Another of Murphy's Laws

The more people involved in any undertaking, the less gets
accomplished. It takes so long to make group decisions and everyone
has diffent agendas they need to fulfill.

--

À coeur vaillant rien d'impossible."I don't want to face my fears, I am
afraid of them!" Spongebob

*
*
Mary

Crossing the steppes of central Ontario

5:14 PM December 30

Fog lays over the snow and fades the darkening trees as the three of us in our over-heated cocoon hurtle through the steppes of central Ontario.  Keith says that our average speed over the last two hours is maybe 40 mph-- we're not making good time.  We had a very long wait at the border.  Then, the 402 was closed due to a bad accident and fire and we had a slow detour through the countryside.  Keith was hoping to make as much progress as possible before it got dark, because darkness alone will slow us down, but darkness is rapidly falling and we are only just into Canada.  Disappointing, for a number of reasons, one of which is that we'll get in late and we're both tired (Graham is sleeping now).  Another is that I have't walked yet today, and the later itnis when I get in, the less likely I am to want to walk.  And if I don't walk, I often feel worse.  Ah well.

Keith says, "well, I was hoping to hot London before it got dark.". It's about dark now.

We pass lovely vistas of prairie covered with snow layered with fog layered with the blue of nearly nightfall.  The highway is a stream of headlights on one side and taillights on the other.

I view the pictures in photo techniques magazine, but it is too dark to read the articles.

Sent from my iPad

Packing

My husband suggested he take my car to work and I pack his car for our
trip. He hands me a small duffle, not even full, with his clothes and
a book or two for the four-day trip. I on the other hand, have a
LARGE duffle of clothes (pjs) and my CPAP and my bran and rice milk
and my Psion and my iPad and maybe a computer and a manuscript and art
supplies and bags of food for the trip there and back and wate
thirties (water bottles [stupid iPad] and camera gear and . . . No
wonder he wanted ME to pack!!

--

À coeur vaillant rien d'impossible."I don't want to face my fears, I am
afraid of them!" Spongebob

*
*
Mary

Palpating the trash

My hand cream disappeared off my nightstand, and I had just collected
the trash. I was afraid it had fallen into the trash basket under the
nightstand, so I ran down to where I was collecting the trash and
palpated it, but couldn't feel the dispenser in there. :-(

--

À coeur vaillant rien d'impossible."I don't want to face my fears, I am
afraid of them!" Spongebob

*
*
Mary

diet :-(

I gained 13 1/2 pounds on the trip!  I went off my diet (obviously--since I'm forbidden to eat out and forbidden to have desserts or anything containing sugar or white flour.

I've lost three of them, as of this morning, but am still 10 pounds above what I was.

If I go off my diet, the following things happen:

1. my fibro gets worse\ sometimes MUCH worse
2. my insomnia gets MUCH worse
3. I get crankier and more depressed.
4. I gain VAST amounts of weight VERY QUICKLY
5. and worst of all, it is VERY HARD to get back on the diet--VERY HARD!  Very very hard.  I do OK with it once I'm on it.  Usually.

Evening

It was weirdly hot and stuffy-feeling OUTSIDE last night, humid, heavy and ICKY!  (at our house).

I had a TERRIBLE NIGHT, really bad insomnia less than 3.5 hours of sleep.

Self=portrait at 3 AM

Here's a new drawing of mine called Self-portrait at 3 AM:

Insomnia

I did this on Panther Studios Colorpad in my iPad, then fooled with it on photoshop a little.

Last day on the heart monitor

Today is the last day, tonight the last night, and tomorrow morning the last morning on the heart monitor, and I will return it Monday.

foot report

I went to the doctor yesterday and she sent me to have my foot X-rayed, but since it was the end of the day Friday, she says I probably I won't get the results until Monday.  She's on call and will call me if they call her and if it's broken.  I got a copy of one of the X-rays and I can see no break.  

