mammogram monday

fell asleep with a headache, woke up with a headache. not too bad yet, refuse to call them migraines. how am I supposed to know trigger points or if it is the start of a migraine vs. a regular headache, this is all new to me.

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the house is cluttered, my room overflowing with trash and in disarray. i keep saying i will do it tomorrow when i don’t have a headache yet that day hasn’t come yet. it’s been about two weeks in a row. yes, I am seeing my doctor on monday after my mammogram and ultrasound, yippee.

English: Woman undergoing a mammogram of the right breast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

really looking forward to that day….to be over. how could it be another year? how many posts have i written about measuring the time going by so quickly by the time in the pink-purple room of the waiting room in the mammogram section. i should count them or maybe you can. they are all in this blog, i’m sure saying the same thing over and over like the warnings not to use deodorant or baby powder.

it’s always the same, not the outcome, but the process. I worry, I know everyone worries, most people can hide it, i can’t. there’s a shocker. i try to make light conversation and people seem so grateful. we are all the same in this room, in every mammogram room, we breathe the same nervous air, we give each other half smiles laden with fear, we wink, we nod. when someone leaves happily, there is always the thumbs up for them, spreading fear within.

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this time i will try to do mindful meditation, it helped during my dentist appointment and i didn’t need nitrous oxide, i was so proud of myself, the dentist so proud of me. will it help on monday? i have no idea but at least i know this much, i know it won’t hurt.

a universal feeling, women in their robes, waiting to be called in. we smile encouragingly to each other. one by one we go in, we leave, sometimes through different doors.

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*IF YOU DON’T SEE IMAGES, I DON’T EITHER. I ALREADY TOLD ZEMANTA/GETTY SUPPORT. I’M SO TIRED OF THIS HAPPENING.  THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

 

 

 

 

*Where MY Wild Things Are

mischievious max (Photo credit: massdistraction)

Just call me Max, because tonight I live in my own storybook. I’m in a cranky, bad mood and while no one sent me to my room, I almost wished they had. It started off with not knowing where my husband was, he was missing. He didn’t leave a note but he could have left one word on a napkin and that would have been fine. He also left our whining dog, prowling around the house while I was trying to rest and get a little sleep because I felt extra crummy. It wasn’t fair.

It was a bad day for Fibromyalgia and chronic pain, my jaw hurt so much, I had ear pain and TMJ and a headache and no one cared. I wasn’t able to sleep because my dog was annoying me. She wouldn’t even settle down on the bed, up and down, up and down she jumped and I was too tired and achy to get out of bed to put her in the crate. Friends tell me I’m in a Fibro Flare but all I know is that I feel worse, much worse. The weather gets damp and now it’s pouring buckets like my expectations and mood, dumping down on the roof, bypassing the dirty, leaf-filled gutters and ending up in big, thick, muddy puddles. I don’t have rain boots and I can’t play anyway anymore.

I ended up eating a tuna sandwich standing up, alone, in the kitchen, with one foot crossed over the other and I ate it so fast that I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I even gave the dog, “the whining one” some of it. Just as I am shoveling down the sandwich, Mr. Last Minute Ambulance Aider comes strolling in with his fake, perky voice and I feel even angrier. I march up the stairs with the rest of my crappy dinner and the dog follows me for food, not for compassion. My only hope at feeling better is getting to eat the two last bites of the brownies that we saved and I am NOT going to share.

The last two weeks haven’t been good at all, okay, they sucked.  I had the hospital procedure and the horrific mammogram both done this week and I know it’s over but maybe not over one hundred percent because now I’m fuming inside like a chimney with an angry orange fire.  A new friend that I met over the summer,” sisters in spirit,” never sent me a birthday card when I thought for sure she would and I miss not having a dad. I believe in the good in people and then they disappoint me. At the same time a new friend thinks I should self-publish my blogs into a book with photographs. What? It came out of left field for me too. I guess we need to learn about balance sometimes.

My daughter is away at college and is sick again and I hate that. I offer to come up there or asks if she wants to come home but she says “No” and I worry, no matter how old they are and then I say out loud ” I wish you weren’t in college so far away.” I probably should have kept my mouth shut too but I couldn’t.

I am going to sneak down to the kitchen and at the end, I do announce taking the two brownie bites because after all, my husband wasn’t exactly doing a bad thing. They didn’t even taste good. I know that this stupid, horrible, unjust day will look much brighter in the morning when the sun shines, when my jaw stops hurting, after a good night’s sleep. All I’ve been doing is whining, I guess my dog and I have a lot in common.

