indigos journal

i am so tired…and full of emotional pain. small amount of tears even. there is the nowadays ever-present physical pain as well. i just want to go back to bed. but, of course, there is much to do.

oh how i wish everything would settle down some. that cassidy would get well and find housing and take her cat back. that diane’s life settle down…be moved in and everything done. i know that all these things are out of everyone’s control…and they take time…but all of us are ready for easier times.

i am doing a fine little dance regarding things inside me right now, and what to say…..

but gotta go take care of things.

Our friend Cassidy, the one with cancer, had to go to the E.R. tonight. We didn’t get out of there until after 2:00am.

She has had high fevers for many days now. It peaked today at 4:00pm at 102.9. She also woke up with pain in her back and trouble breathing. After many tests, it turns out she has pulmonary embolisms in both her lungs. (Another major complication) So she will be inpatient for several more days.

We are so tired. We have had to be big duck on top of a rough day of our own. And there is still more to do…more phone calls that need to be made for her.

We really hope things will smooth out for her after this. We are tired of being scared of her dying. (very really possibilities so far)

now for our own stuff….

we had an appt. with our doc for the oh-so-fun yearly female exam. The lesser stuff: we have a type of excema. We don’t remember what she called it. (note to self: got to write this shit down!) To treat it we need to be using oils & creams.

she (the doctor) thinks we have PCOS. she is starting treatment for it (a pill.) but, as if a pelvic exam wasn’t bad enough, we also have to get a vaginal ultrasound. this will happen next week. they took tons of blood…a handful of vials.

pcos would explain our irregular, painful periods as well as our great amount of facial hair.

our doctor also said that we are not eating enough.

it was hell getting us to the doctor. even though we trust our doc and she is wonderful (including during those exams) we had major panic. someone(s) inside already made us miss an appointment we had scheduled for this over a month ago.

we will have to be seeing a lot more of our doctor as we are being treated for this.

the other big thing going on for us is that for the last week we have been in major dental pain. our dental terror/phobia is 1000 times bigger than our female exam one. which is why it has gotten this bad.

gotta go…cats are really fighting

a dear friend of ours, also a multiple, has been very overwhelmed with everything she has to get done. we suggested the 15-on, 15-off method, which sometimes helps us get things done. basically, you work for 15 minutes, then you do something fun for 15 minutes, then you work for 15 minutes….it breaks it up and helps it not be so overwhelming. setting a timer helps, so that you don’t have to worry about going over or about paying attention to time.

anyway…we have used this method in the past. but recently, despite telling them about it, we seem to have forgotten it. we have been sitting in our apartment so overwhelmed because there is so much to do. and now we are growing gnats because we haven’t done the dishes in some time. then suddenly our own advice occured to us. DUH!

so now we are trying it and it seems to be helping. it is amazing how much one can get done in 15 minutes.

besides that….

last friday in therapy our therapist was being very judgmental. (she even admitted that she was) we have been having major tooth pain. our teeth problem are ongoing and are genetic. this is worsened by our crap for insurance and our terror of the dentist.

anyway, she was being judgmental and not at all understanding. because, of course, we should have gotten this taken care of sooner instead of letting it get to an emergency point. she just didn’t seem to be getting how big of a problem this is for us.

a couple of times we compared it to our shower problem and our fat problem, saying that this dentist terror is just as bad or worse. her response was: “I doubt that.” she also said that if it was a real emergency we wouldn’t wait for someone to go with us, we would go by ourself.

by the time the session was over, we had been triggered big time. T had come out and made his opinion known. someone else came out and cried and tried to help her understand. everyone was feeling much shame. some wanting to cut really badly. others won’t let us take medicine for pain now, believing we don’t deserve it. we deserve to be in pain because it is our own fault it hurts.

there is also some major trust stuff with our therapist again. we thought she had gotten back to normal. then she was wacky again. but this feeling battles with our shame stuff…we don’t know what the truth of the matter is. we do know that we are so terrified and can’t seem to get it taken care of.

basically, we are in a cycle or spiral…we feel shame for not getting it done…but we can’t get it done because we are so terrified…then we are ashamed for being terrified…the more shame we feel, the less we function and the less we get done…so we feel more ashamed…grrrr…

then yesterday we were in a thrift store with a friend. we saw this old wood and metal chair. like you would find in an old school. we went into flashbacks…being tied naked to a chair just like that…when we were little…we can’t get the image out of our head…there are more details than that, but as usual we are scared to talk about it.

on a completely different note…we feel badly that we haven’t been able to email the group. we have just not been able to. the whole overwhelmed thing. we have been reading the emails though. we are glad to see everyone talking. we really hope everything works out.

