the modernity ward

Y'all Are My Bible

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your stories. I am acutely aware of how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such incredible people. I was about to add "online and in real life" but it's all real life, isn't it? Thank you. I keep reading and re-reading every comment. Every single one means so much. Thank you.

And of course feel free to chime in if you haven't, or if you think of something else to say -- original post or here, doesn't matter. I will keep reading, again and always.

I Don't Wanna, But I'm Gonna

I really don't feel like writing this post. You'd think that that the opaque fog of self-loathing might prevent me from inflicting myself upon the internet, but you'd be dead wrong. I'm like a human whitehead of emotion, welling up into some hideous pustule that eventually breaks unbidden at some inopportune moment in front of a classroom of my social betters. 

That was disgusting and not just because of its vivid depiction of something that I know -- I know -- you watch YouTube videos of when there's nothing happening on Facebook. Look. I don't feel right in the head and I haven't for a while, and I suspect that's been obvious to everyone but me. It feels terribly indulgent to admit it, and I won't detail what exactly has been going on because frankly I feel like enough of a bore already, but suffice to say I have ups and downs and both of them are rather intense and I'm always unusually irritable with my children and hard on myself and doing weird behaviors that make me feel like I have a sense of control and when those get taken away -- if I miss a run or eat more than I intend to or go off-plan in any way -- I panic. 

And part of me is sitting in the back seat, arms folded, shaking my head, saying, look, dude. You are a decent worthwhile person and you are beautiful no matter what your body looks like and the world will not collapse if you miss a run and no matter what an ass you make of yourself people will tolerate you and some will even like you. I know all this, on some level. But logic is no match for the part of my brain that's on the fritz. The volume is turned way up on the ugly voices and I cannot make it stop. Either I hate myself and I'm wading through mud or I'm amazing and I start a million things and the engine is just revving revving revving and my brain won't stop shouting at me, either way, either ugliness or great ideas.

So I made an appointment. One of those first-step get-you-into-the-system appointments. You know what I imagine is going to happen? I will walk in there and describe what I'm experiencing and the effect it's having on my family and friends and the therapist or whoever will say: Yeah, you know what, you're just an asshole. Nothing you're describing is a real problem, and if you're letting minor shit like that affect the people you care about it's your own self-indulgence and weakness. Diagnosis DICK. Correction: Attention-seeking dick. You're making it all up. Now stop.

It's not an unreasonable expectation. I did once have a therapist do something like that. I was being treated for depression, oh, maybe 15 years ago I guess, and I told the therapist, hey, sometimes I'm really really depressed but sometimes it lifts and I feel soooo good, and I go out and I spend all my money and rack up the sex partners like you wouldn't believe and I make all kinds of great art and pretty much stop sleeping, and what's up with that, is that a problem?

And she told me: Oh, you're just feeling relieved not to be depressed. Let's not make a big deal out of that.

That was the last time I saw any therapist ever. My Zoloft ran out and I never refilled it. The end.

It terrifies me, the possibility that I will have to confront this instability as my own character flaw, pure failure. Every time I regain my footing a bit, in those little in-between times neither up nor down, I think, oh, that was all temporary, god, can you believe I was acting that way, what an asshole, what utter silliness. I won't do that again. So let's forget all about it and who wants ice cream?

But it is hurting my kids, when I can't stand to sit next to them on the sofa or pay attention to them, when I stare off into space instead of interacting, when I can't think two weeks into the future. It hurts my husband in ways innumerable. It hurts my friends. It hurts my sisters. I made everyone tell me, again and again: How it affects them. How it sucks, how it makes them uncomfortable, how sometimes they have to get a little distance from me. I make them tell me again and again so I don't minimize it away. I don't give a shit about myself -- I have lived in this mildly unpleasant purgatory like an ill-equipped waiting room, on and off, since I was very young -- but I do care about other people, and I don't want this for them. 

I hesitate to share this. Not only because of the aforementioned self-indulgence but because I am afraid that y'all, amazing as you are, will try to comfort me and I cannot handle it. A curt nod and a clap on the shoulder is about all I can take if you are inclined that way. Or better still: your own story.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for sharing it but hell, for some unfathomable reason I can't not.  

