Well-hydrated child in no apparent distress. Voice is raspy but she denies sore throat. Lymphadenopathy present in the posterior cervical and sub-mandibular chains but non-tender and moble nodes all. Ear drums both slightly dull but no fluid noted. Nasal mucosa normal. Posterior oropharynx normal with no drainage or erythema. So prolly allergies.

Now, all first year med students and other students of Dr. Google – tell me what’s wrong with my approach. Yup. I didn’t look at a damn thing below the neck.

So as we’re wrapping this up, Thing 2 says “This doesn’t have anything to do with the bruise on my leg, does it?” I love immediate feedback on exams, don’t you? Too bad I’m an idiot.

Thing 2 drops her drawers and shows me the “bruise” on her leg. Kinda a bruise, kinda burst blood vessels. And no matter how I asked, she swore that she did NOT injure herself. “No, mom, that part of my leg never touched the horse.”

I decide to go with my first impression, call this allergies and ignore the bruise as something that happens to children who don’t quit moving.

Fast forward to this morning when Thing 2 is ready to head to the pool and I get a look at her arms. (Told you I was an idiot. Yup, even with the hint the size of a former Soviet Republic I still didn’t look her over head to toe.) She has the same bruise/blood vessel thing on her arms. Worse on one side than the other but still there on both.

Stepping out of her swimsuit and back into my office I instruct my child that no physician should ever ask you to completely strip. Except me. Now strip. She does and the ONLY spots I see are her arms and leg. Nothing anywhere else. No other findings. No abdominal pain or masses, no murmur, lungs are clear, adenopathy is stable. And most importantly, she’s acting fine. Perfectly normally. For Thing 2.

At this point Dr. Mom is asking herself: “WTF?”

I’ve asked this kid every way I can about injury and she denies anything – so bruising/purpura without trauma opens up a can of worms. I start to run through the list, ruling out most of the infectious things. Somewhere in the middle of my monologue, I see the scrape on her arm.

No trauma? Scrape? Back this train up.

WM: How did that happen?
T2: Getting out of the pool?
~pause~
T2: Doing 53 belly flops wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would it?
WM: Go to your room.

You know. It’s hard to generate an accurate differential diagnosis without a good history. I wonder if anyone has told Dr. Google that?

In any event, I do have a couple of friends at work with whom I share some common skeletons (or at least closet space for bones of various sorts). One of these friends, Marty, is someone that I have a lot more in common with than either of us would ever admit publicly. Marty is a great source of support for me particularly in the area of drugs. You heard me. Drugs. Marty is one of the few people I can talk to about drug use and be completely understood – he gets it. And when he stopped by for a quick chat and a hug today, I was reminded how much that means to me.

So here goes. I’m going to try to explain to the rest of you what it’s like to be more-or-less regularly reliant on narcotics.

First, notice that I didn’t say “addicted” to narcotics. I do not consider myself an addict and, luckily for me, neither does my doc. I’ll go days/weeks without even thinking about narcotics until I need them. If I don’t need them, I don’t take them. It’s really that simple. Where I behave like an addict, however, is that I *always* know where my drugs are and can get to them quickly. Even when I haven’t taken any in weeks, I still know where the bottle is. Why? Because I do.not.like.pain.

Pain is the driver here. Chronic, unrelenting pain. You know that scale of 1-10 that docs are always asking about (“Where 10 is the worst pain you can imagine”)? Our agreement is that I don’t even try to aim for a 1. In fact, 3 or 4 is the threshold for taking pain meds for me. So even when I’m NOT taking drugs but know exactly where they are, I’m still walking around in pain most of the time. I’m just waiting for the pain to be “bad enough” to do something.

When you talk to most people about narcotics, they think about being stoned or loopy or just plain passing out. This is because narcotics make you sleepy. They’re used as part of the drug protocol for conscious sedation for everything from dental work to outpatient surgery. That makes it hard to talk to people about narcotic use for those of us who rely on them to get through the day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone ask if I was okay to drive after taking narcotics. Truth be told, I’m often better off with the narcotics than I was without. It’s easier to concentrate with 5mg of oxycodone in my system than it is with a Scale 6 headache. And that doesn’t even take into account that pulling my hair can obstruct my vision!

