Realise Your Future

 Today I have made several important realisations:

Being in friendly company is waayyy better for my mental health than being left to mope around at home.

That the increase in my Pain & Brain meds since last Thursday has in fact made a huge difference already, and not just in the "lalalaboomph" department.

That my kids are far more tuned-in to how mummy is traveling than I gave them credit for.

That Temazepam does shit for getting me to sleep.

That I have triggers for wanting a drink and the worst trigger is my living room, which is not surprising since this is where I would do 99% of my drinking. I haven't been able to spend an evening in there with the kids since I stopped.

That there are people that I have only known for a few weeks, or haven't seen in 6 months, or 25 years, or have NEVER MET because they are my internet crew who have been with me since the Infertility Days, that are capable of voicing their support and their belief in me and their love in such a way that I can physically feel it, and it wraps around me like the softest purple minky blanket with unicorns on it you've ever seen. I am safely cocooned and buoyed on an ocean of love and belief.

That there is one person, the one who most of all should make me feel this way, who has not offered one word of comfort or congratulations in making it this far.


That today was better than yesterday.

That I have been sober for 15 days.

That I have started maybe thinking about considering contacting AA. But only to get their medals. Would I get one for 15 days?

 Peace,

All Alcoholics Are Created Equal

When I lived with my previous boyfriend, who we call Fuckhead round these parts but whose name was John, I had a close-up hands-on experience of alcoholism. When we met he had already been engaging in serious drinking for a few years, and by serious I mean bottle of Scotch in an hour every day serious. Bottle in the filing cabinet in his office at university. He was an academic. He was brilliant. He was - then - a high-functioning alcoholic.

Lets not get into the myriad reasons why I wanted to enter into a relationship with a person who was clearly - and I do mean clearly- a complete write-off mental health wise. Lets just look at the alcohol.

When he lost his high paid academic job (due of course to the alcohol) and could no longer afford the scotch, he turned to the cheapest source of alcohol above metho, which was a 5 litre cask of wine. To this day the sight of a Berri cask of white wine fills me with anxiety and dread. Said cask would be consumed in one night. Or sometimes starting earlier in the day, if it was a bad day, in one afternoon. It would inevitably lead to other forms of abuse. This would happen every single day and we were together for four and a half years.

That level of alcoholism renders one unable to function, not only in the real world but in your own house too. The stories I could tell you of the filth he chose to live in when I was not there to clean up the detritus of another night's binging...they would make your stomach turn.

Of course I tried to get him to stop drinking, and as a good deal of alcoholics will tell you, he said "I'm not an alcoholic. I never drink before 12."  Or "I can stop drinking any time I want!"  What I didn't realise then was that he couldn't stop drinking because he already had Korsakoff's Syndrome which had rendered him brain damaged. I only discovered this only 12 months ago, when I was told that he had died from Korsakoff's.

I mention this story because this is my only experience of alcoholism.  Extreme. Brutal. Deadly.

So when I drank my one, and then two, bottles of wine each night, the word "alcoholic" did not enter my consciousness at all.  After I had Ella, I never drank to get drunk again. Unlike before, where there are many stories of friends holding back my hair in the UniBar loos...  But I digress.

I drank because it helped reduce the pain. I drank until I was relaxed. I always drank white wine because red made me a depressed and melancholic drunk, but white wine has no such effect. At the point I could feel that I was getting slightly tipsy, I would stop drinking and usually toddle of to bed, knowing that I was relaxed enough that I would sleep as well as my non-sleeping kids would allow me.

And this went on for three years. Every night. No one knew, except Monkey Boy., Sure, people knew I liked to drink wine, but that was it.   Eventually though, I got to the point with my pain and my limitations that I was truly suicidal. I had a plan, which I thought about often. I didn't believe any good could come from my being alive. I truly believed my kids would be better off without me.  So of course, my doctor was told about the alcohol, and wanted me to stop drinking immediately.  And I went into a major panic attack.

In conjunction with our social worker, it was decided I would taper my alcohol consumption in the same way I would taper down a dose of medication before stopping it, which at the time seemed logical.  But I couldn't do it. MB was in charge of doling out the exact number of mls each night, and it was torture. Having a little when I knew that I "needed" a lot, and not being in control of what was happening was just not going to work. So I faked not being suicidal anymore and went back to drinking, and I was still thinking that the alcohol was just a form of pain relief.

But then I would start to panic if we were down to the last bottle in the house. I would panic about when we would be able to get to the bottle shop to get some more. I would be in major distress (which I masterfully hid, or MB is blind to my distress) when MB said "Cant you just wait til tomorrow? I'll pick some up then."

I started to look at the clock mid afternoon and wonder if 2.30 was too early to start drinking. Some days it wasnt. but I never drank before 12!

I started drinking when my son got home from school. I would refill my glass as soon as it was empty, and kept doing this all night.  Then I began bringing the bottle into the living room and sitting it next to me so I didnt have to keep getting up to get another drink. Saving myself the pain of getting up and down I said to myself in justification.  Then it occurred to me that John used to do exactly the same thing with his 5 litre cask.

