Tell Me About Your Mother

I feel so pulled in so many directions that I’ve forgotten which end is “up.”

Our 12-year-old is still sick from this flare up. It’s been a month now and she still is not back to school full time and most days can’t manage more than a few good hours at a time. Her color is still bad but things are starting to slow down finally.

We are learning what it means to be the parents of a teenager (soon to be TWO teenagers). It just doesn’t seem fair that the minute you think you have a handle on the parenting thing something like this throws that idea out the window.

Our older boy is finishing up his Upward basketball season. He loves it so much and we’ve loved seeing how much he’s grown through this season.

And our youngest is about to turn five. FIVE! I can’t really go there, either.

Work is … well, work. The honey moon is definitely over and while I do enjoy most of the work I still softly lament that I’m not doing more counseling. Had I wanted to be a social worker, I would have gone in debt up to my ears for that instead of the counseling degree.

All in all, not too bad. We have a lot of positive momentum in reducing our debt but have a lot more questions on the horizon.

I’ve been pretty silent here because I didn’t feel I had much to talk about. Work has taken over much of my energy and by the time I come home, writing just isn’t on my list of things to do. Particularly since I write when I need to.

Our daughter’s ulcerative colitis has flared up again. We don’t know if it’s due to exposure to a virus or a flare in the course of the illness. To me, it doesn’t matter much. She’s bleeding again, nauseous, in pain… and I feel helpless. There is no pain quite like seeing your child suffer and not being able to do much but wait and see where it goes. Needless to say, I’m not handling it well.

The real problem (and irony) is that I don’t really know how to handle it well.  I think I’m doing well for a long time and something serves as a trigger and I’m a mess again. There’s no playing out my worst fears and realizing I’m making more of it than is necessary when my worst fears are a plausible reality.

How do you even deal with that?

I don’t know who even still reads this blog, if anyone. But for those few who still keep tabs here…

May you fully feel the richness of your blessings this Christmas. May you savor the beauty of the Season and meditate on the meaning behind it.

God bless each of you now and into the next year.

I seem to be losing track of time lately. It barely seems possible that I’ve been in my ‘new’ job for six weeks now and have already had my first evaluation (it went well, thanks). I feel fortunate to be in a job that I love, working with really wonderful people, and being fortunate to help make changes in people’s lives.  Everybody keeps waiting for my honeymoon period to be over. I think when you’ve had your first restless night of sleep worrying about a client and had several work-based dreams then that honeymoon is over, but that doesn’t negate the peace (dare I say joy?) of being in the middle of where I know I’m supposed to be at this point in time.

Outside of work, I’ve had people ask how I can love a field like mental health so much. “How can you do that every day?”

“Do what,” I always ask.

“Listen to people’s problems all day, every day.”

Because you’re looking at it the wrong way. I look at it as almost a sacred honor to come alongside people who are hurting and be there with them in that dark place. I get to help them dig out of it and in doing so I also get to celebrate their joys.  It doesn’t get any cooler than that.

But it’s also fascinating. The human brain is one of God’s greatest creations and the capabilities it has are phenomenal.

I know, I’m weird. But ultimately that’s how it all works.

I’ve always placed a special meaning on the holidays. Like most people, our family has generally had the big gatherings for food and catching up. Over the last few years, it’s been more difficult for me. My siblings are all older and their own children are having children now, so the holidays are a little crazier. Less time together.

It’s bittersweet for me, since my kids don’t get that same experience. Gatherings are smaller and don’t last nearly as long as everyone shuffles out the door to the next stop.  In some ways, as much as I love the holidays I hate them just as much for that reason.

This year, Thanksgiving took on a whole new meaning for me. The depth of gratitude I have for being carried through such a difficult year is hard to express. Here it is November and six months ago we were worried if our child would live. Some days that seems like a lifetime ago, other days it’s fresh in my memory and won’t leave it.  So I found myself on the emotional side this morning when our four-year-old declared in the van, “I am fankful for my whole family.”

