Slightly Thawed

So after begging the Ottawa Public Library to let me work for them for free since September, I finally got the go-ahead to start my placement hours. On a Monday. In February. When Matt had just left for Asia for two weeks. And it was about to snow continuously for three days. And I had my period.

But that's okay.

It's fun. Most of my shifts are at the super-busy nearby branch where I run around like a headless chicken all day from project to project and feel desperately needed. I sat in on baby time. I wrangled kindergartners during classroom visits. I cut out ten felt umbrellas and six big ducks and one baby. I catalogued a filing cabinet full of creepy nursery-rhyme shapes. I had "Five Green Speckled Frogs" running through my head for four days straight.

Remember when I complained about having to learn Excel in my coursework? Guess what I had to use on my VERY FIRST DAY? and remembered nothing about and had to fake until I figured it out?

My other shifts are at tiny little further-away branches and I feel appreciated but not exactly needed. There's something very Zen about shelving holds in alphabetical order in a practically-silent library while the fireplace crackles, though.

I'm tired. My iron keeps bottoming out and even though I'm taking Feramax every day I'm still so exhausted I could cry by the end of a work day and I still want to eat baby powder and drywall dust. I keep trying to decide if I should try to switch myself to the closer medical practice I signed the kids up with. It's so easy getting them to the doctor now, whereas I'm not going to the doctor even though I should, just because it's such a monumental pain in the ass in terms of time and stress and logistics. But I love my doctor. But she's probably going to retire soon. Ack, I don't know.

Funny things the kids have said lately: At dinner the other night, Matt asked Angus "so how was school?" Angus said "Hell! It was absolute hell!" Matt looked at him questioningly and Angus said "well you always get mad when I just say 'good', so I thought I'd switch it up a little."; last week Eve said "this was the first time I've left a project until the very last day even though I had a week and a half to do it. I'm very stressed. One out of ten, would not recommend."

There. I blogged a little. Mostly because I was in front of the computer, had read everybody's timelines for the last four days on Facebook and didn't feel like getting up yet. But still.

Mood Disorder Clinic Appointment

So, regarding this:

I only cancelled one appointment before I actually made myself go, which is a bit of a victory. Matt was away and I was freaking out a little about driving there and parking because of when this happened. Three separate people offered to drive me, and I accepted one offer, but in the end decided to just gird my loins and go for it. The main parking lot was full, but unlike the last time, I saw a sign pointing to parking just before the hospital entrance, so I turned around and went back and there were quite a few spaces.

First hurdle over.

I got a bit lost looking for the place I needed, but I didn't start freaking out again until I was in the waiting room wondering what kind of person I would be dealing with. I had agreed to see a fifth-year psychiatry resident for the first part of the appointment and then be joined by her supervising psychiatrist. I'm all for teaching hospitals and helping medical students learn, but as soon as I'd agreed, I was possessed by the fear that I would end up with some gung-ho type-A overachiever who would think I was totally pathetic and not be seasoned enough to disguise it. Then I remembered that my lovely and delightful sort-of sister-in-law (Matt's brother hasn't officially married her but if they break up we're keeping her, so we consider it official) is also a resident, and she radiates compassion and kindness. So I told her I was going to hope for someone just like her and prayed that she would have curly hair.

She totally had curly hair. And was lovely and kind and understanding. I was afraid that when I said I had trouble using my CPAP all night she would say "so you just don't WANT to feel better?". Instead she said "a lot of people do". I was afraid she would say "don't you think you should be more accomplished at your age?" Instead she said "sounds like you're pretty hard on yourself." It was an exhaustive two-hour questionnaire that was clearly supposed to assess the presence of OCD or bipolar disorder as well as depression and anxiety. After I talked to her, I went back to the waiting room while she talked to the psychiatrist and then went back and talked to the two of them together.

So.... results?

Of course I knew that it wasn't going to be a case of them asking me a bunch of questions, then saying "okay, for cases like yours we do x" and sending me on my merry way, as much as a tiny bit of me hoped it would. I was assessed as dysthymic, which didn't come as a big surprise, and the psychiatrist had a couple of suggestions for combinations of antidepressants that I haven't tried yet (she clearly had a better understanding of possible interactions than my family doctor has), and for sleep aids that I either haven't tried or only tried before I was on the CPAP. She also gave me some resources for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

So. Have I gone back to my doctor yet? No, of course not, it's minus a million out and it takes me six weeks and a strong drink just to book a hair appointment. I actually felt surprisingly good in January, and it helps to know that I have a couple of options in my back pocket for if things go south again.

And there's something else that came out of this, as I was talking at length about the impact depression and anxiety has on my life. When she asked me if depression and anxiety has stopped me from doing things I want to do, I thought that in the past, it definitely has. There were times in high school or university where I didn't go for opportunities I wanted or couldn't bring myself to talk to people that would have been helpful. I was up for an award in university and the professor chairing it called me and asked me to stop by and talk to him in his office to tell him about myself, and I couldn't get myself to go, even though I knew this meant trashing my chances of winning the award. In grad school the mean lesbian professor of my French course had a party at her house and invited all of us - I would have sooner swallowed tacks than enter her house after being traumatized by her all term. One of my former professors was aghast when I said I wasn't going and clearly didn't understand at all what a battle it was for me to even enter her classroom every week.

But now? Well, other than the fact that I might - might - have finished my diploma and gone back to work a little sooner, I really don't think that there's anything I don't do. Did I feel anxious before going to BlogHer in New York by myself, or reading at Blogging Out Loud, or going to meet any of the bloggers in person that I had only known online? Yep. Did I chicken out? Nope. I volunteer at my kids' school extensively. I help run the book fair every year. I go to Blissdom and sometimes I don't even stay stapled to Nicole and Hannah's sides the whole time. Partly this is because I have amazing family and friends who know when I need nudging to do something. Partly it's because I kind of just know how I am now, and I can work around it. My life doesn't look like I thought it would at this point, and there are things I still want to do, but working with what I have, I don't feel like I've done too badly.

