Hard Days

Lately I've been struggling with, I guess, a hearty helping of melancholia. I can function, of course, but I also know that my melancholia affects everyone around me, most of all, my son. J can tell his mommy isn't feeling right. As time has gone on I have definitely determined it's bigger than just a bad case of the blues; I have a massive hormonal imbalance. That's not something small or quick to deal with. What does that mean for me?

When I was about 10 days old, my mother got a call from my doctor, telling her to come into the hospital, with me, immediately. They didn't tell her anything else so of course she was scared that something was seriously wrong with me. She took me in, where she was told that per the standard infant examination, the doctors couldn't find any trace of my thyroid, the little bowtie looking gland that would have sat over my throat. The thyroid is the gland that manages your metabolism, of EVERYTHING. Energy. Food. Anything that needs to be metabolized is done so under the control of the thyroid. And I didn't have one. Fortunately, even back then, there was already an established medication for dealing with it. Unfortunately, it was only in pill form, because it was just so rare for a child of my age to deal with such a thing. So every morning for a very long time, my mom would crush up my pill, put it in a dropper with a bit of water, and give it to me. Obviously, now I'm able to swallow it, although the pills are such that I can chew and swallow them, being of a pleasant taste.

Fast forward 27 years. I'd been telling doctors for YEARS that I was born without a thyroid. If it was to a new doctor, they always wanted to ship me off to an endocrinologist, who would sit me on the table, and then proceed to tell me for the 3498753948753984th time how a thyroid works, how it effects me, etc. No alternatives were ever discussed. Nothing other than blood tests and tweaking of dosages. With each pregnancy my dosage increased a bit, permanently. Over the last 28 years I've gone through a few periods where insurance was either not in my life, or some inconvenience that is life prevented me from going to the doctor to get my prescription set up and filled, and so I've gone through pill-less periods. Some much, much longer than others.

And due to an unfortunate life twist, I am currently in a pill drought. This time, however, I'm feeling the effects much more than I ever have before and it's a veritable nightmare. Around 7/4 I ran out of my prescription, which normally isn't a big deal, because I can go on base, get a blood test or get a new prescription free of charge, get a 90 day supply and go home and resume my life. Not so this time. Because on 7/2 I went to the store with J and G, and in my carelessness I tossed my wallet on my purse. As I loaded my groceries and children into the car and grabbed my purse to go home, my wallet must have fallen off my purse into the cart, unbeknownst to me. I don't generally need my wallet unless I go somewhere, so when I got home, no biggie. G was running a fever and was very lethargic and it was determined between M2 and myself that she likely had strep and needed to be taken in to get started on antibiotics. I was NOT gonna tote J in there because to do so generally resulted in chaos and a nightmare, something I only endure for him when I absolutely have to (because it can take up to 6 hours at the base hospital ER), so I called Husband to come home and watch J while I took G to the appointment I managed to make for her. But as I set to making sure I had everything I need....my wallet was missing. Nowhere to be found. I tore the apartment apart looking for it, with no succession. I knew where I'd used it last and I called to see if a wallet had been turned in. Nope. So whoever found my wallet kept it. I lost a lot of things in that wallet, but by the protection of God, not my debit card, which had been forgotten at home. Husband took G to the doctor and I stayed home, mildly panicking.

That was a month and a half ago. I still have no driver's license, not the way I need to, and now base is closed so I can't get on base until I get my DL, because I can't even get my military ID until I have an ID for them to check. We had to suspend the credit card, I lost $47 in case, and a couple sentimental items. Without a military ID I can't get on base to get a new prescription. So began the process, around 7/20, for a new driver's license. I had a form to fill out, and then I had to send in a few things. But sending in one of those things turned out to be a nightmare itself, something that was FINALLY rectified about a week ago when Husband traveled home to take his bike back before we move, and mailed me, from there, the information I needed. I now begin a 10 day waiting period to get my DL, so I can get on base, get my military ID and then get my pills. I tried calling, at one point, to see what my recourse was to get more pills. Husband could only get them with a copy of my military ID, which is silly because if I had the ID to give him a copy, I would have the ID and wouldn't need him. Fortunately, they have a mailing system of some sorts with TriCare now, so I agreed to have my pills shipped to me, and was very excited to finally get some hormonal imbalance relief. But three days before they were due to arrive, I received an automated call from the pharmacy, alerting me that my prescription was ready and I would need to pick it up by Friday or the pills would be put back into circulation. So I called the pharmacy, exasperated, to tell them that we had set up for them to be MAILED to me, and if I could pick them up I wouldn't have bothered to have them mailed to me. They didn't know what happened to them and had me call TriCare, where the rep told me that she could see the order was put in, and that it even said shipped....but then something else was weird. Oh, ok, so turns out that they couldn't confirm my prescription with my doctor, who was it? Was she at Ft Hood? No? Hmm. Can't reach her....she doesn't have a secure fax line....nothing more I can do, you need to call the clinic and find a doctor with a secure fax line to authorize your prescription. Awesome sauce. All that work and everything fell through. Husband has begun to see the emergency of the situation; one day I was just so run down, low energy, because I've gone so long without pills that I could barely function. He found my temporary recourse that will hopefully lessen the chaos until I get my DL in the mail.

