598

Not really sure how to get this post going.

Life is great.  The wife is off work for what may be the majority of the year to heal up from knee surgeries.  Recovery from her left knee replacement has been exemplary.  She's determined to get "back to normal" ASAP, but she has to negotiate that with her body.  Nonetheless, building back from such major surgery has been nothing beyond fantastic.  She now awaits a date to have her right knee done, which is sooner than later - the coming months - as it's in bad shape itself.  She actually fell going down the entrance steps outside because her right knee gave way, just like her left knee used to do.  She's okay, just a bruised hand and some road burn on her leg, but it could have been a lot worse.  This all will be rectified soon enough, but I need to watch her. 

Janice says she absolutely loves her time off work with me.  I certainly do.  Being alone half the day just blows.  Good thing I have Marvelous Marbles Hagler with me at all times.  He hardly ever leaves me alone.  He's going to be 19 in June (!), and since we've switched him from dry food to wet Blue Buffalo food, he seems healthier than he's ever been.  We've always fed him the best and always will.  His treats are freeze-dried meat, chicken and salmon, which he absolutely loves, and if you get that stuff at Costco, it's incredibly cheap.  We'll never give him anything else.  And we haven't.

Easter brings Lenten season, which we as practicing Catholics follow.  Janice gave up her beloved chips, and I gave up alcohol.  I've come to love having one or two drinks here and there, and certainly miss it, as it helps round the edges.  Rarely to I ever have more than that, though.  I never go over three.  You're allowed a reprieve on Sundays during Lent, but we choose to go all the way and abstain every day during Lent.  Today is Good Friday as I write this.  We attended mass and I did both readings.  The weather this month has been a challenge for Janice's heavy arthritis issues, and this was a mass where a lot of standing happens.  Just a nuisance, though.  The knee, that is.

For myself... it's been a little up and down since August last year.  I'd marked the anniversary of a year on August 2 since my last self-harm episode.  Each one, though further apart, seeming worse than the last.  I couldn't really find my inner peace after dealing with stuff late that summer.  November and December were months from hell for Janice and me, concluding with a hellacious stomach virus that saw me passing out once again and breaking yet another rib.  I think Janice had it worse, though.
The year began quite peacefully.  January is usually a tough month for me, but I handled it pretty good this time.  It seems that the further I put those self-harm episodes behind me, the more solace out if it I got.  Funny enough, I'd gotten a lot of compliments about my hair in recent times, from girls and guys alike.  I'll take that where I can get it, though Janice heaps praise on me all the time.  She's steadied my ship through some pretty choppy waters in my life.  I'm not kidding when I say she's the toughest, strongest person I know.  Yes, she's my wife, of course I'll say that, but if she weren't, I feel like I'd still say that.  She'll tell you she has the best support possible through me.  I try my best, but I don't feel quite worthy of such accolades.

We may get a decent tax return this year, so we hope to be able to re-invest that into bringing the house closer to where we want it.  We still need a couple of doors, and some driveway repairs, among a few other things.  The prospect of a nice summer is there and we're looking very forward to it.  Certainly it has to be better than this March has been.  I think it must have rained every day.  There's flooding around the neighborhood in many yards and some street corners.  Very little snow in Moncton this year, though.

Friend-wise, we've had Nat come over several times.  She likes being around us, and vice versa.  She's the only one we've really seen so far this year.  This isn't to denigrate the friends we have besides her, though, as contact is a two-way street.  Getting older seems to spread the divide.  I have to also add that I'm not the greatest of friends to anyone.  I guess I can blame it on my recurrent issues with whatever disability I have, but the bottom line there is that I'm just not that great of a friend or relative.  I don't say that to 'beat myself up' or anything, either.  It's just a logical deduction of how badly I conduct relationships.  I'd love to sort this stuff out with a psychologist, but, that's a pay-to-play deal.  Thus I self-medicate.  Cannabis oil and gummies have been quite the fire extinguisher.  I kind of wish I could smoke it, but if I do, I'll end up coughing up a lung, since I've tried to.  Smoking it gives you instant effects, whereas you have to wait a bit with what I take, though the effects are much longer lasting.  It's a wonderful thing to feel happy in the midst of a storm. 