When I got to the point of drinking two bottles of wine every night just to feel "normal" of an evening, and I would wake up shaking each morning, I knew something had changed.

What I realised was that I had become physically dependent on this drug, and that if I continued it would kill me as surely as it killed John. I also knew that I had no idea how to stop.

My doctor gave me Valium to get me through the anxiety I would surely feel, but because of the cocktail of narcotics and anti-depressants I take I was certainly no candidate for the drugs that are used to block the desire for alcohol.

And it wasnt until I stopped, until there was no alcohol in my system at all, until I had gone a couple of nights without touching a drop, and I started to feel SO low, so sad, so anxious, so depressed, withdrawn, unable to stop crying, and so scared that once I had got through these physical effects of stopping, I would still not be able to have just one or two drinks, that I wouldn't be able to stop myself once I started...it wasnt until then that I realised the awful, shameful truth.

That I had become an alcoholic.

That there was no difference between John and I, except for what stage we had got to with our drinking.  Had I continued...I would end up in the same place: liver damage, brain damage, death.  We started for different reasons: he refused treatment for his bipolar disorder and self-medicated with Scotch. I tried every medication available to me and still nothing was working satisfactorily so I tried to use the alcohol to "kick along" the other meds into working better.

For me, the knowledge that I am no better than him is devastating. It tears at my soul, it makes me want to scream, it makes me sick to my stomach.

I am a person who must remain in control of what is happening to me. Knowing that I have no control at all in this situation, that I am controlled by my addiction is terrifying.  I am controlled by something I thought, in all honesty, would help me.

I am controlled by alcohol: I am an alcoholic.

I have been sober for 14 days, but I am a mess, I am having panic attacks, I am frightened, I am sad and I don't know how to get through this withdrawal.

How The Fuck Did I Get Here, Then?

I know there was a time when I was happy.

Somewhere in between meeting Monkey Boy at the age of 33 and the shit going down with his mother over our wedding plans, I was happy.  Deliriously happy, as one is at the start of every relationship I suppose, but even more so because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was The One.

Unfortunately, I was at the end of a 9-month drug binge at the time we met. A binge that was helping me forget the incredibly abusive relationship with a brilliant and talented man who unfortunately had Bipolar Disorder with psychosis and self-medicated himself with 5 litres of cask wine every night. A relationship that had ended only with a Restraining Order after 4.5 years of trying. A binge that was helping me forget that my youngest brother had committed suicide one month before I ended that relationship, and that he was the second of my brothers to make that choice.  A binge that helped me forget that people I considered my friends sexually assaulted me in a hotel room the week after I ended that relationship and that the police would do nothing about it.

So I think its fair to say that I was well fucked up around that time. *Actually a gross understatement of the matter.

Being at university, drugs were freely available, always on offer and (it seemed to me) the perfect answer. *They are not and never will be the perfect answer to anything.  And they certainly did help me "forget" my troubles. When you are high on speed and ecstasy almost every weekend, and the good old green every day, you are having a damn good time in your own head.  But the bills aren't getting paid, and there is no money for food and everything else is falling to shit around you because all you do is party.

So when you meet someone who is nice, and decent, and the brother of your best "party friend" and he LIKES YOU, and he meets every criteria on the list you wrote down in your diary (while on drugs) re qualities the perfect man must have, well its rather easy to make some decisions that in hindsight might have been better made...well..sober.

Never mind, the decision was made and we were married. And because there was a passive-aggressive showdown about our wedding plans courtesy of Monkey Boy's mother, (who has several posts in her all to herself) his family did not come to the wedding.

Strike One.

Two days later, on our honeymoon I had Prolapsed Disc #1 followed by six months of unbearable pain that my doctor seemed unconcerned with alleviating in any way. Monkey Boy was halfway through his Honours Degree, which he had to give up so he could look after me.

Strike Two.

I had surgery, finally. Hurrah! It fixed the pain, by taking away part of my spine in a procedure called a Hemi-Laminectomy. Ok, whatever, at least it didn't hurt anymore.

So then I thought: lets have a baby! Fabulous idea, especially for someone who never ever wanted to have children (me) with a loudly ticking Biological Clock.  Then comes the miscarriage..

Strike Three.

My brain is OUTTA HERE!  Major Depression comes and overstays its welcome.

Our lives become a hell of TTC and HCG and TWW and OPK and Semen Analysis and timing sex and heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak.

Until, almost two years later, on the day we are at the IVF clinic being told we will be starting our first cycle in a couple of months and we are freaking out about the whole idea, we were completely unaware about this.

Hooray! We have a baby, and he's awfully cute and healthy and we loved him heaps. He was the impetus for a reconciliation with Monkey Boy's family. But we have no idea what we are doing with the strange little creature though, and he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't feed properly and he doesn't put on weight and I cant produce enough milk no matter what I do so now of course I am a failure, and there is more stress and no sleep.

But somehow,  after 18 months, there was enough sleep to produce some rather unexpected changes.

