Thanks Prednisone!

So Bubba has caught something new right on the tail of his last cold. He came down with a runny nose Sunday morning but was spry and lively, so J. went ahead and took him on their previously-scheduled lunch date with J.'s sister, who needs a name because I'll probably be mentioning her here, but I'll come up with that later. Since the death of their parents in 2000, she and J. have been basically estranged because of all the shit she did while liquidating the estate. Stuff like stealing $8,000 from the estate to buy a car; forging J.'s names on checks; stealing furniture for her own house; not showing up at appointed times to clean out the house; etc. Anyway, she's fat, depressed and in therapy now like the rest of us and is reaching out to J. to mend fences, and J.'s on board with that, and I'm happy for them all but just don't see the point of getting involved in it myself. So I send J. off on these dinners and lunches with a smile but I am still protecting myself until I see more of how this shakes out.

ANYWAY, J. took Bubba with him for lunch on Sunday with his sister. His sister owns horses, so Bubba got his first up-close-and-personal horse experience, at which point we found that he has inherited J.'s mild horse allergy. So on top of the minor sniffles he was experiencing already, Bubba started sneezing a little and rubbing his nose like crazy. When they came home, Bubba was sleeping and when he woke up, we could tell he was sick. He had a terrible night Sunday. He had the most pathetic, scary, mucous-filled cough and would wake up gagging and crying about every hour or so. We had to do a nebulizer treatment at 3 a.m. I was so freaked out with panic that I ended up staying awake until 5 a.m. just monitoring the situation and Googling croup, pneumonia, tracheobronchitis and epiglottitis. I was determined that we would take him to the doctor yesterday, but then on Monday with my mom and dad, he seemed to be much improved. However, about half an hour after the doctor's offices closed and Mom and Dad left, he started crying about his ear hurting. Dammit! I knew I should have taken him to the doctor even though J. and Mom thought he "just had a cold." I am almost always right about Bubba being sick but because I'm also neurotic I sometimes don't trust it.

So yesterday I slogged through a day of work on three hours of sleep and also went to our great family oto yesterday to confirm my self-diagnosed sinus infection/bronchitis, which he did promptly. I love our oto. He gave me a brief, encouraging, "I know we can get you to quit smoking!" talk but then said, "That's all I'm going to say about it. I'm not going to make you feel bad, I just feel that I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say something." One thing I really like about Dr. C. is that he actually sat there for a few minutes silently, reviewing my chart and actually thinking about what he wanted to do next. I admire that so much more than a doctor who just tosses off recommendations for tests and throws a prescription at you. Anyway, he did a nasal swab (my teeth are still hurting from this violation of my tender sinuses) and is culturing my "pus" to make sure I get on an antibiotic that will kill my 'crobes. Hey, that sounds just like "microbes." Cool. Until then I'm on the z-pack/prednisone combo. I'll be going in in two weeks so he can see what my sinuses look like when I'm doing well. There will probably be some allergy testing somewhere down the road, some feeble attempts at controlling anything I'm allergic too, and many fruitless attempts to get me to stop smoking before it all fails and I have to have surgery. But we're not that far yet--although I did predict at New Year's that "this year's surgery" would be my sinuses. We'll see! I just want some relief!

I love prednisone. It provides almost immediate relief of my sinus pain with the added bonus of being an upper that allows me to be up at 3:30 in the morning blogging like crazy. It also gives me the weirdest dreams, which I'm going to relate here whether you want to read them or not, because I like to have them documented and this is really my journal these days. But you don't have to read them if you don't have time; I understand.

Last night's dreams were very disjointed, but included a trip back in time to J.'s parents' farm. In the dream, his mother was already dead but his father was still alive. This is often the case in my dreams about J.'s family, possibly because in real life, his mother had been dying for two years with brain cancer while his father just dropped dead one night. In the dream, I was involved in looking after a little boy--I don't know whose it was--and we were just roaming around the barns and having fun investigating all the farm stuff lying around. When we went back into the house, J's dad mentioned something about how clean the house was, but I couldn't take any credit because I knew I hadn't had anything to do with it.

Another bit of dream that is sticking with me today is this: J. and I were at a doctor's office, standing at a metal counter/table thing. An anonymous doctor presented us with several eggs that looked like small chicken eggs, and apparently, these were my lost pregnancies. (In real life, the only pregnancy that I know I lost was Hope; but I also know that many women conceive and miscarry so quickly they don't even know it, which might explain our Great Pregnancy Scare of 1991). Anyway, we were given the eggs so we could crack them open if we wanted to and possibly find out more about the babies we'd lost. The whole thing was extremely distasteful and scary to me in the dream, but we went ahead with the first three eggs, which were each brown and just a bit larger than a robin's egg. They were just like regular eggs when we cracked them open. Relieved by this, we went on to to the last two eggs, which, in contrast to the others, were white. With much reluctance and hesitation, I cracked them open, and inside each one was a little, white blob that looked like a little poached egg. In the dream I was repulsed and put them down and pretty much ran away from the table, crying. I told J. "I didn't know this would be so hard." That was the end of that.

Then I woke up and started this entry, which I'm finishing now at 9:11 a.m. at work just so I can get it posted. I ended up working on another post that I will hopefully finish soon as well. It will be a busy day for me--I have a very minor, kind of silly part-time job I'm going to learn about in about an hour or so, then I have a therapy appointment later today, and in between I need to do some work (imagine that!) Hopefully Bubba will do okay at daycare--he seemed much improved again this morning and never complained about his ear again...but also was very clingy and crying when I dropped him off. So we'll see what happens. Like I told J.--do you ever have a feeling that your day is going to be a trial from beginning to end? I feel that way today. OH WELL!