Me, too, son. Me, too.

Since my last post, life has been a whirlwind of sickness and learning, usually intertwined. I came down with some form of bronchitis and over two weeks later am still not fully well. The only symptom I ever had was a cough and the Z pack didn’t do much of anything for me. I missed a full day of work in my second week. Not cool but they were kind about it.

In the mean time, I’m still learning the job and anxious to keep busy. I’ve finally organized myself and am top of everything I can be but am sorely short of any quotas I’m expected to keep. I’m told that will change shortly (more like warned) but I’m glad for it. Things are still good with the job and I have landed myself in a place full of great people. Some days I think it’s too good to be true. I like my coworkers and I really enjoy working with my clients. There are some fascinating stories there and hearing them is not just a job but a privilege. Maybe it’s the true blue counselor in me amidst a building of social workers, but I get funny looks over statements like that sometimes.

Good, the world needs to be turned on its ear.

It just dawned on me that the first full week of November is already gone. GONE!  This year has been such a whirlwind that it hardly seems like 10 months have already fully passed us by and I’m looking back with both a sigh of relief that it’s over and a big breath of gratitude for being carried through it:

January

In January, Mike came down with a serious case of pneumonia that seemed to want to hang around for awhile. I was starting into the final stretch of my graduate school education, pushing hard towards the goal. This news through us for a loop.

February

His first day of unemployment was February 1 and he was still sick. Kyra turned thirteen and at some point in this time, Zoe took on what seemed to be a virus. We were very wrong on that account!

March

Still unemployed and still recovering from pneumonia.  Joah had his fourth birthday party that we kept very low-key due to economic conditions (i.e., no income). We were fortunate enough to have had an inkling that something might be coming and had saved about three months worth of expenses. Budgeting is tight. I finish up my internship, but not really. I extend my internship so I can keep credentials in order to be hired to work for pay.

April

My first day of employment was April Fool’s Day. How’s that for irony? Mike is still job hunting and has a few interviews. Zoe, however, continues to struggle with illness. Doctor examines her and has some preliminary ideas but orders blood work and monitoring before he can figure out what’s going on.

May

We’ve received a referral to Children’s Hospital but the earliest appointment was June 3. Zoe starts to decline quickly. I take my licensing exam and pass it. Evan turns nine.  A few days later, Mike starts his new job on Monday. By Friday Zoe is admitted to the hospital and the rest of the month disappears into a hospital stay, blood transfusions, and a parent’s worst nightmare. She misses the remainder of the school year, but is alive to tell about it. God delivered us through horrific experiences. Somewhere in there, I reportedly graduated from school.

June

Zoe came from the hospital on a Sunday and the next day was the last day of school. Her teachers and the administration were gracious enough to pass her based on her record up until her hospitalization. She visited the kids in school on that last day but did so in a wheel chair due to lack of strength.  The other two kids went off to summer camp that month and at the end of it, Zoe turned twelve. We celebrated life that day.

July

I attempted to return to work in mid-July but found working with children to be too difficult after our ordeal. I resigned my position and wondered what to do next. I took a few weeks to look at options and then started applying for positions where I could work with adults.

August

Still job hunting. Kids go back to school with some fan fare. Zoe plays tennis, which is more than we thought she would be able to do. Kyra returns to cross country and greatly improves her times from last year. She’s one of 3 team captains this year. Evan struggles with returning to a new school building with new teachers. He also struggles with the loss of a family friend, only to find that his teacher is that friend’s daughter-in-law. God is watching over us.

September-October

These two months are spent with me trying to emotionally heal from my own wounds of the past year. I am in complete burn out mode, but continue to apply for positions. I interview frequently but never manage to land an offer. At the end of the month, I apply for a position I had little interest in from the ad. I receive a call immediately and interview within the week. I interview a second time.  Throughout this time I’ve had carpal tunnel surgery and 3 wisdom teeth extracted.  I’m offered the job and it turns out to be the best possible place and situation for our circumstances.  God’s timing is perfect.

