Thanks to my parents everlasting legacy, my genetic soup is kinda twisted. Not in the sort of way (thank God) that makes me REALLY sick, but in the sort of way that makes my morning pill ritual look like that of someone double my age. Almost all of my various maladies are handled by specialists, because my GP is overwhelmingly useless or doesn’t have the time to carefully watch my blood TSH levels go up and down like a yo-yo.

They’re not SERIOUS issues that I’m going to die from any time soon, just the sort that requires that I see a fucking ton of -ologists. I’m half-way afraid that the Munchausen* Police are going to burst down my door one day and be all, “Miss, you need to come with us. Bring your pills and your lab work.”

Earlier this year, I started getting My Grains, and when I did, initially I powered through them because I was all “totes stress-related.” Turns out, not so much. I blogged about it a little bit, but usually I leave my headaches out of it because talking about headaches is about as thrilling as talking about beige paint.

With the help of my GP, I went on Topamax, which is a daily maintenance medication for them with Vicodin for any break-through headaches.

All was happy in My Grain Land until my GP went on vacation and left Evil Bitch, RN in charge (under the supervision of another doctor). This happened to coincide with me a) getting a nasty My Grain and b) running out of Vicodin.

I went 35 rounds with the pharmacy and doctor’s office (unaware he was out of the office) until I had this conversation:

Evil Bitch, RN: “I cannot prescribe your Vicodin.”

Aunt Becky: “My GP (your boss) is fine with it. He knows I take it for my My Grains and that I am not an addict. Look at my chart and my medical history and you will see that I have asked him to write a note to authorize Vicodin refills if I need it.”

Evil Bitch, RN: “You are on too many medications.”

Aunt Becky: “Excuse me?”

Evil Bitch, RN: “If you have a headache, you can take Tylenol.”

Aunt Becky: “EXCUSE ME?”

Evil Bitch, RN (happily): “Yes, I am denying your Vicodin.”

Aunt Becky: “What??”

Evil Bitch, RN (obviously enjoying herself): “You don’t need it.”

(click)

Now, before any of you bother telling me that Vicodin is a narcotic and that she was well within her right to treat me that way, I’m aware of it’s addictive nature.

I’m also aware that I am not an addict and that I do not need to be treated like a felon when I am looking for something that I need to function. I wasn’t trying to get wasted, I was trying not to be in pain. I’m sure had I pressed the issue, I could have “gone to the ER.” She was being a condescending asshole to me because she could.

So I did what any self-respecting patient would do. I reported her ass to her boss and then I got myself a new doctor (a neurologist!!) with an office staff that’s used to dealing with patients who are in pain. Even if it means going to another specialist. Which, trust me, is something that’s about as appealing to me as pouring lime jello into my ear canal.

Maybe when I go to my appointment on Wednesday, I can get my specialist punch card punched and get some sort of prize at the gift shop.

And at the very least, this appointment doesn’t require that I carry my poo around in a bucket.

*Munchausen’s disease, I must clarify, is not Munchausen’s BY PROXY which is what those fucking awful parents do to their children. Munchausen’s disease is where people make themselves ill to illicit sympathy from others. And no, I do not have Munchausen’s. If I did, you’re hear about my -ologist’s a hell of a lot more.

————

Over at Skirt! I’ve put up a slightly-less-than-humorous essay about internet communities and cruelty and trolls.

It’s entirely likely that I’m the most annoying person on the planet to live with, not only because I belt out Rod Stewart songs while The Daver is in a bad mood for the sole purpose of annoying him, or because I kept forgetting that the toothbrush in the downstairs medicine cabinet was NOT, in fact, MINE, but actually NOT mine, and I used it over and over anyway, but because I borrow guilt.

(also, I use run-on sentences because I think they are whimsical and fun and WHEE!)

I’ve mentioned it here before, and it’s true, I’m the person cowering in the tampon aisle as the Very Important Security Guard hunts down an underage smoker wondering if I’ve accidentally started smoking again and also become 12. Or maybe I’ve stolen a Baby Jesus from a manger display or the diamond from the old lady in Titanic or I don’t know what.

Guilt issues, I’m guilty until proven innocent.

I work really hard on not self-flagellating too much when I can help it, but I’m a master of biting off more than I can chew and not only doing it all, but being all Super Becky Overachiever about it.

