This is me at age 11. This would be the last time I wore a fitting tank top or jeans until I became a mother because I was not prepared for men.
This week has been challenging. My family is transitioning back into roles that we used to do differently. Transitions are always difficult for me.
I’m now far more solo with cancer stuff and I’m still sick (and now have Covid) so my fear is something I have to barrel through. I am worn down, lonely, and tired of succeeding while looking at the same four walls and confused pets.
My war-torn kiddo is in her senior year of college & all of the feelings that go with school; graduation, her future, and — the mom she stopped her life for to make sure she could ONLY worry about life-saving things that were so obligatory — the drive to succeed was always force-felt by all.
A lot of cancer and ugly diagnoses made me have to barrel through feelings I hate but had to decide not to honor because I HAD to survive. Survival mode is very black & white.
That is placing me at risk of growing a callous to how difficult everyday life is for everyone else.
This is also very hypocritical of me because I know full well how difficult real, everyday life is; period.
That is something I need to put in check IMMEDIATELY because, before long; I’ll be the person who compares traumas like traumas are comparable.
Tonight, I have to power through Zyprexa 10 mg instead of Ativan 0.5 mg because the bottle looked similar in the dark. The one time, failed in the ER with severe neuroleptic symptoms that were so severe I don’t remember any of it or coming home, medication is swirling in me.
I feel the need to rip out IV’s not there and scream about how I said this would happen. I can’t really tolerate Compazine so this is hell I control here for peace alone.
I woke the next day of my last ER hellscape like it was a dream. A horrific, life changing dream. Imagine working up the nerve for an immediate therapy session for you and then throwing your spouse on with that one and another one to ensure all aspects of support are covered just to GO to the ER like her PCP said.
I just took the med that failed my last ER trip where I would have only been able to get a CT of the head. I don’t remember the scan and I’m claustrophobic as heck.
Tonight I took that med and the Ativan 0.5 mg my kind attending at Union Hospital prescribed for me and send a script for. She did it with the instructions never to touch the Zyprexa again. Doing so was my error, but here I am.
I decided to focus the side effects of Zyprexa with 50 mg Diphenhydramine and Ativan and push through the spasms and EPS since my airways are find and the chest spasms are more lateral than midline.
I organized my meds and documentation critical to me into the beautiful secretary my grandmother sat at. She would be proud. My organizational skills supersede most people I know.
When my daughter is anxious, she loses execution function so I’m organizing ways she and my support system (if we find one) can better assist me when my breathing changes from pain. As a nurse who was so organized in her med systems that other nurses eventually had to train with her, I’m good here.
God prepared me for this role as organized, sick person; person who can no longer type well on her phone and her manic typos take forever
When I’m anxious,” I need a job to do. Yesterday I was panicking and my daughter came up to me and held my face in her hands.
She said, “Mom. Mom, I have a job for you to do.”
I said “I can’t.”
“Mom, close your eyes. This job needs you to find the charger to my phone. In the drawer in the living room, where is that charger?”
“It’s in the green elongated Tupperware container I made because I loved that Home Edit show, but Joanna Gaines is better.” (I got them both at Target so my brain went to my happy place ♥️😆)
“Thanks!”
I snapped out almost immediately.
My daughter is amazing. My BP before was 233/166 at times that day so she saved her mom’s life. I’ll never disbelieve that. She probably has many times. She is my manic peace.
In her storm, I try to blaze through my meltdown and pivot to mom role. The mom mask is one that rarely slips off so I can assist her. I am sometimes the hole in the side of her Titanic. (Stupid Jack could have fit on the door, Rose!)
Thanks for reading this and sharing my story and maybe my GFM.
It’s been a week, let us tell you. After a CLUSTERFvCK of misdiagnoses and unnecessary pokes, thousands of dollars in co-pays we will have to deal with fighting through Cigna for imaging never even correctly ordered, here we are.
The video will say what happened at the most local hospital we barely trusted before. No idea how excruciatingly shameful that hospital made me feel. I was “full autistic,” and unable to do a darn thing to turn it off.
For hours, I was violently ill with tachycardia running into the 150’s for decent stretches of time. We can barely talk about it, minus shaking our heads and begging our beloved NP never to send anyone there again.
The photos of relief are relief because of a provider going above and beyond for her patient and former peer who she trusts. Even when I was in her office (see the picture with the visible spasms in my neck) and couldn’t open my eyes, had a HR of 157 from pain and the lights just being excruciatingly too bright; she remembers who I am and WAS before life shit on our chests in EVERY SINGLE CAPACITY in our house in 2020 and we’ve barely gotten to breathe.
I respect her and she values me for who I am when I’m more capable of serving others. She knows and she cares for a broken hearted former nurse who can’t do much now but cheer strangers on on social media. I so appreciate her. She’s wonderful and I now make sure she treats my husband and baby girl.
Christina Husemann, NP saved my husband and I from being forced to keep begging God to make it stop. Once I’m asking God if He is mad at me for not letting me breathe, literally; the pain is past the point of reckoning.
I have panic attacks now. That’s fairly new. It happens pretty easily so when your entire chest from your jaw to your iliac crest in your hip are locked, it pulls your diaphragm and pulls your obliques so tight that your gut motility stops. Add vomiting to esophageal rupture and it was more pain than 64 hours of labor with the cute girl I made.
This week, I’ve lived in the tub. Our water bill will be ridiculous and it will have to have been worth every overpriced penny. It was the only relief I got. After the bath, I’d sit in front of a space heater for several hours to keep my muscles hot. My fingers are raw from massaging myself. Timmy does it, but I’m SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better. My daughter is amazing, too. I digress …
I have internal and external whiplash, autism that a troll on social media keeps saying I’m lying about for some damn reason 😂 and the anterior part of my neck is so spastic, I can’t speak well because just the movement of my vocal chords triggers a ripple effect of tiny spasms that lock up entire muscle groups. It’s maddening.
My family grew together this week in spite of exhaustion, pain, failed Christmas breaks, rage, terror, prayer, my husband physically laying on top of my back for HOURS on Saturday because I couldn’t stop shaking from pain and fever.
I couldn’t take Propanolol safely so he, a man who barely breathes when he is tense, helped remind me that I DO know how to breathe and meditate very well. He carried me into the tub we didn’t have last year because our house drowned and we had no bathroom.
I asked him if God was mad at me, and his relatively agnostic heart told me my Father was not and He was there, too. He then put on my Bluetooth speaker so I could listen to Brandi Carlile sing to me that if I just layed in the tub and went somewhere else, I’d breathe soon without trying not to panic.
I don’t know why I wrote all that, but since I cannot speak very well; I use the one voice I continue to only have. I use social media to connect, find work, make friends, feel like I am saving lives again; there’s SO MANY reasons why I am everywhere.
Someone said I was attention seeking, once or 1,000,000 times. I told them I had notifications off on my phone for about a year and I missed two phone calls from the same person, ONLY. I don’t know what my voice out there is, but I know it matters because I have been, and will ALWAYS be an advocate. I’ll fail at doing it and I’ll say, “fvck,” too much.
It doesn’t hurt very much, however, when someone you know is invested in you being a more whole human says, “Oh my word. Do I ever fvcking love you?!” ♥️
Be kind. It’s an order from the “fake” Queen Buttercup.
Queen Buttercup Speaks 