Couch 245: STELLA!

Well, I got 3 out of the 4 MRIs done. It was pretty awful. The scrubs fit although not very well. I tried to just not think about how awful I looked in them. Got into the MRI room, they situated me and started to shove me into the tube and I freaked out. They pulled me out. They had said I would be in there like an hour and a half and I was like no f'in way I can stay in that tube that long. Had a bit of a panic attack, started apologizing to everyone, then started crying. How embarrassing. After a few minutes, we agreed to maybe just do two of the exams so I was reinserted back into the machine. This time I managed to keep it together and they started the exam. They were talking to me via headphones and I had a panic button if I needed something. After a bit, I told them I thought I could continue and do all of the exams, but they had changed the thing that goes around your head and it would have to be changed back to do the 4th one, so I may have to go back and get that one done at a later date. Felt very shaky afterwards and I'm glad to be back home.

Ive had a couple of mri's, one on my knee and one of my head, and all theyve ever done is open like some back door with no lights on so i had no idea where i was or if i was in a confined space. I think they asked me beforehand if i was claustrophobic and pretty sure i answered yes. I swear one time i thought they were shoving me out to the alley, thats how sketchy the door looked. But they fooled me!

I need my power back on! I have a bike headlamp to get around the apartment with, but they wont even start fixing it until this next round of thunderstorms comes thru.

Sweetie, I think those were the alien kidnappers…

The expensive part of my recent body part replacement, in terms of what I had to pay, was the part of the open sided MRI that the insurance company wouldn't cover. It was worth it to me to do the open sided kind -which was still fairly claustrophobic

Oh I hope it comes on soon. I am guessing or at least hoping for you that Michigan isn't quite as hot as some other parts of the country right now. We're in a pattern right now we're 99 to 100° every day with a great deal of humidity so when electricity off it is dangerous. I'm pretty sure I would have to drive at least one of my dogs to a hotel because he would be in peril

My therapist had one done recently on his hip to diagnose a labrum tear and he said he took a nap while they did it. I'm gonna have to inquire if they stuck him in head first or feet first. I will say the noises didn't bother me and were a little trippy at times.

Oh yeah i looooove the mri "music"!!! As d*ck clark used to say, it has a beat and you can dance to it! I googled for recordings a few years ago but couldnt find any. I only found music to cover it up. Not what i wanted at all!

I'm exhausted. Processing my infertility in session yesterday plus only 4 hours of sleep... And I don't get to see L next until Tuesday.

Hugs, Scarlet. Can you get some rest today?

Hugs, if wanted. I'm sorry it was such a difficult experience. Hopefully, they got what they needed from those MRIs and you won't have to do the 4th. Do you know when you'll get results?

I don't remember music or anything much about the 2 I had in the hospital last month; then again I was out of my mind with pain for both of them so... well, I do remember I went in the tube thingy feet first.

I've read the reports on My Chart. Nothing stood out as problematic in them, but I'm not a doctor so we'll see what the ENT has to say.

Yeah. I'm probably going to take a nap after my phone call with L.

Hope your nap helps/helped, Scarlet!

It was only a 2 hr nap because H woke me up, but I am feeling a little better. More grounded.

The infertility stuff is really hard for me in general, and now with L pregnant... I've never had anyone to process it with. Everyone walks on eggshells around me with this. It sucks. And my house is not a safe place to cry because my dad and H do everything they can to make me stop. They don't care that I might actually need a good cry.

I am hoping to try to get pregnant one more time. H has an appointment in September to see about getting testosterone supplements? And I also have an appointment in September to see if I can get on fertility medication. I just have doubts about my appointment. I'm considered so high risk. From my age, diabetes, high bp, psych meds, and PCOS, plus already getting a huge cyst from the last time I tried meds. I just want to try one more time. I just want one more chance.

I am sorry. Scarlet do you have PCOS (with specific symptoms) or polycystic ovaries? My daughter has polycystic ovaries, she had several surgeries periodically removing the biggest ones, also many ER trips etc. She was always told that she’d have a big fertility issue due to those, but it turns out not to be the case.

Also I am sorry if you already answered it at some point but would you consider adoption or perhaps start with fostering?

Thank you, Divine.

The doctors have told me I have PCOS, but I'm not entirely sure. I do have a lot of the symptoms and comorbid issues like diabetes and high bp. I also had irregular periods in my early 20's. But ever since I was on Clomid (except for extremely stressful months), I am 100% regular. They say if you have your period, you're ovulating. So maybe the Clomid helped restart my hormones? And maybe it's just H's low testosterone? I'll need to take an ovulation test to be sure. The only time I had a diagnosed cyst was due to Clomid. So maybe I don't have PCOS?

Yes, I would love to do adoption if I can't get pregnant: baby or a young child. However, it is so expensive! I know babies are expensive, too. Just adoption you have to pay extra. I'm not to sure on fostering. I would hate to get attached to a child and then have it taken away.

*curls up on Couch, whimpers*

This business of being one's own technical support sucks.
Trying to figure out how to get what I see in my desktop email client to line up with what I see on the web in my new email account...

Its not exactly music, its more like Stomp - all beats and boops. But eventually it repeats, so i thought it was symphonic.

Yay, my power came back two hours ago, but i was so enthralled in my Denali book that i missed it.

