Sheepy

So, I have a new laptop because my previous laptop is nearly five years old. It still works and is a good machine, but it just isn't keeping up like it needs to in my busy school life. This one is the same brand, but a sleeker and faster model with three times the storage capacity on the hard drive. I barely took up an eighth of the space on the last one. I'm not sure what I will do with all the space on this one. I'll find out, I guess.

I went shopping tonight to buy fruits and veggies and generally better-for-me food. I'm hoping this works and I start to make better choices. I've never been good at tricking myself to eat better food, because I know I'm tricking myself, and I'm too smart to outsmart myself. It's very existential, these conversations I have with myself, "Hey, this is a better choice! We can freeze grapes and they taste just like healthy candy!" "Yeah? Healthy candy is an oxymoron and doesn't exist. Let's just go eat real candy and be happy." "Okay." That's how it goes. Currently, there are no candy or cookies or cake or any other tempting foods in my apartment. Well, unless you count the two month old package of Oreos I never ate. I keep forgetting to throw them out. Stale Oreos probably taste just like they sound.

I've been figuring out the points values on all the foods I ate today. I'm proud of myself, because I tracked it all in my little stupidsmartphone app they give you for free at WW if you sign up to pay all this money a month because it's the best value ever and you lose more weight if you do all this stuff they say to do. Yeah. I ate all my points, and only went over by 3. That's not so bad considering all the meals I ate today were restaurant food. And we get those extra 49 points per week. I'm still trying to figure out the points value for this post-nasal drip my allergies have turned on. I think I'll ask at my next meeting.

Now, it's bed time. Right after a hot and relaxing shower.

Something something bum bumm baduuum

I have the muddled words of some Rush song playing in my head. Really, it's just the music. I had an e-mail saying I better log into the blog or else. That was pretty scary. Or else. I have joined WW again, and the first meeting is on Wednesday. I say again, because I keep having to drop out of the meetings because of cost. I wish they were free. They helped me so much when I was on it regularly. I am determined, this time. Nothing is stopping me. Except maybe school. And homework. And work. And that piece of chocolate cake in my fridge. We'll see how it goes this time. I'm hoping I can make myself stay with it and pay for it monthly. It's crazy expensive, considering we just cancelled our cable because of money issues. The husband says to go for it though. He's mildly encouraging. Mostly he just says okay to whatever I say. He's very placating. It's bed time now.

"You Look Like a Dementor" And Other News From Grad School

A month and a half in to the first semester as a grad student, and I've been told I look like a Dementor. Interestingly enough, it was a compliment. So, there is that. One of my colleagues told me that, and the next day she gave me a teapot. Life is good.

Grad school is an interesting ride of exhaustion on top of the zombified roller coaster of academic success. And by academic success, I mean never sleeping again in my life. However, I am having a great time. I have wonderful students who thrill me to no end with their antics and attempts to pass this course. One of them has a wife who wants to invite me to dinner (!). I guess I'm doing something right. I love teaching these people. They're so eager to learn. I realize this may be the novelty of the job and that I happen to have exemplary students that other teachers don't have, but I still am loving it so far. It's challenging, but the looks on their faces when they get something right is just priceless. Occasionally, I reward them by speaking a phrase or two in Klingon. Yes, they really see that as a reward. There's also the occasional Fox in Socks reading if they come visit me in my office hours. And usually, I have students lined up.

As far as the coursework goes that I'm studying...well...it's ridiculous. I have to work hard for my grades now. Before, I only had to work semi-hard. However, it is paying off because I got a 98 on my first midterm! One of my presentations was done with "Syntax Cookies." What are those? Why, they're sugar cookies with syntax rules written out in frosting. Great learning tool. No, they weren't for children. They were for my fellow grad students. Everyone needs a pick-me-up now and then. If that comes in the form of a cookie with grammar rules written on it, so be it.

The husband and I made the move from one town to the next fairly uneventfully, and we've even settled in to a routine. The dogs have adjusted. He has adjusted. I've adjusted to being more busy than ever before. Life is actually pretty good right now. I'm off to bed, because I'm tired.

Obla-Di...

To borrow from The Beatles, "Life goes on." It does. Since I last posted I have been accepted to graduate school. I finished the 21-hour semester without dropping any classes. I got FIVE As. FIVE. And a B or two. But FIVE As. All I have to do now is get through this summer semester, which is almost over. Graduate with an undergrad degree. Find a place to live. Move to Lubbock. Go to Texas Tech. Also, I got a paid Teaching Assistant position which will waive most of my tuition! I'm flying pretty blindly here, having only been to Lubbock once in my life. But I've got some faith, and I'm fairly stubborn. So it'll work. It really will.