So it's good to know I have some resources if things need tweaking. It's also good to realized I'm not actually broken beyond repair. I'm just a little squeaky.

Post called on account of someone beating on my mood with the ugly stick

Pro tip: rifling through the top bathroom drawer in search of that peppermint cream headache cure someone gave you or sold you when the headache in need of curing is already in full bloom and you can't really remember what kind or size or colour of container the stuff was in is unlikely to turn up anything more rewarding than some ancient and unforgivably frosty eyeshadow, some hand cream samples that have taken on the colour and texture of ear wax, and a fresh gripe to add to your surly little store, along with a couple more degrees of headache thanks to the frustration and the search angle.

I guess I'll just stick to drugs.

Settling into Summer

So, this is how it's been.

*Shortly before school ends, go to my doctor, confide that I am unbearably anxious about everything from getting to appointments on time to blow-drying my hair. Agree with her that I should increase my anxiety meds. Increase my anxiety meds. Wait for anxiety to subside.*

*School ends.*

*Pack up Eve for a week at my sister's. Drive to Toronto without incident. Hook up with my sister and her family. See the Wizard of Oz and a bunch of awesome happy gay people. Have a wonderful time.*

*Wake up Sunday and say goodbye to Eve and my sister's family before they drive back to London. Realize I've been in denial about how terrified I am about finding my way out of Toronto to get back home. Retrieve the van from the parking lot. Try to drive out of the parking lot. Think that I'm driving up through successful circular levels, because I was parked down on the lowest level. Realize I've passed the same guy drinking a slushie three times, because I've just been circling the bottom level over and over. Pull into a parking space and have hysterics. Find the ramp to get out of the parking lot. Ask the parking attendant how to get to the DVP. Realize it's dead easy and thank the parking attendant a little overly profusely. Get out on the DVP. Relax a little. Realize I didn't remind Eve to get her fuzzy (white lambskin) out of the bed and pack it and panic that she's now on her way to London without the thing without which she will not sleep. Call my sister, illegally, while driving, and have a shouting conversation wherein it is revealed that Fuzzy is safely packed in Eve's bag. Pull over on the side of the road and have hysterics. Drive home without further incident.*

*Try to decompress for a few days before my sister's family drives up here and leaves my niece and nephew for the week. Do an assignment. Read some books. Feel like there are bees under my skin.*

*Sister's family arrives. Visit with sister and brother-in-law for week-end. Sister and brother-in-law leave.*

*Take Eve and niece and nephew to Despicable Me 2, the Canadian War Museum, the park, Mont Cascade (which is, happily, the Ottawa park that HASN'T just been hit with a 20 million dollar fine for safety violations), Eve's softball game, Home Depot and Funhaven. Have a great time, but keep feeling wrong-footed and weird and desperately wanting a few hours to just be alone and quiet.*

*Get a few hours to be alone and quiet.*

*Read read sit sit think read sit*

*Realize that I'm inconsolably sad and lonely and feel like the air is screaming all around me when I'm alone. Feel disgruntled.*

*Go to a fortieth birthday party. Decide I won't drink because I'm emotionally fragile and have a bit of a cold.*

*Drink drink drink drink drink drink drink drink.*

*Wake up with vague memories of trying to sing a song I didn't know in Rock Band and wonder if I was singing actual English words. Check with everyone to make sure I wasn't the drunkest and most embarrassing person at the party. Love my friends for also being drunken idiots or lying well enough to make me believe that I was not the drunkest and most embarrassing person at the party.*

*Apologize to Eve for having an epic hangover and disappointing her hugely with my inappropriate and immature behaviour. Go to a baseball coach's cottage and have a nice afternoon with the baseball team under Eve's watchful eye because she doesn't believe that I would not drink alcohol at this moment in time if someone paid me.*

*Eve and her friend start drama camp. Hang out with the friend's mother, hang out with other friend with baby, read a little, cook a little.*

*Go to Angus's championship game which his team has to win to win Districts and advance to Provincials. Feel like I'm about to throw up and have a heart attack simultaneously, even though his team is undefeated and has mercied every other team in Districts including the one he's about to play.*

*Get to the game and relax infinitesimally when he pitches a perfect first three innings, but only really breathe when the game is won.*

*Drive through a severe thunderstorm with tornado watch in effect with Angus and Matt to watch Eve's performance on the final day of drama camp. Get wet. Watch performance. Clap and smile. Drive some more through torrential rain, thunder and lightning to visit Matt's relatives who we love at the cottage they've rented while they're visiting from Vancouver. Sit in a gazebo and drink pastel drinks and look at the lake. Feel marginally less anxious.*

*Drive home. Take Eve to her last softball game in the suffocating heat and humidity that the almost-tornado was supposed to demolish. Come home. Think that we have no camp or visitors or plans this week and Angus has baseball games that he might win and might lose, and feel like I might be starting to enjoy summer and have half a hope of getting this elephant off my chest.*

*Think I should blog.*

*Don't blog. Don't blog. Don't blog.*

*Blog.*

Getting There

So we were flying to Calgary on Thursday. There was no connecting flight, so we were flying to Toronto first. Everything was going swimmingly - we got to the airport, got a primo parking place, checked our bags, got boarding passes, went through security, hung out in the lounge for a bit and then went down to the gate. As soon as we got to the gate, they started boarding us - we didn't even have to sit down. Matt said that was like winning airport bingo.

We got on the plane. It was quick, of course. Just as we were touching down in Toronto, Eve said "this is my best flying day ever!"

We shushed her. But it was too late.

As we were boarding a flight to Calgary, we walked past a young man in a wheelchair who looked kind of out of it. After we sat down in our seats - in aisle 17 - we saw the young man being helped up the airplane aisle by a flight attendant. When I say 'helped' up the aisle, she wasn't just holding his arm - she was holding him from behind and almost carrying him. To aisle 16. I thought it was a little weird, but beyond feeling bad for him for having to fly while being unwell, I didn't think much of it. She got him into the middle seat and a woman who was presumably his mother sat in the aisle seat. She proceeded to put down her table tray and unload a buttload of prescription pill bottles onto it. When the woman who had the window seat arrived, the mother seemed annoyed that her son had to stand up to let the woman by and muttered something about him having had surgery. The kids and I were directly behind their seats and my husband was across the aisle. We exchanged glances.

