Let’s Get Real for a Moment

Let’s discuss something women never really talk about. Let me be the one to open up and make myself vulnerable on the interwebs. Let’s talk for a moment about the effects of stress on the body.

First, a recap: In the past year, we’ve worked through treatment for K’s OCD, I wrote and won a grant, I spent two solid months spending most of my time in a hospice facility with my grandfather, and then there was Ant. Oh, did I not tell you about Ant? And how he broke his arm? Let’s follow that tangent for a moment…

I was out of town at a work conference when I got the call—the call from school that every parent dreads. “Sarah, we know you’re out of town. We cannot get a hold of J. We need you to call him right now. Ant fell on the playground, and they’re stabilizing him now, but we’re fairly certain he broke his arm.”

I got back into town that day in time to meet the docs who had taken three series of x-rays of my son’s shoulder and arm, and given him the pain medication that made him even more philosophical than he already is. An example:

Me: Ant! What happened to you, kid?

Ant: I don’t really remember. There are many things I don’t remember… perhaps we’re not meant to remember everything in life!

Me: Wow. Okay.

J: He did NOT hit his head. They gave him something for the pain.

Me: Ant, they said you fell down?

Ant: Ah, yes. I’m not sure what happened. I remember sitting up, realizing I landed in a mud puddle, and that I had lost my shoes…

The long and the short of it was this—Ant separated his humorous at the growth plate between the long part of the bone and the ball joint for the shoulder. This, and he’d also partially dislocated his shoulder. Because my kid is a badass, when he sat up and realized something was wrong with his arm, he apparently grabbed it and pulled it toward him just right—relocating his shoulder. Yes, let me repeat: Ant relocated his own shoulder…

Ah, but the shoulder (which is healing nicely, and in a manner consistent to Wolverine from the X-Men, according to the lovely orthopedic Ant’s seen) is not the only scare Ant’s given us. Last weekend it became apparent that the nasty little summer cold Ant got on Thursday was not just a cold. After battling a high fever on Saturday night, I took him to urgent care, where he was diagnosed with strep, a sinus infection, AND a middle ear infection. Then, to make matters worse, Ant decided to be allergic to the antibiotics he was prescribed, meaning that we got to visit urgent care more than once on Sunday…

And… did I mention we’re selling a place, and looking to buy another? By the time school starts in August?

So, as you can imagine, there’s been a little bit of stress in this household right now. At first this presented with insomnia. I dismissed it—I’d completely messed up my sleep schedule. Then my teeth started to hurt. Okay, perhaps I was grinding them again, in my sleep. And I had missed my dental checkup with my grandfather being ill. And I have sensitive teeth to begin with.

Then I realized I was drinking too much coffee and not enough water. Then I realized I needed to start taking my vitamins again. Then I realized I needed to start my regular exercise routine back up. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the small town doctor I had while growing up, it’s that water, exercise, and a Flintstones can cure many an ill. Perhaps that would fix my new breakouts. And my sore muscles. And the changes I’d noticed in my, you know, ‘cycle’…

And then, all of my excuses came crashing down when I noticed my hair.

At first, I noticed the hair at my temples seemed to be thinner. Not much thinner, but thinner, nonetheless. Okay, well, when one lives in a hospital setting, one tends to pull their hair into a ponytail every day. I just needed to be more careful… Then, this week, I noticed I had a spot on the top part of my head. I was going bald.

A note from J: He would like me to express that my definition of going bald more closely matches the definition the general public would have of a spot near the crown of my head where my hair is slightly thinner, and my part seems just a tad bit larger than normal, and that 99% of the population would not even notice such a thing on their own head, much less someone else’s. While my rational brain says, “Yes, I understand that I’m the only person noticing this,” my emotional brain says, “Oh. My. God. I am losing my hair! Will J still love me when I’m bald???”

So, since it was evening, and doctor’s tend to frown when you call them at ten at night, I Dr. Googled that shit. Come to find out, I could have a hormone or thyroid imbalance (which I’ll certainly get checked out), but the more likely culprit is that I’ve had significant stress within the past six months that’s taxed my system.