I'm off to school to work on my claymation movie. Yes. Claymation. It's one of my classes. I'm making a movie based off a few characters in a tabletop roleplaying game my husband runs semi-regularly. It involves a giraffe who has the mentality of a three year old and a guy wearing a tutu and a top hat...in a post apocalyptic West Texas. Fun.

Time Marches Onward

Regardless of the fact it's been nearly a year since I've written anything here, a lot has happened. In fact, it keeps happening. Constantly. I am currently curled in bed between my husband and a Great Dane. Little room for the Amazon.

I keep thinking that I'm a failure, in more ways than one. I am sitting here contemplating dropping a class. I hate dropping classes, but I am taking 21 hours this semester. This is a course load so heavy, I had to get permission. Under normal circumstances, I like to think that I could have pulled this off. As it stands, I've been so sick for two months that I've missed the vast majority of this class. This professor has been beyond kind and understanding in her dealings with me. I have it in my head that by asking to drop the class, I am abusing her kindness. Is that the case? Probably not, but I feel like it. I feel like a quitter. I've been on six different antibiotics since January. Six. FINALLY, I am seeing some relief from this plaguing upper respiratory infection. But, the damage has been done to my schoolwork. Especially in 7 classes. I've managed to keep up in all but this one class, despite my efforts. I get shot backward.

I've also been having a lot of the usual girl pains. A lot. Since Thanksgiving. Progressively worse. Speaking in fragments. The first part of the plaguing infection, I had a blood pressure scare. My BP was 208/110 at one point because of how much pain I was in, because high blood pressure runs in the family, and because I was on a really high dose of estrogen birth control pills. We've finally got that under control, sort of. It was scary. Very scary. Back to the pain. After a sonogram, it was determined that nothing life threatening was in my ovaries and/or uterus. Just the numerous cysts that are omnipresent with PCOS. So, my other option is surgery. It's been about four years since the last one I had to remove the endometriosis build-up. Yeah, I have a diagnosed history of endometriosis AND polycystic ovary syndrome. Lucky me, I get to have both, which is unusual because of the nature of the diseases. I can't afford the surgery, nor do I have time for the surgery. Right now, it's a matter of tolerating the pain for as long as I possibly can. Past August, because hopefully, I will graduate in August.

I'm hoping August. I have to have thirty hours between now and then. If I drop this one class, then I will be down three credit hours, but there is an online class I can substitue for it that is offered in the summer. I believe I am going to have to do that. Why do I feel like such a failure? Probably because I've been after a degree since 2002. Granted, I had a six year break before I went back. Regardless, I am here now and fighting tooth and nail for this degree so I can go on to make a better life for me, my husband, and whatever future children God will bless us with. Right now, though, it's so hard to see past the looming walls of deadlines and homework and doctors' visits and antibiotics and painkillers and financial difficulty. It is so very hard. Yet, here I am, fighting and struggling to keep my head above water with seemingly little support. I do have support, but it is often caried and unreliable. Occasionally, I just need a hug and a pat on the back with words of encouragement like, "You're doing well. Keep it up," instead of, "You need to get your homework done and you can't miss any more class. What are you doing? I'm hungry." That just drags me down more. In the wise words of Jackson Browne, "Do not confront me with my failures, for I have not forgotten them."

Birthday Blues

Well, the birthday wasn't really blue. In fact, it was one of the best birthdays I've ever had. The months of May and June were horrific, though. It started with the cyst rupture I had. A ticket for running a stop sign on the way to get my 90 year old Granny, who was running a temperature of 104, to the hospital. The bastard cop LAUGHED at me when I told him what was going on. My car breaks down...again. Get it fixed. But we get to start June off with a stroke for my father in law, complete with a week in the hospital and three weeks off work. Our newborn nephew has three holes in his heart that are not healing, so open heart surgery for the little one in a month or so. Gotta wait for his heart to get stronger. Three days after my birthday, my cousin died. I wasn't able to go to the funeral that was earlier this morning. Because, my car broke..again again. I think I cried more over missing the funeral and not being able to go support the rest of my family than I did about his actual death, which was pretty devastating, though not unexpected. He needed a lung transplant. This week I have been weepy and hormonal and pretty damn depressed. The birthday was a welcome distraction. My nephew and I shared a party at Gattiland, which really was fun. I made a French vanilla cake, from scratch.

I'm tired of crying, and tired of things going wrong. That's not even mentioning all the little things that happened: like the plumbing exploding on Father's Day when we had 15 people over. Or the fact I went through three new phones in a week because my body is magically charged and zaps the batteries.

I'm going to go play old school video games with my husband now.

Bleh

After 6 months, maybe I should update this thing. No one really reads it, and a lot of stupid things have happened that have kept me from wanting to post anything.

