Had my spinal block done today. This will not be repeated, even if it works. I think. Depends on how well it works. If it really really works, I won’t need to consider another.
Got up a little after 6 am. Pitch black, 0.4 degrees Celsius outside, car iced over, coffee timer set just that little bit too late for it to be done brewing when I got downstairs. I got hubby up at the appropriate time, started the car to let it warm up (how come none of my neighbours know to do this!?!), and when ready I drove us. Normally hubby drives when it’s both of us, because he usually knows the local roads better. But I know this route quite well, and I’ve got more experience driving in snow and ice. Especially in this car, lately, with two certified-by-a-mechanic bald front tires.
Plus, a challenging drive would keep my mind off what was coming. Plus, if they screwed it up and paralysed me, at least I got to drive one last time (I didn’t tell hubby that last line of thinking).
Drive was a doddle. We got there 20 mins early and checked in via the A&E desk. This procedure kind of worried me until I realised the admissions desk isn’t manned yet at 7:30 am. The duty nurse was related to my hubby, and she realised it just by my name and address even though I didn’t know her myself. Ah, Ireland.
Went to the second floor, no – first floor, ah whatever. We went up one flight of stairs to the Orthopaedics ward. Checked in and began to wait.
The waiting room. On my side of the room there were two more of the small chairs and two more of the orthopaedic ones. I was in an ortho chair by the window and the heater. The window was open a bit, but the heat was also blasting and I had to take off my medium-weight jacket. The lady who came in a bit later and sat in the small chair pictured looked at me like I was insane as she huddled deeper into her huge parka.
Someone came in and asked who was there for ‘injectons’. I wasn’t sure this was me as I hadn’t been calling it anything so childish. I started to ask what that meant and Inuit Lady tried to queue jump me. Ah, no. So I followed him into another room where I had to sign the consent form. I tried to ask some questions and he kept pointing at the signature line while I was trying to read what the hell I was signing. He, and the other men who kept coming in and out of the room, were very hard to understand, unfortunately. They weren’t Irish – well, neither am I. He also told me that they don’t start until 9, and apparently it’s a two-minute procedure. Steroid and local anaesthetic. Back to the waiting room to play a game on the iPad for a bit.
Once in the six bed ward (right across the hall from that open waiting room door), a fabulous nurse told me it wouldn’t be long and asked a student to take my vitals and history. Standard stuff, but the poor student was very, very new. Three minutes to put on the wrist band, and I finally had to tell her how to do it. Ten minutes of staring at the list of questions she was meant to ask me, instead of asking. Poor kid. She was really good at taking blood pressure, though – was the only one who didn’t make my arm go numb. And she had a great laugh, when I joked around to ease her obvious tension. I know how it feels to be tossed into the deep end at a new job.
Then I had to pee in a cup. Guess what they are testing for? It would be a Christmas miracle if I was pregnant, it would be THAT impossible. When I set up a ruckus of a sort, the nurse told me everyone under 55 and female has to have a pee test. Even if they’ve had a hysterectomy. No lie. Humiliation as pointless practice. Should have told her that the 6 X-rays the dentist took of me recently didn’t require a piss test. Ok pet peeve of mine, I suppose. I peed standing up and hope I dripped on the floor. I was already in the classic hospital Johnny robe – but with a twist. I wasn’t allowed to go bareback or wear my own undies. I had to wear these:
Oh, feelin’ so very human now. The indignities! But it was about to get worse.
They told me to get into the bed and covered me up. This is why last Tuesday’s appointment was cancelled: the beds were all full. And yes, on our walk up to the orthopaedics ward we passed someone asleep on a hospital bed. In the hall. Ah, Ireland. Hubby came in and sat next to me for a few minutes, then two people came in, put up the cotsides, and jacked up the whole bed to move the lot elsewhere. I asked if I could leave on my glasses, as I had already taken out my tragus piercing and removed my wedding ring. Taping them to me was much worse than removal. I was laughing and joking with the bed pushers about being able to see their smiling faces and the great scenery I’d enjoy as they wheeled me away into what was signposted as the operating theatre.