Oh. So it is stress. Huh. I guess I have to admit it now.

Women do not like to talk about these things. We don’t even like to think about them. Long, lustrous hair and a clear complexion and a physically toned body reaches out and smacks us in the face every time we look at a magazine, watch TV, or see a movie. Everyone looks as if they’re 24, and if you don’t, there’s something wrong with you.

Yet, these things happen. They happen to a lot of us. The hair-thinning thing? Dr. Google says that will happen to half of us by the time we’re 50, and then it seems it’ll happen to the other half of us in our 50s and 60s. The breakout thing? Well, that happens to a whole bunch of us as well. Look at all the items one can buy in the health and beauty section of any store. And don’t even get me started on the lines I’m noticing on my forehead… Or the grays. Or my eyelashes. Or the 13 pounds I’ve gained in the past year. Or how one’s body hurts when they’re under a whole bunch of stress.

I think we need to get real about this: the hair thinning thing, but more generally, the changes that happen to us women in our 30s, 40s, and beyond. The changes that are natural, the ones that can be caused by stress or fatigue, and the ones that certainly need to get checked out. So, here I am, with a spot right smack in the middle of my forehead that I’m certain will be a monstrous pimple by the weekend, a “balding” pate, and a giant bottle of water that I hope will fix it all. And I’m telling you all about it on the internet, so that if you have to Google something along these lines, you’ll feel just a little less alone.

Adventures in Insomnia

We need something funny.  Or funny-ish.  Perhaps I’m tired of being sad for a bit. Perhaps I’m tired of the rainy, cloudy skies. Perhaps it’s the fact it’s always a bit of a bummer to return to work after a three day weekend. I’m not very good at speculating, but I do know we need to discuss something humorous.  What could possibly be more humorous than my insomnia?

Okay, I get it. Insomnia’s really not a joking matter. I’ve had it all my life, so while not an expert, I know as much as I ever would want to know about the affliction. That being said, the type of insomnia I’m experiencing now is not the normal, anxiety-induced, soul-crushing, cannot sleep for days on end type I typically experience. This is the type of insomnia that occurs when you spent a solid two months messing up your sleep schedule. Royally. So, there is SOME sleep involved. Let me explain:

I am no longer capable of sleeping in a bed. I toss and turn to the point I feel as if I am pulling my hair out by the roots from all the head moving. I fling arms and legs and covers everywhere. It’s like watching a clumsy ninja in slow motion.

I can sleep in a chair. I can sleep on a couch. I can sleep on the floor. I cannot sleep in a bed. I attribute this to my overnight hospital stays. Since March, I’ve slept in hospital chairs, wheel chairs, recliners, couches, cots, an air mattress more like a trampoline than a bed, and the floor. Give me a blanket, and I’m good to go. Except for when I’m presented with a bed.

I now cannot sleep without lights and background noise. I can sleep in a fully lit living room, with the lights on, the television blaring, and children wandering through causing trouble, but I cannot sleep in a quiet, dark room. I can even sleep through Sophie’s incessant barking and massive thunderstorms, but if you dare to turn the bathroom light off, my night’s rest is toast.

While I do get some sleep, you’d be kidding yourself if you think I can string seven to eight hours of sleep together in one session. I’ve become so acclimated to overnight shift-taking and nurses coming in every two hours to administer pain meds that if I sleep more than two and half hours, I wake in a panic. You know that panic—it’s the one that young mothers experience the first time the baby sleeps more than four hours in a stretch. So, I can usually tie two of these naps together for a night, and if I’m lucky (like I was last night) three, but there will be breaks in between my sleep now, and I’m still trying to figure out what exactly I’m going to do with those extra awake hours by myself that doesn’t involve watching some of the weirdest infomercials known to humankind. 

So far, I’ve accomplished reading a book (A BOOK!), and making coffee for myself all stealth-like. I have to be stealthy, because J (who normally would not concern himself with my insomnia, figuring one of us needs to get some sleep if I’m going to be out of commission for days) has become concerned with my new sleep habits, and has been trying to keep an eye on me.

