Some things stay with you longer than others. In my case, I have terrible trouble sleeping at night and I get ashamed of sleeping during the day. If I'm not careful, my instincts leave me with absolutely no time to sleep and I can't afford that. I'm recovering from an extreme sleep deficit so adding to it is foolish. This morning, I decided to get into bed and stay there regardless of what happened short of fire or flood. It worked pretty well and so I feel reasonably well this afternoon.
It scares me how hard it is for me to sleep at night. I feel into a heavy drowse in what's left of my recliner while Melissa talked with her mother and sister on the phone. I know I wasn't actually asleep because I was able to follow the conversation from as far away as I could get in the house. Still, I was in a heavy meditative state because I was in too much pain to do anything else. It was just an extreme headache and my arthritis acting up (in the middle of summer?) but pain is pain. Thankfully, my migraine medicine took away the worst of the headache along with the usual meds. Still, doing anything was an excuse for the pain to start up on me again so I just drifted. I wasn't going to do anything to risk that pain coming back. I was so miserable that I wanted to scream at Melissa at the top of my lungs. "Stop making all noise or leave the room." It would have been a bad precedent because I want her company even when it causes me more pain.
I came upstairs to go to bed when the conversation seemed finished but I put my head down only to discover that my allergies were going to try drowning me. Someone should write a horror story where the protagonist has a chronic post nasal drip and an exaggerated gag reflex. I'd be happy to consult but I've never written horror. I may have written horribly but I've never written horror intentionally. Something in me shies away from the genre.
In any case, my "few minutes to let the allergy meds take effect" turned into an excuse to turn on one of my "Star Wars" games. In this one, you can plan and carry out a long military campaign. We're talking long as in days of real time and months of game time. I kept telling myself that I'd save and quit after this one battle took place but we're talking about a campaign in space. Once I managed to build up my forces, I had to win both a space battle and a ground battle. Normally, the planet I chose to attack is an isolated and under-garrisoned outpost. This time, it was still connected to a major trade route and I had failed to attack the hub first. It's set up like a wheel with a central hub of concentrated power and then spokes called trade routes connect the outer planets. After several failed invasions that I led personally, I let the computer grind away at it until my side won.
After that, I was worn out enough to need more headache meds but too keyed up to sleep. I liberated my tablet from Melissa's bedside table and delved into the latest (for me) "Harry Dresden" novel. As much as I enjoyed the TV series, it got so much flat out wrong. I can understand saving on set construction costs by having Harry live in rooms behind his office and the fake wall he used to hide his lab was a cool effect. I even preferred the TV show's take on Bob. The parts that pissed me off were things that they didn't have to do. Why make a back story involving Harry and Bianca the vampire as lovers? Harry would have been perfectly willing to help Bianca deal with dealer in an addictive magical drug. Why take something that would make it so mortals could use magical sight and make it vampire PCP? So much was dumbed down for the TV series but I still wish it had survived.
The actual books are far more complex. In one case, I thought they were too complex although that turned out to be important later. I just remember reading what I thought was the end of a book and discovering that there was yet another plot twist. As much as I love action, I was ready for some serious denouement. I wanted the heroes to sit back and have one of Mac's ales (Does he have to make special beer for his character? Dresden seems to have good taste in beer anyway.) and talk about everything that happened. Is that just hopelessly old fashioned of me? The tablet saved me by insisting on being recharged so I still have some more of Death Masks to read. I suspect that it may only be a couple of pages.
It ended up being 5 AM and I was still jumping out of bed every time I tried to lie down. Every time I get into bed, I find a good reason to get out of it. This last time was the most foolish of all. I wanted to wait until my symptoms forced me into bed. There is a point I reach after 50 some hours awake where I revert to the mentality of a toddler. I get angry at everyone and everything so it's a good thing that no one has ever seen me reach this point (at least on this side of 30) because I get impossibly miserable. Absolutely nothing is right in the world and nothing could possibly get better. When I reach this point, I know that I can simply lie down and go to sleep.
Thankfully, I caught myself and made myself stay in bed. I was exhausted and I knew it so staying in bed was a good enough idea. I was willing to risk Melissa's alarm waking me up but I never even heard it the last time. I was asleep pretty peacefully and stayed that way until Melissa got home. I'm glad that I was able to decide on pizza in my state because she isn't feeling well right now. I wouldn't have bothered her for dinner when she wasn't feeling well anyway but not bothering her and having pizza to eat beats the hell out of not bothering her and being hungry.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Monday, July 29, 2013
Good Feeling and Farewell
"Good feeling, won't you stay with me just a little longer..." The Violent Femmes
I don't exactly feel great but the soul tearing pain has stayed away for a day or two. Time seems to be doing a funny thing with me where I will struggle through each day wondering if it will ever end. Eventually, I blink or something and a month has gone by. Melissa and I looked at my symptoms and came up with causes and potential solutions to each one. The tooth pain has the easiest short term solution. If I keep applying it, Oragel works wonders. It just takes several tries and it requires me to stay calm. The cause seems to be the way I hold my jaw out of stress. Staying chilled is very helpful here.
The jaw pain was scary until I realized that the sore jaw was affected by moving it around. In fact, it responded (in the worst way) to me setting my jaw out of stress. The two things seem to be related and then there is my neck pain. It felt like something was swollen but my very smart primary care physician pointed out that there are no glands or lymph nodes in that area. The tooth pain lines right up with the jaw pain which lined up with the neck pain. The muscles that move my jaw to set my teeth to grind are the same ones that hurt. Figuring it out was one thing but I couldn't survive another week of the pain. I had to assume that I would be reduced to some sort of primitive animal state.
Melissa prevented this by suggesting I use my cold gel pack to dull the pain. It works for my headaches where there is no muscle and cold is recommended for muscle injuries. I was able to rest the cold pack under my jaw getting numbing cold for the neck and jaw. Even better, I rolled up one of my long sleeve shirts and put it behind my head. Now, I can rest in the broken recliner and get support to keep me from hyper-extending and hyper-pronating. It felt good to solve the problem but it felt even better to solve it together with my beloved.
On Saturday morning, I got my Pearl Jam tickets with a big assist from Melissa. We're in an upper level on the same side of the stage as the last show. We're in row 15 but I'm sure the Wells Fargo Center is designed at least as well as the Spectrum. We'll be able to see everything and hear everything too. A few days after I said that stress and pain were getting bad enough to tear my soul up, I got my Pearl Jam tickets and some pain relief. My long term treat has been ordered and should be on its way.
There was just one more thing to stress over. Were my parents going to sign the house over to me like they had promised? It was an exceptionally generous move but I worried that they wouldn't go through with it. There are just some people in the world whom I piss off seemingly by breathing and my parents are two of them. It could be many things if you look hard enough with enough paranoia but I had been worried about being strung along. They would have been fully within their rights to string me along for a month or so wondering what was going on.
Well, the use of the past tense there should tell you all you need to know. They were not stringing me along beyond my father's conditions which were reasonable enough. (I pay the lawyer and sign first.) I am very bad with time but they seem to have signed more or less a week after I did. I'm free at last but I have no parting shots. I will not take the blame if there is blame to take but I did have the goal of getting closer to them way back in 2000-2001. That goal failed until separation was really the only choice. I thank them for making the choice a painless one in some ways. They made it painless financially and I'm not sure if healing the other pains are within their power.
I wish them the best along with my sister and her family. Farewell.
I don't exactly feel great but the soul tearing pain has stayed away for a day or two. Time seems to be doing a funny thing with me where I will struggle through each day wondering if it will ever end. Eventually, I blink or something and a month has gone by. Melissa and I looked at my symptoms and came up with causes and potential solutions to each one. The tooth pain has the easiest short term solution. If I keep applying it, Oragel works wonders. It just takes several tries and it requires me to stay calm. The cause seems to be the way I hold my jaw out of stress. Staying chilled is very helpful here.
The jaw pain was scary until I realized that the sore jaw was affected by moving it around. In fact, it responded (in the worst way) to me setting my jaw out of stress. The two things seem to be related and then there is my neck pain. It felt like something was swollen but my very smart primary care physician pointed out that there are no glands or lymph nodes in that area. The tooth pain lines right up with the jaw pain which lined up with the neck pain. The muscles that move my jaw to set my teeth to grind are the same ones that hurt. Figuring it out was one thing but I couldn't survive another week of the pain. I had to assume that I would be reduced to some sort of primitive animal state.
Melissa prevented this by suggesting I use my cold gel pack to dull the pain. It works for my headaches where there is no muscle and cold is recommended for muscle injuries. I was able to rest the cold pack under my jaw getting numbing cold for the neck and jaw. Even better, I rolled up one of my long sleeve shirts and put it behind my head. Now, I can rest in the broken recliner and get support to keep me from hyper-extending and hyper-pronating. It felt good to solve the problem but it felt even better to solve it together with my beloved.
On Saturday morning, I got my Pearl Jam tickets with a big assist from Melissa. We're in an upper level on the same side of the stage as the last show. We're in row 15 but I'm sure the Wells Fargo Center is designed at least as well as the Spectrum. We'll be able to see everything and hear everything too. A few days after I said that stress and pain were getting bad enough to tear my soul up, I got my Pearl Jam tickets and some pain relief. My long term treat has been ordered and should be on its way.
There was just one more thing to stress over. Were my parents going to sign the house over to me like they had promised? It was an exceptionally generous move but I worried that they wouldn't go through with it. There are just some people in the world whom I piss off seemingly by breathing and my parents are two of them. It could be many things if you look hard enough with enough paranoia but I had been worried about being strung along. They would have been fully within their rights to string me along for a month or so wondering what was going on.
