It's This, or Nothing--Literally Nothing.
It's a bit mind-boggling that after all this time, El-Jay is *still* the one I go to?
Really?
*sigh* Yes, really. Because it's always been here.
It's been the hard and true internal Chronicles of Me, regardless of EVERYTHING. It was/has been the one place that I could go and be completely vulnerable and do the internal work.
Bonus for the Now-Times:
Nobody reads this anymore, nobody works on this platform, and likely only a few people (bless) cared. So here we are. Y’all. There’s a song by Forty Percent called “Monkey.” Coach Sings, “I can’t take it, anymore.”
When I hear this-or really any early aughts local pros-I find I have hard time with my feels. Honestly? Good.
I owe myself the bare minimum of that level of personal introspection.
It is …roughly 12:30 pm, and a total of from 9 am to now 4 full shots in, trying to figure out what level of fucked I can get away with…
…Oh God. I know. So, here I am.
I had a lot of weird anxiety dreams, particularly about taking the FEO/CPO.
Which I think says something, b/c right now, those are 2 of my most important certs.
Certs that I am unlikely to either earn or keep. My careers all DOA.
I don’t really want to, but…okay. Let’s begin.
Let’s just start from where we left off, and then take it from there…
Me: “So, let me tell you about how having and then supplementing for low Vitamin D is potentially bullshit….” There was an actual reason for this, believe it or not.
The REST of the conversation SHOULD have followed some sort of suit that offered up this…:
…
Okay, the originally question was the usual, “How’s ur mom doin’?” Nothing wrong, there.
It’s just a mind-bender how complicated that answer is, if we’re gonna be real, here.
Short answer: She’s fine. Literally fine.
Also, not exactly, and there’s nobody who gets it.
Originally, my Mum thought I was super full-of-shit for my stance on Vitamin D.
Fine Fine fine, whatever.
Except, okay, so your Mum got prescribed the Methenamine, that makes her retain water.
Which works out super great for all her UTI issues. Yup yup. And while it makes her statistically-under-120-lbs body retain anywhere from 1- 3.5 lbs, it’s obviously a personal problem, and she should simply try harder.
Sure, fine, whatever, you’re ‘fat’ now, but also…that level of water retention on such a small body… #shit. Back to the Vitamin D.
Well, even though my Mum thought I was full of shit about the Vitamin D (which she still takes), she did seem to take my word on another matter. Okay, where to begin…
Just after my mother started chemotherapy, she made sure to flip the fuck out. The only time she felt like she could really do that, is when we were in New York for the Aerial Hoop Instructor Certification Course. She had completely forgotten that we were flying back to Dallas the next morning. Which makes total sense, because we’d had friends come and bother her for a key to the main house a few days before-it was a Thursday to Monday trip. She’d completely forgotten where the fuck we were. She called and left lengthy messages about how a.) We needed to take her to the ER because she thought she was having a heart attack & b.) How they admitted her to the hospital, and thus OMG, HOW WILL THE CATS GET FED?! Since we weren’t there and didn’t have our phones on, she also a.) Drove herself to the ER and b.) Made sure to leave her gd cell phone at home, ffs.
If that isn’t the definition of a dissociative fugue, then I just absolutely do not know what one is.
Also, pro tip: If you can drive yourself to the ER, then you don’t need to go to the ER.
But, because she did that, she now has a cardiologist. He gave her the ‘standard course of treatment,’ for her complaints of idk/idr, pressure on her chest, maybe? Anyway, the standard course is a statin (cholesterol) with a bp med. Christ, those weren’t really problems for her, but okay. My mother, being herself, is very very interested in being compliant…when it suits her, but we’ll get to that. :-/
Thus, between the:
Vitamin D
Nortriptyline
Chemotherapy
BP med & Statin combo
...I basically already had to say goodbye to my mother directly after having returned home from the hospital after the initial surgery.
The worst part is being the only person that knows this.
She is the same amicable, socially anxious person that she always was with everyone else.
