Trying Something New

February break, with the medical stuff and anxiety about it, felt like a Not Break. One reason is we usually try to go to Vermont for a few nights, and we didn't go anywhere but the hospital. There's something about physically taking a break from your surroundings that creates a space, a dividing line, between Normal Days and Vacation Days. 

So, we booked a few nights elsewhere for April Break. We are going to GLAMP! 

I am so excited because the idea of tent camping (or remember the Maine airb&b Bryce found that required canoeing in and out?) is at best anxiety-producing and at worst turning into a bear meal or a killer's victim. Or, as a friend recently said, "you have to love the outdoors enough to poop in a hole by a tree." I don't understand why when we have the advances of plumbing, electricity, and a locked door, I'd  want to "rough it."

But this, this is a geodesic dome with a bathroom, kitchenette, and thermostat, on a lake in the woods in nearby mountains. It's remote, cozy, quiet, and romantic. They have a gas fireplace in the dome and a fire pit and grill outside. And, it's got a zillion stars. 

It's something different, but not too scary. It sounds like all the best parts of being in the woods and being in a fancy hotel. I'm excited to try the least rugged camping ever. 

Good Healthcare Experience

I have sooo many stories about crappy healthcare experiences. Being unheard, dismissed, misdiagnosed. However, today, I have a good one to share! 

I am so tired of having to pee in a cup when having a procedure. It is very annoying to keep saying over and over "if it's for a pregnancy test, I DON'T HAVE A UTERUS!" What's the point of filling out patient paperwork over and over and over again if no one reads it? 

I am also tired of having pain dismissed. I had a terrible experience with a colonoscopy a few years ago where my IV failed and I was awake, sentient, and fully aware of what was going on. I said "OW!" and "I'M AWAKE!" and no one listened. I was left with a longer than usual recovery/ I had to take two additional days off due to horrid cramping and pain, and the place I'll never return to said, "It's always a possibility you'll need additional time after," which was infuriating because that was NEVER mentioned to me.

I can't tell you how many times I have been at a doctor's office, particularly related to lady bits, and been told "you'll feel some discomfort." THAT IS A BALDFACED LIE. "Discomfort" almost always means "pain." If you've never listened to the Serial Productions podcast "The Retrievals," or the follow up one about people who FELT their C-sections and were told they didn't, those are great and terrible examples of how women aren't listened to when it comes to pain. (Full disclosure, I listened to "The Retrievals" but couldn't bring myself to listen to the one about C-sections.) 

So, when I had my colonoscopy on Wednesday to see why I had such a scary experience in January, I was super duper vocal that I wanted to be sure I was knocked out. That my previous procedure was the stuff of butt nightmares. 

Two things happened: 

1) The nurse asked if there was any chance I could be pregnant, and when I said NO somewhat forcefully, she asked if I'd had a hysterectomy and when I said "YES!" with an inordinate amount of glee, she laughed. I do not at all regret my hysterectomy. Good riddance, no downsides (for me, anyway). 

2) When the anesthesiologist came over to talk with me, the same nurse said, "FYI, she had a bad experience last time and she wants to make sure she'll be out out." OMG, listened to AND affirmed! The anesthesiologist was delightful and assured me, "oh yes. You will not feel or remember a thing." He also didn't give me a hard time when I continued asking "are you sure I'll be out?" all the way up until I conked out, delightfully conscious-less for the whole thing. 

What a relief. The colonoscopy went well (they think it was a horrid bacterial infection that caused the initial episode) and I have been firmly un-traumatized. I also didn't have to pee in a cup. Wins all around! 

PS - If you go to get a colonoscopy, I highly recommend that you go somewhere that has an actual anesthesiologist. It wasn't general, it was sedation, but anesthesiologists know what they're doing and are absolute angels. 

Bookshop Cutie

The other weekend we went to my favorite bookshop, and just inside the door was an absolutely adorable tiny child. Maybe she was three? Brown curly hair, blue eyes, shoes that lit up. 

I was looking at the turnstile shelf of WhoHQ books (delightful little nonfiction books for kids that pack a lot of knowledge in a easy to read format), and she brought over a rainbow/animal board book that she liked. 

"Look! It's blue!" 

"Sure is, what do you see?" 

"A WHALE!" 

"Yep!"

And I kept shopping around. No joke, this child came and showed me every single book she picked up. She wanted me to know what she saw, what was on the page, that she was "reading." I think this little girl brought me no fewer than 7 books to check out with her. 

Her mom said, "I'm so sorry, feel free to ignore her, here you are trying to enjoy the bookstore!" 

I honestly didn't mind. She was adorable. 

