What's Been Going On: Thursday, 23 June, 2022 - Sunday, 26 June, 2022

Monday again, and here we are. Can’t say it’s necessarily a *good* morning, because *gestures at the state of the world* but I’ve still got fight in me, and I hope you do too. The weather has cooled down a little, enough to turn the air conditioning off, so it’s actually really nice this morning. I’m going to make the best of it, before getting started on the many tasks of the day, including more homeschool prep, volunteer work, cooking, and laundry.

It's been a rough week and things aren’t looking to improve, so I’m hoping you’re all practicing copious amounts of self-care. It’s not easy, but it’s important. We’re in it for the long game, and we’ve got to take care of ourselves, and others.

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Thursday, 23 June, 2022

I emptied and ran the dishwasher on a cleaning cycle, then sat down for coffee. I wrote and posted Thursday’s post, got some lentils in the Instant Pot, sauteed some onion, garlic, and mushrooms, and then it was time for homeschool prep. I’ve decided to go with the school curriculum for Language Arts (it's free and this way my daughter will be right on track with her public school classmates), so I’m going through that and marking all the material we need, along with familiarizing myself with everything. I paused to prepare a lentil loaf (with added mushrooms; this is really good and extremely versatile and easily veganized. It makes for great sandwiches the next day!), and returned to going through the curriculum.

After lunch, I filled and ran the dishwasher, then baked the lentil loaf. I sliced some broccoli and took out multiple loads of compost, wiped down the countertops, and returned for more homeschool prep. Then I went out on the porch to read with my daughter.

Inside, I roasted and steamed the broccoli (my daughter doesn’t care for it roasted, so I always steam a bit for her). I emptied and refilled the dishwasher, then chopped the potatoes to get them in the air fryer. After dinner and Duolingo, I had planned to go for a walk, but I was feeling really, really tired, so I showered and lay down for a bit. I put my daughter to bed, read The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, and my husband and I watched one episode of Unusual Suspects before going to bed.

 

Friday, 24 June, 2022

Aftere coffee, I wrote and posted my Friday post, I filled and ran the dishwasher, scooped the litterbox, then got dressed and ready. I showered my daughter…and then read the news on the computer. I spent most of the rest of the morning on the computer in an entire rage.

I don’t owe anyone my story, but here it is anyway. When I got pregnant (on purpose!) with my son, I *very* quickly developed hyperemesis gravidarum (the Latin medical name for ‘morning sickness that wants you dead’). We’re talking DAYS after I tested positive, and I tested positive at ten and twelve days after I ovulated. Within days, I was vomiting like the little girl from The Exorcist and needing to go to the emergency room, sometimes multiple times a day, to get rehydrated by IV. This went on for a few weeks until my then-husband called the doctor and expressed his concern for how sick I was. I wasn’t supposed to be seen until I was 12 weeks, but they said to bring me if he was worried. I sat in that waiting room with my hand clamped over my mouth after having done the usual pee-in-a-cup thing. I met my OB when he rushed into the room and said, “Hi, I’m Doctor Blahblahblah. How do you feel about the hospital?”

I was 7 weeks pregnant. He had yet to examine me. That’s how bad my urine looked. In just a few weeks, I had dropped an enormous amount of weight. I’m 5’8; during this hospitalization, they clocked me at 102 pounds (that’s about 46 kilograms). I continued to lose weight after this (like I said, this was my FIRST hospitalization).

Do me a favor. Take a good, deep breath. Let it out.

I couldn’t do that. Taking anything like a normal breath made me throw up. I threw up after every time I showered. Moving around too much made me throw up. Standing made me throw up. Sitting up made me throw up. The movement from the TV screen made me throw up. For months, all I did was lie in bed with my head under the covers and listen to the TV, and throw up. Everything I ate or drank, I threw up. I discovered I’m allergic to the combination of two common anti-nausea drugs (THAT was a fun hospital trip). The one med that worked, insurance wouldn’t pay for, and it was $3000 per month.

I lay there in my hospital bed, alone (husband was in the military and had to go back home so he could go to work; we lived over 1000 miles from any family), scared, and I wanted to cry, but I knew I couldn’t, because it would make me throw up. From all my reading, I knew that a lot of women who suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum ended up aborting, because it’s just too awful (to this day, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s legit the worst thing I’ve ever gone through). And I considered my options. Could I keep doing this for another 33+ weeks? Did I want this baby that badly to continue suffering like this, to the detriment of my own health?

I did.

I came to that conclusion lying on a crunchy hospital bed, after lying on a cot in a storage room in the ER (due to lack of space) for about twelve hours, in a room with an elderly woman who had THE FLU (I’m STILL angry that’s where they put me. I know they were struggling for space, but REALLY?!!?!?!????), hooked up to what was probably my thirtieth-or-more IV in three weeks (yes, my arms looked AWESOME), and I decided to keep doing all of this.

And to this day, I don’t blame any woman out there for choosing differently. It was bad. And to be honest, I was pro-choice before this; this experience only made me more so.

