One year.

I love you, Mom.

Every moment, even the difficult ones, were a blessing for me because they were spent with you.

I mark this day in honor of a woman whose life mattered.

I mark this day in honor of a woman who loved her family beyond what words can express. It was immeasurable.

I mark this day in honor of a woman who is loved beyond her time on this earth.

I mark this day in honor of a woman who was generous, intelligent, compassionate, and downright amazing.

I mark this day in my heart and soul, like a tattoo that can never be removed.

 

Link – anxiety

Nothing new for most of us, but might be good to share with loved ones.

11 Things Others Don’t Realize You Are Doing Because of Your High Functioning Anxiety

http://curiousmindmagazine.com/11-things-anxious-person-understand/

 

March not better

I thought February was bad. March has been worse.

I’m feeling so shitty, I can’t even. Period. I spend much of my days fighting the nausea and the fatigue…I’m exhausted before I get going. And now…and now, my imbalance is back in a big way. I’m struggling to walk without falling over, and I’m back to touching walls and handrails and tables and whatever in order to keep myself stable. This is a huge slide backward for me, as I haven’t had this kind of imbalance in quite some time.

I went back to the doctor AGAIN because I’m still exhausted and I’m still nauseated. She told me I was acting better this time versus the last visit, but she’s still thinking I have a virus that I need to just “wait out”. She sent me for more blood work (ANA, rheumatoid arthritis, lyme, iron, b12), but everything came back normal. My b12 is a tad on the low side for my history but still in the normal range. I’ve ordered my b12 sublingual pills and will start them ASAP. Maybe it’s that, maybe it’s stress and grief, maybe it’s something else. I have no idea and apparently neither does my doctor. She said to drink more water and walk outside for 20-30 minutes a day. She says dehydration can cause nausea–and maybe it can–but my drinking habits haven’t altered much. Except now I feel like shit and so I don’t want to do anything, including drink. If I go walk outside my allergies will get worse and I’ll have more breathing trouble and more snot and more post-nasal drip and more nausea. The doctor didn’t care for that and told me to do it anyway, that being outside and walking will make me feel better and get rid of my fatigue. I’m not eating much because I’m so nauseated all the time. I rush through eating what I can before I feel like I can’t put anything else in my mouth at both lunch and dinner, then I leave my dishes in the sink and go back to the couch.

I spend most of my days on the couch, barely even bothering to look at my computer. I try to stay upright, but I’m so exhausted all the time that I end up stretched out and wishing that the day was just over. I don’t know why I wish for that because at this point tomorrow will be much of the same. I feel like I’m sliding into this despair of thinking that I’ll never feel better. That it will always be like this. I am trying to push past the exhaustion and do stuff–I did three loads of laundry on Sunday–in the hopes that if I ignore what’s going on it will go away. But by the time I do anything, I feel this crushing fatigue again and I end up on the couch. Or in bed.

Sleeping is a negatory. I try to sleep but it doesn’t work, and when I wake up in the morning I can hardly haul myself out of bed. I don’t feel rested or refreshed or like I even closed my eyes. I want to cry but I’m too fucking tired to cry.

I was supposed to go see my massage therapist on the 14th but our local snow canceled that appointment. I was also scheduled to go tomorrow morning, but I literally got an email at 9:30pm saying she’s sick and has to cancel. And for sure I’m grateful because I do NOT want to get sick and it sounds like she has the flu, but I’m so disappointed. For one thing, I was hoping some trigger point release would help with my imbalance and nausea (hoping, though not confident)…for another thing, getting onto her schedule is a bitch and even though I rushed I struggled to get back onto her calendar. It’ll be two weeks before I can get back in to see her, which might not be horrible because if she DOES have the flu I wouldn’t want to be back in her “hands” too soon. But it’s hard to miss appointment after appointment when I’m feeling so poorly. Hub tried to send me a link to a list of massage therapists in the area, but none of them do trigger point AND it’s hard to just find a new massage therapist. It’s like a mental therapist…you have a relationship built up. It’s not so easy to walk into someone’s space and get naked and let them rub you for an hour.

I see T on Friday, which is the day after the one year anniversary of my mother’s passing. Just happens to be how it worked out. Considering how things are going at the moment, it’s going to be a long, sobby appointment.

I can’t stand this constant nausea. Every time I swallow I feel sick. Every time I move I’m wobbly and off balance and that makes the nausea worse. If I didn’t have the dogs, I’d be in bed all day. I gave thought to going back to bed after lunch today because Butthead had peed and pooped after HER lunch so I knew she’d be okay for a while, but I didn’t want to give in. I’ve been in that place where I didn’t get out of bed for weeks (with my prilosec fever) and that’s a bad road to head down. It only makes me weaker and makes me feel worse.