The past couple of weeks has been a challenge though,  I was faced with information from Janice that I prefer not to discuss here.  It wound up being very tough to deal with.  All kinds of thoughts went through my head as I took one of my epic walks to try to clear my head.  I was out for over three hours in the night.  When I came home, I went to bed and basically shut down.  I couldn't resolve how my head and my heart were trying to break things down.  I wound up in this haze that I couldn't seem to fight my way out of.  Similar to last November, I just resigned myself to bed for three days without eating or drinking.  Perhaps that's a form of self-harm, but so is smoking and no one counts that.  But I sort of used it as a punishment for not being an adequate husband and father, based on what Janice had told me, which to anyone else would be viewed as harmless.  But I'm compromised.  I take 100 mg of Sertraline, or Zoloft, to keep the ship level.  It's not foolproof.  

After three days of this, I spoke to Janice about what bothered me so much.  I don't know how to explain the intense thoughts I was dealing with.  I've long felt that I've been inadequate as a husband and father, especially after being put on disability, though I've adjusted to that somewhat.  It was hard to make Janice really understand where I was at.  My inability to come to some kind of resolution with this wreaked havoc on my mind, and a breakdown was imminent.  I took the hair clippers and cut off all my hair, with Janice trying valiantly to stop me.  She asked me why I did it.  "Because I fucking hate myself!" I screamed.  Smashing a plastic case over my head, punching my left eye socket.  Janice was beside herself in sadness and frustration over not being able to do anything.  I am not kind to myself when I stonewall her like this.  The fact is, I try to keep it inside and not have my troubles migrating to others.  I do write about it, like this.  I find it somewhat therapeutic.  Not to mention, I don't keep my mental health problems a secret.  No one should!  Far worse things can happen.  I had an open bottle of pills in my hand as I sat looking at them.  Janice took them from me.  "I really don't want to live anymore."  Imagine her hearing those words come out of the man she loves most.  But I was at a point where I'm getting so tired of fighting this battle.  I even started writing a draft of my will.  I just didn't know if I could find my way out of this.  You can imagine Janice must have felt when she saw me writing it on my laptop.

My last post was about Janice and her knee surgery, as she braced for the pain of recovery.  The long incision mark and scar on her leg is indicative as to what she was dealing with.  Everyone can see it, and I made sure they did, because I want people to understand.  

I don't have an incision mark to show you, or a wound that needs repair (thank God).  The turmoil I face in my own mind is mine alone, and I can only ask those who know me to please believe me.  I have numerous friends and even relatives who say they do, but I know they don't.  This is a heavy cross to carry, knowing that someone who knows me isn't totally convinced.  I can deal with it, but when I fall into this dark state, I can deal with it far less.  It makes this feeling of being alone more intense.  And you do feel alone when there's no real help.  Janice's knee needed replacing, x-rays proved that, as did numerous diagnoses.  Me?  I have a psychologist I can't afford, and a psychiatrist who unceremoniously curbed me.  And that's what I mean by feeling alone.  I pretty much decide how much of my meds that I take.  And I've decided to go from 100 mg of Zoloft to 150, which I know my doctor would say that that's what he would've done.  The tradeoff is, I'm more numb.  It quells the sadness and fear and anger, but it also blunts any feelings of joy or happiness.  But I'm alive, right?

My recovery from this last attack/breakdown/whateveryouwanttocallit is taking a little longer.  I'm not getting any younger, so my resilience is less.  All I can do is be proactive in keeping myself out of situations where I know I might come off the rails.  For 598 days, I stayed on the tracks.  I hold hope that one day I won't be counting the days anymore between these incidents.

One of the biggest reasons I publish these blogs is to speak up about mental illness.  I'm hesitant to verbally talk about it, so I write.  I encourage anyone who's dealing with similar things to not be silent.  Silence can be a killer.  Find someone to talk to who will listen.  I have my wife.  If I didn't, I don't know exactly where I'd be right now.  Or, if I'd be.  Here in this region, you can call 988, which is the suicide prevention hotline.  

I'm okay now, and I will be okay.  

I hope this finds YOU more than just okay. 

Personal blog: The Bionic Woman

Hello, and welcome to February, as I sit here in bed next to my lovely wife at nearly 4 in the morning on Valentine's Day.  