Well, the use of the past tense there should tell you all you need to know. They were not stringing me along beyond my father's conditions which were reasonable enough. (I pay the lawyer and sign first.) I am very bad with time but they seem to have signed more or less a week after I did. I'm free at last but I have no parting shots. I will not take the blame if there is blame to take but I did have the goal of getting closer to them way back in 2000-2001. That goal failed until separation was really the only choice. I thank them for making the choice a painless one in some ways. They made it painless financially and I'm not sure if healing the other pains are within their power.
I wish them the best along with my sister and her family. Farewell.
Soul Tearing Pain
My teeth hurt, my jaw hurts and my neck hurts. The combination pain has reached a new level of horror for me. I know it sounds melodramatic but the pain seems enough to tear up my soul and leave me less than human. When it is at its worst, I have trouble thinking of others. I have trouble maintaining my crucial faiths. It feels as if I've been taking the teeth in my upper jaw and pressing outward against my lower jaw with all my strength. My jaw feels like I have been thrusting it out with all my strength again. In fact, I can move my lower jaw around and feel the pain from the neck muscles I would use to do just that.
In the seventh grade, I was taken to the orthodontist who decided that I had an overbite. He prescribed two mechanical devices that I had to wear in my mouth. The first would stretch out the top of my mouth slowly but surely. I hated the damned thing with a passion because it was another item that I would lose for sure. (No such luck.) Since the orthodontist told me that wearing it faithfully would mean less time spent wearing it, I was extremely devoted. I simply could not get rid of the thing soon enough but the second device really freaked me out. The second device would bring my jaw forward.
What freaked me out about it was the fact that it would fit into both my upper and lower jaws at the same time. People already made fun of how I talked. How was I supposed to handle school with popping this thing in and out of my mouth every time I had to speak. What was I supposed to do with it at mealtimes? My parents got the idea from a classmate who simply kept his wrapped up in a napkin while he ate but I would throw away the napkin for sure. The contradictory commands started early. I was to keep the miserable thing wrapped up so I didn't gross out my classmates any more than I already did. (Thanks, guys. My mother took you literally when it was trendy to write that I had BO in my yearbook.) No! I was not to let the thing out of my sight. Let the other kids deal with it...but don't offend anyone.
I did the only thing I could think to do at age 12. I practiced sticking my jaw out and the orthodontist was so pleased that I got to skip the much feared second device. Well, I learned to stick my tongue between my teeth to make the position a little more comfortable. At 38, I still do this when stressed. I spent four weeks agonizing over potential homelessness sleeping very little and biting my tongue both figuratively and literally. Add in the effects of my broken recliner. My neck is super-sensitive to hyper-extension (leaning my head back too much) and hyper-pronation which is the opposite. With the back no longer able to move and listing to one side, I had my choice of leaning my head all the way back or leaning it forward against my chest to relax. You might ask how either position is relaxing and my best answer would be mentioning how I just fell asleep just then with my head straight up and my back hardly touching the office chair. I have such a huge sleep deficit that I managed to fall asleep standing up in front of Melissa.
Okay. That was my second ten second nap over the course of a minute. There goes a third! I'm trying to stay awake because there is good news in my life. Pearl Jam is coming to play two shows in Philadelphia. Tickets go on sale an hour from now and good seats go fast. Luckily, my disability makes the "cheap seats" far more comfortable. At the last concert in 2009, we had seats in the second level second row stage left. That meant no one was in my way and I could see across the entire stage clearly. The major effects that most people love make me sick so I am all to happy to sit off to the side while the bright lights are aimed directly from front to back. 48 minutes to go. I need coffee.
In the seventh grade, I was taken to the orthodontist who decided that I had an overbite. He prescribed two mechanical devices that I had to wear in my mouth. The first would stretch out the top of my mouth slowly but surely. I hated the damned thing with a passion because it was another item that I would lose for sure. (No such luck.) Since the orthodontist told me that wearing it faithfully would mean less time spent wearing it, I was extremely devoted. I simply could not get rid of the thing soon enough but the second device really freaked me out. The second device would bring my jaw forward.
What freaked me out about it was the fact that it would fit into both my upper and lower jaws at the same time. People already made fun of how I talked. How was I supposed to handle school with popping this thing in and out of my mouth every time I had to speak. What was I supposed to do with it at mealtimes? My parents got the idea from a classmate who simply kept his wrapped up in a napkin while he ate but I would throw away the napkin for sure. The contradictory commands started early. I was to keep the miserable thing wrapped up so I didn't gross out my classmates any more than I already did. (Thanks, guys. My mother took you literally when it was trendy to write that I had BO in my yearbook.) No! I was not to let the thing out of my sight. Let the other kids deal with it...but don't offend anyone.
I did the only thing I could think to do at age 12. I practiced sticking my jaw out and the orthodontist was so pleased that I got to skip the much feared second device. Well, I learned to stick my tongue between my teeth to make the position a little more comfortable. At 38, I still do this when stressed. I spent four weeks agonizing over potential homelessness sleeping very little and biting my tongue both figuratively and literally. Add in the effects of my broken recliner. My neck is super-sensitive to hyper-extension (leaning my head back too much) and hyper-pronation which is the opposite. With the back no longer able to move and listing to one side, I had my choice of leaning my head all the way back or leaning it forward against my chest to relax. You might ask how either position is relaxing and my best answer would be mentioning how I just fell asleep just then with my head straight up and my back hardly touching the office chair. I have such a huge sleep deficit that I managed to fall asleep standing up in front of Melissa.
Okay. That was my second ten second nap over the course of a minute. There goes a third! I'm trying to stay awake because there is good news in my life. Pearl Jam is coming to play two shows in Philadelphia. Tickets go on sale an hour from now and good seats go fast. Luckily, my disability makes the "cheap seats" far more comfortable. At the last concert in 2009, we had seats in the second level second row stage left. That meant no one was in my way and I could see across the entire stage clearly. The major effects that most people love make me sick so I am all to happy to sit off to the side while the bright lights are aimed directly from front to back. 48 minutes to go. I need coffee.
My Day of Jubilee (A "West Wing" reference)
It's hot and sunny. I can't complain about it being hot and sunny after complaining so much about the rain. It would be entirely inconsistent except...oh, well. I hurt like I tend to hurt in the middle of winter. My arthritis kicked in on the day after my pain doc appointment and I'm expecting a storm. This sort of heat powers storms except I've been hiding indoors so I can't tell how humid it is. You need heat and humidity for one of those typical summer late afternoon storms. Every joint aches like there's a storm coming and my joints are never wrong. This is stormy weather even if there's no clouds in the sky.
Yes, I'm feeling cranky and it's mostly the pain. What I'm jokingly calling "my day of jubilee" is coming tomorrow. You have to be a fan of "The West Wing" to really get the joke in its entirety. I've had an entire week to stew over my parents' apparent generosity and stewing is bad for my health. The main fact is that, after tomorrow, this house will be mine and so there should be no need for further contact. The devil may be found in the details and there could be a lot of details. When they bought the house, they told me it was so that I could have a place to live and then there were details thrown in at the closing. The most frightening was an "irrevocable power of attorney" which gave my parents the ability to act in my name with regard to the house. That and a few other document turned my name's presence on the deed into a piece of legal fiction. I was just enough of a homeowner to avoid jumping through a few hurdles concerning getting utilities put in my name.
When we first moved in, there were a few times when my father saved our asses by fixing things. After that, he started saying that he would fix things when we asked but the jobs rarely got more than halfway done. Eventually, we stopped asking. We're tough enough to live without (fill in the blank), after all. We were constantly plagued by the uncertainty of how he would react if we did anything and that damned paperwork made it so his reactions could have legal repercussions. As you know, there is nothing that I could do to please him so anything we did do would cause problems.
In 2009, we embarked on the great housecleaning. Our goal was to make it so that he might not be pleased but that he would have to look in order to find some reason to complain. In the middle of this great quest, we went to New York to visit the in-laws on our 10th wedding anniversary. It was all we could afford to do at the time and I thought Melissa would be happy to see her mother and sister. She's always happy to see her mother and sister as am I so I thought adding an extra time might make her happier. After all, anniversaries are a time to think of making your spouse happy.
We asked my mother to look in on the cats a couple of times when we were away. She agreed because she's an animal lover, usually an overall good egg and we were all getting along fine at that point. Now, the great housecleaning had made considerable progress downstairs mostly concentrating on the areas we used. We never announced an intention to please them or anything because we didn't want to set up false expectations. After all, not everyone can be the crazed cleaning machines that my parents are. So...we came back from a week in New York that probably could have gone better. After all, I was sick then too. Next we knew, our efforts to clean had been totally ignored.
My father had checked in on the cats. Now, he was being nosy as usual but he claimed the fear that one of the cats had escaped when he came in. It was just an excuse to look behind the metaphorical curtain. We returned to find enraged parents because things like the bottoms of toilet seats hadn't been touched. I cite that only because it's a classic case of "out of sight/out of mind." My birth defect left me as a non-seat lifter which left no seat lifters in the household. We were informed that they were going to "take us in hand" (my words - I have no recall of the conversation in which I lost my temper) and treat us like idiots. I had extensive experience with this sort of abuse and tried to roll with it. Melissa did not so it was up in the air for a while whether we would stay if being treated like that was a condition.
Everyone backed off and it seemed as if cooler heads prevailed. They treated us like pariahs along with my mother's entire side of the extended family. This was a shock because I had always believed in my aunt and uncle. When my sister had her first child, I had hopes of being an Uncle John just like my Uncle John but the feud and my poor health prevailed. Time passed and I ceased to think of it as some sort of punishment. As I'd always expected, the feelings of being a waste of oxygen who needed to die faded as time passed away from them.
My only goal in "the plan" was to find a place to live in peace. If there is some trap clause in tomorrow's paperwork, I'll have to make a quick decision to sign or to fight back. This house is not and never will be an investment to me. Don't get me wrong. I understand the benefits of investments but I wanted a place to live in peace. Peace means minimal if any contact with my parents. Peace means no power of attorney hanging over my head. Peace means freedom from fear. That's all I want.