Before the flight left, three separate flight attendants came to speak to the woman. They asked her what kind of surgery he had had - abdominal - and how long ago - she never said anything more precise than 'a few days ago'. They expressed surprise and concern at the fact that the reservations people had apparently not been informed about his condition and asked several times if his doctors had cleared him to fly. There was a bit of a language barrier, but she kept saying yes, yes, he was fine to fly and "he's okay, he's okay".

I did not have a good feeling about this.

Before takeoff, the woman kept dropping pill bottles and asking people around her to look under their seats for them. Shortly after takeoff, the woman at the window seat was moved to another seat to she wouldn't be blocked in by the sick man. Flight attendants kept walking up and down the aisle shooting looks at the pair which ranged from worried to angry. Finally, a male flight attendant came and told the woman that the man wasn't looking very well and that he was going to see if there was a doctor on board. She kept saying "he's okay, he's okay" and finally he said, very firmly, "I don't think he is. And we're at thirty-five-thousand feet."

There was a doctor on board. He came back and asked the woman the same questions that had already been asked, and then looked at the medication. He said "okay, Valium. How much of this did you give him?" She said "six". He said "Six milligrams? No, this is ten milligram strength. Wait, HOW many did you give him?"

She said "six."

He said "You gave him SIXTY MILLIGRAMS of Valium?"

Then he said that one of those pills was enough to keep someone asleep for twenty-four hours, and that sixty milligrams could stop someone from breathing. Then he told her to keep him awake.

Because, sure. Nothing easier than giving someone sixty milligrams of fucking Valium and then keeping them awake for a four-hour flight.

I couldn't not hear any of this. The kids were mostly watching movies or playing on their ipods, while asking me the occasional question because I looked worried. When the guy started roaring at his mother for yelling him awake, they got a little more frowny - even though we all sympathized, because geez, if someone dosed me with horse tranquillizer and then wouldn't let me sleep I'd be cranky too. When he actually DID stop breathing and they started slapping him across the face to get him to breathe again, they became fairly perturbed. Then they removed him to the back galley of the plane and shortly informed us that we would be flying back to Toronto to get medical attention for the man.

On his last trip back from California, Matt's suitcase got lost. Not delayed or misplaced - lost lost. Like, it's never getting found lost. He said that was a first for him in all his many flights. This was another one.

So we flew back to Toronto - and man, it feels horrible to be going backwards. But they were fairly fast and efficient at refueling the plane while the medical personnel got on and took the man off - he was semi-conscious - and they got two new flight attendants really quickly, and they kept us informed, which is the most important thing to my mind - I get stabbiest when no one will tell me what's going on. At one point the announcement said "the two new flight attendants have just arrived and are being briefed. As soon as that's done, we'll.... make another announcement."

So our travelling day was a few hours longer, but my kids were really good. ALL the kids on the plane were really good. I saw one woman who was pregnant and traveling with a toddler and felt like hugging her. Another little girl came down the aisle, whacked me happily on the leg a few times, demanded to be picked up and then tried to pull off Angus's braces. And after we got back airborne, they gave us free pretzels AND cookies, so I guess they really WERE grateful for our patience.

As we were getting off the plane in Calgary, Eve said "well I can't imagine a worse flight than THAT one."

We shushed her. I hope we were in time.

The Post-Plague Diaries

I went out to get some groceries tonight since Matt's leaving for Asia early on Saturday and the kids don't have piano/guitar on Monday afternoon, which is when I usually get groceries for the week. I also went to the public library. This means I did my Monday errands on Thursday. I can't figure out if this puts me ahead or behind.

Eve came and hung out with me and the librarian while I was shelving books in the school library. She found a Roald Dahl book that she hadn't read yet and the librarian checked it out for her even though she already has her two books checked out for the week. She then danced around the library singing "I'm so happy, I have so many books", confirming that she is indeed my child. On the way home someone on the radio referred to someone (from Liberia) as Liberian and she sighed dramatically and said "I can't STAND when they don't speak properly - is it so hard to say LIBRARIAN?" And you must never, ever tell her that I told you about that, but it fits with my general conviction about blogging about my kids, which is that I MIGHT write something here that they would be embarrassed about if they read it tomorrow, but I will never post anything that they would be embarrassed about if they read it in ten years.

I got stuck in the public library parking lot. I waited until everyone went around me and then backed up very slowly until I could go forward again. Our neighbour's lawn is stacked with snow higher than I thought snow could be stacked. The friend who drove us home from school had to drop us off at the end of our street because anything that's not a four wheel drive can't make it through the sidestreet mess. Go home winter, you're drunk.

Have you ever heard of Capgras Syndrome? It's a neurological condition that makes you think your family and/or friends have been replaced by impostor look-alikes. I read a book about it that was pretty bad, and there was a Scrubs episode about it that was pretty good. Lately I've been wondering if there's a similar syndrome that applies to toothbrushes instead of people. And that's all I want to say about that.

While I was driving home from the grocery store I was listening to a program on CBC about families who have to discuss taking a driver's license away from an elderly relative who can no longer drive. Some people tried to argue that most people know when they're not driving well any more, but most agreed that when people are in the early stages of Alzheimer's or dementia, they're under the impression that they're still driving well when it's obvious to everyone else that they're not. Whereas I am almost constantly terrified while I'm driving that I'm going to do something catastrophic, and when I have to park between two vehicles (rather than beside at least one empty spot) I'm nearly paralyzed with fear. Therefore, I have made a mental note that if I ever start feeling like I'm rocking the driving thing, I should definitely start to worry.

That should work, right?

The Plague Diaries

I woke up early this morning. I could feel that my fever was back up. I thought about sitting up to take some Tylenol, but I knew this would aggravate the flaming girdle of cough-strained muscle that has been my torso for the past forty-eight hours. And I thought, why not let the fever do its noble and intended work of burning off the sickness? So I lay perfectly still, trying not to swallow or breathe in a way that would provoke the knife shards in my throat to further lacerating activity, and imagined the fever sweeping through my body in a cleansing, scouring fury.

