Not Knowing

My brain looks normal structurally. But my doc thinks that there is some functional problem that may be causing Simple Partial Seizures. I have read all I can about this and I am really hoping he is wrong. Here is some info: http://www.neurologychannel.com/seizures/types.shtml

I am amazed by two parts of this strange experience: the first is Prednisone's ability to completely fuck with my thoughts, mood and body. I have never felt less like myself and more unable to make contact with myself. It has felt scary and I have been grieving the loss of self that has accompanied this treatment (or maybe it's the diagnosis itself causing this? ) I am now off it- hopefully permanently- and I am already feeling more able to function as myself. Completely fucking bizarre. May I say how disappointed I feel in the fact that I reverted back into dumb patient mode for a while? Fear has a way of making you want there to be some Authority. You want to be dumb and helpless so that maybe someone will actually Have An Answer.

This is a painful place to find yourself. Or lose yourself, as is more often the case.

Did I mention the breast lump issue? Well, I painted my way out of that- did this awesome lionfaced me with milk glands flowering everywhere-MUCH less stressful that running through the halls of medicine. My breasts are fine.

The second thing I am amazed by is the fears I have hidden inside me.

About a week before I came down with this whole dizziness thing, I gave up smoking. Note: I have quit smoking and picked it back up again several hundred times over the last 20 years. I really have always just wished that someone could find a way to sever the part of my brain that enabled me to pick up this round white papered stinky thing and light it on fire and then breathe it in. Um, duh.

One night though, when I was on youtube late, I found all sorts of things about mothers dying and leaving babies- even grown babies- and my smoking part was severed. I wrote this courageously fucked up imaginary letter to my kids - I don't know if I can ever show anyone this letter, but I may change my mind someday-and I felt this switch go off.

I sort of agree with some of what I have read and can see where he is coming from, but I don't totally fit the criteria.

Mostly, I find it strange that I finally discover this deep urge to NOT DIE from smoking and I encounter this weird thing that might possibly kill some part of me and make me not have any more babies.

Note: this unfinished post edited 3 years later....publishing it as is.

Freezing Blueberries

On our second trip in a week to the blueberry farm in Gillette, we picked 5 more pounds. I made myself go even though I wasn't feeling ok.

I froze half of them when we got home.
I love the idea of biting into that fruit in the middle of January.
The berries were still warm when I put them on the cookie sheet to freeze.

My dizziness has remained the same.
My doctor is worried. I am freaked out.
I am operating at about 40% because of feeling so weird and off.

Brain MRI this past Friday. No answers yet about what is happening with me. Lots of scary possibilities.


I am thinking about dying. I am thinking about blueberries frozen in July and how we come to count on the fact that we will be here.

This is what I am doing-
I am playing the dinosaur game with Jackson and learning from him how to just be there playing the dinosaur game. I am pushing the kids on the swings. I am washing their faces before bed. I am sharing my breakfast with my Charlotte, watching her eat with her little 'poon (as she calls it), and I am practicing not getting on the train to the scary places in my mind.

But late at night, when I find myself on that train (and it is finding myself there because I have no recollection of actually having consented to ride), and it is picking up speed and my heart is racing, I am opening the windows and sticking my head out and feeling it all hit me at once. Full scare. No point in fighting being there if I am there. And then the train stops and I disembark and I am given a new moment. I am observing myself. Noting.

Which trains pull into the station for me lately?
There's the Google train, which gives the rider the illusion that they are actually steering the train; the train of hopeful thinking, which can quickly morph into the train of worst case scenario thinking and then back again proving that they are the same train, really (how fascinating) ; the train of sorrow and heartbreak that travels through my kids lives as they struggle without their mama- I don't like this ride at all and couldn't get off last Saturday night.

And I am trying to just sit and eat and read and hug and kiss and love and be and stay off the trains.

I am doing ok today.

The other writer in the family

Dizzy Lessons

If I am only going to post once a year, this had better be a good one.

Chris has inspired me by starting his own blog for his gardening adventures and then I felt like a loser because I am supposed to be the writer in the family. (Charlotte may share that distinction someday- she loves to tell stories and has many pens and notebooks.)