The man (main bed-pusher and sayer of ‘excuse us’ on the trip) left as soon as I was parked in what looked to me like a bigger communal ward like the one I was on already. The woman, who turned out to be my OR nurse, immediately prepped me with no chance to get my bearings or look around, glasses notwithstanding. On to my belly; never easy and really uncomfortable for me. Robe pulled up to my middle back, and those fashion statement paper undies raked down below my butt-cheeks! I was mentally saying what the hell? but maybe I said it out loud, too, as she said, ‘I know! But it has to be done!’ as she threw something heavy over my legs and back and a lighter something over my protruding buttocks.
Then I was left for a bit as she pottered around with what sounded like a lot of equipment but no other patients. I tried to get comfortable, but I can’t lie face down and use a pillow under my head, it hurts. And ever try to wear glasses while one cheek is flat on a firm surface, or even a pillow? Doesn’t work. With 4, maybe 5 inches of pillow jammed upright above my head, my toes were touching the footboard. I kind of just splayed there and tried to relax and listen. I couldn’t see a thing.
Eventually, not too long, I hear the same difficult accents walking into the room. About four of them. Ah, the ‘surgeons.’ All from someplace where the sun is a lot hotter than it is in Ireland, from the genetic markers and accents I could observe. This does not mean I’m racist. I didn’t roll my eyes in return at Inuit Lady when she scoffed at the surgeons’ accents and skin colour back in the waiting room. It’s just an observation. The OR nurse was Irish, I noticed that too. And I noticed one other North American accent coming from a curtained-off section back on the first ward, too. But I still worry about my potential quality of treatment, especially after recent events, because when I moved here, I put this on my permanent health record:
Observational ass-covering is done now. Physical ass still feeling very exposed.
I think they did the same procedure to someone behind me (everyone was behind me!) and to my right. They never made a sound. It took…two minutes. Then it was my turn. Some chat from the main dude who said hello and pronounced my name right and how he needed a stool to sit on. Then the covers were off my arse and I had five strangers (approximately, I couldn’t see) looking at my pasty white, surely pimply, possibly hairy, definitely flabby, 41-year old ass.
And then someone started poking at my tailbone. I didn’t realise it would be that low. Yes it was. Some poking to find the right place, some cold rubbing alcohol and the distinct, unnerving feeling that the cotton or whatever it was that was soaked in alcohol being sort of …poked… lower down into my crack to keep it out of the way. Maybe my crotch was smelly, too. Great, I’ve only just thought of that.
Suddenly the nurse is telling me to take a deep breath ‘down to my belly’ and before I could even decide if I’d done that or not, the invisible head surgeon shoves a needle into my tailbone.
It turns out that when someone does this to me, I say “fuck!”
My face twisted down and my forehead dug into the mattress as I tried to concentrate on my breathing. I know this helps; it serves as a nice distraction. But other body parts moved without my volition. My right leg stayed flat, front of my ankle still touching the mattress. But my left foot popped right up, heel to the ceiling and toes digging in to the sheets for purchase. This is my ‘bad leg’ where all the weird nerve pain is, despite the disk bulge going to the right. This leg, with its weird nerve thing, is the entire reason I now have a perfect stranger shoving a needle in a very dangerous and painful part of my anatomy. And whispering to the rest of the doctors. I can’t hear. I don’t like that.
Then it is over. A big plaster/bandage is stuck on my coccyx and he gets off his stool to leave, everyone else presumably having been made to stand.
I now realise that I can drop the comedy façade and I start to cry and hate myself for it. It’s over, and I’ve been smiling and making jokes and after all the stress and worry (since at least May) and the physical embarrassment that I had to pretend didn’t matter, and the worry over having someone mess with my spine! my spine! they stuck a needle and then drugs in it! and the freaking PAIN being way worse than I could imagine… I knew I could come down off the adrenaline high and stop smiling but of course I still had to keep saying I was fine, I was fine, when I wasn’t, because the ways in which I was not fine were the ways that nothing anyone in an operating room could repair.
