All's Well That Ends Well . . .

. . . but there's always trauma drama. 

The GOOD NEWS for me is through all the tests and procedures, my heart was proven healthy.  This is great news, since my Dad and all of my brothers have heart issues.  And since I am older than my brothers, I feel it a particular blessing.  I had a dangerous blood clot in my neck and a few in my right arm, but they are gone!  (Yay!)  I have some follow up stuff to do and some meds I still need to take for a while.  I'll always need to be checked for PVD (peripheral vascular disease), but for now, I'm good to go.  I'm almost healed from the access site, too.  Still moving a little slowly, but getting around the house okay.

So, that's all great, good, normal stuff -- except for if you're raising traumatized kids with attachment issues and anxiety.  To say my illness has thrown things off a bit around here is putting it mildly.  Things haven't been TOO bad -- no reverting to criminal activity or full-blown rages (at least not as of this morning), but we've had some issues to deal with along the way.  And yes, I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Youngest Son has gone into full withdrawal mode the last several weeks.  I wrote about this earlier.  For the most part, we let him live there.  If he gets too belligerent when spoken to, or if he seems he's sinking in depression, we pull him out of his room for some time in.  We play a board game or put a movie on Netflix we know he'll enjoy.  Most of the time, though, he stays in his room and draws the same sports car over and over again, making only minute changes to the color or angle so that he can say, "It's a totally different car."

One of thousands of sports car drawings by Youngest Son.  I've copyrighted this, so that means you can't use it without my permission.  Just sayin'.

For some kids with PTSD and attachment issues, repetitive movement or sound-making is soothing.  For my Youngest Son, it's repetitive car drawing.

Still, I worry so much he will be stuck where he is.  He's done some significant healing.  He's been an exemplary community member and his grades aren't great but they're not horrible either.  He just doesn't seem to have any initiative or drive.  I believe he'd be content to live in our basement the rest of his life, whether he got a job or not -- and I wonder if he'll ever get a job.

Hubby took Youngest Son around to just about every fast food restaurant and store in walking distance over the holiday break.  He picked up applications, filled them out at home, and hubby took him back to deliver them.  Around here, applicants are expected to follow up on their own applications.  If you wait for the phone to ring, you're going to be waiting a long time.  So that's what we're doing.  NOTHING.

Oh, I "made him" call one pizza place, but they were just hiring for drivers.  Youngest Son has had no real motivation to work on getting his driver's license, though he's had the permit since spring 2012.  See, we don't have any cool cars and we're not buying him one.  Why bother?  Right?

As for any overt reaction to my illness, it's been all about not listening.  Even the day I went for my surgery, he was surprised.  "What?  Wait?  Surgery?  What's that?"  Sigh.  Yeah, really.  These are the kinds of things I deal with all. the. time. with my 17 year old son.  The cluelessness is huge.  To the outside world, it looks like we don't include him in anything, or like we don't teach him, don't like him, don't pity him, don't - whatever.  If they spent more than a week of having to actually DEAL WITH this kid 24/7, they might begin to get a clue.  But I realize now, the only ones who understand are other parents living similar lives.

Two days after my surgery, in an accusatory tone, he asked, "Did you not make any BREAD for dinner?"  Um.  No, dear.  I did not make bread for dinner.  I did not make DINNER!  There is plenty of food.  You are a big boy.  You are fine.  And before you ask, I did not do your laundry.  I did not clean the floor.  I did not feed the dogs.  And I did not wipe your butt when you got home from school.  These are all things I am sure you are capable of handling for YOURSELF.  Any more questions?  (Sometimes, I am so not in the mood to be therapeutic, but then I wonder if maybe these kinds of questions back at him aren't just a different KIND of therapeutic parenting.)

As for The Princess, she's been mostly amazing through this whole thing.  There have been a few times when she's stomped off to her room and hidden under her bed, but mostly she's been "too good."  She's done far more than her share around the house and she's done everything for me from make me toast to help me up out of the Lazy Boy.  Yes, there are times she's been too hyper, too immature and too disrespectful to Hubby, but most of the time she's been great.

Quite frankly, she makes a better cup of tea than anyone in the family.

Some really good, caring, and amazing ladies have made meals for us the last few nights and that's been a blessing, too.  If you're one of those ladies, thank you!

I'm getting there.  We're getting there.

Be Still My Heart . . .

No!  Not literally!

I'm typing this raw - right into the format frame on blogger.  No first run using Word off line today.  I'm feeling pretty raw, so why not?  So what if my grammar isn't quite right or if there are a couple of typos.  I'm learning that "so what" is OKAY.  "So what" is okay when parenting traumatized kids, too.  As long as they're safe and you're safe if they're handling something in a way that seems strange or different to typical families, so what?

I leave the house in just about an hour to go see how involved my heart muscle is in all this vascular disease stuff.  I am praying it is okay, despite the blood clots we've already found in my neck and arm.  I so do not want to go through heart surgery.  I'd pass on the vein surgery coming up if I could, too.  Everyone here in the TMT family would.

Youngest son is shut down.  He can't remember exactly what's going on with me even 10 minutes after we review things -- even just the process of what today brings.  He has said he doesn't want to know.  It's okay.