i guess i better get off my butt…got to go run errands…pick up our meds…get stuff for our friend who is recovering from her recent surgery.

it be so cool! the bigs girlfriend got us kids a easter basket! it had really cool candy we like plus toys for us. terry got a airplane that moves and makes noise like it takin off. jamie got a really soft horsie. sammy got lots of cool pictures of water. bubbles got some bubbles you can hold. they come in little bottles that look like soda bottles. flutterby got this neat snowglobe that gots flutterbys in it. and we got really cool markers that write on windows and mirrors and foil and stuff. it be so nice and stuff. we are way excited. that be so nice of her to do for us.

anxiety level seems to be somewhat better today. got much accomplished yesterday, even though we didn’t make it to therapy. deb helped us out a whole lot….got laundry done (miracle of miracles—that hasn’t happened in oh so long) and errands for cassidy done. even used the phone! made an appt. for robbie kitty to see the vet.

still struggling with trying to call and get an appointment for our teeth. major panic on that front.

some discouragement….is this all life is meant to be for us? it seems like things will never be “normal” Programming tells us that filthing disgusting things like us don’t deserve a normal life.

for the past few days we have been experiencing much anxiety. even our ativan, which is for our panic, has not stopped it.

also there has been much tooth pain. we have had to take pain killers because the pain was so bad. which, of course, means that we need to go to the dentist. we put that off as long as we possibly can…we are terrified of the dentist. and we can’t find a really good one because we have medicaid. so we end of waiting until things are at the emergency stage…which unfortunately makes the experience even worse. so maybe our recent panic has to do with this. or not. who knows?

cassidy got out of the hospital from the second surgery. unfortunately she is now back in there. some big complications. but the good news is that her cancer has been staged at 1A, which is the best result she could have gotten. it means no chemo or radiation are needed. so hopefully she can heal from this surgery and then get back on her feet.

i would sure love my friends lives to be calmer! we still struggle with lines, with boundaries…

we struggle…

haven’t been able to do laundry for the longest time. we have no clean clothes. haven’t been able to do the dishes. haven’t been able to cook. the list goes on…. i really wish we could get a worker like we had before. cause we really need some help getting things done. the more things sit undone, the worse we feel. i wish it was just a matter of will power…then we could do it all!

but at least there was that good news about cassidy.

and we do have some new good things to look forward to: on fridays we do gurps with myriad and aeron (after our therapy) and for a couple of hours on saturdays we do therapeutic activities like system mapping and timelines with a couple of friends.

so things are hard in some ways…but good in some ways too.

the power of the connection between body and mind has again amazed me.

the past few days we have been feeling somewhat sore. Today especially, our skin hurts…it hurts to touch our skin. especially in our arms. we even mentioned it to myriad and aeron today when we met them for brunch. we didn’t know why we were hurting…we just were.

then came therapy…our therapist was reading over her notes from last session. apparently, while we were abreacting a memory, someone said to her that our arms really hurt…they had been burned and the worst of it was on their arms.

it is amazing to me that memories can create such real, powerful feelings in our bodies.

we are even getting little blisters on our upper arms…

i wish the pain would stop.

where is the line between helping someone you care about and being codependent? where is the line between saying no and abandoning? so many questions…things it seems we should know but don’t.

it is therapy day. people have been fighting me all day so far; they don’t want to go. they are scared i think. the last two sessions have been very hard. major trauma work. memory. they don’t want to do that today. do i want to? not really. but i try to be such a good patient…

cassidy went back in for surgery today. that scares us. our relationship with her is so odd…sometimes we really hate her and sometimes people really love her. she can be mean and she can be wonderful. regardless, we don’t want her to die.

sigh…going to therapy now.

we had another hospital dream last night. it wasn’t a good dream though. we don’t remember much about it. we do remember that when we were getting discharged, our dad showed up to get us. that was really scary cause our dad be bad.

we be scared bout goin to therapy today. cause we know that we posed to work on that bad memory agin. but we gotta go cause we don’t want her be mad at us.

the bigs is stressed cause we aint got hardly no clean clothes. but the laundry room in our building is just way too scary. and they gots cameras in there! they be recording you. everybody in the building get to watch. we don’t like that at all. it be way way way scary.

but we be happy cause after therapy we gets to go play at myriad’s house! we like playin there. it just seem like there be never enough time to do all we want there. us kids wish we could make time stop so that we could play as long as we want. or just make it way slow down like it does in ursula leguin’s “the beginning place” that would be so cool!

ok…anyway the bigs says we gots to go get ready for therapy and stuff. we dont wanna. but i guess we gotta.