I have two sweet cats (even though they aren’t so sweet to each other). I have a printer that does print (even though it is mentally challenged), and a laptop, both of which I use to write stories. Which reminds me — I am thankful that I have the ability to put my thoughts and feelings and imagination into words.
I have an awesome sister who is my best friend, and an awesome best friend who is like a sister. I have a beautiful family: my mom, dad, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I have a boyfriend who fits me completely.
I also have a mouth, which can taste and chew and eat (pleasepleaseplease let 2:00 tomorrow come quickly)! I have a body that may be diseased, but does allow me — roadblocks and all — to do what I love , and I am so thankful for that.
I have a great group of friends, both online and offline. I have a job that, although it can be stressful, I love, and allows me to work from home, during my own hours. I am so thankful that I don’t have to get up early in the morning, that I can work in my pajamas or sweats, and take as many breaks as I want, so that I can rest when I need to.
I have a beautiful niece and beautiful godchildren.
I have so much good in my life that, when I lump it all together, it far outweighs the bad.
This weekend was craziness. I can’t remember what I did on Friday, at all, other than shopping for stuff for Mike’s cake. Saturday I went to New York Comic Con with Mike and Rob (and tweeted about it over at @freakingbookwrm). NYCC was freaking awesome. It sucked getting up at 5am on a Saturday, but being in NYC and being at a comic convention totally made up for it. I’m going to write a more in-depth post over at Freaking Bookworm, so I’ll let you know when that is up. For now, just know that it was awesome!
Jayne tee!
Unfortunately, around 5pm, all of my joints from my lower back down started aching in a not so awesome way. Apparently all of the walking — man, was there a lot of walking — aggravated whatever the hell is wrong with me. So I started limping around, and so did Mike, because he has bad knees from playing football or something. When the convention was over, we decided we were going to get a cab. Rob was the only one not in pain. I knew we’d never get a cab on a Saturday night in NYC, but Mike for some reason thought it would be easy. Needless to say, we didn’t, and ended up walking the two or so miles back to Grand Central. It was a beautiful night in the city, with all of the people going different places and us walking down Broadway, but every step sent shocks of pain through my body. Rob walked ahead, I walked several paces behind him, and Mike walked several paces behind me.
If we had all been able to walk, we would have made it in time for the next train. We ended up waiting another hour, and then standing during most of the train ride, because apparently Metro-North does not give a shit how many people are on the train.
The second I got home and up the stairs — three flights, hooray — I just burst into tears. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried while peeing, complete with running mascara. I HAVEN’T CRIED THAT HARD IN A LONG, LONG TIME*. It would have been a great night for Tramadol, but I didn’t have any, so I took Costco Tylenol instead and went to bed hoping I could at least make Mike’s birthday cake in the morning.
Sunday morning rolled around, and it was Mike’s 26th birthday, so I dragged myself out of bed and limped around the kitchen baking. I discovered that if you try to get the cake out of the pan before it’s cooled down completely, it’ll break. A lot.
I cut it across the middle so I now had two layers, put the vanilla pudding filling on the first layer, and flipped the very broken second layer on top using a cutting board and spatula.
This cake was a total hot mess, but it was so. freaking. good.
Then I filled in all of the cracks with frosting.
Cream cheese frosting makes great spac.
I used a whole can of frosting on this cake, people. When I first frosted it, you couldn’t even tell anything was wrong with it.
The sides don't need frosting. Really.
By the time I got dressed and we were ready to leave, the filled in frosting had sunk in. It still tasted great, though!
I was still in pain and limping both Sunday and yesterday. I’m a little sore still today, but at least I can walk.
It’s frustrating that I keep runninginto limitationswith this disease. If I knew what it was, would I know my limitations and not have to find out the hard way? I don’t want limitations, but I’d really like to have a better idea of what is going on with my body.
I started this post a little over three hours ago and now I have no idea where I was going with it. It’s time to go to bed.
On a completely different note, I did some writing today and finished my short story, “Outlaw Love Story.” It’s fourteen pages long and I’m really proud of it. I can’t wait to take it to my writers’ group on Thursday! Could it be that I’m going to get into a daily writing routine?
*Unless, of course, you count Popi’s memorial service.
Today was Robbie’s birthday. He is 22 and is one of three of Mike’s siblings. He’s also a new daddy — someone PLEASE remind me to ask permission to post photos of Ciana — and has a wonderful girlfriend, Jaysa. We all went out tonight with a couple of his friends to the Chinese buffet in Watertown.
Sushi and beer, a girl's best friend
After over three years of dating Mike — we don’t subtract the two months we were broken up — I’d like to say that his family is pretty much my family. We’ve known for a while now that we are going to get married. He is my best, best friend, and the connection between us goes deeper than words can explain. If one of us is hurting, both of us are hurting. I don’t know about him, but I feel physically drawn to him, like a magnet to a refrigerator door (or to an old-school chalkboard, if you remember them).
Right now, we are both hurting.
