I’ll probably never be able to explain why I was universally hated by my nursing school class. I’ve tried to explain it before, but it makes so little sense to even me, that I give up after awhile. It’s not like I’m a hate-able person (who really thinks they’re hate-able anyway?), quite the opposite, actually.

But I started nursing school and was promptly dumped into a class of people I didn’t know, who knew each other, and who didn’t like infidels infiltrating their elite ranks. Or something. Whatever.

Looking for any port in a storm, I sat next to a girl who had been in my statistics class, whose name was Melissa. She was a nice girl, a single mother as well, and we hit it off decently. She had another friend who was a bit closer to my mother’s age, high strung as hell, but seemed like a nice person. It wasn’t exactly who I’d have chosen to hang with had the pool of candidates been any larger, but we all managed.

Until midway through the semester when things got…weird.

Now here’s the part I need to be pretty careful in mentioning properly, because as pompous as I can appear, it’s not really who I am. Bush-beating-around isn’t something I do very well, so I’ll just go ahead and say it the way it is.

I’m a good student. I’m an excellent test taker, and I’d never wanted to be a nurse: I’d wanted to be a doctor. I changed career paths when my son was born, and I found the nursing classes to be frightfully simple while many of my classmates floundered. This, I’m aware, angered many of my competitive classmates who were both aware of my dislike of my new profession and the fact that I reliably beat their test scores.

While I didn’t exactly tell them that I’d beaten their scores, the word would travel like syphilis and pretty soon I’d be getting the death stares I’d gotten accustomed to.

Melissa and her friend were no different. And they seemed to take particular issue with my habit of occasionally skipping lecture sessions to sleep in. The “lectures,” if you can call them that, were all on Powerpoint and downloadable off the web, and were literally read by the teacher. For 4 hours a day.

Pointless, yes. I could read them easily on my own and manage just as well, if not better.

But this angered Melissa and her friend, whose business it was not, and I began to notice a distinctly chilly vibe when I’d greet them. It was clear that they were angry with me and my obviously irresponsible actions, and so I began to steer clear of them. I mean, I’m not a sadist.

During the summer between my junior and senior year, I received a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, which, while certainly not cancer or anything quite as deadly, is not something that at the age of 23, you really want to hear. Knowing the words “colostomy bag” and “bowel resection” are in your future doesn’t exactly inspire one to smile broadly and save some kittens from a burning building.

It’s an ugly disease, and it’s easily found in a book called “100 Diseases You Don’t Want To Get,” right up there with Ebola, SARS and HIV. It’s not something I often talk about because it makes people uncomfortable. It’s a gross subject, that’s for sure, and it’s not one that is easily worked into polite dinner table conversation, so for the most part, I didn’t and still don’t often mention it. People don’t exactly want to hear that you’re shitting 20 or more times a day and in constant pain, especially when there’s no real cure, nothing that really makes it go away.

It’s led me to the pearly gates of our local ER more times than I can count, due to mismanagement on the part of my former GI, the one who gave me my initial diagnosis. At the time I was diagnosed, the only drug that helped was not covered by my crappy student insurance, so I just grinned and bore it. I couldn’t afford the medicine back then, so I just rode the wave.

Pain management was laughable as my GI “didn’t want me to get addicted,” so I had to hit up the ER on the days when I just couldn’t handle it anymore. And some days, the pain is simply unbearable. Chronic pain, to those of you blissfully unaware, is exhausting (especially when you have no real means of relief) and wears on your soul in a way you’d never imagine. I’ve had to lay in bed to recover from a particularly bad flare up because I am so exhausted that I cannot stand properly without wobbling.

Crohn’s is, of course, not a diagnosis that is easy to come by. There’s no definitive test for it, only a gathering of data from a multitude of different yet humiliating tests. Let me tell you why I have little to no shame: I have shat in buckets. Many buckets. I have had to carry said buckets around collecting stool for days on end. Then I have had to drop these buckets off at labs where some poor soul is stuck fishing around in my poo.

I have had to have a camera shoved down one hole and up the other (let’s hope he changed the tubing, eh?). I have had to shit my pants because I couldn’t make it to the bathroom.