I was told I could move into any position I wanted, and after wetting the sheet under my face for a bit I curled on my left, my favourite position. I was left alone, mercifully. The nurse – being the only one still around – knew her shit and knew exactly what I needed – to be left alone to get myself under control. Then they wheeled me back to the six-bed ward, herself and the same man from before. I went onto my back as it seemed to pathetic to be in fetal position in the hallways. The man made eye contact and winked at me in a misguided effort when he saw the change in my attitude, and I started to cry again. Ugh.
Back in my first ward and hubby isn’t there waiting. Once I’m parked back up he comes in, saying that the other ladies in the room were having sponge baths and he was either asked to leave or felt that he should. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t tell him what I was feeling. It really upset me to have to look up at him with wet eyes and know I couldn’t talk or I would bawl. I let him leave again as the bathing was still going on and I knew he was right across the hall if I needed him. He’s learning most of this story for the first time here. I’ve apologised to him for being this way, and he understands. Ah, my lovely Irishman. Thank you, sweetheart.
My ass is still numb 13 hours later. Well, half my ass is. It turns out only the right cheek got any of the anaesthetic. Might explain the left leg having a freak out? I’m in no pain, other than the usual weird leg nerve thing. That will take a few days (if ever) to clear up, once the steroids let schtuff shrink and there’s no more swelling. And it’s a big if, as I said. I still have questions of course. And I’m very tired. Thanks for putting up with a very long and slightly depressing post. I have to write to get it out – I can’t speak the right words. But you don’t have to read it.
heretherebespiders 
THANK YOU for writing every last bit, SpiderE.
Modern medicine treats us like slabs of meat and that just can’t be borne with a smile. It’s shite.
It’s all so complex, those feelings–so many layers. Talk when you’re able–it’s the best release (right after tears).
Be very very easy on yourself–that means: listen to yourself every moment. If you need to duck and stay home under the covers, do it. If you need to cry, do it. It won’t last forever, but give yourself these moments as they come.
I’m around….
Crying in public is never a good moment. Crying in private is fucking hard enough! This is about the end of my talking about it. I have further cogitation to do regarding my humour-as-armour attitude, but these ideas are still forming.
My time ends tomorrow morning when I go to work again. I’m thinking of bringing the last remaining airplane-neck-pillow to sit on.
it’s sad to need armor for medical help.
i carry you in my thoughts, E, and I carry some of the awful for/with you.
I always need armour in my life. I’m confused when my jokes aren’t understood, too. They always are understood in this sort of situation, at least.
we all need armor, girl, and had better strap it down tight from time to time!
the technicians needed the distraction of your jokes–they knew this was an effed-up situation and no way to treat a person. medical help does not have to be this way.
you tried something new for yourself–it’s NOT your fault they made the 2-minute procedure into heartache.
this makes me so angry, I can hardly talk, Spiders. remember when you wanted to send one of my own diatribes to my discharge hospital?
talking can take more than verbal form–drawing, painting, doodling, …. just don’t bury this because it’ll disrupt the frequency of the healing vibrations.
I’m here–can’t get rid of me! nighty-night.
Honey… I can’t even tell you how wrong this whole thing was done. My last couple of times I didn’t even have to change. It was ALWAYS done under an X-ray, the always numbed me up a lot and responded when I said I hurt more. Not to mention I think they did it TO LOW!! Only my last two were there and it wasn’t because of the discs, it was to potentially free trapped nerves. If they did a pain block it should have been higher than that.
I’m sorry. Mine weren’t anything like that and I’d pay money to say it won’t work. Your leg freaking out was from the injection. Specially when it’s that low. My last low one hand my foot tapping on it’s own off and on for weeks.
Don’t do this again honey, I’m afraid they’ll hurt you as they aren’t doing it right.
For me the worse part, the part nearly bringing me to tears was sewing the metal in the X-ray of my back. I’m very grateful that MOST of my medical professionals treat me like a person.
I have to go to bed, coffee-prep and sleep for work insists. Yes, I know NOW it was wrong. I’m assuming the heavier blankets were lead-lined, but if there was an X-ray done it was fast and silent. So I’m doubtful. I know I’m not nearly as damaged as you are, and I don’t expect the same level of attention, especially when this was elective and not in any way guaranteed to work.
Hey, I can walk and move ‘normally’ so at least this time I’m okay. So far.
