I am doing the best I can

My Body Electric

2025-10-20T08:16:00.000-05:00

(March 31, 2019)

I was 35 when I began writing this blog. I am 48, soon to be 49, now.

At 35, my body underwent what I can only assume to be some bizarro hormonal change. My deodorant stopped working and I moved into the "perpetual hot" phase of my life. I've mentioned before that I have the windows wide open year round in my room.

At work, in lecture, I start to fan myself as I meander, gesticulating wildly. I climb up on counters to open the windows that should never be open but god damn it, I am a woman of a certain age and woe betide the human male who tells me to close the window.

I had always imagined myself sailing gracefully through the end of my fertility, having started this when I was 12. I would do it all natural!

Um, fuck no.

Last summer, I'd finally had enough of the bullshit. I was having two periods a MONTH. Two full fucking periods a month. What was this fuckery? I was supposed to be slowing DOWN, not ramping up. I would wake up drenched, despite my frigid room. My boobs hurt. Like puberty hurt and all the time because I was constantly having periods. I also was having month long cramping. Like the first day of your period, but all month long. The amount of ibuprofen and naproxen I was taking was, frankly, terrifying. I could clear out a 180 liqui-gels out every month.

I finally went to my doctor and said "I am over this shit". Now, remember, in 2005 I'd vowed to be hormone/birth control free mainly because we suspected it had contributed to my depressions. Now in 2019, I was all "give me the pills". What the fuck did I know then? Nothing.

They helped. Oh, and CDB oil helped too. Non-THC version, but completely controls the cramps with only minor ( like three) ibuprofen help.

I am still peri-menopausal so there is more to come, but it is more bearable. Ladies, for those of you not at this stage of life? Think back to the emotional and physical tumult of puberty. It's like that, but you have a fully adult brain and still can't stop the emotion flowing out of you. It's a treat.

I also had a bipolar episode from August to late November. Wheeeeee! That's really fucking inconvenient. Once I'd acknowledged that something was wrong and gotten myself to a new psychiatrist, we started a new medication that slowly brought me to center. I still have little flares, but I recover from them much faster.

Of course, when you are in a bipolar episode your attention to your blood sugars is shit. So there is that. I am slowly trying to bring all of this together. In January I told my GP "Yeah, I know I've gained weight and my Blood sugars are kind of shit, but I just can't manage everything right now."

Then there was the endless snow from January until mid March. We had snow drifts up to my tits. Not cool.

The amount of pills I take morning and night have become a running joke in our house. I have a GIANT pill organizer to keep track of the various medications that keep me from becoming a diabetic hormonal monster.

Can you believe this behemoth?

Terrance, this morning, was moaning about aches in his fingers. He held his hands out for me to inspect. I said, "That's what happens when you think that you are invincible in your 20's!"

I may have added in a "motherfucker" because he has a wife who swears like Samuel Jackson.

One strange and unexpected side effect of being with the same partner for 28 years is that you get to watch your own body, and that of your partner change. I don't need to be a 25 year old woman. I like this aging body I inhabit. I am rounder. I gain weight, I lose weight. The male gaze slides over me, which is delightful.

I am coming to terms with this body. My body electric.

Update: October 2025

I finally made it through! Menopause! Woot! A year ago, after not sleeping (Danger! Danger!) and forgetting so many things and the occasional horrid period, I went to an OB/GYN who specialized in Menopause. Did I mention the sweating? Not just hot flashes but all night sweating? Good god. Waking up drenched does not improve ones outlook on the day. I was not above begging the aforementioned OB. DO SOMETHING!

While estrogen was no recommended due to the heart thing, I could have progesterone. It helped. I do not think I am so special as to have no effects of menopause but I just didn't need so...many. The memory thing was what was maddening. I have always had an incredible memory so to forget what I was doing seconds after I stood up was a unique torture.

The progesterone helped. Not a 100% fix but a little better. At this point I take what I can get.

Annoying Child (Gimlet Eye August 2007)

2025-10-20T07:59:00.002-05:00

This was what Terrance began to sing to Emily this evening, in response to one of her bazillion questions.

School starts on Thursday and it, frankly, can't get here soon enough. I mean the mood swings, the weeping, the snappishness....and then there is Emily's behavior.

Hah!

Upon describing my daughters overall persona to my mother this weekend, she shared that the two weeks before school started again was the time of year she seriously considered running away.

I completely know how she feels. It was a relief to go to work today simply to disentangle myself from my daughter.

For instance, a little vignette from my weekend....

I needed to rest on Friday. I had been awake for-evah and needed to just close my eyes. I announced that I was taking an hour to do this. Under no uncertain terms I declared this to be an hour Free of Child. Eye contact was made. Clarity of intent was communicated.

For good measure, I went to Emily's room and placed myself upon her bed. I closed my eyes. I breathed deeply. I know that she has no intention of coming into her OWN room. Oh no. She wants to be in MY room. I listen to the birds. I relax.

With a sixth sense which is uncanny, Emily senses the change in my brain waves. She creeps into the room. I am not quite asleep and can hear her approach. She assess the situation. I can feel her making a decision. Her hand shoots out and rubs my leg.

I don't move.

She rubs a little harder.

I don't move.

She pauses and stares at me. She is watching me breathe.

She makes her decision.

Unzipping her ViewMaster slide case ( but muffled - so I won't hear it), she removes the slides and begins to line them up the side of my body starting at my feet. One by one - edge to edge, she lines up the round disks on my body. She gets to my chest and shoves a couple into my yoga top, then covers my arm.

She steps back and assess her handiwork. She is pleased.

I consider leaping up and scaring the crap out of her. That would be funny. But I don't.

Instead I say from under my pillow:

"What exactly are you doing to my body?"

She starts to laugh. She is totally busted. She tries to pretend she is not in the bedroom TRYING to wake me up.

After several attempts at some lame story, she finally confesses. It was too quiet. She wanted me awake.

Yes. The realm of "annoying child" has been reached.

August 27, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Healthy

2025-02-02T17:56:00.003-06:00

For the first full year in recent memory I have been healthy the whole year.

FAFO

2024-08-20T13:09:00.003-05:00

This is on the corner of my computer. In fact I have stickers all over my computer, which doesn't seem to be the culture of the State of Vermont...but meh. I am supremely unbothered. Until the Commissioner strolls up and directs me to start peeling them all off they stay. My Deputy Commissioner sees me a billion times a day and she is also unbothered. Emily tells me it is an "academic" thing.

These five words ground me during meetings where I am annoyed, but trying to seem neutral. Meetings in which something that I want is being denied by the people I (State of Vermont) am paying. Quick note - If I (or any funder) is paying you two million dollars to exist and we want to implement something that is within the scope of your agreement telling me no is a surefire way to fuck around and find out. I told a colleague that they ignore me "at their peril".

The position that I hold gives me an interesting space in which to move policy and practice. Many of these things are slow - gentle and persistent pressure applied systemically. Early Childhood people are patient and persistent by nature. Seriously, you wrangle a group of sixteen 4-year-olds for a day, or 8 infants. Patient and Persistent.

I thought my career pinnacle was being a tenured professor. While I absolutely loved my students and the process of teaching them to become kind and caring teachers who knew that the child is always at the center of the curriculum, the cost of that job outweighed that joy. The energy that I had to expend was too much for me. My desire to take care of and support my students was at a steep cost to myself. Dying in front of them for three years in a row gave them collective PTSD with every cough or every time I needed to be out. Not a good fucking model of work life balance.

There is life after academia. A much happier life it turns out. One with actual boundaries and a real work life balance. A life in which I can effect a lot of change for child care in a small state that I love and in which I feel "normal". Wisconsin always left me feeling like I was an odd and brightly coloured bird that was misunderstood. I was too blunt, too direct, too Dawn. Too fuck around and find out.

I am back in a place where Dawn-ness is understood - maybe not all the time - but it is also not looked at askew. In Wisconsin I was told by an Associate Dean that I didn't realize how I came across and I stared in amazement. Bitch, I have lived with me for 50+ years. Do you think I have not had intimate knowledge about how I come across?

Then I quit my job.

Fuck Around and Find Out.

Flood

2024-08-16T13:08:00.002-05:00

I am truly trying to write here more.

My brain is wholly quieter now that the constant-ness of a child at home, and a job that was killing me has subsided.

It's nice.

I drive to work two days a week and it gives me time to sing to my favorite Sirius stations, or Spotify playlists all while thinking through my day ahead or day behind. I still marvel at the beauty of my home state with early morning mist coming off the intense green of late June. I marvel at the deep blue of the afternoon sky reflecting onto the trees as I drive by now-quiet streams on small back roads.

We all watch those streams now. The PTSD of last years flooding remains close to our skin. I find myself holding a bit of breath when rain is forecast for multiple days. There are no guarantees that your town or city or house will not suffer next.