No one marches for a cure or sells stuff with pink on it in honor of it. I don’t know of any corporate sponsorship or nifty slogans that people can say to say that They Support My Disease (which is likely to lead, one unlucky day) to colon cancer. I’m not angry about having it any longer, but I’m not exactly enveloped in new research or treatment options, nor can I tell most people that I have it without explaining it in more graphic detail than anyone wants to hear.

It’s glamorous, as you can see. It’s the sort of diagnosis a girl would simply KILL to have.

Right?

Because I can’t think of any other reason that anyone might imagine I’d lie about having it.

I came back to my senior year in college, and word spread like herpes that I had Crohn’s disease. Which, to a bunch of nurses IS somewhat interesting. It didn’t impact my studies too often, and I didn’t have much call to talk about it. Again, it’s just something I deal with, not something I define myself by.

One day, a couple weeks into that semester, Melissa’s friend, who hadn’t spoken a word to me in ages, as I was now Public Enemy #3 (number 1 and 2 being syphilis and herpes, naturally) turned around during one of our breaks and spoke to me all accusatory-like:

“My STEP-daughter has Crohn’s disease. And she’s had it since she was 11. And now I’m wondering how YOU got it so LATE in life.”

Her ‘YOU’ was drawn out like a finger pointing directly at me. Accusing me.

I reminded her that Crohn’s is normally diagnosed in patient’s twenties or thirties, but she just wouldn’t let it go. And as she ranted on and on about how it stunted HER growth and how much WORSE her step-daughter had it than I did, it dawned on me: that bitch totally thought I was lying. I’d hung with them long enough to know that this was how their brains worked, Melissa and her friend.

She totally thought I was lying about having Crohn’s disease. Which is either funny or sad, depending on how you frame it.

Because if I was planning to lie about something, I assure you that I would choose something FAR cooler to do so about. Like maybe tell you that I was, in fact, born in the Congo and had a monkey as my best friend as a child. Or that I was actually descended directly from royalty and was just going to college to “see how the other half lives.”

It was then when I learned just how strange people can be. I still cannot imagine what would lead them to believe I was in any way faking this disease. A) I’m not that clever and B) I don’t really like pity.

————-

I was thinking back to those days today, after I finally put a phone call into my OB’s office about what can only be called a flare-up of my Crohn’s disease. I’ve put it off for awhile since I have no active GI doctor and no failsafe treatment plan. I’d planned on going back in for the battery of tests once Amelia is born and getting some real sort of treatment going, but things have gotten to dire for me to do this safely.

In a shocking turn of events, not only was I able to get the phone nurse to get a real answer for me, but I was able to get an appointment with a brand-new GI doctor for tomorrow. Which goes to show you just how bad things have gotten if I can get in next-day to a doctor I’ve not seen before WHILE I’M PREGNANT. Most doctors hate dealing with pregnant ladies due, I’m sure, to the incredible level of lawsuits they might get if they mismanage care.

And I’m hoping like hell to get something, anything, to stop the pain and spasms and bleeding, lest I go insane.

But even if I do go insane, I highly doubt I’ll accuse anyone of lying about having a disease. Because that’s just fucked up.

I’m a little woozy from my glucose tolerance test this morning, so I’m taking the liberty of reposting yet another old post. Trust me, it’s better than anything else you’d get out of me today. Why is the GTT The Devil?

Last week, under the guise of ‘œbusiness’ Daver took Ben and I to NYC. Having never been there, I found myself to be utterly un-enthused in the weeks leading up to our departure. I’ve been in Chicago all of my life and was never as turned on by the city as some. And having to go with child in tow, despite Dave’s assurances that ‘œwe would be fine’ alone all day by ourselves DID I MENTION ALONE AND BY OURSELVES in a city we’ve not been to, I was even less thrilled.

But the minute we got off the plane, amid Ben’s pleas to get back on the airplane, my mind was changed.

Drastically.

It took physically going to New York for me to realize that this was where I belong. For some people, going to Paris or London or even Australia is where it’s at. My own personal mecca, unbeknown to me, happened to be NYC.

