Into town, closer to the hospital, closer to the services that we now need for Ivy.

Closer to my mum.

I can’t see how to do it though.

If we move and Ivy has the IVIG then going back to work for a couple of days a week is a possibility for me.

It could be good.

If Ivy can go to pre school with Noah then I could go to work.

It wouldn’t be for any extra income.

It would be for me.

In town we would be close to the Performing Arts School, if Imogen and Madeline got in.

We would have access to after school care, services and people who could support David and I through this business of having a sick child.

But

the market is terrible and our house is nowhere near being able to be sold.

It would need work.

Work that would be easily undone by seven children running around.

I would miss people.

I’ve done this whole moving thing so many times before and I would miss people (Tracey).

If we move we will have to start again.

New schools, new dance teachers, new soccer teams, new neighbourhood.

What about our animals?

I love my house and the view we have, anything we might buy in town would be smaller, much smaller.

We would have to move and rent, something tiny  and unlikely to accept pets.

Clean up the house and make it marketable and then look to buy again after it sold and after I had been working again for six months.

How do we do that?

A mortgage and rent on one income?

Can it be done and if so, would it be worth it?

My head hurts trying to put everything into perspective.

Was Ivy that sick that she needed to see him today? He had a twins’ birth he needed to be at and alot was going on, did she really need his time and attention or could it wait?

I said she was sick.

If she weren’t, did she really think that I would take an hour long drive in stormy weather?

What for?

Just to rattle his cage a bit? Make him work harder?

Ivy is sick.

No, she is not at the point of needing an emergency admission but she does need someone, other than me, who has not slept well in over a week, to cast an eye on her and to treat her.

She does get up in the mornings, quite bright and able to tinker the hours away but after her nap it is a downhill slide into the nights which are full of tears and pain.

While Noah has been inflicted with croup and now asthma as well, his recovery has been short and sweet and, functions normally, despite a two day setback.

Ivy’s temperature is up and down, she has a wet cough and her ears are producing some funky smelling stuff that, no sooner do I put the ear drops in, reproduces at an alarming rate and gloops out like slow moving lava. Her antibiotics are pushed up to the absolute maximum and this is making her vomit, or maybe it is just an explosion of gooey pink fluid, when she coughs too hard.

She claims her legs ache, her throat is sore, she is eating little and drinking little and well, you get the picture.

Having said all of that, she is predominantly okay.

The thing is, she was okay just before she moved into sepsis the last two times and that is what scares me, I think.

Ok is not good. I’d settle for good.

Ok is not great, great would be the best.

Ok is not acceptable for me.

Is that bad?

I don’t want to stress anybody out. I don’t want to make the paed’s day a living nightmare.

I do want Ivy to feel well.

Last night, I was lying with her as she grizzled about her pain, looking at her, holding her little hand in mine, I wondered if this constant illness is going to change her.

When Immy was going through all of this, it was very different.

For a start, I would never have waited on a 39 something degree temp with febrile convulsions. I wouldn’t have to consider family dynamics and when Lily came along (Maddy often came to hospital as a boarder) I had the help of my mother in law. David, a junior at the time, would not have to weigh up his job security over his family and neither would I. 

 Our paed, who had a good understanding of immune deficiency, supported Imogen’s need for quick access to IV antibiotics. We were usually in and out in a few days, with barely a ruffle to have to smooth over. Yes, there were some scary times but once we got into the swing of things, the girls’ paed was very good at slowing the emergent admissions by heading them off at the pass.

Immy would be discharged and that girl was so easy going, she seemed to transition back into the outside world with no problems. There would be no lag, no five minute breather. We just kept going.

She never asked about or recounted her hospital stays, other than the reflection that she loved the deep hospital bath. Of course, in later years she has asked questions but once answered she moves forward and doesn’t look over her shoulder.

Ivy is a different story.

Since the last bout of hospital admissions she has had an increasing fear of all things medical, which is understandable but beyond that, is the constant need for reassurance; that her old canula site is  better, that her ears are okay, that she is ‘very brave’.

