How Willing Am I?

To save my marriage and my family?

This willing.

What debilitating pain looks like. The warmth of my husband holding me helps.

I know it sounds dramatic - but that's me "Skippy the drama Queen" - tough rocks. I don't care.

I have spoken of pain before. I have talked about the debilitating effects of conditions I didn't even know I had - only to discover the stuff was real and nothing was touching it.

SURPRISE!!

I have a new pain that makes RA seem like birthday cake - with sprinkles and candles, no less - but this HURTS.  It is beyond hurting. This is a slamming door to the point you separate the door frame from the wall, you cry for 20 hours a day and wake up after a four hour nap knowing you cried in your sleep because your face is still wet. The kind of pain where you scream at your husband and your daughter because they are not getting it.

They have that stupid pain scale, right? The one that comes out of the doctor's mouth as "So on a scale of one to ten, where is your pain?" and they show that inane chart with the withering smiley faces?  I have gotten to the point where I look at them and say "Where is the one with tire marks running across it's face and Xs for eyes? THAT IS MY PAIN."  [They usually step away at that point, but I promise I am saying it quietly and without my eyes rolling back in my head.] I told the doctor and my nurses one time that I considered childbirth to be a 4, at the worst - and for me, and four kids? Yep that works. They shook their heads and went to correct me.  I stopped the doctor  from telling me "Oh no, ALL childbirth is at LEAST a 6."  I wanted to scream "Who the fuck are you and when is the last time you pushed a watermelon out of your body? IT IS NOT."  Sorry - but it pisses me off to be corrected when people who don't live in MY body but are book educated try to explain PAIN to me.

YOU, doctor sir, have no idea. No one has any idea and it is simply one more area where I am completely isolated from everyone and everything.

I am fed up with being asked if I am suicidal.  I retort "Why? Why do you ask? Do I look depressed? Act depressed? You bet your fucking socks that I am as depressed as I AM - but NO I AM NOT suicidal.  Had I been I would've shot myself long ago."  Yeesh.  I don't want more meds - I want LESS - I want to know how to FIX THIS.  No human being, living creature - oh hell - nothing should live like this. [As this is a blog I feel the need to point out that I am NOT diminishing other's struggles with mental health and suicidal feelings. They are real and their worlds, and I pray that they get the help they should have been allowed a long time ago -but?  I am not chemically imbalanced.  I am worn down and desperate from fatigue, pain and isolation.]

YET? I do LIVE LIKE THIS.  And you all see me play nicely and happily in the sandbox over on Facebook - but what you don't realize when I am talking about Evie's prom dress? Or Emily's graduation? While typing that, I have tears pouring down my face.  When I speak of our 20th anniversary in less than two weeks? My heart is happy but I am contemplating whether or not I can catch the garbage truck barreling down our street to just step in front of it.  At this point I think the mail truck could do a fair job. Considering.  The weight is going south AGAIN and Steven is starting his whole "I can tell her she is pretty. . . BUT? She looks like hell" marathon.

Put your thumb and forefinger around your wrist.  Make them touch.  Okay?  You shouldn't have a gap between your fingers and your skin on your wrist, or a smallish one if you are small boned.

Me?  I can fit a fucking SNICKERS bar in the gap between my fingers and my wrist.  The only weight I have on me now is due to swelling and water retention.

Oh joy - oh thrill - let's do the happy dance.  ::and the sarcasm drips, drips....and then it pours.::

So what am I willing to do now to alleviate this pain? To get me back to being marginally me?

I am going to take Lyrica again.

Even typing those words scare the living crap out of me.  If any Tadpole remembers the last time I took that drug I had such severe nightmares that Steven had to come home from work to help me.  He could not convince me that the older kids weren't hurt or dead.  I kept dreaming that Dee, Tee, Jr. and Squirrel had been [for lack of a better word] slaughtered.  And I couldn't help them. Save them.  These nightmares left me screaming, unable to wake myself up that my 13 year old daughter had to come into my room and physically shake me as hard as she could,  hurting me, to get me out of the fugue I was experiencing.

Steven and I finally decided that it was time I picked.  Functionality or debilitating pain?  Nightmares or me?

I picked pain free with the added gift of bloody nightmares.  Wish me luck while I figure out how not to sleep until they can reduce this swelling and take the damage away.

I tried to do happy Tadpoles. You simply have no idea right now how I can't. I am so sorry.