It's 4 a.m. and nobody else is up so I have no choice but to ramble endlessly on my blog

So we've figured out why men's butts stink. Now let's tackle another of life's mysteries: why does a simmering illness always become acute, or a new illness always present itself, after 5 p.m. on Friday and usually before noon on Saturday, when all doctor's offices are closed and you still have the majority of the weekend to survive?

Yesterday I came home early from work because I was just so exhausted. I laid down at about 5 p.m. and, other than a few feeble attempts, did not wake up until 2:30 a.m. today. As I was hacking up the chunky shit from my lungs that had accumulated over the past 9 hours, and blowing the chunky shit out of my nose, and feeling pretty much like I might pass out because I had been too fucking tired to even eat anything substantial for the past day and a half, I concluded that yes, my extreme fatigue, coupled with the chunky shit, probably meant I did have a sinus infection for sure and possibly a touch of bronchitis. Gee, it only took me a week to figure it out!

Obviously I had some kind of clue because yesterday, before I fell into a coma, I called our family otolaryngologist and made an appointment for myself because of the almost constant sinus issues I've been experiencing for the past six months (amazingly, I got an appointment on Monday!) And I called in my refills for antibiotics and prednisone, which I got that last time I had a sinus infection. So really, a doctor probably couldn't do much more, but damn! I'm sick of being sick on the weekend.

I had bizarre dreams during my fugue state. In the first part of the dream, LilCherie and J. were with me and we were carousing around Amsterdam and met this group of guys who were also from America and were touring the city and playing a few clubs with their band. They weren't famous or anything, in fact, far from it. Anyway, you'll know this was a dream because the totally hot bass player actually kind of had eyes for me and we were really attracted to one another. We flirted extensively with one another but it never went any further than that.

Suddenly, the bass player and I were at Nigel's Mom's parents' house in the U.K. She had this perfect life (imagine that!) and I was incredibly jealous. She was there getting married and I was there for the wedding. I was hanging out in the living room with Bass Player and my cell phone rang--it was my friend Pioneer Girl. I realized through the course of the conversation that she and Bass Player were actually an item and that they were going to be getting married. I was crushed! Bass Player continued flirting with me in a harmless way and I couldn't resist flirting back even though I knew it was a shitty thing to do, given his relationship with Pioneer Girl.

So...the wedding occurs and it's actually a double wedding, ostensibly between Bass Player and Pioneer Girl and my friend Nigel's Mom and her fiance, but of course in the dream they look completely different. I'm lonely and sad and just waiting to come back to the U.S. the next day, but still kind of sad about coming back because Nigel's Mom's parents' house is so perfect and happy and wonderful. During the wedding, there's a delay and they need someone to "entertain the crowd," so I end up doing this bizarre song and dance number about Christmas in front of the crowd. I notice a few little girls dressed in red, white and blue, obviously from America, and I say something to them in solidarity towards America or something. Finally the wedding occurs, we go back to Nigel's Mom's Parents' house, where I pack and count out my Euros to figure out if I have enough petty cash for the airport the next day.

Next thing I know, I'm in a car with J., heading for the airport, but he's not my husband. He's married to someone else. I say to him, "Do you really love her more than you love me?" He looks at me like he doesn't quite know what to say, like he's contemplating lying, and then lets his guard down and says, "No, I don't. Isn't it funny the choices we make when we're young?" I smile at him and we ride the rest of the way in a kind of friendly, wistful silence, wondering what could have been.

The general feeling I had when I woke up, and now two hours later, is basically one of sadness, lost opportunities, and jealousy, along with a dash of warmth because two men actually loved me or were attracted to me in the dream. The whole dream really took me back to the days of my youth when J. and I were really infatuated with one another. God, it seems like a million years ago. In some ways I feel starved for that kind of attention and adoration. It makes me sad to know that I will likely never feel that again in my lifetime, and because of my choice to marry the first man who ever showed an interest in me, I only got to feel it once.

The feelings J. and I have toward one another now are so much more complex. There's so much baggage attached to it all. All the shit we've been through--his parents dying, my surgeries, Hope--in some ways they deepen a relationship and in other ways they weaken it. You spend so much time just trying to save yourself that it's difficult to focus on the other person, and then the self-centeredness becomes a habit that's hard to break out of. And yet you feel incredibly bound to one another because of all the struggle you've shared. It defines your relationship in a way you never expected, and it kind of puts a cloud over it. When most of the seminal events of your marriage have been incredibly traumatic, the whole relationship seems locked in survival mode, rather than a higher place of love and respect. If that makes sense.

Yet there are some things that remain constant through it all. When I think of the time before I started dating J., when I first became attracted to him, the thing I remember first is sitting in the school library before school, his group of friends and my group of friends horsing around with each other. He made me laugh so hard and so much that I would leave after a half an hour with my face actually hurting. And through it all, I doubt there's been more than a few days here and there when he hasn't made me laugh, even during our darkest times. And I know deep down that I would rather have laughter than cheesy romance. I guess it's just human nature to want we don't have.

There have been three times in my life where I've felt that a dream of mine has actually come true, fully and completely. The first was when J. asked me out for our first date. The second was when I found out I was pregnant with Hope. The third was the day I gave birth to Bubba. When you really think about it, I'm pretty fucking fortunate to have had those three moments.