Isolation...oh yes please.

June 2008 I swallowed 10.7 mci of radiation to attempt to kill/damage my over active thyroid gland.

I had to spend 4 days in strict isolation.

My kids were 6 and 1 3/4. Husband took the time off work and watched them.

I stayed in the back of my pick up. Which was parked in front of the house. I was allowed to make there food so they would call me on the walkie talkie and then go up stairs so I could prep their food then leave the house.

I would have loved to have stayed at a motel, but wanted to be there close in case my hubby needed verbally coached through the four days of kid wrangling. Plus we couldn't afford it.

I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the isolation. I have grown very fond of the physical touches my husband gives me through out the day. I love being near him and hugging him. He told me before we were married that "what ever my faults may be, it won't be giving my wife lack of affection."

He has been true to his word.

I eat up his physical touch. Its like a nutrient that nourishes me.

Four days without it was going to be rough.

The total isolation protocol was this:

4 days strict isolation no closer than 12 feet from ANYONE.
then
NO neck contact with anyone for 2 weeks (as in you can't touch my neck or hug me where your face is near my neck. Which meant no sleeping in bed with husband for two weeks.
(um, that was the hardest part. I am a spooning junkie)
NO closer than 3 feet from me for one week post isolation
NO contact with babies for 2 weeks - babies suck up radiation like sponges.
No sitting near me or riding in a car with me for longer than 30 min after 1 week of the treatment.

I arrived back at the house after taking the radioactive pill and climbed into the canopy and radioed Coremind to tell him I was home and to check on the family.

They came to the picture window and waved to me. I remember thinking...who is this 4 days going to be longer for, me in isolation, or Coremind alone with his kids and no wifey.


I laid back and opened the book I had brought, and promptly fell sound asleep.

Not just asleep, but ASLEEP. For the first time since conceiving our son in 2001 I slept soundly. There was no sleeping with one ear open listening for the kids or for burglars or house fires, no listening for hungry babies calling for my boobs....nothing. I was responsible for just me.

Literally I was relieved of ALL my parental duties. Actually all my duties as a human!

24/7 non-ending parenting wears you down, I didn't realize just HOW much till that moment.

I think all parents should be put in strict isolation 4 days every year just so they can have a complete break. What a wonderful thing that was.

By day four I was ready to return to my job. Gauging  from the number of times my family came to the window to look out at me in the truck, they were ready for me to return too.

Sedronomy

What could be such a vile force, to creep into a man's sanity and gnaw a hole? Thus allowing the liquid madness to seep in and jell...its destructive tendrils flaying out to take root like a cancer.

"Sedronomy" He declares aloud to an unseen jury, and for a moment he appears his true age of twenty-three, as his muscular body tenses pulling him to attention.

Within his psyche the hushed seductive voice of madness oozes from one shadow to another whispering as it goes.

He wilts into an old man and soundlessly sobs as he pounds the backs of his scarred hands onto his quivering thighs. His cobalt blue eyes clench tightly as he begins again to recite combinations of the endless verbal rubics locked in his mind, in an attempt to find the combination that will free him.

"snakes, cakes, big fat lakes...two  on two off, two on two off....sedronomy, hydronomy, anon-omy, anon-omy,... anon-omy" He arches back as his pale face grimaces. He grabs his disheveled shaggy brown mane and pulls at it, as if that will ease the internal pressure.

He is held by two orderlies as the nurse with lilac-rose perfume on coaxes him to relax his woody lips so she can pour in 15 cc of cloudy grape juice and Thorazine.

For a moment he resists, enjoying the sensation of being held, temporarily relieved of responsibility, as they are now in charge of holding him together. Keeping him whole and preventing him from shattering into a million pieces.

The loud taste of rotten moldy barley assaults his numb pallet, followed quickly by the skin sucking bitterness of the grape juice.

He swallows and comes up gasping for air...reborn by chemical baptism.

The madness laughs its deep rumbling laugh and goes no where. The drug will paralyze normal brain function and the madness will spread its dark gospel to the unresisting.

Crabby Cranks

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Warning crabby - venting - cranky - growling - grumbly - type of morning
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Weekdays promptly at 6:30 the neighbors German shepard starts barking when the bus arrives to pick up her son.

The walls of our house are thin. Reeeeeeeaaallly thin. So it sounds like she is sitting beside the bed barking.