A month ago, I had a large cyst rupture. It was painful. I cried. I was sitting on the floor at my sister-in-law's house playing Call of Cthulhu.The room went dark briefly, I got tunnel-vision, all color drained from my face, and I started sobbing uncontrollably. That's always fun in a room full of people who are playing games. Went to the ER. What do they tell me? There's nothing we can or will do about it. They took some blood and a sonogram and sent me home with Tramadol. That's it They even said I didn't have a cyst rupture. Excuse me. I think I know what happened. A week later I was in another town for my bro's graduation. Thankfully, my GYN is in that town. I was still hurting and hurting unbearably. I went to the ER there, and ten hours plus a pelvic exam done atop an inverted bedpan later I was diagnosed with two pelvic infections and a ruptured cyst with a lot of fluid buildup. I stayed a few extra days to get a follow-up visit with my GYN.

Depressingly, she confirmed the cyst rupture. The fact I hadn't had a period since January, only one round of clomid, and no money, she gave me the progesterone to induce a period and put me back on birth control. It's the best decision for now, the birth control. Doesn't mean it hurts any less to know I have to go back on something that will prevent pregnancy even more than my body already does. Yeah, I know. I get that it helps the other hormones. I get that I need the periods. I get that it helps. But, at the same time...it hurts. Hopefully when I finish the undergrad degree and get a job with benefits, a job with a paycheck so that we aren't picking for food out of the frozen wasteland of the freezer space. Things will hopefully look up.

Summer school has been kicking my butt. Twelve credit hours. A graduate English class. With a 20 page paper. Yeah. I'm a masochist. My father-in-law had a stroke and was in the hospital for a week. It's been so crazy around here. He's better now, but still it was hard. He's still not cleared to go back to work. It's just rough. Sigh.

Here's hoping that things start to look up as we move forward.

She Wore a Pearl Necklace

On her ovaries. At least, that's what the sonogram picture looked like. Sparkly and round shiny cysts. That'll bring anyone down from a high. I thought that maybe I had ovulated or would ovulate or was maybe in the same neighborhood of ovulation. No, not even close. The sonogram yesterday was a heartbreaker, and yet, it may have provided some hope. A baseline has been established where there previously was none. I go back next week for a cycle day 20 sonogram. Gotta see how the follicles are moving along, if at all. They want to start me on Clomid. I was warned that most girls with PCOS do not respond to 50mg of Clomid at all. Then they up the dose to 100mg, then 150mg. After that I don't know what they do. I may turn into Attila the Hun, according to a friend of mine. Who knows. We'll see. I've a feeling I'm in for a lot of heartache before the final payoff gets here. I'm bracing for it as best I can while trying to remain optimistic about the whole ordeal. Tim and I are starting out on a very long and arduous, not to mention expensive, journey. Thoughts and prayers from anyone reading this will be appreciated more than you will ever know.
The HSG dye test is a must for me because of some idiotic malpractice of a surgeon years ago. There is scarring, and I have no idea if it's inside the tube or not. I'm praying it isn't. I can't run the risk of an ectopic pregnancy, nor does my doctor want to run that risk either. It's a very sticky and precarious situation I'm in, and one that sometimes fills me with despair. I am struggling to bring myself out of that pit and have faith and courage through all of this. 

Asphyxiation

Today has been rough. Today has been an emotional roller-coaster. I want babies. I called to pre-register for my dye x-ray on Monday, only to be told that I would have to have a bare minimum of $675 before they would do the test. I have no insurance, my husband is on disability, and my only source of income right now is whatever happens to be left over from my financial aid for school. I was told that we make too much money for financial assistance. Too much money at $700/month from disability. Now, I knew this wouldn't be an easy journey. I know I only have a short amount of time in which to bear children. I had hoped that we would have more income to pay for the tests and medicines and whatnot. I know that should I have a child we need more income. I KNOW all of this. Maybe I was holding out hope and faith that something would happen. Some miracle would take place. I'm in limbo right now. I feel as if my babies are being taken from me before I even have a chance to conceive them. I'm being robbed. Tomorrow when the nurse calls back to talk to me about sonograms and everything, I'm going to just have to tell her to call it off. To wait and see what's going on. I'm due for my annual exam next month. Can we just let it rest until then? Can we wait and see if the new year brings more hope and fortitude? I'm floundering around in an abyss of emotions. Hurt. Anxiety. Fear. Depression. Sadness. Anger. These are all rife within me, yet I still feel the need to fight, though I am unsure how.

