us all forget anything, anyway). Dr. Dhillon explains how I can now scale back on some of my meds (which, um, didn't want to tell him that I'd started to do that already because he might not be like Dr. Davis, who never minded me messing around with my own meds schedule) but can't stop taking them entirely because remission is so new for me that we don't want to make any hasty mistakes. Then he's about to leave when Devin pipes up, "Well, you know, why I'M HERE..." "Oh, yes. Baby. Children. Start family." Dr. Dhillon has an extremely strong accent, and, according to Wikipedia, the type of turban that he wears means that he's probably Sikh. Possibly from India. I honestly have no clue on this one but I felt that I needed to share that half the time I have no clue what the man is saying and I have to make him repeat himself. I suck at trying to decipher strong accents. "You can start trying to get pregnant right now." Um... what? What about my meds and stuff? I'm on leukemia drugs, don't I need to be OFF those before trying to get pregnant? "You are on low dose of medication. Everything I've read says that such a low dose is not a problem for the fetus." I believe Dr. Dhillon when he says stuff like this because he also has degrees in pharmacology and he knows what he's talking about when it comes to medication. "I subscribe to many journals and have many resources to research this for you. Let me remind my staff to remind me to look up these drugs (6-MP, the leukemia drug, and Asacol, a 5-ASA drug) and make sure they are okay to take while pregnant. Normally it's the sulfur based drugs, and the steroids, that they don't want pregnant women to take." I nod because Dr. Dhillon doesn't seem to realize that I'm not going to take steroids again, even if I'm not pregnant, unless I'm dying. "Call me back on Friday and I will let you know what I find out. I'm pretty sure you'll be fine to continue taking these two drugs but we'll make sure. Then you can start trying for baby." This must have been when I went into shock. Doc left and instructed me to just make another follow-up appointment for a few months from now, and reminded me to call him on Friday about pregnancy and my meds. If I said anything, I don't remember it, and somehow we got to the car and started heading home. We live about forty-five miles from most of my doctors because the small town that we live in has CRAP GI specialists (one guy likes to prescribe prayer for his patients instead of meds, and I'm not kidding, the other guy traumatized me when I was a kid and I'm never seeing him again in my entire life). We hadn't even gotten to the freeway (which is only about five minutes away from Dr. Dhillon's office) before Devin starts jumping into talking about having a baby. "What time of year do you want to have the baby? I don't want a summer baby, and we already have a lot of birthdays in the winter." He said a whole lot more than this but I was still in shock. The shock that had rendered me speechless. Devin's still going on about what time of year he wants to have a baby, so subtract nine months and that's when we'll start trying. I'm just dumbfounded. Is he being serious? Oh yeah. VERY serious. Now he's mad at me because I'm not willing to commit to a time of year that I want to birth the baby. All I can get out is that "I can't talk about this right now." Which only made him madder. How can I not want to talk about this? This was the whole reason we got me healthy, I had PROMISED him that this was what I wanted, so why wouldn't I talk about this with him!? "I just... can't decide when to birth the baby right now. This seems very important to you. That's fine. I can't think about that right now. You go right ahead, though, and pick out the time of year you want to have a child." I thought that was very adult of me, reasonable and respecting of his desire to plot the conception of our child. He just got madder. "Why won't you talk about this with me!!?" "I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW." Then I started crying. "Are you CRYING?" God. He made it sound like I was losing my mind and was being a horrible wife. "I can't... I just can't... this is too much pressure. I don't want to sit here deciding with you when to give birth because that's out of my control. I have no idea WHEN I'm going off my birth control, and once I do, there's no guarantee that I'll get pregnant right away. It could take MONTHS. It could take YEARS. PLEASE STOP PRESSURING ME ABOUT THIS." "FINE. If you don't want to talk about this then that's just FINE." He sounded like me when I scream "FINE" at him at the end of an argument. Which meant that he was obviously not FINE with all of this but I was beyond talking at that point. We drove home in complete silence. Once we got home I just lost it. I sat down on our bed and started bawling. Those big, loud, body-shaking sobs that make you sound like you're choking on your own emotions. At first Devin didn't seem to care--there goes Katie, crying again. Except I didn't stop crying. I just cried, and cried, and cried. Finally he comes over, puts his arm around me and says, "What's wrong?" in a very gentle voice. Which was good because if he had used his mean, scary voice like in the car, I might have slapped him. "This is all good news, Katie. You're so healthy. This is GREAT NEWS. What's WRONG?" "I haven't even decided when to go off birth control and you're already planning the birth. Narrowed down to a specific time of year that you want to have a child. WHAT IF IT DOESN'T GO ACCORDING TO YOUR SCHEDULE? AND WHY DO YOU GET TO MAKE THE SCHEDULE?" I was screaming at him through my sobs. "I'm already worried enough about carrying a healthy baby to term. I just want to be able to make us a healthy baby. Now you want me to focus on WHEN to make that healthy baby. I just CAN'T DO THAT RIGHT NOW." I think he finally began to hear me. Because then he started apologizing for putting all that pressure on me before we'd even discussed me going off the birth control. Saying that we don't have to make any decision right now, that he didn't realize how freaked out I was going to get about all of this and that he's just SO EXCITED, and I am SO FREAKED OUT. "I just... never thought this would happen. My docs told me my entire life that it would be so hard for me to get pregnant, that I might not even be able to try to get pregnant, that my disease is so severe that it would leech away nutrition from my fetus and make it horribly deformed." "Well, your docs also thought you would be dead by eighteen if you didn't let them remove your colon when you were nine. They were wrong about that, and now they were wrong about this." Which was probably another reason I was freaking out. At twelve years old, when I was really, really sick and told that I might not ever be able to carry a healthy child to term, I decided that was fine and I would just adopt. No big deal. That was fourteen years ago. It's been a very recent idea that hey, maybe I COULD carry a healthy baby to term. Then learning that all systems are good to go on this, and all of my docs have signed off on me being healthy enough to start trying to get pregnant. And the first thing my husband wants to do is make a freakin' baby schedule. While I'm still wrapping my brain around the notion that all of my doctors have told me I'm healthy enough to start trying to get pregnant. Which lead to me thinking, am I ready to start trying to have a child? Will I ever be ready? (My father-in-law just asked me why I freaked yesterday after my doctor's appointment. I am going to kill my husband.) Well. I HAD thought that I had gotten over being mad at my husband. But, apparently, he regaled the entire pool company with tales about crazy Katie and her breakdown yesterday. My brothers-in-law just teased me about my freak out. All of them just started laughing at me. So, I'm now ready to start crying all over again. It's just... I don't know. I spent the morning trying to get an appointment with an OB/GYN to get papped and everything, trying to be the good non-freaking out wife and going ahead with this plan to have a kid. And Devin spent his morning making fun of me to the point where everyone I work with is now laughing at me. Is this funny? Have I just lost all perspective on reality? How in the world did Devin think my freak-out yesterday was FUNNY? And why was he so nice to me about it last night just to turn around and make fun of me for it today? Now I'm seriously distraught. It's one thing when it was just me and Devin, working through these problems together, but now I've got all of my in-laws (and other company employees) laughing at me and telling me that I need to relax. How in the WORLD is that relaxing? I guess this means that I'm freaking-out again. I wonder how funny Devin's going to find it this time.