So, they don’t see it. They all think I’m crazy. Fine.
Well, in one of my many Wikipedia bunny-trails, I discovered that ‘muscle-wasting’ is actually a totally known phenomenon when taking statins. Which works great, because she hates physical activity and would just rather not, thanks all the same. So, she didn’t, and then with the cancer, and the surgery, and then the chemotherapy, and then the damn statins…
“Do you need additional support when getting into/out of a chair, such as placing your hands on the table to assist you?”
“Oh, no.”
*braces herself on the arms of her chair to stand upon conclusion of the appointment*
Me: *$#&^?!
*sigh*
She is so unsteady. She legit met the definition of “medically frail” before the surgery. Now? I don’t know what to do, short of moving into her actual house and attempting to force her to do mini-training sessions multiple times a day. Which is great, because she holds her breath the entire time, because it’s hard and she has no idea what she’s doing and she has to do it perfectly (she does not). But the only way for her to do it is for basically me to come in and do it for her, every single time.
But, for awhile, she kept complaining of this pain in her legs.
We simply gave up. You hurt now.
Then, she reported a few days ago that she’d stopped taking the Crestor. Great. Not sure if that affects your BP at all though, because you’re already on that plus another, and…let’s go back to that methenamine. She has the choice: Take this, which spikes your BP to actually hypertensive while just sitting there, resting, or…get UTIs every 3 weeks for the rest of your life. Which, being that they’re infections, means she’s actually sick each time. Great for immunocompromised.
Though this most recent infection turned out to *not* be an infection? A first, but also: Is my suspicion that she is SOMEHOW royally fucking with her twat just irritating it this much, and all the time?! You know, like when you get a zit that isn’t quite ready to pop, so you fucked with it and made it so much way worse? She had some spot on her eye (possibly a wart, I’m betting a stye), and also her eyes got all puffy (fat deposits floating forward as part of the aging process), which led us to making and going to TWO additional eye appointments, because she simply forgot what the guy told her the first time.
Also, guess who is driving her to all these appointments.
This is but a snapshot.
Then there was the time that the damn banking shit changed over because her old bank got bought out.
It’s not like being drunk or high. But I have taken HCTZ, and WOW could I not think straight. I mean, I forgot Mandie’s name, whilst stone-cold sober. It feels like thinking in molasses.
So here she is, thinking in molasses, trying to deal with the bank shit.
The worst is that you don’t realize that you can’t think. So, a few days prior, I’d set up what we could, but then we needed to wait for some codes to come in the mail, because who tf knows, whatever.
Then I go over there, and I walk into a. scene. She’s been on the phone with them for however-long, and has managed to forget all the shit we’d already set up, and then ‘locked’ herself out of an online account that we’d already set up and JFC, WHY. There was no reason to touch anything, and yet…why not just randomly torture yourself?! It was the WORST trying to get her to calm down, to figure out what the fuck she’d done (literally nothing, because we’d done it all before), and why in the world she decided that this had to be an action item, when we were still waiting for the fucking codes to come in the mail? Thankfully, she gets her mail both at the PO and also here at the house, because that’s the best place for secure items to go (our unlocked box at the street) and not confusing to keep track of.
I do everyone’s laundry, now.
If she does hers, she’ll leave it in a pile of cat fur on the chair, wadded.
It’s bad enough that you’re medically frail and not entirely lucid, but let’s not add ‘looks homeless,’ please? All I need is someone coming after me for this. Related: She still drives. Mainly to various drive-thrus/donut places, the public library, etc. Which, I guess is something? But is it good? IRDK.
What I do:
The laundry, basic cleaning/tidying, drive her to all the medical appointments.
What she does:
Drive herself to get books/food, read, watch TV, sleep.
We had to stop the oral/at-home chemotherapy maintenance medication, on account of it was just making her too weak. Before that, she was already on half the normal dose, for the same reason. We have about 6 more months of this, and then we get declared cancer-free.
The last scan was great/clear.
Why am I not excited?