Affording the sonograms, the tests, the medicines, the injections, the everything is out of the question right now. We barely have enough money to feed ourselves. What was wrong with me to think that maybe I could take care of a baby or two? The desire to have children and to love them and care for them is all encompassing. It surpasses my basic survival instincts, or at least, it seems to. I feel like I'm drowning in a never ending cycle of misery and despair and all because of money. People who say money can't buy everything never had to live without it. It can't buy joy, but it can buy food and shelter and clothing. It can buy doctors and medicine and health care. It can buy a car that won't break down if you look at it wrong. It can alleviate some stress. The stress of basic living and functioning. Without worry of where your next meal is coming from or whether or not your shoes will hold out the rest of the year, one can concentrate on other things. I'm so sick of this. This cycle of poverty and desperation. Of being told that there are programs to help, but they won't help. I've tried. I've tried them all. I'm sick of not being able to help myself. I'm going to school so that hopefully I can help myself in the future. But what happens to the present? I can't work and get a job with insurance while I'm in school. I did that before and wound up in the hospital from exhaustion and stress. I'm walking a razor thin line of dilemmas. "Go to school part time and work," was a suggestion. I lose a great chunk of my financial aid when I do that. Tried it last semester. I lost a lot of scholarship money because of it. The loans alone aren't enough to cover everything, even for part time.

All of this ties into my "What do I do now?" questions. Finish school to have a better future and be able to support the babies, but at the cost of possibly not being able to have them. I'm on a very tight timeline. I don't know. I can't even think coherently right now. All of the thoughts in my brain are jumping at me at once. I need to breathe and I can't. I need to sleep and I can't. Each thought is shouting at mee, "what are you going to do?! You have to pick one thing or the other and neither is guaranteed to help your situation any!" They taunt me and mock me. None of them offering any hope or suggestions of a way out. I've hit the very bottom. And I'm curled up crying.

Add to that, today my father-in-law was in a very nasty car wreck. He's okay. The car isn't. I went to pick him up and it was a mess. Traffic. The cars. Ambulances. Fire trucks. He was pretty shaken up, and got a ticket, but I'm so glad he's okay. I also think I somehow managed to kill all the fish in his fish tank while he's been gone at the hospital with the mother-in-law who had back surgery. I just tossed out a very large, very dead plecostomus. I don't know if I overfed them, underfed, them or what happened. I can't do anything right, it seems. 

I don't feel so good.

On almost all fronts. I'm nauseated and crampy from the progesterone. I can't control my moods very much. I've found myself sticking my foot in my mouth more often than not. This morning, I feel I hurt the feelings of my dad's fiancee something fierce. And what I said was not meant as offensive. In my mind and in my heart, I really and truly meant it as a compliment. See, she's pretty rockin'. But I was working on about an hour and a half of hormonal manic sleep in which I cried myself to the slumber. I had gotten up early to go with my parents-in-law to the hospital. MIL was having back surgery. So, coupled with the stress of that, the hormonal crappy sleep, the fact that I have mouth diarrhea sometimes, it was not a good morning. I've apologized profusely, especially when I sit and think about what I said. My rational side just screams at me, "You are such a bitch! How could you say something like that to the nice woman who makes your daddy so damn happy?" My emotional/hormonal side just sits in the corner rocking back and forth and muttering to herself, "I'm sorry. It was a nice thing to say. I meant it nice. I meant it to mean she was really awesome." Then the rocking turns into wracking sobs.  And this dialogue goes back and forth in my brain so much that I've worried myself sick over it. 

Okay, so even at 27, I'm new to this weird crappy hormonal thing. Sorta. It's never constant, the effects. I haven't ovulated in 14 years. I've had 6 years of birth control induced periods and the wanky PMS symptoms those give. I've been diagnosed and treated for severe Pre-menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I was told to quit taking the Prozac that helps that immensely. I haven't taken it in nearly 6 months. With my hormones being stuck in a semi-constant PMS state, I question the wisdom of the doctor on that decision. So, right now, I'm on my own in a weird hormonal wonderland of guilt, shame, misunderstandings and overall malfunction of, well, everything. In full-blown, actually-gonna-ovulate PMDD PMS. And I have final exams over the course of the next two days. The inability to focus on that is an incredible thorn in my side. I'm doing my best, but wish there were something that could help. I know, I know: "This, too, shall pass." Doesn't make it any easier.

The onset of increased hormone activity also increases my sensory perceptions. I hear everything. I smell everything. Couple that with the synesthetic goodness of tasting and seeing what I hear, well, I'm having a blast. A regular LSD-tripping blast. I've never done drugs of any kind, except the kind that are prescribed to me. A bad experience with hydrocodone right before my last surgery has left me scarred for narcotics for a long while. Regardless, the effects of the acid trip will often induce synesthesia in the individuals being affected. So, think of living with most forms of synesthesia as living with an acid trip. ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME. Normally it's not so bad, and I actually just go with the flow of things as they pass in and out of my psyche. Not when my hormones are significantly and exponentially (redundancy for the win) increased. At this point it's a wonder I'm not committed temporarily.