It’s the place where everything HAPPENS. Everything that’s anything comes straight from NY, fashion, food, style; it’s all there. It’s glamorous, it’s busy, it’s FABULOUS. Plus you can get knockoff purses at every street corner ALONG WITH HOT DOGS! I LOVE HOT DOGS. NOM, NOM, NOM HOT DOGS.

Now you might be saying to yourselves, but how was traveling with a four-year old? You still have a kid, how cool can you really be?

The answer is NOT VERY. Bringing Ben to NYC I like to liken (hehe) to taking a bath in hydrochloric acid with a little bleach mixed in for good measure. He wasn’t BAD by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s a busy and active little boy; the kind who DOESN’T want to have his hand held because at 4, he’s too COOL, and only has to urinate when it’s the most inconvenient time and place possible. Like the airplane. I swear that there were times when I could physically FEEL my uterus trying to crawl into the most hidden crevice of my body cavity.

Perhaps behind my spleen.

And I couldn’t blame it. I wanted to crawl in there myself.

Especially after I realized that although I had stocked up on Mother’s Little Helper I had foolishly neglected a stroller. Normally Ben will react to being confined to a stroller (you know, I’ve always seen those kids placidly riding in strollers, while mine insisted upon walking at 6 months old. It’s pure jealousy, let’s be clear here.) with sheer anger and arched back like a cat in a patent leather bikini, but in NYC, I could have cared less. I could have probably given him to the gypsies like I’ve been threatening for years, BECAUSE I’M SURE I COULD FIND SOME.

I looked high and low for strollers, but 5th Ave apparently is fresh out of strollers. Except for the $150 one from FAO Schwartz. Which, by the end of the trip, I was cursing myself for NOT buying. It was a matter of perspective that made me realize how CHEAP $150 was.

I have spent the time since returning home trying to devise a plan for Ben to get a job with a decent income so that we can totally move back to NYC. It’s totally where I belong. Any kind of food delivered at any hour of the day. Hustle and bustle of the crowd going to and from wherever it is fabulous people go. HOT DOGS!

Four years old isn’t too young to get a job, right?

(This is a repost from my first blog, written in 2004. I’ve come down with yet another stomach bug and am composing in my head a post about Adult Diapers. Be pleased I’ve spared you.)

As I do every day that I ride Metra to school, today I walked past the music building on my way to my 9 a.m. class. And as I do every morning, I shake my fist at the careless music majors who pepper the lawn, smoking joints and unfiltered Camel after unfiltered Camel while enjoying such activities as football, Frisbee and what can only be basket weaving.

It kills me.

It really kills me that these people, who look much, much more interesting than the cretins in my classes get to ‘œrelax’ and ‘œhang out’ and generally ‘œenjoy life;’ fundamental things that we Nursing majors cannot remember ever doing.

I’m hoping sometime in the next year before I actually graduate (yes me, a college grad, who’d have though it possible?) that I might spend even *part* of an afternoon on campus enjoying myself. I carried with me the same lofty goal last year and alas, it was not close to being met. I think at most I may have *smiled* once, most likely when I saw the campus security guard jump out of a bush in front of the music building.

He was looking, no doubt for some fun-seeking music majors’ ‘œmarijuana cigarette’ and he had this look on his face like he thought that he might have found a clue to an urgent crime in the underbrush.

Damn all of them and their fun times and great memories (or lack of memories) of college. Forever stuck in my mind are the rectal suppositories and enemas, and of 6 hour classes and of feeling like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. No co-ed frat parties or keggers for me, no I instead get pig and cell parties.

All of this from someone who has taken 6 years to get a BS degree.

I really need to cut down my caffeine intake on Thursdays.

————–

Since I’ve gotten through a lot of NaBloWhatever, I’m going to keep going, despite my childish desire to screw it all. So, any burning blog post-y questions for me?

BlogHer 2009
July 24-25
Chicago, IL

Who is in, my bitches? Who wants to come to Chicago, home of our famous deep dish pizza, the best hot dogs on the planet, AND everybody’s favorite Aunt Becky?