I thought for a moment, maybe she senses that I'm a safe person! She knows I'm good with kids! 

Bryce kind of ruined that thought though when he told me in the car after that she came up to him once, and he just said "ah" and walked away. 

So, either she has terrible survival skills (clearly NO stranger danger at all), or I was the only stranger willing to entertain her show-and-tell. 

She even brought over a little stuffed spider that delighted her, and I agreed it was pretty much the only spider I could think was cute (although that's a lie, I find the little jumping spiders strangely adorable). 

I was just thinking, "aw, how nice that I'm having this interaction with a random toddler!" 

But then she got carted out of the store, wailing, "WAAAAAH, I POOOOOOOOPED! WAAAAH!" and I was like, yep, still enjoy tiny children in small doses. 

It was delightful while it lasted, and didn't make me feel sad at all (despite the little girl eerily resembling a child I could have had). 

Cranky Current Events

Current events lately are hideous. Sometimes there's just so much bad stuff that it feels like there will never be good news again. Not everything is super important, some things that come up are somewhat trivial in the grand scheme of things, but how things are presented in the news/media bothers me especially. There were three things that came up that bothered me in particular. 

First off, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are horrific (as are the narratives used to justify the murders), as are the killings of non-white people by ICE that are getting considerably less coverage -- Keith Porter, Parady La, Heber Sanchaz Dominguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos (to be honest, I didn't know there were so many until today, and I know nothing of the circumstances, which is also upsetting). The horror of the widely-available videos showing just how shocking these deaths are is devastating. 

It does bother me, though, that Renee Good's life is often presented as Mother first. She was a 37 year old mother. She was mother and a poet (in that order). It's especially tragic because they shot a mother.  Renee Good was many things, and mother was just one of them. Does it make my heart hurt to think of her young son who she'd just dropped off at school? Absolutely. Is it an important part of her? Absolutely. But to make it the FIRST thing, and a large reason why her death is so tragic... it makes me wonder if someone who was not a mother would garner as much attention, or sympathy. The tragedy is not what has me irritated, because it is a tragedy, it's the media's constant use of "mother" as "worthy." You rarely hear men described first as "father." It does happen, but women are more often pigeonholed into Mother First. 

Second, my guilty pleasure is my PEOPLE magazine. It comes in my mailbox and I enjoy all the shiny airbrushed people wearing fancy clothes (many of which I don't really know anymore). It helps me keep somewhat up to date with pop culture.  You know who loves a celebrity pregnancy/birth? PEOPLE. ESPECIALLY if it's an IVF success story, or "miracle" birth to a 50 year old person, or whatever. So I was super irritated to have this in my mailbox over the weekend: 

Arrrrgggghhhh. I mean, yay them, I'm so glad they had the baby they wanted so badly and after such difficult circumstances, but the phrase "miracle baby" should just be...disappeared. The idea of miracles granted haphazardly, which is quite painful for those who were skipped over for miracles, it just isn't great. Also, having several friends who never got a "rainbow baby" -- the term really makes it seem like that's the most likely outcome after a loss. These terms get bandied about, and they are of course not a problem for people who have experienced the miracle or the rainbow, but they highlight how invisible it can feel to be passed over and left in the dark. Or to find alternate rainbows that people don't always understand are just as meaningful. Sigh. 

Lastly, I was listening to the January 16th episode of the New York Times' The Daily podcast, "An I.V.F. Mix-Up and an Impossible Choice." It was absolutely gripping and emotional. Buuut, the following statements were made: 

"For millions of families, IVF is a modern medical miracle. But for a small number of parents, the largely unregulated field can go terribly wrong." (Michael Barbaro)

"It allows women to put off having kids until later in life. It allows women not to worry so much about the aging of their eggs. It allows people who have infertility for one reason or another, to conceive." (Sue Dominus)

So, the "terribly wrong" is swapped embryos. Not repeated failures, not I.V.F. not working, not reluctance to tell patients that it likely will never work for them. There is no mention of that at all. And sure, it "allows people who have infertility for one reason or another, to conceive" -- but it also fails those people just as much (if not more, because success rates are weird). And holy jeezum, to present it as a silver bullet for later childbearing (as if that's always a choice!) and not mention the insane cost, or toll on body and mind...it just screams irresponsible to me. 

The story is fascinating, and truly heart-wrenching, but... and here's a spoiler... 

The baby swap is possible. In part, because BOTH COUPLES WERE SUCCESSFUL IN THE SAME CYCLE. Also, they lived not too far from each other. And, they are all a part of their children's lives in this interesting extended family situation. 

But, um, THAT'S a miracle. Two sets of embryos, two cycles, two full-term pregnancies, to older moms. 