I was re-reading some of my older writing here and find myself marveling at that person who wrote so well, so witty. She was fucking brilliant and hysterical. Since this blog started in 2006 it can feel like looking back into distant memories that snap back into crystal clear focus with re-reading. It brings me back to having a seven year old and feeling the exhaustion of mothering both both ways - into her past and into her future. As I write today, I can feel that exhaustion but it is far away and fuzzy. I am not sad about that. I have said before and will continue to say that Motherhood was terrible for my mental health. It nearly broke me and despite my fierce I-will-cut-a-bitch-while-you catch-these-fucking-hands protectiveness - it cost me.

My body continues its slowest fucking meander into Menopause ever. 54, ya'll. I am 54 and my body is not particularly ready to give up the fertility ghost. I am at the doorstep waiting to hand it over but the UPS driver never arrives. I got my first period when I was 12. I think I've donated to the cause long enough. That being said, the symptoms of menopause do not wait at the door.

While I can abide a lot of symptoms, it's the not sleeping through the night that gets me. No sleep = Dawn can easily spiral into a manic episode! I take two sleeping meds, with Ambien on stand by if I have haven't slept in 4 days.

(As an aside, the lectures I have gotten about my Ativan and Ambien by doctors who are not my psychiatrist. YES, I know they can be addictive. No, I am not abusing them. I got lots of issues but substance abuse isn't one. Well, maybe the ibuprofen liquigels but that is in the past)

*********************************************************************************

If you've read to here you will think "Did she say June up there in the third paragraph"

Yep. Sorry. Who knows how I got distracted or by what - one of those eternal mysteries that I just live with it seems. Perimenopause has fucked with my memory in ways that I find intolerable. I would find myself forgetting words in lectures that I had given for 11 years. I stand up and walk away from something and immediately forget what I was going to get and why. Mostly it just pisses me off. I hear that it is not uncommon.

Vermont did flood again in July on the anniversary of the 2023 flood. This followed with a flood two weeks later and then more damage a week or so later. Every time rain is forecast we all, collectively, hold our breath to see if it is just a little or it is going to turn into some destructive force. If you don't believe in climate change come to Vermont. We can show you the effects all across our state. Emily can take you on her field visits assessing damage to historic infrastructure that has simply disappeared. We can't even rebuild yet because the ground is so saturated that it simply collapses inward. Rebuilding a culvert or road to only watch it disappear with the next heavy rain is worse than the initial damage.

Let us not even discuss the amount of farmland being swept away and the yearly loss of crops in the middle of the growing season. One farmer I know has lost ten acres between the July 2023 and July 2024 floods.

I didn't intend to make the end of this some kind of climate change flood rant but Vermonters, while hella strong, are tired. The FEMA relief has not yet come through from 2023. The houses they said they would buy out have not been bought out and continue to flood. People have nowhere else to live because there is no housing here (insert my feelings about hedge funds buying the real estate and air bnb profiteers)- so they live in flood damaged homes or apartments with mold and the knowledge that the next flood will also come for them again.

Terrance, Emily and I are fine. We are privileged and fortunate. The inconvenience of not finding a house or land ( that is not on a newly designated flood zone) on which to build is a small discomfort compared to fellow Vermonters.

Spare them a thought.

Take to the Sea

2024-06-24T16:23:00.001-05:00

This time of year finds me contented. The beginning of summer with it's softness and greenness stirs something inside me that holds forth a type of promise that things will be good.

Our family tradition has become meeting in Maine for three weeks and living in the beach house at Moody Beach. My sister comes from Florida, my nephew comes from Detroit, my mother in law from Arizona. My brother and his family come from outside of Boston. It has become, for me, a time outside of time.

The ocean rolls in and out and I look at it all day perpetually fascinated by the immensity of the sea. It is hard, when confronted by an ancient force, to focus on small problems. I love the ocean and not in a charming way. It is terrifying and beautiful. There are nights when the tide is so high and so strong that it hits the sea wall and moves the boulders. All of this reminds you that you, human, are so small and inconsequential that your anxieties are misplaced.

I walk the beach after those tides and see fish, lobsters and crabs torn apart by the force of the waves. I wade up to my knees, even though the water is ice cold. I walk out on the rocks to the tide pools. I haunt the edge of the tide. I am uniquely at ease.

Homeward Bound

2023-10-16T20:26:00.001-05:00

i may decide to write here more. Hard to say.

Updates:

#1 I am alive. Heart continues to heal and recover and do it's god damned job. One flare up of pericarditis...but I knew right away because I can feel the rub under my breastbone. May none of you EVER become so familiar with the feeling of pericarditis that you shoot off an email to your cardiologist to say "HEY! I am pretty sure my pericarditis has returned"

and then find yourself in a 7 am echocardiogram. It had returned and it was treated and I am Ok now, although Terrance has never stopped being the Heart failure police.

Mayo Clinic, it seems, does not fuck around.

#2. I quit my job. Yep. Up and walked away from a tenured position. Why? because it was literally killing me. How many organs need to fail before you get the bag of dog shit on fire message left on your front door?

#3. As part of quitting said job, we moved back to Vermont. In January. I wouldn't recommend it. I also had to medicate an infamously skittish cat and then haul him cross country in three separate flights. I should have medicated myself too. If the gabapentin wasn't tuna flavored I might have thrown some down my throat.

#4 Housing in Vermont is really, really, really hard to find. The January part didn't help. We had a massive three bedroom, 2.5 bath, with two car garage in Wisconsin. Backyard...the whole works. Vermont? About the size of what we lived in during our first years. TINY. We pay triple for this Vermont place. TRIPLE!!

C'est la vie. We look for houses, or builders, or both.

#5 I have inexplicably become a woman who gets her nails done. As in I have standing appointments. These are my real nails and they look amazing. Who knew that at 53 I would suddenly morph into a lady with nice nails

#6 I have also become a woman who can't seem to finish things. Last episodes of shows, rugs...just things. It makes me too sad. Honestly. Terrance tried to get me to watch the end of Reservation Dogs with him and I flat out refused. Left the room. Began to cry when he came back into my bedroom because I couldn't bear to think that their lives became sad, or that one of the girls disappeared , or they died...

I think it is the weight of adulthood.

#7 Hang on to your hair stylist. Tip them extravagantly. When you move and lose them it will take you 10 months to finally find someone who doesn't fuck up your colour.

#8 Find a job you like and that pays you what you are worth. Its nice. I also don't have to have an IV of Ativan to get through every meeting with a dean.

#9 Today, I finally got a consult with a psychiatrist. Yep, its taken almost 10 months. She commented that Mayo sent an crazy number of pages in a medical file. I actually laughed. "I'm sure they did", I said. In whatever I must have filled out in May I wrote comments about the standard. questions.

She reads "You wrote here that your childhood was .....stressful."

When I tell you that I guffawed. It was unseemly. My response "That is the understatement of the century"

Otherwise I like her.

#10 Terrance and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary on October 5th. You don't - you can't - realize what it means when you marry. I think if we did no one would do it. Standing there at my wise age of 26 and being so sure - so, so sure - that you know everything and that you will do it all right, and better and more perfect.

But you don't. You can't. The best outcome you can hope for is that you like the people you become. Individually and together. There were easily 7 years in which I really, really did not like my husband. I don't say that to crow about how we made it through and look at us! No. It was hard and awful and I despaired. Our daughter got to watch that and it makes me endlessly sad that she had to witness that between two adults who love her.

Our marriage is peaceful. He brings me bouquets of flowers every Thursday because he knows it makes me happy. We both work from home - him full time and me three days a week. We just keep company.

I think it is the best thing you can have.

P.S. Emily has a Master's degree. Historic Preservation, University of Vermont Dec 2022.

Kintsugi

2023-10-16T19:43:00.001-05:00

The first few days home were terrifying. There is a PTSD that marches alongside BIG health issues and everyone in my family now has a healthy dose.

I mean even tonight I was laying on my belly watching tv when Terrance ran in and said "Are you Ok? Is everything all right?" I looked up at him and said, "Yeah, I'm fine, why?" "Because when I see you laying like that its usually because you don't feel good"

Poor man. Now, in his defense, Dawn standing and flopped forward onto her belly was my preferred stance during heart failure. Apparently it takes pressure off the heart and is an actual documented "thing" about heart failure. All I knew was that I could breathe better so it became my default position. I got so accustomed to it that I continue to do it. It's comfy. Not so much for him.

Despite my "no big deal" about being in the hospital....home was scary. Do you know those "in sickness and health" words that are in many wedding vows? Um, yeah. I was cashing in on those words HARD.

In the hospital, Terrance had to bathe me. I would stand up and he would take these warmed cloths and wash me. Have you, an adult human, had another adult human wash you? That, more than anything else, encapsulated how weak I was. I needed him. I needed his help. At home, I couldn't make my own food, or walk up and down stairs. Shit, walking the 10 steps to the bathroom in my bedroom was a lot. I would slowly walk to the bathroom, then slowly walk back. Rest, then try to climb back up into bed.

Terrance would run my baths, wash my hair, get me lotion and then into a clean nightgown. He got a crash course in low sodium cooking because I was banned from the salt train. (Sob, I still miss salt sometimes) He monitored my fluids because I was only allowed 64 ounces a day to keep the fluid from building up. And he listened to my breathing because I still sounded like shit, gurgling away like a bubbler, then going quiet so he thought I had died. The man slept in a chair staring at me for weeks. No wonder he has PTSD.

