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.
Friday, July 12, 2013
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.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Rage and the Pain
I have had it! I am so fed up that I find it hard to care that things can always get worse. Certain people in my life - on the extreme verges of it anyway - have lost their tenuous hold on reality. Certain people is, of course, code for my parents. It's not very good code if I give it away but that's how angry I am. I am sick to the point of wondering how soon I will die and they have used the excuse of the great flood to hold my feet to the fire. They seem to expect me to sort through 12 years of my life here and pack up what I want to keep in the veritable blink of an eye. Since I know I want to leave and I decided to be honest with them, they have lost all pretense of civility.
For a little while, I saw things through their eyes. I'm this terrible disappointment and all. The truth is that they made me top to bottom. I'm good at certain things because I had to be in order to survive all the emotional child abuse. That's right! I'm calling a spade a spade. They are damned lucky that I didn't open my mouth when I was a child. I'm sure it's too late to sue them now for creating this thing that lurks inside of me.
What thing is that? I'm talking about the urge to kill myself. After my latest conversation with them when I let them do all the talking, I curled up into a metaphorical ball and fell to pieces. That's when I used one of those survival skills that they taught me. I attacked the problem with logic which is something inaccessible to insane people. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the insane people. Who would benefit from my death? Allow me an agnostic moment so I can question my sure acceptance into heaven. My religion has certain problems with suicide anyway so I might not have to have that agnostic moment but that's what it feels like. My wife loves me so she would be devastated. Even my most optimistic projections would involve her going through hell on earth before her life got better again. The only people who would benefit would be my parents so that sorta kills the revenge motive. Why does the urge to die by my own hand still haunt me? If it isn't based on logic, I believe it is based on all those years of being brainwashed into believing I am worthless.
"The only thing I have to offer is my brain," said my dear mother and father. Guess what? Thanks to their genes or some long denied mistake my mother made while I was in the womb, my brain is fucked up! They seem to believe that there is some way of making me better but I'm avoiding it because I prefer this life. Let's attack those two points separately. First off, my second surgeon may be the foremost expert in the world in my condition. He told me to my face that there is nothing else he can even try to improve my condition. There was a possibility but further testing showed that it might very well kill me. Medical ethics prevent him from trying the surgery even if I were willing to risk an unacceptable chance of death. We're not talking about dying from an unanticipated complication. The actual surgical objective would be what killed me. Game over!
The second part of their apparent belief is the one that truly annoys me. I do my very best to make the best of everything but my life sucks! Your lives probably suck to the same degree if you are the fellow chronic pain patients that this is intended for. We don't have the option of lying down and dying so we make the best of things. We use the tools given to us for as long as they are available. My father's kind gift of cable TV was much appreciated as a tool to help me through the worst pain. When he pulled it back, I was careful to say nothing unkind because I don't walk in his shoes. He might very well be struggling to make ends meet and hiding it from me. The same thing applies to the reduced rent that we were given while living here.
My mother had the gall to tell me that I can't afford to live where I am now. It's part of the miserable shame game that they have played with me for as long as I can remember. Then again, I was pleased to hear that she had paid off the mortgage and that my meager contributions were covering the association fees, the taxes and the homeowner's insurance. I was exceptionally pleased that I was not putting them through any hardship. That's a laugh. My mother is hoisted upon her own petard. She needs to learn better insulting skills from her husband.
Her intent was to show me how dependent I'd been on their generosity but I knew that already. I gave her the opening by expressing surprise at the actual rates being charged out there. My intent was to praise her for the generosity but to reinforce my reasons for needing to leave. I offered them nothing but honesty and the sort of criticism of my packing performance that you learn being raised like I was. Nothing I do is right and nothing can deflect criticism. I should just die for them...just kidding.
There is a reason why I use every tool I'm offered. I live in pain the likes I doubt either of them has ever felt possibly barring my mother going through labor pains. It takes practice to let the background pain go and save my breakthrough pain meds for the times when they are needed. My choice is to curl up into a literal ball and moan all day. This is very hard on the vocal cords as experience taught me.
Getting through the easiest of days is an accomplishment for me and for my readers in chronic pain. We have to ignore the unintentional advice of those who would just take handfuls of pills and kill their livers or those who say they would go insane. It's tough to stay sane in the commonly used sense although actual clinical sanity is stronger than you might think. In the commonly used sense, my parents drive me insane whenever they touch my life.
Getting through those easy days requires concentrating on the requirements of life as a chronic pain patient. We need to follow our prescribed medicinal routines. I actually have to use my tablet computer to track my one medication used once every three days or risk days like today. On top of all the wild pain from the wet weather outside, I felt this awful electrical tingling in my muscles. When I took the risk of not blocking it out, I realized it was the familiar sensation of not changing my patch on time. Oops. My bad. I paid for it.