It doesn’t matter that my damage is worse than yours, what you are going through is plenty horrible. Your pain is just as real to you are mine is to me. It shouldn’t matter what level of damage you have you should still be treated humanely.
I doubt you had X-rays.. You’d know. There would have been a rather large machine with a screen attached to your table.
There’s no way you could have known how screwed up this whole thing would be. You weren’t told what would happen and hadn’t done it, hard to know what will happen in that case.
I was never told I shouldn’t drive myself home after, for example. I was never told if I should go to work the next day and sit in an awful office chair for 9 hours, either. I’m going to sleep now, no tears.
Darn them. No, you shouldn’t have driven and work will be.. Unpleasant.
They really just slapped you on the ass and sent you out.
I am sorry you had to go through that darlin’. I am sending you squishy hugs and love.
Thanks! I get the feeling you know all about using Comedy Armor 🙂
I do know a lot about it.
We hard-assed Comedy Defenders need to stick together! Hope whatever happened with you recently has been fully recovered from. You just don’t ask, do you, when people are smiling? I never intended to be funny here all the time, I can’t imagine the pressure of actually trying!
Oh I generally try to make funny things out of bad things. I have known great horrors in my childhood, so it takes a lot to make me not want to laugh. I just made my first very serious post just now about the shootings.
Ugh. I’ll try not to get started on the way that the medical system creates trauma instead of relieving it — because I know I’d never stop.
But yes, this was unusually callous. I have clients who have had this done and while it wasn’t a pleasant outing — and only works about half the time — no one ever got treated like that.
I hope all the critters (does your husband count as one of those?) are giving you extra love.
It’s just…different here. All my time in the US did not prepare me for getting ill in another country, I’m sure now I had no X-ray before placement of the needle. Which makes it clear that even if it does work (not so far) I won’t ever get the same result because no one knows what they did the first time.
I have a question for you, if you could share your immense wealth of physiology. If I stand and stretch backwards, quite often ‘something’ at the front of my pelvis on the right goes wonky. I’ve realised since the ‘injection’ I get out of my chair at work holding the area. I’d be happy to Google but I don even know what hurts.
I DO know that one! If I remember right it’s because the nerves from your back and pelvis go through the same area. When I got my second to last shot I felt it in my pelvis as she injected me. Basically the nerves go through a muscle (god, I think I’m so mush headed now) and that muscle can get irritated pinching the already damaged nerves. Apparently that’s something that most docs don’t even really know about.
Without an X-ray is never never do it again. Besides they did it way to low.
The hip-pelvis thing has been going on a while actually. Post-injection, both hips hurt and my lower back is occasionally crampy like I’m in labor, I guess. Or bad PMS. I don’t get PMS so hard to judge.
I have heard that very low is intentional as it is no longer into the spinal fluid but just into the descending nerve bundle?
As it was explained to me that muscle gets irritated because we tend to hold ourselves weird and sit wrong, so it tightens up and clamps on those pelvis (and back) nerves. I know I’ve had a tight knot of muscle in my back sense I blew out my second disc. Sadly having a bad back comes with a bunch of other problems.
Typically here they do the injection near where your nerves are likely damaged first. I was told by a couple of different places that in order for that sort if injection to work it needs to be near the damage. When I’ve had it injected that low it was to relax and help the nerves going through that muscle or to unstick my nerves.
It’s easy to do the shot lower as the X-ray isn’t as needed, which I’m sure is the real reason they did it there.
Yeah. Lazy fuckers. Sigh.
It could be the rectus femoris muscle, attached at the crest of your hip bone where you can feel it in front, but my money is more on the iliacus, which is a flexor and would be stretched by that movement. Possibly psoas, which goes to a common attachment with the iliacus. Those two are both deep in the body, in effect they are “the front of your back” at the lower end. You could look them up.
Lesser candidates are the pectineus muscle or just the lower abdominal obliques.
I’ll give it a go – but as you know well, sometimes these oddnessities are a surprise!
Holy shit, I think you might have nailed it! I found this quite quickly: http://www.painreliefvermont.com/iliacus.html
Not only does it explain the hip issue but ALSO what is going on with the lack of lower-back curvature! I think I owe you a bottle of fine Irish Whiskey!