The thing was, we were not planning on another child. At all. Felix was the miracle baby. Another child was statistically impossible. Goes to show what you can take from statistics.  The other thing was that the very first day of the pregnancy I managed to prolapse a disc again. Same disc as before at L4/L5 but on the other side. The surgery that fixed the initial injury in 2004 had created a weak point, and my stupidfuckingspine decided "wheyhey! Lets smoosh out that way".

So imagine, if you can, a ruptured disc that presses on the sciatic nerve and causes indescribable pain happening at the very beginning of a pregnancy. All those long months ahead of you with increasing pressure on the back, on the pelvic joints, the loosening of all the joints thanks to stupid hormones. The doctors saying "well you're pregnant, you cant take anything."  Imagine pain that starts in the lower back, courses through your buttock and down the side of your thigh, hot, burning hot liquid pain, that then heads to your big toe, where it feels like your toe is being pulled so hard your leg is being ripped off.  Imaging this 24 hours a day. Imagine pain that makes you rock back and forth on your knees for hours on end in tears, unable to walk, or sit, or lie down, heavily pregnant and screaming with pain at times and desperate, desperate, desperate for anything. Even for the pregnancy to be ended there and then so they would give you decent pain relief.

Imagine also that you are dealing with all of this with an 18 month old son, a husband who cannot cope with what is happening, and no support. Imagine your husband grabbing your son, pointing to you while you are in obvious distress and yelling at him: "Look! Look at what you've done to mummy!"

My heart broke right there and then, and I realised that there was a choice to be made and that I would always always make it in favour of my child. Looking back, that was the moment, the very moment that our marriage died.

Nevertheless, I am pregnant and still completely disabled and dependent.  It wasn't until I was 33 weeks pregnant that I was finally given an MRI and some halfway decent pain relief.  To get this I had to scream hysterically at my Obstetrician who wasn't quite understanding that if he didn't prescribe me some decent drugs RIGHTNOWFUCKYOU I would kill myself.  I was given Endone for pain relief, and the MRI showed what I knew it would all along, a disc protrusion on the right at L4/5 impinging on the sciatic nerve root.  Right there that produces a whole new set of complications for the pregnancy and delivery. 

The boffins all said it would be right as rain once I had delivered. That once the pressure of the baby had been relieved then the disc would heal itself. Well we all know that boffins are full of shit, eh?

So delivery, with my back in this state? Horror show. Again, that's a story for another day, if I can bring myself to write it.  Suffice to say at the end, I had more pain in my back from the epidural, pain from the emergency c-section, a baby in ICU being checked for narcotic withdrawal (it turned out she was completely fine) and hospital staff that clearly never bothered to read my file and treated me like a "normal" postnatal woman, when very clearly I was a fucking wreck with very high needs.

I left hospital with severe PTSD from the delivery as well as severe PND which nobody seemed to pick up on even though I knew I had both but was so fucked up I literally couldn't say anything to anyone.  I was completely unable to care for my new daughter and what's more, I didn't want to. This is another story. It was BAD. It was so bad that it let to a complete disassociation from Monkey Boy's family. Again, another story for another day.


I think Ella was at least 12 months old before I got to see a proper Pain Specialist. In the meantime I took a combination of every painkiller on the market, including continuing with the Endone, and I took all of them at doses far greater than was recommended.  It was extremely hard for me to breastfeed because of the pain, and we had been comp feeding since the hospital anyway, so by the time she was 4 months old, she and I preferred to use formula.  I was over my high and mighty stance on breastfeeding. I had to do whatever it took to survive.

And once I was no longer breastfeeding, I decided to try "potentiating" my medications with a glass or two of wine each night. And it worked. It really did. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't even tipsy, I just felt less pain. I had greater ease of movement. I could get some sleep. And so it went on. And on. and on, for almost three years.


I changed medications frequently in an attempt to find the right drug and right dose and right combinations, under the supervision of my Pain Specialist, until we eventually hit on a combination of 4 different medications that, for most of the time, kept the pain at a bearable level. But the alcohol, unbeknown to him, remained part of my secret strategy.

I knew it helped the pain, so I drank from late afternoon (the time of day when I would have used all my energy reserves just coping with being alive and a mother) and I drank until I went to bed.


Three MRI's later and nothing had changed for the better. Quite the opposite, in fact. The L4/5 disc has "dessicated and sequestrated" and there was now also some spinal stenosis and retrolisthesis. There were "white matter lesions" on my brain which still may or may not be MS.  Much talk of Degenerative Disc Disease and permanent and spine is failing and wont operate too risky and I am just tuning out once we get to the word "Permanent".

So my life is a routine of pain medications that would knock most people out, doctors visits, neurologists, pain specialists, psychologists, and social workers whom I BEG for help and yet none is forthcoming beccause I dont fit into any of the right funding pigeonholes. Too young. Wrong type of spinal injury. Not disabled enough. Have someone at home with me therefore no need for extra help.

Except the person who is at home doesnt do all  the things he is needed to do. He takes his stress out on the children and on the person he is supposed to be caring for.  If this were a professional relationship of Carer/Client, he would be fired. Except it isn't, and one cant fire one's husband.  One cant even divorce one's husband when he is your Carer and there is no one else to do the job.