But lately, I’ve just sort of given up on being able to do it all and I’ve let a lot more slip than I noticed and it wasn’t until this weekend that I finally took a look around and saw all that I had turned a deaf eye to.

What I saw made me really, really sad.

Sad for myself because I’ve created these impossible standards and while I like to be all “shit, bitch I’ve got this motherfucker covered,” I don’t and I can’t and I’ve tapped out all the possible help that I can.

And really I’m sad because I don’t really like to imagine that anything that I have under my care is getting less than what it deserves.

I know that a good deal of my problems are that the medicine I’ve been taking for my headaches make me feel like a glistening plate of buttholes and the narcotics knock me out and leave me swimming through my day.

I seem to be emerging from the other side of the fog, which gives me hope that I’ll be able to be all “shit, bitch I’ve got this motherfucker covered,” and mean it.

This weekend, I rolled up my sleeves and got all down in it and got a lot of what needed to get taken care of done and I know that I’ll get a handle on the rest and will be back to scrubbing the toilet the cat’s butt my own pearly chompers with Dave’s toothbrush by accident again.

I’m trying desperately not to punch myself in the face for allowing things to get so bad because I really have been feeling like a steaming load of ass and really, a face beating doesn’t really accomplish much besides give me some rockin’ black eyes, and just learn from my mistakes: I cannot possibly be everything to everyone.

I must find some balance.

I must also find some new storage bins and perhaps some clothes that fit.

But don’t worry. My run-on sentences and over-active guilt complex are going nowhere.

How do you find balance? Do you find balance? Is that impossible? Can I BUY balance? Not like, balance bars, because those are really kind of not my thing.

It was pretty clear from the moment I trudged back to the train from my first day as Student Nurse Aunt Becky weeping like a crazed fool that I wasn’t going to make a very good nurse. I knew it when I signed up for the program that this probably wasn’t going to be a career I could actually stick with, because I don’t do well taking orders from people, no matter how adorable Precious Moments scrubs are.

They’re not, by the by. Precious Moments anything make me want to heave.

But anyway.

I was as welcome among the ranks of Student Nurse as a bout of gonorrhea and that was made clear right away. I don’t know why, except that I’m probably a gigantic puckered poohole, but the rest of the class (mostly) hated me. Never one to let people get the best of me, I hated them right back.

Especially since they’d interrupt our four hour lectures, hands waving feverishly in the air only to have something like this come out:

Umm…so I work in a hospital right now as a tech, right? And yeah, on your Slide Show, you show the pads that we put under the patient as blue? But where I work, they’re pink?”

Blink, Blink, Blink.

For the first couple of weeks, I’d wait patiently to hear the statement/question followed up with something more important, something that would make an outburst like that really worth interrupting class for. Nothing ever came. Just observations.

Not witty observations like, “Why does my cat insist upon licking his empty nutsack for 5 hours?” or even ephiphones like “Arbys = RB’s = Roast Beef’s!!!!” No. Just bullshit like, “One time, my grandma was in the hospital and her roommate had a Code Brown.”

Blink, blink, motherfucking BLINK.

Torture. Pure torture.

At the end of my senior year, we rotated through the ER and finally, I felt like I had found my calling. No more shoving suppositories and wiping butts for me. No more bathing old people or young people or hiding from overbearing Nurse Ratched.

It was all holding organs in body cavities and blood and guts and sputum and hearts falling onto the floor and suicides and it was like mother-fucking heaven. IV-drips, patients who have to go elsewhere and doctors who stay put and nurses who love their job and techs who, wow.

I’m not sure why I didn’t end up working in the ER.

It’s hard to get in there, for one thing, and I probably would have had to work for a couple of years on a Med/Surgical floor (which may as well be called an Ass/Butts floor in my book) which probably would have made me insane before I could have applied to the ER.

I really don’t know why I didn’t go for it. I should have.

I drifted to a Cardio unit–the same place I always said I never wanted to work–at the intense urging of a over-eager HR manager and lasted there only a couple of weeks, because, well, I know myself.

From there I went into hospice case management (they didn’t call Your Aunt Becky “Nurse Death” for no reason) and then I’ve stayed home with my kids after I had Alex. I plan on doing a stint with Doctors Without Borders when my kids stop needing their momma so damn much, but that probably won’t be for a couple more years.

