I have a doctor’s appointment this morning in a little while. I don’t want to go. I have to get stuck with needles again, and I don’t want to go. Did I mention that I don’t want to go? Some days, it’s just so hard to make myself go get the bloodwork I need. I’m tired of being stuck. I’m a hard stick on top of it, but it’s more a psychological thing, honestly, because it never hurts nearly as much as I think it’s going to. It’s never as bad as I worry it will be. I just get so worked up over it. I put it off for days, then weeks, then the doctors get mad at me for taking so long.

Sometimes, it’s anxiety, because I get scared. I’m scared of what the test results might say or how the doctor might change my medication because of the test results and what the changes will mean for how I feel. When I feel lousy, changes are good, but when I’m feeling okay, changes might be bad. I just don’t have a lot of okay moments anymore.

I’M NOT SUPERMOM ANYMORE

One of the hardest things to hit me the past couple of weeks is that my daughter, 23 years old, and a friend of hers, has moved in with us. My son is going to be 17 this month and he lives with me too. There are now more people in this house than there are bedrooms, and several more people than there are bathrooms, and we have three bathrooms! The people are almost outnumbered by the animals: Buffy’s two cats, my son’s cat, our dog, my daughter’s two cats and their dog. That’s seven animals. Don’t even get me started on zoning laws and city ordinances… we’re up to our eyeballs in litter boxes.

Then, because I cook the meals around here a lot of the time and because I have to do a special diet for my health, it seems that I have pretty much been waking up, making breakfast, cleaning up for breakfast, logging in to check email, the making lunch, eating lunch, cleaning up from lunch, taking care of animals, then logging in and checking email, then making dinner, cleaning up from dinner, and then finally falling asleep around 2am, waking again at about 5am, and starting all over again. I remember it being easier when the kids were little. I remember having more stamina, more energy, more time… hell, I used to work a full-time job in criminal justice advocacy, come home and work a part-time job of freelancing in the evenings and one weekends, all while raising two kids, going to school functions, outings on the weekends, and I cooked and cleaned then too. Granted, the house wasn’t spotless, but we didn’t live in a landfill either.

I can’t keep up anymore. What’s worse, at 23 and 17, my kids should be helping more than they do. It’s disappointing to see that after all this time, I haven’t seemed to instill in them the concept of cleaning up after oneself. Maybe having been supermom didn’t necessarily do them justice.

Me, though, I’ve lost so much… so much. I’ve lost so much of me.

I’M SO TIRED

So I’m tired. I’m literally exhausted. I mean, who wouldn’t be, right? Even in the best of circumstances, anyone would be tired with this new schedule, new routine, and then to top it off, my daughter goes and runs her car without any oil in it, and we had to give her rides to work all this week – well, she works an hour away from us! That’s two hours to take her and drop her off and two hours to pick her up and return home, on top of the cooking, cleaning and keeping up with the house.

I’ve gotten no work done, at all, the past two weeks.

MY HEALTH WORSENS

And it hasn’t helped my health any either. I’m very weak right now. The muscles in my thighs and legs are nearly nonexistant. Buffy took me out to breakfast yesterday to Kelly’s Country Kitchen (great food!) and when I went to stand from the table, I had no right leg. I had to hobble with help from the restaurant. You know, since I’ve been on the prednisone, I’d been using the wheelchair less, so we figured for a short trip inside the restaurant and back out, who needs the chair, right? So when it came time to leave, there was no wheelchair in the car to go get, and that left me hobbling out of the restaurant, with the eyes of all the patrons on me as I limped and moaned my way to the door. It’s embarrassing. I know I shouldn’t care, but damn it, I do.

I’ve lost my looks, my body is falling apart, my legs barely hold me up, my hair, which is my vanity, is dry and dull and listless, and now I’ve got everyone staring at me while I try to limp my way out of a restaurant. I was mortified…

I’M DEPRESSED

Of course, I’m depressed. I’m overwhelmed. But at least I know that I’m depressed and I’m staying on top of it. But it’s been 6 weeks since the doctor ordered these lab tests, and I haven’t taken the tests yet. I need to do that. I’m just so damned tired of being sick and being poked.

PUBLISHERS

The one bright spot is that I did send off a book packet to a publisher that I’d been wanting to send out. That’s a great thing. Wish me luck with it. It’s a great book.

Trying to get me to send something to a publisher or an agent is about as painful as going to the doctor and getting blood drawn at this point. Rejections sting, and sometimes you get bad news. I don’t know which hurts worse. Some days I think I’d rather have cancer than get another rejection. Not that I’m putting THAT out to the universe or anything.

Well, I guess I’d better go. My appointment is in 45 minutes and it’s a half hour drive there.

Thanks for letting me whine this morning.

Love you all,

Michy