I am not a morning person. A lot of my work nights I don't get home till 3:00 am....fall asleep by 4 am if I am lucky.

So let me tell you how much I enjoy the am bark fest.

I have no doubt that someday soon the sleepy one, aka THE BITCH will get up and unleash a verbal tirade of screams out the window at said dog and the owner who stands there every morning and does nothing.

So that sets the tone for my am's mon-fri.

Then at 7:00 I have to get up my family and wrestle them to get the day started.

As I said I am NOT a morning person.

I would make the perfect military weapon of mass destruction.

We interrupt this program to bring you this news update....The entire population of Oregon was annihilated this morning by the military after the accidental deployment of their P....General RG Pouge had this offical statement to release...."We accidently set the alarm for 7 AM instead of PM, heh, oopsie."

Fat toad

I have been insanely busy, and this isnt the post I planned to write....but I want (need?) to write.

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TRIGGER for death and suicidal thoughts - a morbid peek into my head and what is rolling around in there tonight.
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*crrrrrooooaaaack*

Feels like I have a fat toad in my belly, slimey...warty...gross...heavy and poisonous. Sitting there making me feel bloated and barfy.

*Bleaah*

And making it worse is that stickie note on the calender that says I have a doctors appt on Tuesday.

I don't go to the doctors unless I think I am dying.

So that should tell you what I think my prognosis is.

I am always ready to die. Something about being suicidal my whole life makes the thought of death very appealing.

I do NOT have health insurance. I do NOT like racking up medical bills. I do NOT want to go to the doctors.

But I am out voted.

I would just silently die from what ever is going on with me and no one would ever know, just one day my family would be like HELLS BELLS our mama died!

My children are not old enough to fend for themselves yet. I can't die until they both know how to use the stove and make there own food.

My husband is good at learning things, but I don't think he would relish the idea of having to learn to be me.

So as I said I am out voted. I go to the doctor because my family needs me.

That frightens me.

Them needing me binds me here. Gives me roots. I no longer have that freedom to say heck with it I am going to attempt suicide/plan my death.

In a way they control me.

But they can't control my mind. Who, with this fat toad issue, is working over time on the theory that I am dying.

I have spent soooo much of my life "dying".

Afraid to connect and live. Really live.

afraid of what?

afraid that someone will need me and want me and miss me.

and that I will have to keep on living.

I have been working all week covering for my boss. All those extra nights commuting DID NOT HELP ONE BIT. 45 min one way  to be alone with my head.....and the fat toad. Playing Dr House and running through all the diagnosis.

Then 45 min back, to plan just how I want to die.

What I will tell my children.

What my last hours with my husband would be like.

Nope, not good at all.

I am afraid.

Afraid because I don't have insurance...and to live would mean burdening my family with bills. But the alternative is??

The toad and I will go to the doctors. I will make me tell the doc what is going on. I will tell them I have already diagnosised it as terminal, and please have hospice contact me. Then I will have to go to work that night.

45 min one way to stew over the appt.

alone.

Why does life have to be so blasted complicated?

Undiagnosised - Capturing a lie on film

I have been looking through my photo albums a lot lately. There are a lot of empty spaces in them as I have given most of the farm kids the copies I have of their pictures.

This one I still have.

It's puzzled me as to why I didn't pass it on.

That is KSS before she was diagnosed. She is inside my shirt with me and we are crawling about the house.

I love the smile on her face. She could scoot by herself, but not for long or far. There was too much upper body hypotonia (ie weakness) to allow her to crawl properly. She just knew she was supposed to be mobile and it fustrated the heck out of her.

She wanted to move faster then she could so I provided the stable frame work and we would make tracks about the house.

hmmmmm. Oh wow..

After some soul searching and thinking about it. I figured out why I have kept this particular picture.

(tears)

wow.

What you see there isn't the truth. Matter of a fact its a total lie.

That is an almost immobile child moving freely about the house with a giant smile on her face. That smiling woman with her is suicidal and planning her death. The last sun rise she plans to see is on her 23rd birthday.


KSS has the looming diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy heading her way, and I have a slew of psych diagnosis heading my way. We both were undiagnosised at the time that picture was snapped. But the picture doesn't show that. We look....okay.

We both were struggling to function in a world that was normal...while we were not.