Last night my foot was so bad that I got in the night to soak it, took an extra strength (prescription) motrin, wrapped it in in an ace bandage and went back to bed.  This morning it is significantly improved (not as swollen or painful), but it tends to get worse throughout the day.  

In any case, it happened Monday and got worse every day until Thursday, and yesterday (friday) was slightly better than Thursday (except at bedtime), and today is slightly better than yesterday, so if it is not broken, it may be slowly on the mend.  I hope so, because I haven't been able to walk for several days.

Not only that, but I have to soak my butt in hot water several times a day, and my foot in cold water, pretty soon someone will tell me to soak my head!

(my fibro is much improved and my arthritis isn't too bad.)

In the Dark

We have no bathroom lights in the upstairs bathroom. Something happened and they blew a fuse and BB hasn't been able to make them work yet--though he's been very busy with a series of other problems--it's fine during the day, but a problem at night.

BB left piles of light bulbs on the sink and I was knocking them down in the dark, having forgotten they were there. :-( (Grrr!)

I've been using a headlamp since then to use the bathroom.

back from LEEP

*

*

*

**DANGER! Do not read if offended by VERY PERSONAL DETAILS!**

I am back from my LEEP procedure.

It was totally not fun, a bit of a torture chamber, starting with having to wait more than 2 hours from the time to procedure was scheduled.

First the doctor washed inside my vagina and my cervix with acetic acid (strong vinegar) and iodine, both of which burned! And stung.

She gave me 4 Novocain shots in the cervix--that hurt!

Then she cut of pieces of my cervix to 1/4 inch in depth--like pieces of MEAT! That hurt a lot. The Novocain did NOT stop it from hurting. I'm sure it would have been much worse without it. Then she cauterized it to stop the bleeding. That hurt too, but not as much.

During the cauterization, there was a fan running to blow the smoke out of my vagina so she could see what she was doing.

I was crying a little and jumping--I couldn't help it. She said not to jump, but I couldn't help it. You hurt me, I jump. I apologized, but then did it again. Multiple times. I just couldn't hold still when I felt the pain.

But anyway, it's over. I hope there will be no further procedures--she's sending the all the samples for biopsy. I have to go back on Aug 16 for a followup and to learn the results of the biopsies.

My butt is not healed, but is much better. It hurts for several hours every time I poop but if I only poop once in the morning, by afternoon I am nearly ok. My butt didn't hurt during the procedure.

And it doesn't hurt now, but my crotch sure does. No sex until after I see her again, but because of the rectal pain, which is sometimes severe, we haven't had much sex since it started--once or twice only.

I wrote that little letter about my walk as sort of a death-bed greeting--I was really nervous about the LEEP thing. I wanted to leave something behind in case I disappeared in a puff of smoke and pain.

I'm kind of a wimp about pain. :-(

The procedure didn't actually last all that long, though it seemed like it at the time--it was probably less than half an hour total time. It seemed like hours and hours.

Doctor's orders: I am not supposed to do anything, so BB is making dinner--Good thing I walked earlier!

I hope your day was better than mine. :-D

Click image of fractal to view larger--click again to view larger still

Heart monitor and weight loss

Here I am yesterday with my heart monitor.  It was a pain at night!  I
ahve to wear it all night.

The second thing is that as of today, I have lost 35 pounds since I
started my current diet (and am down 44 from my highest ever, which
was less than a year ago, I think).  (I don't look any different
though, or at least not very.)

INSOMNIA AGAIN #100717a

INSOMNIA AGAIN #100717a

YAY! Lost 30 pounds! WOOHOO!

I'm on a diet and I've lost 30 pounds. I didn't want to mention it
too soon, but I'm making progress!! YAY! A ways to go, but progress
is progress!!!

Insomnia 100715

I had insomnia last night, lay awake in bed for an hour and half and then got up several hours, then lay awake for several more hours.  I did this piece on iOla the IPad last night to illustrate how I felt.  Sent from my iPad

Pain and the manifestation of pain

Pain and the manifestation of pain

Pain and Pleas

The bad news is that it is supposed to go up to 92 today! AK! You
will come home hot and tired and cranky and I won't feel well either.
VERY SAD.