So when I fall asleep watching TV on the couch, he’ll end up on the other couch. And when I fall asleep on the floor, he’ll end up snuggling up next to me, afraid I’ll get cold. He’s the Centurion to my Pandorica. And yes, I’m completely caught up on all of the Doctor Who I missed in the second half of this season. And I’m completely and totally Sherlocked.  I’ve caught up on my viewing, well, as much as On Demand will allow…

And Candy Crush! Oh, let me tell you about Candy Crush. I’m on level 253 now, and in the early hours of this morning (I’ve been up since 4:30am, even with my three nap bonus last night), I’ve managed to annihilate level 252. That’s the type of level where you have 30 seconds to score 15,000. I stopped after 45 minutes and eight million points, because I really, really had to pee. I’d already had three cups of coffee, you see.

I’m not certain how I’m going to get back into the swing of things-- sleeping in a bed all night long-- quite yet. At the same time, I don’t really think I’m ready for suggestions, either. I want to see where this is heading. Maybe Candy Crush will contact me and tell me I’m the highest scorer on that level and give me a prize… Or maybe I need to keep playing…

Snownami 2013

Oh, it looks so pretty! Until it attacks you, that is...

If you’ve seen me on Facebook or Twitter any time over the past two weeks, you know we received some snow. Or, more aptly put, a shit-ton of snow. Missouri prefers a debilitating ice storm to a blizzard, so when we get a decent-sized snowstorm every few years, we’re out of practice. It always seems to come as surprise.

At this point in time, you might be saying to your computer, “Well, Sarah, you know they have this thing called the ‘weather’. You could check it, you know. It comes on the TV and the internet, and you can even get it on your phone. And then you could plan accordingly.”

And you would be right. Except, the weather people lied two weeks ago, when the first (yes, there’s been more than one) snowstorm hit. What was supposed to be three to six inches ended up being thundersnow (have you ever seen that?) that dropped a foot on us in a period of a few hours.

You would think, with my Type-A, only child, perfectionism, I would have been prepared for a snowstorm. You would be wrong. Let me illustrate by highlighting some major points in my day, two Thursdays ago, when ‘Storm Q’ hit:

8:00am           I go to work. The boys are out of school for the impending snowstorm, but I plan to work this morning. There’s nothing happening, and not a flake to be seen. I have a meeting to set up at 11:00—which is also when the heavy stuff it supposed to hit—and as soon as I get everyone situated, I can head back home. I live three miles away from campus, so it’s not like I’ll be making a trek through the wilderness in a blizzard like Pa in Little House on the Prairie.

I have just destined myself to suffer, by the way.

9:00am           Huh. It’s starting to snow.

10:00am         Damn. It’s really snowing. Good thing the plow trucks are going by! If they keep the roads okay, I should still be good in an hour or so.

11:15am         I am heading out the door. There is snow everywhere. I’m thinking we may already have six inches on the ground. I don’t know what the plow trucks have been doing when they drove by, but it doesn’t look like this road has been plowed at all. What the heck? Was that lightening?

11:30am         I watch traffic come to a creeping halt on the road home. At first I think it’s because the wind is gusting so bad that visibility is virtually zero. Then when the wind lets up for a bit, I see that a plow ahead of me has run off the road. The guys get out and start directly all of us behind them to turn around.

11:45am         I am now heading AWAY from my house. I can’t go down this road to the right; three people have spun out. I cannot go down these two roads to the left; people are stuck. Traffic is now not moving to the north or to the south. K calls me to see where I am.

12:30pm         Why didn’t I fill the car with gas? Why didn’t I bring my cell phone charger? Why does Ant keep texting me asking if I can see all the snow? I am in the middle of the damn snownami, kid! K calls me to see where I am.

1:00pm           I try to pull the car off in a parking lot so I can walk back to work. I’ve just received a text saying the campus is in full closure. J’s work is closing, and he’s pushing people out of the mall parking lot and onto the road because there’s about nine inches on the ground and no one can drive.  I am still going to wrong way, if ‘going’ is what you call it when you’re not moving. The parking lot maneuver didn’t work. Now I’m stuck. K calls me to see where I am.