Stuck, with pain, with permanent pain, with a life on narcotics, with a life of dependance and limitations, and with the inability to care properly for my own children, with the inability to work. Stuck in a marriage I desperately want out of and with no clear way out.

How the fuck did I get here? Even looking at all that history, I can see how I end up in a situation where I become an alcoholic, but I cant see how WE - Monkey Boy and I - end up in the position of contempt for each other, and he behaving in damaging ways towards our children, when we started from a position of such love and respect for each other.  I have changed, of course I have, but I don't take my grief and anger and loss of hope out on my kids. 

Or did I miss the signs that were there the beginning that, had I not been drug-fucked, I would had realised meant trouble down the road?

Is this a hell partially of my own making?

My nane is...

Hello.

Posts for the next little while will be very difficult to write. .  My doctor todat increased the doses on some of my pain killers. and the combinatuin makes a fun and interesting spectator sport, no doubt. But from this end, it is a struggle to stay awake long enough to write ledgably. Ledgiblu. See?


So. Just a quick now. now.,,k

Hello. My name is Sharon and I'm an alcoholic.

I have been drinking 1 - and more recently 2- bottles of wine a night every nighhhhht for almost 3 years, in order to deal witj my paim

I have been sober for 8 days.

I would kill for a drink.

this post has taken me one hour to write.

My name is Sharon and I an an alcoholic.

cant retrieve id

The title of this post is an error message that was sitting there in the Title options bar, being all eerily appropriate.

Cant retrieve identity.

How did I get to this place, where I am nothing, I can do nothing, I see no one, I am not interested in anything, and I know that nothing will change.

Cant retrieve identity.

The discs in my spine are so badly degenerated that there is no hope of getting better. Yet I am "not bad enough" that a surgeon will touch me due to the serious and real danger of being left paralysed if they operate. I am left here, stuck here, waiting and hoping in some macabre nightmare that things will get worse, so that they may get better.

Cant retrieve identity.

I am nothing, in limbo, in a life I loathe, in a marriage that is dead, dependent on someone who isn't dependable, support-less, passive, sad, angry, watching my life being wasted.

How bad does it have to be, if this is "not bad enough"?

Hello Blog, My Old Friend

Nice to see you, though I must say you're looking a little tired these days. A little too...Early Oughts. And far to focused on babies. Whats that about? Move on! Contemporise!

Yes, a makeover is called for. No, don't take offense. You just need a little something to help your inner beauty shine through. Attract some new people into your life.

No, there was nothing wrong with the old people. But do you see any of them around here? They've gone done other things while you just sat here, all purple and full of baby pictures and not saying anything. Cant blame them, really. (I know you were busy falling apart. Look, can we talk about that later?)

Yes I know, I know, mad as hell and just want to yell it to the world. Can it wait? Just until you've at least fixed your colours? They really dont suit you anymore. Nothing worse than someone doing the ugly crying when they are wearing the completely wrong makeup. No need to look worse than you have to, I say.

Ok then. What? Yes you can bitch on Twitter in the meantime.

The Other Me

Has Another Blog. 

Apparently a Secret Blog, for all the traffic it is getting.  I feel decidedly unloved over there.

Perhaps some of you kind folks who still lurk here and maybe still get my feed could pop on over and say hi, and follow me there too?

I'm torn about posting in two places.  Should I pull the pin here and just do my brain dump on SparklePanda Design?  Should I keep the two seperate and try to maintain some veneer of professionalism?

Hmmm.  Until Decisions Have Been Made (which is unlikely to be in a hurry) a comment or two on my Attempts At A Life would be appreciated.

Pretty, non?

So Where Did That Year Go?

Or the last 10 years, which is how long I have now owned my house that still doesn't have a decent kitchen.  Or the last 20, which is how long I have been dealing with a debilitating medical condition that may now turn out to have been something else all along.

In the intervening time, the year, the 10 years, 20 years, nothing has gone the way I thought it would.  When I was 21 I certainly never imagined myself in this place.  A year ago I didn't imagine myself in this place.  A year ago I hoped desperately things would be different, that with love and hope and good intentions they would be fixed.    To all intents and purposes they are not.

I have a couple of new friends, some new social outlets, have re-engaged with my love of sewing, have found that my daugher loves me fiercely and I her, and that I will do anything - absolutely anything - for my kids.

The thing I wanted most to change hasn't, and I'm not really sure where the hell I can go from here.  I am in quicksand, and I'm sinking.

Because I Can, And I Need To Vent.

I wonder the legalities of publishing an email correspondence without the consent of the Evil Bitch other party.

I shall ponder upon this, either until the question is answered or I have exploded due to suppressed rage.

Birthday Wishes

It is very quickly approaching the anniversay of my birth, and of Ella's birth.

Both are significant birthdays. Ella's because she will have survived her first year of life and remains the happiest baby ever, so long as you give her food every 10 minutes. Mine because I will have reached that age where "they" say life begins, and I wonder.

I'm sure some lives do begin at 40, with a newly-found acceptance of self, of freedom from the responsibilities of parenting. But mine...?

