Category Archives: Anonymous

Anonymous

“The Look”

Leave a comment

In my experience, most PWCs have what I call “the look.” I don’t know how to describe it, but I’ll bet if any one of us goes to the mirror, we’ll see it. There’s a look of “who WAS that masked SOB anyway” combined with a shadow of pain and great age (far beyond chronological years). Much of a PWC’s gaze is turned inward, as if searching for or trying to understand some great mystery. I also see tremendous weariness, patience and determination, and a muted blend of anger and hope. I have a lot of pictures on my wall behind/above my computer, and every single one of the PWCs among them has this same look. It’s in the eyes. In some ways it’s like the look one sees in the eyes of people jammed into refugee camps.

Never fails to make me weep.

Anonymous

Kids, Friends, and Delendency

Leave a comment

Re: the issue of encouraging dependency in others, I would put money on the fact that I have done everything I can to train my children to be as independent as possible, to be able to solve their own problems and to fend for themselves. However, quite often when young males have a captive audience, they go onto Lord and Master mode and promptly forget everything Momma ever taught them. Even my 10 year old is perfectly capable of rendering the house spotless (he’s a better housekeeper than I ever was!)… when he’s so inclined, which is about once every six months. My 13 yr old could, if he chose, prepare a very respectable three-course meal. They both are capable of taking care of themselves, though of course both are too young to go unsupervised for extended periods of time.

My children resent me for being sick, blame me for being sick and therefore not an “active” mother capable of doing things that “normal” Moms do (including bring in a paycheque for them to spend on all those things children seem to “need” these days). They often choose to “forget” that they are capable of fending for themselves quite competently. I think they believe that if they’re obnoxious and demanding enough for a long enough period of time, I’ll drop all this “nonsense” about beng sick and life will take on some semblance of normalcy (bearing in mind that I have been sick all their lives, having contracted the dd when my 13 yr old was born; the strain of raising two small children while at the same time dealing with the angst and fashionable anger of three adolescent sons sped up my decline).

Their biggest “thing” is that they don’t (can’t) get the attention they need. I try to listen to their rambling tales (show me a kid who doesn’t ramble and I’ll show you an inhibited kid! :), but they can see my eyes glazing over if they talk for more than five or ten minutes. It’s not that I’m not interested, it’s that my brain shuts down no matter how hard I try to pay attention. I try to be sympathetic, ask pertinent questions and make constructive suggestions when they have a problem, but since I’m braindead most of the time, what comes out of my mouth is either gobble-de-gook or a simple “I don’t know.” To them, from their position of too little life experience, this says “I’m not interested.”

And so they have become demanding and abusive. A natural enough response, and they’re too young to understand that by doing this they are undermining their own goals: to get Mother back on her feet again. They alternate between fear of losing me (i.e. that I might die) and hating me for “letting them down” in the mother department. When you think about it, theirs must be a mighty scary world right now.

As to others: my definition of friendship includes helping. Back when I had a life, I didn’t see anything wrong with helping a friend laid up with the flu, or driving someone to a doctor’s appointment because she was too sick to take herself, or lending a hand with a major project that needed to be accomplished quickly, or…As I said, my definition of friendship includes the concept of helping. It wasn’t til my crash, when I started needing a little reciprocation, that I realized it wasn’t a two-way street. Life is full of tough lessons.

But in any event, I don’t consider myself to have trained anyone to rely on me at any point. IMHO, there’s a vast difference between being reliable and trying to make oneself indispensable. The former is a positive character trait; the latter is just plain sick. As a matter of fact, being an essentially selfish person, excessive dependence on me is the lastthing I want! I have long made a point of taking time for myself to do absolutely nothing but exactly what I feel like doing at that time (something of which a lot of people disapprove since it’s not “productive”, and goodness knows one must be productive in our society to be seen to have any true worth).