One of the things we chronic pain patients need to do is get regular rest including more sleep than the average person. Knowing that my family may decide to contact me at any given moment deprives me of regular sleep. I find myself not wanting to let my mind drift because I find myself lingering on the insults my father delivers on a regular basis when he contacts me at all. Let's think of a recent insult from as recently as yesterday. "You just sat around in that hotel room and didn't think to come and clean up."
Okay. I was silent about this on the phone because I didn't think you had the lack of sense to say such a thing. The "pipe" burst on a Saturday afternoon. For days before that, I was so tormented by weather related pain that I got little useful rest. My chance to sleep was disturbed by a river flowing out the bathroom door and a collapsed ceiling downstairs. Nonetheless, Melissa and I reacted rationally. We called the insurance company to get our marching orders. Was it even safe to remain in the house?
The insurance company reacted rationally and sent out a water damage mitigation service. It was Service Master and I had seen their TV ads run before. I mention them by name here because their tech did every single thing he could to do his job and make things easier on Melissa and me. However, having a stranger in the house pulling down what was left of the first floor ceiling, running assorted drying equipment and making a hell of a lot of noise was traumatic. It would have been traumatizing to anyone which makes it 100 times worse for any chronic pain patient. Once again, I know this from experience obviously.
The insurance adjuster pulled through for us and got a very nice hotel room for us. It got upgraded to a suite by another very kind company. I got there Wednesday night and spent the rest of the week recovering. By the time we reached the weekend, I had recovered enough to worry. Yes, I recovered enough from the trauma to experience severe stress. Why had I not received any marching orders? On Monday, I called to ask for them but the adjuster was busy dealing with a tornado catastrophe. On Tuesday, I received a false alarm that sent me spiralling down into near collapse again but it seemed to work itself out.
That's when I got the truly bad news. My father was involved and calling the shots. It took my own father two days to return my phone call and that Thursday call involved no marching orders. On Friday, he called me to insult Melissa and me which I took in my usual silence. There were no practical instructions given. Was it safe to return home? I didn't know anything so please forgive my pathetic ignorance. On Monday, we managed to return home and get me through pain doc day which featured a freaky storm that took me from feeling good for me to almost landing on the floor. The medical staff was suitably freaked out since none of us looked out the window. We assumed it was still sunny. Regular readers will know what even the best pain doc appointments do to me.
I can't remember the exact day I got my marching orders but I started following them immediately. I was already sorting out and removing trash so that left me books to pack. I built a box that the contractor provided kindly and packed it. It took a lot out of me but I felt no sense of achievement. My father wanted the job done not done realistically. Thus, I tried to continue and mostly ended up on the floor a lot. Despite this, I continued my work.
That brings me to the final insult and the one that bothers me the most. "What's Melissa doing while she's off? So, she's working nine days straight with roving days off? That leaves time to get things done." I know you don't care but Melissa is sicker than she lets people see. Thankfully, she can sleep through almost anything so she gets enough rest to stay in the fight at work. She just got a top notch review from work and we're on a promotion track. (She doesn't mind when I say we despite the fact that she's the one doing all the work. I love that about her.) Due to her chronic and likely progressing illnesses, that leaves her little time or energy for anything else.
To paraphrase a movie, don't mess with her if you want to have a fight over toughness. She's far too good for you. Stick with me as your victim. Then again, my name is John Stapleford and I'm getting you out of my life. ("My name is Andrew Sheppard and I AM the President.") I just hope you don't send me to my grave first.
For a little while, I saw things through their eyes. I'm this terrible disappointment and all. The truth is that they made me top to bottom. I'm good at certain things because I had to be in order to survive all the emotional child abuse. That's right! I'm calling a spade a spade. They are damned lucky that I didn't open my mouth when I was a child. I'm sure it's too late to sue them now for creating this thing that lurks inside of me.
What thing is that? I'm talking about the urge to kill myself. After my latest conversation with them when I let them do all the talking, I curled up into a metaphorical ball and fell to pieces. That's when I used one of those survival skills that they taught me. I attacked the problem with logic which is something inaccessible to insane people. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the insane people. Who would benefit from my death? Allow me an agnostic moment so I can question my sure acceptance into heaven. My religion has certain problems with suicide anyway so I might not have to have that agnostic moment but that's what it feels like. My wife loves me so she would be devastated. Even my most optimistic projections would involve her going through hell on earth before her life got better again. The only people who would benefit would be my parents so that sorta kills the revenge motive. Why does the urge to die by my own hand still haunt me? If it isn't based on logic, I believe it is based on all those years of being brainwashed into believing I am worthless.
