Well, I spent several days in the hospital last week. For what? You ask. Well, god only knows. The doctors sure don't. I was glad to have the morphine while I was there though and I feel better now except for the overwhelming frustration at the mysterious looming news that must be on the horizon. Things aren't ship shape at home either. Both of us having trouble coping with eachother's chronic conditions. What a state we are in.

On a brighter note, and really what I wanted to discuss, is the wonderous world as a three year old. The bright horizon and innocence. The children are so smart and have so many possibilites at this age...but are still remarkably set in their personalities. I swear to you that I can almost see one of my boys in his high school letterman jacket. He will most certainly be a jock. One of the girls is destined to become the president of mu alpha theta but a mere member of the more popular club, national honor society. Of course, you never know...but I am pretty sure I have those two pegged. This girl has very little interest in the dressing up and playing house that the rest of the girls fight over...she simply sits quietly and solves every puzzle that we have in the room. She plays with manipulatives...the more complex the better. And quietly too. You would hardly know she's there except that she does crave teacher attention. It is amazing that behaviors like that, the love for learning, start so long. I hope I have instilled that in my children but I suppose only time will tell. Working at the preschool has been enlightening though. Really a wonderful experience for all members of the family. It is great when something like that can just fall into place.

The other thing is, I played piano today and drew a picture. Imagine that. I have some ideas I would like to convey and I suppose that these steps...getting back into practice...would be the best steps toward trying to convey something. Even if my expression isn't great in the sense of some of the items I discussed in my last post, well, you only learn by trying, right? So I leave you with that. Building personal creativity is my current goal. To improve my "personhood" so to speak. Checking off boxes in my life's "to do" list. I mean, we only have one chance and I have a long list already at 28 that will most certainly grow longer. Interesting how so many of my friends are nervous about turning forty and here I am thinking that every day after 40 is a gift from god. Not that the days prior weren't but that you can't possibly deserve more than that...the day of surpassing my mother's lifespan is looming over the horizon as my milemarker...I guess that's why 30 isn't bothering me at all.

talented self-expression

My son is sobbing upstairs because my husband had the audacity to get angry with him for not going to sleep...it is now three hours past his bedtime. He is screaming/sobbing Maaa-meee Maaaaaaaaaah-meeeeeeeeeeeee in a gutteral whine that carries through the house with the incessant grinding quality of a migraine. One of those migraines that makes you just want to immerse yourself in darkness hidden smartly from the world crouched under a pillow. If I was only small enough to fit inside a pillow. I could pull my knees to my chest and cover my head with my arms so that I could spin safely through the chaos of my life. I drove home tonight thinking, wondering really, how is it that some people are so great at expressing themselves that you can literally feel like you crawled into their skin and can feel their pain? I am sure I've mentioned it before, a big song for me is My Immortal. I feel like I am inside the song when I listen to it. There are others though, different genres, that get to me: James Taylor's Fire and Rain; Cat Stevens's Father and Son; Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You; Tori Amos's China and Silent All These Years; Billy Joel's She's Always a Woman; Jewel's Foolish Games; and Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64. It is a rare day that I can listen to any of the above without finding the need to steady my breath from the onslaught of feeling. Techno/Trance Music is something very incredible to me as well...particularly with light effects and all. They go beyond simply affecting you intellectually but they alter your environment and physical experience to the point that you can feel separated from yourself. And I just wonder what it is that makes some people so tremendously wonderful at conveying and affecting emotion with such beauty and other people capable merely of feeling and experiencing the beauty but unable to express their own pain. I feel that if I had a talent, perhaps I would be able to better deal with my life. If I could harness my feelings and express them through some means of self expression (other than wordy emails and blog entries), maybe my shared experience would make someone else feel more connected and myself more connected as a result. Maybe it would serve as a release, the release that is missing. No matter how I try to talk about the things which bother me, they still linger, they are still here. Perhaps creating an experience that could be boxed up and shared would create a finality to the concept. If I could really create something that summed, for me, the experience of loving someone with every ounce of your being, knowing that they are troubled but loving them, wanting them, and then finding out that after they left you without looking back, to find out that they committed a hanus, unforgivable crime, and then knowing you still love this person...yea, if I could package that, express that in a way that others could see the beauty of the love and understand the total, disasterous, complete swan dive into sadness that my heart does every time I think of him...well, I suppose I would be talented if I could convey all of that through any media. Recently, I was so overwhelmed with pain that I just curled up as small as I could in my bed and sobbed and sobbed. I don't know how I ever got to sleep that night. I think I ended up only getting two hours of sleep though because, as you would expect, my daughter had a sixth sense about how late I was up and decided that I should arise equally early in the morning. Which leads me to the next item on my list for the day...sleep. I must get some. Maybe I will go looking for a hidden talent tomorrow...right after I do some chores...yea...right after...

watchful waiting

Well, the new birth control seemed to improve my mood but now I think it is just too much. I have been manic and getting aggressive and angry. "Chaos" reigns again. Aggravated. I'm not sure what to do about it. I am a little sick of going to the doctor. Between all of us, our family copays since January 1 have been about $500. That is only going to go up. I can't imagine what we would do without insurance. I'm not sure that all of the trips were worthwhile either.

