New!

I’m writing really quickly to let everyone(okay there aren’t that many) know that I’ve changed my blog address. Instead of here at Brain Of A Mommy I’ll be at Just Ashlee If you you’d like to keep reading me and I really hope you do, please follow me over there! Thanks!!
Ashlee

Not So Sweet Dreams

I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m admitting that right out of the gate. Thing 1 hasn’t slept well for over a month-almost 2 now. She won’t go willingly to bed and doesn’t stay there once we put her in bed. She is scared. Scared of something. She cries. She holds onto me. Something isn’t right. She wakes up anywhere from 2 all the way to 10 times in the middle of the night. Sometimes she will go back to bed and to sleep without a fight. Other nights(most times) she begins crying hysterically and acts as if going back to bed is the most terrifying thing in the world. I’m at a loss. I’ve called the pediatrician 5X only to be told by the nurse I will be called back and then they don’t. This upsets me. I trust and love our doctor. I’ve never been treated this way. I don’t blame him. The receptionists/nurses that work for him are worthless. I despise them. I am heartbroken for my little girl. Something very real to her is making it impossible for her to sleep peacefully through the night. Something in her dreams, thoughts, or imagination is causing such dramatic outbursts that, at times, I don’t recognize my own child. This isn’t a skinned knee I can put a band-aid on and kiss away. This is deeper and much worse. I have been told to try melatonin and really do want to try it but I was wanting to discuss it with our doctor first. I’ve tried to talk to her about this. I have moved her brother into her room for comfort. She has 2 night lights and a lamp that emits enough light for reading she sleeps with and her TV is on every night. I never let her watch anything even remotely scary. I feel like I’ve covered every possible base yet here we are…..every night the same thing. I feel like I’m failing as a Mommy to protect my little girl. Isn’t that my job? She needs me. I’ve googled and done research on night terrors. Some of the symptoms fit. Some do not. I won’t stop looking for answers and if our doctor’s office can’t get back to me I’ll find another doctor that will. If anyone has any information or help that I haven’t tried, it would be greatly appreciated. My little Sleeping Beauty deserves calm and peaceful sleep.

Bring it on!

It’s been  a while since I wrote. I was honestly hoping I’d have something new and wonderful to tell you. “I love menopause. Greatest thing in the world!” Those would be big fat lies. Menopause is almost as big of an evil whore as PMS and endo. The hot flashes feel like satan is here licking my skin. The night sweats feel as if someone has dropped me in the swimming pool and lovingly placed me back into my bed all the while not waking me from my slumber. The mental confusion? HAHAHA! I had that shit before the menopause so now it’s just worse. That ones just kind of funny. The fatigue? It hits at really odd times and I feel like I’ve run a marathon after feeling fine a moment before. When they say “rollercoaster”, they aren’t shitting you. I feel for any woman who has gone through this chemically or naturally. The pain is still here. Doc said to expect at least 3 months before I’d feel less pain. I think it might be less. I’ve attempted to stop the pain meds a few times to see if I could handle the pain. So far, bad BAD experiment there but I had to try, right? Hubs didn’t think so and got pretty upset with me trying. He hates seeing me in pain. I feel like menopause has made me a liar. I am constantly telling him or my sister(about the only IRL people who ask how I’m doing) “I’m fine” and I am lying about 90% of the time. There are days where I’m okay and that’s not a lie. I function through the pain regardless and I go about my day as I would without any pain at all. It just sucks to have to do that because it’s a lot harder to put that smile on my face for Thing 1 and Thing 2 who have come to watch me much closer. They “know”. They don’t know what’s going on but they “know” something isn’t right and they are very protective of me. I love them for that and hate that they notice it. This will get better. I know it will. I’m willing it to get better. I refuse to accept that I will be in pain forever. I have too much in my life and too many things to do to lay in my “Ashlee Cave” with a heat pad on my stomach and cry about how bad I’m hurting. Bring it on, pain. Bring it on, hot flashes. Anything else you got, Mr. Menopause? Throw that at me, too. Thank you to anyone who reads this and asks me how I’m doing. You have no idea how much your support and concern mean to me. I have very little real life support so that fact that you care and worry, wow. Thanks.

The Ride…..