That magnetic connection is still there, but we both are currently faced with the C word. I can no longer lean on him when I’m having a hard time accepting that Popi is sick and may not be with us much longer. Now, we must lean on each other, and I honestly don’t know how to be there for him when I am hurting so much myself.
You see, today we found out that there is a tumor in his mom’s brain. This strong, beautiful woman is like a second mother to me. No one could ever replace my own mother — I love you very, very much, Mommy — but Tracy is very dear to me. They — meaning the doctors — don’t know if it’s malignant or benign, so we have to wait and see, and anyone who knows me knows that I suck at the waiting game.
I thought for sure that maybe she had MS, and it was an MS lesion. I wanted it to be MS, so very badly, just like I wanted my grandfather to just have a damaged sciatic nerve. Instead, the C word looms.
And people act surprised when they discover I am smoking again.
With makeup and au natural hair
Don’t get me wrong, things aren’t all bad. I went to my writers’ group this afternoon, although I was half an hour late because it started at 3:30 and I work at my PT job until 4. I didn’t bring anything with me, either, so it ended early because out of the four of us, only two people brought something in. One of us wasn’t even there to perfect her writing; she is an ESL student and joined the group so that she could hear more conversational English and learn from listening to us pick apart language in our writing. She’s Russian, so she is automatically cool in my book. I sometimes desperately wish I knew more about my Russian heritage, but thanks to my mom’s dad taking off when she was a teenager, we know next to nothing.
Anyway, she was very cool and for someone who claimed to not be a writer, she had quite a bit to offer to the conversation and lots of suggestions for Chick’s poem.
Even though I had nothing to bring in with me, I did spend almost two hours yesterday writing a chapter for Secondhand Mom. So far, it’s nine pages long and is probably going to be twice as long when I finish it. It might be so long that I’ll have to break it up into at least two separate chapters. Regardless, it felt really good to actually do some writing. I fell right back into pace, and am really loving my characters right now. I just wish that I had more time to spend on writing as opposed to working.
Yesterday was also my first appointment with my new psychologist, but that’s a whole other post.
I am trying really hard to see the good side of life right now, or else I’ll probably lose my mind. I often feel like my whole childhood, my history, is just being pulled right out from underneath me by some meaner, bigger kid. Life’s a bitch like that.
The headache started at about 7. It felt like just another, “Hey, asshole, you need to eat something” warning. So I ignored it for a little longer, working on my client’s blog design until I finally gave in and ate. It didn’t go away.
When I picked Mike up from work at about 9:20, the headache continue to hang around. Robbie invited us over to Jaysa’s for a bit, so we decided to head over after going to Mike’s so that he could change out of his work clothes. I figured the headache would hit the road once I’d had a couple of drinks, as we were going to play a little beer pong. As soon as I walked in the door and saw my niece Ciana, though, I lost all interest in beer. I know, I know; there must be something wrong with me! But no, it’s just the part of me that absolutely adores kids and is completely addicted to very cute newborns. So while Mike played a couple games of beer pong and the rest of the gang finished off the few remaining bottles of beer, I snuggled with Ciana, talking to her about this and that, and then fed her while her mommy and daddy got to have some fun.
The headache moved into the background, and I figured it would finally fade.
After the last drop of beer was gone, the four of us — Mike, Robbie, Jaysa, and I — sat around the kitchen table and chatted while Ciana slept in her infant carseat.
The night wore on, and soon Mike decided that he wanted to go home. He also decided that he wanted a Big Mac, so we stopped at McDonald’s. As we sat in the drive-thru, my blood sugar dropped and I felt pretty crummy, so I decided I’d get some fries and a McDouble (which is the double cheeseburger). I drove back to his house carefully, very aware of the snow, the slickness of the road, and my dangerously low blood sugar. (Ever since I was a little Elizabeth, I’ve been hypoglycemic, which basically means that my metabolism is really fast and keeps me skinny, but also absorbs sugar very quickly and leaves me really sick if I don’t eat every few hours AND eat foods high in protein.)
By the time I got to Mike’s, my head was pounding, my stomach was queasy, and I pretty much sat on the floor of the kitchen while he ate, occasionally nibbling on a fry or two when the headache and nausea ebbed momentarily. It would come back quickly, and all I could do was sit on the floor with my head between my knees, my hands pressing hard on the top of my head where the headache seared, making it feel like my brain was swelling against my skull.
I could barely eat, I felt so horrible.
I forced myself to eat a little more, if only to raise my blood sugar. Then, suddenly, the headache turned into a monster migraine. Pain would flare across my brow, through my eyes, looping in a nightmare. It would cease for a second, then it would go back around the front of my head. When it paused, the headache would go back to the back and top of my head. I knew I needed to go home so I could make some soup, take a Tramadol, and take my Seroquel, but I could barely move, it hurt so bad.
I’ve never had a headache like it.
When the searing pain in the front of my head stopped, I put my boots and coat on, grabbed the rest of my fries, and got into the car, hoping that I would make it home before it came back.