Hub’s birthday dinner with his family is this coming weekend. I don’t know how I’m going to go…by 3pm, I’m so exhausted I can barely sit at our kitchen table for dinner, how am I going to get out and go to a restaurant and be “on” for his family? For hours… We didn’t go out on his birthday because I couldn’t get up the energy. We didn’t go donate the dolls and bears I crocheted to the police station because I didn’t have the energy to leave the house.

I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know what path to take. I don’t know how to do anything right now.

 

 

Sleep? Why bother…

Apparently this is what my body and brain has decided. Sleep unnecessary.

I know that for real it has to do with my mental, emotional, and physical pain. All of those wrapped into one, split into pieces, kneaded into each other, and then rolled into a throbbing ball of oneness. I’m so on edge that one small scrape and I’m raw and bleeding profusely, figuratively.

I cried on the way to the grocery store this morning. Not because I had to go to the grocery store, not because I was worried about being able to afford the trip to the grocery store, not because I was afraid I was going to have an anxiety attack in the grocery store… I cried because I couldn’t not cry. I’m tired, I’m not sleeping, I’m worried about Hub and I’m worried about Butthead. I’m worried about myself, too. My grief is overwhelming every part of my life and I can’t seem to dig my way out of it.

Hub is agonizing over a job offer–in part because it might mean less flexibility and he worries that he won’t be able to come home if I need him–that he received on Friday. I’m worried for him because I don’t feel that the company was being up front with him…they kind of bait and switched the job position (which they apparently did to the guy before him, someone Hub knows). I am concerned he won’t have any backup on his work, and I’m worried because if this is how they treat potential employees, how do they treat current employees. But Hub is unhappy in his current job and looking for a way out. Our health insurance changed due to the buy-out, so he’s both unhappy with the new corporate owners and unhappy with their shitty health insurance. Unfortunately, the potentially new company has equally shitty health insurance…so that kind of cancels out the pro/con in that category. Now they’re not budging on a concession he asked about (a minor concession on their part!), so that might be the end of that. I only hope that his current corporate overlords don’t decide that he’s no longer needed before he finds something else.

Butthead is randomly puking again. I mean, it’s good news that she’s not persistently puking like the last episode where we ended up rushing her to the vet hospital and coming home with anti-vomit pills… But this randomly throwing up (twice in the last four days…one of which was this morning which was another reason why I was so upset) is so frustrating. We don’t know if she’s sneaking and eating bad things outside or has gastritis and so her stomach hurts her or what… We’re at the point where we’re acclimating her to a basket muzzle that she’ll have to wear anytime she’s outside so she doesn’t eat crap off the ground and make herself sick. It’s hard and sad to make her wear a muzzle because she’s a good dog, not aggressive, shouldn’t have to wear it. I know it’s uncomfortable and bulky and just plain weird for her, but we don’t know what else to do with her. We can’t figure out what is wrong with her. And if it’s that she’s eating stuff outside that’s making her sick, there’s nothing else we can do other than the muzzle. For the past month or so we’ve been out there with her every minute, following her and standing over her and making sure she’s not eating things. But with the snow and ice, and my physical capabilities being limited at this point…I couldn’t keep up with her and I think she might have eaten something that made her vomit last Thursday when I wasn’t standing over her. We just don’t know what to do with her… So I’m worried that she’s going to vomit again like the last episode. Ugh. So far it’s been these two random episodes and today I spent time on and off modifying the basket muzzle to try to use a quick-snap collar to hold it on her head versus the old-fashioned buckle which is a pain in the ass to get on and off of her, especially with her floppy ears and long hair.

Even though I’ve been feeling ultra shitty and exhausted, we had to do a bunch of things this weekend. Most of which we accomplished. Unfortunately, one of the things was cleaning up the caulk in our master shower which seemed to be growing mold behind the caulk at the joints of the floor and wall. Hub is not flexible, so he had trouble sitting on the floor and scraping at the caulk, so I did 90% of it. Which, of course, hurt my arms, shoulders, and hands more than they were already hurting. The end result, though, is that we need to call in a professional to look at our shower because this is the second time in a year that we’ve ended up with this problem. Last time my brother helped me strip and re-caulk the shower, but now we’re in the same place again… There’s something wrong if there’s mold and mildew growing behind the caulk, especially since we bought mold-resistant caulk. This all means that we don’t have a shower in our bathroom and we have to haul ass to the shower on the opposite end of the house…past all the windows in the front of the house and over the foyer area of the house. It also means we have to haul all our paraphernalia into the other shower, which is smaller than our master shower. It’s not a huge deal, it’s just more stress. And more stress in having to find someone who knows what they are doing to come into the house to fix whatever is happening. The stupid sub-contractor that our builder hired to do our bathrooms did not know what they were doing. They screwed several things up in our master bathroom and ruined a lot of our shower floor tiles by having to go back and chip out all the wrong grout they put in. So we were left with grout over top of grout, and chipped tiles. And the slope of the floor is really bad, which causes water to pool in different spots in the shower and leaves our grout with water stains where the water sits. It’s shitty and depressing and frustrating. That’s all in addition to whatever this caulk situation is.