Oh, I am trying not to “work” that. Shoot, I answer questions like that for the sheer fun of it.
Here’s a thought: Check this site. I am not trying to get you to buy a “wedgy,”
http://www.sacrowedgy.com/
because I have found you can get damn near the same result by making a tight roll of a small towel and placing it lengthways the same way the images on this site show you should place their “wedgy.” Yeah, it ‘s a good product, I own one and sell them, but I believe in the 25 cent fix and an experiment with a towel might tell you a lot about how your iliopsoas (some people think of them as one muscle) is behaving.
Here’s another thing to try — lie on your left side so you can get your fingers around the front of your right hipbone and rub the INSIDE of the pelvic bone as deeply as you can without violence. That ought to tell you how much iliacus action is in this.
Remember, no muscle in the pelvis gets into trouble by itself, but just as they reach critical mass after a while of quietly going wrong, you can take away the components of that critical mass one by one.
I’ve always thought the big H on those signs is for humiliation. Don’t know anything about the procedure but it sounds horrible. Hope you get over it soon.
Oh gosh, so sorry you had to endure that; I hope they find what’s wrong and fix you; love and hugs
Thank you – it doesn’t seem likely as this was a ‘what if?’ procedure.
I’m sorry you had to go through all that. I hope you’re atleast feeling much better. 😦
I’m mentally better after getting this out in writing – amazing how that works wonders for me. Physically…no. Have odd symptoms and no change.
Hun, I’m so sorry that I failed to finish reading this post before today’s Oirish Tirsday. I could have commiserated with you. I know how things like this can effect you. I too have gone through humiliating medical procedures that I effected me so much that I couldn’t go home right away. I never told any one about it, still can’t talk about it, would love to meet the woman physician assistant who traumatized me late one night in a dark alley. Seriously, and you know I’m not like that. I’ve found myself fighting tears in the hallway of the Drs office, ashamed of myself and forced myself to suck it up for fear of frightening others. I don’t cry in public, rarely in private, it makes me feel weak and ashamed. I’m working on that. I don’t want my daughter to feel weak. I’m learning.
Don’t feel bad for not being able to share with your hubby. You’ve been there for me, with me during some rough times and you know all too well how hard it is/was to share things with Bear. That’s why we have girlfriends!
I wish I could have been there to hold your hand. Or at least punch out some Ahole surgeons!
I think everyone expects us to be so strong that it seems wrong to be upset over stuff like this. I’ve started feeling numb now but there has been many times I’ve had to sit in the changing room and just suck it all in.
Far to often we are just cogs in the medical wheel, shuffled along as quick as possible. I often leave feeling like I was pushed along so fast I forgot half if what I wanted to say.
I almost NEVER break down on Kent, I don’t know why, I think because I don’t want him to feel bad or guilty about something he can’t change. Usually I end up somewhere alone, feeling run over.
And that’s with relatively reasonable medical care (most of the time), what you went through was seriously screwed the fuck up.
See, that fucking sucks. Yes we are just meat: but I’d expect more empathy from a veterinarian than I do from a doctor, and still the doctors find ways to show they don’t even have sympathy.
Is this a tough-woman thing, not showing pain to our male partners? We’re all great with our powers of observation and so we know that men like to fix things, and it messes them up to give them a problem they cannot fix. But maybe we aren’t giving them enough credit or forewarning? I know D going mental on the poor nurse wouldn’t fix what had already happened. But I still would rather cry a bit alone than let him see me with what felt like big wet scared doe eyes. Yuck.
I don’t know. I don’t like anyone knowing I hurt, even my medicle professionals. My physical therapist said she wished she had a machine to measure pain because she couldn’t tell with me. It took her until the 3 time I went to be able to read me. I suspect that’s a hold over abuse thing but I don’t know. It’s done me wrong before, where I ended up suffering more than I had to because I didn’t express that they were hurting me.
Kent, I just don’t want him to feel bad. He tends to blame himself for not being able to make it better, no matter how often I tell him it’s not his fault. Even if I made sounds rolling over in bed he frets.