 

I Think "Desogen" Would Be a Pretty Name for a Girl

Like "Desiree" and "Imogen" together, no? 

No?

Well, eff off.

The RE said:

• Yeah, you still have PCOS
• That's nice that your internist wanted to take you off met but you're a lifer, baby
• Everything you're doing for yourself is awesome
• But we still need to keep you metabolically fit (hence the metformin)
• And it sure does look like the antiandrogenic effects of oral contraceptives would help you
• I mean we could control your bleeding with periodic applications of progesterone
• But that would just mask the underlying problems (at this point I swooned)
• So Desogen it is, darlin', and keep it up with the full dose of met since you tolerate it well.
• Great job with the diet and excercise, and
• See you in three months.

The difference between "We'll put you on the first pack of OCPs I put my hand on just to 'regulate your cycle', okay?" and "blah blah antiandrogenic effects blah double pronged approach metformin metabolism blah" is HUGE. It was so nice to talk to a professional who actually knew his shit and wanted the underlying metabolism and hormone profile to make sense and wasn't just interested in making the bleeding all orderly-like.

Also I got Mad Props (tm) for my attention to the specifics of my diet. No sugar, no flour, no omega 6 oils, lots of protein and vegetables and omega 3s. I was a little unnerved by the resident's shock at my lack of facial hair -- I mean, the dudes don't always get that ladies wax and laser and bleach, but I would expect a woman to have a better sense of what was possible in terms of hiding that stuff -- but I explained about how long I'd been managing my issues and she got it. 

So there you have it. Metformin and birth control. I'm a lifer. It ain't the worst thing. 

 

The Best Old Lady in the Grocery Store

Tuesday morning shopping with a suspiciously well-behaved Daphne. That child, accidental murderer of poultry, driver-crazy of sisters and mothers and fathers, unstoppable irritating machine -- in short, a totally ordinary three-year-old -- was being charming, responsible with her miniature shopping cart, chatty with strangers. 

A grandma-aged woman said, "Oh, how old are you, darlin'? You must be four!"

"I turned fwee for my birfday," Daphne informed her, holding up three fingers.

"My goodness," said the woman, turning to me. "She's very tall for her age!" I agreed.

"And she doesn't act like a three-year-old! Why, that was the only time I really hated being a mother -- when my children were three. Three and thirteen. Those were the only times I just didn't want to do it any more."

I assured her that today's behavior was unusual, that I knew exactly what she meant, and that I was grateful that our good day could be shared with the shopping public. And off we went to the dairy case. I said a little prayer in my head, that her kids take good care of her as she ages. 

May I grow up to be that lady in a grocery store someday: Complimentary, kind, admiring, and unabashedly honest about the reality of parenting little children. 

String of Pearls

Let's get a little help from Glenn Miller, mmkay?

Sing along, now:

Baby, here's a five-and-dime

Baby, now's about the time 

For a string of pearls a la YOUR BROKEN OVARIES THAT WILL NEVER WORK RIGHT EVER NO MATTER WHAT YOU EAT AND HOW FAR YOU RUN AND HOW MANY SUPPLEMENTS YOU TAKE AND HOW WELL YOU MANAGE YOUR INSULIN LEVELS DOOT DOOT DOOOO BAAAAHHHH

So. I went in for my wanding this morning, at a place so calming, so elegant, so womanly that I actually had to check myself for a leather-and-beaten-silver bracelet reading LIVE-LAUGH-LOVE upon leaving. I mean, there was a swoopy-lined abstract picture of a woman on the glass door! And a dish of tiny dark chocolate bars at reception! 

More important, there was a changing room with a reed diffuser, you know, so you can get "waist-down" before the wanding in peace and without having to smell your own chooch, which you and the tech both will spend the next twenty minutes you don't actually have. Oh oh but MORE important than that is a giant monitor on the wall so you can SEE what your wanding reveals, without having to crane your neck or rely on the dismayed expression of the ultrasound tech.

Now. As any of you who have endured a wanding can testify, the tech is not allowed to say what's popping up on the screen. Dead baby? Set of car keys? None of your business, lady. That's for the doctor to interpret and explain to your stupid little layperson self. 

