The Sacking of Disneyland

          Hello everyone. I haven't been on in a while because things have been so completely busy. My husband graduated with his Bachelors Degree in the end of April and we took a vacation  to Disneyland to celebrate. It was a great time. We spent 3 days in Disneyland and California Adventure then went down to San Diego to do one day at Sea World. The next morning we hit the beach and then went home. It was kinda a whirlwind vacation with kids and mother in law in tow, but there was a bigger point (to me at least.) The last time I went to Disneyland was for my honeymoon and I ended up taking all my sleeping pills. I was a little nervous to go back. I was anxious that I might be reliving a bad experience. I did go through more Clonopin then normal to deal with the crowds and being in a strange place, but I hardly thought about that last time. I have conquered Disneyland. That seems like a strange thing to say, but I am really a bit proud of myself. I just made sure we were in a very different hotel. It turned out to be a much nicer hotel anyway. I felt refreshingly normal. :)

Haunted Healer

My friend Carolyn, who knows me in real life made a comment that I have a nursing degree. I had not revealed that on here previously. They say not to give out to much personal information, but I think my reasoning was more along the lines of, 'What if I want to be a nurse again and someone connected this blog to me?' The reason I approved her comment and and I am responding to it now is that I have come to terms with the fact that I will never be a nurse again.

I Loved it. I loved feeling smart and I loved being the one people could turn to: for answers, to help the pain, to heal. I loved being the hero. I loved feeling capable and smart. I loved to help someone in need. Then my world tilted and I was the someone in need. I hated that, so I hide it as much as possible. I realize now, looking back how much I was putting my patients at risk. I don't always know when I am not well. I don't always realize when my brain is not processing quickly enough. I could kill someone that way. That is why I have decided to put this out there and never be a nurse again.

I realized this a few months ago and it was very depressing to me. Vocational Rehab has been trying to push me to choose a different career because they would then pay for any educational costs and help me find a job in that field. I have been taking there tests and it only leads to medical and art. How do you get a job in art? I am way to insecure for that. Although I draw well.

Well I've been dragging my feet because all the options seemed like such a depressing dive after being a registered nurse. How can I be a truck driver after I have been a respected intellectual. (Well in my mind respected. Maybe everyone mocked me behind my back. Who knows?) I finally figured it out though. Phlebotomy! For you who don't know those are the guys who just do blood draws. I was kinda a rock star at that back when I was a nurse. Others would come get me to draw blood on their patients after they had given up and I usually got it. Plus there was always a thrill of triumph every time I saw that red flash in the tube. I loved it. Plus there is very little chance I can kill someone if I'm not thinking well, unlike as a nurse. I really don't see anyway to accidentally kill someone in this career. The worst I could do is cause a little pain or have to poke them again. Also the whole job is very list based and I love to work from lists.

When I am not doing really well I have a hard time talking to strangers. It's hard to make eye contact and think of the right word I mean to say and I look really dumb. In this job the conversation only has to be: I'm here to draw some blood, Okay little sting. Then I can just focus on an arm, not a person and that is so much more comfortable.

Even though I was a nurse and know how to do this I still need to take a class to get 'certified'. It's 4-6 weeks a few hours a week . I'm going to do that over the summer. I'm really pretty excited about it. I would probably only work 1-2 days a week though because my young kids need me. I just need a little out of the house time to get this defective stamp scrubbed off my forehead.

Fall Apart

I've been AWOL for a while because I have not been real stable. I found out that one of my best friend's little boy has been being molested by her foster son. I was horrified and it brought back all my old crap. This poor kid is 4 and the perv was 17. They took him to court and it looked like they were going to lose, then they found the jerks videos he made of it. I want to scream just thinking about that. You would think that would be good enough evidence to get some justice, but he got off with community service and is not even listed as a sex offender because he was a minor. AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Well, I'm sitting there calmly listening to her story and being supportive and sympathetic because it would be rude to fall apart right there and make it about me. I bottled this all up for a few weeks so I could socially appropriately fall apart at home instead. There was no justice for me either and I pray that her son doesn't carry this around with him for the rest of his life. His mom has him in therapy so that's good.