Dave works pretty much at the same rate he consumes oxygen and while I could go back to work, at this point, it would create more problems than it would solve.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, my three remaining brain cells rattling about my brain cavity like ball bearings about how much I miss that part of my old life.

It’s great to use my medical knowledge to be smugly superior and occasionally solve the medical mysteries on House, MD before his team does, but I miss using the rational and analytical part of my brain. That’s what I do best: analyze.

I’m going back to school soon, I’ll get my PhD in virology like I always said I would and I’ll get to pursue my dreams, a little derailed thanks to a couple of crotch parasites, but intact and burbling just below the surface

I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to nursing and it’s likely that the next time I’m in the ER will be with one of the kids and most days it probably won’t make me nostalgic, or maybe it will. I can’t be sure.

Are we all so conflicted?

No, Fair Reader, your eyes are NOT deceiving you, I did change my layout! It wasn’t that the lovely and talented Admin’s design wasn’t awesome, it was just that I needed something that was widget ready.

Do let me know if you see something wonky and let me know which operating system you use, because I have a Mac, which should mean something to someone besides the guy on the Mac commercial.

Also, I added a feature called “threaded comments” which, means that I can now easily reply to your comments VIA EMAIL. So, rather than adding a pithy and no doubt insightful comment inside the comment box, I am now attempting to reply through email.

This means two things:

1) if you actually care to see what I have to say, check that you’ve left me a valid email address

b) don’t reply to the email directly because I think that it would go to email purgatory.

————————-

Back at the beginning of the summer, I went to see a shrink for exactly one visit before determining:

1) that I would never be the sort of person who would be comfortable sitting around discussing My Feelings without feeling like more of a narcissist than I already do (I blog, people. Come ON!)

b) My mental health benefit sucks balls.

But while I was there, I got to take this big fancy test, which thrilled me intensely, because I happen to adore taking tests. ESPECIALLY ones that have questions like, “I have flown across the ocean 45 times this week” because the answer is an obvious YES.

From this inventory, among other things, it was determined that I have incredible difficulties with Feelings. I don’t understand them. I don’t know how to express them. I don’t know what to do with them when I feel them. He suggested that I might need to go back and somehow relearn all about feelings.

Some of you are probably rolling your eyes right now because it sounds pretty far-fetched, but I think the dude and his 212 question inventory was probably on to something here.

While I have managed to escape my fucked up childhood relatively unscathed, I’m not sure that you can say to your husband, like I did on Sunday night conversationally, “Well, no matter what you do, I mean, don’t feel TOO bad, because you know, at least YOU didn’t cancel CHRISTMAS for me, heh-heh-heh. Sure, maybe you were late coming home this week, but you didn’t cancel Christmas.”

Did you catch that?

I made a joke about the time my mother canceled Christmas for me to make someone else feel better. Because it happened. She did. Everyone else had Christmas as usual. Except me. Other people got me stuff, just not her. I’d been “too bad that year.” And the kicker? If I brought it up, no one would remember it.

Now, that situation is a lot of things, but it’s not very funny. I don’t find it funny, I think it’s awful and it’s sad.

I do that a lot of the time when I shouldn’t: I discount the things that I’m going through. I’m sure there’s some jargon for it, but I’m not a psychologist and I wouldn’t know how to Google it if I could, so I won’t. So, here on Mommy Wants Vodka, we can call it the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome.

Or the Reverse Pain Olympics, if you prefer.

Because in the Pain Olympics, if you have a splinter in your finger, I have a stake though my arm and require immediate blood transfusions, sympathy cards, a parade in my honor and several crosses to get on.

But in the Other People Have No Legs Syndrome, rather than allowing yourself to feel badly for, oh I don’t know, maybe having a bad day just because you had a bad day, you’re stuck thinking “well, how can *I* be upset about being overtired when there are people in the world WITHOUT LEGS.”

So you don’t feel bad about your day, you move on. Eventually, though this builds up.

I’ve had a really hard year.

I don’t tend to blog about it anymore, because I’m kind of tired of how those kinds of posts bring out the leg-less, armless, fingerless masses. One might wonder how these people type, but, I’m fairly sure that even assholes can figure out how to make their point clear. Maybe they can type with their tongues, which must make them amazing at performing oral sex.