I have been suffering from dizziness. Vertigo. For coming up on 3 weeks now. I like to think that every physical manifestation of dis-ease exists as a message from my self. Like when I had shingles in December- I think I was totally running constantly from one event to another and working like crazy and staying up too late making plans for things I could never follow through on. My body, though not in the most healthy space over the last 12 months, has been an excellent teacher. I am learning to listen to the whispers instead of waiting for the yells to get what I am supposed to get.

So. Why am I dizzy? The sensation is like not being sure where my feet are. Last Monday, during a session which I should have cancelled but didn't, I had to take my sandals off and put my feet on the rug so I could get a better sense of where I was in space. I was in the chair I have been sitting in for almost 5 years yet I didn't know it with all of my being. If anyone besides Chris read these posts maybe they would be able to give me some cool metaphorical explanations for my ailment. I think, though, that Chris has been too busy being both of us to do any meaning-making.

Where else in my life am I feeling like I can't find my footing? I am deliciously IN my marriage in ways I never knew I could be. I am in Mama-hood with all of me. I am curious and I am waiting to find out what I need to take from this experience.

Significant moments so far: ending a session early for the first time (and surviving it), taking it really easy at home- letting the dog hair swirl, admitting right here to having watched The Two Coreys on A&E, eating half an apple pie by myself the first night I was on the Prednisone, and my favorite moment of all: playing really slow games with the kids. Last week we played "adventure", hiking upstairs to see the giraffes and meteorites and we sat on the futon and shared an apple from one of Charlotte' s many bags. That was my favorite moment of all.

So I am waiting for this to end and for me to come out of it with something new. I am also working really hard to realize that these glimpses into disability are opportunities for me to learn to drink up the stuff of my life that I usually run past in my effort to do the things that I have myself convinced I need to do.
Maybe that's what I am supposed to get.
More being- less doing.
More adventure- less purpose.
Slow down.
Yes.

I thought I would check to see if I still exist in the curious world of blogs since I haven't added anything since June of last year. Turns out I do exist. Which is nice. I have just spent about 45 minutes reading through another woman's blog- I have to figure out how to put the link in here- about her life in the Midwest on a farm. No Starbucks for miles, 8 year old daughter hauling hay, lamenting the lack of creme rinse in her life. Her writing is so funny and I feel like I would like her in real life. So weird, this whole blog universe. I am not really sure what the point of blogging is- much of it feels like masturbating in public to me. (What I imagine that would be like.) Is this important work? Does this help us become the writer we are supposed to be by forcing us to find a voice and imagine an audience? If so, is this anything but practice for real writing? Why aren't I working my poems right now? I must read more about this experience. I find that is an excellent way to avoid writing.



I can't help feeling a little weird. ( Who am I even saying this to????????UGH!?!?!?!)

From the time I was about 16 until I was about 21 I kept journals. They were diary-like (sort of in an Are You There God-It's Me Margaret-ish sense). Cloth covered flowery lined books that I filled with lies. (Are they lies if you don't know they are while you write them?)I was always aware that I was writing for an audience, though I can't say that I know who I imagined reading my words. I know I didn't write some things for fear they would be read, and I did write other things in the hopes they would be read. I know it (the writing) wasn't meant for me and I have no idea what they did for me besides provide me with the satisfaction of finishing one and starting another. Like I was saying- Look, I have filled a book about myself- I must exist. (Didn't I just ask that of my blog?)



I haven't recycled them yet but I haven't cracked one open in about 8 years. Since I got married. I don't really know what to do with them- Maybe I will decoupage a lampshade out of torn out pages from my journals. Maybe I will burn them- a funeral for my old illusions.



So, will this be the place for my new illusions? I cannot say. I like to say I am waking up. (I have actually never uttered those words, but that is how I have been feeling for about 5 years).



I will use this space though, as a space for finding out the answers to my questions and as a space to generate more questions.



I will maybe even write about my book soon- Up the Down Staircase is my working title.



Maybe this blog can be all things. I can write down what my life has looked like, I can find my voice, I can use the space to connect to the world in some way. I am sort of excited but a little skeptical.



Hopefully I will know more upon my return.

Goodnight.

earthverms

Spent the last few days just being with Jackson...what a difference it makes to the way i feel about my life when i can just get down in the grass and look at earthworms with him. (he calls them "verms"). Before i became a parent i was so afraid i would lose myself in being a mother.... now i realize i am actually finding myself.

dig it

not really too sure what i am supposed to be doing here, but i was led in this direction and i believe that wherever one stumbles one should dig. so here i am. digging.