I know that I am going to hell for so many reasons already. Why not add this, too.
--Bethany Celeste
Really?
*sigh* Yes, really. Because it's always been here.
It's been the hard and true internal Chronicles of Me, regardless of EVERYTHING. It was/has been the one place that I could go and be completely vulnerable and do the internal work.
Bonus for the Now-Times:
Nobody reads this anymore, nobody works on this platform, and likely only a few people (bless) cared. So here we are. Y’all. There’s a song by Forty Percent called “Monkey.” Coach Sings, “I can’t take it, anymore.”
When I hear this-or really any early aughts local pros-I find I have hard time with my feels. Honestly? Good.
I owe myself the bare minimum of that level of personal introspection.
It is …roughly 12:30 pm, and a total of from 9 am to now 4 full shots in, trying to figure out what level of fucked I can get away with…
…Oh God. I know. So, here I am.
I had a lot of weird anxiety dreams, particularly about taking the FEO/CPO.
Which I think says something, b/c right now, those are 2 of my most important certs.
Certs that I am unlikely to either earn or keep. My careers all DOA.
I don’t really want to, but…okay. Let’s begin.
Let’s just start from where we left off, and then take it from there…
Me: “So, let me tell you about how having and then supplementing for low Vitamin D is potentially bullshit….” There was an actual reason for this, believe it or not.
The REST of the conversation SHOULD have followed some sort of suit that offered up this…:
…
Okay, the originally question was the usual, “How’s ur mom doin’?” Nothing wrong, there.
It’s just a mind-bender how complicated that answer is, if we’re gonna be real, here.
Short answer: She’s fine. Literally fine.
Also, not exactly, and there’s nobody who gets it.
Originally, my Mum thought I was super full-of-shit for my stance on Vitamin D.
Fine Fine fine, whatever.
Except, okay, so your Mum got prescribed the Methenamine, that makes her retain water.
Which works out super great for all her UTI issues. Yup yup. And while it makes her statistically-under-120-lbs body retain anywhere from 1- 3.5 lbs, it’s obviously a personal problem, and she should simply try harder.
Sure, fine, whatever, you’re ‘fat’ now, but also…that level of water retention on such a small body… #shit. Back to the Vitamin D.
Well, even though my Mum thought I was full of shit about the Vitamin D (which she still takes), she did seem to take my word on another matter. Okay, where to begin…
Just after my mother started chemotherapy, she made sure to flip the fuck out. The only time she felt like she could really do that, is when we were in New York for the Aerial Hoop Instructor Certification Course. She had completely forgotten that we were flying back to Dallas the next morning. Which makes total sense, because we’d had friends come and bother her for a key to the main house a few days before-it was a Thursday to Monday trip. She’d completely forgotten where the fuck we were. She called and left lengthy messages about how a.) We needed to take her to the ER because she thought she was having a heart attack & b.) How they admitted her to the hospital, and thus OMG, HOW WILL THE CATS GET FED?! Since we weren’t there and didn’t have our phones on, she also a.) Drove herself to the ER and b.) Made sure to leave her gd cell phone at home, ffs.
If that isn’t the definition of a dissociative fugue, then I just absolutely do not know what one is.
Also, pro tip: If you can drive yourself to the ER, then you don’t need to go to the ER.
But, because she did that, she now has a cardiologist. He gave her the ‘standard course of treatment,’ for her complaints of idk/idr, pressure on her chest, maybe? Anyway, the standard course is a statin (cholesterol) with a bp med. Christ, those weren’t really problems for her, but okay. My mother, being herself, is very very interested in being compliant…when it suits her, but we’ll get to that. :-/
Thus, between the:
Vitamin D
Nortriptyline
Chemotherapy
BP med & Statin combo
...I basically already had to say goodbye to my mother directly after having returned home from the hospital after the initial surgery.
The worst part is being the only person that knows this.
She is the same amicable, socially anxious person that she always was with everyone else.
So, they don’t see it. They all think I’m crazy. Fine.