But somehow along the lines I’ve decided that’s how one is supposed to deal with these sorts of hard situations, you know, being a single parent during the week, having had a stressful childhood, day-to-day bad days: by just pretending that they just don’t exist.

As one of my wise commentors and friends pointed out, denial is a very powerful and often useful thing because it allows you to get through the hardest times without falling apart into a blubbering pile of goo.

But when that’s the only way that you can manage your problems, is by saying, “well, at least it’s not cancer!!” That takes away from the very real day to day problems that I do have and you know what?

That isn’t fair. So this is me, trying to give myself permission to have feelings and allow myself to feel them.

This isn’t an earth shattering revelation and probably to many it seems like it should be a “well, DUH” sort of moment, but even the very act of writing this down here, having to form coherent thoughts (shut UP) has really helped me. I feel like a weight that I didn’t know I’d been slogging around behind me has been lifted now.

And don’t worry, before all of you frantically claw your way to the “UNSUBSCRIBE” button, I don’t plan on turning this into a blog about my feelings. They’re still boring and trite and don’t make a whole lot of sense and while it may not seem this way, I do keep some amount of things to myself.

So this is me, Your Aunt Becky dipping a toe in the water here. I can’t ever picture myself as one of those people sculpting what “anger” looks like in clay form and I don’t think I’ll devote years of my life writing bad poetry about my sadness, but maybe I’ll learn something.

Maybe I won’t.

Progress, not perfection. Because if I were perfect, I totally have flown the around the world 45 times this week while curing cancer and baldness and world hunger.

As anyone who really knows me knows, I’m not really one to talk about “My Feelings.” Hell, typing that simple word there, the one any 3-year-old sings about, makes me squeamish. I’d prefer that I don’t have them at all, truth be told, let alone mentioning to people–some complete strangers no less–that I might have feelings other than “happy,” “sad,” “sleepy,” or “I want a fucking cheeseburger.” Potentially a side of “I need a damn nap” as well somewhere in there.

So when I struggle with something, I tend to downplay it. I don’t often get into the nitty-gritty of what’s goin’ on to even my best friends, I don’t have long and detailed discussions with Daver about whatever issues there may be floating around in my head, and I certainly don’t want to admit it to myself. It’s like I somehow imagine that if I don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. Besides, who wants to listen to someone whine about their life?

This was how I got through months and months of living in a weepy, postpartum depression world after Alex was born (and never went to sleep again) before seeking treatment. And after I started my Vitamin W (Wellbutrin), I was seriously pissed at myself for not admitting my problem sooner. I gained nothing by staying silent, and the person who paid the highest price was me.

Before Alex was born, however, I struggled mightily with something even less talked about than postpartum depression: PRE-partum depression.

I spent most of the months I was pregnant with Alex after struggling to get pregnant with him in the first place, completely and utterly miserable. I worried and I fretted about each and every twinge, each and everyTHING I could think of. Most of those 9 long months were spent with me sitting on the couch feeling downright despondent, disturbed, depressed; certain that I wouldn’t get my happy ending after all. That my feelings of panic and dread were something MORE than a symptom of depression in my addled brain.

So when I got pregnant this time, I stayed on my Vitamin W until I was rudely informed by one of the OB’s in my practice that I’d be seeing the HIGH RISK OB if I continued on it. Not-so-shockingly, I decided to rough it out on my own until I couldn’t any longer.

Most of this time, I’ve been okay. Truthfully okay.

It wasn’t until Daver had a bit of a nervous breakdown at the end of August that I realized how thinly the string holding me together had become. It’s been a really, really hard year for me. No, that’s not quite true, let me rephrase that: it’s been a year that’s tested me. It’s been non-stop: my dad’s heart attack, my post-partum depression, Steph’s death, the two miscarriages, then this pregnancy that I never accepted would make it, then Dave’s breakdown.

I guess I only have so much to give anyone, and it’s all been taken. And I’m left sitting here and struggling, much like I did with Alex. I absolutely have my hackles raised, I’m going to see how long I can tough it out with this wee one still inside before I consider going back on my meds.

I’m thrilled by this baby, so very thrilled. I love my life, I love my husband (most of the time), and I’m tickled constantly (literally AND figuratively) by my two children. And I was so afraid to mention how I’ve been struggling BECAUSE I know that someone will misinterpret what I’m saying and twist it around to remind me of how lucky I really am.