I should start by updating my earlier post. We have decided against the surgery for now. A lot of factors brought us to this decision. It’s inevitable that a hysterectomy is in my future but hopefully the later future. For now, we have chosen menopause. I saw “we” a lot. The reason I say this is because no choice I make affects only me so Travis is very involved in all the decision-making that goes on. We are a team in every aspect. He has amazed me. I started the process of menopause Monday. I had researched, talked to the doctor, talked to people who had gone through the process, and prepared myself mentally. I was ready. Or was I? No. I wasn’t. In beginning, my new medicine I would have to stop my old medicine-the birth control I thought was doing nothing for my pain. I was wrong! About 4 hours after not taking my birth control that I normally take religiously, the pain increased. It kept getting worse and worse until I was doubled over and crying. I couldn’t believe I forgot to take into account that *maybe* this birth control was doing what the doctor prescribed it for….taking the pain down a few notches. So, that’s what I’ve battled the last few days. Pain. More pain than I’m used to. I like to think I can handle a lot. This? Is a new level of “a lot” and I am not a fan. Another fun twist? While my body is transitioning into menopause for the first two weeks my estrogen levels will be extremely high. I couldn’t figure out why I felt like crying nonstop. I wasn’t mad or sad or upset. I would be sitting there and tears would well in my eyes and begin falling down my face. Lovely hormones. That’s been going on for a little over a day. I’m honestly scared to leave the house. What if just start bawling at a total stranger? Then, what? At first, I had decided I was going to keep what I felt when I felt it to myself. Now I’m not. I don’t care if one single person reads this blog.  I want to get this out. Every step of the way, I will be documenting how I feel and when I feel it…..no matter how embarrassing or pathetic. If I can make one other woman feel like she isn’t alone then I will consider it worth it. Here is the beginning of my ride! Giddy Up!

Right now…

Some of you know and some of you don’t know that my endo has gotten more consistently painful lately. I knew going back to the doctor was inevitable. We went yesterday. I knew another surgery was going to be in my future but what I heard wasn’t what I expected. It’s time to remove my uterus. Lasering off the endometrial growth won’t help much and the lesions have become so severe that I am left with no other options. Everything is so spider webbed together that laproscopy is not an option. I will be having open surgery….much more risky and a longer recovery time. My doctor wants to make sure he gets everything. He is very thorough. He is going to try to keep my ovaries if he can remove and/or drain the cysts that have grown on them. He also wants to keep my cervix if there aren’t any lesions on that. I will have a urologist there to place stints in my ureters to help them see and feel them so they have a better chance of avoiding them during surgery. After surgery, I will begin getting lupron shots and taking a daily dose of progesterone to put my body into early menopause to kill off anything that might be left. This will go on for a minimum of 6 months and we will reevaluate the progress at that time. To say I’m scared? Understatement. Fucking petrified is more like it. This is huge. I know something has to be done because living in pain and not being the Mommy and wife I want to be is breaking my heart every day. I don’t want to be morbid but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought this: What if I die? What happens then? Those thoughts don’t go away for long. I worry about that. I am still in shock about all this. They are scheduling the surgery and will call me with the exact date. It will be sometime in early July. Thank you to anyone who reads this, worries about me, prays for me. You, my online friends, mean so much to me. You lift me up. You encourage me and give me hope. I love you. I wanted to make sure you knew what was going on now. I’m scared and sad. I’m trying my best to think positively. I really am.

Wordless Wednesday

 

I love these kids more than my own life and seeing them love each other just makes me feel so overwhelmed with emotion that I come up short trying to put it into words. Hopefully, it means I’m doing something right.

My Mom….