Because I cannot fucking wait. To all of you previous attendees, is it worth it?

With one of my children far past the age in which I can dress him in whatever costume is either cute or hysterical blackmail fodder, the other one bears the brunt of my Psychosis, Halloween Variety. As you might have guessed, it’s the little one that I’m referring to.

Exhibit A: Last Year’s Costume

Name: Halloweenier

Exhibit B: This Year’s Costume

What the hell IS that costume?

Uh….

Name: Hedgehog.

Go here if you want to see some more photos of Alex in action.

And in a stunning display of choosing a costume I would *never* have chosen, and furthering the notion that biology plays hardly any role in Ben’s life, Ben was a…

I don’t have a reference photo for last year, since I couldn’t catch him before he ran off, but he was Darth Vader. Exactly the OTHER costume I wouldn’t have chosen for him. Ever.

Between my busted foot and Alex’s decision to get up a whole 2 hours earlier than normal, we were in no real shape for Trick or Treating. Thankfully, other people were able to take Ben, saving Dave and I from the delightful and titillating screams of my second son.

Alex, it seems, is just simply not old enough for Halloween. And apparently I am getting too creaky to do it myself. To top it off, those damn kids were on my lawn again. Me, without my cane.

There was a commercial awhile back, I don’t remember what it was for really-perhaps a bank?–in which a man offers to paint his (presumably) wife’s toenails. The tag line was “Because you’re not THAT GUY” (THAT GUY being the one who paints toenails), and it made me laugh.

Because I totally married THAT GUY.

I’ve never actually asked him to paint my toenails, but he swears up, down and sideways that he would if I did. In the past he’s also volunteered to help me shave my delicate lady bits when a burgeoning stomach is preventing me from taking care of the ole undercarriage properly, and would probably shave my legs if I begged. Or bribed. Whatever.

This omission makes him sound like a complete and utter pushover, who without a complaint, says “yes dear” to anything, EVERYTHING I say, but it’s simply not true. (SADLY. I WAAANT A PONY.) People who haven’t shared a lot of time with us together have remarked that Dave is “pussy-whipped” or perhaps “Becky wears the pants in THAT marriage,” but it’s just wrong. They miss the indelicate back and forth that Dave and I tend to do in private.

He does call me fuckface or asshead when the moment strikes and the kids aren’t awake, and he does so unapologetically. And I’ve never seen him shy away from me unless I was especially hormonal and chasing him around with a butcher knife. Which is funny, because we HAVE NO BUTCHER KNIFE.

And being THAT GUY doesn’t mean that he does any of the following:

*Hanging up his laundry
*Throwing his socks down the laundry chute
*Remembering any present buying holiday ahead of time
*Ever buying an anniversary card
*Ever calling to tell me he’ll be late UNTIL he’s already late as hell

But he’s THAT GUY all right.

How do I know this for sure? Well, The Daver is suffering once again from Couvade Syndrome. Otherwise known as a sympathetic pregnancy. It happened when I was pregnant with Alex, and his donut consumption may or may not have been responsible for his elevated cholesterol, and it’s been happening since I got pregnant with Amelia.

While his behavior when stricken with a Man Cold (which pretty much involves moaning a lot, reminding everyone within a 20 yard radius that he HATES to have a cold, and sniffling deeply whenever I ask him to take out the trash, and generally being a pain my in ever-loving ass) leaves much to be desired and may be the only time I delicately suggest that he go to work by kicking him out of the house and locking the doors, I’m lucky that this is not indicative of his behavior while “pregnant.”

This isn’t to say that he religiously reads “What To Expect While You’re Expecting” book-marking the relevant chapters (we don’t even own it) or dreams up color combinations for the nursery, hell, he’s barely interested in baby clothes or deciding on a middle name for our daughter. No, he’s just as emotionally labile as I am these days. And is nearly as interested in donuts and hot dogs and squishy chocolate deserts.