I find myself on the brink of 40 with limitations that cause me both physical and emotional pain, with trying to be a "good enough" mother to two beautiful children who deserve more than I can give them, and being wife to someone who is clearly not coping (and why would he?) with the difficulties that my condition has placed before him.

What exactly is life going to give me now that I am, give or take, at the middle of my life? Physically, for me, it seems to be all downhill from here. I resign myself to the fact that I will never be able to run with my son the way he wants me to. I will never be able to lift him up and twirl him around the way I see other parents do with their child. I feel as though I will always be on the sidelines in the lives of my children when I long to be there right in the middle of things, wrestling or bike riding or just sitting on the floor and playing a game. I want to pick up my beautiful Ella Bella Mozzarella and hold her close for more than the few minutes available to me before my back is telling me that any more will mean a week without walking.

I want to drive my own car. I want to have a whole day to myself. I want to drive this way and then on a whim drive that way and, in the words of my son, "see what I can see". I want to have a functioning brain that is not addled by the cocktail of pain management medications I must take every day. I want to not be a burden to those I love. I want to know that my condition is not permanent and that there is some hope, somewhere, of leading a normal life.

I want to know that the white matter lesions in my brain are not Multiple Sclerosis.

Another One Bites The Dust

You...you who acts the perfect princess with the voice of an angel and the aura of a successful social butterfly...

You are the product of your upbringing at the hands of a narcissist, and so you have become one yourself. You cannot look at your mirror image and say "you are wrong". So you hear your mother's words and you see yourself in her and you say "she is right."

You don't care if she is not right. More than that, you do not even entertain the notion that she could be wrong. It is not possible, for I am she and she is me. I am right. She is right.

So You destroy relationships, just as she has destroyed relationships. It is what you do for it is what she does. You place your hands over your ears and close your eyes to any truth that does not fit the tale you tell yourself, the tale you have been told.

You break my heart but that knowledge does not touch yours, for if it did you would be wrong, she would be wrong.

You, who were my friend long before you were my family, You are now placed, sadly, in the same messy, painful package in my head as:

• my parents
• my brother
• the violent alcoholic who stole 4 years of my life from me
• the friend who sexually assaulted me, and
• the friends who, knowing what happened, made me socialise with those perpetrators.

You, in your need to...what? Feel important? Feel right? Be the most beloved child? Get all the good presents from the grandparents for your kid? What? You destroyed not one but 4 relationships by the simple decision to not want to know the truth.

You are the one who has lost. You lose something real: being part of the lives of two amazing children, the friendship and love of a brother. My friendship and love.

I...I lose something that was never there. I lose the illusion of care, the illusion of love, the illusion of a real relationship at all.

You believe what you have been told. You think so little of me that you toss me aside without question, without a "what the fuck? Is this true?"

Illusion or not, it still breaks my heart.

Broken or not, it is best that you have ended this relationship. You, who are not what I thought you were, are not the You I want in my life.

The real You stood up.

I dont like You.

Ch-ch-changes

So, things have changed around here while I've been away.

Felix turned 2, we sent him to local child care to help him socialise with other kids and he was very quickly identified as "kid most likely to be gifted." The Terrible Twos started at 18 months and made me think that he would be identified as "Kid Most Likely To Be Homicidal Maniac."

Evil Felix

Impish Felix












Then there was a little thing called an Anniversary, followed two weeks later by much in the way of "How the bloody hell did THIS happen?"

Such musings were shortly followed by crippling pain thanks to a prolapsed disc at L4/L5 for the whole of the pregnancy, with pain so bad that I couldnt walk and at various times:

a) wanted to die,
b) wanted them to take the baby out at 28 weeks and GIVE ME SOME DAMN GOOD DRUGS,
c) was crying and swearing at the Senior Consultant at the hospital until I got me some damn good drugs but then had to deal with the perpetual worry of what said drugs would do to the baby.

At the end, even with the damn good drugs, the pain was so bad that they decided to induce 2 weeks early.

For those of you that have stuck around from tales of The Spud, cast your mind back to 2 years and 4 months previously. There was a little drama going on about the induction of the Spud. That 3-day event was a mere picnic when compared to the 5-day horror show that ended with this:



A gorgeous little girl, Ella Grace, who weighed in at 8.8lbs and was born via emergency c-section under a general anaesthetic and had the cord wrapped twice around her neck. I lost 1.2 litres of blood and had the delivery converted to a general anaesthetic when I could feel them cutting.me.open.

Yes, you read that right.

Thanks to the drugs I had taken during the pregnancy, Ella was kept in the neonetal intensive care unit for the duration of my post-5 day labour and c-section bloodbath hospital stay.



It was over 24 hours before I could even go to see her and hold her properly.


5 days later, these 3 shattered people were allowed to go home to a toddler and no help.



For all sorts of reasons, some of which I may elaborate on and some of which I probably still cant, this was a Very.Bad.Idea.

We all survived, but certainly not unscathed. It wasnt until Ella was about 8 weeks old that I realised that she did not actually hate me.