"The only thing I have to offer is my brain," said my dear mother and father. Guess what? Thanks to their genes or some long denied mistake my mother made while I was in the womb, my brain is fucked up! They seem to believe that there is some way of making me better but I'm avoiding it because I prefer this life. Let's attack those two points separately. First off, my second surgeon may be the foremost expert in the world in my condition. He told me to my face that there is nothing else he can even try to improve my condition. There was a possibility but further testing showed that it might very well kill me. Medical ethics prevent him from trying the surgery even if I were willing to risk an unacceptable chance of death. We're not talking about dying from an unanticipated complication. The actual surgical objective would be what killed me. Game over!
The second part of their apparent belief is the one that truly annoys me. I do my very best to make the best of everything but my life sucks! Your lives probably suck to the same degree if you are the fellow chronic pain patients that this is intended for. We don't have the option of lying down and dying so we make the best of things. We use the tools given to us for as long as they are available. My father's kind gift of cable TV was much appreciated as a tool to help me through the worst pain. When he pulled it back, I was careful to say nothing unkind because I don't walk in his shoes. He might very well be struggling to make ends meet and hiding it from me. The same thing applies to the reduced rent that we were given while living here.
My mother had the gall to tell me that I can't afford to live where I am now. It's part of the miserable shame game that they have played with me for as long as I can remember. Then again, I was pleased to hear that she had paid off the mortgage and that my meager contributions were covering the association fees, the taxes and the homeowner's insurance. I was exceptionally pleased that I was not putting them through any hardship. That's a laugh. My mother is hoisted upon her own petard. She needs to learn better insulting skills from her husband.
Her intent was to show me how dependent I'd been on their generosity but I knew that already. I gave her the opening by expressing surprise at the actual rates being charged out there. My intent was to praise her for the generosity but to reinforce my reasons for needing to leave. I offered them nothing but honesty and the sort of criticism of my packing performance that you learn being raised like I was. Nothing I do is right and nothing can deflect criticism. I should just die for them...just kidding.
There is a reason why I use every tool I'm offered. I live in pain the likes I doubt either of them has ever felt possibly barring my mother going through labor pains. It takes practice to let the background pain go and save my breakthrough pain meds for the times when they are needed. My choice is to curl up into a literal ball and moan all day. This is very hard on the vocal cords as experience taught me.
Getting through the easiest of days is an accomplishment for me and for my readers in chronic pain. We have to ignore the unintentional advice of those who would just take handfuls of pills and kill their livers or those who say they would go insane. It's tough to stay sane in the commonly used sense although actual clinical sanity is stronger than you might think. In the commonly used sense, my parents drive me insane whenever they touch my life.
Getting through those easy days requires concentrating on the requirements of life as a chronic pain patient. We need to follow our prescribed medicinal routines. I actually have to use my tablet computer to track my one medication used once every three days or risk days like today. On top of all the wild pain from the wet weather outside, I felt this awful electrical tingling in my muscles. When I took the risk of not blocking it out, I realized it was the familiar sensation of not changing my patch on time. Oops. My bad. I paid for it.
One of the things we chronic pain patients need to do is get regular rest including more sleep than the average person. Knowing that my family may decide to contact me at any given moment deprives me of regular sleep. I find myself not wanting to let my mind drift because I find myself lingering on the insults my father delivers on a regular basis when he contacts me at all. Let's think of a recent insult from as recently as yesterday. "You just sat around in that hotel room and didn't think to come and clean up."
Okay. I was silent about this on the phone because I didn't think you had the lack of sense to say such a thing. The "pipe" burst on a Saturday afternoon. For days before that, I was so tormented by weather related pain that I got little useful rest. My chance to sleep was disturbed by a river flowing out the bathroom door and a collapsed ceiling downstairs. Nonetheless, Melissa and I reacted rationally. We called the insurance company to get our marching orders. Was it even safe to remain in the house?
The insurance company reacted rationally and sent out a water damage mitigation service. It was Service Master and I had seen their TV ads run before. I mention them by name here because their tech did every single thing he could to do his job and make things easier on Melissa and me. However, having a stranger in the house pulling down what was left of the first floor ceiling, running assorted drying equipment and making a hell of a lot of noise was traumatic. It would have been traumatizing to anyone which makes it 100 times worse for any chronic pain patient. Once again, I know this from experience obviously.