Bottling this up hasn't been great for me though. I went to Easter at my parent new house and acted like a spaz. Now all my nieces are mad at me. Just because I may have tried to convince one of my sisters that her daughter needed antidepressants. (I see that everywhere though.) In the USA I think everyone either needs them or is causing those around them to need them (just kidding).

Well all this is causing me to function on a much lower level. My house is kinda trashed and I have spent every penny I can get my hands on. But on the plus side my baby now has a pink princess canopy toddler bed on the way. She turns 2 on the 3rd. My doctor just restarted me on Geodon (which is the big guns I rely on when I hear voices) and I'm happy to take it right now.

Post Court Blues...

Well, I was approved for Social Security Disability. (It only took 20 months.)  Logically I know that getting approved is supposed to be a good thing, but I am feeling kinda ambivalent about it. I'm glad I wont be a burden to my family, but at the same time I feel like the experts weighed me in the balance and then stamped DEFECTIVE on my forehead. I feel like I am not suppose to do anything productive for the rest of my life. Adding to that feeling is the fact that my Mother in Law is here doing a lot of the work I used to do. I have decided that to combat these feelings I am going to go volunteer in my kids classrooms once a week each and if that isn't enough maybe volunteer at the rest home, playing card games and stuff like that. I need a purpose, a goal. The problem is I don't think I can do most of this volunteering until the fall because my husband is going to be gone most of the summer for military training.

Excuses, excuses

Sorry I haven't been on here for a while. I have been really depressed. I would sleep all night and most of the day too. When I was awake I didn't do anything. I just laid in bed and watched old reruns of Grey's Anatomy on Hulu. All this started because my IUD fell out. It was the kind with hormones in it. I finally got my gynecologist to check my hormone levels and found out that my progesterone is so low that I now take two birth control pills (the kind without estrogen), just to get me up to normal. I have an appointment later this month to discuss getting my tubes tied in April. This might be to much info for some of you, but I figure I've told you guys a lot worse than this, so whatever. Maybe something in here will help someone else. HAVE THEM CHECK YOUR HORMONES.

Tomorrow is the day. My day in court to decide if I get Social Security Disability or if I get to be a burden to my family forever. And I certainly would be a burden. My co-pays alone right now are over $450 a month. With SSD would come Disability Medicaid to handle all of that. Then of course there is the monthly allotment. I really don't know how much that will be, but I just don't want to be asking my husband for money for everything for the rest of my life. (I have to buy you a birthday present so hand over some money.) Or there is the other side were I try to work and go from job to job until I've run out of options around here and have gotten a lot sicker.

Jesus in the Kitchen

I've been at my parent's house this past weekend and the coolest thing happened. My baby is 21 months and she was talking in her sing song voice. She said, “ Mama and Jesus.” She's just started to do sentences every once in a while and she has never said Jesus before. I said, “Where is Jesus, Baby?” She looked at the kitchen doorway. I think He was really there. I have always heard very young children can see angels and things like that, that we can't see. Their so called 'Imaginary Friends'.

At my parent's house my baby and I were sharing a room. Someone brought my 3 year old in to sleep in my bed in the middle of the night and it woke up my baby. She was angry and screaming . I said, “Jesus, can you come back and comfort her and let her sleep?” Within 1 minutes she was asleep. It felt like proof of my earlier guess.

Update...I'm okay.

I realize I should have got back on here sooner to say that I am okay now. That depression only lasted about 2 days after that post and I didn't do anything stupid, like take extra pills, so I'm kind of proud of myself for that. Sorry I left you all hanging there. I didn't even think of it until I got a worried phone call from a friend of mine who was reading it.