Which is something that I already know: I have most everything in the world I’ve ever wanted. How many people do you know that honestly feel that way?

And I went back and forth with talking about this here. It’s a public forum, and while I don’t often worry about what I would say–people who I haven’t exactly peed roses about here may not understand WHY I feel like I do about them, but I tell The Truth According to Aunt Becky and I stick by it–I know this isn’t the same type of posts you normally get from me. Which will piss some people off.

But I’m telling The Truth because someone has to. Since those women went nuts and killed their kids, there’s been a huge push to get the word out about PPD (postpartum depression), which is good. People SHOULD know about it.

Pre-partum depression is rarely discussed, tho. Women don’t talk about it openly, lest they be branded as “ungrateful” or my personal favorite “unfit to be a mother.” Instead, those who suffer from pre-partum depression suffer alone and in silence about it. Because if you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist, right?

Don’t believe me? Do a google search for the term “prepartum depression.” Most of what comes up are other blog posts about it. It’s out there, it’s just swept under the rug.

So this is me, your Aunt Becky, telling you, that this exists. And it hurts. And it’s hard. And I’m struggling right now. I’ll make it through, of course I will, it’s what I do, but for now, for right now, I’m hurting.

And now I’m encouraging you, my faithful readers, to share YOUR Truth without hiding from it. The Truth can be ugly; it can be not-fun to admit; but sharing it is a Very Good Thing. Besides the uncle pervy’s out there who find my site looking for “cheeseburger crotch” and “excess skin balls,” I’m damn certain that someone will find this post, someone also struggling during what is supposed to be the happiest time of your life.

And to you, I tell you definitively that you are not alone.

Full Moon Tonight: Check (unproven scientifically, but as nurse and former waitress must agree with it, as have experienced it)

Cervix Softening: Check

Baby Full Term: Check

Number of (documented by hospital records) Times Baby Has Tried To Kill Me: Twice

Dreams of Gigantic 18 lb Babies Being Ejected by Crotch: One (which beats the 60 lb baby dreams I had with Ben. Wait, that was a fantasy)

Hospital Bags Packed: One (last time, simply threw pile of cheeseburgers haphazardly into plastic sack and hoped for the best)

Baby Settling into Pelvis (thereby making me have to pee 1 tbsp every 4 seconds): Check

Increased Need for Semen in Vagina Because Someone, Somewhere Promised that Semen Brings on Labor: Check (poor husband is home from work for exact purpose. Was considering donor sperm if husband not available until it was made clear that you HAVE TO PAY FOR DONOR SPERM. Totally unaware that people could CHARGE for SPOOGE)

Mucus Plug/Bloody Show: Likely intact, although may be coming out of nose

Emotions Range from Stark Raving Mad to Weeping Uncontrollably: Check

Number of Times Husband Has Threatened Divorce: Miraculously, none, although am sure will be summarily paid back when shoulder surgery occurs.

Laundry Piled Up, Needing To Be Put Away: Currently two baskets. Hoping that if labor occurs, husband will have to do it himself for the first time in three years. Scratch that, as I will end up with 5 year old son’s clothes in my closet. Mental note: must put away laundry today.

Desire For Whole Bottle of Beer: Growing by the minute. Know it is bad as Icehouse is sounding tastee.

Jealousy of People Who Have Scheduled C-Sections Before Actual Due Date: Growing by the second.

Disgust with Pants with Elastic Waistbands: Almost epic proportions. Cannot wait to leave them behind. Cannot believe that once thought that they were ‘œcomfortable’ and ‘œkinda cute.’ Annoyed with previous naivety.

Plans For Evicting Baby, Beginning Today:

Sex, or alternately, turkey baster insemination.

Getting involved in huge, massive, messy project, knowing that this is likely the time water could break (would normally have lit cigarette, but have quit smoking)

Locating trampoline and jumping (likely injuring self)

And my favorite:

The Branch Davidians Method: Planning to loudly play Alice Cooper, Corrosion of Conformity, Peter Fucking Frampton, Rush, Any Smoove Jazz I Can Find, Phil Collins, etc to belly. Hoping he will take the hint and decide to come out and turn that motherfucking shit DOWN, motherfucker.

Anything else?