I feel sad because I know you love me, but sometimes, it seems to me
that you don't know how to show it. You were very kind last night
when you stretched my neck—I'm so sorry you banged your knee and sorry
I kept you up late! You were very kind when you read to me. I love
it when you read to me.

But what I mean is when I'm in pain. You often act uninterested or
unconcerned or unsupportive or unloving or unsympathetic when I'm in
pain. Maybe you're afraid of me because I get really grouchy when I'm
in pain. :-( I wish it wasn't that way, I'm sorry.

You don't USUALLY get grouchy when you're in pain* (though sometimes,
you do), and you probably just think I'm a big jerk or a big baby. Or
maybe you think I am faking it, or not in as much pain as I say I am.
Sometimes, you seem to totally forget that I'm in pain and act
surprised, even astounded, when I don't want to do something or can't.
(*I don't know how you manage that, I wish I could do it!)

What I would like would be for you to come and check on me when I'm
having a pain incident, to ask how it's going, to ask if there's
anything you could do to help. You don't need to "hang out" if you
have other things to do, but you could express interest and concern
and sympathy. If the bathroom door is closed and I've been in there a
while, you could even knock. I close it automatically, out of habit.

Perhaps it is hard to be sympathetic and supportive because my pain
and problems go on and on and on and get boring for you. It's WORSE
than boring for me—it's wearing and tiring and horrible.

One time I told you that if I'm in pain, you could say something like
"I'm sorry for your pain." I meant that as an example, but now, if you
think of it at all, you often say by rote, "I am sorry for your pain."
Sometimes I laugh, which seems mean, but come on! Couldn't you be
intelligent and sensitive enough to say, "It's really too bad you have
to suffer like this" or "Honey, I'm so sorry," or "That really sucks,
sweetie?" And, yet more difficult, I'd like you to say it like you
really meant it, not like a rote repetition, as if you CARED how I
felt. You could include a hug, or hold my hand, or kiss my forehead
or something. (Yes, you do occasionally say something nice.)

I am not saying you never do that—sometimes you come and stand beside
me or touch me, which is really nice—but that is only a small
percentage of the time. Other times, you start telling me something
totally irrelevant when I am desperately in pain and need of
comforting.

Maybe loving me when I'm in pain is like kissing (or even approaching)
a fire-breathing dragon who has just consumed an extra large dose of
sulphur.

And I cannot entirely fault you for that, but dammit, don't you have
natural sensitivity to the suffering of the person you supposedly
love? You won't be much fun or much help to me when I'm dying!

If you have something to tell me that you simply MUST share right
after one of my pain incidents, you could at least acknowledge my pain
before you launch into something irrelevant. Otherwise, I feel as if
some seemingly petty concern is more important to you than the HUGE
pain I am experiencing.

You can be such a big baby yourself-- you love to collect sympathy
from me and others--but you are not always nearly as eager to dispense
it as you are to collect it. (I'm sure none of us are, including me).
Though I must say, you do often listen well to your mother (and often
to me) when she (or I) complain.

I know I am not the most sympathetic person in the world myself, but I
do try sometimes, whenever I have the strength, to administer
sympathy, scratching, rubbing, and hugging to you.

You're prickly with tiredness and feeling fragile, and I'm prickly
with pain and feeling frail, and we're rubbing each wrong instead of
right. I wish we could both be better at this loving and supporting
stuff—it's hard for me when I'm in pain, probably hard for you when yr
tired and stressed.

I don't mean to be hard on you, but sometimes I don't think you have
any idea how hard this is on me. Being in pain is VERY LONELY. Being
in chronic BAD PAIN is even lonelier. After a while, it seems that no
one cares or understands.