Oh, and pills? I got the pills. Lots and lots of pills. The record high was 22 pills a day. Blood pressure, heart rate stabilizers, pericarditis meds, diuretics - and then the depression/bipolar meds, diabetes, my regular statin.... Open up, swallow them down.

They had warned me that finding the right medication titration would be ...rough. Given that I believe that nothing will really affect me - I was dubious. First med down? Losartan. I got the cough. You don't want a cough after heart failure because, well, a cough is a sign of heart failure. Tried another med. Not good. Tried a third, meh, Ok.

This went on with medication after medication. We would find my therapeutic dose and then move to the next med to titrate me up. The thing that we don't talk about is that with these medications with my condition the only way we know we are at your therapeutic dose? You get sick. Your symptoms return. The day we figured out that the Bisoprolol was too much? I walked into cardio rehab looking like death. The med after that? I was puking in my office after the increase.

Oh, did I mention the remote monitoring nurses? I had to weigh myself, take my blood pressure and pulse ox every day with a tablet that sent those vitals to the team. Once a week I would talk to the nurse as she reviewed those vitals and assessed any warning signs. Then, of course, there was my cardiac rehab team. I exercised under their watchful (and encouraging) eyes until the end of April. They also kept an eye on my weight, and I wore a heart monitor so they could watch to make sure I wasn't overdoing it.

Cardiac rehab was nice, actually. I could see that I was getting stronger. I could see that I could be on the treadmill longer, or on the fancy bike with the scenic beaches and get to the end of that walk/bike. I was able to add weights by February and I was able to increase those numbers. It was me, and several older men. They were crusty, refusing to change their diets, eat vegetables or exercise at home. Of course, some had been through cardiac rehab before and didn't really see the rationale for adding vegetables into their diets.

Not me. Tell me to exercise at home? Ok. Eat more veggies and fruit? Absolutely. The cardiac rehab staff are innately upbeat and kind. The other thing they do is transmit their observations to your doctors in real time. If I said "Oh, I was coughing a lot last night"....my doctors knew. They watched me for lightheadedness and if my blood pressure was too low. The cough from the Losartan not resolving? - the cardiac rehab staff emailed my doctor. The first time I had that reaction to me medication? My doctor knew right away. I was ensconced in a team that was really dedicated to getting me back to a "normal" life.

Broken Hearted

2022-07-28T16:36:00.001-05:00

The reality of what has happened still catches me off guard. My habit of minimizing my trauma, my health, my life is being broken...slowly. Even then there are times when the enormity of what my body has been through in nine months can pull me up short.

When my cardiologist took my hands in March and said "You've been through a lot Dawn. This is a really big deal and you are doing everything you need to - but this was a big deal".

I burst into tears. Of course, I was also having symptoms of heart failure again and was terrified that my heart was saying "fuck it" and counting down.

When I got the bed in the hospital I was there for six days? seven days? It was a long time. I had lots of blood taken, and lots of things pushed into my IV. The ward I was in was next to the ICU - so there was a lot of monitoring. I am an easy patient. Compliant. I stretch out arms for blood pressure and blood draws. I helpfully point out where you are most likely to get a vein. I coach folks through the fact that my veins seem to push down and disappear when you are looking for them. (as an aside, I never thought I'd be SO familiar with my veins and how to access them). I take the meds, all the meds.

Mostly I sat in the quiet and just waited. Terrance would arrive and sit with me for hours, then go out and make it back for a couple more hours before visiting hours were over. I listened to things and watched out the window. Mainly though, I just lay there.

I was so tired. Tired from the illness but tired from everything. Like every educator during Covid, I was fucking exhausted. My students were falling apart and I was trying to patch them together and teach AND do all the other pointless bullshit that comes with the professor gig. I was keeping an admin at arms length as they failed to listen AND piled on more bullshit. I was trying to be the program director for our major and protect the faculty from some of those ridiculous asks from admin.

Where did I find myself? Laying in a hospital bed. Again. Third year in a row! Increasing severity with every visit! Terrance did not mince words. "This job is killing you. We have to do something about this."

I didn't have the strength to argue, and what was there to argue about? It was true. The evidence was *literally* laying here in a hospital bed. He began to handle HR and the FMLA debacle mainly because I was just so sick and couldn't bear to deal with the University bullshit.

On a Monday, after my echocardiogram, I woke from a little nap to see my nurse standing over me. She was waiting for me to wake up. She had a diagram in her hand.

Now, nurses are the ultimate poker faces. They do not ruffle, they do not have big reactions. While this nurse was not overtly panicking, she absolutely had an air of purpose. In truth I was not surprised to see her. My nosy ass watched the echo intently and even my amateur eyes could see that it wasn't good. The tech can't tell you anything and mine was excellent but I mean you'd have to be blind to see that my heart was just not really pumping blood. Anywhere. The colors that indicate direction of the blood were just kind of hanging around. My heart looked weak. Tired.

In that, we were both aligned.

My nurse had a diagram in a booklet and I rolled over to give her my attention. It seemed that my heart was really, really not pumping. Not the right ventricle, and the left ventricle was particularly stubbornly refusing to participate. My ejection fraction was so low that she suspected I might get taken into surgery right now to have a defibrillator installed. Like Right now.

I did not have a surgery. Surgery is always decided on in terms of cost/benefit and there was a good chance that with time and medication and diet and exercise we could avoid a surgery. However, and this is the fucking annoying thing, it would take time. A lot of time. I was young. There was no discernible reason that my heart should have decided to take a vacation. Maybe it would correct itself.

My low ejection fractions seem to have set off a bit of a kerfuffle in my cardiology team ( yeah, I now have a team) about whether to release me or watch me for a few more days. They compromised and kept me an extra day and then released me.

I'd been warned about post hospital recovery and I was sure I would be fine. I mean, come on. How hard can it be? No surgery or anything - just pills and diet changes. I had been released.

Broken Heart

2022-06-28T13:17:00.034-05:00

Even I can take the hint. Me, the person who never takes ANY fucking hint to let go, to subside, to be still, can take this hint.

In October I felt really worn down. My office is on the third floor and by the time I got there I had to rest, panting. I assumed my cardio fitness was shit and I was probably getting fat. I am, after all 51, and my body continues to change as I morph into the bad ass crone I was meant to be.

I was teaching face to face, as I had done all through the pandemic, and was ( and still am) scrupulous about masking. I still, for the record, mask in public spaces. I don't trust any of those motherfuckers.

I planned on my COVID booster in early October because - well - I am around 18-25 year olds and they are invincible. I, however, am clearly NOT invincible. (See previous posts)

So there I am, panting up three flights of stairs. The tightness around my torso began. "hmmmm", Dawn thinks , "probably a bronchial infection which I should not have because I mask all the time and I better not have fucking Covid."

I go to my doctor. He says "pneumonia" and I agree. It does feel like pneumonia. I now cough and cough and the pressure is getting worse. I do the first round of antibiotics and nothing gets better. I go to the ER and they say "Yep, still pneumonia, take these other antibiotics". Week 2 of antibiotics commence.

"OK", I say. By now my breathing is bad. I use the inhaler. I drink the water. I call in to class because I can't breathe and I certainly won't be able to do my lecture performance for 2 hours at a time. I do some meetings via zoom and black out the screen when I cough so hard that I nearly fall off my chair. My continual coughing keeps me awake all night.

We go back to the ER after week two.. It's a long night and a million tests are run on me. Some tests are a little wobbly but nothing really indicative. I must be fighting off the infection. More antibiotics are prescribed. Week 3 of antibiotics.

I've now been on a month of antibiotics. Nothing seems to be helping. I can no longer stand in the shower so I sit in steamy showers trying to break up whatever is in my lungs. The inhalers do nothing. I don't sleep because of the coughing. My ability to walk has been curtailed from my bed to my bathroom and back. Even then, I have to rest leaning over the bed before I can climb back up because I am too tired to hoist myself back into bed. Terrance finds me in this position frequently because it helps my breathing.

There is no working my job for me. I can't even care because I can't breathe. I later find out that the students think I have Covid - really bad covid - and that no one is telling them.

The night before Thanksgiving I wake up panting. My stomach and gut hurt all the time and I think it is because of the mammoth amount of antibiotics that are killing my gut flora. I try eating yogurt.

Emily is home because of the Thanksgiving holiday and she stares at me while I am propped up in bed. I tell her that I woke up panting and she rats me out to her father immediately. He declares we are going back to the ER right now. "No", I plead, "They will tell me it is pneumonia again. There is nothing to be done."

He threatens to carry me down the stairs. I barter to eat a little Thanksgiving dinner before I go, knowing that there is no food to be had in the ER. I eat. I am so tired. I need to be helped into clothes and my family maneuvers me down the stairs and into the waiting car.

We arrive and I am ushered into a bed. Around us people with Covid are yelling at the nurses - denying, demanding.