Some time later I rose triumphant from my bed, feeling rested and restored and that my decision had been amply justified. Then I realized that, in addition to feeling stronger and faster than I had in some time, I was also apparently now a man. And that I may have inadvertently confused the healing fire of a fever with a radioactive spider bite. And that I wasn't, perhaps, upon further reflection, awake at all.

My husband came in to check on me. I asked him if I could shoot webs now. He said probably not. I asked him to check if my toes were steaming.

He made me take some Tylenol.

Pass the effing kleenex

When I was young, I cried all the time. It pissed off my mother, which seems unfair because she always cried a lot too. And it drives me insane how people think you should just be able to not do it, because duh, it's not like we do it for fun, or on demand. I got a little older. I still cried a lot. Weddings, funerals, auto shows. Then I stopped. I hardly ever cried any more. I thought maybe I was maturing. Maybe I was developing a nice hard cynical shell. Maybe I'd cried all the tears and there were none left.

Then I read a blog post where someone mentioned that she didn't cry any more because of the antidepressant she was on. I was thunderstruck. It was the drug? How did I miss that? I knew it made my eyes and mouth dry. I knew it made it hard to lose weight. How did I miss that it made me not cry? Which I was all in favour of, by the way - the less snotting up in public the better.

Now here I am. Since I started on the CPAP machine, I've gone to an extremely low dose of my antidepressant. And oh, fanfuckingtastic, I can cry again. Which would be fine if I could cry elegant, restrained movie-star tears - you know, just enough to feel in a sort of glamorous way that I'm able to hear the mournful music of the spheres, or feel the elegiac sere sadness of human life - shit like that.

But no. It's all ugly crying now. When Eve was at drama camp in London this summer and we went to the end-of-the-year show, the campers all sang this song and then the counsellors sang this song to the campers. If I'm ever caught in the car and one of these songs come on the radio? Good Christ, I have to pull over, it's freaking tearmageddon, the windshield fogs over, there are salt stains on the upholstery, HELP HELP, I NEED TO BE DEAD INSIDE AGAIN. I started watching this show because I stumbled over it on the Space channel and I needed to fill the space for a postapocalyptic tv show left when I realized that I couldn't force myself to watch the vapid, belly-button-exposing, generically-good-looking-leads dreck that is Revolution. It's mildly diverting, but it's not like I'm glued to it or anything. In fact, I was half-reading the paper today while watching. Then this woman is in labour and the baby is breech and this grizzled old soldier-guy walks in and washes his hands and says he helped the midwife turn his own daughter in utero before his wife's home birth. And suddenly I'm squishing up my face up so hard my chin is bumping my forehead in a desperate attempt to NOT START SOBBING ABOUT THIS STUPID ALIEN INVASION TV SHOW.

It's humiliating. It's undignified. Who the hell wants to walk around in constant danger of an incipient GLURT of weeping and wailing showering innocent bystanders? I'm going to have to up my dosage. Or get my tear ducts cauterized.

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.” 
― Richard Siken

Take This Drug and Shove It

So I woke up this morning. Ish. And I dragged myself into the shower. And I looked back at this nightmarish week (and I mean this in a sort-of literal sense - it's not that anything especially bad happened to me, it's just that everything felt uncanny and skewed and subtly but unmistakably wrong, like it does in a nightmare). And I pictured doing it all over again for another week, and then another.

And then I thought, well fuck that.

It gets so hard to get any clarity once you start putting something like this in your system. I know it feels bad, but I cling to this idea that maybe it has to be bad in order to then get better. He's a psychiatrist, he knows about the drugs, is what I've been thinking all week. But, I thought today, he doesn't know about me, or how my brain works, or what this feels like for me, or what my life is like - not like I do. I'm the expert in me.

Before I started this (in case I've been unintentionally cryptic about 'this': my sleep doctor, who is also a psychiatrist, added a new antidepressant which he said was different from most other antidepressants, worked on the two areas of the brain that produce physical and mental symptoms of anxiety, and was also a sleep aid. This is in addition to the antidepressant I'm still taking, at a reduced dose) I was feeling better. Not all better, but better. It was a little easier to get up in the morning. My anxiety was bad, but I was managing it. Now I feel like I've gone backwards. Waking up in the morning is ten times harder, which makes me feel lazy and more depressed. I have to save up all my energy to do one thing in a day before I have to rest because I feel like the world is constantly pitching and rolling and coming at me like sleet, or arrows. When I stayed home to answer the door at Halloween, every doorbell - which I was expecting - sent me into a full-body seizure adrenaline-dump (which I'm thinking is not a strong endorsement for a drug that promises to alleviate symptoms of anxiety). I had to leave a really great dinner party early last night because someone cranked up the music, and suddenly the loud-noise sensitivity morphed into this thing where I felt like the music was crushing me and squeezing all the air out of my lungs (is aural claustrophobia an actual thing, or have I actually invented a new, really-messed-up side effect?)

I could stay the course. I could put myself, and my husband, and my kids, and my friends, through another week or another month of this, in the possibly-vain hope that I will emerge with something better than what I had before. At this point, I don't think the cost is worth the possible future benefit.

Thanks for all the helpful words. I will try really hard to blog about something other than how high I am for the rest of November.

Oh Good Grief

I love Charlie Brown. I've always loved Charlie Brown, from when I was fairly young and got my first collection - I believe it was called Kiss Her, You Blockhead. It's the kind of cartoon where you only get the funny when you're young, and as you mature you start to appreciate the bittersweetness of the humour. I often think of something that I heard the aboriginal playwright Drew Hayden Taylor say in a talk at McMaster University: "The truest humour comes from pain." Because Charlie Brown does not have it easy. Charlie Brown is wishy-washy, and lonely, and anxious, and lacks self-confidence, and gets pushed around by his dog and tormented by that bitch Violet. And then there's Lucy. Good lord, Lucy demands a post all to herself.