It wasn't presented that way, though. The facts behind the successful I.V.F. cycles were background, not the story. It drove me crazy enough to write The Daily an email, and to ask that they consider a story on women/couples who do I.V.F. and DON'T end up parents. I haven't gotten a response yet. Sigh. 

This might be a Negative Nancy post, but these are the things that make me cranky. They don't ruin my day like they might have before, but they do really hit a nerve for me on how we talk about parenthood and miracles. 

Stress and My Body

My body, like many bodies, tends to manifest stress. There is always something (shingles, autoimmune responses like the Scleritis of 2017), and this past week was yet another adventure. 

This school year is particularly stressful. There were a handful of really difficult situations that cropped up after we got back from break, and I felt ragged and worn down -- both physically and emotionally. 

I woke up Saturday morning with a migraine, and had breakfast then pretty much went back to bed, in the dark(ish). Later I had lunch with Bryce, and then my stomach started acting weird. 

My stomach is not a calm entity on a good day. Celiac disease makes my GI tract feel like an always-ticking time bomb, and I have suspected for a while that there could be something else going on because of flare-ups of severe gastrointestinal distress that seem to come out of nowhere. 

Well, I thought I had experienced severe gastrointestinal distress before, but Saturday evening was a whole new level. I had cramping. I had diarrhea. I felt like I was prepping for a colonoscopy. But then, there was blood. Not a little. A LOT. 

I have never experienced this before. And nope, didn't eat any beets in my lunch salad. It was not negligible. It was clearly, unmistakably bright red blood, as if I'd gotten my period in a deluge. 

It freaked me out. 

So, we arrived at the Emergency Department at 11:00 pm, and I was a mess. They put me on an IV. They gave me a small dose of morphine for the pain. And they did a CT scan with contrast dye. If you've never had that experience, when the dye goes in it is the WEIRDEST experience. You feel a heat run down your torso and pool in your pelvis, and it almost feels like you are going to pee yourself. 

It was colitis, unspecified type, possibly food poisoning (although I doubt it because I ate EXACTLY the same meals as Bryce 3x in a row and he was fine), but I had significant inflammation in a section of my colon and my blood markers for inflammation were elevated. I was super dehydrated, and felt completely wrung out. They sent us home at 4 am, and said to set up a colonoscopy so they can figure out what the heck is going on. 

Ooof. I felt like absolute hot garbage for the next several days. I called in for Monday, which was good because the gastroenterology department called and could see me Monday afternoon for a follow-up. They were amazing! I have a colonoscopy set for February 18th, and they put me on the waiting list to see if they can get me in sooner. No stress there, not knowing if I'll need to take two days in a row off at short notice and hope for a good sub. (Those of you not in teaching/never been in teaching, the worst part of being out as a teacher is sub plans. It is often far easier to just go in feeling crappy, unless obviously you are contagious. When I worked in industry, I never had to write up an account of every minute of my day so someone else could do it in my stead, and hope I didn't get a weirdo in who would traumatize my kids.)

February 18th is right in the middle of February break. So, I guess good thing we were behind in making our plans for a short getaway to our favorite place in Vermont, because that's clearly off the table. 

Monday night I had severe cramping again and had to call in, in tears, for a second day. There was no way I was going to be in some kind of bathroom disaster at school if I could help it (because I have not been able to help it before, and it is THE WORST). For the first time in a long, long time one of my sub plans was "watch a movie, any movie, preferably PIXAR." Oh, the shame! 

I did go to school Wednesday with my lunch box full of beige food (plain rotisserie chicken, GF crackers, a banana) and apparently I didn't look awesome because people kept saying "um, should you be here?" to which I said, "I give myself a B-, so yeah?" The truth was Wednesday was the dreaded NWEA testing, which had me running a session (hard to have a sub do) and we have over 2 hours scheduled for a test that on average takes my students 12-30 minutes, so to have a sub have so much unstructured time would be torture. We also had the Special Ed Department meeting that is the Annual Review season kick-off (all things IEP writing and meetings). Aaaand, I missed my kids, obviously, and didn't want to miss more time. One of the best things in teaching is when you come back after an absence and your kids surround you and yell "THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK! WE MISSED YOU!" which, no joke, happens. Except for the one time a student abjectly hated my guts and told me once, "remember when you were sick for a week? That was THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE" and then followed it up with some choice vocabulary that even I wouldn't use. Sigh, can't win them all. 

Then Wednesday afternoon our Winter Weather Advisory turned into a Winter Storm Warning, and everyone was abuzz with the glorious possibility of a snow day. We never get one unless it's a Winter Storm Warning, and it is rare that we have one of those that says travel will be treacherous and we DON'T get a snow day. We've had years with no snow days, but the weather patterns have been favorable lately! 

