…I only have a few minutes to write, but I’ll try and make this a quickie.
The weekend was really hard, as you may have gathered from my Saturday-morning post. Felt low, numb, overwhelmed, sad, had little appetite…the light had just kind of gone out. I was afraid that N was going to tire of me, because I was tired of being that way myself, and on the whole, so very tired. This is what happens when you don’t eat much. I told Doc Chinatown how I was feeling and started taking the little black balls of herbality he gave me as a result, and e-mailed Brit-therapist a couple times Saturday to let her know how I was feeling. I perked up somewhat on Friday and Saturday evenings (I decided this was because at night, it’s finally socially acceptable to feel as tired as I had been all day, and so I could stop fighting so hard to feel and seem right), but last night not so much. (4th-graders have come and gone; I continue writing, because I am required to be here until 4:20, even though I only teach until 3. Planning, shmanning; let’s blog!)
Yesterday, N and I went up north to have brunch with my brother and his family. I continued to feel mostly like a shell of myself. My brother knew I had been feeling crappy, and so he was understanding, but still. After we arrived, he told us that my grandfather, Papa, who lives farther north still, had taken another turn for the worse (this after a recent turn that meant he was staying mostly in the upstairs of his house with his caretakers and hospice nurses) and that our mom was on her way up to be with him. Initially, we had all planned to head up to Papatown, where my mom’s sister and her brood also live, for Yom Kippur, but suddenly it wasn’t even clear that Papa would last that long. And so after brunch yesterday, my brother, N, and I drove up to Papatown to see him. Papa was in bed, on a lot of drugs after the five seizures he’d had earlier in the day (five!), somewhere between knocked-out and asleep. We talked to him, told him we loved him and how lucky we were to have him as our grandfather, gave him a footrub as he was always cajoling us to when we were younger, and were sad to see him like that. A shorter version of the longer story is that Papa has a growth on his pancreas, but my mom and aunt decided not to put him through all that treatment would entail. He’s 90, and it just didn’t seem like a kind thing to do. So the focus now is on keeping him comfortable.
Anyway…I woke up this morning, and immediately knew that I felt better. Interestingly, my temperature had also finally gone back down lower than it’s been since I last ovulated. Prometrium, were you really fucking with me for a whole week after we parted ways? You sly bitch. I’m praying that I continue feeling like myself forevermore, because for most of these last few days, I’ve barely recognized myself, and that makes me so sad.
What melts my heart is the way N dealt with me and how I was feeling. I told him that I was afraid I would drive him away, which felt to shriveled-up version of me like a very real possibility. That my sorrow and un-funness would break that camel’s back and he would move on to greener pastures. Last night, after we left Papatown, as we were driving home from my brother's house, N said to me: “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about worrying that I would leave you. People get sick, and their spouses take care of them. They don’t do it alone, but they pick up the slack. You’re sick right now; something’s wrong with Pumpkin, and we’re going to get it figured out.” Tears are welling up in my eyes as I type this. I finally got that I didn’t have to do this alone. I feel blessed beyond blessed. Did I mention that N has a master’s in social work? That doesn’t hurt either. Anyway, as we were talking, he suggested that maybe we should stop trying to conceive for now, stop stressing and measuring and timing and graphing and estimating and pill-popping. I said out loud for the first time that I’m not sure that a route to parenthood that involves pumping myself full of hormones is going to work for me. I just don’t know if I can handle it. If that makes me weak, then I’m weak. I think it just makes me me. It may be that other hormones will have different effects. It may be that going back to micronized progesterone, 100mg twice a day, will be better for my body and mind than Prometrium, 200mg once a day. Or it may be that it’s either going to be au naturel, a surrogate, or adoption. We have a lot to talk about and think about. And N seems on board to consider all options. Love that guy.
Okay, I’ll be let out of my pen soon. I’ll post this for now and maybe add something on that I dictate in the car. Thanks for reading; it’s good to be back.
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