This was the day after her big surgery to get knee replacement for her left leg.  I'd planned on going in with her, waiting for however long the surgery was, and join her immediately when I could.  And that's what happened.  The surgery was around an hour and a half, maybe give or take ten minutes.  She chose only to be frozen and have sedation, which is what I did for my knee surgery nine years ago, though that was just to fix a tear and a scope.  She wanted to see the operation going on, but, as everyone does, she wound up snoozing through it, and I think that's for the best if you have any idea what knee replacement is like.  Janice is highly knowledgeable of the medical field, so it's not surprising she wanted to get her eyeballs on what they were doing, not to mention she's pretty much fearless.  But anyway, she was taken to post-op recovery, while I waited until she would awaken and go to her room on the sixth floor.

So as is with pretty much any hospital, the food isn't the most palatable, and I offered to go fetch her a chicken salad sandwich, a pop and a donut, and that's what our meal of the day was.  She wasn't keen on eating much more than that anyway.  She was in great spirits when I saw her, with the freezing still in effect, as she got a small needle in her back to freeze her from the waist down, plus she was still loopy from meds they had in her I.V.  But she was 100% my Janice.  She was actually up out of bed with a walker and actually walking about four hours after she woke up.  Even the nurses and doctors were a bit taken aback at how solid she was.  I was surprised, marginally, because I know how much she wanted this done and wants it behind her.  But man, she's tough.  I call her "The Tank" for a reason; there's just not a lot that stops her.  

In the evening, I hiked up to her work, Shoppers Drug Mart, to get a one liter bottle of Diet Pepsi - at a ridiculous price of $4.45 with taxes.  But my queen was thirsty.  I got back and a serving of hot something or another was at her table over her bed that was served to her, and she wasn't terribly fond of the idea of eating.  I saw it, I still don't understand what that was.  It got a bit busy in the room she was in, with three other ladies in there who also got replacement surgery of some sort.  We actually all got to know one another a little.  I should also point out that my buddy Pete, who works at the hospital, took time on his break to go see Janice, which I was immensely appreciative of.  The night grew shorter and the time came for me to go.  I hadn't gotten hardly any sleep the night before, maybe an hour and a half, because she had to be in the hospital for 8:30 that morning.  

I'd gotten home to share the night with Marvelous Marbles Hagler, who was a bit lonely that day.  I grabbed a bag of Yum Yum onion rings and munched a bit, cleaned up and got in bed.  The bed being half empty because Janice wasn't in it.  I hated it.  Laying here looking over at her side with her not being there was a bit tough.  We never spend time apart.  I took a dose of cannabis oil and waited, and hoped, for it to work to try to sleep.  A few hours later, after sleeping maybe two or three hours, I took another dose.  That enabled me to sleep during the morning, as I awaited the phone call from Janice to go pick her up.  And she did, right around noon.  I got everything all ready in the house and was pretty pumped to go get my girl!

I picked her up at the main entrance, on what was quite a lovely day.  We still haven't really gotten a knock-down-drag-out snowstorm or anything, maybe a brush of one, but there's not a lot of snow on the ground outside,  Very strange for February.  I went to Walmart after I picked her up to get her some of her beloved blackberry Diet Canada Dry, and we went home to reassume our lives.  When we got home, her sister was next door at her Mom's, and she went over to briefly visit and reassure her family that she did extremely well. (Don't worry, I was escorting her everywhere.)  It was beyond nice to see her get in the house and plop down on the loveseat and look so relieved that it's all done.

But here's the thing... when her surgeon checked on her before she left, she asked her how she felt, and Janice was pretty much like, "so when can I do the other one?"  The fine doctor told her that she can get it done in a few months, because her right knee wasn't in much better shape than the left one.  That means she's off work for most of the year (darn!!!), and by the time Christmas comes she will have pretty much two brand new legs to rebuild at the gym - modestly, of course.  She still wants to go to the gym anyway and do upper body stuff and get stronger on the treadmill.  That will be in due time.  I want her stitches out before we do anything like that at all.  In the meantime, I will make her walk around the house at times and see that she does her exercises.  She wants me to do all this, just in case you're thinking I made myself the gestapo of Belmont Street.  It is nothing short of remarkable how much progress she's made in one freakin' day!  She had her leg sawed off, basically, and a new knee inserted, and she's up on her feet walking with a walker or a cane??  Like I said, The Tank.  

Now we await the next surgery, which, as I said, is being expedited, so it'll all be out of the way.  We're both pretty thrilled with this.  

We're both extremely appreciative of everyone who offered their support and well wishes.  Every one of them.  If you're reading this, know that we love and appreciate you.

That's all for today.  Thanks for taking the time to once again read my humble blog.