I wasn’t abused, I can’t even get close to what that was like…you do know you’ve never told me what happened? When we met so many years ago you weren’t ready – in fact I don’t think I ever knew anything at all. I’m impressed with what has changed with you over the last 15 years. Love ya 🙂
Yeah, I do the same – I just “don’t bitch.” But my patience with D when he has a boo-boo and I hear about it every 20 minutes, for days, is very, very, limited for the same reason! I’m a bad wife 😉
Really? That so weird that I didn’t say anything about it. Now i’m willing to tell anyone any detail they want to know. Being open about it has helped people. It seems like the whole world knows. My dad molested me when I was (hopefully) about 7-8. I know I use to pretend I was sleeping or hide what I was feeling, so I assume wanting to hide my pain is related, but hell I don’t really know. Is it because I’m to strong for that? Am I protecting everyone from feeling bad for me? Is it somehow an Aspburgers thing? Is it basically raising my sisters, wanting them to always thing everything was ok? Do i feel guilty about making the doc feel guity for pain they cant help but cause? Maybe it’s everything.
My comment thingie has maxed out! Commenting above to keep it going,
Sarah, you seem ‘normal’ to me. Whereas most traditionally, popularly, ‘normal’ people seem really odd to me! Maybe I gravitate towards those with damage? Then again, everyone has something big and painful to them in their past and while it does shape who you are, very rarely have I met someone who did not overcome it. Those who can not end up in the news, like today’s killings. Yours is one of the worst, however, and I can only repeat that you are, indeed, odd – but not visibly damaged. One of the strongest and artistically free-thinking people I know! How great it is to be your friend 🙂
Have you been officially diagnosed with Aspergers? I really wouldn’t have thought so. I just thought you didn’t have the will or energy or patience to deal with annoying people! Ha! I know I sure don’t want to. What a curse to have when also cursed with a lifetime of crappy jobs involving the public
Perhaps as women, even the non-traditonal variety, means that we can’t help but protect the ones we love in any way we can? Actually now I think about it, men do the same thing?
I’m starting a new comment so it doesn’t cut us off.
First off **BLUSH** you make me sound amazing!
Normal people seem odd to me too.
I think I just didn’t know there was an option that wasn’t learn to move on and deal with it. Maybe that’s because I had to take care of my sisters, I didn’t have the option to fall apart completely or go crazy. I often joke to Kent that I must be the most stable molestation victims ever if you base it on the stuff on TV. I don’t feel special or stronger or anything, although the amount of things people do and blame on being molested shocks the hell out of me. I mean becoming a hoarder, how does that work?
But there are far to many people who jammed all the hurt, shame, powerlessness and anger down. Eventually it’s going to exploid.
I haven’t officially been diagnosed as Aspie, but I intend to be tested. Honestly, I’d bet any number of things that I am. Obviously if you read the naked definition I’m not, but if you talk to or read what an Aspie says it’s like to be Aspie, I fit oh so well. There are a lot of things about me most people don’t know. So much of it I had to suppress or over come. It’s the way I visually see things, the way I instinctively feel around people, the noise in my head, the way my skin feels, my hatered for talking in the phone, OCD, my obsession over new subjects, and so many things. Once I started looking into it I’ve had so many AHA moments. Obviously I’m not on the low functioning scale, but I’m on there. I’m so certain that I thought about getting tested to add to my SSD claim.
It’s okay, I was good with getting it out ‘on paper’, as it is. I think what really upset me was that I KNEW, suddenly, that I had been scared and possibly mistreated and I had no more humour left to make it better. I was probably just as upset by the pain and experience as I was by realising that I was faking it the whole time. That’s not exactly what I mean but close. You know it takes me ages to sort this shit out in my head.
Maybe the way we have strength isn’t the best way, after all. Maybe if I had shown ‘weakness’ this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe what you and I think of as being strong is just giving the appearance and it isn’t real? I don’t like that idea one tiny bit.
I’m still not done thinking, obviously!
ugh…. poor thing. sending tons of love your way. how you manage to maintain your humor…!! so frightening.