Well, in one of my many Wikipedia bunny-trails, I discovered that ‘muscle-wasting’ is actually a totally known phenomenon when taking statins. Which works great, because she hates physical activity and would just rather not, thanks all the same. So, she didn’t, and then with the cancer, and the surgery, and then the chemotherapy, and then the damn statins…
“Do you need additional support when getting into/out of a chair, such as placing your hands on the table to assist you?”
“Oh, no.”
*braces herself on the arms of her chair to stand upon conclusion of the appointment*
Me: *$#&^?!
*sigh*
She is so unsteady. She legit met the definition of “medically frail” before the surgery. Now? I don’t know what to do, short of moving into her actual house and attempting to force her to do mini-training sessions multiple times a day. Which is great, because she holds her breath the entire time, because it’s hard and she has no idea what she’s doing and she has to do it perfectly (she does not). But the only way for her to do it is for basically me to come in and do it for her, every single time.
But, for awhile, she kept complaining of this pain in her legs.
We simply gave up. You hurt now.
Then, she reported a few days ago that she’d stopped taking the Crestor. Great. Not sure if that affects your BP at all though, because you’re already on that plus another, and…let’s go back to that methenamine. She has the choice: Take this, which spikes your BP to actually hypertensive while just sitting there, resting, or…get UTIs every 3 weeks for the rest of your life. Which, being that they’re infections, means she’s actually sick each time. Great for immunocompromised.
Though this most recent infection turned out to *not* be an infection? A first, but also: Is my suspicion that she is SOMEHOW royally fucking with her twat just irritating it this much, and all the time?! You know, like when you get a zit that isn’t quite ready to pop, so you fucked with it and made it so much way worse? She had some spot on her eye (possibly a wart, I’m betting a stye), and also her eyes got all puffy (fat deposits floating forward as part of the aging process), which led us to making and going to TWO additional eye appointments, because she simply forgot what the guy told her the first time.
Also, guess who is driving her to all these appointments.
This is but a snapshot.
Then there was the time that the damn banking shit changed over because her old bank got bought out.
It’s not like being drunk or high. But I have taken HCTZ, and WOW could I not think straight. I mean, I forgot Mandie’s name, whilst stone-cold sober. It feels like thinking in molasses.
So here she is, thinking in molasses, trying to deal with the bank shit.
The worst is that you don’t realize that you can’t think. So, a few days prior, I’d set up what we could, but then we needed to wait for some codes to come in the mail, because who tf knows, whatever.
Then I go over there, and I walk into a. scene. She’s been on the phone with them for however-long, and has managed to forget all the shit we’d already set up, and then ‘locked’ herself out of an online account that we’d already set up and JFC, WHY. There was no reason to touch anything, and yet…why not just randomly torture yourself?! It was the WORST trying to get her to calm down, to figure out what the fuck she’d done (literally nothing, because we’d done it all before), and why in the world she decided that this had to be an action item, when we were still waiting for the fucking codes to come in the mail? Thankfully, she gets her mail both at the PO and also here at the house, because that’s the best place for secure items to go (our unlocked box at the street) and not confusing to keep track of.
I do everyone’s laundry, now.
If she does hers, she’ll leave it in a pile of cat fur on the chair, wadded.
It’s bad enough that you’re medically frail and not entirely lucid, but let’s not add ‘looks homeless,’ please? All I need is someone coming after me for this. Related: She still drives. Mainly to various drive-thrus/donut places, the public library, etc. Which, I guess is something? But is it good? IRDK.
What I do:
The laundry, basic cleaning/tidying, drive her to all the medical appointments.
What she does:
Drive herself to get books/food, read, watch TV, sleep.
We had to stop the oral/at-home chemotherapy maintenance medication, on account of it was just making her too weak. Before that, she was already on half the normal dose, for the same reason. We have about 6 more months of this, and then we get declared cancer-free.
The last scan was great/clear.
Why am I not excited?
I know that I am going to hell for so many reasons already. Why not add this, too.
--Bethany Celeste