Now I just spent too much time writing this—I guess I was feeling
somewhat unloved, sorry.

old lady in a rocker

Somehow, when I wasn't looking, I became and old lady!

milestone

Finally I have lost 25 pounds since I started my diet!

--
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London

"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth." Einstein, from a letter to a friend in 1901 when he was 22

"The fist is more than a sum of its fingers." Margaret Atwood

"Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint
or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth." ~Madeleine L'Engle

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton

Mary

Sleep

On good days, I love laying in bed and hopefully sleeping in the morning, maybe half the time. on bad days, which seem to be more like 3/4 of the time, hate lying in bed at night--I get so restless and agitated I can't stand it!!!

I am up tonight with insomnia. Wahn!!

I don't know why some nights I can sleep and others I can't. I have a warning though--when I lie down, if I start hallucinating dream-like images while I'm awake, I probably will not sleep. Which happened tonight. Tired and wired, yawning like mad, but wide awake. And hungry!

• was it the eight potato chips I ate at the end of dinner? Or the later than normal dinner?
• was it the very late (but short) walk I took after 9:30 at night, about 15 minutes?
• was it the worry of the day? The annoyance I felt with K and G? Or what? WHY?

WHY CAN'T I SLEEP?

Counting Sheep

Counting Sheep

 

I force my body to lie still in the bed, tangle it with blankets

to tie it to the dark end of night, close my eyes,

and pretend to sleep, but inside my quiet legs,

my unquiet legs are running, running,

and the tattered moths my of eyes beat and beat

against the cage of my skull.

 

Somewhere, an invisible light keeps calling me,

a light I can't turn off, no matter how many times

I pull its chain.

 

I am as small as an ant.  I am a song in the wind.

Sleep holds its breath and counts and counts,

but there are never enough sheep, never enough

boring stories to fix me in the womb of darkness.

I tumble like a weed, a diaspore. I am an exploding star.

A memory rising from oblivion.  A haunting.

 

 

 

Mary Stebbins Taitt

100608-0220-1st

 

My brain tumor today

I had my MRI today, here are the results.  The tumor has grown since
the last MRI.

Insomnia! OH! :-(

It's almost 3 AM and I haven't slept at all. I am up out of bed
becasue I was restless and agitated. An hour and a half ago, I took
two Tylenol PMs becasue my fibro pain was interfering with my
relaxing. It did NOT put me to sleep!

I had a normal breakfast of oatmeal and bran with rice milk, I had
shredded wheat and rice milk for lunch (not normal, but I've had it
recently without being up all night.), and for dinner, I had ntua
steaks (not normal) and a normal stir-fry. Veggies etc. Nothing
unusual.

I did take my vitamins at dinner instead of breakfast and I did not
take any melatonin and haven't been for several days. I haven't had a
bad night like this for a little while.

Sometimes, it seems that if I am angry or uset, I can't sleep. But I
was not angry or upset. Not that I know of.

I don't know what causes it, but I hate it! :-(

I wasn't angry or upset before, but I am now. :-(

Twenty Pounds!

I didn't want to post about it until I was sure it was real, but I've lost 20.5 pounds since I started my new new food plan. (Otherwise known as a diet, except this needs to be life-long).

I am not, however, sleeping well, still. I was hopeing the diet would help.

Tachycardia/arrhythmia Event

The Great Fish of Fear, by me

Tachycardia/arrhythmia Event Thursday, March 25, 2010, Report to Dr. Muna Beeai with questions

I was awakened at about 4:20 by BB’s alarm, went back to sleep, and woke up again around 5 AM or so with tachycardia/arrhythmia. It followed on the heels of a nightmare (scary dream), but may not be related to that. I felt a scary sense of pressure in my chest and my pulse was fast and irregular. It was not accompanied by vertigo. (I say this because I used to have incidents where the two came together.)

The event lasted 2.5-3 hours or so.

Brian P says he had such events before his thyroid was properly regulated and I wonder if mine is not properly regulated.