Lo and behold, at 10:00 at night, we got the call! (It was during the Verizon outage, so actually I got the email, not the call, and was doing the old-school look at the news website to see the school closings list, feverishly refreshing every minute or so). Snow days are another wonderful part of teaching -- an unexpected day to rest with ABSOLUTELY NO SUB PLANS. 

So I soaked up a free day to recuperate further, but then had a different GI problem. I was supposed to let the doctor know when I had a bowel movement, but since Sunday early morning... nothing. I sent a message asking when THAT became an issue given all the inflammation, and they said to get myself a super gross 10 oz bottle of magnesium citrate and down it. That stuff is supposed to liquefy your bowels a la colonoscopy prep, and you're supposed to be very near a toilet after taking it, because according to the label blast off should be within 30 minutes to 6 hours from guzzling. 

Can you guess what happened next? 

NOTHING. Absolutely no movement. Some upper abdominal cramping, but no being chained to the bathroom. Which is bad. Very bad. 

Ugh. I had to call in on Friday so I could, yet again, go to the Emergency Department for repeat imaging, to make sure I didn't have a blockage or obstruction of some sort. 

Good news: I was not nearly in as much pain or distress as last time. 

Bad news: they were surprisingly WAY busier during the day than the Saturday overnight, with tons of flu, a waiting-room-puker, multiple strokes, and ambulance arrivals. I was there for 8 hours. And, like over the weekend, I was masked up and threw all my clothes in the wash when I got home, and showered. NO FLU NO THANK YOU. 

Good news: My friend and Pilates instructor, who deals with inflammatory bowel disease, joined me for a few hours to help with asking questions.

The CT scan showed that the inflammation from the previous weekend had resolved, which was good. My bloodwork was back to normal. They were concerned because, as the Nurse Practitioner said, "you've had a lot of abdominal surgeries," and that can breed scar tissue in your abdomen. I never really considered all the gynecological stuff abdominal surgeries, so that was interesting to know. But, everything showed up normal; I was just stopped up. 

Apparently, after a scary and super traumatic GI event like the first ED visit, your nervous system can take over and say NOPE, WE ARE NOT DOING ANY OF THAT NONSENSE FOR A WHILE. There can be no physical blockage, but your system is just...stalled. 

So they sent me home with an enema. They actually wanted me to do it there, in an ED room, but the room had no bathroom. So either I was going to a) do it in a commode which is humiliating, gross, and  smelly (it's amazing what toilet water does to combat stench), or b) run to one of two PUBLIC bathrooms on either end of the ED. Both of which were occupied the last time I'd gone to pee. So, um, nope.

It worked. I will not share details of that experience, but I'm glad it worked because they said if it didn't, I could come to the Emergency Department AGAIN and they could do an intense warm milk and molasses enema.  Everything about that sounded terrible (and weirdly delicious for a hot half second). So grateful I didn't end up with an ass that smelled like snickerdoodles. 

I am on the mend, and slowly introducing non-beige foods into my diet. The doctors were glad my imaging was improved, but we still don't know WHY or WHAT was truly going on. I did share my horrible colonoscopy experience I had last time, because I definitely want to be out for the count, and this new practice was horrified. So I can rest assured that I will be loopy loo and not aware this time around. 

Several people said, "you need to figure out your stress management." I don't disagree, but I'm really not sure what I can do right now. I am working hard to leave at a somewhat reasonable time (I give myself one day a week to stay late), and I am doing my Pilates and my walking (when not in GI distress clearly), I'm taking time to read and do NYT games and puzzle, so I'm not really sure what else I could do. I guess I could take advantage of the treadmill that lives in the garage utility room (it's cozier than it sounds, I've avoided it because....spiders, but Bryce actually has it tricked out nicely) more. When it's cold and dark the walking tends to go by the wayside. 

As stressful as it is, I love my job, warts and all. So I guess I better figure out a way to have more balance, or my body will do it for me.

Goodbye, Glider

We found a home for the glider. It left the house last Friday while I was at school. 

Over the break we went to Goodwill to drop off a bunch of things from our cleanout, and decided to check out the furniture to see if the glider was in good enough condition. Um, it was apparently PRISTINE comparatively speaking -- no stains, no rips, not 70s plaid, just a few errant untrimmed strings from where the cats have naughtily used it as a scratching post. 

We left Goodwill and thought, I don't think that's the place for such an important piece of furniture. 