*Based on the enchanting book:Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Eating For This And That

English: Individually wrapped slices of American cheese. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In addition to eating for enjoyment, I’ve realized food choices reflect my mood. When I am nervous I can eat rapidly, going from one food to the other at an alarming rate: sweet, salty, sweet, salty, crunchy, soft, sweet, salty. When I am worried (I’m in that stage now) food has very little appeal to me and I need to force myself to eat.

I remember when my dad was in the hospital for quadruple by-pass heart surgery my mother complained to him that “your daughter has not eaten in three days.” Like he needed to hear that! But, I do remember having to force myself to take a bite of my age-old comfort food, bread, butter and Kraft’s American Cheese (individually wrapped.) My only beverage of choice was a Yoo-Hoo. To this day, if I can’t eat, which admittedly is rare, I will rely on the same things or scrambled eggs with a lightly toasted English muffin with butter and grape jelly (not jam) to put something in my stomach.

Comfort food. The things we had in our childhood that made us feel better. I had a friend whose comfort food was a hamburger. I found it strange but to her it was comforting, that is what her mother made her when she didn’t feel well. It was her version of my American cheese sandwich. What are some of your comfort foods? I’d love to hear about them and why. No judgment here. Love,food and comfort, they unite us all.

My Bad And My Apology

Mea culpa, mea culpa (Photo credit: VanessaO)

Yesterday I posted a blog (“Worried Sick-One Crazy Ass Blog Post”) that not only scared me but many of my followers and one in particular, a friend I haven’t met named Mike C. First, THANK YOU for caring.  I figured out exactly what happened and I was a complete jerk. I am on the medicine Synthroid for an underactive thyroid, (and an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis for which I take Synthroid. We were away for a few days at our daughter’s orientation to college and in the hotel I had no idea if I had taken my Synthroid in the middle of the night as I usually do at home. In the morning, when I woke up the pill was still there. I vaguely remember taking it in the middle of the night but…I wasn’t a hundred percent sure so I played doctor. Mea Culpa.

Stupid me, as it turns out TOOK IT…AGAIN, double the normal dose. I was off kilter all day and had no idea why. Yes, I was super-duper anxious and fearful but couldn’t imagine why everything felt so wrong and intense. I apologize to all of you who were concerned and I apologize for making you concerned. I only realized at the end of the night that was what happened and yes, I felt like the stupidest person on earth.

This dear, as yet unknown, Mike was worried about me. My friend Judith and Wendy and others were worried about me as well and I’m so sorry. I am not denying that I don’t get anxious at times, I do but yesterday was like an anxiety bonanza. I could have been the poster child for Buspar or Xanax or perhaps a new drug called “Scared-out-of-my-nutty-head.”. Also, while I feared (in my panic mode of all future imagined illnesses) I never said I felt the symptoms. It was an endocrine mind game that truly put me off my game and frankly I should have been given a “Do Not Stop Go” to the Emergency Room.

Thanks to Mike C. he reminded me of how I USED to be funny and I used to enjoy writing Pop Cop and being sarcastic and witty and sentimental and all the other things I used to write about. It’s been a very rough year, that I can’t deny. I’m trying to look forward to not let the major (and they were major) stressors of last year stay with me. I hope to get back to writing on a variety of topics too. And yes, hopefully I’ll be funny too.

Thank you readers, for caring. We just got home from our seven hour trip but I refused to rest until I sent this out to you. You don’t know how much your comments meant to me. I am fine, I do have meds and I do see a doctor so please don’t worry. Just give me a virtual kick in the pants and tell me, like you did yesterday. I love you all.

Again, I dearly apologize for causing anyone any stress, but I can’t tell you how touched I am that you cared enough to write me back.  Hugs, kisses, pizza with jelly (sorry, Mo),  orange carrot cake and honey baked corn bread with a glass of cold milk for us all. Cheers, to friendship!

Love, Laurie aka hibernationnow

If I could change my past…….I would:

*   have pushed through the fear and not let it stop me

*   have  FOUGHT for more attention

*   have  learned how to say “YES/”NO” earlier in life

*   not have been such a goody-goody

*   not worried about what everyone thought

*   made decisions quickly instead of a Libra’s wishy-washy ways

*   tried many new things, just because…..

*   not done what I knew I was “good at” or what was ” familiar”

*   not been so very afraid and worried all the time

*   not blame people for what they could not help

*   forgiven people faster and better

*   expressed my feelings instead of holding them in

*   taken many, many more chances