But despite the fact that I also lack confidence, and have a wishy-washy streak a mile wide, and if I ever got a dog I would probably let it wake me up in the middle of the night for treats or bizarre philosophical discussions, right now all I can think of is, when it comes to me and prescription drugs, I am a perpetual reenactment of Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football.

Some nice, well-meaning, trying-to-be-helpful doctor says "oh, I have the perfect drug for you. It will help with your depression. And your anxiety. And your sleep issues. And it cooks dinner when you don't feel like it". And I think "careful, now, don't get all excited. You know you're the poster child for uncommon side effects. You know that, even though it says the worst that should happen is a dry mouth and some mild irritability, it's entirely likely that you'll take one dose and wake up with purple elbows and an inability to stop singing the French national anthem." And yet, and yet.... I dare to hope. I think, maybe this one will work. Maybe this one will be the silver bullet. Maybe this is the one where they tweaked it just to the point where this drug and my convoluted brain chemistry will dance like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Or not.

Hope springs eternal. I really just need to learn to stamp on that stupid hope like a cockroach. Because at this point, it's starting to seem like this is just my own damned fault.

Anybody seen the little red-haired girl?

NaBlo effing PoMo

I don't feel like doing NaBloPoMo. But then I don't feel like doing much at the moment besides lying on the couch and bemoaning my stupid brain chemistry. "You live your life at the edges of the bell curve" my kindly pharmacist sister just informed me. "Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes it sucks donkey balls." Okay, she didn't really use those exact words. She's less vulgar than I am. Mostly. Back when we lived together while she was in pharmacy undergrad and I was doing my master's, she used to say 'suck my ass' a lot, but then she determined that this was too vulgar, so she switched to 'smooch my patootie'. I, on the other hand, have only gotten more vulgar with age. I used the expression 'shot my wad' the other day and my husband actually recoiled.

Anyway. I'm housebound for a few days as I try to ride out some adverse side effects while determining if said side effects are going to subside and let the drug do its magnificent thing, or if this is going to be one more in a long line of Miracle Cures That Weren't. I might as well be writing. Or... wait, have I watched all the available episodes of Leverage?

Let's start off with some late Halloween pics, of which I don't have many because I've spent the past few days feeling unpleasantly drunk and whining (try to keep up will ya?) This was the first year Matt let Eve use the knife and do a bit of pumpkin carving on her own, in addition to generating the artistic vision. She kept saying "It's pretty good for my first pumpkin, isn't it?" which was cute the first six times and then should have become annoying but instead started to become so heartbreakingly beautiful that my ear drums leaked out of my eyes because my baby! wielding a knife! all by herself! and also fake drunkness!

So here we are at our friends' Halloween party: Baseball player/Zombie slayer (Angus), baseball biker (Eve) baseball bookstore employee (me) and Zombie food (Matt - he works in fibre optics and actually had a shirt from a recent sales meeting that said fibre and the number 1 on the back). I said "we look sort of lame" I said when I saw this picture, and Matt said "yeah, but we look happy", and he's not wrong.

Non-Zombie Biker for trick-or-treating

Bizarre.... game-show host or something pulled out of the tickle trunk for trick-or-treating when Angus decided at the last minute to go trick-or-treating with his friend of the same age who is so embarrassed at the height difference that he had to cover his face. 

Sleepover From Hell

First of all, smooshes and kisses to everyone who shared their own stories of official-document-related failures. I have to apologize to my husband for getting irate whenever he answers one of my own laments about my personal flaws with a consoling statement that starts with "if it makes you feel any better" and ends with his own or someone else's defects or missteps. I frequently bark something like "do you really think I'm so small and petty a person that someone else's screw-up will make me feel better about my own?" Well, friends, it turns out that I AM PRECISELY THAT SMALL AND PETTY A PERSON.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening making supper, hanging with the kids and cleaning out another shelf of the downstairs storage closet (related: somebody remind me never to buy glue sticks again EVER). Then I packed my overnight bag and hugged the kids good-bye - Eve was very unhappy about this whole state of affairs (join the club). I left myself a little time for the almighty fuckery that is  every hospital parking lot, since I'd never actually parked there. As usual, the signs were less than no help, and I drove around getting increasingly annoyed and worried, ending up at the delivery entrance and in the staff parking lot before I found a geriatric pick-up 15-minute spot and went in to ask the lady at information where the hell I was supposed to park. She was very nice and called me 'Sweetie', which I might have found funny at any other time but at this point it was REALLY NICE, okay? Turns out I was confused because I could park right near the front door. At a hospital. I mean, what the hell kind of sense does THAT make?

I went up to the Sleep Lab and rang the doorbell. The technician, a nice friendly man named Fraser, let me in and took me right to my room. Without asking for my Health Card. I asked him - begged him, really - to look at my Health Card, but he really wasn't interested in anything but getting down to business (when I told this to Hannah, she sent me this link, which thank goodness I didn't have in my head right then, because things were weird enough.)

I changed into my pajamas - shorts, tank top and a sports bra because I didn't want the infrared camera to catch my boob falling out and commit suicide by blown fuse or something. Then we went across the hall so Fraser could attach seventeen sensors to various body parts, after using a swab to scrape off four or five layers of skin first. While he was doing this, I was beside two computers that were monitoring the brain waves of Snoring Woman and Coughing Man. Snoring Woman was off in Dreamland, but Coughing Man was having trouble drifting off, and I kept asking Fraser if he was asleep yet, and he would show me which brain waves meant what, which was cool.

Fraser said that if they found evidence of Sleep Apnea, they would have me back to spend another night and try a CPAP machine, which made me die inside a little. Then he said that if the readings were bad enough that they were absolutely sure what the doctor would say, they could possibly wake me up after a couple hours and try the machine tonight. He asked if this would be agreeable to me and I said something noncommittal like 'OH HELL YES'. Then he said not to worry if they didn't do it tonight, it didn't mean there was no evidence of apnea, just that they had to wait for the doctor. I was pretty confident I'd be seeing Fraser again in a couple of hours.