What feels like 2 gallons of blood is extracted. My veins are bruised from all the other visits so new sites must be found. I can barely care, but I am compliant and kind to the nurses and techs. Terrance hovers, fiercely. I am hooked to an IV antibiotic to which I have a horrifying reaction. I feel like I am burning to death. I vomit, I cry, I keep asking how much longer till the bag is empty. I consider ripping the IV out to stop this horror.

Terrance is frantic, putting cold cloths on my neck as I plead with him to make this stop. "I can't do this, I can't do this", I cry. When the medicine ends, the pain stops. I can open my eyes and speak again. "That was bad", I say. He is shaken and quiet. "I've never seen you like that. Even in labor", he says.

I lay on my side. Laying on my side helped the pressure in my torso, but makes me cough. Every decision is weighed with the discomfort. We sit, waiting.

I am taken for more procedures - MRI's with contrast. The dye always feels funny - the hot tingle before it subsides. I return to the room. I wait. Emily has arrived and sits next to me.

My doctor eventually arrives. "This is congestive heart failure", he announces. Emily bursts into tears. Terrance shushes her - he is intently listening. "You are going to be in the hospital for while", the doctor says.

New medications are pushed into the IV. Saline is immediately discontinued and diuretics are pushed. The swelling that I'd thought was dead gut bacteria is, in fact, fluid. LOTS of fluid. The pressure and fluid in my lungs? Not pneumonia , it seems, but fluid building up. I go back in for another MRI. The tech says "This is the last one you can have for 24 hours. Remind them if they try to send you for another one."

The squeezey things are put on my legs to try to move the fluid. I pee constantly.

There are no beds free in the hospital due to the Covid patients. Terrance goes home to get me my favorite pillow and some other things. I sleep in the ER until a bed is freed 28 hours later.

Aging

2022-06-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

I turned 50 in April. We'd planned a month long sojourn through Italy, starting in Rome and then winding down the Amalfi coast. We planned that trip for over a year.

Then Covid. Which, you know. Closed Italy, then closed everywhere.

But this post isn't about Covid. That is an eternal nightmare that makes me incredibly filled with rage at stupidity and toxic individualism. It's not about the 3.5 months that I literally did not leave my house because my never ending pancreatitis, recent past kidney failure and diabetes painted a giant "Easy to kill" sign on my back. It's not even about the depression that hit me like a wholly unexpected wave and pulled my feet out from under me, forming a rip tide that I had trouble shaking.

In May I had a surgery to remove my gall bladder which was determined to have caused ten months of pancreatitis. It was a weird thing having a surgery during a pandemic - especially one that was scheduled two days after my visit with the surgeon. (It was a very bad gall bladder. Quite.) Of course by that time I'd had three Covid tests since pancreatitis mimics Covid. The surgery seemed less daunting than having my brain swabbed again.

No one was allowed to go in with me. I woke up to very kind nurses who ( apparently) were keeping Terrance up to date via phone calls. I lingered in recovery until about 4:30 that afternoon when Terrance was called to meet me at the front door. I walked out to get in the car, blessing the nurses who had managed the hell out of my pain and kept the ice cold cranberry juice flowing. (Big props to the nurses at Mayo Health)

I slowly recovered - which took longer than I expected. Then again the stone was 5 FREAKING CENTIMETERS. Having your surgeon in front of you super excited as you emerge from the fog of general anesthesia to exclaim about the size of your gall stone is a special experience. My mom later said "Yeah, surgeons rarely get excited. It must have been a really large stone - larger than he's seen."

At the beginning of June, just as I was feeling better and didn't have to clutch a pillow to my mid section every time I inhaled too deeply, I was walking back to the car from dropping off some library books when I stumbled. And fell. And heard a deeply worrisome POP! My first thought was "Please Jesus, don't let my still not fully healed incisions to have ripped." They did not. My next thought was "My ankle is not in the place it should be on my body." It was, in fact, not. I reached down and with grit I did not know I possessed, I popped my ankle back into it's joint. I continued to lay on the gravel for some time, causing the librarians to run out of the building and try to convince me to have someone get me.

No. I insisted, I would drive home. It was only about a quarter of a mile and I could do it.

I did glance down at my ankle on that short drive home and began to mentally prepare for the news that it was broken. It looked - well - like nothing I'd ever seen before. Terrance took one look and said "That's broken." Once at the ER, a very kind doctor unwrapped my ankle and said "Oh! well, I suppose you could have sprained it - but something that looks like that is usually broken."

It was not broken was badly dislocated and incredibly swollen. The ER called in more painkillers which made the pharmacist intently question Terrance as to my obvious budding opioid addiction. Two times in a MONTH. Was he sure I didn't hurt myself on purpose to get more drugs?

About 4 weeks after the surgery, I got a call from my GI doctor. Now, friends, at this point I have SO many doctors who've been pulled into my case(s) that I can forget who does what. I thought they were calling to see if the pancreatitis symptoms were better. Nope. I was 50. I had some long term GI issues. It was time for my colonoscopy. I actually said "You've got to be fucking kidding me. "

Nope, they were not fucking kidding me. They wanted me in ASAP. I was on the radar. Fine. Whatever. Why not? They were going to sedate me, right? Ok. Sure.

I went in for that little exercise in willpower after drinking that low key semen flavored gallon. Lucky for me, I ALWAYS have diarrhea so there was less to clear out of my intestinal tract. Oh, and if you mix margarita mix into the solution it will mask the taste, at least a little. And if you are diabetic you are free to suck on real sugar candy to keep your blood glucose from diving off of a cliff during your day of fasting.

The procedure itself was nothing. I was given meds, I woke up and left the hospital. I was warned that I had some polyps and they were going to be tested. If they saw anything untoward, I would be back to do this in 5 years instead of 10. I

Last week, I got tagged for my overdue mammogram.

********************************************

This is where I seem to have stopped writing. Who knows why - Cat? Child? Spouse? All are feasible explanations. But now I hit publish on this saga of fiascos. For I will be publishing the NEXT saga of the fiasco

We in ECE are not your cannon fodder

2020-03-20T21:02:00.001-05:00

The inevitable has happened. The world economy has ground to a halt and the nation casts their eyes to whom? Child Care providers.

"Work! Keep Working! We need you to work so we can give you our children so we can work!"

I ask

"Where were you all when I had no health insurance? When I survived on 13,000 a year? Where were you when I would ask for a living wage to be told that I did unskilled labor that anyone could do?

Where were you when I got no sick time, and no vacation? When I came in sick with bronchitis or drove through dangerous conditions to get to my job so I could care for YOUR children?"

"But we need you! You are an essential service"

I ask

"Really? Because most of my work force lives in poverty. Many of us make minimum wage. Most make no more than $10 per hour if we are lucky. We qualify for SNAP benefits. We use food pantries. You've never paid me like I was an essential service. In fact you made me feel guilty for saying that I needed more money. You told me that I was greedy, that I wasn't in this for the money."

"But we can't work if you don't care for our kids! You can't be selfish! "

I pause.
"I am not selfish. However, you don't get to abuse me for decades and then turn around, point at me, and demand that I accommodate you."

"But who will care for those sick and dying?"

I exhale.

"Who will care for me? Where is my protective gear? Why is my health less valuable?

When you pass new emergency laws raising adult to child ratios so I can take more children into my already crowded classrooms how does that help? Who does that help? Me?

Are you unaware that children spread disease faster than any other age group? Have you not spent time with a group of eighteen 4-year-olds? or eight infants? That crowding more children into those classrooms guarantee that more disease will spread?

What happens to me and my colleagues when we (inevitably) get sick? Who cares for MY children?"

I start to close my door. You jam your foot into it.

"You must work! We can talk about what you deserve later. You must work now"

I push the door close as I say:

"My profession and our bodies are not your cannon fodder. I told you this day would come and we told you, endlessly, that your economy runs off of our labor. You ignored me.

You stepped on me and my colleagues over and over and over. People wrung their hands and said "Yes, you deserve so much more", but more never came. Our wages and benefits never increased. Our facilities never got better. We still have to spend our own money on paper, and paint, and glue, and kleenex, and snacks to feed these children that we love. We still have our own children to feed. For many of us we can not afford to send our children to the centers in which we work.

Your promises are empty. You will forget about us as soon as this crisis passes. If you wanted to change this you could, but you are too busy telling us that it is all too expensive for you to do anything.

Care for your own children. We hear it is easy unskilled work not worth a living wage. Not worth health insurance. Not worth getting an education. "

I lock my door.

I am doing the best that I can

2020-01-01T16:01:00.000-06:00

I wrote the below in November. Egad, did I ever feel rotten. My lipase has started to come down and I am due for more tests in the next couple of weeks here in January 2020. My body finally succumbed to the onslaught of insulin with the addition of an insulin sensitizer. I am seeing fasting glucose numbers of 90 in the morning.

It isn't pancreatic cancer, not that we can see from any of the million scans, blood draws or ultrasounds. That, I think, was the first fear. Was my pancreas shutting down/eating itself because of a tumor or malignancy? That doesn't seem to be the problem but we still don't know just why all of this is happening. The tests continue.