She is second guessing herself and her ability to heal.

After we come home or after a long bout of being sick, she takes an equally long time to be emotionally well, with the world. If I were to take her out the day after a discharge, she would not cope, hasn’t coped.

So, I sit in the dark, bowed over her like some old knotted willow tree and I worry and wonder how this is changing who she was originally supposed to be.

Will she go through life always scared and worried. whereas before she may not have?

Will she second guess her abilities?

Will she become the weaker person because of all these years of recurrent illness and what can I do to help her?

I cuddle her and tell her she is the bravest soul I know. I kiss her and tell her she is better. I encourage her to be active when she is well. I distance myself so that she can just be one of the kids.

Am I doing the right things by her though?

Nobody wants to screw up their kids.

I want her to be everything she can be. I want her wildest dreams to come true. I want her to be happy.

That’s all.

If she can be happy then I will have done my job well.

*edited to add, In the end, Ivy’s appointment was only pushed back an hour*

I’m a big girl, I can admit that without collapsing with jelly legs.

Or falling in lust.

Or swooning.

Or gushing.

Not just your average good looking. He is really good looking and he is nice to the staff at the hospital and his hands are strong.

Does anyone else like strong hands?

No? Just another of my strange little quirks, perhaps.

His personality is weighted in salesman like shmooze. (Nothing against salesmen, you know, just likening to the stereotype and all).

What I mean is, he could talk his way out of any trouble.

Any at all.

And did I mention the power dressing?

One of my friend’s reckons that is my sole purpose for keeping him as our paed. I have been dazzled by his power shirts! (Purple being one of his favourite power colours).

I can make these observations because I spend so much damn time with the man.

When he comes to visit in the hospital the nurses surround him, like bees to honey.

* and there is much swooning to be had*

There is just something about him. 

Charasmatic springs to mind. (All of the above does not lessen my frustration with him).

While we were in the hospital last, nearly every single nurse, who came near us, told us how (use sing song, lovey dovey voice here) lucky we were to have him for our paed, how delicious he was and how, it was unfortunate that he was married and had a mess of kids because he could park his size 11 boots under their beds any time he wanted!

Oh. Yes. They Did.

Ewwwww.

Not how you want to be thinking about your child’s doctor.

It did get me to thinking though, about personality types and how some people just fit into a group. I think about this alot because it is one of David’s little hobbies and I kind of like people watching and trying to figure out their type too.

Here are the four basic personality types and their traits for you to look at and a couple of links to more involved descriptions.

It’s fun and a little bit wierd working out which type you fall into.

 Taken from Wikipedia;

The assessments classify four aspects of behavior by testing a person’s preferences in word associations (compare with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). DISC is an acronym for:

• Dominance - relating to control, power and assertiveness
• Influence - relating to social situations and communication
• Steadiness (submission in Marston’s time)- relating to patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness
• Conscientiousness (or caution, compliance in Marston’s time) - relating to structure and organization

These four dimensions can be grouped in a grid with D and I sharing the top row and representing extroverted aspects of the personality, and C and S below representing introverted aspects. D and S then share the left column and represent task-focused aspects, and I and C share the right column and represent social aspects. In this matrix, the vertical dimension represents a factor of “Assertive” or “Passive”, while the horizontal represents “Open” vs. “Guarded”. ^[3]