It’s never easy to see a parent in pain or be sick. It’s a hard thing to see them wheeled off to surgery. This is what I saw last Monday. My mom went in for a laparoscopic surgery to remove some infected areas of diverticulitis that has caused her pain over the last few years. Her pain had gotten to an all time high and the surgeon decided it was time to take care of it. It was only to take 2 hours. 2 hours came and went. Nothing. We sat there and waited. 4 hours later and we had gotten a call that they had some complications and it was taking longer but they still weren’t finished. They are always very vague in these calls and that’s never reassuring. 6+ hours after my Mom was taken back to surgery the surgeon came out to explain what had happened:  He had gotten in there and looked for the single area of infection, finding 3. He had to give up on the laproscopy and cut her open to get a better look at things.  He removed all pieces and in doing so, had to remove over one half of her colon as well. When he tried to put her intestines back together they simply wouldn’t stretch. He had removed too much surface area and couldn’t make it connect. He “borrowed” a piece of intestine from somewhere else and finally made everything connect and this is why it took so much longer. At this point in time, I was just glad to hear that she was okay, had survived the surgery, and was in recovery. I barely heard what the surgeon had said and had to have it repeated to me by my Mom’s fiance, Jeff, later. We went to her room and waited for her. When they brought her into her room I was not ready for what I saw. My mom was white….pale. She has never looked so bad in all my life. I immediately put my hand on her chest to make sure she was breathing. She didn’t look like she was alive. She was. Thankfully, she was! She spent the next 8 days in a horrible amount of pain. The pain never subsided. The nurses told us over and over that she was just someone who had a “low threshold for pain” and left it at that. Tuesday afternoon she came home. She was still hurting and very swollen in the abdomen and was sick to her stomach. By Tuesday evening late she was hurting so bad she asked her fiance to take her back to the hospital. He did. When they got there, she was x-rayed and they found out that all the food that she had eaten over the past 8 days was still in her stomach. It hadn’t been digested or passed. There is a kink in her small intestine making it impossible for her food to pass normally. They stuck a tube down her nose and pumped an ungodly amount of food out of her. They put an IV back in and started rehydrating her, realizing that since taking it out, she hadn’t gotten any liquid. They also started a central line to administer what they call “milk” to her. The “milk” is a lot of nutrients and vitamins to get her stronger. She is very weak from not getting anything from all that food she consumed. They are waiting to see if the kink becomes “unkinked” or if she will need more surgery to fix it. Right now she is too weak and considered a bad candidate for surgery. It’s a waiting game and I hate this for her, for Jeff(my Mom’s fiance), myself and my siblings.  Seeing this, living this is hard. Both my parents have always been healthy. I’m thinking very positively and Travis has been amazing….watching the kids so I can so see her, going with me to be with her. I love how strong he is. It’s just hard. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. It’s hard not think about everything good your mother has every done for you when these kinds of scary things happen. It’s all I see running through my mind. I’ve explained (in a kid-friendly way) to Thing 1 and Thing 2 that Nanny(their name for her) has a boo boo in her tummy and the doctors are working to fix it. They are worried and upset, naturally. I’m trying to comfort them and I try to stay strong for them and quietly comfort myself. It’s hard. I’m scared.

Wanted: Best Friend

All my life, I have searched for the friend. Not a friend. I’ve had plenty of those. THE friend. A best friend. A friend who can only be described with the word “best”. A friend who is so much more than they have to be. I always had sleepovers growing up, was invited to birthday parties, had people over to my house. I never lacked in someone to hang out with. As I got older, I never ran out of people to do things with but I also didn’t have that someone….that person. I knew it and I think the people who I hung out with knew it, too. I’ve had people in my life who I thought could be the best friend. They lied, talked about me behind my back, broke my trust….broke my heart. They were not my best friend.  I turned my cheek and kept looking for what I knew I wanted: that person. The person who I could tell my fears, my desires, my dreams and wishes to. The person who will listen to me when I’m being silly and then tell me just that. The person who will make me see the positive when all I see is the dark and negative side of things. I have a few people in my life who I can confide in. There is one person who I KNOW would and could be a best friend to me. We cannot be the friends we would like to be. The circumstances around our situation won’t allow it. She knows who she is and she knows how grateful I am for her friendship that I do get. Thank you. I hear about people talking on the phone and hanging out. I want that. I want someone to help me plan my kid’s birthday parties and to go shopping with me and tell me what looks okay on my big boobs that are too big for my body frame. I was laying in bed last night and I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about my missing friend. The one I know I should have. It felt like a Mack truck came and hit me doing 90. Ashlee! You dumbass! This friend? This person who is always there and never leaves me? This person who will stand by your side and never walk away? The one who will never betray your confidence and tell your darkest secret? The single most trustworthy human on the face of the planet in your eyes? You. married. him. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before now. We’ve been together almost 9 years…married for 6 next month. I’ve bitched and moaned this WHOLE time about how I’ll never find a best friend, someone who is what everyone else has. I already had it…just in a different form. He isn’t a girlfriend. He isn’t a woman. But he’s my best friend. I know how corny that sounds, trust me. I know people will say “Aren’t you supposed to marry your best friend?” and yes, you are. But, I didn’t realize how much I depend on him as my friend until last night. He’s everything I can’t find in someone else and maybe that’s why….I don’t need to. I have it.