Truth be told what really got me out of it was I had a HUGE fight with my husband. I felt horrible, but I just went to bed. I woke up the next morning and I felt so relived, Like the pressure behind that argument had been building up for a long time. Literally I had a sigh of relief. I felt so much better. I got up the next morning and apologized and admitted that he was right. (Which is totally true. He was right, but that was totally irrelevant the night before.) I actually had 3 days there that I was thinking really clearly, but I'm back to being my normal cloudy self. I was clear enough to realize that I've been kind of stupid for the last 10 years or so and I was so smart before. I was thinking, "Is there anything important I need to get done before I'm stupid again." I couldn't think of anything beyond having a heart to heart with my daughter.


Having those couple of days were I was smart again. Made me think I am over medicated normally and for some reason I didn't absorb all of my medication for a little while there. I didn't change the pills on my own, but I took them differently. They told me I had to take the Geodon with at least 500 calories and I learned my trial and error that I have to take the seroquel on an empty stomach or it does not work as a sleeping pill. So It's annoying but I usually separate them out. Well the night of the big fight I had no appetite and I didn't care. I just took them all together with a V8 juice.


Well I went to my doctor with my theory. (Not my Psychiatrist my General Practice guy.) It's hard to get into my Psychiatrist. The appointments are 6 weeks out. In an emergency I could show up at 11 AM on a Tuesday (if I'm first or second in line to do that), but I don't really think this is an emergency. So I talked with my other doctor and he took some blood to rule out a bunch of stuff like thyroid problems and diabetes for my thinking problems, but all the blood work was normal. So he ordered a sleep study. I quit using my C-PAP for sleep apnea in October because it was so loud it kept me awake. So the three options for my current condition of not thinking very well are: A. I'm over medicated, B. My Schizo-Affective is getting worse, C. Sleep Apnea. Truly I am hoping for A, since then I get to try to take less meds again, but the timing suggests it's C, Sleep Apnea which is annoying, but much better then option B. Option B is unthinkable because there is not much they can do to help me if it's just my Schizo getting worse. I want you guys to know though, that I'm not depressed, just a bit spacey and stupid. I can live with this. It's just frustrating sometimes. More so now that I got a good look at the comparison of how I used to be/could be. I will not go off my meds without my doctors help though. My voices are not nice to me and my neither are my delusions when I get bad. It would prefer to be stupid then to get all that back.

The Other File....

Most of my posts are trying to be all bright and cheery....screw that. I think I only got one shower last week. My house is really dirty, except downstairs were my mother in law keeps it under control a bit. Some days drift by with me in a daze while I hardly notice and other are so long and torturous and I can hardly keep from screaming. I know something is very wrong, but I'm not sure what. Some days I feel pretty good and I walk through my house feeling like I'm getting so much done, but later my husband will comment that everything was started, but nothing was finished. I started the laundry on Wednesday, but it took me until Monday to get the clean clothes out of the laundry room and into the drawers. Bathed the babies but didn't dress them.

My mother in law's bathroom downstairs looks sparkling and mine looks disgusting. She only got to our country a few months ago and I am suppose to be teaching her the culture, but I just feel like I am training my replacement. I can't sleep lately and I have started taking extra stuff to try to sleep, like benadryl, unisom, or melatonin. They just leave me so groggy in the morning that it's hard to get up and get my 3^rd grader out the door to school. We were reading and having a prayer together before school, now I can't hardly read at all and my speech is slurred for the first few hours of the day.

Okay so maybe I do know what the problem is but I'm not ready to change yet. I am on a prescription diet pill and I added Metabolife and then I added green tea also. I just keep thinking if I can just stand it for a few more days/weeks, I could loss a bunch of weight....or have a heart attack. Not sure if I'm going to post this. Not sure I want the back lash that this would create among my reader/relatives. Maybe I should email this to my psychiatrist, but then he might call my other doctor and get him to not give me my prescription diet pills. Not sure if I can stop. Whenever I don't take them I get really depressed. And I'm already so up and down right now and the down days are really horrible.......