Here I am...I still have abdominal pain...actually have pain on both sides now. No real reason for the pain on one side, only supposition that it was probably a cyst too. So now I am in "watchful waiting" mode. Watchful? What kind of strane thing is that. Not like you can see it...feel it burst maybe. No real risk to having it burst either. Infertility maybe but seeing as I already have two children, it isn't a terrible risk. I don't know. My main reason for agreeing to the watchful waiting mode rather than having it removed immediately is because I had just figured out the $500 number the night before and I didn't really feel like adding a hospital copay to that as well. I figured I would wait for 6 weeks and see what the next sonogram shows...then I'll decide. Every woman who I have talked to has told me that I am crazy and I should have it removed immediately. My mother-in-law (who doesn't typically work with much real information to support her claims) went on and on about how cysts will turn in to cancer if you don't have them removed. That, of course, was quite different from the information my gynecologist gave me.

Hmmm...

Watchful waiting. It is more like an endurance thing. It isn't terrible pain. More sore/discomfort. But to deal with it 24 hours a day for 6 more weeks...it really is quite annoying. And it makes me nervous. Is it getting bigger? Does it hurt more or less than it did yesterday? Or am I just tired from it hurting for so long? Does it really hurt that bad or is it just that I notice it hurting more? And why am I still getting sharp, stabbing pains on my other side? And what about my mood? What should I do? I don't want to go to any more doctors. I know that the increased dosage on my birth control is what affected my mood but I'm not interested in going to another doctor. I am fairly certain that he would just reduce my lexapro back to 10. I think I will just try that for a few days again. But if I get depressed again...my husband will kick my butt. I'm not in the mood for another lecture but I need to do something about my mood and it is expensive to go to the psychiatrist and it is difficult to get in to see him now that I am working. Oh well...time to ponder all of that again tomorrow.

I want to be a gynecologist

This seemed like a good place to vent...

So I go to the gynecologist who tells me that all of my pain is probably from a cyst that ruptured. This derived from the fact that there is a large cyst in the other ovary. I ask if it could possibly be from endometriosis since I was recently informed that my mother suffered from this (thanks for passing on the information dad). The doctor said yes but that it didn't really matter because the treatment for endometriosis is the same...birth control...and lots of it. My friend is going through menopause...and you know what they prescribed her? Well, birth control of course. And if the birth control isn't effective they will prescribe a different one (in any of the above cases) until said patient gets frustrated. Then the doctor will offer up a sure-fire way to resolve the issue...get rid of everything. Hysterectomy! Woohoo!

Do we really need to go to medical school for this? I could easily look at every woman who came through my door and tell her that for any given female malady...take birth control...oh, here let me experiment some more...take a different kind...this new kind...etc. Oh, nothing seems to work, darn, here, let me get paid a little more to remove it all. And once we do that? Hormone Replacement Therapy...read...birth control! What?!? Is this really all that modern medicine can offer us?!? What's worse is that I (along with millions of other women) am buying in to this. Crazy.

I think I could really handle this career. It pays well and I think I have the prescriptive remedies all figured out.

Yum.

The world looks so much sweeter when I am looking at it through a mudslide.

nothing much

Well, I'm depressed again. I was up...way up yesterday. Felt great, had a great day at work, enjoyed the kids, went to two friends houses after work, played with the kids outside in between the visits, painted and read with the kids...it was awesome. I want to cry today. I am beside myself. I could hardly bring myself to bathe the kids. I didn't want to read a story to my son and snapped at him for not picking out a book more quickly. The worst part? It is my fault. I decided that things were going so well and the extra half of a pill of lexapro tasted so awful because no matter what I do it dissolves in my mouth...I decided just to not take it. So, here I am...depressed. Hmmm.... didn't see that coming either...gotta wonder sometimes. My husband gave me a stern lecture. I would be laughing at myself if I wasn't holding back tears. And my head hurts. And for some reason I am developing large painful ovarian cysts. They thought it was my appendix at first. Going for a sono as soon as I can schedule one. I have been pretty sick for the last couple weeks. Another reason that I really didn't want that nasty taste in my mouth. Hopefully tomorrow goes better. I would love to have a drink but I am afraid to add another chemical to my body just now. I have been going to bed at about 8 for the last few weeks. Crazy. Very difficult to get things done when you sleep 11 hours a day :-) Anyway, I don't have much to say other than I am sad and frustrated. Waiting for another "up". I could really use one right now.

On the brighter side, my sister has finally decided to get some help. I hope things work out for her.

Oh, and I am NEVER going to eat at McDonalds again. Supersize me really is a good movie. My husband actually started worrying about what we feed our children. That takes it a step further than just working on changing his own habits. He wants to make sure that we all change our eating habits. I think he really took it to heart. This, along with the fact that he just found out that his weight is actually crushing his spine, was a much needed wake-up call. I hope it lasts this time. I have a lot of hope this time...I don't think it is misplaced.