Yes, I'm feeling cranky and it's mostly the pain. What I'm jokingly calling "my day of jubilee" is coming tomorrow. You have to be a fan of "The West Wing" to really get the joke in its entirety. I've had an entire week to stew over my parents' apparent generosity and stewing is bad for my health. The main fact is that, after tomorrow, this house will be mine and so there should be no need for further contact. The devil may be found in the details and there could be a lot of details. When they bought the house, they told me it was so that I could have a place to live and then there were details thrown in at the closing. The most frightening was an "irrevocable power of attorney" which gave my parents the ability to act in my name with regard to the house. That and a few other document turned my name's presence on the deed into a piece of legal fiction. I was just enough of a homeowner to avoid jumping through a few hurdles concerning getting utilities put in my name.
When we first moved in, there were a few times when my father saved our asses by fixing things. After that, he started saying that he would fix things when we asked but the jobs rarely got more than halfway done. Eventually, we stopped asking. We're tough enough to live without (fill in the blank), after all. We were constantly plagued by the uncertainty of how he would react if we did anything and that damned paperwork made it so his reactions could have legal repercussions. As you know, there is nothing that I could do to please him so anything we did do would cause problems.
In 2009, we embarked on the great housecleaning. Our goal was to make it so that he might not be pleased but that he would have to look in order to find some reason to complain. In the middle of this great quest, we went to New York to visit the in-laws on our 10th wedding anniversary. It was all we could afford to do at the time and I thought Melissa would be happy to see her mother and sister. She's always happy to see her mother and sister as am I so I thought adding an extra time might make her happier. After all, anniversaries are a time to think of making your spouse happy.
We asked my mother to look in on the cats a couple of times when we were away. She agreed because she's an animal lover, usually an overall good egg and we were all getting along fine at that point. Now, the great housecleaning had made considerable progress downstairs mostly concentrating on the areas we used. We never announced an intention to please them or anything because we didn't want to set up false expectations. After all, not everyone can be the crazed cleaning machines that my parents are. So...we came back from a week in New York that probably could have gone better. After all, I was sick then too. Next we knew, our efforts to clean had been totally ignored.
My father had checked in on the cats. Now, he was being nosy as usual but he claimed the fear that one of the cats had escaped when he came in. It was just an excuse to look behind the metaphorical curtain. We returned to find enraged parents because things like the bottoms of toilet seats hadn't been touched. I cite that only because it's a classic case of "out of sight/out of mind." My birth defect left me as a non-seat lifter which left no seat lifters in the household. We were informed that they were going to "take us in hand" (my words - I have no recall of the conversation in which I lost my temper) and treat us like idiots. I had extensive experience with this sort of abuse and tried to roll with it. Melissa did not so it was up in the air for a while whether we would stay if being treated like that was a condition.
Everyone backed off and it seemed as if cooler heads prevailed. They treated us like pariahs along with my mother's entire side of the extended family. This was a shock because I had always believed in my aunt and uncle. When my sister had her first child, I had hopes of being an Uncle John just like my Uncle John but the feud and my poor health prevailed. Time passed and I ceased to think of it as some sort of punishment. As I'd always expected, the feelings of being a waste of oxygen who needed to die faded as time passed away from them.
My only goal in "the plan" was to find a place to live in peace. If there is some trap clause in tomorrow's paperwork, I'll have to make a quick decision to sign or to fight back. This house is not and never will be an investment to me. Don't get me wrong. I understand the benefits of investments but I wanted a place to live in peace. Peace means minimal if any contact with my parents. Peace means no power of attorney hanging over my head. Peace means freedom from fear. That's all I want.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Melissa's Birthday
In case you didn't notice (or my failing mind invented the entire memory), there was something titled "The Plan (with diagrams)" out there in fiction. It was just a small reference in a much larger work but it stuck with with me. Usually, I don't talk about my real plans unless I'm the only person involved. I don't like to tempt fate and I don't like to have people out there thinking that I'm challenging them to ruin my plans. Once more than two or three people are involved in a plan, simple friction from the different parts trying to work together can make it fail.
Today (July 22nd anyway) was Melissa's 42nd birthday. I love and cherish her for all the usual reasons but also because she gives me strength to deal with every day pain. We went out to dinner at one of her favorite places which is also one of mine because I get to drink so much more than she does. If there is a plus to not being able to drive, I encountered both plusses today. She got her license renewed at the DMV as well. She decided not to throw extra tension into my life so she did not remind me that it was her birthday. Well, she reminded me but I'm not sure it was intentional.
I had made no plans other than to pay bills today. With the house situation still unresolved, I'm trying to set aside as much money as possible. The idea is that something sudden and unlucky could hit at any moment has been eating at me. Well, I caught myself falling into an old bad habit from the days when certain stress was all too common. I left bills unpaid out of the fear of not having the money to pay them. Don't worry. It doesn't actually hold up under logic. It's leftover from the days of trying to please the unpleasable. The worst part is that it can snowball very easily if I let it. I find myself not wanting to face the shame of possibly being short on cash and so I try the hiding under a rock method. Meanwhile, monthly bills keep coming every month.
This was the day when I crawled out from under the rock and decided to find out where I stood. In the process, I learned two things: one was that the bill money was still there unspent and the other was that we were only a month behind. My system fell apart in June due to all the extra pressure on me but it is only July. There is a school of thought that says I should beat myself up for letting things slip in June. In truth, it's a one person school. Everyone else says not to cry over the spilled milk. You wipe it up and go without it for a little while if you spilled enough but that wasn't the case here.
When I added up the known expenses that could hit, I found enough left over for Melissa's birthday dinner. We had fun although I can't explain why to outsiders. It's just something about enjoying each other's company more than the specific activity. Her presence can make any activity special. The fact that she's beautiful doesn't hurt, of course.
I am amazed that anyone can survive chronic pain without my Melissa. I guess you just need to find your own support system. All too often, I find myself trying to finish some task with my symptoms in the way. I'm getting more frustrated by the moment and she will prick the balloon (risking my occasional bouts of rage) by pointing out how the task can be finished when I'm feeling a little better. In one last little tribute to her (I'd prefer to wax poetic for hours, of course.), I'm going to wrap this up right here. I love my Melissa who is so many things to me.
Today (July 22nd anyway) was Melissa's 42nd birthday. I love and cherish her for all the usual reasons but also because she gives me strength to deal with every day pain. We went out to dinner at one of her favorite places which is also one of mine because I get to drink so much more than she does. If there is a plus to not being able to drive, I encountered both plusses today. She got her license renewed at the DMV as well. She decided not to throw extra tension into my life so she did not remind me that it was her birthday. Well, she reminded me but I'm not sure it was intentional.
I had made no plans other than to pay bills today. With the house situation still unresolved, I'm trying to set aside as much money as possible. The idea is that something sudden and unlucky could hit at any moment has been eating at me. Well, I caught myself falling into an old bad habit from the days when certain stress was all too common. I left bills unpaid out of the fear of not having the money to pay them. Don't worry. It doesn't actually hold up under logic. It's leftover from the days of trying to please the unpleasable. The worst part is that it can snowball very easily if I let it. I find myself not wanting to face the shame of possibly being short on cash and so I try the hiding under a rock method. Meanwhile, monthly bills keep coming every month.
This was the day when I crawled out from under the rock and decided to find out where I stood. In the process, I learned two things: one was that the bill money was still there unspent and the other was that we were only a month behind. My system fell apart in June due to all the extra pressure on me but it is only July. There is a school of thought that says I should beat myself up for letting things slip in June. In truth, it's a one person school. Everyone else says not to cry over the spilled milk. You wipe it up and go without it for a little while if you spilled enough but that wasn't the case here.
When I added up the known expenses that could hit, I found enough left over for Melissa's birthday dinner. We had fun although I can't explain why to outsiders. It's just something about enjoying each other's company more than the specific activity. Her presence can make any activity special. The fact that she's beautiful doesn't hurt, of course.
I am amazed that anyone can survive chronic pain without my Melissa. I guess you just need to find your own support system. All too often, I find myself trying to finish some task with my symptoms in the way. I'm getting more frustrated by the moment and she will prick the balloon (risking my occasional bouts of rage) by pointing out how the task can be finished when I'm feeling a little better. In one last little tribute to her (I'd prefer to wax poetic for hours, of course.), I'm going to wrap this up right here. I love my Melissa who is so many things to me.
Friday, July 12, 2013
The Plan (with sarcasm)
Over the past month or so, there have been numerous references made to a plan. At one point, I nearly burst out laughing from tension when I was accused of changing the plan. I'm glad I didn't because it would have been highly inappropriate at that time. The original plan was to get some sleep late on a Saturday morning/early on a Saturday afternoon. I hadn't thought ahead any further than that because any regular reader of this blog knows that I know better than to make plans while in greater than usual pain.
When the flood took out the ceiling and all, my plan was kept simple. Find out what I needed to do and do it without involving my parents. The first hitch in this plan came when the first returned phone call went to my father and not me. His instructions seemed to indicate his willingness to let me handle it so I pretended like I didn't know he was informed. Honestly, it made me feel better at the time. Someone else had informed him so I couldn't be accused of running for help at the slightest problem and yet I wasn't keeping anything from him.
The plan was more or less a joke for about a week. First, I was traumatized beyond the ability to do more than pet my cats. As I started to recover a little, there was a rash of freak tornado producing thunderstorms in Delaware. My insurance adjuster was busy with other disasters. When someone got back to me, all they did was throw false alarms my way. I had no information to use. There was an hour of joy when the false alarms were cleared away but then the insurance adjuster hit me with the true bad news. My father was involving himself and his only motive seemed to be anger.
