Sleepless Nights

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  • A fucking snake

    We just found a snake. Inside my house.

    A white lipped ‘whiptail’ snake.

    Not the best photo, I was shaking too hard to get a good one.

    It was curled up underneath the fridge. Only that Nathan had decided to mop the kitchen and moved the fridge did we find it. It was about 12-14 inches long and asleep, under my fucking fridge.

    Anyway, with much swearing it was relocated and hopefully we’re snake free now. A timely reminder that we need to be wearing shoes outside ALL the time and that the kids MUST have boots on, all the time.

    I might still be a little panicked. Enough that I’m considering blundstones for inside the house and having a minor panic attack with every footstep. Yeah, I have anxiety issues. Small ones.No one said I was being reasonable.

    A snake! Inside my fucking house.

    Excuse me while I go and hyperventilate. And possibly complete the panic attack I put on hold because everyone is awake.

    And I might even change my animals category to ‘goddamned motherfucking animals’, just to make my displeasure clear.

    (At first glance I thought it was a baby copperhead, but the photos showed me differently. Still very freaked out.)

  • What’s down there?

    What's down there?

    Alternate title: Holy CRAP I have a FOOT!

  • And everything keeps going down the drain.

    There are things you don’t want to hear when you go to the doctor.

    Like – You have the back of a 60 year old. When Nathan is only 28.

    His back is bad. Really bad.

    There are arthritic changes, a bulging disc, some compressed discs, bone spurs, narrowing of the nerve canals and degenerative issues.

    Never gonna get better kind of bad.

    Sure, loads of physio should help in the short term, but as far as I remember, nothing can be done for bones that are arthritic, or bones that are breaking down.

    ***

    I’ve been seeing a Gyno for my insane periods and heavy bleeding/cramps like labour pains. That’s the backstory.

    I went to see them yesterday, to follow up on how the trial of a contraceptive pill went.

    [paraphrasing, as best I can, because somehow, telling you without the conversation added is too hard]

    ‘So, how did the pill go?’

    ‘HA! Badly. Really badly. I came off it early because it was bad.’

    ‘Bad how?’

    ‘Mood swings, depression, increased dislocations, etc etc. Bad.’

    ‘Well, in situations like yours, we really like to try the contraceptive pill.’

    ‘Yes, but the pill doesn’t agree with me.’

    ‘I can see. And you seem very against trying it again.’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘So, we’d like to try the Mirena.’

    ‘No.’

    ‘Huh? No?’

    ‘I have anecdotal evidence to tell me that the mirena would be really bad for me’ [he tries to cut in] ‘and YES, I KNOW that the progesterone supposedly doesn’t leave your uterus, but really, my body is so sensitive to progesterone that I don’t want to trial the mirena.’

    [he looks very spluttery]

    ‘We would like to try the mirena. If you don’t want the mirena, then we’re looking at things like gonadatropins and they’ll make you gain lots of facial hair and will deepen your voice and -‘

    ‘Well I don’t want to trial those either.’

    ‘If you’d try the Mirena, we wouldn’t have to look at gonadatropins.’

    ‘I don’t want the Mirena.’

    ‘Gonadatropins will make you gain a lot of weight… wait, I’m going to consult with my boss.‘

    [A few minutes later, his boss- the doctor I saw last time enters.]

    ‘Hi Veronica, so you trialled the pill?’

    ‘Yes. And it was awful. I stopped it after 3 weeks because I couldn’t cope anymore.’

    ‘What happened?’

    ‘My joints fell apart, it felt like I was walking on a wobble board instead of a pelvis, I was angry and sad and it was horrible. So I stopped.’

    ‘Good, that’s what we discussed. So really, our next option is the Mirena.’

    ‘I don’t want the Mirena.’

    ‘It’s really the best option.’

    ‘I don’t believe it’s the best option for ME. I think it will make my joints worse and YES I KNOW the progesterone won’t leave my uterus, yada yada, I’m not willing to put a coil into my uterus to just see.’

    ‘We’re really running out of options here, the Mirena…’

    ‘No. I am opposed to IUD’s on ethical grounds too and really, I don’t think poking my internal organs with metal and making them angry is going to make me feel better on the whole.’

    ‘Ethical grounds?’

    ‘Yes. I don’t like how they work.’

    ‘Do you KNOW how they work?’

    ‘I know a plain IUD doesn’t prevent ovulation or conception, it just prevents implantation. I know the Mirena with it’s progesterone generally prevents ovulation, and also that it prevents implantation in the event that conception occurs. I don’t want the Mirena, I don’t want something I can’t stop using myself if I get bad. I can’t afford to wait weeks until I can get in here to be seen and fixed and HONESTLY, I’ve been on the wrong side of side effects and statistics for so long, I’m not prepared to mess around with things.’

    ‘Right. Well then.’