But there’s more to it than the difference between pain and narcosis. Anyone who has chronic pain can tell you, pain makes you tired. This week I slept 12 hours one night only to fall asleep on my desk the next day. I don’t know why, but pain wears you out.

If you’ve followed me so far, this is where it gets interesting.

Marty dropped in just in time to catch me mid-dilemma: What to do about the pain/fatigue issue. I’m in pain and I’m flat out exhausted. If I take drugs, the pain will get better. This generally would wake me up but if I’ve waited too long then all it will do is take the pain away enough that my body will collapse into the sleep it wants so badly. But if I don’t take something then I deal with pain-induced fatigue and brain fog. And I can take a half dose which might not do anything but might contribute to either of the above and if I get more tired/sleepy after half dose is that because I didn’t take enough or I took too much? Really, at that point is pulling one’s hair easier?

Marty didn’t tell me what to do. He just gave me a hug and told me he understood. And really? That was just what the doctor ordered.

So for my friends out there who suffer with me – and you know who you are – consider yourselves hugged. I understand this is a bitch. We’ll all get through it.

(That was for those of you who think I’m a drama queen and not a Pagan queen)

I am unspeakably tired. My huge project at work is beginning to roll out – slowly and clumsily – but it is rolling. Thing 2 has is currently out of town with WF. Of course, she’ll get home and head straight over here so he can get work done after his two WEEKS of vacation (I would KILL – literally – for two weeks of vacation) and that will leave me with shopping for school supplies and clothes as well as child care and transportation duty while things at work continue to slowly progress to full speed.

Thing 1 is NOT on vacation with WF, she’s home with me. Last week she was helping with a camp that had some of the most inconvenient hours I can imagine – cutting my work days short. This week she’s not in a camp so she’s hanging out in my office all day so I don’t have to drive the extra hour at the end of the day to get her to the club. Today we had to leave early to get to the orthodontist only to find that WF hadn’t paid his half of the bill this month.

So, cutting my hours last week, this week, paying ortho, school shopping and cutting hours again next week all during the busiest time of my professional life. Why? So that WF’s life works smoothly.

He’s not alone. There are others who I feel I’m keeping afloat. To avoid a fight, I’ll avoid details. The bottom line is that I feel very much like somehow at some point it became my role to keep other peoples’ lives running smoothly.

Really, this might just be a case of teaching an old dog new tricks (this is where I sound like PMS depression but it’s totally off cycle). I’m not accustomed to being rescued. This goes back to, well, let’s see, birth? It was made clear to me then that I was a burden and should be grateful for anything that I received. I wasn’t helped emotionally or financially or logistically with getting my life rolling. School, social events, college from testing to moving in – none of that was supported. And yet, here I am at 43 wishing that for once in my pathetic life someone would actually want to help me manage things. At 43 I have had a full lifetime of watching other people come home and disappear into their own heads while I sort out what needs to be done.

So here I am tonight. I’m home, I’m in pain and I’ve been crying on and off all day. There are dishes and trash to be dealt with as well as sorting out how to scare up the money to pay for the new air conditioner. That’s what it’s going to take to make my life work tonight. But instead I’m going to take something for this pain and cry myself to sleep. Princess Charming is taking the night off. Everyone is on their own for making life work.

Anyway, one conversation was with a woman in the field who is years ahead of me in her career. We shared stories (yes, I know things are getting better, but they still aren’t fair) and she told me that women like me are part of the problem.

She didn’t say that to be mean. Let me explain. She said that women like me make it look too easy. We have a great career, keep on top of developments in the field, continue our education, produce at work AND raise kids (in my case as a single mother). When the men in charge see this, of course they don’t feel compelled to reward all that hard work – it doesn’t look hard.

That conversation happened weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Mainly because as it becomes clear that I need to find a new job I’ve been having panic attacks. What’s out there? What will I end up doing? How is that going to impact my schedule with the kids? Will I like it? What will be the long-term impact on my career? See? My chest is getting tight now.