Let's back up a day or two. Melissa and I sat down to a meal after she got home (to the hotel which felt more like home each day) from work which is something that almost never happens. The meal was prepared, eaten, cleaned up and everything was put away less than an hour later. This was how we wanted to live at our actual home but it just never worked out that way. We dreamed out loud to each other about how a smaller place would allow us to live like that. She had gotten some good news at work and we started to think about how to get from Point A (where we are now) to Point B (an actual condo). Somehow, this became known as the Plan because I am capable of thinking in terms of years.
While we dreamed, we started thinking of practical things. How can someone who falls as much as I do live in a two story house with the kitchen on the first floor and the shower on the second? I can't consolidate and give up a floor no matter how much sense it makes in the abstract. This was not something I had been thinking about for a long time. The spate of bad weather since early Spring followed by the flooding crisis followed by the potential eviction crisis had me in what I hope is a temporary - if absurdly long - run of worse than usual health.
When my fight or flight response kicked in, I cared very little about long term plans. All I wanted was to get away from my tormentor. Of course, I got used to the abuse again. The urgency of flight faded compared to practical matters and I settled down to try holding out here until some of my patented luck and/or wonderful friends/connections kicked in. I figured the key would be avoiding too much contact with my father before we had our escape planned. That's when he made his famous (in my own mind) call telling me that he planned to continue calling to hurry me along. I responded by eating crow but he wasn't done yet.
Finally, I got upset enough to take it out on Melissa. I love the moral support and love but when are you going to start taking some of these calls for me? She agreed to take the next one and so she did. Just sitting in the background, I twitched so much that I tumbled off our bed to the floor where I remained because the room was spinning so bad. Melissa got off the phone and explained the current plan to me and I took about two minutes to say yes. That was only because I couldn't believe my ears. I called my father back the next day I could expect him to get the message at work. I have no long distance so he left work as my only means of contacting him when he moved without telling me.
The amazing thing is how little of what I say gets processed. It's not just me because Melissa's fear of getting a call at work saying I'm hurt or worse got turned into the calls she was getting. How she had gotten calls about me falling to my death is beyond me but it explains a little. Most sentences can be warped beyond recognition if you transpose a few words. I have an old friend who suffered from hearing dyslexia so it is possible.
This is a basic explanation of how a dream and a nightmare got combined to form a plan. I left out details mostly so that I could finish before the spinning room makes me nauseous. The plan is to be done with him now. I don't need any parting shots and he's scarred me for the rest of my life already. Let's just walk away from each other now. He told me the third cat was the last straw. I refrained from making a reply in that moment about decades of abuse. It's time to entrench the border, set up the landmines and leave each other alone.
When the flood took out the ceiling and all, my plan was kept simple. Find out what I needed to do and do it without involving my parents. The first hitch in this plan came when the first returned phone call went to my father and not me. His instructions seemed to indicate his willingness to let me handle it so I pretended like I didn't know he was informed. Honestly, it made me feel better at the time. Someone else had informed him so I couldn't be accused of running for help at the slightest problem and yet I wasn't keeping anything from him.
The plan was more or less a joke for about a week. First, I was traumatized beyond the ability to do more than pet my cats. As I started to recover a little, there was a rash of freak tornado producing thunderstorms in Delaware. My insurance adjuster was busy with other disasters. When someone got back to me, all they did was throw false alarms my way. I had no information to use. There was an hour of joy when the false alarms were cleared away but then the insurance adjuster hit me with the true bad news. My father was involving himself and his only motive seemed to be anger.
Let's back up a day or two. Melissa and I sat down to a meal after she got home (to the hotel which felt more like home each day) from work which is something that almost never happens. The meal was prepared, eaten, cleaned up and everything was put away less than an hour later. This was how we wanted to live at our actual home but it just never worked out that way. We dreamed out loud to each other about how a smaller place would allow us to live like that. She had gotten some good news at work and we started to think about how to get from Point A (where we are now) to Point B (an actual condo). Somehow, this became known as the Plan because I am capable of thinking in terms of years.
While we dreamed, we started thinking of practical things. How can someone who falls as much as I do live in a two story house with the kitchen on the first floor and the shower on the second? I can't consolidate and give up a floor no matter how much sense it makes in the abstract. This was not something I had been thinking about for a long time. The spate of bad weather since early Spring followed by the flooding crisis followed by the potential eviction crisis had me in what I hope is a temporary - if absurdly long - run of worse than usual health.
When my fight or flight response kicked in, I cared very little about long term plans. All I wanted was to get away from my tormentor. Of course, I got used to the abuse again. The urgency of flight faded compared to practical matters and I settled down to try holding out here until some of my patented luck and/or wonderful friends/connections kicked in. I figured the key would be avoiding too much contact with my father before we had our escape planned. That's when he made his famous (in my own mind) call telling me that he planned to continue calling to hurry me along. I responded by eating crow but he wasn't done yet.
Finally, I got upset enough to take it out on Melissa. I love the moral support and love but when are you going to start taking some of these calls for me? She agreed to take the next one and so she did. Just sitting in the background, I twitched so much that I tumbled off our bed to the floor where I remained because the room was spinning so bad. Melissa got off the phone and explained the current plan to me and I took about two minutes to say yes. That was only because I couldn't believe my ears. I called my father back the next day I could expect him to get the message at work. I have no long distance so he left work as my only means of contacting him when he moved without telling me.
The amazing thing is how little of what I say gets processed. It's not just me because Melissa's fear of getting a call at work saying I'm hurt or worse got turned into the calls she was getting. How she had gotten calls about me falling to my death is beyond me but it explains a little. Most sentences can be warped beyond recognition if you transpose a few words. I have an old friend who suffered from hearing dyslexia so it is possible.
This is a basic explanation of how a dream and a nightmare got combined to form a plan. I left out details mostly so that I could finish before the spinning room makes me nauseous. The plan is to be done with him now. I don't need any parting shots and he's scarred me for the rest of my life already. Let's just walk away from each other now. He told me the third cat was the last straw. I refrained from making a reply in that moment about decades of abuse. It's time to entrench the border, set up the landmines and leave each other alone.
Agitation's Toll
I tried to go to bed several times but that unspecific agitation that I know stems from my parents refusal to allow me any sleep. The jaw and tooth pain threatened as I grew more sleep deprived and this added to my agitation. I decided that I would sit in my broken chair, listen to some of that great new (to me - live recordings from 2005/2006 in a boxed set) Pearl Jam and enjoy the day. I was freshly showered and comfortable if you don't count the pain and so it felt like a good day.
Madeline knew better in her feline wisdom. She climbed up into my lap and napped me thoroughly. Unfortunately, sleep upright in a broken recliner does not compare well to sleeping horizontal in a bed. When Melissa came home at 4:30 or so, I took the opportunity of having Maddie out of my lap to form a coherent thought or two. If I went right to bed, I could nap for an hour and still make it to the tasting. Melissa woke me after that hour (one minute before my alarm was about to go off) and I told her the depressing news. I didn't want to go to the tasting anymore.
It wasn't precisely true but I wanted to escape the pain more than I wanted to go drink (almost) free good beer. I was asleep again too quickly to change my mind and woke again a half hour after the event was over. Still tired, I knew I'd made the right choice. I might have paid my admission price only to fall asleep and/or dropped and broken a glass due to my nearly narcoleptic symptoms. I went back to sleep and my bladder forced me out of bed at 2:30 AM when I decided that nine or ten hours was enough sleep for one stretch.
I'm trying to keep the frustration out of my mind now. If my father hadn't pressed my buttons so hard on Wednesday, I would have slept. Sleeping would have saved me considerable pain and that's reason enough to be angry. After that, I missed out on my only chance at a social event for the entire month. Despite all the humor I get out of saying that I go purely for the chance to drink more than I would normally, I go mostly for the people. With no August event scheduled so that the employees can take vacations, my next chance is September. I'm nervous that I might have lost my status as a regular already.
I spent much of my childhood being told that I shouldn't expect to be accepted anywhere because I was too weird. Thus, I value my friendships very highly even the casual ones. The casual friendships have their own unique advantages. If I see someone at beer tastings and only beer tastings, we can talk about the beer and be pals. I don't have to give great details about my illness or parental fears/frustrations. I don't have to remember names, spouses' names and the names of children I've never met. We can just talk about the beer. It's an interesting subject to me and there are few things in life as fulfilling as finding a pal who shares your more unusual passions for subjects.
Thankfully for you, I'm not one to go endlessly over what I've missed. I'd much rather figure out what I can gain next. Maybe I'll get a six pack of an unusual brew to try on my own or maybe not. My most immediate goal is to recover from this seemingly impossible sleep deficit. That wounded and scarred part of me tells me not to sleep. I might miss something important that could be used against me as a weapon later on. I need the sleep to regain the ability to counter the unexpected
In my younger and more foolish days, I wanted to finish every fight with a deadly or, at least, crippling blow. I forced myself to change over the course of years until a new philosophy emerged. Summed up succinctly, "a happy enemy is a former enemy." Most of the time, people seek to hurt others to fill voids in their own lives. If those voids can be filled, some enemies can even become friends. I cannot imagine becoming friends with my father so I will have to choose the second best path. If I can convince someone through short, sharp battles doing as little harm as possible that attacking me is a waste of time, they can come to another cliched conclusion on their own. "It seems there is enough room in this one horse town for the both of us." We just have to avoid contact and respect borders. I don't want anything to do with his new home and the surrounding area. Can he respect my borders as well? I think so.
Now, I just have to take it easy while making sure I complete all of the tasks immediately ahead of me.
Oops! I forgot the promised details of "the plan" and how it evolved. Maybe later today.