    ‘Can we try something to help with the cramps and pain instead of trying the mirena? ‘

    At this point, I feel like I’ve been fighting the doctors to get ANY sort of health care that doesn’t involve inserting a foreign body into my uterus and leaving it there. Not to mention the absolute shock on their faces that I wouldn’t accept the Mirena as ‘the best possible thing’ [all hail the fucking copper coil] and wouldn’t be badgered into it. Not even with the ‘you’re gonna grow facial hair and get really fat’ scare tactics that the original doctor was using. I mean, fuck.

    Eventually, the doctors agree on a course of action, medication wise and send me away with a script.

    45 minutes later, I get to read all about the reasons I should not take a drug to help my blood clot.

    Like, don’t take the drug if anyone in your immediate family has had a blood clot. Both Mum and Nan have had blood clots.

    Don’t take the drug if you have bruising, especially bruising without trauma. Hello fucking EHLERS DANLOS.

    Don’t take the drug if you have irregular periods. Um yeah, that’s part of why I’m seeing a Gyno. I’m 21, I’ve had periods since I was 12 and I’ve had 2 kids, my periods should be fucking regular. They aren’t.

    I’m just so tired of having to fight the doctors for things that might help. Tired of them not asking questions they should before they prescribe something. Tired of being treated like a disobedient child, for not falling into line and letting them do whatever ‘they think best’.

    Tired of feeling like these bandaid fixes don’t do anything towards working out why my body isn’t doing regular periods, why I bleed for 10-12 days each period, why the periods feel like labour pains, and why I’m having hot flushes.

    Tired.

    I’m booking an appointment with my regular GP to discuss the new tablets before I even think about taking them. Somehow, knowing how my body works and which side of the stats I fall on, I’m a little concerned about taking something to promote blood clotting.

    On the upside, there was a Med Student there during the whole appointment and I got ages to talk to her about Ehlers Danlos while the doctors were consulting in the other room. She was lovely and interested to know how EDS presents in normal cases.

    So good deed done. Even if I still want to bang my head against the wall.

  • Cottees

    The cottees post has had to be taken down, due to legal reasons – the competition terms and conditions haven’t been approved yet, so we need to wait for that. Anyone who has commented already, your comments will remain, everyone else, I’ll give you a yell when you can comment and enter the competition again.

    Sorry.

    Ugh.

  • The harlotry of mummyblogging

    Mummyblogging: It sounds like a dirty word. Like something you’d spit out of your mouth, or scrape off your shoe. People say it with a snide smile, or throw it over their shoulder. Like ‘the dirty mummybloggers, bringing us all down’. It’s become the word for all that is boring and mundane in blogging.

    It’s a bit of a rough deal, to be considered a mummyblogger. The rest of the blogosphere avoids mummyblogging like the plague, even as advertisers and sponsors court the hell out of you. Mummybloggers are considered to be sell outs, to be making money off the back of their children, to be blog whores.

    It’s all a little bullshit if you ask me.

    I spent a lot of time avoiding the whole mummyblogger cliche. I called myself a personal blogger, because I was writing about myself, with bits about the children thrown in. I wasn’t writing about poo or doing nothing but updating with photos of my kids and telling everyone how wonderful my life was.

    It took a long time to come to terms with the fact I was a mummyblogger (spit, cough).

    But I am.

    I write about my kids, myself, my life.

    THAT is mummyblogging. If you put photos of your kids on your blog, you are mummyblogging. Whinge about your sleepless night? Mummyblogging. Complain that nursing tops are hideously uncomfortable and that you tried to drown the baby in breastmilk? Mummyblogging. Remind everyone that kids are hard work and you’ve got it hard? Mummyblogging.

    You might not do it all the time, but you’ve got to own the fact you do it sometimes. You might hate the term, it might make your insides curl up and die a little, but if you have ever blogged about your kids, then you’ve participated in that thing we call (spit, cough) mummyblogging.

    Funnily enough it isn’t solely the genre of crap and mundane writing, in fact, some of the best writers I’ve ever read are writing about themselves and their children.

    I’ve seen plenty of utterly crap blogs, written by people without children, so why don’t they get the (spit, cough) reaction that mummyblogging gets?

    I share parts of my life and you guys click over to read about it. It’s a little voyeuristic, a little like being a whore, only without the need to shower afterwards. It’s also the closest thing I’ve got to a community and the most supportive network you’ll ever find.

    Some people might exclaim that I’m selling out my children in exchange for Internet celebrity (hahahahahaa, cough, ahem), that children and disabilities are all currency that sells here in the InterWebs. And I’ll consider those points, probably while I tear my own hair out and the children bounce off the walls, and then I’ll disagree with them.

    I’m selling myself, sure, maybe a little. After a fashion at least, but I don’t think I’m selling the kids.

    Like most mummybloggers, the kids are the supporting cast to my (not-so-brightly-lit) stardom. They get their own lines, sure, but in the end it always comes back to me. Slightly narcissistic? Okay, probably. We’ll go with that.

    But, that’s me, I’m the mummyblogger harlot. Taking off layers of my personality for money. Baring my soul for dollar signs. Supposedly.

    I might as well own it.

    And as the old saying goes, if you don’t like it, click away. It’s the Internet, it’s big enough for everyone.