yucky stuff

Day 80: Me in Parts

| Aspergers Girls

There’s a reason I didn’t go into the medical field besides the fact that I faint if I look at a needle. I don’t do well with illness, disease, or sickness of any sorts, or thoughts of being attacked by a killer species. I do fine with driving my car, walking down dark alleys, crossing bridges, and climbing high places, just can’t deal with physical health conditions—well at least not rationally. The common cold sends me into a tailspin: worse case scenario, worser case scenario, worsest case scenario.

In the course of my four decades plus of living, I was certain of my imminent death at least five times a year. Looming demise total equals 200 times, give or take a death or two. And I’m not talking a passing thought. I’m saying a good two- to three-week sickness-induced death-terror cycle. And with the invention of Google God, the all-knowing search engine, I’ve also had hours of adrenaline-pumped investigative research.

Last year, about this time, I was certain, dead certain, that my heart was going to explode from a genetic disorder. I was so convinced I had the syndrome that I was continually analyzing myself for symptoms, even in my dream state.  In fact, in a comical attempt to self-diagnose, I compared my attached earlobes to others’ attached earlobes and even wondered if my large Italian nose could feasible be considered pinched.

When I was younger, rabies was my big fear. I never ever should have watched the depressing classic Old Yeller in third grade. Why?! Afterwards, my hamster-bit finger led me to check my mouth for foaming saliva hourly, for a month! Watching Hitchcock’s The Birds was another faux pas. Remember the killer bees? Well I do. I believed for years the bees were approaching in swarm.

Bloody noses are notorious fear-buttons, ever since I saw that character on a television show with a bloody nose bleed-out and die.

My fear of the C word started after my kindergarten teacher died; and I still can’t write the word out on paper. Which ironically-sucks because it’s my astrological zodiac sign. Four times during my life, twice as a teenager, and twice as a young mother, doctors suspected I had C or pre-C. No cause for alarm in all four cases, but the panic that ensued during the waiting period was insurmountable.

You know what really bites? Working at a homeless shelter and having a child infected with AIDS bite my leg through my jeans. The doctors assured me my chances of contracting AIDS was almost zero; still they wanted to be certain. I checked my tongue for a white-coat and my skin for sores for a good year.

My most laughable approaching-doom-fear happened when I was nursing my firstborn in the late hours of the night, and I’d stare down at the dirt in the corner of my toenail, and know I was going to die of toe fungus. If you bring in the big guns like MRSA, I so freak out. Any infection is MRSA. Hives? I’m certain I’ll suffocate from severe allergic reaction.  Menstrual cycle off a day—I have growths on my ovaries.

To make matters worse, doctors have wanted to remove my uterus and my gallbladder, and to biopsy my kidney. None of which happened. But the fact of their recommending such procedures makes me think I have bad parts to begin with.

If you’ve got your wits about you, you’ve probably gathered I have a wee bit of a phobia to illness in any form—real, made up, imagined, or non-existent.

What many do not understand about this illness phobia is that no amount of exposure makes a dang difference. With exposure therapy, if someone is afraid of bridges, you can slowly and decisively assist him or her in overcoming the bridge fear. A common therapy strategy might be first showing pictures of bridges, next playing with toy bridges, later taking photos of bridges from afar, and then crossing a small bridge over a creek. If therapy is effective, then the person eventually will cross a bridge as a passenger, then drive assisted, and later cross alone. Sounds logical.

Doesn’t apply to illness: First look at pictures of people who are sick, next play in filthy area, later… not helping! And getting sick and sick over and over again, doesn’t help either. Done that.

I haven’t been feeling myself, lately. Which is significant. Generally speaking my self, due to a host of syndromes and conditions, is relatively fatigued, a little melancholic, and a bit sore in the muscles. So, I hadn’t taken too much note of my intense fatigue, until I could barely function most of the day. My doctor had in the meanwhile sent me my annual blood test forms in the mail (twice), which I avoided like the plague (or in my case the common cold). I finally dragged myself to the doc when the heart palpitations and shortness of breath kicked in. By the day I got my stubborn self to the doc’s office, my forehead was peeling like a rattlesnake sheds.

The good news is it turns out those eight extra pounds are not my fault! And either is this depressions cloud I blamed on the Washington winter weather. Turns out I have hypothyroid.

Guess what this hypothyroid reckoning does to my mind. Here’s the conversation I had with my doctor. I kid you not.

Me: “Well, now that I know I have hypothyroid, I guess I should mention that I’ve been having trouble swallowing. I read that’s a symptom, too.”

Dr. “Oh.” She pulls out a lab slip. “Well then we better get an ultrasound for nodules.”

Me: “Nodules? Can I die from nodules?”