Madeline knew better in her feline wisdom. She climbed up into my lap and napped me thoroughly. Unfortunately, sleep upright in a broken recliner does not compare well to sleeping horizontal in a bed. When Melissa came home at 4:30 or so, I took the opportunity of having Maddie out of my lap to form a coherent thought or two. If I went right to bed, I could nap for an hour and still make it to the tasting. Melissa woke me after that hour (one minute before my alarm was about to go off) and I told her the depressing news. I didn't want to go to the tasting anymore.
It wasn't precisely true but I wanted to escape the pain more than I wanted to go drink (almost) free good beer. I was asleep again too quickly to change my mind and woke again a half hour after the event was over. Still tired, I knew I'd made the right choice. I might have paid my admission price only to fall asleep and/or dropped and broken a glass due to my nearly narcoleptic symptoms. I went back to sleep and my bladder forced me out of bed at 2:30 AM when I decided that nine or ten hours was enough sleep for one stretch.
I'm trying to keep the frustration out of my mind now. If my father hadn't pressed my buttons so hard on Wednesday, I would have slept. Sleeping would have saved me considerable pain and that's reason enough to be angry. After that, I missed out on my only chance at a social event for the entire month. Despite all the humor I get out of saying that I go purely for the chance to drink more than I would normally, I go mostly for the people. With no August event scheduled so that the employees can take vacations, my next chance is September. I'm nervous that I might have lost my status as a regular already.
I spent much of my childhood being told that I shouldn't expect to be accepted anywhere because I was too weird. Thus, I value my friendships very highly even the casual ones. The casual friendships have their own unique advantages. If I see someone at beer tastings and only beer tastings, we can talk about the beer and be pals. I don't have to give great details about my illness or parental fears/frustrations. I don't have to remember names, spouses' names and the names of children I've never met. We can just talk about the beer. It's an interesting subject to me and there are few things in life as fulfilling as finding a pal who shares your more unusual passions for subjects.
Thankfully for you, I'm not one to go endlessly over what I've missed. I'd much rather figure out what I can gain next. Maybe I'll get a six pack of an unusual brew to try on my own or maybe not. My most immediate goal is to recover from this seemingly impossible sleep deficit. That wounded and scarred part of me tells me not to sleep. I might miss something important that could be used against me as a weapon later on. I need the sleep to regain the ability to counter the unexpected
In my younger and more foolish days, I wanted to finish every fight with a deadly or, at least, crippling blow. I forced myself to change over the course of years until a new philosophy emerged. Summed up succinctly, "a happy enemy is a former enemy." Most of the time, people seek to hurt others to fill voids in their own lives. If those voids can be filled, some enemies can even become friends. I cannot imagine becoming friends with my father so I will have to choose the second best path. If I can convince someone through short, sharp battles doing as little harm as possible that attacking me is a waste of time, they can come to another cliched conclusion on their own. "It seems there is enough room in this one horse town for the both of us." We just have to avoid contact and respect borders. I don't want anything to do with his new home and the surrounding area. Can he respect my borders as well? I think so.
Now, I just have to take it easy while making sure I complete all of the tasks immediately ahead of me.
Oops! I forgot the promised details of "the plan" and how it evolved. Maybe later today.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Agitated
I know the when, where and how so I can risk opening my mouth. As of next Friday, the paperwork will be finished - on my end anyway - for me to own this house. My mother and father should follow suit shortly afterward since my father seems to fear that I will attempt to weasel out of paying a small lawyer fee. The idea that I would try to get out of paying such a small amount of money with anyone involved is silly. The idea of me trying to screw my father over such a sum is maddening. Maybe it was just the most hurtful thing he could come up with on such short notice.
To say that I am upset is to say the waters beneath Niagara Falls are turbulent. On the one hand, you have the amazingly generous act of giving us this house. When you get down to it, the price is less than free because he has put money into the place that he need not have done had he just given it to us in 2001. If you ask anyone in the know, they will tell you I say my father is too generous for his own good frequently.
His generosity isn't what's keeping me awake at 4:30 in the morning on a night when I was all but desperate for sleep. I can't shut down the turmoil inside me. Most, if not all, of us grow up wanting to please our parents more than anything. In my case, I cannot remember a time when I succeeded. He piled on the parting shots today until my hold on my temper slipped a little. I verified that he had given me all the marching orders that I needed, said goodbye and hung up on him. First, I told him that the difference between the two of us is that I would not let a little kitten starve. He agreed that he knows he's a monster (he was being sarcastic) and I wouldn't call him a monster given the opportunity.
I seem to be that little kitten to him and nothing else. Nothing about me is worthy of respect to him. I have fought battles that he has never had to face. He had his own but they call me handicapped for a reason. I fought battle after battle with one hand tied behind my back. When I was 25 and a newlywed, the other arm got tied as well. For a while, it seemed that Melissa and I would not survive despite the help of having a house to live in essentially rent free. I can hear his voice in the back of my head questioning my use of the word essentially there. He would ignore any and every simple statement that the smallest amount of money going from my pocket to his represented an effort on my part. It's been a long time since the last time that tiny payment was a struggle and then it was only because we were dealing with other bigger bills. It's been a very long time since I was dependent on him for everything. I'm no kitten or baby in a crib.
I can hear his answer to that as well. I learned to believe that they are always right and, since they disapprove of me all the time, I'm always wrong. Thank God for Melissa and her family! Melissa taught me what it was like to be loved and our family taught me what it was like to have a loving family. I'm not only allowed to take pleasure in things but they enjoy it when I do so. Showing pleasure in something around my father created a vulnerability. My pleasure could be taken away at the next point of disappointment. If it weren't taken away, it was a sign of his benevolence. Pleasure and pain were his to dispense as he decided.
Meekers the cat was a blessing to my household. She was starving, weak and utterly dependent on me. She went from fitting in one hand to the size of a small mountain lion in what seemed like a week. Obviously, it was longer than that but she was our baby. Like Clifford the Big Red Dog, we prayed that she would survive and grow when the odds seemed so long against her. I guess we forgot to pray for her to stop like the boy in the first Clifford story. One of the many running jokes is that the Meekers we know and love now snuck into the house and swallowed that kitten whole. While she grew, the rest of us were rejuvenated for a while. After all, every cat has her gifts and Meek has mastered the art of misbehaving. From the moment she was steady on her feet walking, she used that new skill to get herself into trouble.
The plan for our unplanned child was adoption. She was supposed to go into the adoption center as soon as she was weaned but the rescue organization kept changing the rules. Instead of putting our baby into a cage environment where she could get used to it and use her cuteness to hook some other sucker, the organization only let her attend special events. She handles crowds like I do except that she finds it acceptable to claw and bite. Every time we tried to get her de-dopted (our baby-talk word for adopted), she would turn into Cujo at the event. We got these frantic calls to bring this crazy beast home before she scared everyone away. Of course, she was angelic as soon as she got home. There was a method to her madness. She likes it with us and she gets along perfectly with Maddie and Pippi.
Of course, we had a bad habit in those days. When faced with an unknown expense, we would put it off indefinitely because we couldn't afford it. Our veterinarian is a very kind person who is understanding of financial difficulties and has offered us payment plans in the past. She likes to say that she wants to help but can't help unless we bring the cats to her. In this case, we put off having Meekers declawed. She's been a terror for a year longer than necessary because we failed to learn how affordable the minor surgery was. Let's move on to present day and back to the original topic.
When we learned that the deed transfer would take place next Friday, we were thrilled for many reasons but I had one extra reason. I hate the fact that my father's attitude toward us forces me to keep him out of the loop as much as possible. As soon as he was no longer our landlord, I planned to bring Meek out into the open. I hate hiding things from him and I wanted him to know what a dear Meekers is. (It had nothing to do with her reactions to strangers as a kitten where she would bite and claw desperately to escape. She's met every person to come through here and at the Residence Inn without making a single aggressive move.) It was more like when I quit smoking some time back in 97 or 98. I wanted to own up to the fact that I was lying - or merely withholding information in this case - about something and come clean.
Instead, our vet's office called his home about Meek apparently thinking she lived there. I must remember that it is not Christian to bite off someone's head over a simple honest mistake. It shouldn't be too difficult since I find it easier to forgive those who do not hold power over me and misuse it. I could not figure out why so many people seemed to think I lived in Maryland recently even if they had be confused with my dad. He lives right down the road from me. Well, he lived less than 20 minutes away before he moved without even telling me. Of all people, he should know what a grave insult that is to me. I feel like the punch line from some joke about the kid who had his parents move away while he was at school failing to tell him. Well, I guess it's funnier in context and if your own parents didn't do it to you!
I know their justification. No one has told me but they would say that I stopped bothering to keep in touch. I've got news for them. I have trouble making it through the simplest days and so initiating conversation is almost impossible for me. Add on to that the fact that my parents make me want to kill myself every time we speak, I had very little reason to hurt myself just to gain their disapproval.
This is the cusp of the greatest victory of my life to date and I cannot sleep. Lack of sleep will send me back into constant extreme pain. Normally, I spend a couple of hours per day (2-3) in extreme pain and the rest of the day is merely enough to cripple my efforts to do almost anything. Replace that 2-3 hours with 10-12 hours of wanting to scream and you have my recent life. We're going to a party tonight, a beer tasting party, and I had hoped to have at least 12 hours of sleep before that. It starts in 13 hours. I will feel okay once I'm there even if I'm groaning so loudly that all the guests can hear me. They understand me there and they like me.
My parents will never understand me. They will never attempt to understand me. Every time I give them a glimpse into how I see things, they look at me like I'm nuts. I've told all of you readers that chronic pain patients need to treat symptom management like a full-time job. I'm falling apart from my failure to manage the sleep part of my routine but it isn't my fault entirely. (Actually, it isn't my fault in the slightest degree but I have trouble managing to believe that.) I was already sick from the weather when the trauma of the massive toilet flood and ceiling collapse hit. I had things completely under control including getting the rest I needed to recover when my father got involved and fucked things up.