November

On the second day of this month, I started back to work full-time. My second day on the job, Joah’s illness worsens. He was diagnosed with bronchitis and checked for pneumonia. We caught it just as it was starting. Two days later, Zoe is diagnosed with H1N1/swine flu & pneumonia.

It still feels like yesterday that Mike was sick and laid off. Throughout all of this we have been blessed. Health insurance started Mike’s first day and so the majority of Zoe’s medical bills were fully covered (praise God — the bills were huge). We have been blessed to find a doctor who is aggressive in his treatment and patient advocacy.  While I’m thankful for the positives this year, I’m already ready for 2010 to start and wipe the slate clean.

I think it started with my toothache, but at some point in the last 3 weeks I stopped sleeping well at night. It was probably originally the discomfort, but as the week wore on and I had my wisdom teeth taken out I noticed I was only sleeping due to the pain medication. I would still wake up halfway between doses and never felt rested.

Now it’s a week later and at first I wondered if my sleeplessness was a rebound effect from the medications. Then I realized how tense I was about hearing about the job I had interviewed for. It was much worse than the others in that I knew the likelihood was good that I’d gotten the job — and I really did not want another big disappointment. At the same time, my nerves were on edge because I was probably going to get it.

I don’t know if you know this or not, but aside from the school mandated internship I have really held a long-term “real” job. The longest I’ve worked at a paying job was 3 months — summer job and temporary job right before I got married. And being a cashier, though I did enjoy it, does not have the same amount of impact on people’s lives as therapy. I feel some pressure there.

So yesterday I officially accepted the formal offer of employment. The tension in my neck and upper back was unreal. It’s like months (maybe years) of stress started to ooze out of my body. I broke down and used a natural sleep aid to help me sleep. And for the first time in a few weeks now I slept through the night.  I’m still tired, so not sure how much it helped overall but at least it’s a start.

Last week we took three of the four kids to get seasonal flu shots. This is our first year in doing so, and really only did it because of our daughter’s immune suppression treatment for Ulcerative Colitis. We will also be getting the H1N1 vaccines for the same reasons. I am not looking forward to it.

Why? Well, there are several reasons and the widespread panic about catching it is not even among them. The greatest reason I dread it is because of the kids’ fear of getting shots. And for us, the shot is the only real option any of us have. For the kids, as with most people, anticipating unpleasantness is generally far worse than the actual unpleasant action that’s feared.

For this very reason, we did not tell them what we were doing. Our 4-year-old had his pre-kindergarten shots this summer and still holds a grudge against the nurse in our family practice. So we went to urgent care and risked catching God-knows-what while there for this. The 13- and 9-year-olds caught on quickly.The oldest went first and, God bless her, put on the bravest face she could muster so as not to scare the littlest one.

Our nine-year-old couldn’t hold it together that long. He sat down and the nurse said “are you ready?”  The tears burst through and the panic started. He jerked away once but let her give him the shot afterward. He laughed when it was over, realizing his fear was worse than the act itself. The littlest one was having nothing of it. He screamed at the top of his lungs “I. DON’T. WANT. A. SHOOOOTTTTTTTTT!!” and alternated it with “I FEEL FINE! I SAID I FEEL FINE!!”

It took two grown men to hold him still, which is why I insisted his daddy go with us for these. I know what unnatural strength the child is capable of once that adrenaline kicks in. It would be utterly amazing if it wasn’t so frustrating.

But I can’t blame them. I, after all, have spent the last 12 years avoiding having my wisdom teeth removed for fear of the pain and fear of general anesthesia. Please, don’t laugh. It’s embarrassing enough. But a week and a half ago, one of the became infected and the pain of status quo became much greater than the fear of the unknown. Four days ago, those puppies came out. And would you know that it wasn’t as bad as I’d built it up to be?

In fact, the pain of the infection was worse than the extraction itself — even the one that was “difficult.” It makes me wonder how stupid I’m being about other things.

