Saturday 14 December 2013

I was NOT a slut...I was just horizontally accessible.

Hello, hello!

I haven't blogged in quite a while, mainly due to the stereotypical basking of glory you have when you bring a baby home; our Little Love <3 He is just perfect, and apart from an overly obsessive love of hugs (clearly passed down from his mother) we have all settled in greatly.
Also, I have been healing. My hips and pelvis are finally doing what they're meant to, and I can move around without too much difficulty.
This brings me to my next point - Painkillers; and the vast amount of them I have been consuming since the birth of Little Love.

I have been following doctors orders, and knew that as of two days ago, I was to lower my dose of oxy, and begin weaning off these medications.

I, (because I am a large idiot) decided that I would be fine to go without pain meds for just one day, and that I would be just fine to make it to the doctors on the following day.

What I received in return for my careless attitude, was an incredibly nasty bout of withdrawals - oddly, something I used to be quite familiar with...

Lets not fuss about too much with pleasantries, I used to take a lot of drugs. A lot.
Put it it a pipe, wrap it in a baggie, roll in on your tongue, pour it in a cup, draw it in your lungs, pack it in a joint, or rack it into sweet white lines with a Medicare Card - I loved all that was bad for me.
Actually, the more I reminisce, the more I realise that almost everything I did was bad for me. I still loved it though, and I'm not ashamed to say I have some brilliant memories.
Some bad ones, too.

I was 18 fresh out of high school, I had an over-inflated ego, no money or car, and a mini-skirt - I was ready for the world!
What I got, after 8 weeks of trying to force myself to like the course I had enrolled in, was a night job as a waitress, and my first look at that whole underground scene all the 'good' goth movies aspire to show you.
This whole nocturnal lifestyle enveloped me so much so, that suddenly it was not just work, and the hours that followed my shift that provided me with chances to indulge. Now it was all the other social circles that popped up all around me, offering places to go on other nights, reasons to stay up another 24 hours, shouting me (cause most of the time I was flat broke) new and tantalizing experiences, almost all of which would somehow land me sleeping with someone who I either worked with, who I had been with before and promised myself never again, or, majority of the time, both.
Ah, yes. I was a train wreck.

Toward the end of my relationship with all things narcotic, I started to experience my first real punch-in-the-face bouts of withdrawal.
I'm talking hot flushes, cold sweats, grinding my teeth, extreme anxiety, and the urge to kill anyone who dared look at me.
Bet you can guess my answer to these horrible symptoms? You guessed it - More drugs! Hurrah!
Whether to perk me back up, or to lull me into nightmare-filled-sweaty-writhing sleep; more was always my answer.

Always, until 2 days ago.
I was left feeling utterly stupid, because I knew this would happen.
Because of the SPD, I had been taking highly addictive opiates for over 6 months now.
I do not feel a 'high' when I take them, I feel normal. I feel able to cope with movement and any pain.
It was this illusion of feeling 'normal' that messed me up, I think. I assumed that I could easily go a day without them. Silly rabbit.

10am sore me sweating, gnawing the inside of my mouth, repulsed by food, and wanting to rip the skin from my bones (it felt like there were ants under it).
However, while I endured this self-inflicted torture, so many memories came flooding back to me.
Memories it seems, from another life time all together.

I started to remember 'that' girl.
The girl who could keep her 2 jobs, while; simultaneously shagging half the staff, spending her last $10 just to see a local band play and dance wildly in chunky rock boots, having a highly expensive drug habit that she hardly ever had to pay for, living out of a backpack covered in band buttons, wore her hair too tall, and her skirt too short, and who would crash on whoever's couch she could find.

The, dare I say it 'lady' that I am now is a far cry from the little party girl I used to be.
I love my life now, every part of it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, it's nice to encounter something that makes us remember who we used to be.


If not to reminisce about a totally different life, then just to marvel at how far we have come.


                               

 Little Trashy Fiend. 
Note the 'gothness', the fame hawk fins, skinny skinny spine, and skanky pigtails.

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Helplessness and Children

If there is one feeling about parenthood that I absolutely abhor, it's the feeling of helplessness when your child is in pain, and you can't do anything to help them.

My son's recent stay in the NICU made me feel like I was being violently beaten around the head by a giant hammer, with 'helplessness' written across it in big, angry letters.

The very same day he was born was the day he was taken to the NICU.
I knew he had to go, I wanted him to go. He was wheezing and grunting constantly, and when the paediatrician explained that those noises were a strong indication of a respiratory infection, I knew I had made the right call in alerting the nurses. He was wheeled away in his little plastic capsule, and I was left in my hard, uncomfortable hospital bed, in my little curtained-off cubicle, feeling overwhelmingly, and unequivocally helpless. I had been in that much agony (as the Pain Team had not yet visited me to update my medication), that I hadn't even been able to pick him up when the noises started. My tiny few-hours-old baby was right beside my bed in his plastic capsule, and I couldn't even sit up to reach in and comfort him. All I could do was push the button beside my bed, and hope that someone would come quickly to help me.
I cried well into in night after he was taken away.

The following day when Luke arrived, he helped me into my wheelchair and wheeled me down to the NICU. We passed so many capsules; some open, some closed in with the UV lights shining down, but all containing tiny little babies. Babies that were so small, you would think they were dolls, babies who seemed not to show signs of life at all, and babies who, despite their minuscule size, were screaming the house down - even though they were donned with little goggles to protect their eyes from the UV, and so covered with tubes, drips, and medi-tape, that you could barely view their translucent skin at all.

I was overcome with a feeling of great empathy - so many tiny little humans that were unwell, meant that there were equally that many parents who were racked with fear, exhaustion, and sorrow.
My heart immediately went out to them.