As I head into my fifth decade, I have become acutely aware of my fragility. I know it sounds cliched, but I never considered aging. Not like this. I knew, of course, that I was aging but the failure of my body was truly unexpected. My perimenopausal body bucks and kicks against it's confines, shocked at the ways in which I used to be effortlessly strong or renewable.

I have spent the last two weeks of December 2019 ensconced in bed, reading and recharging. It is almost time to begin the march to the beginning of the Spring semester and I am nearly ready. I face this new decade with more humility than I have ever felt in my entire life.

The beauty of youth is the sense that you are infallible, that you know everything and that the older adults in your life simply do not know of what they speak. That is a state of grace that allows youth to do amazing things, outside of what is considered possible.

The strange beauty of looking at 50 is that I am deeply aware that I know nothing and that I am crushingly mortal.

I am doing the best that I can, and that is more than enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's been a rough year, friends.

The kidney failure knocked me off of my axis for quite a while. My summer was strange and I found I couldn't work as hard or as long in the garden as I had in previous summers. I would get really tired after only two hours. I know - two hours! But that was far less than in summer past.

I was coping well with everything and have found myself to be more easy going about many things. Some of that is age, I think. I am 49. I have tenure. My kid is in year 3 of college. I have a cat who loves me.

Other things, though.

My knee hurts at odd times. It occasionally crosses my mind that heels aren't a super idea, but I push that thought WAY down deep since there is no way that I am not wearing the heels. Seriously. You will find my cold, dead broken ankled body before I give up the heels.

I was put on half the dosage of Metformin after the kidney fiasco. We supplemented that with a different med that was doing an OK job at controlling my blood sugar. I felt ...fine, I guess. Always really, really thirsty but I assumed that it was part of my kidney recovery.

In August, we spent some time in Cape Cod. We try to do a couple of weeks vacation before we launch Emily back to college. Early in the week, I felt just awful. My stomach was in agony. I wrote it off to eating as if I was on vacation - you know minimal vegetables, lots of sugar and fried things. I dispatched Terrance for some Zantac ( since Prilosec is now on the "apparently can fuck a kidney" list).

Oof. It was bad. We would try for little trips, but I would have to cut us short because of the discomfort I was having. We did make it through the Edward Gorey House, which made me happy.

As I am a trooper, I just take medication and just suck it up.

This, gentle readers, is a mistake we can all see, right? Dawn's body is flagging her down. Dawn says "It must be a virus" and keeps going. Dawn's body eventually falls apart.

Now, in my defense I now know kidney failure. I know the signs and the symptoms. There are NO signs of kidney failure. No pain. No ibuprofen use (sob). I am urinating just fine and as copiously as always. Ergo, it must be a virus.

We drop Em off to college. We go home. I get ready to start the semester. Boy, my stomach isn't feeling better. Still hurting all the time. Like ALL the time.

By week three of the semester, I finally acquiesce and make an appointment to see my doctor. The day before the appointment, I felt a little better and thought "Hmm, I should just cancel. It WAS a virus."

The morning of the visit, I was vomiting. And I was dizzy. These are the exact things I ignored before the kidney failure. "Shit.", I think.

I get to the office. My patient doctor is like "What the actual fuck, Dawn?" (not her exact words) and begins to order tests. I am to have blood taken and sit there in case my creatinine is rising and I have to be hospitalized again. "Oh shit," I think some more. Now I am going to have to tell Terrance.

I text Terrance: "Have to have some blood tests. Will know more soon!" I resist throwing in smiling emoticons, hoping my exclamation point = careless optimism

The phone rings. It's Terrance. He is on his way. I attempt to protest. He ignores me.

We sit for an hour, waiting. As we sit there, a tech enters the room and states: "I am supposed to start an IV on someone in this room." I am confused and scared. "Are you?", I stammer. "Are you sure?"

She leaves and I start to cry. "I was doing everything right! No ibuprofen. I can't drink any more water! There was no kidney pain at all!"

Terrance pats my arm.

My doctor comes in. My creatinine is actually great! I stare at her. I explain about the tech. She laughs. No, that was a mistake, not for me.

BUT my lipase is through the roof! What is happening with my lipase!

It seems that I had an acute pancreatitis attack in August. You know, no big. I am, it seems, continuing to have a lesser pancreatitis attack.

Do I fit the profile for a person to have pancreatitis? No, not at all!

Thus began the mystery of why Dawn's pancreas has decided to eat itself! As part of this mystery, we have had to take me off of all my diabetes medications, then retry things, then re-test my blood to see what is happening in Dysfunctional Pancreas Land. ( don't vacation there)

I've made friends with the lab techs since I see them every week. I give informed and specific notes on where the best vein to hit might be, since I have fussy veins and I can now predict where they will hit best. I try to drink a full bottle of water before a blood draw because it plumps my stubborn veins up a bit more.

By October, this mystery had not abated. In fact, it had gotten weirder and more puzzling. I am sent to an endocrinologist. We go off the other diabetes agents, as they may irritate the pancreas. I am to try a tiny bit of Metformin for a week. Then another blood draw.

Now, my blood glucose levels have been atrocious since August. For reference, a diabetic should have numbers of about 180 at their 2 hour post meal test. You should wake up and see a number at or under a 120 fasting blood glucose. HAHAHHAHHHAHAAHA!

Waking up in the morning and having a fasting BS of 200 starts your day off on a shitty trajectory. It means that anything I eat is going to send me spiraling up into the 300's. When I am under-medicated, my glucose doesn't fall. I will get to 297 after dinner and then STAY there for 5 or 6 hours. Last night, for instance, when I ate at 5 p.m. I was 237 at 9 p.m. By 11:45, as I was getting ready to go to bed I was 197.

You know that sleepy foggy feeling you can get when you have had a carb heavy meal? Yeah, I feel like that all the time. Headache. Foggy. Forgetful. Cranky.

I was placed on insulin when the last Lipase came back too high. It's doing nothing. My glucose has gotten far worse while on the insulin. As a Type 2 diabetic, my primary problem is insulin resistance. I make ( or have made ) enough insulin...my body just ignores it. Metformin should not have caused the lipase spike. It only works on the liver, so the pancreas should be unaffected.

********

Two cuter kidneys

2019-06-19T10:15:00.001-05:00

As I sat in my hospital room, lights low, I filtered this information - but slowly. Terrance, who had gone home for the evening, would need telling and I needed to do that gently. He gets deeply rattled when I am truly sick, for I am never truly sick. Even when I was diagnosed with diabetes I soldiered on, diligently taking on the task of glucose monitors and medications and tons more doctor visits. When a mammogram came back sketchy, I soldiered on, soothing him with the statistics of this being a scare and not a true problem.

Later, a good friend described the moment when he appeared at the desk of our Admin Assistant to share that I was being admitted to the hospital and I would not be back to teach classes for the foreseeable future.

"I've never seen a human look like that.", she said.

I've just been told that I am in very bad shape - far worse than I thought and well beyond my optimistic assessment that I would be out in a day and we would all laugh because I'd just been dehydrated and I could go back to teaching by Thursday.

Terrance called a bit later and I braced myself for his barrage of questions. When he is scared or upset he can revert to his lawyer training, peppering you with a barrage of questions that you can't quite answer.

"Hi Hon. The nephrologist was just here." I pause. We both know that the nephrologist should not have been there at 9 p.m.

"It seems that I am in acute renal failure. We don't know why. We just have to wait and see what the fluids will do and if my creatinine comes down."

His questions come fast - does this mean dialysis? When will we know for sure? Why did this happen?

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

"Don't tell Emily yet. I don't want to freak her out. She is in the middle of final exams and she is already freaked out about my being in the hospital."

This, readers, is an understatement. My daughter is positively violet with fear and worry. I get texts every 5 minutes begging for updates. I refuse video chats because if she sees me in the hospital bed, hooked to an aggressively beeping and humming IV, she is going to absolutely lose her shit. She is in New Hampshire. She will be home in a week. She needs to focus on her final exams.

"This is my worst fear", she says later. "Like, Mom. I have had nightmares about this - not being able to get to you and you are dying and I can't get there."

I soothe her too. I am fine. I am being taken care of, there is nothing she could do even if she was here. I am in the best place for me to be in this situation. Focus on her final exams. Everything is fine.
This is the mantra of most mothers. Things are all right. Nothing is unsolvable. Our unflappability is an anchor for our children. We are their herd leader. Our fear becomes their fear and they do not need to fear.

I am not fine, of course. I am shaken. On the day I am turning 49, I was unknowingly beginning to die - quietly and slowly but the path was actively being constructed. As it was my first real brush with my mortality it is deeply disquieting. I mean, sure, we all consider our mortality, but it is abstract even when it encompasses the deaths of family members or friends or acquaintances. We all hope for deaths that are predictable coming when we feel as if we have had enough time to be on the earth to accomplish everything we had hoped to accomplish. We want a clean death, pain free and not messy. A sneaky death that you don't see coming? No. I have been snuck up on by my body and I do not like it.

I sleep fitfully. Hospitals are terrible places to sleep and even my sleeping medication is not keeping me asleep. Not to mention that the VAST amounts of saline being pumped through my system demands that I empty my bladder every 20 minutes. When I sleep for a little over an hour, I am amazed to see that I urinate 20 OUNCES of fluid. Nearly a whole water bottle full of urine. I had no idea my bladder was so robust. In the end, I have about 7 gallons of saline moved through my body.