I went from recovering nicely to sitting on a hot plate trying to move fast enough to avoid becoming extra crispy. He dared poke fun at my plans made while flailing about in the emergency he caused. If he had made it clear that him transferring the deed to us was on the table, I wouldn't have bothered with emergency plans.
I was born a rambling man at least in conversation and conversational writing but it's time to stop. I hope to get to what the plan was, how it formed, how it changed in the face of artificial emergencies and what it is now. Let's see if Blogger will post this. *grin*
To say that I am upset is to say the waters beneath Niagara Falls are turbulent. On the one hand, you have the amazingly generous act of giving us this house. When you get down to it, the price is less than free because he has put money into the place that he need not have done had he just given it to us in 2001. If you ask anyone in the know, they will tell you I say my father is too generous for his own good frequently.
His generosity isn't what's keeping me awake at 4:30 in the morning on a night when I was all but desperate for sleep. I can't shut down the turmoil inside me. Most, if not all, of us grow up wanting to please our parents more than anything. In my case, I cannot remember a time when I succeeded. He piled on the parting shots today until my hold on my temper slipped a little. I verified that he had given me all the marching orders that I needed, said goodbye and hung up on him. First, I told him that the difference between the two of us is that I would not let a little kitten starve. He agreed that he knows he's a monster (he was being sarcastic) and I wouldn't call him a monster given the opportunity.
I seem to be that little kitten to him and nothing else. Nothing about me is worthy of respect to him. I have fought battles that he has never had to face. He had his own but they call me handicapped for a reason. I fought battle after battle with one hand tied behind my back. When I was 25 and a newlywed, the other arm got tied as well. For a while, it seemed that Melissa and I would not survive despite the help of having a house to live in essentially rent free. I can hear his voice in the back of my head questioning my use of the word essentially there. He would ignore any and every simple statement that the smallest amount of money going from my pocket to his represented an effort on my part. It's been a long time since the last time that tiny payment was a struggle and then it was only because we were dealing with other bigger bills. It's been a very long time since I was dependent on him for everything. I'm no kitten or baby in a crib.
I can hear his answer to that as well. I learned to believe that they are always right and, since they disapprove of me all the time, I'm always wrong. Thank God for Melissa and her family! Melissa taught me what it was like to be loved and our family taught me what it was like to have a loving family. I'm not only allowed to take pleasure in things but they enjoy it when I do so. Showing pleasure in something around my father created a vulnerability. My pleasure could be taken away at the next point of disappointment. If it weren't taken away, it was a sign of his benevolence. Pleasure and pain were his to dispense as he decided.
Meekers the cat was a blessing to my household. She was starving, weak and utterly dependent on me. She went from fitting in one hand to the size of a small mountain lion in what seemed like a week. Obviously, it was longer than that but she was our baby. Like Clifford the Big Red Dog, we prayed that she would survive and grow when the odds seemed so long against her. I guess we forgot to pray for her to stop like the boy in the first Clifford story. One of the many running jokes is that the Meekers we know and love now snuck into the house and swallowed that kitten whole. While she grew, the rest of us were rejuvenated for a while. After all, every cat has her gifts and Meek has mastered the art of misbehaving. From the moment she was steady on her feet walking, she used that new skill to get herself into trouble.
The plan for our unplanned child was adoption. She was supposed to go into the adoption center as soon as she was weaned but the rescue organization kept changing the rules. Instead of putting our baby into a cage environment where she could get used to it and use her cuteness to hook some other sucker, the organization only let her attend special events. She handles crowds like I do except that she finds it acceptable to claw and bite. Every time we tried to get her de-dopted (our baby-talk word for adopted), she would turn into Cujo at the event. We got these frantic calls to bring this crazy beast home before she scared everyone away. Of course, she was angelic as soon as she got home. There was a method to her madness. She likes it with us and she gets along perfectly with Maddie and Pippi.
Of course, we had a bad habit in those days. When faced with an unknown expense, we would put it off indefinitely because we couldn't afford it. Our veterinarian is a very kind person who is understanding of financial difficulties and has offered us payment plans in the past. She likes to say that she wants to help but can't help unless we bring the cats to her. In this case, we put off having Meekers declawed. She's been a terror for a year longer than necessary because we failed to learn how affordable the minor surgery was. Let's move on to present day and back to the original topic.
When we learned that the deed transfer would take place next Friday, we were thrilled for many reasons but I had one extra reason. I hate the fact that my father's attitude toward us forces me to keep him out of the loop as much as possible. As soon as he was no longer our landlord, I planned to bring Meek out into the open. I hate hiding things from him and I wanted him to know what a dear Meekers is. (It had nothing to do with her reactions to strangers as a kitten where she would bite and claw desperately to escape. She's met every person to come through here and at the Residence Inn without making a single aggressive move.) It was more like when I quit smoking some time back in 97 or 98. I wanted to own up to the fact that I was lying - or merely withholding information in this case - about something and come clean.
Instead, our vet's office called his home about Meek apparently thinking she lived there. I must remember that it is not Christian to bite off someone's head over a simple honest mistake. It shouldn't be too difficult since I find it easier to forgive those who do not hold power over me and misuse it. I could not figure out why so many people seemed to think I lived in Maryland recently even if they had be confused with my dad. He lives right down the road from me. Well, he lived less than 20 minutes away before he moved without even telling me. Of all people, he should know what a grave insult that is to me. I feel like the punch line from some joke about the kid who had his parents move away while he was at school failing to tell him. Well, I guess it's funnier in context and if your own parents didn't do it to you!
I know their justification. No one has told me but they would say that I stopped bothering to keep in touch. I've got news for them. I have trouble making it through the simplest days and so initiating conversation is almost impossible for me. Add on to that the fact that my parents make me want to kill myself every time we speak, I had very little reason to hurt myself just to gain their disapproval.
This is the cusp of the greatest victory of my life to date and I cannot sleep. Lack of sleep will send me back into constant extreme pain. Normally, I spend a couple of hours per day (2-3) in extreme pain and the rest of the day is merely enough to cripple my efforts to do almost anything. Replace that 2-3 hours with 10-12 hours of wanting to scream and you have my recent life. We're going to a party tonight, a beer tasting party, and I had hoped to have at least 12 hours of sleep before that. It starts in 13 hours. I will feel okay once I'm there even if I'm groaning so loudly that all the guests can hear me. They understand me there and they like me.
My parents will never understand me. They will never attempt to understand me. Every time I give them a glimpse into how I see things, they look at me like I'm nuts. I've told all of you readers that chronic pain patients need to treat symptom management like a full-time job. I'm falling apart from my failure to manage the sleep part of my routine but it isn't my fault entirely. (Actually, it isn't my fault in the slightest degree but I have trouble managing to believe that.) I was already sick from the weather when the trauma of the massive toilet flood and ceiling collapse hit. I had things completely under control including getting the rest I needed to recover when my father got involved and fucked things up.
I went from recovering nicely to sitting on a hot plate trying to move fast enough to avoid becoming extra crispy. He dared poke fun at my plans made while flailing about in the emergency he caused. If he had made it clear that him transferring the deed to us was on the table, I wouldn't have bothered with emergency plans.
I was born a rambling man at least in conversation and conversational writing but it's time to stop. I hope to get to what the plan was, how it formed, how it changed in the face of artificial emergencies and what it is now. Let's see if Blogger will post this. *grin*
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Resting
The phone rang less than an hour after I had drifted off to a troubled sleep. There were three possibilities for people who owed me phone calls yet one pair from the list of three seems to have a sleep sensor hidden somewhere. I had missed a call the night before when I had been fully awake and ready because I forgot to carry the cordless phone with me. Well, I was right about who it was on the phone but I wasn't ready for unexpected good news. It seems that the recent bout of tension has come to an end.
I was so nervous watching Melissa on the phone that I fell off the bed. Thankfully, there is still carpet in that part of the room. Melissa is very good. I signaled to her that I was fine but that I planned on staying right there for a while and she nodded without saying anything out of the ordinary. Normally, I can hear both sides of a phone conversation unless I'm on the other side of a room but she was too close to a fan for me. I could hear just enough to pick out the voices of both my parents but not anything that was said. All I could tell is that Melissa's face was very relaxed.
I don't believe in luck or fate or anything like that but I do feel that it is too early to say anything specific about what was said. Let's just refer to my parenthetical header from the previous post and say that tensions are reduced. I had felt as if someone turned on a hotplate beneath my behind a few weeks ago and yesterday's conversation turned it off. I wanted to celebrate. More than that, I wanted to feel good but my body betrayed me. All I was able to do was sit down with a book and let Maddie the cat nap me.
She napped me for more than ten hours yet I was still tired when Melissa came home from work. It's obvious that I need a few days of significant sleep before I'll even know how I feel. That's feel in the physical sense. How much of my recent physical decline was brought on by the stress from the flood and what followed? There had been a long stretch of bad weather before that. Am I going to come out of this capable of living the life I have been planning? It's quite possible that I've never been this tired before.
I slept for a night and a day sitting up in a chair with Maddie holding me hostage. She allowed me a few bathroom breaks but that was it. Any side trips earned me an angry meow and my eyes kept trying to close on me. After staying up for a few hours after almost 24 hours unconscious, my body reacted in a way I should have expected but didn't. Expected or not, it has still been some of the worst pain I've ever felt. My nerves decided that my pain for the day would be toothaches. Don't get me wrong. I do not deny having untreated cavities that react very badly sometimes to what I'm eating. This was different. It was like someone sounded a starter gun and the extreme right side of my mouth exploded in pain.
I tried treating the pain with generic Oragel which was marginally effective until the pain came back. Experience told me that I had to brush my teeth and get the first coat of the stuff off before a second coat would do any good. This got me through the day with a couple of repetitions. I slept even more until shortly after Melissa came home from a night shift and asked why I didn't just go to bed. I had no good answer. I tend to get no sleep at all or twelve hours minimum from which I awaken congested enough to start gagging when I sleep in bed.