And despite this, nobody around me knows I’m feeling this way. Why should they? There’s nothing they could do to help and there’s no point in upsetting anyone. In short, I’m doing it again – I’m making this look easy.

This is where I could turn my blog post into a long character dissection about why and how it is that I am compelled to be so stoic about so many things. Don’t worry, I’ll save it for my shrink. The point for you, dearest reader, is to know that this is not easy, I AM in a state of panic and this will pass. I know how to put one foot in front of the other and I certainly have learned somewhere in the last 43 years how to land on my feet.

I think it’s something a bit different. Maybe it’s not reliving but a grieving for the road not taken. I understand that, but still question why women wouldn’t have similar reactions to similar feelings. And while I’m sure there are women out there who do, my circle of friends and I are having a different sort of midlife crisis.

Career women all, we’re getting to that age and beginning to question what we want to do when we grow up. Not because we don’t love our jobs – we uniformly do – but because we’ve all learned that our jobs don’t love us. We’ve slaved and sacrificed only to discover that we can go no further – in many cases because we lack penises. We’re underpaid, overworked, and unappreciated. And across the board we’re toying with ideas as drastic as catering, writing and coffee shops as good uses of our advanced degrees.

I think this is the female version of the midlife crisis. Men feel unappreciated at home and seek the attention of younger women to give their egos a much needed boost. Women feel unappreciated at work and find themselves floundering to figure out what comes next.  If anyone figures it out – let me know.

That’s exactly the feeling that i had last night while tucking in Thing 2. She and I were chatting and she made some comment or another about the future. You know, the kind of innocent thing that Mommies and Little Girls talk about at bed time – how she’ll always be my baby even when she’s old enough to have her own babies. It was late, I was ambling along and reflexively came back with a comment about WF. Basically, I asked her if she had this conversation with him, too.

Those of you who do not know Thing 2, allow me to explain that this child is Drama incarnate. Nothing with her is small or insignificant. NOTHING. Her kindergarten teacher once said: “That’s our kid, everything is larger than life!” and that’s about the best summary I’ve heard.

So when Thing 2 very matter-of-factly came back with reply: “No. He’ll be dead too soon to ask him that. Unless they cure cancer he’ll be dead while I’m still a kid.” I froze. Literally. I was afraid to physically move for fear of shattering that moment.

I’d been laboring under the misconception that her silence on the subject meant that she hadn’t absorbed it or had and was just rejecting it. But she very clearly spelled out exactly what her understanding was with chilling accuracy. What is a Pagan Queen to do?

We chatted for a good bit after that. We talked about what she was feeling (a little sad) and how I was there if she wanted to talk about it (she doesn’t) and what kinds of questions she had. She’s the literal child of the two so it shouldn’t surprise me that he questions were very concrete: What happens to WF’s house when he dies? Where does that money go? Do I get to keep the things in my room at his house?

By the end of that I was feeling a bit bolder so we talked about losing my Grandpa when I was 15. I didn’t go into much detail, there’s stuff there that people my age struggle with when they lose a parent as adults that is just plain hard and I still don’t have the heart to warn her. I did tell her that I’d always be there for her and that we’d get through it because I’d always be her Mommy. And that brings us full circle on this conversation.

WF gets home in just over 48 hours. It will do Thing 2 good to have him back and it will do me good to be able to talk to him about some of this stuff and see if we can get on the same page. Because right now, I’m starting to feel like the deer in the headlights myself. I know this is coming and I’m powerless to stop it. I’m not sure what I can do to prepare myself or my girls for the trauma and I suspect that WF isn’t prepared to talk about that at all. I’m not sure I could if I were him.

But this week as I was trying to wrap my brain around how I would ever manage to get us through this, I turned on the radio and heard an ad for the local Hospice. WF isn’t ready for Hospice care at this point by any stretch of the imagination but I wonder if it wouldn’t be worth talking to the folks there who, sadly, have more experience with children in these circumstances than I do. A little information might just save us all from becoming road kill.

Look. A period. Pray that they’re contagious.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go shop for support hose.