Honestly, I find the whole situation rather adorable. After being pregnant by a dude who was downright abusive during the whole gestation, it’s such a refreshing change of pace for me. If you’d told the pregnant-with-Ben me that I would one day find a man who was going to be pregnant with me, I’d have rolled my eyes bitterly and probably laughed without any humor behind it.

At that point in time, I’d have settled for a guy who was even remotely interested in his child and not interested in sticking his penis in other women. His TINY penis.

(sorry, I had to)

It reminds me that I hit the jackpot when I met Dave, something I’ve always been acutely aware of. Sure, we might not ever be the romantic couple of the romantic comedy genre, we may never refer to what happens between the sheets as “making love” unless we were trying to be sarcastic and make the other laugh, and we may never compose love letters OR poemes, but it doesn’t matter to me. It never mattered to me.

Anyone who shares a fleeting 9 month obsession with encased meats and sweets is more than enough for me.

As I close down Week 2 of being pregnant and crippled–wait, is that a Lifetime movie? Because it totally should be–I find myself to be more and more empathetic toward the handicapped community. Which, considering I tend to have pretty non-existent sympathy/empathy/whichever one is better toward the majority of the population, is saying quite a bit.

I mean, I always got angry and perhaps occasionally called the police on cars illegally parked in the handicapped spaces. Or if I didn’t call the police, I’d shake my fist angrily AND menacingly at the offending car. Because how scary is that for that car?

But now Going Out has gone from “ooh! Maybe I’ll see something adorable I HAVE TO EAT at Target and buy it! Then EAT it!” to “Fuck, do I really have to leave?” And it’s not because it’s incredibly painful for me to walk, it’s a combination of other factors.

First, I look stupid. This I’m aware of. I go out, wearing this gigantic moon boot of doom, obviously pregnant, and lugging a 30 pound toddler–who is likely screaming in my face–through the store. I knew I looked stupid before I made 70% of the store patrons and staff stop and stare at me, but after making several small children cry (although that might have been because I told them that there was no Santa Claus after they called me a “retarded gimp”), I’m suddenly aware of how people who have real handicaps must feel on a daily basis.

Second, just because I am pregnant and crippled for the moment–and perhaps ugly for the rest of my life–doesn’t mean I am stupid. I mean, okay, okay, I’m kind of stupid, and perhaps even emotionally crippled but really, my IQ is not in the low 30’s. I don’t think. But people see a huge boot on a person and assume that I must be one of those Special People bussed in from an institution on my Big Day Out. Where the toddler and 7 year old with me come from is anyone’s guess.

They occasionally cluck sympathetically, raise their voices to speak to me slowly and loudly in small sentences, “Aaaarrreeee yooooouuuu reeeeaaadddyyy tooooo cccchhheeecckkk ooouutt?” I may look stupid, people, but I assure you that my mental facilities are as intact as they were before I injured my foot. Take that to mean whatever you’d like it to.

And my least favorite of the people that I come across on my brief ventures out into the Real World are the ones that walk behind me impatiently as I gimp along, muttering about how slow I am, practically touching my ass with their crotch, grumbling the whole way along. While I can relate that being frustrated by being behind someone slow is annoying, what I cannot understand is why on Earth they don’t go around me in the miles of space to my left. Slower traffic keep right, and all.

But then, just as I’m accepting that the person behind me really would like to be my hemorrhoid (mental picture is awesome), the minute I head toward a checkout, they speedily zip around me, practically knocking me over to get in front of me. Being slow at walking does not mean I’m slow at getting checked out.

Now, normally I let most anyone with less items go ahead of me, but now that my foot makes me gimpified, I honestly want to do nothing more than get the hell outta there so I can ice that puppy down. I’ll still let people with a couple of items in front of me, but the people who speedily zip past me ruthlessly cut in front of me always seem to be doing one of a couple things:

a) trying to write a check without proper identification (i.e. driver’s license)

b) trying to get the cashier to okay 4,595 expired coupons

c) arguing over a 2 cent price difference between “marked on shelf” cost and rung up cost

d) trying to use a declined credit card by arguing with the bored looking cashier

e) baffling the hell out of the cashier by whipping out food stamps

And I stand there, behind them, chanting “serenity now, serenity now” in my head as Alex attempts to scramble out the cart, shrieks when I dare detain him, as my foot throbs merrily.