…....I wrote this last week and I didn't post it then because of the fear of the fall out I would get. I quit the green tea and I am feeling better. I can sleep now anyway and I'm not as frantic or depressed. Not sure if I'm getting anything done still, but this never really bothered me because I never noticed I was doing that. I was shocked when my husband commented on it.

Hippy Braids are a Bad Sign...

I came to the realization on Sunday that I am slipping a bit right now. The first sign should have been that I went to church with my hair in 2 long braids like a pioneer adolescent, but I didn't stop there. I put about a dozen glittery flowers in my braids and went like that. Kind of hippie flower child hair. Really looking back there was earlier evidence. I'm not getting much done around the house, it's hard to read and I'm not even playing with my artificial flowers. I can't account for what I have been doing with my time.

Anyway, it all became obvious to me on Sunday when the theme of church was on 'Being reverent in church.' I have said before that this is a major struggle for me to keep the kids quiet. The were mentioning things I did specifically as being bad. Like letting my kids play with my phone to keep them quiet. (Really I only let my 3 year old do that. He's to young to get anything out of church anyway.) They also mentioned sitting in the very very back as bad. (That's my favorite spot. I don't want to feel like people are looking at me.)

Anyway, towards the end of this part of church, I sent my 14 year old home to grab me some Tums and some Clonopin. She made it back just as this part was ending and I was getting the babies to their Sunday school classes. She was so good she even brought me a water bottle. I downed that stuff with a sigh of relief that the worst was behind me. I then went into the adult Sunday school class and the Bishop starts in on the same topic and I was already convinced that this whole Sunday Lesson was specifically about me. I started crying and left, But I couldn't leave really because My 14 year old had my keys and I would have to go find all my kids in their classes, showing my crying face at each door. I felt trapped. I felt thoroughly un-invited to church and I was thinking that maybe I'll come back in 5 years when hopefully my babies wont offend anyone.

I went to the Nursery (babies class) and cried in there. I was so happy to go home in the end. That night I called the president of the women's class to tell her I didn't want to lead the music anymore, since I wasn't going to come. I was bawling on the phone and she said when I walked out I missed the point the Bishop was making, which was that others should help those with small children. Then the Bishop called me saying the same thing, that I left before he got to the point of what he was saying and he explained it again. I told him I have to sit in the back. That my 3 year old that has those autistic like tendencies does so much better if I can have him strapped into a stroller facing the back wall, playing angry birds. He agreed that it was best if I stay back there then.

Finally I called my best friend next door and she said we have this lesson every year because this one older couple in the ward complains about the noisy kids all the time. When she said that I knew exactly who she was talking about. That gentleman is the reason I started sitting in the very back. He was leaning over the bench to correct my whispering preteens. I was thinking, "Mind your own business. They are quiet." I don't know if this couple ever had kids, but if they did I feel sorry for them (The kids I mean). It seems that all those perfect parents out there, never actually had any kids.

Well after talking to 3 people about how I felt about church, I was beginning to realize that I was being paranoid and they weren't talking about me specifically.  I am planning on going next week again.

My Tapestry Analogy

I was thinking the other day about how strange and hard my life used to be and how much better it is now that I have been in treatment for about the last 10 years. I came up with this analogy.

My life before was like a tapestry that I was weaving but the picture was awful. Like nightmarish and I would cringe to look at it. Then I got in to treatment and I had to undo all that weaving. It was time consuming and painful to see all I had done be undone. Then I'm left with a pile of loose threads and I had to untangle them lay out each one straight in neat piles and examine them to see whether I wanted that color in my tapestry anymore. It took years to do this much. Then I had to start completely over on a new tapestry, so I was way behind other people. Now looking back I have several years worth of a tapestry worth looking at. The design is original, different from any others out there, but now it's something beautiful.