At the time that picture was taken these were my goals in life.

1. To have dark circles under my eyes.
2. Have grey hair.
3. Be dead by the time I am 23.

All I had left to cross off that list was #3. And those plans were made and set in stone.

Life was unbearable hard and difficult. The only reason I had not killed my self at that point in time was because of that little person inside my shirt.

I am alive today because that ball of sunshine came into my life.

This was taken when she was 17. I am 5' 6" She is even taller now.

My....how the tables have turned. She could stuff me in her shirt now and haul me around. Wouldn't that be a hoot to reshoot that photo in reverse!

Those dark days have faded in intensity over the years. I don't have to struggle so hard to stay alive as I did back then. The love and light of all of my farm kids sure made up for a lot of pain and torment from my peers as a child.

I learned to love them before I could ever learn to love my self. Being there for them made me work hard at getting the self injury under control.

To be needed by them was a gift. My life on the farm was a retreat and a healing journey all in its own.

maybe I should share that one moment on the farm that profoundly altered my existence. Yes I think I will in my next post.

I am heading off to bed to fall asleep day dreaming  about how KSS and I used to ride the horse. Her arms flapping in the wind, as she shouted "SAJA RIDE!!" as we cantered about the field, both of us escaping our predicaments for a moment.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

From a reader's Email in response to my post Best-est older sister on the planet.

"Are there any compromising photos of you out there?"

(wouldn't you like to see the photos that promoted Wal-mart to issue this to me??!!)

BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHAHHHAA!!!

Okay, Lets examin the evidence.

 I have a nudie streak a mile wide. I love to mug for cameras...AND I have a very warped sense of humor.

ergo....Too many to post. Waaaaaaay to many to post.

I will share my favorite one and the story behind it.

Did you know that nudy Prince Harry and I have one thing in common?...yup, we both have balls.

Of course mine are beet balls.

Those are my great grandma's pickled beet balls. On an insane laughter filled road trip down to see her we found them in her fridge. They had expired a 1/2 a century ago and we all joked that someday we would find ourselves the recipients of said beet balls at the reading of the will.

I lamented about being 4th in line to inherit them.

We (older sister, younger bro and me) decided to photograph them for posterity, and well things slipped down hill pretty fast after that.

Common, admit it, my choice of pose is legendary. Pickled beet balls are quite photogenic don't ya think?

That's my Tiny Grandma. She was as goofy as her great grand kids. Gosh how that woman loved to laugh.

I don't know who eventually inherited her beet balls, but knowing my family like I do, I am sure I have not seen the last of them. LOL!!

Gold medal performance 2002 Sibling Olympics

Being born when I was had its advantages. One of the greatest things about it, was the lack of things to do. No cable, no internet, dirt had just been invented and only rich families could afford it etc. So to entertain ourselves we did psych experiments on each other used our imaginations.

One branch of that tree was the Out funning the other category. The rules are simple: be funnier than your sibling.

Here is my entry in the Summer 2002  Sibling Olympics.

Email to family:

August 6, 2002

Now I have been thinking....I am a writer, why can't I write my own ask friends/family/internet a zillion questions questionnaire to circulate on the internet? So here it is. Please fill it in and send it back.

Love you all, P.

1. Which credit card is your favorite/has the biggest credit allowance?

2. What is the number?

3. When does it expire?

4. Where do you bank?

5. What is your saving account #?

6. Pass words/PIN #'s?

7. Where do you keep the valuables in your house?

8. When will you be gone next?

9. Do you have an alarm/BIG dog?

To which my big sister promptly replies:

Otay, I fill it out nice, yor sistuh me

1. Which credit card is your favorite/has the biggest credit allowance?

De one wit de shiny face

2. What is the number?

tee for five

3. When does it expire?

It's still alive

4. Where do you bank?

At de bank

5. What is your saving account #?

De bank lady she no dat

6. Pass words/PIN #'s?

Please and thank you

7. Where do you keep the valuables in your house?

Do yew meen da family jewels?

8. When will you be gone next?

I be gone mos of de time fisshin'

9. Do you have an alarm/BIG dog?

De dog he be big dog, he don't set de alarm he can't work de buttons.

BOOM! I was knocked out of medal contention and my sisters flawless performance wins the gold with a 10's across the board!!