• Dominance: People who score high in the intensity of the ‘D’ styles factor are very active in dealing with problems and challenges, while low D scores are people who want to do more research before committing to a decision. High “D” people are described as demanding, forceful, egocentric, strong willed, driving, determined, ambitious, aggressive, and pioneering. Low D scores describe those who are conservative, low keyed, cooperative, calculating, undemanding, cautious, mild, agreeable, modest and peaceful.
• Influence: People with High I scores influence others through talking and activity and tend to be emotional. They are described as convincing, magnetic, political, enthusiastic, persuasive, warm, demonstrative, trusting, and optimistic. Those with Low I scores influence more by data and facts, and not with feelings. They are described as reflective, factual, calculating, skeptical, logical, suspicious, matter of fact, pessimistic, and critical.
• Steadiness:(Submission in Marston’s time): People with High S styles scores want a steady pace, security, and don’t like sudden change. Low S intensity scores are those who like change and variety. High S persons are calm, relaxed, patient, possessive, predictable, deliberate, stable, consistent, and tend to be unemotional and poker faced. People with Low S scores are described as restless, demonstrative, impatient, eager, or even impulsive.
• Conscientious: (Compliance in Marston’s time): Persons with High C styles adhere to rules, regulations, and structure. They like to do quality work and do it right the first time. High C people are careful, cautious, exacting, neat, systematic, diplomatic, accurate, tactful. Those with Low C scores challenge the rules and want independence and are described as self-willed, stubborn, opinionated, unsystematic, arbitrary, and careless with details

http://en.wikipedia.org:80/wiki/Four_Temperaments Describes where personality traits originated from.

http://www.personalitypage.com/high-level.html   This is a fantastic site. The labels below come from this site and give the best overall description of type.

The paed is a high ‘I’ with bits of ‘C’ and ‘D’ ‘The Inspirer’

David is  is a mix of  ‘C’ and ‘S’  mostly, ‘C’ and maybe some ‘D’ as well. Known as ‘The Mechanic’

Me?

Dave thinks I am firstly an ‘S’ with some ‘C’ and ‘I’ thrown in there. ‘The Nurturer’

Obviously not many people would fall into the exact categories and there are some variants but that is where the fun really begins.

So, what type are you? Go and work it out and then tell me!

Then I will give you all an Ivy update as we just spent the morning with ‘The Inspirer’ and I know you are all just dying to know where we are headed next!

We are supposed to be going to a wedding this weekend but I haven’t seen my friend for so long now, I feel that I shouldn’t go. Besides that, when I think about getting out amongst people my heart jumps into my throat. The thought of mingling with other people makes me nervous.

Sick nervous.

It hasn’t always been this way. I used to be a social creature, who needed to get out and be with others but as I become increasingly overwhelmed with Ivy’s illness I feel ’safer’, for want of a better word, staying at home.

Don’t get me wrong, I still get out. I have to. The kids have after school activities and of course there are all the doctor’s appointments but when it comes to being social, I suck.

Alot.

I used to be good at holding a conversation, making my thoughts and ideas known but now I find it is easier to be quiet.

It seems the phobia for staying inside has made all my other little quirks twice as bad.

I worry about what I say, I think what comes out of my mouth sounds weird or unimportant or just plain dumb.

I worry what I look like to others. That I am not good enough in some way.

I just worry.

Weird, I know.

The sad thing is, it’s starting to be more than just around strangers.

My family, my friends, in particular, my own husband, who I have known for years and knows me inside and out, I suddenly feel inadequate around.  Like nothing I say holds any interest. I feel like I’ve said it all and I’ve exhausted all new avenues of conversation without sounding like a total train wreck.

It’s better to just be quiet.

I’m really struggling. (insert nervous laugh and wonder if I am divulging too much of my inner thoughts to even the most forgiving of universes).

Psychotic?

No…maybe…I don’t know anymore.

In losing myself, through having to give up work and being confined, often, to the four walls of a hospital room, I have just lost my confidence in who I am, I think.

Maybe I just need a holiday, time to reassess.

Also, a period of wellness for Ivy might be good.

Might help.

I am typing at the kitchen table waiting for another friend to arrive with lunch and I feel as though I am going to throw up. Try as I might to deter her from ‘doing lunch’ she is insistant that we catch up. I cancelled my going to her house (she is a chef) and so she is bringing lunch here.

Part of me is very grateful to have such a wonderful friend, who will go the extra mile for me but another part is worried that I am not good enough for her…for anyone, really.