“No”

“I can’t?”

“No.”

“What is the worse case scenario?”

“If they find nodules, the protocol is to keep a watchful eye on them. If they grow, they’ll likely drain them. But nodules are not deadly.”

“Oh, good, but what about cancer? Could I have cancer? Or did my blood tests rule that out?”

“No. Your blood tests didn’t rule that out. But thyroid cancer is very, very rare.”

My eyes grew super big and I swallowed hard.

Dr. added: “And the cure rate for thyroid cancer is 100%.”

“Oh!” Huge sigh. “Thank you so much for adding that. How long will I have to take the pills?”

“For the rest of your life.”

Long pause.

Me: “But what if the end of the world comes? How will I get my pills?”

 

 

 

 

Side Note: (euphemism for I can’t stop babbling)

Taking into consideration the four types of thyroid cancers, I recently researched, the combined cure rate is only 95%. For better effect, in the writing above, you’ll note, I fearlessly overcame my fear of the word cancer. The title Me in Parts means I feel as if I’ve sorted myself into parts with all my constant sickness analysis. The good news is, I always live like I’m dying.

Day 52: Stop Stealing My Articles You Boob!

| Aspergers Girls
This is our Scooby who passed on in February. His photo is here because he makes me feel safe.

If nothing else is gained from this post, at least you got to see a good-looking dog.

That’s our Scoob. He passed on in February at the age of six years. I miss him everyday. Today Scooby’s photo is here on my blog because he reminds me of the beauty and love in the world.

I’m not feeling too happy about people at the moment. Not you, but the boobs of the world! The people who seem to mess it up for the rest of us.

This is my dog Spastic Colon. She is still alive. I put her picture here because Scooby loved her and she's a Boob!

This is my other dog. I love her, but she is a boob.

I just spent three hours going through my entire blog and deleting as many photos as I could find. Fun times!

Hopefully you weren’t following my blog for the cute images.

If you cruise through my posts now, all those animal images Crazy Frog found are sadly gone. Sigh.

Vanished are the YouTubes as well. But there are still links.

At this point, I’m seriously hoping you like to read.

I removed the photos because of copyright infringement. I learned today, through my own research, that I ought not be posting others’ photos without permission; which makes a lot of sense in retrospect. Kind of that AhHa! factor.

I was researching copyright laws after I discovered some BOOB is taking my most popular Aspergers articles and posting them on his/her blog.

I want the word about Females and Aspergers to spread, but at the same time, I don’t want someone stealing my thoughts and my work.

Considerate and honest people contact me first and ask how to go about quoting my work.

Conveniently the “blogger,” who is supposedly some lady, has no contact and no comment section. I don’t think one article is anything he/she wrote.

I needed to do something about this injustice, so I made a cool sign! You can see it below.

If you go to the blog page I listed, which you probably are tempted to do, (as I know I would be) then PLEASE consider coming back to my blog afterwards, and supporting me with comments.

Words like that boob in the comment section would work wonders for my stinky-state of mind.

I know the article says Aspegersgirls—but I don’t want my work and my words on his/her page.

If you look, one of my articles still has my copyright protection on the bottom. Obviously he/she isn’t putting much effort into this.

I know this might not seem like a big deal.  But it’s a big deal to me. This is my heart’s work. Please consider not supporting bloggers who steal other people’s work. Don’t follow them. Don’t visit their blogs. It discourages other honest people, like me, from wanting to blog at all.

I will gladly remove the sign when my articles are removed from the blog page where they don’t belong. I also thought to include my own sign. Because if Boob gets one, then I should, too. I don’t care if this Boob’s blog hits go up. Hopefully it will only be for a day. Thanks for letting me do a mini-protest. Not that you had a choice. But thanks, anyhow.

The sign has been removed after contact with blog owner. However I will replace the sign, if needed.

Day 48: Death by Saliva

| Aspergers Girls

I awoke in the early hours of the morn hacking like a hairball-ridden feline with my throat aflame. I’d apparently choked on my own saliva and was still mostly asleep, pacing the bedroom floor while gasping for air. My throat was parched from what had to have been an up chuck of bile.

Out of breath and slit-eyed, I made my way upstairs, and sat in the cold living room under the light of a singular lamp, contemplating my death. LV (see my lingo button) was wide awake, panting and pacing in a pure state of panic, entirely convinced that at any moment the co-conspirators of spit and throat would rebel and squeeze the last breath from me.  Sir Brain refused to ever sleep again. Crazy Frog started counting on his webbed digits all the ways a human could feasible expire. Elephant headed out to the forest. Phantom was weeping in the dark. And OCFlea was in his element, strumming on his ukulele and serenading Death.

Little Me, I passed out on the couch while bargaining with the gods.