She made cute little noises and when she looked directly into my eyes at about 8 weeks and gave me a very obvious and beautiful smile, I finally felt like I could mother this child.




The crippling back pain that I was told would go away once I delivered did not, in fact, change in the slightest. Two MRI's and a second opinion later we have the pronouncement that more than likely this will be a permanent condition.

Mummy and daddy couldnt cope with everything that life was dishing out, so Ella was off to child care with her Big Brother, where she was instantly at home and deemed Happiest Baby Ever.




She has reached all her milestones early, as does her brother and at 11 months is so close to walking and talking it hurts.



Felix turned 3 and is so intelligent it floors me every day. He knows all the colours, knows his shapes, can actually count objects up to 12, can do simple arithmetic and shows a remarkable understanding of abstract ideas. He remains a whirlwind, will no doubt be psych-tested and deemed "gifted." He keeps us permanently exhausted, frustrated, amazed and amused.

This life, these challenges, these moments of agony and of perfection, are not what I imagined when I began the difficult journey to have a family. I didnt see past the goal of ending up with real live baby at the end of a normal 9-month gestation.

"Ooooh, its all worth it in the end" I hear so often I want to stab people with a teething rusk or whatever object happens to hand.

Lets leave that for the next session, shall we?

Erm...

Yeh.

Hi.

Seemed to have got a little distracted there.

Perhaps my brain really did turn to runny icecream.

Perhaps stuff so big that it left no room for a functional brain happened.

Obviously, one cannot describe the events of the last two years in a single post.

For now, it is enough to say: "I'm still here. I'm alive. I have Things To Say."

Yes, for now that will do.

Runny Icecream Brain

There I was, feeling quite content with motherhood, when I foolishly opened the program for our capital's Festival of Ideas.

Fabulous stuff. Interesting topics being discussed that one can sit in on and feel all intellectual and suchlike.

Of course, I made the mistake of reading the blurbs of the people who would be presiding at said conference of incredible intelligent peoples.

I ended up drooling over the CVs of all these fabulously intelligent women my age who have done what I planned to do once I finished my degree. Now I wander around going "Yes honey, duck" all bloody day while they're off being Chair of XYZ Fabulously Intelligent Committee and saving people from human rights injustices.

Its not that I think raising the Spudly One is less important than saving the world from human rights abuses, or writing amazingly successful books about god-knows-what-amazing-thing-that might-change-the-face-of-the-planet but...BUT...

Once, I had an idea that I might make a difference. That I might actually have the nous to figure out something that no-one else had figured out before, and that it would actually have some sort of impact on society. Once, I had the idea that I would do something Important. Something that would have people In The Know go "Wow. We never thought about it like that before. She's totally right."

But instead, I am naming all objects in sight and wondering when my son will twig than not everything he sees is a duck, and wondering if there is any prospect of me regaining the brain that I worked so very hard to get to Distinction standard.

Once, I had the crazy idea of being the head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Keepin' It Real for the regular Bruce on the street. Now, Keepin' It Real extends as far as the ingredients in whatever happens to be served for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner/Snack.

Its not that I dont want to be teaching another human being about the world, sharing my knowledge with someone so small and impressionable, raising the next generation, blah blah blah. Its just that...I miss the intellectual pursuits. The selfishness that comes with that. Being able to spend hour upon hour in the library reading Plato and Kant and Dawkins and Singer and Mill and Rawls.* Having the time and the space to think about their arguments and formulate my own and think about how great society could be, if only...

Instead, I find myself creating a better society one day at a time, one word at a time, one tantrum at a time. Is this the more rewarding way? Is this the way to a better society? I know I have written about this before and argued that it is, but right now...right now I miss the cerebralnesnes (shut UP), I crave the ethereal and I would do almost anything to avoid the mundane.

There must be a balance here somewhere.

Oh please tell me there is a balance here somewhere. I really dont want to end up with an IQ of a toddler.


*Slaps self in head for longing to be back in the library for hour upon hour.

Walking Wounded

Well, hobbling more than walking.

After months of waiting I finally got me some knife action on my knee and so, rather than being all like "ooh look at me driving the car three days after surgery" LIKE MY SURGEON PROMISED, I find myself in a position of having to sit down a lot. Not running after the small squidgy item all day leaves a fair whack of the day in which to do the tippy-tappy thing I vaguely remember being interested in once upon a time.

Not that I expect anyone else to still be here anymore.

But for posterity's sake, here is a very exciting list of all the things that Spudly now understands, being the very grown-up and not-at-all-babyish 14 months old:

Bottle
Sippy cup
Glass
Truck
Duck
Puppy
Kitty
Ball
Phone
Bikkit
Hat
Shoes
Socks
Chair
Food
Spoon
Bowl
Glass
Stick
Monkey
Panda
Penguin
Pony
Cookie Monster
Elmo (god save me)
"Where's the...?"
"Pat the...(kitty/puppy/dadda/mamma/Alex-friend)"
"Where's your...(nose, head, ears, toes, feet, belly)"
"Clap hands"
"Wave goodbye"
"Give to mamma"
"Close the door"

and many others I'm sure he understands and cant quite articulate yet, such as "for fucks sake".