Thankfully, the congestion issue has improved since the pain doc's office found that my sleep apnea had improved to almost nothing. Since the congestion was coming from the mask, it isn't as bad now. I decided to go sleep in bed except that something new happened when I tried. The pain snuck up on me again except that it was both sides of my mouth. Pick your four teeth furthest toward the back and picture them bursting into pure pain. At the same time, the muscles that hold my neck up felt strained, swollen and very painful. I used to believe that they were swollen lymph nodes. There was no way to lie down and sleep in that much pain. The annoying thing is that lying down to sleep was the only way to make the pain better.
What I need is 8-12 hours of good sleep lying down in bed for a few days in a row. Melissa's next night shift seems like the perfect chance. I tend to sleep during those because I get bored and lonely enough to avoid getting cases of the frantics. Overall, I'm not worried. This is all the sort of thing that happens to me when I'm coming down from a period of great stress. Up until yesterday, I had failed to get a solid night or day's sleep in 4-5 consecutive weeks running. That may be a new record in the literal sense for me. I am pleased that there were no fatalities around me.
The pain actually got worse after so much sleeping in a chair so I went to bed. Ten hours of sleep in a bed left me feeling awful upon waking. It wasn't the usual congestion. The intense pain was very much like I had spent the entire time asleep with my jaw clenched in severe tension. This is awful beyond what I thought was awful before that. Now, it's raining five hours or so later and I feel marginally better. Having been through a day of this, it's hard to imagine having written that I would be okay after a few days of it yet I suspect it is the truth.
The good news is that it seems to have stopped getting worse for the time being. The bad news is that Blogger is NOT cooperating!
I was so nervous watching Melissa on the phone that I fell off the bed. Thankfully, there is still carpet in that part of the room. Melissa is very good. I signaled to her that I was fine but that I planned on staying right there for a while and she nodded without saying anything out of the ordinary. Normally, I can hear both sides of a phone conversation unless I'm on the other side of a room but she was too close to a fan for me. I could hear just enough to pick out the voices of both my parents but not anything that was said. All I could tell is that Melissa's face was very relaxed.
I don't believe in luck or fate or anything like that but I do feel that it is too early to say anything specific about what was said. Let's just refer to my parenthetical header from the previous post and say that tensions are reduced. I had felt as if someone turned on a hotplate beneath my behind a few weeks ago and yesterday's conversation turned it off. I wanted to celebrate. More than that, I wanted to feel good but my body betrayed me. All I was able to do was sit down with a book and let Maddie the cat nap me.
She napped me for more than ten hours yet I was still tired when Melissa came home from work. It's obvious that I need a few days of significant sleep before I'll even know how I feel. That's feel in the physical sense. How much of my recent physical decline was brought on by the stress from the flood and what followed? There had been a long stretch of bad weather before that. Am I going to come out of this capable of living the life I have been planning? It's quite possible that I've never been this tired before.
I slept for a night and a day sitting up in a chair with Maddie holding me hostage. She allowed me a few bathroom breaks but that was it. Any side trips earned me an angry meow and my eyes kept trying to close on me. After staying up for a few hours after almost 24 hours unconscious, my body reacted in a way I should have expected but didn't. Expected or not, it has still been some of the worst pain I've ever felt. My nerves decided that my pain for the day would be toothaches. Don't get me wrong. I do not deny having untreated cavities that react very badly sometimes to what I'm eating. This was different. It was like someone sounded a starter gun and the extreme right side of my mouth exploded in pain.
I tried treating the pain with generic Oragel which was marginally effective until the pain came back. Experience told me that I had to brush my teeth and get the first coat of the stuff off before a second coat would do any good. This got me through the day with a couple of repetitions. I slept even more until shortly after Melissa came home from a night shift and asked why I didn't just go to bed. I had no good answer. I tend to get no sleep at all or twelve hours minimum from which I awaken congested enough to start gagging when I sleep in bed.
Thankfully, the congestion issue has improved since the pain doc's office found that my sleep apnea had improved to almost nothing. Since the congestion was coming from the mask, it isn't as bad now. I decided to go sleep in bed except that something new happened when I tried. The pain snuck up on me again except that it was both sides of my mouth. Pick your four teeth furthest toward the back and picture them bursting into pure pain. At the same time, the muscles that hold my neck up felt strained, swollen and very painful. I used to believe that they were swollen lymph nodes. There was no way to lie down and sleep in that much pain. The annoying thing is that lying down to sleep was the only way to make the pain better.
What I need is 8-12 hours of good sleep lying down in bed for a few days in a row. Melissa's next night shift seems like the perfect chance. I tend to sleep during those because I get bored and lonely enough to avoid getting cases of the frantics. Overall, I'm not worried. This is all the sort of thing that happens to me when I'm coming down from a period of great stress. Up until yesterday, I had failed to get a solid night or day's sleep in 4-5 consecutive weeks running. That may be a new record in the literal sense for me. I am pleased that there were no fatalities around me.
The pain actually got worse after so much sleeping in a chair so I went to bed. Ten hours of sleep in a bed left me feeling awful upon waking. It wasn't the usual congestion. The intense pain was very much like I had spent the entire time asleep with my jaw clenched in severe tension. This is awful beyond what I thought was awful before that. Now, it's raining five hours or so later and I feel marginally better. Having been through a day of this, it's hard to imagine having written that I would be okay after a few days of it yet I suspect it is the truth.
The good news is that it seems to have stopped getting worse for the time being. The bad news is that Blogger is NOT cooperating!
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Teaching or Torment?
(Since I wrote this, the tension in my family has dropped considerably. I considered not posting it at all but remembered something important. No matter how it seems, my motivation in writing was not hostile. I believe a lot of people make honest mistakes and I would like to help reduce the number made if I can.)
This is a subject I've kept silent about for decades because my mother's career was in teaching kids. It made me ill to hear about how good she was at it when I had such a different experience. It's time to get to the roots of why I am such a slob. Why am I so disorganized? At 38 years of age, it's probably too late for me to benefit much but some of you can learn from the mistakes that were made. The thing is that I've always been messy for as long as I can remember. My school teachers made distinct efforts to help me with little success but they deserve thanks for those efforts.
My parents bought me a Trapper Keeper which is a hard binder in which you insert folders the way you would papers in a regular three ring binder. I never made much use out of these devices in my school life. Why? It always seemed like there was too much else to do. I didn't mind being a slob so much except when it led to the repeated crises I suffered. Yes, my 38 year old mind can make the connections and I've made all the adaptations I can manage like making sure my monthly bills come online where I can't lose them easily. As a child, these things didn't click quite so easily for me.
All my mother and father did was buy me the tool and complain when I didn't use it. I would come home every night with a bag full of (often crumpled) papers that never got organized. As a 38 year old, here's what I might have done with my nonexistent child. I would have asked him to empty out his bookbag daily and open up the Trapper Keeper. We would have done the filing together until it clicked in his mind. When he suffered the inevitable setbacks, we would have started again. Do I believe this is something that every parent needs to do with every child? No. I had a problem and the complaints/threats did nothing to solve it.
The school actually encouraged things like this. One of my teachers initiated a policy where I would record my homework assignments each day and she would initial them. My mother was to initial them as complete. Somehow, this system broke down due to my inability to get the assigned work from my desk at school to my home. This probably had something to do with the lack of organization mentioned above. Due to the support I received at home, the system became nothing more than a method of embarrassing me. After all, I could do anything I put my mind to doing according to my father and I was failing at this so it had to be a lack of effort.
Cleaning my room would have been a joke if it hadn't been the source of so much hostility. I was told to clean my room so I did. I managed to pick up everything and vacuum under it all then put it back in place. I was told that this wasn't what was expected of me but then no further instructions followed. There were plenty of threats but never any useful measures.
Unlike the Trapper Keeper situation, I lack the ability to deal with this even today. It's a matter of degree, of course. I do understand certain concepts. On the other hand, the vast majority of my clothing is very casual these days. Nothing is harmed that I can see by having a dirty clothes pile and a clean clothes pile. The concept of doing more falls under the label of wasted effort especially now that I have so little energy to offer. On days when I am in more pain than usual, the concept of walking used (but reusable to me) dishes to the sink where they will simply mix with the truly dirty dishes and become disgusting is laughable. Once upon a time, I had the energy and the strength to wash dishes once or twice a day without undue suffering. Those days are long past. My beloved's health issues are her own to discuss or not discuss as she chooses. I'm the one who was taught to value myself so lowly that I feel obligated to "earn my oxygen" by trying to help others with problems like my own. Earning my oxygen is my own way of summing up how I try to deal with those lingering anxieties and feelings of inadequacy my parents taught me.
Things are going to get a bit scatological now so consider this fair warning. I'll try to avoid the most lurid details for the sakes of everyone's appetites but I was born with what the doctor's call limited bladder and bowel control. What this truly means is that I can go but I can't stop or prevent myself from going. This is an unpleasant facet of my life that I have learned to simply accept for the most part. Those who have chosen to be my friends and family do their best to accept me for who I am. First and foremost of these people is my beloved Melissa followed by the Allen clan, my family of choice.
I wrote that I have learned to simply accept this for the most part because there is a whole laundry list of adaptations I've learned to mitigate the symptoms. One of these is called a "bowel program." I'm going to use it to help illustrate how not to teach a disabled child to adapt. When I was younger, I suffered from what even I consider an excess of bowel accidents. I lived in terror of them throughout most of my childhood and learned to be ashamed of them because I failed to follow the "bowel program." I learned the term from my father but never a single detail except those he made up to suit his prejudices of the day.