Wordless/ful Wednesday: Night and Day

Meet Night:

This is my talker. She will tell you about her day before you ask. She will ask about your day before you have processed what your day was like. She is the champion at “20 questions”. She quests for knowledge. She is my sassy one. If you make her mad, prepare yourself. She has a quick wit about her and you will see/hear it(we’re working on that one). She is a Daddy’s girl. She has a fierce love for us all but Daddy holds her heart. She swears she will marry him when she grows up and gets out of college(she actually says that). My girl is brave. Nothing scares her. She is always up for trying new things. She wants to jump off the high dive or try the big slide at the park. I love her passion for life and everyone in it. She amazes me every day with her wide eyes that seem to be taking every thing in at all times. I love this girl.

Meet Day:

This is my shy child. You must earn his trust to be able to talk to him, sit beside him, hug him. He’s very protected with his feelings and thoughts. You know you’ve done something right if he asks you a question or walks up to you with a hug. He’s my cuddle bunny. He loves to cuddle, snuggle…pretty much anything that involves close contact with his Mama. He’s been this way since birth. I worried that would go away as he got older but he’s proved me wrong. He’s all boy, too. If it makes a “vroom vroom” sound, he’s all over it. He likes dinosaurs and monkeys and loves to play pretend. There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars for this little man who brings a smile to my face every day.

These kids of mine are completely different in so many ways. They are like night and day. They also have a lot in common. They both have their Daddy’s feet. Thank goodness! Mine are hideous. Both kids have my nose which is also good because the Trav’s is kind of big. Their eye colors are different but the shape is very similar I could stare into both and get lost. They’re beautiful. These children complete me. They are the reason I am here. I have never felt a more powerful love or need to protect anything in my entire life. Both kids hold my heart in the palms of their tiny little hands. I love them from the tops of their heads all the way down to the tips of their toes….

A hard post…..

Some of you know I went to the doc a while back. Some of you don’t. I switched ob/gyns. I didn’t feel like mine was listening or taking the time to really consider my pain so I asked around and found one that came highly recommended. To say I like the new guy is a huge understatement. What I found out is something totally different. I have had endometriosis for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been in pain but never like this. It’s become a daily struggle and so I knew what I would hear wouldn’t be good. I went in and met the doctor and had a vaginal ultrasound. What I saw on that screen shocked me. My female parts are a mess. The uterus should be a “T” or chalice shape. Mine is almost a perfect circle. It’s being compacted. It should move freely, mine is stationed in place. Imagine if Spiderman flipped his wrist and flung a web at my inner lady bits. That’s how it looks. Everything is attached by endometrium and scar tissue. I also have a cyst on my right ovary that’s almost larger than the ovary itself. This came as a relief to me. I know that sounds crazy but the pain has been so much more intense on that side and it felt good to finally know why. I have two options. Neither of which I like. The first option is to have the doctor go in and try to laser as much scarring and growth off as best he can. He says he can’t promise anything and if he were to get in there and see that there isn’t a possibility to do any good with the laser he would have to give Travis the option of the second option or nothing while I was under. The second option would be to have a hysterectomy. When he said that I just about fell off the exam table. Me? A hysterectomy? At my age? I’m 26. I cannot tell you the fear and internal struggle I’ve had with this news. I know we’re done having children. One, b/c we have decided that two is enough for us and two, b/c it is not safe to try to get pregnant with the condition my uterus is in. I guess I’m greedy. I suppose I’m selfish. I want to keep my damaged parts that cause me pain. Sick, right? We’ve talked about it over and over. I know I will have to do what’s right for our family. That cyst could rupture at any time. I’m in constant pain. I’m losing weight b/c I don’t feel like eating when I hurt. All of these reasons and so many more are why I will eventually part with the very organs that created and carried my children. I will say good-bye to them and go through menopause before 30. This was/is a very hard post to write. Seeing it in print is even harder. It makes it real. That’s why it’s taken me so long to do. I’m not ready yet but I will be, I think. I will not apologize to anyone if I seem like a wimp or a weenie for being so sentimental over these organs that cause me so much pain. They’ve also given me the most greatest gift I’ve ever received. If someone doesn’t understand that, then I can’t help it. I’m struggling with this and I don’t need anyone else to understand me or my pain or fear. It’s mine and I own it……