Saliva Choking Info. Found Online: “I would be interested to know if you are Overweight. The symptoms that you are describing sound very much like obstructive sleep apnea, which is more common in people who are overweight. In this increasingly common disorder, the soft tissue in the back of your throat relaxes while you sleep, and then it falls into the airway.”   

Oh! JOY! Time to find me a muzzle. 

This morning, I looked in the bathroom mirror, and I swear my chin is gone. Vanished. Took off with the night. And I have a taste in my mouth like some Keebler elves were up late lacquering my teeth with pond slime. My chest hurts from choking, and still from that nut that caught in my throat from that frozen-cheesecake incident a couple of weeks back. My legs, and basically every part of my body, ache from starting back up with my evil (Eeee-V-aalll) exercise regime. Oh, yes, and my headache came back like black magic, right when the Dean of Education called me last night.

The Dean is heading to China. She gave me a quick ring-a-ding before she left her office for the week. I will get reimbursed thousands of dollars, it seems. Her advice, to set the final part of the plan in motion, was to write a very short, ambiguous email explaining to the VP of the university that I had to withdraw from the college because of my disability. (For university auditing purposes)

Oh boy, did Elephant barge out from nowhere. All of the sudden anger, which I can only assume had been held hostage in the dark of the haunted woods with Phantom, came barging out full-force, trumpets and all.

Elephant had a thing or two to say to the dean. And Elephant actually sounded quite intelligent during the process.  First off Elephant reminded the dean, who I have to say was kind in her manner, that I would not lie, that I was not leaving the university because I had Aspergers! In truth I was leaving because of the way the professors treated me. And that in my last Master’s Program, I had had no trouble whatsoever with the professors, and was in fact supported! (What a concept.)

After Elephant’s romp, the dean was rather quiet. When she spoke again, she still said the same thing: A brief email would be best.

Within a few more minutes, Elephant got to the bottom of the situation. (Now I’m picturing butts. Sorry. Can’t help myself. But I’m stopping Crazy Frog from posting cute butt photos.)

Elephant discovered that the dean had no qualms about anything that Elephant had said. In fact she agreed. With some careful questioning, Elephant came to realize the dean wanted me to write a brief email to assure I’d receive my tuition back. The brevity would avoid the potential of my tuition reimbursement request going into the long, drawn out appeal process. The dean also concurred, quite nicely, that after I had the money in hand, I might consider sending a letter to the VP explaining the truth of the events.

Bravo! One step closer to putting this university behind me! (Butt images again…)

Crazy Frog is ever so thankful to have his precious i-Mac computer back today. Seems he’s become quite the computer snob.

My post was super short yesterday, by my standards. Wouldn’t you know, it turns out that people who read blogs like short posts! Now I have to go back to review my Blog 101 Rules again, and develop a working list of the unspoken norms and etiquette of blogging. It appears, through the act of blogging, I have stumbled upon a cyber society with its own set of virtual rules and expectations.

I’ll be hosting a sit down with the Geek Posse at high noon, to acknowledge our quirky-cute, uniqueness and our right to be however we wish to be in any society, cybernetic or not. Though, I predict the whole meeting will turn into a Matrix  (virtual reality) debate, where Crazy Frog searches out the boundaries of his existence, and theorizes he is existing in some simulated world anyhow. Regarding their existence, I imagine I’ll have to console LV and Sir Brain with dark organic truffle chocolate, yet again.

And then by sundown, I’ll inevitably find myself gasping in the night with no chin. Such is the story of my life.

The Muppet Matrix. For all my fellow Geek Posse Folks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQrotZDDsTE


Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Day Thirty-Eight: Things That Make Me Go EWW!

| Aspergers Girls

Once a month my boys have late start—a time where they go to school an hour late because the teachers have a staff meeting. This bit of schedule variation sets me up for an anxiety-ridden morning. Everything—the alarm clock, breakfast time, traffic—is a little bit off. And the morning is always a little less predictable.

For instance, my youngest is currently undergoing an eye therapy program, and because we had extra time before school began, he played his favorite eye therapy game with one of his older brothers at 8:00 am. Eye therapy first thing in the morning, instead of the traditional afternoon time, brought about changes. Changes that included Robert, my youngest, standing on the basement-level floor at the bottom of our staircase, knocking wooden blocks off an ironing board by smacking an orange soft ball with a big stick. A ball held by a string hung over the stair banister at the top-level, a string that I balanced, while playing referee and keeping score.

Late start meant that there was time for my youngest, age ten, when finished knocking over the blocks and shouting gleefully, to make himself some scrambled eggs (without asking); so that when I returned from a cold shower, (because all three boys had enough extra time to all shower in a row, which left Mom no hot water), I found the kitchen, I had painstakingly cleaned, covered in eggs, shredded cheese, and what-have-you.