1:30pm           I am running low on gas, I have been at this shit for over two hours, I haven’t moved down the road, I am soaking wet from digging out the wheels, but by God, I AM NO LONGER STUCK. I did it, bitches! Well, actually six undergrads took pity on me, and helped push my two ton car out. Remind me to never pull into a parking lot, again. K calls me to see if I’m still stuck.

2:00pm           J: I am coming to get you!

Me: NO! Save yourself! Someone has to live for the children!

J: NO! I will rescue you! I will come and get you!

Me: You will get stuck just like me! You will be stuck for hours!

J: Oh, that’s okay. I filled up my car and grabbed the phone charger this morning.

Bastard.

2: 15pm          We are moving! We are moving! I am going to make it to this next intersection and they will have it plowed and I can start driving in the right direction and I will make it home, and I can meet J at the grocery store parking lot and we can caravan home together and I might even find an open gas station!

2:30pm           Huh, this road hasn’t been plowed. Thank goodness no one else is on it! I’ll make it through the hills as long as I don’t have to stop! K calls me to see where I am.

2:32pm           Oh. My. God. That hill is like a damn parking lot. There must be thirty cars spun out on that damn thing. Most of them are Jeeps and SUVs…

2:35pm           J: I am going to walk to where you are.

Me: You are going to walk a mile to me, in the blizzard, with a shovel? Because I don’t need you so much, but we sure as hell could use a bigger shovel to get some of these cars out of the middle of the road.

3:00pm           We’ve pushed enough cars out of the way that we now have a decent path to get up the hill. I have traction control and all-wheel drive and a transmission I can switch to manual. And now? Now I have my shovel-wielding husband with me. We’ll leave his car at the grocery store, and get ourselves home.

3:10pm:          We clear the hill, and come to the next hill, where everyone we’ve just pushed out has gotten stuck, again. You have got to be kidding me! J’s driving, and so he whips the car around in the middle of the road and starts going back the way we came.

3:12pm           Holy crap! More people have gotten stuck and have clogged up the spot we just freaking cleared! J whips the car around onto a side road that hasn’t been touched, but also is void of any other cars. K calls to see where we are.

3:25pm           Our street! Our street! I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM…Oh, no. No, dude in front of us, don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop!

3:30pm           I have walked home—where the boys are shoveling the drive for us. I grab them to help get the car unstuck.

3:40pm           We get the car to the driveway, and we have to “unstuck” it again to get it IN the driveway.

3:45pm           This is my house! These are my children! These are our things! I will have dry clothes! And a hot bath! And beer! And I WILL MAKE SOUP!

3:50pm           I email my boss and tell her I’ll be working from home the next day. She writes back immediately and tells me that’s a great idea. I won’t have to drive in this crap for three more days!

At least this story has a happy ending, and no one in our town was seriously injured in the craziness. The news reported that several of the highways around us also had to shut down, and people were stuck on the roads in some places until nine that night. Also, this is the first of many wild snow stories we had over the past two weeks… During the next storm we lose power and INTERNET! I watched two trash trucks get stuck on our road. And, Sophie develops an elaborate ritual for going outside after falling through a snow bank…

Prevention

I saw an OCD meme I wanted to share with K the other day. I told him so, and he automatically responded, “I don’t even want to freaking hear about it.” He’s so used to shutting people down when they attempt to talk OCD. I pushed my phone in his face, and his expression softened.

“Well, it’s about damn time that we took the meme world back from them,” he exclaimed.

He and I see a lot of OCD memes. They ebb and flow on my Facebook feed every few months, and I’m witnessing an upsurge again.  Most of these memes are wrong and slightly offensive to me just because they are filled with untruths. They are very offensive to K—who, of course, has all the right in the world to be offended. He feels as if they invalidate the horrible nature of what he went through and all of the progress he’s made.

In the past six months, I’ve been appalled to realize how often we use OCD as an adjective, how often we trivialize it in jokes, how often we pass off incorrect information about the disorder without even realizing it. My kid comes home and talks about the kids who—while trying to show compassion and empathy—discuss how they have OCD some days too, how they are neat freaks, too, how they think the public bathrooms at school are disgusting too, how they can’t eat red Skittles, either.