All creatures need their places of comfort in times of crisis.

Iggy’s girls are with us this week and yesterday it was discovered that the youngest needed an item of clothing that she didn’t have with her. No worries, Thing 1 has just the item! Trouble is, it’s at WF’s house. No worries, I have the keys!

Thing 2 simultaneously levitated, announced “I’ll go” and was at the door with her shoes on. This would be less impressive it wasn’t already her bedtime and she’d been half asleep when I stood up. She was at the front door before I was and opened it so we could head off to WF’s house in search of a random article of her sister’s clothing.

The search was unsuccessful. I did find all three bottles of my missing sun block, both lost soccer bags, the swim bag with gear, a missing lunch box and two of my tote bags. Don’t worry, I left them all there. For now.

But when I was done and had given up the quest, I realized I’d lost something else at WF’s house. Thing 2. She was gone. Now I figured she’d get bored with the search so this wasn’t a huge shock. I walked back up to her bedroom and there she was.

Thing 2 was sitting on the floor in front of a pile of stuff next to her bed. She wasn’t doing anything – and that’s a big deal for this kid. I asked what was going on and she said: “Wasn’t dad nice? I didn’t clean my room so he put my stuff in piles near where it goes for me to go through.”

All creatures need their places of comfort in times of crisis.

Thing 2 and I went home, my home, and she got ready for bed. Even though it was after her bedtime, she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go to sleep until I got upstairs. So I curled up in bed next to her and we chatted a bit about nothing in particular and fell asleep like that. Curled up with one another in her little twin bed. Two creatures seeking out a a place of comfort in a time of crisis.

Thing 1 is loving the trip. Her vacation responder reads:

Hello, i am very sorry that i cannot reply to your messages seeing that i am in Norway, today i will be at the hotel and MIGHT be able to get access to the hotel computer but until then I cannot respond. Also the next 2 weeks I will be in Svalbard (look it up it is a really cool place.) and i will not have access to a computer, but i will reply as soon as i return…assuming i am not eaten by ice bears (they are so cute!!) well i shall try to respond a.s.a.p. bye bye (also look up the Besseggen, a hike i did, the ridge was really hard)
–
\~/   My NORWEGIAN glass looks half full to me!

She’s having a blast. But back home, not so much.

Thing 2 has developed several sudden, unexplained fears of things that go bump that cause her to turn to flypaper and cling to me. I’ve tried talking to her about why this might be the case, but she shuts down.

My best guess? She’s feeding off of me again. Because I’m stressed.

The original plan was for WF and Thing 1 to do some hiking by themselves for a week. That lasted a day. They had to scale back because the weather wasn’t cooperating and the hiking was longer and harder than they anticipated. This tells me a couple of things. First is that WF is being reasonable and not pushing too hard. This is a good thing. Second is that there is the potential for more trouble ahead. The temperature in Svalbard is going to be at least as cold as what they bailed out on so they have to face that weather eventually. But what about the hiking?

The last phone call was from the boat so Thing 1 had already met up with the group they’d be hiking with and had survived their first hike together. It was a short hike but with some fairly steep vertical and Thing 1 was the youngest member of the 15 person team by at least a decade. She hiked right up front with the leader – on purpose – to prove herself. That’s my girl! But when I asked where her father was I was informed that he was bringing up the rear.

He confirmed that, as well as informed me that he was using medication for motion sickness and had been paying attention to his medication. He’s been very good about my overt intrusions into his privacy recently regarding medical matters. In fact, he’s called me promptly every time he’s received his PSA results this year. He gets that checked every month. And yet, I haven’t heard a test result since summer started.

I know I’ve been traveling and that I tend toward “borrowing” trouble. But with my eldest above the Arctic Circle out of contact for over a week, it’s easy to think of things that might go wrong under the best of circumstances. And these are NOT the best of circumstances. Throw in a bit of uncertainty about who I’m most worried about and there’s plenty of trouble to borrow.

So if Thing 2 has random fears of things that go bump I guess I have to accept that she may have come by this naturally. I seem to share those fears.

Flypaper it is.