By the morning, my creatinine is dropping. Slowly but surely. There is a smidge of movement in the right direction. The doctors look happier. I ask - for the last time - when I can go home. They look at me sternly and make no promises. It is clear that I need to accept that I am in here for a while.

I become accustomed to the routine - unhooking the IV, wheeling to the bathroom, coming back, replugging the IV and getting back in bed, careful to not tangle the lines or displace the needle. I take a shower, an extensive plastic sleeve covering the IV port, and trying to wash with one hand. It wasn't awesome, but it helped. Visitors come and stay for awhile. I am deeply grateful for the distraction. I read, I manage panicked freshman who are registering from afar. I plan for how my classes are going to finish their last week and a half without me, how presentations are going to get done and how good enough is fine.

The following morning my nurse is pleased. "Have they told you your numbers?" No, I hadn't seen anyone yet that morning and I had actually slept in a bit. My creatinine numbers are continuing to decrease nicely. It seems that the massive push of saline into my blood had woken my kidneys up and they were operating again. That meant no biopsy. No more white blood cells in my urine. I am eating some small meals.

A final day, it is decided, to make sure my numbers continue to decrease and hold. The IV is slowed and then taken out. I am wildly grateful to have the use of both arms again. Later, the bruises will bloom up and down both arms, flowers of purple and blue planted in haste.

I cry again as I am given advance directive paperwork to complete. These things are concrete and final. I am being asked to not only consider my death, but to plan in advance for the eventuality. I am controlled until the question about "Is there something you want to say to someone in the even you are unable to speak?" I sob. SOB.

Yes. Yes. Yes, but it can not be contained on this paper. I can not commit to this question. It is too big, too amorphous. It is beyond my human capacity to distill into words. I leave that section blank.

The rest I read aloud to Terrance, getting his consent to the things I ask him to consider. How I want to die, what parameters I can control and his possible role in facilitating those wishes is a conversation we have never seriously had in the course of our relationship. While necessary, it is unnerving for both of us.

When I am released from the hospital, I am unsteady. While now deemed physically OK, I am more emotionally fragile than I knew. I have a panic attack that evening, convinced that my kidneys are shutting down again and I won't know and die. Simultaneously, I know this is a reaction that is in my mind and not my body.

It's been a bit over a month now. I am doing well. The medications that could have caused this have been removed from rotation. No ibuprofen or naproxen ever again- Pour one out for my beloved Liqui-gels. I mourn them. Metformin was taken away, then reintroduced at a much smaller dose. No more Prilosec or its cousins. My blood sugars soar and we have to do a different medication to eventually get it under control. We do another creatinine test because we always do more creatinine tests. I am .88. Perfect kidney numbers.

I joked that I now know what kidney failure feels like. Terrance does not find this funny. He monitors me closely and when I don't feel well, he asks a litany of questions to assess if this is a passing thing or the prelude to something more serious. I drink water, so much water. I am still a little slower than I feel I should be at this stage in the summer. I get a bit more tired. I try to be more gentle with myself when I don't get as much done as I'd hoped, reminding myself that I was very sick even if I don't admit it. I travel alone, for the first time post hospital, and find myself in a hotel room worried that I am feeling pain in my kidneys and terrified that I will be away from home and go back into kidney failure. There is a bit of post traumatic stress that, while disconcerting, is also perfectly normal.

I wish I had a grand pronouncement, but I don't. Listen to your bodies, my friends. We are more fragile than we realize, especially as we move solidly into middle age with all of it's accompanying insults, aches and pains. (Ask me about my rando aching knee!) Make sure you are peeing. Drink water. Don't take too much ibuprofen, they aren't kidding about the kidney thing.

Take care of yourselves. I would miss you if you were gone.

A cute kidney

2019-05-11T22:59:00.001-05:00

On Monday, April 29th, I turned 49 years old.

On Tuesday April 30th, I was admitted to the hospital with acute renal failure.

They didn't know that at first, of course. The ER doctor, though I am sure well meaning, was fairly dismissive of my description of my symptoms. I was trying to explain that my dizziness had become so pronounced that I could move only if I stared down at my feet and never looked up. I explained that my appetite was gone, and I was only eating one very small meal a day. Oatmeal. I didn't even have a cupcake for my birthday, because I felt so bad.

I explained that on Monday I'd tried to teach class, but had to sit down because of the dizziness. That quickly became dry heaving, then full body sweating leading to my releasing class early because I was not doing well. The poor startled and concerned students were rather beside themselves.

I described that on Saturday I had dry heaved and vomited a little in the parking lot at Walmart. I did this while a man in a white truck watched me, and Terrance looked on with concern.

Yes, of course I was drinking fluids. That's all I could do, really. Green Tea and Water. No, I hadn't been sleeping either but who can tell with a 49 year old body. Sometimes you just wake up and stay awake.

The ER doctor told me that I could control the dizziness with over the counter medications! Why he too suffered from Vertigo - Right now, even!

Could it be ear infections, I asked? Maybe some kind of weird ear infection that was making me so dizzy? Grudgingly, he looked. Nope, no ear infections.

He left me alone on the ER bed, feeling foolish and overreactive. Nurses came in. They took more vitals, someone took blood. When it was determined that I was dehydrated, a kind man came and got an IV started. He was very kind and patient, as my veins were just about invisible and he had to work hard to find any place to get this started. After he was successful I asked, "Can you get my husband? He's in the waiting room."

Terrance arrived. He sat down and asked me what the doctor had said. I shared that he thought I must be dehydrated and there were no ear infections.

Now, what I am not explaining here is my utter insistence that I am fine. This is a little virus. Maybe a small bacterial infection.

I am *always* like this. ALWAYS. Everything is no big deal. Earlier this spring right before class was starting, I ran to the washroom and vomited profusely. I hadn't realized that the door had kicked itself open, meaning that ALL of my students got to hear me vomiting profusely. In fact, the whole first floor got to listen to me puking.

As I returned to class, I faced an entire room of startled students who just put together that the person they had just listened to was, in fact, their professor.

Readers, I taught the class. For the full 2 hours.

For me to say "I think I need to go to Urgent Care" is the white flag of defeat in Dawn world.

A nurse came in and asked me to take out my earrings as they wanted to do a MRI to make sure I wasn't having some kind of tumor or stroke issue. I lay there feeling utterly ridiculous. I was just dizzy, terribly dizzy. And nauseated.

They wheeled me back into the room. I lay there, eyes closed. Terrance stared at the walls.

Here is where the dramatic moment of hospital shows happened. The doctor whips open the curtain and exclaims that my blood tests are showing something very wrong and they are admitting me right now. People appear. More things are done. Terrance is handed my purse and told to go get things from home because I am being wheeled upstairs now.

Truthfully, I am now feeling guilty because this is all a bit much. For some dizziness? I've had two liters of saline pushed into my body in such rapid succession that when they hook up the third, I am confused because I thought we had just started the 2nd one. I am transferred into a hospital bed. I am covered in warmed blankets. I lay there and begin calculating how much this is going to cost us and how soon I can get out of there because we have a child in college and I can not afford a 20K hospital bill.

Sidenote: Thanks, American medical and political systems for that extra tidbit of stress. As if I am taking a spa break, or a fancy vacation, I worry about the cost of the bill for my portion of the hospital admission. In fact, I begin to cry in the hospital because I am thinking of how much this is going to cost. I apologize to my husband when he arrives because this is going to cost too much.

The first doctor arrives. The next bag of saline is being hooked up and pushed through my body. My doctor says they aren't quite sure what is happening yet. Something is going on with my kidneys but they don't know what. They are going to keep pushing saline. A nephrologist has been called.

Terrance arrives with a backpack full of things. We sit in silence as I cry about the cost and he reassures me. The IV pump hums aggressively. After about 7 hours of continuous IV fluids, my appetite returns in the smallest way. With the nausea controlled with medication, I might want to eat a little. I want a salad. I want a little hamburger. Maybe even a few fries. Terrance does what he does best - he manages food for me.

The nurse smiles when she sees me eating, even if it isn't much. It's good. I still can't stand without getting dizzy, but I am peeing lots now. My indignity is enhanced by the fact that I have to pee into the "hat", a large plastic container that measures my urine.

I am wildly grateful that I went with the boy shorts underwear instead of the usual thong given my hospital gown and the frequency with which I am now peeing.

I am still optimistic that this is just all an overreaction and I am fine. Terrance goes home for the night.

The nephrologist arrives at 9 p.m. I am laying in bed actually trying to grade papers and respond to emails from panicked freshman asking about registration. ( See: Dawn's inability to admit she is ill, above)

This startles me for a couple of reasons. First, I was told that he wouldn't see me until tomorrow since he had left for the day. Second, he seems *very* serious.

He is kind. He is clear. He does not talk down to me. He takes a history, asking me about medications, health, any changes I had observed in my general well being. He then starts talking me through what they suspect has happened.