The thought of leaving this chair at Goodwill that was supposed to be where I bottle fed and rocked our mythical baby, a gift from Bryce's mom that we picked out together once upon a hopeful time...it just didn't sit right. Now, would it have been an amazing find for someone? Yes. Would we feel guilty? Also yes. 

There's another store, Once Upon A Child, that is a consignment shop. You can get clothes, strollers, pretty much anything you would need for a baby at really great prices, gently used. They also pay you on the spot if you bring things in and they accept them -- and they would take a glider. 

But then the thought of disassembling it into two pieces and bringing it to a place like that had too many echoes of peeling nursery decals off the wall and making a pile of nursery things by the door to be donated, and it didn't feel right either. I feel like any money we would get would have to be donated to a children's charity or domestic violence shelter, because that ALSO didn't feel right. 

Our wonderful cleaning lady has taken baby things before, as her sister had a baby recently and needed pretty much everything. So we thought, maybe we'll hang on to it just until she comes to see if she wants it. 

While I was at school, she saw the chair and said, "Oh wow, this is a really great chair! I will totally take this chair!" She was super appreciative and shooed Bryce away when he tried to help carry it down to her minivan. 

But that meant that it was gone before I got home. 

I was caught off guard by my reaction when Bryce told me on my way home from school that the glider was gone. I was glad, so glad, that it was going to someone who would appreciate it (and I suspect it may be her downtime chair, which is also joy-giving). But... it was also the last big thing that really had a specific purpose. The last "this was bought for a baby that never was, and we really can't see it without thinking about what it was meant for." 

I cried the rest of the way home. It made me (un)surprisingly sad. 

I am not sad about my life now. I am not sad that our house is not made for babies. I'm not going to lie, I sometimes have the guilty feeling that I'm grateful not to be raising a child in these times. It doesn't mean I didn't want it, desperately, at the time. It doesn't negate the love that I had for a nonexistent, completely elusive child. 

But there was something about that glider being gone that reopened a long-shiny scar, at least for a couple of hours. 

The room is so much more functional and roomy now that the glider isn't there anymore. I got an area rug that's coming this week to cozy it up a bit, and at some point Bryce will hang his guitars on the wall... and then there will be nothing recognizable left. I really wonder sometimes why we moved with it to the new house... but it really was a great chair. I'm glad someone is going to use it and enjoy it without the history and ghosts of what could have been.

A Hunt for Delights

In 2022, I read The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. It was my evangelical book of the year (I could not stop talking about it!). I reviewed it here, but basically he is a poet who decided that he was going to write about a delight a day, every day, starting on his birthday and ending on his next birthday. (He admits that was ambitious, he did skip a bunch of days throughout the year.) The other thing is that he had to handwrite the delights and write them quickly. 

I loved this book, and loved the concept behind the book even more. And, percolating in the back of my mind was an idea to use it in the classroom. 

So, in this new year, I decided to do two weeks of delights with my self contained 7th grade English class. I flagged some more appropriate "essayettes" as he calls them, and read the preface and two of the delights. There were so many I wanted to read, but they had too much swearing and a little sauciness that wouldn't be the best in the classroom. 

I found these little paperboard journals that I'd purchased for a club, and I had exactly the right amount to give one to each student, me, and the teacher's assistant. Today, we looked at some examples of my delights, and decorated the covers of the journals. Their homework was to brainstorm a list of possible delights to look for, knowing that sometimes delights find YOU. Tomorrow, we start a delight a day. 

My thought is that we all find a delight each day to chronicle on a page in the journal, and then we'll share our delights at the start of class. I'll weave some figurative language in for the describing, and then we'll pick a couple delights over the course of the two weeks to turn into more finished writing pieces through the editing and revising process. 

I am so stinking proud of this idea. The world is super yucky right now, and it's the dark, cold, dead of winter, so who couldn't use a hunt for and meditation on delights? 

The icicles and full moon made my bathroom window look like it had teeth.

.

The first batch of flower/seed catalogs to get me dreaming of spring.

Over the break we reorganized the coat closet, and these clear plastic drawer boxes brought me a tremendous amount of delight because now I can SEE everything! 

We reorganized the craft room/guest room/puzzle room/soon-to-be-musical-instrument room, and while the number of puzzles I have is kind of embarrassing, now all my supplies are in one place in the closet and it is soooooo satisfying to look at. 

This was NOT a delight when I saw it the first time, but it IS a delight because it's a giant plastic bee that Bryce loves to hide in weird places (in the bed, in the refrigerator, etc) and it's ridiculous childish fun.

And this oldie but goodie, a rogue pansy that sprouted form the gross pavers of our old house's stoop, that was perfectly in tandem with one of Ross Gay's delights about a flower growing up out of a curb.