Had I not had this choice, had I been forced to be a prisoner in a body that was actively trying to kill me… there’s no doubt that I would’ve ended my life. If I had been forced to suffer through this, especially with the insurance company telling me I didn’t need the one medication that kept me out of the hospital, that I wasn’t worth it and their saving money was more important than my health, yeah. It would’ve been over and I would have been dead.

My son knows all about this. He knows that he is here because I made the choice for him to be here, despite what it cost me, and what the alternative would have been had I not had the power to decide what to put my body through. He’s just as angry about the fall of Roe v. Wade as I am.

I made it through the pregnancy, but with permanent damage to my body, and the day before I gave birth, I weighed in at 131.5 lbs. No one believed I was full-term because I was so small. I lost a tooth, needed three root canals, and had many other fillings (despite brushing my teeth after every time I threw up. The baby takes from your body, including from your bones. I fully expect to get an osteoporosis diagnosis at some point in the not-too-distant future. I had over $10,000 of dental work done and my teeth are permanently screwed up. It took me over a year and a half of appointments every three weeks to repair this damage). My chronic pain from my back problems likely began here; doctors are shocked when I tell them I was initially diagnosed with my degenerative disc disease at 23, but that’s what tough pregnancies do. They ruin your body.

So you can imagine how Friday’s news made me feel. It would have been my death sentence had it happened back then. Not that the people who did this care. They don’t, and they never have.

We had an early lunch so we could go to my daughter’s counselor. Afterwards, we stopped by the ATM so I could get some money out, and then it was home to have some yogurt while I raged on the computer a little more.

I went out on the porch to read, but then got a call; my daughter’s replacement glasses were in, so off we went to our old eye doctor. At home, we read on the porch, ate leftovers for dinner, and I did my Duolingo. I showered and knit, then logged in for virtual Shabbat services. I read my book afterwards, and my husband and I watched one episode of Unusual Suspects before bed.

 

Saturday, 25 June, 2022

After breakfast and coffee, I got dressed and ready, and then we were out the door. I ran into Walgreens to pick up some new anti-itch cream for my son (remember last week, we went to the beach and there were a ton of those nasty biting flies? They LOVED him and he’s still suffering from the bites). And then we headed to another book sale!

Did I need to go? NOPE. I have so many books I need to read. But hey, there’s not a lot of good in the world right now, and since books spark joy, I’ll absolutely take that dopamine hit wherever I can. This sale was smaller than the last, but here’s what I came home with:

 

At home, I emptied and refilled the dishwasher, then snuggled with my daughter and husband for a bit while she looked at toys on my husband's iPad. : )

After lunch, I read for a while, then took my daughter to the library; she wanted a few extra books and a few cookbooks (she really likes to look at them, which I think is adorable). I got a few cookbooks of my own. At home, I read for a good long while, then went on a 3.2-mile walk with my son (shorter than I wanted, but his fly bites were really bothering him). We saw this squirrel, whose chomping on this nut was incredibly loud:

 

I made dinner, a dish from Budget Bytes that can now only be found with the Wayback Machine, but which isn’t all that great anyway, so I don’t know that I’ll make it again. I filled and ran the dishwasher, took out the compost and recycling, did my Duolingo, showered, and put my daughter to bed. I read my book, and my husband and I watched three episodes of the Netflix sitcom God’s Favorite Idiot, which is pretty funny and clever. I couldn’t sleep afterwards, so I grabbed my kindle, which lights up a little, and continued to read until I was able to sleep.

 

Sunday, 26 June, 2022

After coffee, I continued reading and finally finished The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish. SUPER good if you like historical fiction. I got dressed, emptied and refilled the dishwasher, took out the compost and recycling, then tidied and swept the living room and kitchen. I grabbed my daughter’s copy of Guts by Raina Telgemeier and read it all (I hadn’t read this before, and her books are so cute), then had lunch and filled and ran the dishwasher.

I got the tofu out to press, then read out on the porch and finished Library Lin’s Curated Collection of Superlative Nonfiction by Linda Maxie, which I really enjoyed. I then grabbed the copy of The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman, which had been waiting for me for a few weeks, and began reading that. Reading is very much self-care for me, so I’m hitting the books as hard as I can right now.

Inside, I made a batch of tofu meatballs, emptied and refilled the dishwasher, then took out the compost and recycling. I relaxed on the computer for a bit while the fries cooked, and after dinner, I did my Duolingo, then headed out the door for a high-speed walk on my own. Four miles in just over an hour, which is pretty much as fast as I go.

I showered, put dinner away, then crawled into bed. I read ten pages of I and Thou by Martin Buber, then finished The Complete Maus. I started reading The Nourishing Homestead by Ben Hewitt, and my husband and I watched two episodes of God’s Favorite Idiot before bed.

 

And that’s it! Nothing on the schedule this week; just the usual of volunteer work, homeschool prep (you know, for someone who’s been told she ‘hAtEs bAyBeEz’ by people of a certain political persuasion, I sure put a LOT of work into making sure my babies have good lives…), and the usual cooking and cleaning. I’d like to go through my daughter’s closet and weed out the too-small clothing; that’ll definitely happen before the start of school, but I don’t know if we’ll get to it this week.

Be good to yourself this week, friends. It’s not easy out there. Wishing you all a productive, peaceful start to this last week of June.