All this means that for about 3 weeks I have been on an emotional roller coaster. I was cranky and horrible for approximately 2 weeks, and then as soon as my monthly time was over I was inconsolably mushy and tearful, sentimental....and now I feel the very severe effects. It didn't help that every morning for most of that 2 weeks, I was waking up to J having created a little disaster in his room, for me to deal with first thing in the morning. Towards the end of the worst of it, I finally discovered a secret to dealing with it, something I'll mention later. Let me tell you, if even part of you thinks that anything about this blog post is intelligent and well worded, please appreciate the miracle of that. Generally, any time I've been off my pills, my ability to put certain logical thoughts together drops. I can't remember squat, I can't deal with minor catastrophes with any sort of grace....my ability to function as a normal, well-adjusted adult just sorta limps, if it functions at all. All this having been said though, I would LOVE to find an alternative, more natural way to deal with this lifelong hand of crazy jokers I've been dealt. I've had to find some ways to keep my mood tolerable.

Music is a major ally. I get in moods where I can't think of anything but a specific song, and so I'll listen to it and similar music to death until the itch is scratched. As long as I have that sort of music in my life I can put a smile back on my face. Oils are another coping method. Remember earlier when I mentioned the trouble J was getting in every morning? In the scheme of things, they were small....except that the same routine of trouble was repeating itself, literally, every morning. Sometimes there was an element that changed that just made everything a little bit worse, like the morning he'd taken his poopy diaper off and smeared the contents into various spots all over his carpet and on a few pieces of furniture, or the morning he took his wet diaper off, ripped it apart and had a confetti party with the wet stuffings that come in a disposable diaper, and it looked like it had snowed a bit in his room. Waking up like that, to such a mess that was just so....horrible, meant some pretty epic explosions on my part. So I took to waking up, walking to the bathroom, and rubbing Stress Away and Joy on my face, and then going to the kitchen to take a couple Confianza, before daring to open his door. Those few things are all that saved him an epic explosion the morning he played Picasso with poop. They also saved him on the snow diaper morning. He still manages to drag his mattress off the bed base every morning which drives me nuts simply because it's a pain to put back and I've told him no a million times, only for him to basically ignore me and either do it again the next morning, or even again later that day, around nap time. Le sigh. The struggle that is a toddler boy.

Coloring is my next coping method. I've mentioned these ideas in my stress management post, but, you know, I wasn't even off my meds when that happened. My stress level multiplies by about a billion when I don't have my meds helping me manage my hormones. Coloring makes me calm down and be methodical; it takes my mind off whatever may be going on that is stressing me out.

And then, bath time with a book.

Stress is par for the course with being an adult. It's inescapable. But it can be manageable, especially if you know yourself. I'm getting to know myself...and I like what I'm seeing some days, and dislike other parts. It is the way with things.

Plans For A Boy

Hopefully I can type this all in one sitting because it's weighing heavily on my heart today, but I know darn well that that can end with one distraction. I need to get this out.

The last couple of weeks have been very hard for me. Not because something big and traumatic happened, or because I'm remembering something crazy that makes me go crazy, but because my hormones have been completely out of whack. About a month ago, my wallet was lost/stolen. That's a hard thing to recover from, from a logistical standpoint, but to add insult to injury, I ran out of my prescription pills about at the same time. Now, I've gone without pills before, but for some reason, this time it was...different. My hormones took a deep, awful swing downward. I was cranky, moody, more than impatient, emotional in a bad way....my tolerance was at its lowest point, at least the lowest it's been in a very long time. Between snapping at Husband and J, I didn't even like myself, but I didn't seem to be able to reign in my total irritation for every little straw added to my haystack. I started waking up, dreading what new, fresh heck J would prepared to me. One morning he'd pooped and gotten his diaper off, and had smeared said poop all over and into his carpet. I spent the entire morning trying to spot clean the smears, and there are still stains that we'll have to use a professional cleaner on. He has also taken to scooting his mattress off his bed, so every morning for a bit I'd walk in there to discover his mattress taking over his floor, toys broken or scattered...it was hard to start a morning out keeping calm after telling him to quit doing that every single day. The lack of respect was, and really, still is, hard to stomach.

But what I'm noticing is that losing my temper serves 2 purposes: to ruin the rest of my day, and to break J's spirits. Now, if you don't know my boy, that sounds sad in and of itself, but if you could see the sheer life that seeps out of this boy, that would break your heart. He'so full of life, I don't want to crush that life out of him because I struggle to control my temper. And so this is what's on my heart.

I was an only child, raised by a single mother. My first child was a girl. I'm super unfamiliar with boys and so my poor son is his mother's guinea pig into the world of raising little boys. Add into that that he's busier, reportedly, than any of my MIL's children (one of whom helped create this tiny tornado) and, to be polite, I have my hands full. On Sunday, our associate pastor preached about grace, giving something to someone that most certainly doesn't deserve it, just because they are loved by the giver. He spoke on God's grace for us...and it hit me. If God gives me grace despite the awful person I am, I need to give J grace, because he's only 2.

My son is part of the future of this country. He has a strong heart, he has intelligence, and as his mother, it is my job to raise him as a God-fearing man that will treat everyone as a precious child of God, with respect and love. I want him to learn to consider his words before saying them, something his mother is still working on doing. I want him to love unconditionally, to make wise choices, and to treat the woman he chooses to love with dignity and respect.