My previous Dr., Dr. Fazio in upstate NY, told me that in most cases, the generic drugs are comparable in their efficacy to the name brand drugs, but in the case of Synthroid, this was NOT TRUE and that the real Synthroid was better than the generic. I asked for the real thing but was given the generic. If it’s true that the real Synthroid is better, as Dr. Fazio said, perhaps I would do better with that? Can I be prescribed the real Synthroid, at least on a trial basis?

This was REALLY SCARY—I was frightened.

AND—it’s just one more annoying way to WASTE TIME and DEPRIVE me from my proper rest! (Even though I was scared and uncomfortable, I got bored lying there waiting for it to end.)

New Diet, 3-21-10

I have tried repeatedly to start a series of new diets an failed. I am trying again. Since the other diets didn't work, I am going to try the OA version of abstinence, which is difficult to stick to in society, but works if I do stick to it. A1, no white sugar, A2, no white flour

3-21-10: A1, A2 (but ate potato chips and a fair number of them.) GAINED weight. However, this is okay, if in fact I succeed in becoming abstinent.
3-22-10: A1, A2 (but ate popcorn in large quantities with canola oil and salt. See above for comments.) lost a few ounces.
3-23-10: critical day. If I can get through this day on A1 and A2, it should get easier.

Stupid fibro

Ouch, it hurts! :-(

Colorplay II

Colorplay II, by me (click to view larger.)

What if I am the Fairy who didn't get...

unfinished illo:  The poison spindle

What if I am the Fairy who didn't get invited to the wedding?

How do I avoid planting a poisoned spindle?

That actually happened to me, many years ago, when a friend got married and her husband wanted my boyfriends as his best man, but we'd just had a fight, so they decided that to avoid tension, they would not invite me.  I was incredibly hurt.  Our friendship was never the same after that.  I felt unloved and rejected.  I've tried and tried to forgive.  And have not succeeded as well as I would have preferred.

That's an ongoing issue for me that I'd like to resolve, but the current one is GB, who did not show up for his guitar lesson.  This is the boy who "doesn't consider me family," who stopped calling me "Mom," though he called me that for many years, who doesn't want me to adopt him.  Orphan boy.  But it's me calling to make him doctor appointments and me calling all around trying to find him so he won't miss his guitar lesson.  And there won't be any thank yous. 

Do I need them?  I probably shouldn't need them.  I should be able to rise above it all, to continue to be loving in the face of rejection--and I keep trying--but sometimes, it's hard.

Anyone know a way to detoxify a poison spindle?

Sardinia at Night

Evoking in me some sadness.

Tachycardia

Report on Tachycardia incident, Feb 5, 2010, for Muna Beeai

• Wake up, 3:30, use bathroom, return to bed, can't sleep, restless

• 5 AM, turn on left side. Immediately experience heart
flutter—arrhythmia, followed by tachycardia. This is accompanied by a
sense of pain and pressure. I am afraid I am having a heart attack
and might be dying. Then I think maybe it is just gas pains from
drinking water to fast when I got up to use the bathroom. But the
speeded pulse is real.

• My fibromyalgia flares up—everything hurts—shoulders, legs, knees,
thighs, neck—I am a mass of pain. Pain and tightness in chest
continues. I have a cut on my thumb and it feels as if it is on fire
with lightning

• This continues for a couple hours and finally slowly fades way. I
sleep for a couple hours, and when I wake up, I feel not quite right,
but gradually better.

• There was no vertigo.

(click painting to view larger).

Confronting the Shadow or The Myth of Unconditional Self-love,

Confronting the Shadow or The Myth of Unconditional Self-love, by Mary Stebbins Taitt. (Click image to view larger.) This is a digitally altered painted--I "smudge-painted" over a water color.) I am probably not done with it yet, but because I am working on that fellowship application, I have to set it aside.

I was depressed all day today, after bad insomniac night last night and I am not off to a very good start to this night!