Yeah… I think maybe the humour isn’t such a great response anymore. And that isn’t good either, I enjoy being funny! It’s one of the reasons Ireland is such a good country for me to live in.
Wow! 😦 *hugs*
Thanks dear! I need all the hugs I can get 🙂 Hope you are still mad about Christmas and I am hoping for another cartoon before then!
Oh what a horrible experience ((hugs to you!)
Love Leanne
I’ve discovered tonight one reason why I HATE crying where anyone is witness to it, especially my hubby. Tonight I hit a breaking point and broke into tears. It started out as tears of frustration and anger then turned into “great, now I’m a weak weeping sobbing woman”. Remembering this post and the conversations about this topic I asked myself just why I HATE to cry and why I feel weak when it happens. At least part of it is due to this…
I hate that moment when I feel the tears coming and I see the look on his face. The inevitable words he’s going to say to try and “fix” it, to make it stop because let’s face it, it’s hard to just sit and let someone cry and just let them get it out. He’s going to hug me, tell me “no that isn’t true” “it’s okay that you don’t -insert any housework or job work- because you have the baby to take care of” AHHHHHHHHH!!! Don’t patronize me! Don’t hug me with that sick sweetness and try to make me feel better. Don’t look at me with those eyes that say “it’s just hormones. How long is this crazy going to last” or at least that’s what I feel they say in that moment.
Baggage, we all bring baggage into these situations. We are human, we can’t help it but we can try to understand where these feelings come from, understand them better and maybe just maybe one day ill be able to cry and not feel like a disgusting puddle of weakness and want to throw up at the thought of anyone seeing me at my most vulnerable.
I love you, you are more woman than I for sharing your story. Hugs my dear.
I always felt that with men they just wanted to fix it… It didn’t matter what it was or how un-fixable that thing was. I can’t stand that almost panic-y look of “oh shit!! What did I do, what CAN I do?” I hate how sad me crying makes Kent, how down on himself he gets. It makes me feel like I have to make it better somehow. That I have to reassure him that I’m fine.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m touched that he loves me that much, but sometimes I feel like it cripples me. That I can’t be as sad/hurt/angry as I feel because it’ll shatter him.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried uncontrollably by myself about the no baby thing. I can’t, I just can’t break down like that in front of him, or not often. I feel like I can’t even talk to him about it because then he’ll blame himself. It doesn’t matter that he can’t fix my overies, or that he’s been willing to do whatever it takes for something like 13 years now, he blames himself.
So I hold it in. Unless it just explodes out. I want it to be about me, and if I’m that down I don’t have the strength to prop him up too.
I’m sure there are more complex reasons in not fully aware of. I’m just as sure that we all have a million different reasons for it.
But I don’t think you or Spiders is weak for hating to cry in front of others. I think we are to strong for our own good.
I’m not sure any of that has anything to do with what you posted, but it’s to darned long to delete!
I hear ya babe. I didn’t get into the whole thing but you and I are so much alike. I too feel like I can’t break down due to some part of him starts to apologize etc. at that point I want to shout “it’s not about you right now”. I was in my still a disaster of an office/studio mulling over paperwork that I thought I had finished and one comment from him reminded me of a hole other account I had forgotten about, SHIT! I got angry, he took it personal, I blew up explaining that over the last year, getting pregnant, house hunting, moving, renovating, having our baby, NO help getting my office/studio up and running how my life feels like a disaster. I used to be so in control, so on top of things, now I’m a ear behind in everything. No family or friends near by to help, a hubby who’d rather work day and night renovating the house than to watch the baby so I can actually do paperwork for our business, a business I might add that is his dream not mine. Running a Land Surveying company isn’t my idea if a dream but I support him, love that it provides for s but DAMN watch the fucking baby so I can do the paperwork!
Wow, thought I was over that. Guess not! Ugh. Life is way to complicated to get it all out here. I just need a babysitter a few hours a week and al would be better. Or so I tell myself.
Darn it!! I lost a huge post! Anyway..
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to scream “This isn’t about you!!”. Girls know that sometimes you just need to get it out. So we just cram it all in until we feel like we’re going to pop.