Please, leave that as a rhetorical statement. I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon enough.

Blogging here has been very scarce and that was intentional. I have been on a mission of sorts to figure out what my problem is and I think I did just that.  I was struggling with depression, trauma from our daughter’s illness, lack of professional and personal identity, physical ailments, and a general sense of feeling useless. There’s a word for it now.

Burn out.

Our pastor’s wife twittered a week ago about finishing a book and as soon as I saw the title I knew I had to read it: Leading on Empty by Wayne Cordeiro. I haven’t quite finished it yet but it is exactly what my soul needed. Not to say I am where I need to be yet, either, but I know the problem and I am working on the solution.

Cordeiro speaks to pastoral leadership about burnout, but the same scenarios and advice are helpful to anyone in a helping or caretaking profession. It took only the first 40 pages for me to realize how badly burned out I was. Six years of school and putting out fires in regards to various issues, ignoring health concerns that should have taken higher priority, and other life strains that just culminated in my daughter’s illness. I was forced into rest, and I believe it was a divine intervention to save me from myself.

I am learning to say no, and not now. I am learning to wait for the best instead of jumping for what’s “just” good. I am trying to effect real change in my life because, quite honestly, where I’ve been is not where I want to be in the future. I am also seeing my own spiritual desert lately. I have questioned my faith as well as God, and am concluding that I am still in a season of growing pains. Growing, yes. And painful — very much so. I have faith that this is working out for my good and God’s glory. The journey isn’t terribly pleasant, but it’s movement all the same.

I have diabetes. After two years of unsuccessful struggling to get my numbers under control with a family doctor I transitioned to the care of an endocrinologist. I like her and while my numbers are much better, they’re not really controlled still. It seems my body has a thing about various hormones.

For example, I get horrendous PMS. It’s probably more like PMDD (you can google that one), but it’s awful every month. For this reason, I remain on birth control pills even though we took more permanent measures in that area. Insulin is also a hormone and I appear to be insulin resistant on top of everything else.  It all comes down to hormones, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the last few days I have felt what was an inexplicable rage, set off at the stupidest triggers. I was edgy, irritable, and just generally not nice to be around. Moody, tearful, angry.  I did a lot of apologizing. And then it dawned on me. My blood sugars were off AND it’s that time of the month, which apparently also coincides with higher blood sugars. Bad combination in general, but especially for me.

Yesterday my blood sugar was spiked above 350 for quite awhile. I gave myself almost 200 units of fast acting insulin on top of the usual baseline and it wasn’t coming down. I was characteristically tired but also frighteningly irritable. It was not a good experience. I ended up going to bed at nine and praying my numbers would come down.  I woke up this morning to a more normal number, thankfully.

Ironically, I had met with a patient information rep about an insulin pump yesterday morning.

This has been a difficult year for our family. It started with my husband having pneumonia and losing his job as of February 1. Shortly after that our daughter’s illness began to manifest itself and go downhill quickly. I finished internship and passed a licensing exam just before spending most of May in Children’s Hospital with a critically ill child. We had a long summer of ups and downs, fears, and small victories.

School came around and we sent three off to the various buildings. And then we saw our third child (the oldest boy, age 9) begin to struggle again with school. If you’ve never had a child have serious difficulty with school work and subsequent behavioral issues developing from it, then you’re likely to judge that child or family as lazy or undisciplined. I know I have. But just as I watched my greatest fear manifest before me earlier this year (a critically ill child), I am now facing another fear: having a child struggle with things you cannot relate to.

It sounds silly to some and others will say to toughen up and push on. I used to think the same thing. However, after five years of watching the struggle and watching his self-worth plummet it’s been time to do something. We’ve begun the process of having him evaluated by getting a referral to Children’s again. Per my professional experience, I knew it would be an ADHD referral. However, also per my experience, I’m concerned about other issues — like learning disabilities.  I suppose the process will tell us for sure, but what I didn’t anticipate in this was the pain I’m experiencing for him.