My maternal grandmother had very bad agoraphobia in the last years of her life. It makes me think that maybe there is a little mental health issue going on here and that a trip to the prescriber of the crazy pills might not be such a bad idea.

Ugh, I don’t know.

Do you have funny quirks and phobias?

Please tell and make an old shut - in feel better.

For as long as I can remember I have carried the extra kilos, have never been the skinny girl, never will.

School was a tragic affair of teasing and bullying. There were things that happened in the playground that I will carry with me forever.

Like that teacher in the forth grade who made ‘Boom Boom’ sounds (to the jeers and applause of the sporty kids) as I thundered down the run to the long jump pit in a bid to participate in the compulsory sports day.

Or the fifth grade dance item I was not allowed to participate in because my being large detracted from the overall effect of the dance of the Maypole.

Or the time the sixth graders tripped me and pulled down my underwear so that everyone could see how large my backside actually was.

Ah good times, my friends, good times.

Things were not much better in highschool, although going to an all girls school taught me that cruelty was possible in stealth mode and that you could be mean in a really passive aggressive way.

I could go into how my father’s stock standard line for me, that I looked like the side of a house, or even more bluntly that I was fat and ugly and that he was embarrassed to walk down the street with me, made things thousands of times worse but that would just be laying the blame on someone who can’t defend their actions (read dead) and besides that I’m all about taking responsibility for my own choices.

And I chose to put the food in my mouth. I made the wrong food choices, for whatever reasons.

As an adult it has taken me a long time to feel comfortable in my own skin.

My first diet was when I was eight and I have yo - yo - ed ever since.

I ballooned out to a massive 134kg then took control and lost 58kg and then put it all back on again post death of baby and then lost 40kgs of that so that I could fall pregnant again. I have only lost a minimal amount since birthing for the last time but I am ok with that for now.

I am a big girl and that sits okay with me for the first time ever.

When I say okay, I mean I sometimes look in the mirror and don’t like what I see and tell myself I need to do something about it but mostly, I just accept that this is me and go with it.

Motherhood has changed my body in ways I never thought possible. My wobbly bits got wobblier and I have lumps and bumps that would make any plastic surgeon shudder (either that or have them rubbing their hands in anticipated millions with all the work that needed to be done to achieve anything resembling a ‘normal’ body).

I think becoming a mother has also changed my perspective on body image and that is why I am okay with being larger than the average Australian gal.

As a mum, (and a larger mum, with multiple food issues) I have worked really hard to teach the girls about right choices, exercise and everything in moderation. I’ve tried to teach them that everyone is different and that is okay. I’ve taught them about genetics and how their parentage plays a big role in their DNA and that they need to take that into consideration when choosing the food they put into their bodies. Immy and Maddy have been taught about fat cell lay down early in life and how these will be filled as they become adolescents, in anticipation for their child bearing years.

An interesting side to this was how society has changed but the human body has not evolved along with it.

I’ve tried to teach the kids about teasing and how even a tiny little thing can stay with a person forever, wounding them deeply. (Imogen understands, she has endured alot of teasing about her teeth in the past).

I am proud that my girls are in the right weight range for their height. I have worked hard to get them there. Okay, they are bigger than some of the girls in their year. The girls who are allowed to diet (mine aren’t), the girls who are small by genetics (my aren’t), the girls who are still riding on that fast childhood metabolism (I never let that be a chance to be less vigilant).

I am proud that the kids accept that people come in all different shapes and sizes. To me that is the most important thing.

I have to say though that I am saddened and disappointed, after all that hard work, that a teacher would make a remark, one single remark, that one of my girls was ‘big’.

With that, it has brought about requests to limit calories and has made my girls doubt themselves, it has rocked the named ‘big’ girl’s confidence to the very core.

I am angry.

I have pondered why I am so angry for a while.

Is it because of my own struggles with rude comments made by adults who were supposed to help to build my confidence and a happy, healthy me?

Is it because I don’t want my kids to ever feel the way I did? Maybe because I know what it feels like.

Is it because I feel that my own choices now reflect on my children?