I have my mammogram on Wednesday. We finally got our health insurance cards from Hub’s new corporate overlords. I opened the mail, found the card, and called for my appointment all within about ten minutes. The first they had was a week away (now this Wednesday) and I took the appointment. I am pretty paranoid about keeping up with my mammos, so I’m glad that it’s only about ten days overdue from the day I had it last year.

I was supposed to have a relaxing massage last week. I had it scheduled in between two trigger point appointments…I normally go to TP massage therapy once a month (ish). So I scheduled the relaxing massage exactly two weeks after one TP appointment and two weeks before the next TP appoint. And then it snowed, and my relaxing massage appointment got canceled. And I really really wanted it. I mean, not enough to endanger my therapist or myself, but I’m so disappointed. I knew this was going to be a difficult month (technically, it’s been a difficult year so far), so I had planned for the relaxing massage–which I never get–and then plans went pfffft. Since my massage therapist only works two days a week, there were no openings for me to do a make-up massage. I don’t know when I’ll be able to fit it in again.

I told T on Friday that I want this grief to have some kind of end date. But with every day, every month, it stays. It’s a solid burden that I carry with me every. This month is especially difficult as it’s the (one year) anniversary of Mom’s death. And with every calendar day I think of what I was doing on “this” day last year. How we had no idea what was coming. How we took her to an arboretum in the city trying to perk up her spirits…not knowing how soon it would get so bad. How it happened so fast. How I was late to Hub’s birthday dinner last year because I was with Mom and Dad helping them with something. How it was only days after his birthday that she was in the hospital and then hours later that she was gone. Grief has no end date. It plays by no rules. It doesn’t give a shit who you are or what you want. It lives and breathes and grows and growls and harps and hammers and changes and does whatever the hell it wants. And it sucks.

 

 

 

 

The 1st of March

It’s the first of March. It’s the first day of the month during which I lost my mother last year to her cancer.

Yesterday I went to see my massage therapist. It was a long appointment and the therapist worked hard on my trigger points. With all the pain I’ve been in, she really had to do a lot of work on my upper body. Arms, upper chest, shoulders, neck, my entire back, my glutes. I came home feeling exhausted and so weary. I probably shouldn’t have driven home myself but I made it successfully. I had the air conditioning in the car full blast to keep me alert, but I think once I turned into my driveway my brain sort of gave up. I drove up the driveway but…when I turned my car toward the garage so I could make a K turn to park in my usual spot, I went just a little too far. And I hit the garage door. Again. I wasn’t going fast and I didn’t hit hard, but I pushed the already damaged door in just enough to break the bits on the inside that hold the panels to the rollers. I did this years ago (like 3 years?), but at that point I had backed into the garage door and the molding at the edge of the door. I broke my tail light and dented the garage door. The repair guys came out then and just repaired the stuff inside and said it’d be okay. Well, it WAS okay until I hit it again yesterday. The guys came out today and said the door parts were damaged beyond repair and we’d likely have to replace two of the panels. They are supposed to call tomorrow or Friday to let us know the cost. I don’t know what happened…and I can’t believe I hit the garage door a second time. I guess I’m thankful that this time I didn’t damage my SUV and that Hub couldn’t have cared less that I hit the garage. He was more upset that I was so upset with myself. We can’t use the garage until we get the repairs done, which doesn’t really affect me because I don’t park in the garage but it means Hub can’t put his car in the garage. Again, he’s totally not upset about the damage, but I am.

So I haven’t been sleeping much at all for the last six weeks or so because of all the pain I’ve been in. I slept about an hour or two (fitfully) Monday overnight to Tuesday because Hub went to an overnight sleep study at our local hospital. Tuesday I had my massage therapy, and Tuesday night I was in extra pain from the trigger points she worked on. Today, Hub worked from home and I spent most of the day on the couch trying to find a comfortable position. I’m not sure I’ve tried to describe this before, but when my massage therapist works on trigger points, I am often left with a feeling of horrible bruising (without any bruises) and like I am resting on golf balls that are pressing right on the bruised points. All my body weight right on those bruised spots with hard golf balls pressing right into those spots. It’s painful. Even moving is painful. The best thing I can do is not move. Find a position that doesn’t put too much pressure on any of those spots (and they are numerous and spread throughout my back, arms, shoulders, and butt) and then don’t move. So I was stretched out on the couch while Hub was working nearby and everything is hurting…and I start crying. I’m exhausted and in so much pain and I just feel overwhelmed.

And I’m sad. I miss my mother so much every single day. And I know now that March was the beginning of the end for my mother last year. And I’m thinking of the things we were trying to do with Mom last March…and how fast it went in the end. The tears just came and I let them. I feel so sad. And lost. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. I can’t believe how much time has passed without her. How life has gone on for so long without her. It hurts. Physically and emotionally and mentally I am just exhausted and sad.