He responds with, “Oh, wow, that’s wild,” and “That must be rough,” and all the other things one could say when they just want to shut down the conversation, but in a polite way.

I’ve started calling people on it. I’ve done it nicely (As in, “Hey, would you consider taking this down? K and I have learned over the last few months that this is not really OCD, and it can really project the wrong image of his condition. I don’t want to start a fight, but I do want to start a discussion, so I’m hoping we could talk about it further.”), but I’ve lost more than one Facebook friend this way. Often, these people tell me that they have OCD, too, and that my taking offense is offensive to them. I’ve only had one who responded in any conversational way.

Why do I call people on it? Well… I’m not their therapist, so I don’t know what they’ve been diagnosed with, but I don't understand why someone with the disorder would want to post untruths…  It's mostly because all I see these days is memes on OCD, and I’ve never seen a meme for depression or schizophrenia or dissociative disorder, and I wonder why OCD is fair game.

Why is making fun of OCD fair game? Can anyone explain this to me? I know I’m sensitive to the issue, but… Can anyone tell me where the Tumblr blogs making fun of psychosis are? I didn’t think so.

***

K is actually doing really well these days. Not that the obsessions are gone (the medication does turn down the volume significantly), and not that the compulsions are completely gone either (the kid is always going to wash his hands, and he’s always going to let someone else open a door for him if he can), but K can function. Manage.

Live. My kid can live again.

Back in August, K could not touch a door handle, could not touch a bathroom floor, could not touch others, could not have his things touched by others, could not have people in his room, could not touch the bottom of his shoes, could not look directly at the screen of his phone, could not leave anything plugged into an electrical outlet, could not leave his room without repeatedly opening and closing his dresser drawers, could not go to bed without setting his alarm clock nine times… this is not even a comprehensive list of what my kid was doing…

Most importantly, in August, K could not eat. My son could not eat. His food was likely contaminated with deadly bacteria, and it wasn’t the prospect of his own death that bothered him so much, but the idea that he would inadvertently pass a deadly disease to his brother that prevented him from eating. The rituals he performed to keep us all alive and well each day was in excess of four to five hours each day, and that didn’t even count all of the things he cleaned or the verbal checking he would do with me each day. The rituals were a huge problem, but they didn’t even touch the fact that my kid couldn’t eat. He was hungry. He wanted to eat. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, even though he knew the obsessive thoughts were irrational.

My kid has put 15 pounds back on his skinny frame in the past five months. He can eat again.

So this is the point where I always want to ask exactly how preferring alphabetical order or avoiding red Skittles is OCD… I understand categorizing and magical thinking, and the roles they can play in OCD, but having one thing that you find bothersome does not an OCD diagnosis make. 

***

K is to the point in his treatment where exposure-response therapy is over, and it’s all about relapse prevention. He knows he can do certain things without getting sick or us dying. He knows the coping skills to manage intrusive thoughts when they strike. Now we need to learn how to keep it from ever getting as bad as it was again.

He’s not cured. There is no cure. He will never be ‘normal’. We had a baseline of manageable behavior we wanted to reach, and for the most part, we’ve reached it. OCD will always be a specter in the back his mind, waiting to rear up. It will come back. He will have other episodes. It will be there tomorrow, and it will be there twenty years from now. The question is, will he be able to recognize it, mitigate it, and find the help he needs to move past it? That’s what we’re working on now. And this, by far, is the hardest part.

Part of what he wants to do (and I as well, to be completely honest) in this relapse prevention segment of treatment is talk to others about what OCD really is, what it really means, and how debilitating it can be. He doesn’t know how he wants to go about doing this yet, and I’m not going to push him. I’ll let him come to his own decisions on how to best approach that. Still, just the fact that there was an OCD meme on an OCD Tumblr written by someone who actually has the disorder makes a world of difference, and gives him something to consider.

If you would like to check out the Tumblr I mentioned, you can find it here.