Maybe it’s because I think it’s wrong that someone as influential as a teacher makes those judgement calls, those life altering words that will sting forever.

What right did this person have to do that? She must think herself pretty perfect to be able to say that to an almost 12 year old.

Maybe it’s for all the above reasons and that it hurt my girl and that it hurt me.

The question now is; what am I going to do about it?

Aside from damage control from my side, should I kick up a fuss at the school?

This year I don’t feel like the world’s best anything.

In fact I feel like sh*t.

The last few weeks have really knocked my confidence, as a mother.

I feel as though I am  free falling.

Out of control.

In true blog - happy style though I am going to give you a photo of how I picture motherhood because that’s what they are doing over at 5 Minutes For Mom and even though I can’t enter their competition because I am an Aussie, I am going to join in because, today I really need to remind myself how wonderfully amazing motherhood is.

Motherhood is this;

 that first breath taking, life altering glimpse at new life,

a change in this world - your world.

Knowing that nothing will ever be the same again, whether it is your first foray into motherhood or you sixth time down the road, your journey will be different from anything that has gone before it.

Motherhood is looking into the eyes of your child,

and knowing perfection,  for just that instant

and nothing else matters.

Motherhood is the past, the present and the future all wrapped up in this tiny being.

It is joy, hope, sacrifice, love, fear, sometimes painful, miraculous, often messy, exhausting

but worth it.

All of it is.

She physically and me emotionally.

I am not sure I can cope with her being unwell now.

Not now.

Not any time in the next six weeks or so.

But she is.

And I have to deal with it.

Because.

Just because I am the mother.

Yesterday I had the world’s biggest panic attack and I haven’t had one of those in such a long, long time.

There was nothing to trigger it.

Nothing obvious, except the last six months of doctor yuckiness and second guessing myself as a Mum. Nothing obvious except that William’s birthday is coming and my whole self is being engulfed by his presence.

It is really just an adrenalin rush, the panic attack. An overdose of it, if you will, and you get the sweating and  heart palpitations and the dizziness. All the physical signs of the emotional turmoil coming to the surface.

I hate them though.

They are an open sign of the crazies.

For me.

So, the girl’s ears are bad and she is throwing up her antibiotic and her poo is gross, runny and black (because she is on the iron and because she has gone back on the Erythromycin - I know Mary, I know). She is back on the EES because she started vomiting the Bactrim and she spiked a temp. Now she is not stomaching that either.

Her tummy is just so tender.

We were hoping to go away this Easter but all of our funds are sadly depleted from ongoing medical expenses and Dave just cannot see a way around it. He is stressed about money, which I completely understand and support and I am stressed about everything else.

Which brings me to my point.

My breaking point.

I wonder if others can feel it coming.

When they reach the end of their tethers and they know that if something doesn’t give something is going to give.

I can feel myself getting agitated and short with the children. I can feel that…lump…just under the surface.

You know that knot?

It just keeps growing, balling itself up, until eventually, it will cause an obstruction and all the panic, anxiety, stress, sadness, anger, horror will come bubbling out. As harsh words, as ‘what about me’s’ as emotional breakdown.

If I don’t tend to this node, do something to ease the pressure… I don’t know, really.

Please tell me that it’s normal. Please tell me you all know what I am talking about. Please tell me I’m not at breaking point yet.

It was nice.

To be out.

To see a friend.

Later that night we started up a conversation via email.

It was a wicked, naughty, fly by the seat of your pants, conversation of abandonment about…well… about lust. Two women who met not so long ago, letting their hair down…showing their true selves in the safety of words.

It got me thinking; why can’t we talk to each other face to face that way? Why can’t we, as people, look one another in the eyes and bare our souls the way we can in email? Not just this friend and I but people in general?

tell someone your hearts desire, your thoughts, your vivid memories, good and bad.

To wear your heart on your sleeve.

To just be you.

Why are there all these social barriers when we are with others? Why do we hide our true selves, only to venture out in written prose?