I tell you, this whole “being injured” thing is getting more and more annoying. Especially since I have neither good drugs nor a handicapped sticker for my car. Perhaps I’ll get a cane and whack people with it just to make me feel better.

Misery loves company and all that, right?

“Banana Hammock.”

What’s yours?

The forecast today?

Sunny with a chance of PINK.

Looks like we’re having a girl. My wallet is aching already.

Before I was fortunate enough to meet The Daver, I tended to be attracted to and date guys that were Smugly Superior. Honestly, in Becky-Land, that’s an characteristic of people I’d date: dudes who were Full Of The Rightness. Didn’t matter about what. Didn’t matter whether or not I was more schooled in whatever it was they were trying to argue with me about. They Were Right. And if They Were Right, then I Was Wrong.

If I were to remark on the lovely sky blue pink sunset (incidentally, my favorite color on the planet), each and every one of them would somehow come up with a way that the color of the sky was actually, Becky, green. (I may be colorblind, but I am positive I’ve not seen a green sky).

I’d mention that I happened to like that new Britney Spears song only to be shot down (sadly, not in a blaze of glory) about how stupid and vapid pop music was, and how what I really should be listening to is Peter Gabriel.

But nowhere was my Wrongness more clearly illustrated than in the selection of movies.

I’m not much of a movie person, this much is damn certain. I don’t know different producers, I don’t know geeky facts about obscure movies, and I only know actors because I enjoy nothing more than some time with a good gossip rag. And what’s even more offensive to some is that I DON’T EVEN CARE.

That’s right, my friends, I don’t care about movies.

My tastes run from fluffy to action movies, and at no point in time do I ever enjoy watching hard-to-find foreign films, no matter how many nekkid boobies I get to see. I’ll watch the same movie multiple times (although never in a row) and not be the slightest bit put off if I know how it ends.

I don’t need to watch a movie to feel sad about the world or to make me think and question my system of beliefs. I don’t generally want to feel like slitting my wrists after seeing a movie, I absolutely refuse to think about what the character was thinking after I’ve seen it, and I can think no more suicide inducing thought than to have to talk about the movie ad nauseum once I’ve seen it. I’ll never get most movie references without a clue-in from someone, I’m okay with never debating which version of Romeo and Juliet is best (Oliva Hussey vs. Leo DiCaprio?), and you’d probably never want to play trivia games with me. I’m oblivious at best.

I guess I like my movies like I like my one-night stands: quick, to the point, and without need to revisit them.

But my Haughty Group Of Boyfriends would insist that I did actually like movies, and in that vein, they’d drag me off to the movie store to pick up the newest French movie. Without a care that it was not subtitled and that neither of us spoke a lick of French. On the days without a Movie Agenda, I’d wander around the store while they scoured the racks, and my suggestions to rent Weekend At Bernie’s 2 were always shot down.

It’s probably safe to say that for about 10 years, I never picked out a movie to watch by myself, which sounds far more depressing than it should. When I’d say I didn’t care, it’s because I truly didn’t give a shit. Sometimes I’d sit and watch movies with my boyfriend, other times, I’d take off and do something else.

The only lasting impression that I have of the whole situation is a general dislike for sitting around and watching movies. A handful of times a year, I have an urge to watch this or that with The Daver, but overall, it’s with much teeth gnashing and nail sharpening that I agree to do so. I prefer to do pretty much anything else: watch TV, play solitaire on the computer, read books.

And I can’t really say for certain that my Smugly Superior ex’s are really and truly to blame for any of the dislike I feel, who knows if that’s the case or not?

What I do know is this: every time I tell someone this omission, I’m met with an almost unanimous “You don’t like MOVIES?” and a subsequent eye-rolling so loud that I can practically hear the pop.

So what do people scoff at that you dislike that most people do not? I know I’ve previously mentioned my hatred of all things sandwich, but I’m curious (and I have a short attention span) as to how universal this reaction is.