In all of this, I’m struggling with a mixed bag of feelings regarding my lack of progress in finding a job. I have been convinced the counseling profession is my calling in life. I believed it stemmed from my own history of problems (postpartum depression), but now I’m left wondering if I didn’t get a very expensive degree just to be an advocate for my children. While that alone would be worth it, it’s hard to be disappointed on that front as well.

I feel as though I’m in the process of having my world torn down so it can be rebuilt. It’s painful and I wish it wasn’t happening, but I also have to believe there’s good reason for it. I’d just like a hint at what it is.

It’s been two weeks since my last post. I would have thought blogging would be more frequent in the absence of work to occupy my time, but I guess not. Not to say I have not been busy, quite the contrary is true.  I’ve had three job interviews, one of which involves contract work that looks like it’s moving forward. I haven’t heard about the other two yet.

I also had carpal tunnel surgery shortly after that. The recovery has been tougher than I was led to believe, but not horrible. I had no idea how weak my hand would be after surgery (except for c-sections, I’ve never had surgery before this).  It was also my first time being under any kind of general anesthetic. All I can say was that was weird. It’s like a nap, but you wake up more tired than when you went out. But the experience is now over and my general fear of it is a bit less.

Although I haven’t been writing, I’ve been thinking about writing. Blogging hasn’t really been “enough” for me. I’ve found it so hard to post here. Everything I feel like I want to say… or really, need to say, is much weightier than a blog feels appropriate for. I don’t know where it’s leading, but I know that I need to do this for healing to take place. What that means for this place, I also don’t know. Some days I feel like I’m done, and others not.

I am sitting here in the comfort of my living room with the knowledge that all four of my children are safely tucked in to their beds. I know that at this point in time there are parents across town, parents of a girl my two daughters are friendly with, who are worried sick. Their 13-year-old daughter is missing and presumed to be with what she has called her 26-year-old “boyfriend.”

I have two young daughters in their beds feeling guilty because hindsight is 20/20 and viciously clear. It’s easy to read the signs once you know where the destination is and I’ve tried to reassure them that they have no fault in this.  If you’re lied to by someone you trust, shame on the liar who wasn’t trustworthy.

We (I) have always been brutally honest with our kids about the risks of some behaviors. Some things you talk about are standard parental talks: stranger danger, sex and development, dating… but who stops to consider the need to tell your young children that there is no such thing as a consenting relationship between a 13-year-old and an adult. Any situation thereof is predatory and is criminal for very good reasons.  I’ve heard conflicting statements now that her parents both knew they were ‘dating’ and that they considered him a stalker. Either way, do not take such things lightly.

Don’t take it for granted that your kids know these things. It may be embarrassing, it may be awkward, and it may feel like you’re stating the obvious. But it is sure is less painful than not knowing where your kid might be.

I met with my two daughters’ teachers a couple of days ago to explore the need for a 504 plan. It’s a document that has medical information in it that both instructs school personnel what to do in regards to her illness but also interventions and accomodations as a result. For example, should she have another flare up it can accommodate for testing and homework. As my husband called it, it’s common sense written down. But more than that it helps with transitions from year to year so there’s no battles with people who don’t understand that her invisible illness still impacts her life significantly, even if it’s not an every day occurrence.

Both girls, being in honors, have the same teachers. And my older daughter had these same teachers as a seventh grader last year. As the school psychologist asked the teachers how our younger daughter is in class, the 7th grade advisory teacher just shook his head in amazement and said that she was NOTHING like her sister.

It was really all I could do to keep from laughing. It was a long-awaited confirmation of something we’ve known since each of them was born.

They are indeed very different in almost every possible way. Sure they have similar characteristics, but the expression of those traits is so different it’s sometimes hard to see it. Neither personality is bad at all. They’re both very good kids. But that statement of the obvious was stated so outright that it was humorous.  So is the knowledge that one takes after me so much and the other is her dad made over.

This is why I love studying human behavior.