This while my Spastic-Colon (my dog; not my intestines) decided to do that move that all dogs do when there is a clump stuck to their rear. I watched, my hands covered in wet egg, as Spastic-C balanced on her butt, used her front legs like ski poles, hiked up the back legs, and slid across the kitchen linoleum, leaving a line of crap. My oldest, by then groaning and moaning from the disgustingness of the situation, was made (by me) to balance Spastic-C between his legs and hike up her tail, to ensure I had the best vantage point and stability for scissoring off the poop lump.

It’s about 9:00 am and I’m so ready to crawl back in bed. Only my husband’s big 5-O is arriving shortly, and I haven’t the faintest idea what to buy him. That, and LV is shouting: “Oh my gosh! You’re going to be married to a fifty-year-old! Gross.” (Yes…I know…it’s right around the corner for me, too.)

I thought about making a sweet list, using an acrostic of the alphabet, where I match one item/person/event that I’m thankful for to each letter. For instance, A is for apples, B is for boys, C is for custard. But then I thought (because let’s face it, thinking is what I do best) that I wasn’t in the mood to be some chipper, happy-go-lucky, nothing-gets-me-down, poop head! I’m not a Pollyanna; never will be; never could be. Though that used to be Spastic-C’s name when we adopted her, which in retrospect explains a whole lot.

By the way, my real name means from Mars.

Right now my eyes hurt, my shoulders hurt, and I’m freaking out knowing I’m only about 10% done with this blog. Since I’ve already written about 60 pages. Logically, I hypothesize I will be typing some 600 pages by the time this blog hits the magic 365 Days.  Don’t you even think about erasing me from your blog email list!

There is no doubt I have enough thoughts inside of me to share 600-pages of content.  That’s not the troubling factor. What I fret over is the absurdity that could potentially leak out in roughly 300 days.

There is only so much editing Crazy Frog can do (my lingo button); and there is a limited amount of brute strength I possess to keep LV and Sir Brain from running the show. Then there is Elephant, who likes to clomp over the pages, and Prophet in my Pocket’s extremely profound, lost-in-my-mind prose. Then I have Phantom, who hasn’t even showed herself fully. I can only imagine what she’s got hidden under her cape.

Oh Crap! (I hope that’s not offensive in countries outside of the USA; because where I live, crap is actually quite mild comparatively speaking. I’m stopping myself from using the thesaurus in combination with crap. But feel free.)

I typed Oh Crap because I forgot I had to still take my youngest to school. Don’t worry. He ran barefoot to the van and got his socks and shoes on during the ride, just in time, before he had to sprint to the classroom. Although, he couldn’t wear his new tie-shoes because there was no time for shoe tying. That’s why he said to me as he was bolting out the van’s side door, “Don’t worry Mom. I’ll call you if my shoes fall apart!”

I’m such a good mom.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m in an exhausted, wish-I-had-stayed-in-bed mood, I don’t like to read about how grateful people are and how life always has a bright side.

In all honesty, what cheers me up is hearing about other people’s crap and their struggles, and how they’re still doing okay despite it all, and that we’re all just free-styling in some giant pool of life, because know one really knows how to swim the right way.

Here’s a list that would make me happy, if you wrote it. I invite you to make one and post your list in comments. Just right (write) the first thing that pops into your mind. That’s what I did. But you probably figured that out.

Things That Make Me Go EWW! (or bother me)

A: Ants when they crawl out in masses out of cracks in the house

B: Beef on a plate

C: Curds on milk

D: Dentist chairs

E: Egg shells dripping with raw egg

F: Fat around my waist and on my upper arms

G: Goats’ stench at petting zoos

H: Hamburger cooking smell

I: Insides of the toilet bowl rim

J: Jellybeans that are throw up flavor

K: Kids picking their nose

L: Lights that are fluorescent

M: Money; it’s a love-hate relationship

N: Nuts in frozen carrot cake that scratch my throat

O: Octopus on a plate

P: Pigeon poop

Q: Questions that aren’t really questions but disguised insinuations or insults

R: Red coming out of a nose

S: Sunshine factor in the state of Washington

T: Teeth that are chipped

U: Underneath firewood where there are bugs and spiders

V: Vampire HBO series endings, because I want more

W: Wind

X: X-rays of any type, especially teeth x-rays

Y: Yellow in the toilet bowl

Z: Zoos, especially petting zoos

I thought that list would take a long time. It didn’t. So therapeutic! I think my next list will be people that make me go EWW! No. Just kidding.

Here’s a great alphabet list from another blogger that made me laugh! Prawn and Quartered Blog