Posted by Katie. at 8:48 AM | | 5 comments | links to this post  

5 Comments:

laura c. said...

OH, HELL NO.
katie, i love devin to death, but the telling-everyone-in-his-family-who-also-happen-to-be-your-coworkers thing? you have not lost all perspective on reality. if anything, you are being too calm. and i could not even imagine what you're going through emotionally right now, but i am happy you're healthy.

 12:15 PM |  

laura said...

& by the way, that's me, up there-- for some reason blogger was using my gmail account? weird.

 12:22 PM |  

Anonymous said...

I am your pretty old reader who contributed you some books through amazon wishlist some years ago, monetary equivalent which you had rather contributed to medical research. Ugh.

Anyway. Just my 2 cents, I think your husband is living in other realm with his thoughts about baby scheduling.

For the good news, after a small while, after his positive shock starts wearing out and after some star treck type mind hindering device stops functioning in his brain, he will start to see light again like someone who is living on this planet.

 12:53 PM |  

suzanne said...

things will calm down. and compromise will be sought. and both of you will return to your senses and plan your next steps together. if it hasn't already happened.

 12:27 AM |  

johnqcasual said...

I can relate to the husband. When MY wife was pregnant/preparing to get pregnant/a big emotional crybaby, venting to friends and family was all I could do to stay sane.

It's not like I thought "hey, my wife is crying and yelling at me...this is funny! I think I'll go make fun of her with my guy friends!"

But it's very stressful to see your wife act like that, and as a guy I never know what to do. So I get a little bit of relief by ranting about how tough it is to my friends--and then, since they are not as emotionally involved in the situation, they just find it funny. They just laugh and say "why would she cry over that?" or "who in the world would yell at somebody because of this?" or "why is taking her crazy emotional breakdown so seriously?"

I'm not saying your husband should have done it. He should have realized that these were your co-workers and backed off. But sometimes you just have to talk to somebody.

 9:17 AM |  

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