Anonymous

On the Importance of Pets

Leave a comment

I have often asked myself WHY I let one beloved creature after another into my life, my home and my heart. We all know going in that the odds favour us outliving them, and each loss is so heartbreaking. Those who have never loved or been loved by an animal (makes you wonder, doesn’t it?) can’t begin to understand the extent of our emotional attachment to these precious beasts. It has been years and years, but still I mourn for my darling Beardog. People say “oh for god’s sake, he was only a DOG.” I beg to differ. He was family. He loved us. He was devoted to my children. He had a personality and a sense of humour.

And he trusted us implicitly. Never was that trust more evident than the night we lost him. I had rushed him to the vet at something like 9 p.m. As he lay there on the table, in terrible anguish (we never did find out what was wrong with him), I was torn to shreds by indecision. The vet had told me there was a slim chance we could keep him alive long enough to run the dx’tic tests which might tell us what was wrong and that if he lived long enough, we might be able to treat him. But he was perilously dehydrated and in unspeakable pain. While I debated, Bear looked up at me and as clearly as if he had spoken, I “heard” a single word: PLEASE. I turned to the vet and said “do it.” I put my forehead to Bear’s and he stared into my eyes with absolute love and trust. I could feel the vet moving around beside me. Seconds later, my Beardog heaved a great sigh and was gone. Oh lord how we howled, the kids and I. I’m crying now as I remember that terrible night. And I wonder how I ever managed to bring myself to risk my heart again with another dog.

But what’s the alternative? Deprive ourselves of the joys of their companionship? That would be like avoiding human friendship because we fear we may experience pain sometime in the future. And where else do we find such acceptance, such unconditional love? Where else will we find someone who doesn’t judge us by our looks, our race, our financial status, our social standing…our state of health? They don’t see those things, they see *us*. Not only do they give us love, they give us laughter and a reason to get up in the morning (even if sometimes it’s a mite earlier than we’d like 🙂

It’s no easy thing. We take them into our hearts and hope they will live long, happy lives. We do everything we can to ensure just that. Under the circumstances, it’s the best we can do. I know I have no alternative; I can’t imagine life without my crazy crew. I can’t imagine life without at least a couple of cats and a dog; I’d die of loneliness! Well, all that aside, for every heartbreaking story, there’s a happy one. For every tragedy, there’s a miracle. Through the dark threads of worry and grief are woven bright threads of joy, companionship, love and loyalty. I guess that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Anonymous

Hysterical??

Leave a comment

It has been suggested that we “hysterically” manifest our symptoms (consciously or unconsciously) in order to gain sympathy from friends, family and the medical community, and/or a “free ride” courtesy of the government. Those not “in the know” often believe we enjoy countless perks. Almost all of us have heard, at some time or another, someone say something like “Gee, I’m tired all the time too! I wish I could just lie around all day and not have to worry about going to work or keeping up with the housework.”

I have just emerged, bloodied and somewhat bowed, from a fruitless discussion (one of many) with yet another doc. I have lost count of the discussions I’ve had…with doctors and other non-believers…about how my deepest psyche must have a reason (one I can’t or won’t recognise on a conscious level) for presenting me with these symptoms I persist in believing in. EVEN THOUGH I NOW HAVE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE that something is rotten in the state of Denmark (the kicker being that this doctor is questioning the validity of tests in general and mine in particular). I can state in emphatic terms til I feel synapses frying themselves to a crisp from the effort, that I am rapidly going broke broke broke, that I don’t get any government handouts, that I have been forced to give up all of life’s little pleasures (and I do mean all of them except, occasionally, reading…and that not of my former standard or volume…and, occasionally, a shopping expedition in which I must do as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible since I have no idea when I’ll be able to leave the house again), that I get no sympathy from anyone, that all my “friends” have disappeared (putting in an appearance only when there’s something they want from me), that I deal daily with emotionally debilitating scorn and disbelief, insults and flavour-of-the-month amateur psychoanalysis, that my children, to whom I am deeply devoted (despite my complaints) are virtually raising thmselves. I get to watch my home, upon which over the years I have lavished tender ministrations to create a comfortable and pleasing environment, virtually falling apart around me because I can’t maintain it and can’t afford to pay someone else to maintain it. I experience the deep disapproval of the staff at my childrens’ school who all too patently think I just don’t want to attend various meetings and functions. (They’d certainly never believe how long and hard I cried the year I couldn’t make it to their Christmas concert). Every time I emerge from under my rock, some happy-pants moron is there to bounce cheerfully up to me and say something like “Hey, you’re out and about! You must be better!” (No, idiot; I just happen to be able to walk today and since I’m suffering from terminal cabin fever, I’m willing to send myself into a spectacular three-week crash just to get the ^%*^ out of the house for a couple of hours.)