But I have spent enough time with a plastic rod in my cooch to know an ovary when I see one, and more to the point to know an ovary riddled with cysts. (Not mine, but exactly like mine.) Of which I sport two -- and I counted at least six or seven cysts per ovary. That's many moons worth of not-quite-ovulatory cycles, of eggs insufficiently fired to burst through a tough-as-hide thecal layer into the vastness of my inner space. 

In other words: that IUD was pretty much just for fun, as no actual babies were in danger of being conceived.

Also, now I understand why my ovaries hurt so much, midcycle. And why, after a while, there ceased to be a midcycle, or a cycle at all.

All my health was an illusion. I don't know if it was the reduced dose of metformin that set the cyst formation in motion -- allowing enough of a hormone surge for follicle development but not good follicle development -- or what. I do know that I'm going to see a reproductive endocrinologist for follow-up, because nobody without a bunch of specialized knowledge is getting anywhere near me with a birth control prescription. I am Out of Your Ken, internist and certified nurse-midwife. I am a Special Case -- in that I am not satisfied to mask symptoms and call it good, in that I am not willing to let things slide now that my fertility is not of paramount concern. 

And also in that I am a total dick about this stuff, so you're probably just delighted to pass me off to someone else.

Hey but I didn't see any fibroids in there so yaaaay. Then again, I might not know a fibroid on ultrasound if it bit me in the myometrium. 

In any event: I am angry and disheartened and frustrated and smugly satisfied that I knew what I'd see and then I did in fact see it. I'm girding my loins (because that's where the action is) for the next round of masterminding good health care aimed at protecting not my fertility but my overall health, and wishing like heck we could get this all settled out before school starts. 

 

 

Beclam-ed

The verdict is:

Huh. Dunno. Go get an ultrasound Monday and report back.

OH HOW I HAVE MISSED THIS! :clasps hands beneath chin:

Ovaries and uterus both feel a little enlarged. My bet is that my ovaries are cystic as all hell, string-of-pearls style, and maybe there's a little fibroid or two in the trunk? Maybe not? But definitely the ovaries. 

Anyway I Said No To Drugs (meaning birth control pills), I resolved to look up that coil thingy they jam in your fallopian tubes after your child murders the family pet and you decide you don't need any more kids, and for good measure we dethroned the Tiny Copper Scarecrow. I got to look at it, all bloody and sinister on a paper towel. Don't let the labia hit you on the way out, asshole. Because that would hurt. Me.

I'm flying without a parachute now! Whee. 

 

Y'all.

The time has come for me to go to the midwives and find out what in the hell is wrong with my Mystical Lady Workings. What do you think they'll find in there? Fibroids? Bottlecaps? Pennies? Some old Doublemint gum with little bits of cigarette stuck to it? The IUD?

Feel free to organize a betting pool.

Meanwhile: we have a new serviceberry tree planted atop a dead chicken. Daphne does, as predicted, seem to understand that Something Serious Happened. And I am fine. Thank you.

Crotch Report upon my return. I know, I know. It's hard to wait but becalm yourselves while, I, um, be-clam myself?

Oh god I don't have time to make that work but there's something there, right?

Awful

I went out to lock up the chickens after the girls were off to bed and could only find three of the four.

I hunted under the porch, in the nesting boxes, the shed -- nowhere. Chickie Emma, the smallest and nicest of our hens, a little blue-egg-laying Araucana, was not to be found.

Then I noticed the 25-gallon plastic tub turned upside down.

I lifted it.

Underneath was a very dead Chickie Emma, along with a final blue egg.

I knew immediately what had happened: Daphne, my holy terror of a three-year-old, was the rooster of the flock, and when she came walking all the chickens froze in their tracks, let her pick them up, docile for only her. She also, of late, had been experimenting with trapping them in the shed, once even hiding two under the plastic turtle-shell lid of her sandbox. I spoke seriously then, explained that they would die, sent her to her room.

But I must not have been watching closely enough early this morning. In fact I know I wasn't. And then we left the house and were gone most of the day. The hot, sunny day. That poor little hen. What a horrible way to die. Not the humane death I had envisioned for the animals under my care. No, a hot, unpleasant, miserable, protracted death for a sweet little creature I loved best -- we all loved best -- of our chickens.