We went back to my room and he plugged all the sensors into a little machine on the bedside table and then strapped a thing around my head with nasal prongs and a thing in front of my mouth to monitor breathing. Then he left and I laid there feeling stupid and uncomfortable for a couple of hours. Then I fell asleep.

Some unspecified amount of time later, Fraser knocked on the door, came in and said "yeah, we're gonna try the machine because my head is about to explode from watching you almost sleep for ten or fifteen seconds and then gasp yourself awake", or something to that effect. So now I had seventeen sensors plus a mask over my nose and 'headgear' to secure it, which was just a strap, but I think I actually whimpered when he said "we secure it with this headgear".

It took me even longer to fall asleep. Fraser woke me up at six and said things were definitely better with the mask. Then he gave me a ridiculous survey to fill out, asking how long I thought it had taken me to fall asleep, how many times I thought I'd woken up, what I remembered about my dreams and if I remembered what had woken me up this morning (I wrote "Fraser - duh!" - try not to judge, I was working on about 3.5 hours of sleep).

So now I contact a supplier and borrow a machine for a month and then decide if I want to buy one. This is pretty much a no-brainer, although I confess I'm feeling a distinct sense of loss and grief along with the hope and gratitude. I'm not sure if this is just my personal weirdness, or if it's normal. All I could think, lying there trying to breathe more-or-less regularly, was that this is the end of sleep as a normal, natural activity. Now sleep means having this alien extrusion attached to me. I had visions of my kids being scared when they come in to wake me in the middle of the night after a bad dream. And in the unlikely (really, very extremely unlikely, well-nigh impossible) eventuality of my ending up single again, well, forget ever sleeping with anyone ever again EVER. Then again, presumably the hideous clamour of my spasmodically collapsing airways were never going to be a huge turn-on anyway. And I hardly ever find myself dozing off attractively in a flower-filled glade. And truthfully, my kids will probably think the damned machine is totally cool.  So the fact is that, after I have time to get used to it, this will be a good thing. It will. Completely. Which is nice because he's good at his job and everything, but I never want to see goddamned Fraser again.

Allow me to clarify

To everyone who has responded with kind concern to yesterday's blog post - in the comments and otherwise - I apologize for not being clearer. For this I blame the very brain fog (see? I just typed 'brain god') I was complaining about. I AM following my sister's advice about the gradual weaning process for my anti-depressant, I'm just being grumpy and ungracious about it. This is far from the first time I've had to stop an anti-depressant, and I have no desire to endanger other people on the roads, or my children, or dinner for the next six weeks, by being incautious (now I see I've sort of mixed up a driving reference with a cooking reference, so clearly blogging is also in danger. Awesome. Stupid drugs).  That whole 'relationship with an abusive lover' thing was just an attempt to inject something slightly poetic into what was feeling like a really flat blog post. It really works, though - I'm totally feeling the whole 'if I can't be with you, you'll be miserable' vibe, and it's upsetting. Every time I open the bottle I feel incredibly resentful. But I'll do it.

On the up side, I had lunch with Julie today. And then we went to the Lindt outlet store. I have chocolates with flowery green wrappers!

My husband just brought me a beer. Already feel slightly drunk. At least if I drink it, I'll have a better reason for that. 

What day is it?

Driving back from a tournament baseball game in Perth on Friday night, Angus made some comment about not being able to figure something out because he was too dumb from being out of school for so long. Then we realized we had no idea how long he had been out of school. Then we figured it out and were both stunned to realize it had only been EIGHT DAYS, when it's felt like a month already.

Last day of school was Thursday. Saturday, Eve and I drove to my sister's in southern Ontario. Sunday, we went out to my brother-in-law's sister's farm for swimming, barbecue and fireworks. Monday, Eve started theatre camp with her cousins, pronouncing it seven kinds of awesome (which, from what we could see when we got there to pick them up, it really is). Monday night we took the kids swimming to the equally awesome community pool. Tuesday I drove back to Ottawa and our central air kicked the bucket. Wednesday I slept and sweated. Thursday I spent the afternoon at the sleep clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital and met with a psychiatrist/sleep specialist who was really nice. Friday our air conditioning got fixed and we went to Perth for baseball. Angus's team is doing double practices every non-game day and single practices on game day, which means five hours of baseball per day at least. And it's hot.

Then there's this goddamned anti-depressant that is so desperate to stay in my system that the withdrawal systems are vicious and unrelenting. I keep trying to give it a couple of days, but that's not enough, and then I have to take it because I can't drive with my head spinning and the odd lightning-bolt pain crashing into my skull and random stomach upsets. My sister, the pharmacist, said just go ahead and take it every other day, or every three days, for a while, which is sensible advice, but I don't want to. It feels like continuing a relationship with an abusive lover, and I hate not knowing when I can be rid of it forever. I want it out. I want it gone.

I kissed Eve good-bye on Tuesday morning and she didn't call until Friday night. I can only conclude that she is managing this brief separation quite a bit better than I am. Of course, she adores my sister, and her older girl cousin, and the swimming pool, and she's basically immersed in drama all day long, so DUH.

Also, I have two giant zits that seem to have settled in for the duration. Awesome. Did I mention I'm forty-two fucking years old? I mean, come ON.

I think, on the whole, that Jennifer Lawrence looks better as a blonde.

Mondays on the Margins. Sort of.

I'm weaning myself off of my anti-depressant. People close to me have received this information with a variety of reactions verging from mild alarm to outright panic, sometimes accompanied by a subtle and polite edging away.

Kidding. Mostly. I'm not doing this lightly, or without consideration, or out of any misplaced sense of detoxing or anything. It's just that, when I finally reached a short space of calm and insight a few months ago, I thought back and couldn't really say with any confidence that I've been, on the whole, better on this medication than off it. I don't think there's any question that my brain chemicals don't always play nicely with each other, or with my other bodily processes, or with the way the world works. It would be nice to think that there was medicine that would help with this, and it's entirely possible that there is. I'm just not certain that I've found it yet.