My kidney's, he explains, had simply stopped working. When I arrived at the Urgent Care that morning, I was in acute renal failure. I had lost 95% of my kidney functions by the time I was admitted. A few more hours of waiting and I would have been in the ICU. He explained that they weren't sure if this was reversible yet and that they would need to wait and see my numbers in the morning. The ultrasound of my kidneys and bladder showed no tumors or obvious blockages, so it could be an infection inside the kidney, or a combination of other factors. A biopsy may be needed.

After he left I sat in my very dim room and considered my fragility. This was the moment that I got scared.

Roots and Wings

2019-04-28T12:43:00.001-05:00

The baby bird is leaving the nest. Well, not really, but she is testing her wings.

On Friday, Emily walked to school ....“Alone”. Of course this means that Terrance trailed her to school, keeping a not unsubtle distance between she and he as he pretended to be out for a jog.

Upon his return from said jog, he reported that she walked with confidence the 3 blocks to school. Then he sent me to the school at noon to make sure she was really IN school. When I picked her up at 3:30, she was all smiles. “How was the walk to school?”, I asked her as she hopped into the car.

“Good. Daddy followed me the whole way you know.”She said this without irritation or indignation at being granted her independence....but not quite. I paused and listened for tone, as the nuances of my daughter are becoming more shaded and obscure. No tone was forthcoming and I did not deny that her father had indeed followed her to school. We both knew he had.

Later on at dinner, she casually mentioned to him that she knew of his poorly concealed attempts at
covert surveillance . His blustery attempts to deny the facts made it only that much more obvious. She accepted his denials with a world weary grace that took me aback. It was then that I realized that our daughter has come to understand that she must be patient with her parents as we learn to let her fly. Our intent is not to stifle her growth, although it sometimes may feel that way to her. She is secure

in the knowledge that we love her wholly and that everything we do is done to protect and encourage her. This knowledge allows her to accept some of the perceived indignities of being a child as acts of
love and caring. We, in turn, see this acknowledgment as indications of her growing maturity and need to stretch and grow.

This push and pull is a wonderful, terrible thing. Our dance of mother, father and daughter is growing
more complex and entangled with every passing day. We – the mother and father – find her struggles for autonomy both thrilling and maddening, for we never know how much to give or how much to curtail, and more often than not we are at odds with each other about what she can handle and where she needs support.

Today, however, she told us exactly what she needs.

After deciding to walk to school on her own yesterday, she invited her father to walk with her today.

Her decision. Her terms. Her wings.

September 17, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Dark chocolate and espresso

2019-04-21T22:53:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I get very tired of being a Mom.

I know, I know.

Not for long. Usually a good sleep, or latte will bring me back to myself.

However, it is the moments when you have said "Get ready for school" for the 18th time, or picked up the underwear off the bathroom floor, or had the same round about argument with the 8 year old about whether or not you signed her permission slip ( come on! Of course I signed it!)

and you think...."When do I get my life back? Will I ever get my life back?"

Because you don't think so, really - you suspect that this goes deeper than you thought as you were deciding to get pregnant and have a baby. That this is the hidden part of the deal.

That this person, whom you adore and who makes you laugh like no one else - This person, who leaves her underwear on the floor everyday- This person, who turns her nose up at the food you have prepared and tells you that your breath smells bad....Well, you would step in front of a truck for this person.

And that freaks you out, a little.

Because as much as you sometimes wish for this person to grow up and leave the nest, you realize that the nest is getting smaller and your baby is much bigger. That pretty soon, this person who can't keep her damn clothes ON will stop letting you see her naked.

And like very good dark chocolate and espresso, this makes for delicious bittersweet thoughts.

Undercover Picniker

2019-04-17T21:55:00.002-05:00

Tonight, I led my daughter from the path of righteousness.

Yes. I secreted food and beverage in her backpack and had her carry it into the movie theatre.

The movie being Harry Potter, of course.

I lay out the plan in the car after stopping to pick up sandwiches. I mean, in my defense....Summer Camp ended at 4 p.m. The movie was downtown on St Catherine. It started at 4:30 p.m. The next showing wasn't until 7 p.m. - and I knew that she could not eat dinner that late - nor was she making a massive tub of popcorn her meal. Plus going into the movie at 7 would get us out at 10...and home by nearly 11 p.m. No way I was handling the exhausted puddle she would become by that time of night.

So, we ran into the sandwich shop and got a couple to go.

"Look", I tell her in the car. "The movie people don't really want you to bring food in - at least not food that you haven't bought THERE in the movie - so we have to be kind of ....not Obvious about bringing it in..."

The truth of what I am saying sinks in.

She weighs this. "What if they find them?", she asks. She is, after all, a rule follower.

"I don't know, but I don't think they will take our sandwiches - I mean they're just sandwiches!"

I begin to feel kind of bad, inducing my child into being my accomplice in the illegal transport of bread and meat and vegetables. And a couple of bottled waters.

I look at my purse. I wish I had brought a bigger purse. I look around and see her backpack.

"Ah", I think, "the ubiquitous child's backpack...."

Being opening week, they will undoubtedly search my bag. Montreal is, apparently, a hot bed of illegal taping in theaters. Indeed, a security team is at each of the doors of the screens showing Harry Potter. You show your ticket, they check your bag...and then they walk up and down the stadium seating, making sure no one has whipped out the video-phone to capture Old Harry in his 5th year.

I sigh. This moral dilemma is bigger than I wanted at 4:22 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon.

I decide to go with the "Don't ask, Don't Tell" Policy. I pack her backpack and carry it down the street. I suppose the worst they can do is take our sandwiches.

We get our tickets at 4:32 and race up the escalator to the FIRST theater. I present our tickets to the security team. They look in my bag....and completely ignore her backpack.

We walk in past the doors and Emily, in true nine year old fashion says (loudly):

"WOW! They didn't even look in my backpack!"

Mata Hari, she's not.

July 13, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Storm Front

2019-04-11T22:47:00.002-05:00

The storm arrived fast. There had been no tell tale clouds in the sky. No predictions of rain in the forecast. In fact, until the moment the storm arrived, you would never have guessed that there was even the vaguest possibility of foul weather.

It started with some mild howling. She didn't want to do her reading, she said. There was a law against kids having to do homework in the summer, she said. This progressed into precipitation - tears rolling down her cheeks as she is sent to her room, foot steps thundering away as she stomped off, muttering loudly about fairness.

Moments later, like lightening setting a meadow afire, she returned to curse at her mother. She hated her, she said. She wanted to live with her grandmother.

The mother, calm and passive until that moment, is struck by the lightening of her daughters fury. It passes from body to body, the smell of ozone lingering in the air.

The mother gets up and leaves the room for the kitchen, beginning to make dinner. The storm follows her. Upon opening the freezer, a water bottle falls out and cracks - the plastic shattering into jagged shards. The second crash follows on the heels of the first, as the glass coffee carafe falls into the sink and breaks.

The mother now storms from spot to spot, trying to clean the glass and plastic and cook at the same time. The daughter returns, rumbling about the choice of dinner as the thunder cloud of her mother moves from mess to mess.

The storm cloud expands, mother and daughter echoing the thunder back and forth...

Until , like all storms, it passes. The child is fed. The mother cleans the mess. The quiet is restored.

You would almost not know that the storm had rolled through, save for the melting ice bits, slowly melting on the kitchen floor.

July 11, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Cannibal

2019-04-10T22:52:00.002-05:00

The old cliché is that the shoemakers kids are the ones walking around barefoot, right? Well, kids of early childhood professionals are the ones who fail to adhere to developmental timelines. They are also the ones on whom all the advice their parent has ever spoken will be guaranteed to NOT work. They will talk late, be constipated as exclusively breast-fed babies, and get chronic ear infections. They will also become biters in their classroom.

Yes, I was the Mom of the Biter. That Biter – you know the one who took a chunk out of your child’s face? Then followed that up with the bite on the back the next day? Yep – That was my kid.

What doubled my pleasure, so to speak, was my dual role as point person for the angry parents who wanted me to “do something” about that Biter.

Logically, I could tick off the reasons for Emily’s biting. She was small. At a year old she weighed a whopping 13 pounds so her classmates were behemoths in comparison. She used her teeth when she felt threatened or unsure. She also bit people when she was overcome with love or happiness. Knowing her life long struggle with the modulation of her emotions and her eventual diagnosis of ADD, it doesn’t shock the Me watching seven years later. But try to explain to another’s mother that your child loves her child so much, that she bit them. Not a popular sell.

For Emily, she was also dealing with a significant language delay. Having experienced chronic ear infections from the age of 3 months on, she was a very late talker. She would get frustrated with a friend, and since the word or objection couldn’t be quantified as a word – the teeth were handy and fast.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The day that another child bit Emily, I fought back my urge to punch a 14-month-old child in the face. I also knew that my husband was going to go apeshit when she saw the marks on her cheek. “Who was it, Who was it, Who was it” he grilled me over and over.

“Are you asking me as the mother or as the Director?”, I responded

“The Mother”, he said

“I don’t know, as the mother. Staff doesn’t tell you the name of the biter.”