How I’d give almost anything to live closer. I’d babysit any time you needed. I adore tiny babies. Most men are terrified of babies. They often lie about it but you push them and they eventually crack. It’s like they think the baby will detonate if they change a diaper. That and I suspect some part or them still think it’s OUR job. The last person I coached for we were really close to. Kwix held that baby ONCE (it’s the cutest picture, it’s like he’s holding spun glass) and then didn’t touch her until she was 3.
I think you’ll just have to hand him the baby, tell him to watch her, and lock yourself away. It’s like the guys never think about watching the babies and giving mommy a break!
I just don’t know why simply because I have a vagina I’m the one in charge. He’s great with her, feeds her, entertains her, changes diapers but the moment she fusses, as babies do, he takes it personally, gets a blank look on his face, declares “I don’t know what you want” and walks away leaving me to pick up from there. WTF?
I just feel that as women we all too often are left to pick up the pieces, to pick ourselves up and move on. We tell ourselves if we act tough then we are tough. Almost as if showing emotion negates or takes away the legitimacy of our feelings.
That’s why I love having Spider and you in my life. Two women I can bitch to, dump on, commiserate with. This blog Spider as made brings people together. The world is a better place because of it. I hope she knows what good she is doing.
Spider, we love you. Group hug!
Wow, a lot went on here while I was asleep and at work! Until this last comment, I was only thinking the blog is a place where you two can get serious and not have to worry the menfolk will come and snoop! Now I feel all gooshy inside. I can accept that. But don’t make a habit of it 🙂 Ha! Okay let me see if I’m up to thinking deep thoughts about the rest of the comments…
I haven’t a clue why men do the “um… I got.. A lawn to mow.. Yeah” when a kid starts getting fussy, but you aren’t the first woman I’ve heard that from!
I think woman are more likely to muscle through stuff, pick up all the pieces and just DO it than men. Not saying they aren’t capable, but so often we have no choice. If the guy leave us with the kids what choice do we have? We HAVE to be stronge.
Woman definitely need woman friends. Someone who knows the strength might need some bolstering.
One line here really stood out: ‘if I’m that down I don’t have the strength to prop him up too.’ Is this something you could tell him now? That you need to just get it out and he can come back later? I’m even thinking code words or something. ‘BLUEBERRY!!!!’ “Ah, okay, I’ll go…vacuum the truck…”
I let go so very rarely that I don’t think that would work for me. And if I get ‘caught’ in a full blown snot-fest, I can ask D to go away, usually. It’s when one is imminent and he sees my eyes go red that I feel trapped, and that I have to ‘share.’
I’ve tried explaining to him that if I’m down I don’t have it in me to prop him up… But then he starts to hate himself, and honestly I’d rather be strong than chip his delicate self esteem any more. I feel like I can take it. Silly isn’t it? That it always comes back to us being strong!
I break down a lot more than I use to. Being in chronic pain shortens my reserves.
Hi babe! Sorry you had a poopy night. The very last thing I want; when crying and snuffling snot or letting it just RUN and fuck it, I’ll change the pillowcase later; is someone friggin touching me. Especially the way poor hubby does – he pets me like a kitty. How…irritating. It doesn’t matter how well he means. Just don’t. No hugs, no talking. I’ll stop eventually. If I don’t THEN you got something to fix. Take me to the mental ward stat.
So it seems we all hide it until we can be alone. Which sucks, emotions aren’t that easily controlled (hormones or no).
And sadly, there’s a lot of people who don’t try to understand why they do anything that they do.
Yup. That was the shoulder thing, except it took forever because they had to ultrasound it into the joint capsule. And the numbness wore off and it hurt and hurt and hurt. And there was no husband at that point. Good, well, at least I know what to expect with the back now…. And there’s a husband to bawl at.
I wish they would have looked at where they were going! I’m grateful you won’t be having anything done here, at least. Oh, my wrist surgery is Monday. Woot.
Hope your Himself doesn’t mind some slobber 🙂
He’s a great big softy and will probably be producing more tears and snot than I will. So it’s OK. We can blubber over each other and neither of us feels we have to ‘fix’ the other. All the best with the wrist. Hope you’ll still be able to type and tell us the gory detail.