He my rockin' homie.

Brain Freeze

I dont know where my life has gone. Its all dishes, washing, tidying up toys, feeding the Spud, playing with the Spud, wrapping the Spud and starting again. Internet? What's that?

Spudly turned 1. He had two parties, one with his G-Unit from the Block and the other with the family, shared with his Great Grandpop who was 85 two days before Spudly's birthday.

He doesnt just walk now, he runs everywhere. His little dinosaur arms have straightened out and he walks like a big person. He understands about a dozen words, and quite by accident we discovered this when I said "look at your big belly" and he patted his tummy. Freakin' genius!

The Burrito Wrap no longer manages to contain Captain Squirmy-Pants, who regularly escapes at night and is driving us insane AGAIN.

Monkey Boy is all sorts of freaking out about starting his practical teaching placement next week and isnt he fun to be around right now. (Hint: no.)

I have gone back to being so tired my brain cells barely bump into each other anymore.

Here endeth the worst blog post ever.

Burrito Boy

In order to avoid thinking about other things I have spent rather too much time successfully creating a fabulous PowerPoint Slideshow on How To Wrap A Spud.

Enjoy.

In Which We Descend Into The 11th Circle of Hell

The System. You cant beat it. Even if you join it you cant beat it because you dont want to get your ass sued. And even if you make it to the top of the system and cant be sued then you still have to work within legislation which those in REAL power wrote so they would get re-elected and not so it would actually work for the benefit of those whom it covers.

The System: 1. Panda: Nil.

And normally I would be kicking and screaming all the way to the District Court yelling as loud as I could to anyone that would listed about how completely FUCKED it is to allow two people for whom there are "grave concerns" about their wellbeing and ability to cope at home TO ACTUALLY GO HOME and about HOW can one make a determination about someone's mental incapacity when it is acceptable for that person to REFUSE a psych assessment and therefore an application for Guardianship is denied because there isnt enough evidence AND how is it even ethical to do so when that person is the CARER for someone who has been deemed to have a mental incapacity but no, HE doesnt need a Guardian either because this woman over here, THE ONE WHOM WE CANT ASSESS BECAUSE SHE REFUSES BUT WE'RE HEAPS CONCERNED SHE'S NOT QUITE RIGHT IN THE HEAD, HEY, she's going to be his carer.

Normally. But now I have a Small, Somewhat Burrito-Shaped Item who kinda needs his mamma to be around and not be climbing the walls with frustration and RAGE at this system that gives carte blanch to old people to go home and die.

So my parents are at home. My mother hates me and has even gone so far as to make the statement to the Board that I "never did anything to get them help" [A-HEM], the social worker, who while very nice and I'm sure the best thing mum could have at this point, is very naive about how my mother operates and is in for a rude shock, my father is oblivious to the whole thing, and my brother... Well, my brother is about to get the following email. I hate him like poison.


Dear Fuckhead,

Today you said some things that I have to address, if only to get them out of my brain so I can get on with my life and not keep dwelling on how angry I am.

You based your allegation about my suitability for our father's Medical Power of Attorney on what exactly? My behaviour at the hospital the night my parents were admitted, you claimed. What behaviour was that exactly?

• Was it the fact that I stayed at the hospital until midnight in Emergency with my 6 month old son?
  
• Was it the fact that I made sure someone was with him once our mother had been taken to hospital so that he was not left to fend for himself alone for a whole weekend because the doctor wouldnt do anything for him?
  
• Was it the fact that I called an ambulance in the first place so that our father was not at home choking to death?
• Was it the fact that I made sure that the hospital had as much information as I could give them about their medical status and history?
• Was it that I made sure the doctors were aware that the growth on his face needed to be looked at? Lucky I did, hey, since it was cancerous.
• Was it the fact that I had to request an ACAT Assessment be done for them to make sure that they werent just sent home?

What other decisions have I made that havent been in his interests? Was it being the person who pushed and pushed to get a diagnosis for him? If I hadnt insisted upon a referral to a specialist, there would STILL be no diagnosis. If I hadnt taken him to all his appointments for the majority of my pregnancy he would not have gone.

Your transparent attempt at maligning me fooled no-one today. If you want to make allegations that I cannot be trusted to make medical decisions for our father they'd better be backed up by some damned good evidence next time.

Truly, you are diabolical to me. I cannot understand your need to deny our family history. What do you gain from trying to sweep decades of abuse under the carpet? Do you somehow asuage your guilt by doing this? Is it the only way you can live with the fact that you knew what was happening to our mother and you knew what was happening to me when I was a child, yet you did nothing to protect us? Even Warren had the guts, the sensitivity, to apologise to me for not being there for me when I was a child.

It makes me sick to think that you want to rewrite history and pretend that it was a mere "difficult relationship" that has now "weathered the storm". Domestic violence should NEVER be ignored in this way and I cannot believe that as someone who has been called out to surely countless DV incidents is so willing to ignore it and diminish it in his own family. Our parents have not "weathered the storm". Our mother was battered by our father since the very early days of their marriage. The ONLY reason this stopped is dad's decline from dementia. As his dementia progressed his personality changed and lucky for mum it was into a placid, doddering old man. The way you minimise the dysfunction in their relationship and our family is so reminiscent of the behaviour of the perpetrators of the sexual assault on me 5 years ago that it makes my skin crawl.