I braced myself for the follow up.

“Then Director. I am asking you as the Director.” His eyes were widening, mouth tightening.

“As Director, I must tell you that we don’t release the name of the child. It is a matter of program policy and confidentiality. I can assure you, however, that the parents have been notified and are working closely with the staff.”

I took a deep breath. I braced myself, for the gale was a-coming.

“What!!! You will tell me Dawn. You will tell me who bit our child! You will tell me …or I’ll sue you. I’ll sue the Center! This is a matter of health! What if that child has something?” He paused, panting and huffing.

After several more threats to my professional well-being, he desisted. The tables turned soon after. WE became the parents of THE BITER!!!

Her reign was not mercifully brief. She had a long and glorious stint as the top shark in the pond. It persisted through the Two-year-old room, off and on.

The crowning moment in my title as “Mother of the Biter” came after one of Emily’s best beloved friends transitioned into the classroom.

Now, Early Childhood people worth their salt will tell you that groups of children behave in some very predictable ways. In groups of Toddlers, new children are often targeted with a bite. This may come from the last child to transition into the group – or may come from the “Top Toddler” so to speak. I wasn’t kidding when I referred to my groups of children as “Wolf Packs”. They have very, very similar characteristics.

J was coming into the Ones and Emily was overjoyed. She was her buddy in badass behavior. In fact, this group of Mom’s and I often joked that there must have been a streak of Bad Ass in the water, since we had produced some of the most Bad Ass group of little girls to grace the center in quite a long time.

Day One, Emily greets J and Bites her on the right Cheek. The bite takes up about 70 percent of J’s cheek. It is a nasty thing. Purple and swollen. I want to cry when I see this other child. It is bad. It’s a bite that, as Director, I have to call the Mother about. A mother whom I considered to be a friend. As with my husband, I am going to be questioned. As with my husband, I am going to have to hold the professional line.

This Mother was actually OK. This was her second child, and she was a bit more relaxed when it came to life in the child care center. Her husband, predictably, flipped out. I believe that she later told me that he had wanted to come beat up the Toddler who had bitten his child. I understood.

No, the beauty of my tenuous situation came from another mother in the group. Mother of the very first child who had bitten my own child, in fact. Having observed J’s bitten face, she approached me in the hall.

Her: “Boy, J has a bad bite!”
Me: “Yeah, It is a big one”
Her: “You know, I’ve been thinking. The parents of that Biter have got to do something about this. I mean, they can’t be very good parents if their child keeps biting, right? What kinds of parents have a child that bites like this?

Me:” I can tell you that the parents are very aware of the situation. They are working closely with the staff and they feel just terrible about the biting.”

Her: “Still, if they were better parents, their child would stop biting.”

At age one, Emily taught me that while she is Of me, she is not me. She has to make her own way, as hard as that is for me to watch and experience. So what kinds of parents have the biter – or the hitter, or the pincher, or the pusher-downer? Ones just like Terrance and I, apparently.

July 9, 2007 Gimlet Eye

River of Tears

2019-04-07T21:22:00.000-05:00

In keeping with our theme of "ways to make Dawn and Terrance uncomfortable and/or annoyed" , we can safely add the persistent and unexpected crying that our child has taken to unleashing at any time or place.

Flat Stanley left at school?

Can't find the pair of socks she wants to wear?

Can't decide if you want to go on a bike ride with your father?

Refuse to wash your hair, and then cry when you are ordered out of the tub before your hair is washed?

Demand to have the fan installed in your room and then insist that it be turned off because you are too cold?

FLOOD OF CRYING. And screaming. Let's not forget the screaming. For it ties it all up in a lovely package of pre-adolescent angst.

If ever there was an effective form of birth control, I would say that living with a hormonal nine year old girl would pretty much do the trick.

Oh, and her father just added this tidbit of nervy-ness.

This morning, after demanding that he get up and make her pancakes and bacon, she criticized the crispiness of the bacon, for she likes her bacon a bit chewy and he failed to achieve the chewy texture she desires.

Seriously.

June 12, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Deep Thoughts

2019-04-03T00:14:00.000-05:00

As part of my "Let's do anything to keep a child busy during two rainy in-service days" campaign this week, Em and I went to see Pirates of the Carribean.

I like watching a little Orlando Bloom and J Depp as much as the next lady and Em LOVES the Pirate/fantasy/mythological aspects of the movies.

However, producers and writers of the P of the C movies, my nine year old has figured out a major weakness in the plot point of this last film, which she addressed to me this morning.

If all of the crew on the Flying Dutchman are in effect Dead, but immortal - as evidenced by their gruesome sea creature like appearance as well as the premise of the entire second movie - How can they all be killed so easily during sword fights?

Chew on that Hollywood writers.

June 7, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Full circle

2019-03-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have noticed the recent emergence of several posts which seem....out of time.

No, my daughter has not morphed backwards to an 8 year old. Yes, she still asks for dessert daily.

Emily is on the cusp of turning 21. TWENTY_FUCKING_ONE!!!!! This makes me feel oddly old, since I met her father when I was 21. I look at my daughter and think "How could you even ever think about settling down with a partner at 21?!?!"

My blogging has decreased, obvs. Part of that is because I have classrooms full of students to regale with my humor and stories and the need to write them down feels less urgent. While my personality felt large and outsized for my body in 2005, it feels less so in 2019. I have expanded, both internally and externally ( pats belly roll).

The recent stories are old Gimlet Eye stories that I'd forgotten I'd stored in Draft form. I wanted to insert them in this blog because they are 1) good and 2) things I don't want to forget.

Em is using them for a narrative for her sexual behavior class as examples of how parents talk to their children about sex and it amuses me endlessly to re-read those stories.

When I read these stories to her over the phone, we both end up laughing. She remembers glimmers from those years, but my voice overlaid on top adds a sort of nuance to her memories. I am filling in the behind the scenes stuff that she didn't need to know, but now does know. Having my daughter read the inner voice of her mother was something that I never anticipated when I began blogging in 2005.

In hindsight, I am so glad I wrote it all down.

It just happens

2019-03-24T21:27:00.000-05:00

While we were in the Target dressing room, Emily asked me what was wrong with her Daddy.

I took a deep breath and tried my best to explain to her that he father had noticed the changes that her body was beginning to undergo and that it made him kind of sad. She wasn't his baby girl anymore.

She put her hand on my shoulder. "But I'll always be his baby girl!", she said.

"Yes baby, I know - but it freaks him out a little to see your body changing. He sees that and starts to think about you being in high school and starting to date and it just makes him a little weird..."
I trailed off.

She paused and stared at her body in the mirror. She did a little half naked dance. The same dance she has been doing she she could rip her diaper off and tear ass across the living room.

"Well, Daddy just has to understand that EVERYBODY grows up - It just happens." She cocked her hand on her hip and stared at me.

"I know, sweetie - he'll live. Now get dressed."

Stepping out, I waited for her outside the dressing room. She needs her privacy now, you know.

Always Be Prepared

2019-03-24T21:23:00.000-05:00

Last week, Emily and I were walking along the lake. The flooding was at it's height, and we walked around looking to see how far the lake had risen into our neighbors yards. We walked down to the front yard and watched the ducks swim around the partially submerged picnic tables.

As we walked back, she hit me with a question for which I was unprepared.

"Why do boys have penises?"

Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder? A penis discussion at 5 p.m. on a Wednesday?

Attempting to conceal the lump that has grown in my throat, I inquired, "That's a good question - what made you think of it?"

Buy the time, Dawn, buy the time. THINK!! THINK!!

Em:"Well, we talked about being safe in school and how only certain people are allowed to touch your private areas, like your doctor - or you and daddy."

Em:"That's true, but even Mommy and Daddy and doctors should ask you if it's OK first. Your body is your body and you have the right to tell anyone that you don't want them to touch you."

Em:"Yeah, I know. And I know that I have a labia and a hole where my pee comes out and a hole for my vagina, but I wondered what do penises do? What are they used for?"

My mind begins to cycle through a variety of answers, not the least of which is "NEVER TOUCH A PENIS!! PENISES ARE BAD!!!", which is irrational, but a mommy instinct. I then mentally veer to the "too much information" side where I give a detailed description of the clinical uses of the penis and it's reproductive or elimination functions.

Egad. Where do I go with this? I settle for the middle of the road.

Me:"Well, boys use their penis to pee. You know, like Daddy does."

Em:"Oh, yeah. I've seen Daddy pee."

Me:"What else do you think penises might do?"

I have an image in my head of dancing penises of various ethnicities and girths, in full cirque de soleil garb, putting on a Vegas style show.

Em:"Well, I think they help to make a baby..."

Oh. My. God. I am not ready for this talk. I cannot have the how babies are made talk. I will throw myself in the lake to divert her. OK, that seems a bit extreme. I go for the middle of the road response again.

Me:"Yep, they do. Do you have any other questions?"

Em:"Nope."

Me: "OK. But you know that you can ask mommy anything, right? I will always give you answers to your questions..."

Razor's edge, folks, Razor's edge.

Originally Published May 24, 2006 at The Gimlet Eye