Years ago, when I didn't really know what was wrong with me, and I was fast coming to the conclusion that I was probably just lazy, or unintelligent, or overly dramatic, or just a bad fit for, well, everything, I think medicating was the right way to go. But now that I actually know what the general problem is, I think I tend to have horrible mornings and better afternoons and evenings, and horrible winters and better every-other-seasons, and the medication doesn't seem to change that. Besides that, the medication makes it extra hard to lose weight, and I never want to have sex (sorry for the overshare).

Besides that, I have a somewhat simple wish right now to see what I'm like without it. It's been a good few years now, and every now and then somebody else mentions a side effect that they find they experience from their anti-depressants - memory trouble, or an inability to cry, for example - and I think, holy crap! My memory sucks and I hardly ever cry any more - I thought that was because of getting older and, well, getting older. What if it's not? I'm fully willing to admit that I might be mis-remembering how bad I was before, and if my husband is as bad at monitoring me for this as he was back when I tried that low-estrogen birth control pill we might all be royally screwed, but I can always start taking it again. Well, not this one. Another one. I really think this one sucks.

So anyway. I've been down from 150 mg to 50 mg for about a month now. I definitely feel more inclined to exercise and leave the house, but that could be because it's June instead of February. I don't think I've lost any weight - in fact, I had a total fat day today, but it didn't prevent me from going to the school library to shelve books, so that's good. I still have to go and talk to my doctor about it - I meant to talk to her before starting the Grand Experiment, but I think taking the pill actually made it impossible to pick up the phone and make the appointment, so I'm pretty sure I could make a case for the fact that I couldn't actually go see her until after I stopped taking it. Yes. I'm sticking to that.

For the past couple of days I've been in a bit of a reading rut. I still read, but when I get into bed at night I stare at the tremendous pile of books on my table and nothing really calls out to me. I have to force myself to pick something up. This always scares me, because when I'm really depressed one of the scariest things is losing the joy of reading. I've never been so low that my children don't make me feel better when they show up, but I have been so far down that books are suddenly a giant So What - and I don't want to live in a world like that.

So this is my Remedial Reading Program, beginning tonight:

Michael Chabon. Everything I've read by him, without resembling in the least any other book I've read by him, has proven to be surprising, insightful, full of wonder and sadness and incomparable delights. I've had this book on my pile for a while, but something keeps stopping me from picking it up. I'm sure if I force myself through the first few paragraphs, I'll be hooked. I will force myself.

Zombie stories. I really need to do a whole zombie story post at some point. For now, I just put this book on hold at the library.

Missed classics. I've always meant to read Trollope. I looked at a few message boards for recommendations on which book I should read first. I have to admit, reading the description didn't exactly make me giddy with anticipation, but if nothing else I'll get a certain sense of elitist satisfaction - oh, don't look like you don't know what I mean.

Re-reads. I suck at rereading. I always mean to, but then my ludicrously long to-read list stares at me accusingly and I plow on. I suddenly realized last night that this completely misses the opportunity to read something that I ALREADY KNOW I love - with the added bonus that the number of books I read and my crappy memory (which may be radically improving any day now, who knows, I'll keep you posted) still allow a sense of discovery, since many of the details will have escaped me since the first reading. So, this, this, and this have been placed at the top of the pile.

So yes. Please admire my brilliant plan. Replacing my present pile of books with.... another pile of books. I'm feeling pretty confident. Besides, if all else fails, I have a secret weapon held in reserve.

Regular Mondays on the Margins posts will resume. At some point. Probably a Monday, but really, who the hell knows.

You are getting very sleepy....

So, my magic bullet turned out not so magical. I think I may have mentioned that the last time I saw my doctor I was having fairly severe insomnia problems and a lot of headaches. She prescribed a mild antidepressant that was also a sleep aid and a migraine preventer. She may have also mentioned something about conferring magical Japanese-speaking abilities and the power to see through walls, I'm not sure.

I was skeptical. I waited until my husband was back in town and it was near the week-end to try it, and I was prepared to wait out a few side effects. So a few days ago I started taking it at bedtime.

The thing about sleeping pills, is that it's quite possible to find one that will, in fact, help you sleep, especially if you dial the dosage high enough. The problem is that, contrary and demanding creatures that we are, no sooner do we sleep a few hours than we're wanting to be awake, and functioning with a reasonable degree of coherence. On this count, most sleeping pills are not so good -- I guess that's why they don't call them sleeping-then-waking-and-functioning pills.

The first night I took one, I read for a while, then had that delicious, I-can-now-turn-out-the-light-and-lie-down-and-sleep feeling, that heavy-eyed nodding-over-the-book feeling that I rarely have. Most nights, I turn out the light because the time on the clock seems reasonable for a going-to-sleep time. Then I lie there in the dark, eyes closed for a while, eyes open for a while. I make grocery lists in my head. I reflect on whichever song is playing over and over in the back of my mind (once it was Put Down the Ducky by Hoots the Owl from Sesame Street. That was fun). I try to meditate, I try to self-hypnotize, I try to think about nothing. Eventually I go to sleep. Or not.

So the nights were great. The days, not so much. If you feel like it, blink rapidly ten or twenty times. That's what I felt like -- like everything was this stop-action film coming at me in jerky fits and starts, and I couldn't get properly braced for it. I kept feeling like things were flying at my head, or like I was just missing something important out of the corner of my eye. I felt untethered from reality and vaguely paranoid. It was wretched. I didn't have a headache, but I felt constantly on the verge of collapsing in tears or erupting in a white-hot rage. Eve's sweet little voice was unbelievably grating, and even Angus asking if I was okay seemed irritating beyond measure.

I decided to stop taking it. This is a great thing on a couple of levels. The last time I had side effects like this, I lived with them for months. I was in such a horrible place before taking it that I actually wasn't sure that the cure was worse than the disease. I needed it to work so much that I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't that bad. This wasn't true, and eventually I figured that out, but I think it stole a lot of time with my kids that would have been much better otherwise. Now? Sure, it would be nice if I could be sure I was going to sleep every night, and if I didn't have so many headaches. But there are other ways I can manage. Also, the thing with medications like this is that, like any mind-altering substance, they impair your judgement -- sometimes to the point where, very quickly, you forget that what you're experiencing isn't normal. So yeah, doesn't everyone see slugs disappearing into their hair when they comb it? If there's a cricket trapped in the basement, well sometimes they're trying to communicate with you and sometimes they're just your garden variety insect, right? Doesn't everyone have little baby naps between blinking and opening their eyes?