In 1967 a 24 yr old physics grad student led an expedition up mt mckinley. He had 8 people on his team, another team of 3 joined them, but these 3 guys were all supermen, while the original group was a bunch of nerds and weirdos. Summit day, the leader summits with the supermen, leaving the orig group to go up the next day with his co-leader. Yeah right. SNOFU.

So i keep turning the pages - this is not the first account ive read of the expedition, but it is the first written by this so-called leader - anyway im turning pages waiting for him to take responsibility.

So i kept kool reading this book and i have a little battery-operated fan. Plus my bike headlamp to guide me to the bathroom, i survived the 48 hr blackout

You could sell a tshirt!

I have been miserably down the past 48 hours. Like a cheerfulness blackout.

I don't have children. I am scared of them and by the idea of being a mother. I was brought up by a mentally ill mother who was abusive. How do you know when you are healed enough from your own wounds to be able to safely mother a child? I know that plenty of people have children without considering questions like that. However, I think that when you are in therapy and are working on your own pain and wounds, it feels like the question becomes more conscious as we are (hopefully) more aware of this kind of existential crossroad. I can't imagine being in the middle of my work around attachment and relational wounds with all the core pain that this entails, and then adding in a child. That is hardcore emotional work with such great risk to self and child. As I said, my stuff around mothering and children is very delicate so no wonder it's not clear to me, but I am interested in how other women know they can mother despite their own wounds.

This is causing some kinda complicated musing in me, moo. When I got pregnant with my son, this was going on 26 years ago now, it was a good 10 years (if I did the math right) after I'd first tried therapy with 2 different t's because my parents made me go when they found out I had been dating a woman (t1 i walked out of the first session cuz he was a d*** and t2 there was no connection at all so I didn't see her for very long) and at the time of my marriage, I was so happy - loved my job, h and I had only been married like 2-3 months when I found out I was pregnant, being a mom was something i wanted with every fiber of my being. Looking back now, I can see that while I was happy, I was also very much living my life at a surface level if that makes sense, doing what was expected of me basically as far as marrying a man, working, having a family, etc. Don't get me wrong I really wanted to be a mom and that was about the only thing at the time that came from deep inside me. Besides wanting to be a mom, I had no idea what was going on inside, of the childhood wounds that needed healing, because I had shoved them down, covered them up, so that I could deny their existence to myself I suppose. If I hadn't been in so much denial and had known how messed up I was, I would have been afraid to have a child. I wouldn't have gotten married, either.

But I didn't know.

I think the email saga is finally over.
Managed to migrate everything from the old one to the new one and changed what needs to be changed over.

*collapses in a heap*

For me, childhood issues that I hadn't resolved resurfaced when I became a mother. I returned to therapy about 5 months after I had my daughter (and have been going ever since). Some of that was due to intense postpartum anxiety (and postpartum depression, though I didn't fully recognize that part at the time).

My daughter's initial diagnosis of a developmental (speech mainly) delay, followed by her diagnosis of autism dredged up even more stuff, like my dealing with OCD and anxiety as a kid, but not having help for it. Well, and things with ex-MC triggered some of that, too, in his talking about helping his daughter with her anxiety.

I was talking to Dr. T recently about why I became very attached to a teacher in high school, then didn't really have any sort of paternal/maternal attachment again until ex-MC. I thought at first that maybe it's because I was becoming attached to people I dated instead. I think that was part of it. But then I realized that a big factor was becoming a parent. He agreed that it made sense. I do wish I'd worked on some of this stuff more before becoming a mom.

I never wanted to be a mom. I dont think i ever had a mom. I would not know how to be a mom, or have the patience or attention span it seems to require. I didnt even know how to play house when i was a kid. I remember one time, i hit my dolly (speaking in italian - omg how cute was i?!), then the game was over - the other kid (a younger cousin maybe?) was kinda horrified, and my mother pulled me away.

I was told to sit on the couch and not move until my mother got out of bed at noonish. There i taught myself to read from a big book of fairytales. Later i was promoted to sitting at the dining room table so i could play with my crayons. Basically no interaction on a daily basis between me and my mother, except that we were in the same house. Once in a while she would cut my toenails with freezing cold nailclippers. My dad gave me a bath once a week on friday or saturday night. I would go with her when she shopped for dresses and shoes for special occasions - i was the zipper-upper. Thats it. I made my own cold cereal, my own sandwiches, my brother made my toast. I remember many nights lying awake with a stuffed nose. I called for a parent once and was told to never do that again because they had to sleep for work.

The old hungarian lady next door yelled at my mother for leaving me in my crib all day long. Like once a summer, she would invite me over and give me a butterscotch candy. My dad would walk us to a city park in the evening, not as frequently as i wanted.

Once i started walking to school by myself (3rd grade), things opened up and i started going to day camp and the city library, all about 5 blocks away from my house but in different directions. And the shopping center. Often with a neighbor girl, but like the library was usually a weekly solo trip. In 5th grade, 5 blocks in yet another direction to buy my feminine supplies.

No parental helicoptering! I got all A's, so they never attended any parent-teacher conferences. Summer i was 16, she told me WE were going to Italy, tickets were BOUGHT. I told her *I* can't go, im taking drivers ed. How could she not have known that? She really only started interfering in my life when it was "time to get married". And i lived unhappily ever after.