The insurance adjuster pulled through for us and got a very nice hotel room for us. It got upgraded to a suite by another very kind company. I got there Wednesday night and spent the rest of the week recovering. By the time we reached the weekend, I had recovered enough to worry. Yes, I recovered enough from the trauma to experience severe stress. Why had I not received any marching orders? On Monday, I called to ask for them but the adjuster was busy dealing with a tornado catastrophe. On Tuesday, I received a false alarm that sent me spiralling down into near collapse again but it seemed to work itself out.
That's when I got the truly bad news. My father was involved and calling the shots. It took my own father two days to return my phone call and that Thursday call involved no marching orders. On Friday, he called me to insult Melissa and me which I took in my usual silence. There were no practical instructions given. Was it safe to return home? I didn't know anything so please forgive my pathetic ignorance. On Monday, we managed to return home and get me through pain doc day which featured a freaky storm that took me from feeling good for me to almost landing on the floor. The medical staff was suitably freaked out since none of us looked out the window. We assumed it was still sunny. Regular readers will know what even the best pain doc appointments do to me.
I can't remember the exact day I got my marching orders but I started following them immediately. I was already sorting out and removing trash so that left me books to pack. I built a box that the contractor provided kindly and packed it. It took a lot out of me but I felt no sense of achievement. My father wanted the job done not done realistically. Thus, I tried to continue and mostly ended up on the floor a lot. Despite this, I continued my work.
That brings me to the final insult and the one that bothers me the most. "What's Melissa doing while she's off? So, she's working nine days straight with roving days off? That leaves time to get things done." I know you don't care but Melissa is sicker than she lets people see. Thankfully, she can sleep through almost anything so she gets enough rest to stay in the fight at work. She just got a top notch review from work and we're on a promotion track. (She doesn't mind when I say we despite the fact that she's the one doing all the work. I love that about her.) Due to her chronic and likely progressing illnesses, that leaves her little time or energy for anything else.
To paraphrase a movie, don't mess with her if you want to have a fight over toughness. She's far too good for you. Stick with me as your victim. Then again, my name is John Stapleford and I'm getting you out of my life. ("My name is Andrew Sheppard and I AM the President.") I just hope you don't send me to my grave first.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Exactly What You Need
I have written before about things that could be done to help me cope with my disabilities but I never thought things would get this exciting. Two Saturdays ago, I thought I heard a downpour in my sleep. Then, I looked up at the bright sunshine in my face and realized something was very wrong. I found the source of the flood and shut it off between the wall and the toilet. Crisis averted, right?
When I went downstairs, the ceiling was on the floor. A big piece of ceiling was where my head normally rests when I nap. I had decided to go to sleep in bed for once. I was joking about this being a good thing but you might call it a miracle. No one was hurt. The insurance company has done a good job helping me so far.
Unfortunately, five miserable days followed. I am badly affected by things like noise, stress and strangers around me. Water damage mitigation is all about those things. On the day when they finished, my insurance company got me out of the house and into a beautiful hotel room. This exceptional company will be the topic of another entry about those few companies that go beyond being merely handicap accessible.
Things seemed to be going well until I was notified that the man of my nightmares was in charge of the decisions concerning house repairs.
While there might be a certain degree of misunderstanding involved, the man holds me and my little family in contempt. Melissa and I realized that we wanted to live elsewhere. The man of my nightmares was only about third on our list of reasons why. The main reason is my health. I fall on the stairs at least once a day. Sooner or later, I will land on my head and die. The stairs are painful even when I don't fall.
We need a smaller place with reliable maintenance. I can't live here so I have to find a smaller place.
When I went downstairs, the ceiling was on the floor. A big piece of ceiling was where my head normally rests when I nap. I had decided to go to sleep in bed for once. I was joking about this being a good thing but you might call it a miracle. No one was hurt. The insurance company has done a good job helping me so far.
Unfortunately, five miserable days followed. I am badly affected by things like noise, stress and strangers around me. Water damage mitigation is all about those things. On the day when they finished, my insurance company got me out of the house and into a beautiful hotel room. This exceptional company will be the topic of another entry about those few companies that go beyond being merely handicap accessible.
Things seemed to be going well until I was notified that the man of my nightmares was in charge of the decisions concerning house repairs.
While there might be a certain degree of misunderstanding involved, the man holds me and my little family in contempt. Melissa and I realized that we wanted to live elsewhere. The man of my nightmares was only about third on our list of reasons why. The main reason is my health. I fall on the stairs at least once a day. Sooner or later, I will land on my head and die. The stairs are painful even when I don't fall.
We need a smaller place with reliable maintenance. I can't live here so I have to find a smaller place.
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