The Princess ended up under her bed with the bedroom door closed again.  I sat outside her bedroom door and sang some made up little diddies about how she was safe and God was near and we were all going to be okay - that we were lucky to be in America with good doctors and good hospitals and that we had insurance and we would still have food to eat and a house to live in and we would still all have each other and everything was okay even though Mom had to do some pretty unfun stuff these next few weeks or so.  I just sat outside the door and sang.  Eventually, I felt silly and started singing the old Batman theme song and then "We three kings of orient are, puffing on a rubber cigar.  Cigar was loaded.  It exploded.  BANG! . . . We two kings of orient are . . . "  She came out to shut me up.  It's okay.

Now, I'm getting off here and slathering on some EMLA cream my family doctor gave me to help me deal with my phobia (trauma) regarding blood draws and IV sticks.  It worked well for the blood test on Tuesday.  I'm hoping it works as well for the IV.

Keep Princess and Youngest son in your prayers.  My four big guys wouldn't mind a word or two for themselves, either.  Hubby, too.

A Hot Mess – And I’m Not Talking Turkey!

I like the way my friend, Diana puts things sometimes.  Recently, she described us both as a “couple of hot messes.”  I can’t think of a better way to put it.  I’ve been a hot mess for quite some time; I just didn’t know how much of a mess I was in until about two weeks ago. 

The kids are still the kids.  Youngest Son is still doing well, but it is the holidays and well, you know, the holidays are hard on kids with complex traumatic pasts.  We got through the Thanksgiving weekend around here pretty well, though.  Most of the time, he stayed in his room and did not participate in family activities with my older sons and my daughter-in-law (and “almost daughter-in-law” – but I’ll tell you about that sometime later).  Anyway, he coped by withdrawing.  That’s what he does.  And I let him.  We’ve learned the best thing to do to help him get through it all is to let him get through it the way he always has.  Now, however, he knows what his behavior is all about and he can identify the feelings – even the hidden feelings stored in his amygdala that trigger his responses to stress.  He can’t always do it in the moment, but he gets there eventually.  DBT has helped him accomplish this.  And besides that, he’s produced some pretty amazing art while he withdraws.

Still, Youngest Son’s Thanksgiving weekend wasn’t perfect.  He gave me some lip (which I did not respond therapeutically to) and treated me as though my own personal hot mess was just a big, stupid inconvenience to him.  For a time, he had no consideration for what I am going through, but it was only for a time.  He backed off.  He’s not done anything to care for me, but backing off shows a lot of care.  I am still in awe of how far he has come.  We wouldn’t be doing this well if we were going through this hot mess last year. 

As for The Princess, being home with me this school year has helped her in ways words cannot fully explain.  After a rough start to the school year, we developed a relaxed rhythm for school work and for social/emotional development.  I’ve really enjoyed having her around, quite frankly.  She’s a lot nicer to everyone since she’s no longer around certain other girls, and she’s learned she has the choice in how to respond to someone who behaves in a way much different than what we are teaching her to “be” as a young, Christian girl.  She now knows that someone who cuts off her friendship, or treats her poorly, or is just plain MEAN, is missing a lot of “good stuff.”  She truly is an awesome kid who has come so much further than most anyone else I know – kid or adult.  Still she’s had her moments, too.  Dealing with this hot mess is frightening to a kid who has been through what she’s been through. 

I haven’t felt well physically for some time now.  There’s been one thing after the other, but I’ve attributed much of it to just getting a bit older and facing the “monster” all middle-aged women face at some point or another.  Most women are through the brunt of it by the time they reach my age, though.  I’ve been one of the “lucky ones” still going strong at age 53.  I am well on the high end of what is still considered average for pre-menopausal women.  So, I just figured my body is a-typical.  I’m going to experience some weird, a-typical things.  So I have.  It’s been going on for probably three years, and I’ve learned to live with it, but it’s getting worse as time goes on.  The kicker for me was when my right arm and hand started being so much colder than my left arm and hand.  Then, my family doctor’s nurse couldn’t get a blood pressure reading in that arm and my pulse was very, very faint.     

So, to shorten a really long story into one that’s bearable reading for a blogpost, it boils down to this:  I’m having cardio-vascular issues.  I have a blood clot in my right jugular vein, about 6” away from my brain.  There are other blood clots in my arm.  I’m going to have an angiogram with radio-active medicine sometime soon to see if there are other clots in other places in my body (as my cardiologist suspects there are), and then after that, I will have surgery.  It’s a hot mess.  Even the little things involved like getting blood drawn are traumatic for me.  I am a notoriously hard “stick.”  I have been this way all my life and my own amygdala has some pretty intense stuff stored in it that gets to me every stinkin’ time I have to have blood drawn.  It truly is terrifying to me.  Yes, terrifying.  So, for those of you reading who may think, “Sheesh.  She needs to get over that.  A blood test is nothing,” don’t think I haven’t tried.  PTSD is PTSD.  Period. 

My kids are scared.  I am scared.  My husband is scared.  No one knows for sure what happens after they put me under for the surgery.  At this point, we’re just trying to deal with a screw up at the doctor’s office last week that had me critically (their word) overdosed on blood thinners thanks to a staff person who didn’t know what she was talking about.  Little things like needing a blood test this morning to see where things are, but not being able to get one, add to that stress.  Yet, I look around and I try to see the women I know who are strong no matter what they face.  And I try.  But my trying is for naught.  I try to remember that courage isn’t the absence of fear, it is moving forward despite the fear.  I am me.  It's okay to be me.  It’s okay to be scared.  I just need to choose how I am going to deal with all this stuff.

I hope my choices make my kids proud – proud like they’ve made me proud.  I just think I sure could use some “easy” up in here, ya’ know?