I would be ecstatic… I would be eternally grateful… I would give even unto half my (remaining) kingdom… if someone, somewhere, could, with a few sessions of psychoanalysis, lead me back to the life I had 13 years ago. For eleven years I struggled with this frigging disease before it literally turned my world upside down two-and-a-bit years ago. For eleven years I had myself convinced that I could ignore what was happening to me, that I could use force of will to keep going, that I could use “mind over matter” to halt or reverse the slow decline to the almost total helplessness in which I now find myself. I treated myself more cruelly than anyone has since because I honestly believed I could overcome what was happening to me if I just tried hard enough.

Yesterday I reported to the above-mentioned doctor that I’ve had waking temperatures of as low as 94.9. The response, the exact wording of which I of course can’t remember, essentially implied that either I was lying or that my imagination was running amok, because if I had really registered such a low temp, I’d have been in a state of hypothermia. Well DUH! And is this cause for concern? Nope. It’s cause for dismissal of me as being exceptionally creative in my attempts to gain unwarranted medical attention (i.e. in this learned individual’s unsupported opinion, I had attained new heights of hypchondria and/or hysteria).

Right now I am fighting for sufficient evidence to put together a case for disability benefits of some kind (preferably before I lose my home and the welfare comes to take my children away because some zealous soul has reported that I’m “neglecting” them), and quite frankly I don’t care what they want to call it as long as some doctor somewhere recognizes and is willing to put in writing that I’m disabled. Frankly, I’d as soon not receive a formal and documented dx of CFIDS because even with a doctor’s “seal of approval” I would still have to deal with much of the same bilge as I am now, and we all know that a dx of CFIDS does not necessarily a case for disability make.

Oh yeah! I get sooooo much out of persisting, in the face of so much “evidence” to the contrary, in believing that I have a physiological and not psychological disorder!

OK, vent-fest over 🙂

[Ed note: since this writing, the writer has received an official diagnosis of CFIDS and is in the process of applying for disability. If you are applying for disability please do check the SSDI website and do your homework as the rules for ME/CFS have changed since this was written,]

Anonymous

:: Yawn ::

OhmiGAWD what a night! I really must commend the gods of slumber one of these days for their unique sense of humour.

There I am, snoozing away, when I realize there’s a cat on my head. Ohhh kayyyy….

Wait a minute: A CAT ON MY HEAD!?!?! (Where’s the dog!?!)

The dog is at the foot of the bed, contemplating how she can get at the cat without stampeding over me and thereby getting herself killed. Every now and then she bounces in place, woofs, and makes a swift foray to one side of the bed or the other. The cat purrs louder and makes rude gestures at the dog.

“How the h*** did you get in here, Arthur?” I enquire. Arthur purrs and investigates my ear with a wet nose. “Silly human,” sez she, “I slipped in while that idiot dog was out in the kitchen, of course.”

Well this is unacceptable. I detach the cat from my head…the dog bounces joyously, thinking it’s feeding time. For the next ten minutes I try to evict the cat (RUN, kitty!!!) while holding the dog back. Nope. Cat looks at me like I’m out of my mind while the dog nearly strangles herself by leaning on her collar, front feet suspended at least six inches from the floor.