I dont know why you have such a low opinion of me. I have never known and I probably will never know. At this point I dont even care. I scratch myhead about it and wonder in an anthropological/psychological exercise kind of way, but that remains the extent of it. I doubt that even you could tell me. I know I have absolutely done the right thing with regard to ensuring the welfare of our parents and somehow I have managed to rise above my upbringing and become a decent, well-adjusted human being despite my family.

Methinks that when you have yelled at me that I am just like our mother (and you mean that in a bad way) that in reality, you are projecting your beliefs about yourself on to me. I see so much of mum's behaviour in you (particularly the denial of reality and rewriting of history to fit your agenda) that I really hope your kids have been paying attention to whats been going on here. I fear that this will be their story in 30 years.

Good luck with the Administrator role. I hope you can sort out the financial mess.

I'm done here.

My Life In The Tenth Circle of Hell

Ok. The dummy has been reinserted and I have about ten minutes before he starts screaming again because he really does want to get up now please.

In the last 6 weeks we have experienced the following at Chez Panda:

• Projectile vomiting from the Spud for TEN DAYS which left all of us drained, and him especially so.
• No sleep whatsoever for a number of nights which was definately heading towards "I'm gonna kill the baby and divorce my husband" territory.
• The return of Monkey Boy to university and thus the beginning of my life as a Stay At Home Mum Who Now Has To Deal With The Baby All On Her Own and doesnt THAT cut into your blogging time.
  
• A trip to the Sleep Clinic where we learned how to wrap the Spud like a burrito in a single bed sheet so he cant escape and will thus sleep through the night. And it worked. IT WORKED. He sleeps! He sleeps! He will not be killed! I will not be divorced!
• A phone call to the nursing home re my parents...and you know that has to be saved for a post all of its own because I cant possibly rant enough about having to go to the Guardianship Board next Thursday in the time I have left before the Small One wants out of the burrito.

It has been an interesting time.

Did I say interesting?

I meant fucked.

Except for that sleep bit.

Double Digits

Dear Spud,

I cant believe you're ten months old now. More to the point, I cant believe that we've all managed to survive the past ten months. We didn't kill you, we didn't leave you on the footpath for the recycling and we didnt kill each other. Mummy has a drinking problem and Daddy is addicted to caffeine again...but at least we're all alive.

In the past ten months you've discovered you exist seperately from everything else, you discovered your hands, you discovered your feet (and you're still pretty wrapped with them), you discovered food, which you LOVE (apart from the peas! Ugh! The peas!). You learnt to smile, flashing us your cute little dimple, and then quickly followed that with infectious belly chuckles. Now you've developed a sense of humour and think its bloody hilarious to get mamma to eat the remote control just like you.

You've always had amazing upper body strength, even from the beginning, and you figured out how to sit up at 5 months, figured out your very own style of bum shuffling (involving doing reverse donuts on the floor) to get around before you clued in about the whole crawling thing. You were SO happy the day you could crawl and get around on your own. It was like you'd been trying to figure it out your whole life, and maybe you had. Now we watch you come to grips with the whole standing up and moving your feet deal and marvel at how quickly you put it all together. Daddy still says we're not getting a leash for you but I think he doesnt know what we're in for once you are confident on your wobbly legs. We are looking into enrolling you in the circus.

You love everyone, especially little people. The squeals you come out with when you see another little person! You want to make friends with them all and I suspect that you will. You have your favourite people though, and surprisingly The Man Who Serves Us Coffee Every Shopping Day So We Can Live who you've seen every second week of your life gets the biggest smiles and even makes you go all coy because you love him so much. And no, there isnt something you should know. You've only ever not liked one person, and you cried as soon as he looked at you and said hello. I TOTALLY trust your judgement on people kiddo, because he turned out to be a total asshole.

You are so excited by life that you fight sleep with every ounce of effort you have. Sleeping merely wastes time you could be doing cool stuff like pulling chunks of plaster off the walls or squealing through the front door so the whole neighbourhood hears you. You also don't like being alone when you're sleeping and your favourite place to sleep remains in the middle of mummy and daddy's bed, preferably lying sideways so as to cause the maximum amount of discomfort for everyone except you. We love you, darling, but we heaps wish you wouldnt do that.

This has without a doubt been the hardest and most challenging ten months of my life. Its damn lucky for us that you're the coolest kid ever because that makes it a whole lot easier to deal with the challenging bits and not go completely insane. You know exactly how to press our buttons, you know what you can get away with and you know that delerium caused by sleep deprivation makes daddy VERY funny indeed. One day I hope you read this and realise three more things:

1. Mummy loves you more than she ever thought possible
2. You are the most amazing gift we could ever have
3. It is not funny to pee on mummy every time she takes your nappy off.

Love your guts, Squid-Boy,

Mamamamamama