I dug a hole in the dirt just to do something with my rage. Daphne was asleep already but Sophia wandered out. I showed her Emma's stiff body, let her pet the chicken's feathers, explained what had happened. She was unfazed, and tried to comfort me by suggesting we get another chicken.

I didn't bury Emma. I put her in a trash bag in the freezer. When Daphne wakes up in the morning I will show her, and we will talk about what happened, and we will bury Emma in the yard together. We will plant a tree over the spot. ("An apple tree?" asked Sophia. "With branches to climb on and a tire swing?" [She's been agitating for one lately.])

Not that I expect this to change Daphne's behavior. She's three. Innocent, in that her brain isn't capable of making the connection between her action and the chicken's death, or for that matter of stopping the action even if she DID understand that at the very least she would be in trouble.

Obviously there's one person at fault and that's me. I didn't see what happened, I didn't watch closely enough. Worse still, I was congratulating myself all the while for providing a little wildness for my girls, an unfettered life in the confines of the backyard, with dirt and animals and bare feet and tree climbing.

That wild dirty-footed life includes death as well. Sometimes at the hands of a child.

I'm so sad for that little chicken. 

Twang (Another Insufferable Running Post)

I had a "long" run -- 7.4 miles, my longest in some months as I train for a half-marathon at the end of the month -- and sure enough, that IT band started hurting again, along with some grabbing pains in the outside of my calf. Same old same old. I figured I'd back off the running, cross train, and know that I could, in a pinch, run 13.1 miles without having run more than 7 in the weeks previous and just pay the price in a couple weeks of discomfort.

It did seem a little unfair, though. Here I'd spent weeks retraining my muscles to work together in the right order, getting so much stronger, and then same old pain. And then I got to thinking about my weird balance problems, the proprioception that never quite recovered after foot surgery, and something my physical therapist said about putting her balance-problem patients in Vibram FiveFingers so they could really squat down on their heels.

Which is hard for me to do in these super built-up stability running shoes with their big old heels.

So I started doing kettlebells (which require balance and core stability) barefoot and it worked pretty well. Started doing my physical therapy balance stuff without my shoes. 

And then this morning I took the kids down to the park and I took off my shoes and I walked a bit -- and then broke into a run.

I felt a definite "twang" right where my IT band crosses a knobby bone on the outside of my knee (the top of where I felt pain) -- like a too-tight guitar string plucked really hard -- and then? 

Nothing.

No pain. I could still feel the muscle soreness along the outside of the calf, but as I jogged and walked around the mile loop, barefoot on asphalt path and often in the grass alongside the trail, I felt no new pain at all, no increase in pain anywhere.

It blew my mind. I have problem feet: frozen joints with arthritis, flat loose arches (although they really aren't any more -- with running they have gotten strong and as I point my feet forward instead of out they seem to actually be improving in their arch-ness). I should need the most built-up shoe they make, right? 

Or maybe not. Maybe I can (slooooowly) transition to running in something with no stability heel, no arch support, no padding. Maybe that'll make some new awful thing happen, who knows. I'll let you know.

I'm still kind of in shock from the idea.

 

 

Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Jo

First: My Paragard IUD that I loved so well a year ago, I'm not so sure I love it. For the past about six months I've developed midcycle spotting that turned into midcycle bleeding and then there was no midcycle anymore. Past two months I've had near constant at least spotting, often actual bleeding, enough to need something not marked "light days." With peaks around periods but still, I never don't have to deal with it.

Second: My midwives said, okay, come in, we'll talk about other options plus we need to evaluate you for fibroids, because duh.

Third: My mom had fibroids. For which the treatment was total hysterectomy. 

Fourth: I have been tapering my metformin dose. Maybe this bleeding is not related to the IUD or to any fibroids, but to hormones that are still messed up no matter how much I exercise or how well I eat. Maybe the PCOS is going to get me no matter what I do.

Fifth: After considering the previous, I very much hope it's the IUD. I would even settle for fibroids. 

Sixth: I mean, I would happily raise my metformin dose again if I needed to. I don't have any side effects or long-term concerns about it but...there was something very rewarding about believing I'd healed something about myself. But, hey, maybe not. Maybe the trashed ovaries always win.