OK, I pick UP the cat…warning the dog in explicit terms jsut what will happen to her if she tries anything…and heave her (the cat) out into the hallway. The dog gives chase and for the next five minutes all I can hear is the scrabbling of doggie claws on newly-waxed hardwood and a lot of hissing and spitting. Next thing I know…ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZOOOOOM! The cat is back in my room, now under the bed, while my 50 lb German Shepherd tries to wedge herself under six inches of clearance to join said puddy-tat. Arthur laughs mockingly and makes more rude gestures. The dog runs around and around the bed from one side to the other. “Hyuk hyuk! Get da kitty! Duh…yup!”

“No, you can’t have the kitty,” sez I, contemplating my watch wrathfully. It’s 4:30 of the a.m. Way too early to put the dog out (she likes to howl; my neighbors tolerate it by day, but I think they’d say it with bullets by night).

The cat hisses occasionally, just to keep the dog in a frenzy. I continue to ponder. Finally, the inevitable hits: I must lock the dog up in the laundryroom til it’s a decent enough hour to let her out. So I stagger once more from my wee trundle bed. “Come on Mozz, come on you *^%&$%$$%%^%&% &$^#^%$ &%^$%^ idiot dog,” say I in sugary tones.

She boings and leaps and bounces after me, leaving a smirking feline behind. Into the laundry room we go. She spies her door (the one that leads to her pen). “Oh GOODIE! I’m gonna get to go outside and bark and howl a whole bunch.”

WRONG!!

WHAM! I slams the laundry room door in her face, almost turning her into a pug. “Good night, Mozz,” I call sweetly, and stumble back to bed. It is now about 5:00 a.m.

The fun has only begun. Mozza begins to howl. Sheba, our little dog, takes up harmony. Arthur emerges from under the bed and re-establishes herself on my head. I spend the next half hour convincing her that she doesn’t really want to sleep on my head. She goes away and I slide into a coma. I wake an hour or so later to find another cat…this one MUCH larger (16 lbs worth of Maine Coon Tabby)…sleeping on my chest. I open a jaundiced eye and contemplate her furry little face. “Comfy?” I ask. Oh yes indeed, thank you very much.

I’m too tired to think, let alone move. I fall asleep again. I wake up half an hour later. I have one cat on my head, another on my chest. Both purring in harmony. Right. I fall asleep again. Half an hour later, I wake up. My head is now conspicuously cat-less (kind of hard to overlook), but I still feel like someone dropped a fuzzy cement block on my chest. Yup, she’s still there. I evict said cement block by the simple expedient of turning over (why hadn’t I thought of that before?). I snuggle down under the blankies and am about to drift off again when the dog starts howling.

“Tough s***,” I mutter, “You shoulda thought of that before you started chasing kitties.”

And I go back to sleep. For another whole half hour. It’s now 8 of the a.m. and as late as I ever sleep, before or since the dd, regardless of how little or how much slumber I’ve had during the night. I wonder if the dog has eaten my wheelchair (which is currently parked in the laundryroom while my car is off getting a facelift). I think in terms of coffee.

The cats, their duty faithfully fulfilled, have vanished. I sit up. I swear. I knock back a fistful of Advil to dull the thundering in my head. The dog barks. My bladder threatens mutiny. I deal with the bladder (in the company of the 16 pounder whose thankless task it is to supervise such activities). I stumble and shuffle to the laundry room. I open the door. Mozza leaps out, cavorting joyfully, sniffs noses with the cats, and starts galloping toward my room.

“FORGET IT!” I holler down the hall at her. “It’s time for you to go outside.” She’s not buying it. I wrestle her spring-loaded carcass out the dog-door and slam it. WHEW! She lopes off to the far end of her pen and barks a good morning to the neighbor’s dog, who replies in kind before they settle down for a good howl.

I go in search of coffee, tripping over assorted and sundry feline personnel in the process. Open the front door. The nightshift cats come in, the dayshift cats go out. The coffeepot gurgles and groans, slowly filling the carafe with the elixer of life.

And so begins a new day…