By the time I got home, I felt too exhausted to make the soup. I took 50mg of Tramadol, hoping that it would kick the migraine’s ass and let me sleep, as well as the 400mg of Seroquel (Pam bumped me up to 400 to see if it would make an even bigger difference from the 300 I was taking). I put my cold eye mask on, put my regular sleeping eye mask over it, and lay flat on my back as the headache sat in front of my head.
My plan was to get up at noon and work on my client’s site so that I could have everything done and go out bowling with Mike and his coworkers.
I woke up fifteen hours later.
Dazed, groggy, and annoyed that I’d woken up so late, I stumbled around trying to clear my head enough to do at least SOME work. I figured I could cram it all into a few hours and still be able to go bowling.
WRONG.
Pam had warned me that going up to 400mg would make me drowsy. Normally, Tramadol gives me a high and allows me to sleep really, really well if I take it before bed. Apparently, combining the two is a recipe for a fifteen-hour coma (but it did make my headache go away, so I guess we’re even). Gone were my plans of going to my aunt’s to work with her for a few hours and then coming home for a shower before going out to the bowling alley.
It’s kind of a good thing, though; Mike and I do a lot of stuff together, so it’s nice to see him go out and have fun without me. I do feel a little left out, but it’s my own damn fault.
I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Both medications are okay to take together — I made sure to ask Pam about it. I think what happened was, I took both too late (at about four in the morning), and should have just gone to bed with nothing instead. Had I known that we did have some Aleve in the house, I would have just taken that.
I just know that that headache was NOT a normal headache. It was awful, beyond any words. I’ve only had one migraine before it and that wasn’t even close to how bad last night’s headache was.
I still feel it, faintly there, as if it’s just waiting to come back and torture me more. It could be worse, though:
“I havnt talked to you in a while and wanted to say hi and stuff,” reads the text message. Ever since opening it, all I can think of are his hands around my throat.
* * * * *
Things have been absolutely bonkers on planet elizawhat. Aside from people from my past popping up like germs on a little kid’s hands, life has been packed with huge projects for clients with looming deadlines, a new niece to snuggle and love and gaze at while she sleeps, anxiety about Popi’s angioplasty that he had done today, a renewed sense of connection and even deeper love for Mike (who has been amazing beyond words through all of the shit hitting the fan), a slew of phone calls to schedule appointments with various doctors, more worry while we wait to see what the doctors say is going on with Dad, depression cycling in and out of me faster than fucking bunnies (and “fucking” is a verb here, heh), and a deep, unquenchable urge to play Sims and write even though I barely have time to sleep.
Suddenly, “bonkers” doesn’t seem quite appropriate; things are absolutely batshit.
* * * * *
Popi has been having chest pains, that go all the way down to his elbow. They found two clogs in the arteries of his heart, and did an angioplasty this afternoon to open up the arteries. They’re not sure why the arteries were clogged; it could be the chemo, it could be something that was already there before the cancer came along. More than likely it is the chemo, because a few weeks ago they did a full slew of tests and no clogs were detected.
I’m angry and afraid, to be perfectly blunt. I’m angry at the chemo, and afraid that it’s going to destroy him, piece by piece, before the cancer does. And then I saw him last night, and seeing him looking well and being with him made me think more positively. I look at my great-great-aunt Nan, who is in her nineties and was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer more than six years ago. She’s fine today, still kickin’, feisty for such an old lady. She makes her own clothing. She drinks wine. She cracks jokes, sometimes dirty ones. She’s got an uncanny strength for someone who looks so fragile. I admire her, deeply.
She is proof that Popi can make it through. It pisses me off when everyone starts discussing hospice. It’s like they’ve already given up. I don’t want to give up. Call me selfish, but I want to keep my Popi. I like to think that he can kick this thing’s ass, even if it’s already taken its toll in so many places: hip, spine, liver, lung. Fuck you, cancer. My Popi is stubborn and won’t go down so easily. I won’t let him.
* * * * *
My niece is a doll. She has Jaysa’s nose, Robbie’s face. Her hair is black and her head is full of it. Her eyes are big and constantly open, aware. She may not be able to see much yet, but she looks like she’s perfectly aware of what’s going on. Ciana Olivia Pelletier already has all of us wrapped around her tiny, long fingers.
* * * * *
It’s hard to talk about everything that is swirling through my mind. I don’t really even know where to start. I’m bone tired, thanks to a week full of nights spent staying up until the ass crack of dawn to get pieces of projects complete. I keep reminding myself that if I work hard now, in five to ten years I’ll be able to enjoy things. Sometimes I wish I could be a “normal” twenty-one-year-old, spending my late nights partying instead of working, falling asleep with veins full of thin, beer- or vodka-chased blood, then waking up to do it all over again the next day. But my partying stages were years ago, when being fifteen meant that I didn’t care much about my future. Now, I want that future, whatever it may be.
* * * * *
I know things have been pretty serious around here. I promise to try to make this place fun again. Thank you for listening.