And then I saw my son.
I could barely move from the wheelchair - I just stared.
He was so small, and was being made to look even more so by the over sized clothes the nurses had dressed him in. There were tubes feeding him, a drip in his minuscule hand hydrating him, monitors on his feet and chest, and the reminace of the C-PAP that had been helping him to breathe the night before.
My tiny baby. He was meant to be in my arms, not hooked up to a bunch of beeping machines.
And I couldn't do anything to help. Yes, I could do cuddles with skin-to-skin contact to help him feel loved, but I wanted to help him get better in the same way all these pediatricians and NICU Midwives knew how.
I just felt so utterly useless. I felt overwhelmed and helpless - not one part of me had been prepared for this.

But as the days went by, we grew to accept that loving our son was the best thing we could do, as that was something we could give him that all the nurses and doctors just couldn't.
So even though we still felt awful that he was unwell enough to require such intensive care, we had found our own way to help him get better - and we were the only ones who could give it to him.

Now that our little man is safe and sound at home, I have been thinking about other instances when I really felt helpless as I watched one of my children in pain.

I will bypass all the 'child is sick', 'child falls and hurts self' instances, as every parent goes through these, and even those without children can imagine how horrible it must feel to 'kiss the owchie' and still have the child squeal "It's still hurting!", or to sit rocking your child in your arms and trying to kiss the tears away, because they're sick with a fever, and the pain relief you've given them just doesn't seem to be working.

When I think of the absolute worst time I felt helpless to aid my child, one story immediately comes to mind.

This takes me way back, to when Master 4 was Master 2.
He had a stye under his eye on his lower lid, and it had been growing and getting bigger over the past few months, not shrinking as the GP had advised us it would.
After scheduling another appointment with the GP, we were advised to consult an optical specialist/surgeon, as there seemed no other option other than to drain the stye, so that my son would be able to see properly, and wouldn't be in discomfort anymore. While the stye itself wasn't painful, it had grown so large that it pushed the lower lid of his eye so far up that it interfered with his vision, and the stretching of the lid skin was hurting him more every day.
So grossly over-sized was the stye by this stage, that the GP called the specialist straight away, and managed to get us an appointment that afternoon. She did not want us on a waiting list while the stye kept growing.

And so that afternoon I took my son to the specialist.
The specialist seemed nice enough, he did all the routine checks - including poking and prodding the stye (which by this stage was rock hard) and judging what type of procedure was necessary to give my son some relief.
He told me that even though the stye seemed rock-hard, he felt the best course of action would be to drain it, then let it recede on its own.
It was at this point that things started to get odd. Things happened that in hindsight should have been warning signs for me. Such as;  instead of asking me to lift my son onto the exam table, he asked me to lay my son down on the floor, then to hold him down. I did as he said, I had put my trust in this man, he was the professional.
He told me he was going to make a tiny cut in the stye then let it drain out. He said my son would feel a very quick sting as he made the cut, but after that he would feel relief as it drained out. I imagined it would be like popping a blister - a tiny pin-prick, then it all drains away painlessly, and then you put a band aid on.
I enquired, since my son was only 2, as to weather there was to be any pain relief - numbing cream, happy gas, a local anaesthetic? But I was assured that the procedure was to be so quick that pain relief was totally unnecessary. I ignored my better judgement, and agreed.
The specialist produced a scalpel and a tonne of gauze, he nodded to me to start holding my son down.
He made a quick slit in the stye. I felt my son twitch, and he made a small squeal as expected. But the stye did not start to drain, nor did it even start to bleed.
This made the specialist do something so totally barbaric, that to this day I have not forgiven myself for letting one of my children go through such an ordeal.
What this monster did, was ball some gauze up in his hand, and start to roughly push, squeeze and manipulate the stye, exercising such force that his knuckles were white, and my son started to scream.
I remember being frozen with shock. This was not what I had been lead to believe would happen. Was this even a real procedure? Should I say something? All the while my son's free eye bore into me, staring at me as he screamed - seemingly in disbelief that I was letting this happen to him, let along helping this pain be inflicted upon him. Even though it sounds cheesy, I can still hear him wailing "Muuuuummmmmyyyyy!" at the top of his lungs, and staring at me with his tear-filled free eye.
This horrendous scenario lasted for a good few minutes.
By the time I had broken out of my state of shock, and was about to rip my child away from this butcher, the 'specialist' had decided he was finished.
He said, quite matter-of-factly, that there was nothing he could do, and to just take my son to the Children's Hospital. He then charged me $270.
I returned home with a still-crying child who couldn't quite look me in the face. I had betrayed his trust.
I had seen him in such pain, pain that I was helping to inflict upon him, and I had felt utterly helpless during the whole process.


The feeling of helplessness, when associated with our children is always going to be one of the hardest feelings to cope with.
We only want the best for our babies, and we tend to feel like failures if we cant be the magical SuperMum or SuperDad that they see us as. In my experience, there is only one real way to console yourself when this feeling presents - and that is to remember that you give them love that no one else can.
They may still feel the hurt, but you can hug them and fill them up with such love that the pain seems bearable. They may still cry, but you can kiss away those tears. You can tell a funny story or make a funny face that makes them giggle for just a moment, so although they're still crying, they are also smiling - even for only a second.


(Note: We did end up taking our son to the Children's Hospital. We also enquired with the doctors at the Children's Hospital, if the 'proceedure' the butcher had performed was even legal. If it wasn't, we had fully intended to sue. It turned out it was legal -  although all doctors did agree that it was very outdated, would normally only be used on an adult, and certainly never without pain relief.)