Let's start off with the facts. Your basic bowel program is an attempt to simulate what healthy bodies do on a regular basis. The pun was unintentional but it is usually called "staying regular." I was in my mid-twenties, at least, when I got up the courage to get this information from my primary care physician. She gave me a very simple set of instructions that I'm sure most of you learned as basic toilet training. Let me put this stuff in chronological order in terms of my daily life so that it will best make sense.
At the end of each meal, go to the bathroom and see if you have to go. The end of the meal is a casual concept for those of us who like to linger over our food. Eating is another activity that promotes going. Get a bathroom stop in before you move on to your next activity.
There are no dietary restrictions related solely to a bowel program. My doctors and I have isolated stress and lack of sleep as the two main causes of irregularity. Obviously, eating foods that are exotic to you will have an unknown effect on your regularity. Some foods may have an effect on you but you should consider those effects as part of a whole. Those of us who suffer from chronic pain are more likely to suffer from chronic constipation because of our medicines. If you start to feel backed up, you might want to consider that Mexican dinner that disagrees with you.
Last but not least, please remember that I am not a doctor! If you are trying out adaptations for a better life, my ideas might work for you but run them by your doctor first. I do not know if you have a condition like my hiatal hernia or, God forbid, an ulcer. My point is not that you should listen to me. My point is that you should be careful whose advice you take. Doctors are the best choice.
Getting back to the major theme of this post, my father decided that he was an authority on bowels. My doctor and I had a laugh out loud moment when I asked her what sort of bowel consistency I should strive for. She told me peanut butter and that was my father's signal that something was wrong. Thanks to my father's good intentioned but very misguided teachings, I go through unnecessary constipation. Pardon the pun but the man taught me to shit bricks.
Why was he so misguided? I believe the main difference comes from the separate motivations of my father and a doctor. My father is ashamed of me and has been since the days when he accompanied me into men's room stalls. He saw bricks as easier to manage and hide than peanut butter. I was willing to try anything to please him. He and my mother spent my young teenage years analyzing everything I did. Thanks in part to a lack of proper guidance, I had more bowel accidents than I was wiling to accept but I never said anything like that because my father was freaking out enough for several people.
I remember trying to remind him that I had a handicap and he reminded me that others managed better control than I ever did. He informed me that I was putting my mother through undue hardship. I couldn't make the accidents stop but I could keep my mother from suffering. Thus, I did things like re-wear the same pair of underwear until I got enough time alone in the house to do my own laundry. This was foiled by my mother counting my clothes and not coming up with enough underwear. I'm sure she had nothing but good intentions but her good intentions spoiled mine. After that, I started setting aside the soiled pairs in a hiding place so that I could wash them later.
As usual, my mother and father were all too eager to examine what they saw as my extremes of behavior and question my sanity. They never looked at the root cause of the problem. Their shame at having a handicapped son drove them to increase pressure on me until I looked for what even I consider to be odd solutions. They never seemed to use any of my mother's vaunted teaching skills to help me. Their goal was to label me as something other than normal. I was someone whom they could torment because I wanted to please them.
This is a subject I've kept silent about for decades because my mother's career was in teaching kids. It made me ill to hear about how good she was at it when I had such a different experience. It's time to get to the roots of why I am such a slob. Why am I so disorganized? At 38 years of age, it's probably too late for me to benefit much but some of you can learn from the mistakes that were made. The thing is that I've always been messy for as long as I can remember. My school teachers made distinct efforts to help me with little success but they deserve thanks for those efforts.
My parents bought me a Trapper Keeper which is a hard binder in which you insert folders the way you would papers in a regular three ring binder. I never made much use out of these devices in my school life. Why? It always seemed like there was too much else to do. I didn't mind being a slob so much except when it led to the repeated crises I suffered. Yes, my 38 year old mind can make the connections and I've made all the adaptations I can manage like making sure my monthly bills come online where I can't lose them easily. As a child, these things didn't click quite so easily for me.
All my mother and father did was buy me the tool and complain when I didn't use it. I would come home every night with a bag full of (often crumpled) papers that never got organized. As a 38 year old, here's what I might have done with my nonexistent child. I would have asked him to empty out his bookbag daily and open up the Trapper Keeper. We would have done the filing together until it clicked in his mind. When he suffered the inevitable setbacks, we would have started again. Do I believe this is something that every parent needs to do with every child? No. I had a problem and the complaints/threats did nothing to solve it.
The school actually encouraged things like this. One of my teachers initiated a policy where I would record my homework assignments each day and she would initial them. My mother was to initial them as complete. Somehow, this system broke down due to my inability to get the assigned work from my desk at school to my home. This probably had something to do with the lack of organization mentioned above. Due to the support I received at home, the system became nothing more than a method of embarrassing me. After all, I could do anything I put my mind to doing according to my father and I was failing at this so it had to be a lack of effort.
Cleaning my room would have been a joke if it hadn't been the source of so much hostility. I was told to clean my room so I did. I managed to pick up everything and vacuum under it all then put it back in place. I was told that this wasn't what was expected of me but then no further instructions followed. There were plenty of threats but never any useful measures.
Unlike the Trapper Keeper situation, I lack the ability to deal with this even today. It's a matter of degree, of course. I do understand certain concepts. On the other hand, the vast majority of my clothing is very casual these days. Nothing is harmed that I can see by having a dirty clothes pile and a clean clothes pile. The concept of doing more falls under the label of wasted effort especially now that I have so little energy to offer. On days when I am in more pain than usual, the concept of walking used (but reusable to me) dishes to the sink where they will simply mix with the truly dirty dishes and become disgusting is laughable. Once upon a time, I had the energy and the strength to wash dishes once or twice a day without undue suffering. Those days are long past. My beloved's health issues are her own to discuss or not discuss as she chooses. I'm the one who was taught to value myself so lowly that I feel obligated to "earn my oxygen" by trying to help others with problems like my own. Earning my oxygen is my own way of summing up how I try to deal with those lingering anxieties and feelings of inadequacy my parents taught me.
Things are going to get a bit scatological now so consider this fair warning. I'll try to avoid the most lurid details for the sakes of everyone's appetites but I was born with what the doctor's call limited bladder and bowel control. What this truly means is that I can go but I can't stop or prevent myself from going. This is an unpleasant facet of my life that I have learned to simply accept for the most part. Those who have chosen to be my friends and family do their best to accept me for who I am. First and foremost of these people is my beloved Melissa followed by the Allen clan, my family of choice.
I wrote that I have learned to simply accept this for the most part because there is a whole laundry list of adaptations I've learned to mitigate the symptoms. One of these is called a "bowel program." I'm going to use it to help illustrate how not to teach a disabled child to adapt. When I was younger, I suffered from what even I consider an excess of bowel accidents. I lived in terror of them throughout most of my childhood and learned to be ashamed of them because I failed to follow the "bowel program." I learned the term from my father but never a single detail except those he made up to suit his prejudices of the day.
Let's start off with the facts. Your basic bowel program is an attempt to simulate what healthy bodies do on a regular basis. The pun was unintentional but it is usually called "staying regular." I was in my mid-twenties, at least, when I got up the courage to get this information from my primary care physician. She gave me a very simple set of instructions that I'm sure most of you learned as basic toilet training. Let me put this stuff in chronological order in terms of my daily life so that it will best make sense.
At the end of each meal, go to the bathroom and see if you have to go. The end of the meal is a casual concept for those of us who like to linger over our food. Eating is another activity that promotes going. Get a bathroom stop in before you move on to your next activity.
There are no dietary restrictions related solely to a bowel program. My doctors and I have isolated stress and lack of sleep as the two main causes of irregularity. Obviously, eating foods that are exotic to you will have an unknown effect on your regularity. Some foods may have an effect on you but you should consider those effects as part of a whole. Those of us who suffer from chronic pain are more likely to suffer from chronic constipation because of our medicines. If you start to feel backed up, you might want to consider that Mexican dinner that disagrees with you.
Last but not least, please remember that I am not a doctor! If you are trying out adaptations for a better life, my ideas might work for you but run them by your doctor first. I do not know if you have a condition like my hiatal hernia or, God forbid, an ulcer. My point is not that you should listen to me. My point is that you should be careful whose advice you take. Doctors are the best choice.
Getting back to the major theme of this post, my father decided that he was an authority on bowels. My doctor and I had a laugh out loud moment when I asked her what sort of bowel consistency I should strive for. She told me peanut butter and that was my father's signal that something was wrong. Thanks to my father's good intentioned but very misguided teachings, I go through unnecessary constipation. Pardon the pun but the man taught me to shit bricks.
Why was he so misguided? I believe the main difference comes from the separate motivations of my father and a doctor. My father is ashamed of me and has been since the days when he accompanied me into men's room stalls. He saw bricks as easier to manage and hide than peanut butter. I was willing to try anything to please him. He and my mother spent my young teenage years analyzing everything I did. Thanks in part to a lack of proper guidance, I had more bowel accidents than I was wiling to accept but I never said anything like that because my father was freaking out enough for several people.
I remember trying to remind him that I had a handicap and he reminded me that others managed better control than I ever did. He informed me that I was putting my mother through undue hardship. I couldn't make the accidents stop but I could keep my mother from suffering. Thus, I did things like re-wear the same pair of underwear until I got enough time alone in the house to do my own laundry. This was foiled by my mother counting my clothes and not coming up with enough underwear. I'm sure she had nothing but good intentions but her good intentions spoiled mine. After that, I started setting aside the soiled pairs in a hiding place so that I could wash them later.
As usual, my mother and father were all too eager to examine what they saw as my extremes of behavior and question my sanity. They never looked at the root cause of the problem. Their shame at having a handicapped son drove them to increase pressure on me until I looked for what even I consider to be odd solutions. They never seemed to use any of my mother's vaunted teaching skills to help me. Their goal was to label me as something other than normal. I was someone whom they could torment because I wanted to please them.
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