This time I was clear-minded and on the ball enough to realize that nothing like this is normal, and that I don't need to live like that. I've actually... made progress.

I believe this calls for chocolate. Chocolate helps you sleep, right?

Also, I Gained Six Pounds.

I had my yearly physical today. In the course of the appointment I mentioned that I seemed to have a sinus headache all the time lately; when she asked how I was sleeping, I said not great, and she asked if I felt rested when I woke up and I said huh? Does anyone? She also knew I was having breakthrough depression symptoms, which I wasn't that concerned about because I generally do in January. But just as she was about to leave the room and I was about to hop off the table and get dressed, she came back and said she wanted to give me a prescription for something that she thought would a) help me sleep more deeply b) be an adjuvant for my antidepressant and c) help my headaches, because it's often used as a migraine preventer.

I felt a little like Homer Simpson after Lisa tells him that bacon, pork and ham all come from the same animal: "Oh right, some wonderful, magical animal!". If this works, I'll be out in the street with a sandwich board shilling for the drug company that makes it.

Truthfully, my mood situation has been better this year than it has some Januaries. I crashed a little early this year, so Christmas was a little hard to get through, but the last two weeks I haven't been terribly depressed. Physically, though, I feel just kind of crappy. Not really quite getting anything but always sort-of maybe fighting something off, that kind of thing? It makes me think of this passage in one of my Top Ten Best Books Ever (The History of Love):

"My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I'm at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, Who smells shit? -- small daily humiliations -- these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. Other damages I take in other places. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that's been lost. It's true that there's so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take, all I feel is a quick, sharp pain and then it's over. Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. I don't mean to make it sound like I've made a science of it. It's not that well thought out. I take it where it comes. It's just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I'm ready, this, for reasons I can't explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. The field where we used to play, the field in which everything was discovered and everything was possible... Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don't know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine. All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist: my knees, it takes half a tube of Ben-Gay and a big production just to bend them. To everything a season, to every time I've woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone was sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all."

Now, Leo Gursky has had a genuinely, monstrously, unfairly tragic life. Me, not so much. But still, I wonder if my depression and anxiety have gone undercover, and only come out in weird symptoms and discomforts. My sore shoulder -- maybe that's my fear that we spend too much money and have too much stuff. Headache -- the suspicion that I read too much and live too little. Rash on elbow -- the worry that I'm really not the best mother I could be. Aching breasts -- the regret that I didn't have more sex with more people. Cough -- existential fear of life, death, the universe, and everything.

Nah. It's probably just lung cancer or a degenerative brain disease.

Who's the Bah Humbitch now?

Obligatory disclaimer: I am a lucky, lucky woman. I have a great family, a nice standard of living, haven't endured undue hardship or grief. I shouldn't complain.
This morning SUCKED!!!
I have this cough. This cough that visits at least once or twice every year, and I can't remember the last Christmas I wasn't making really unpleasant noises and worrying about waking up the house and being glad that I didn't actually have to be asleep before Santa would come, because sleep wasn't something that was going to happen (it's hard to sleep while your entire diaphragm is in revolt every seven to nine minutes and you're in constant fear of throwing up or becoming incontinent). Since I was little, every cold or flu I've ever gotten goes right for my lungs. I have inhalers now, as well as narcotic anti-cough pills that help a little, but it seems like it was too little too late, and my airways? They're reactive. Over-reactive. Hyper-reactive. Super-mega-fucking-turbo reactive. It's a drag.
So I get up this morning, even though Matt's taken the kids to school so I can sleep in in the interest of shaking this, because I realize I'm not going to sleep any more, and I suck on the inhaler. Which then gives me super-turbo-charged-junkie shakes, which makes it hard to brush my teeth or wrap Christmas presents or write Christmas cards (that would be filled with self-pitying bitter expletives anyway). I have a zit the size of Tasmania on that spot, you know the one between your chin and your cheek, where there's no bone and it's incredibly painful? And my hair has entered a whole new universe of suckage. I'm like nuclear waste in human form.
So I wander around trying to make myself wash something or wrap something or move something from where it is to where it should be and if we had plants they would be withering and dying as I walked past. And I'm getting frantic because I have the whole day off until the kids get home from school and I'm wasting it in jittery, acnified, frizzed-out unproductive misery, which just makes me more miserable.

photo credit
creative commons license

So I stopped and thought, what should I do? Or maybe, maybe I shouldn't be thinking about what I should do, but about what I want to do. So I asked myself what I wanted to do. And my self said it wanted to curl up on the couch and watch TV for a bit without folding laundry or writing Christmas cards or writing a blog post at the same time. My self also indicated that something with a fairly high proportion of sugar in it might be good for a hellacious demon cough, or at least for Ventolin shakes. So I gave my self what it wanted, and it felt better. I think my inhaler should actually come with a 'take with astronomically high levels of high fructose corn syrup' label. Maybe I'll just make one myself.
A bit later my sister called, and I sorted through pictures for Christmas cards while we had a very satisfying whining-about-frivolous-things session. And she told me about a gift basket she and the other pharmacists at the cancer treatment centre at the hospital got from a department that's notorious for its complete lack of humour. It was a deli basket with crackers and cheese and the like. And an enormous shrink-wrapped dill called Big Papa's Portly Pickle.
The department? It was gynecology.
Then my Mom called and invited us over for borscht. Then the kids and I had a lovely walk home in the crisp cold darkness looking at Christmas lights (me) and dive-bombing snowbanks (them).
Then I wrote more Christmas cards while watching Terminator Salvation on my laptop -- very festive. Now I'm going to go suck on my inhaler again and take some Actifed because it just makes the whole going-to-bed experience so much more special.
So to all a good night (I can only hope visions of portly pickles will be dancing in our heads.)