Yes, a long time since I wrote anything.
A lot has happened.
Mostly, I have been busy teaching. Some practising. Lots of lessons.
Teaching is good. I love it.
December happens. Some of my students I now will not see until January 7th, the last day I am teaching in 2013 is December 21st. I have had my last piano, guitar, and voice lessons for 2013.
More people I know have died. I am ready for 2013 to be over with. Six funerals in a year (and more I somewhat felt obligated to go to but didn't) is too much for someone who is only 23.
Three friends have lost parents this year. Two lost their fathers, one lost their mom. Well, three friends MY AGE. I'm not counting the loss of some dear older (people in their fifties +) friends' parents. Which did happen. More than once.
The biggest change recently is that I am now in the process of the protocol for egg retrieval. The first part is regulating my cycle via birth control pill for approximately three months. I started that protocol last sunday.
And I HATE IT. I HATE the pill, *Marvelon* that I am on. My emotions have been across the board. Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half in a row crying. Last wednesday, I couldn't stop smiling to focus for fifteen minutes during my voice lesson. Now, I do enjoy my voice lessons. But I *SHOULD* be able to control myself. It bothered me almost as much as the crying.
I feel like I am fourteen, when I was going through a bought of teenage depression/mood swings. Not knowing why I'm crying, or smiling. Feeling like the world is ending for no particular reason, or over a very small reason. More difficulty concentrating.
I know I'm not alone. I have yet to find much positive about Marvelon online. Most women write about how horrible they felt while on it, even if other birth control pills were fine. Many call it 'antiquated'. So WHY ON EARTH IS IT THE ONE THAT IS USED IN FERTILITY TREATMENT? That I have yet to find out.
It has been so bad the past week and a half that I am going to be putting a phone call into the clinic tomorrow to ask about my options. As much as I dislike the idea of going up on my seroquel or imipramine, I dislike the idea of staying this emotional, not-very-functional-wreck even more. Random thoughts of "I hate myself", "Everyone disapproves of me and is disappointed in me", "My students are going to quit", "I'll never get into my next university", "I'll never graduate with the degrees I want", "Why did I sign up for a flute exam, I'll never be ready", and more keep going through my head. Most have very little basis in reality, and the ones that have even the slightest really aren't THAT bad. Sometimes students quit. Yes, my advisor, the registrar and the associate dean probably are disappointed that I haven't finished the paper but I have that magic third chance and I WILL MAKE IT WORK. My guess is that they probably are wondering what is going on with me...perhaps concerned. I hope that that is the way they are choosing to look at things.
To be honest, giving myself injections for up to two weeks, and enduring vaginal ultrasounds (the wand is too big for me...) everyday seems preferable to this insane Marvelon.
GAH. Marvelon, I HATE YOU.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Another year
Another year has nearly gone by. As a teacher, I measure years based on the September start of classes, not really the January calendar change. But as a young woman whose mother died in early November, and whose mother was diagnosed in November the year before that, I also measure years based on November. Four years ago, my mom was diagnosed with serious cancer, and almost three years ago she died from that cancer. Does it ever seem right or fair? No. Things will never feel right with how it happened. It was of course supposed to happen when I was in my fifties or sixties, perhaps even closer to seventy! Not when I was twenty, and not in the way that it did.
Still, things are mostly pretty good although there will still be strange and challenging moments. Although I have done a lot of cleaning and organizing, at times I will still find something related to her that surprises me. Sometimes this is a good surprise, sometimes not. It still hurts, and likely always will hurt that I was never able to discuss my love of teaching my classes with her. She was THE MYC parent, the to-die-for type on almost every aspect. I say almost because in my child mind especially with some retrospect, she could have handled composing and some practice times better! But that is very much in the past.
Sometimes, life feels very surreal. It seems impossible to believe all that has happened in the past three or four years. We lived through cancer and death from cancer, I started teaching, I became sick and finally received my diagnosis, my dad became engaged, and next summer I will have a much larger family. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have five step-siblings, let alone three step brothers, but it is happening! Life goes on.
Still, things are mostly pretty good although there will still be strange and challenging moments. Although I have done a lot of cleaning and organizing, at times I will still find something related to her that surprises me. Sometimes this is a good surprise, sometimes not. It still hurts, and likely always will hurt that I was never able to discuss my love of teaching my classes with her. She was THE MYC parent, the to-die-for type on almost every aspect. I say almost because in my child mind especially with some retrospect, she could have handled composing and some practice times better! But that is very much in the past.
Sometimes, life feels very surreal. It seems impossible to believe all that has happened in the past three or four years. We lived through cancer and death from cancer, I started teaching, I became sick and finally received my diagnosis, my dad became engaged, and next summer I will have a much larger family. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have five step-siblings, let alone three step brothers, but it is happening! Life goes on.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
On hair, and email addresses
The past three weeks have brought some changes, and not just in the back-to-teaching and back-to-lessons-full-time type of changes.
Three weeks ago, after approximately four years of growing it, I got my hair cut. Eighteeen inches were taken off. My waist-long hair is now shoulder-length and even wavier.
Now, haircuts usually don't signify that much change. For me, however, the last time I had gotten my hair cut was with my mom. It was September or October of 2009, and we did a girls' day out type of event. She was still 'healthy' then, we had no clue that just a few weeks later she would be unable to drive, and a patient of CancerCare.
That random saturday afternoon was the last girls' day out we had.
For almost two years, I had been saying that I would get my hair cut, must have wrote it into my schedule at least fifty times. But it didn't happen. I had become very emotionally attached to my hair, and not just the hair itself, but the life it represented. A life where I had two parents, where I didn't know the trauma of cancer, or extended grief. Being a person who doesn't always deal with change well to begin with, and having that emotional attachment meant that...the hair didn't get cut for four years!
Cutting my hair was a sort of moving on. And today, while going through my email contacts to find some that could be deleted or revised, I found that I still had my mom's work email as a contact. I hadn't realized it, to be fully honest. Today, my mom's work email was deleted from my email contacts.
Bit by bit, my old life-that of the little girl, basically-is ending. It isn't easy going through these changes at times. Her birthday was this past friday, September 20th, and she should have been 57. In just a few days, we hit the day that she entered the hospital for the last time. And November 2nd is creeping up faster than I would like.
Change happens.
Three weeks ago, after approximately four years of growing it, I got my hair cut. Eighteeen inches were taken off. My waist-long hair is now shoulder-length and even wavier.
Now, haircuts usually don't signify that much change. For me, however, the last time I had gotten my hair cut was with my mom. It was September or October of 2009, and we did a girls' day out type of event. She was still 'healthy' then, we had no clue that just a few weeks later she would be unable to drive, and a patient of CancerCare.
That random saturday afternoon was the last girls' day out we had.
For almost two years, I had been saying that I would get my hair cut, must have wrote it into my schedule at least fifty times. But it didn't happen. I had become very emotionally attached to my hair, and not just the hair itself, but the life it represented. A life where I had two parents, where I didn't know the trauma of cancer, or extended grief. Being a person who doesn't always deal with change well to begin with, and having that emotional attachment meant that...the hair didn't get cut for four years!
Cutting my hair was a sort of moving on. And today, while going through my email contacts to find some that could be deleted or revised, I found that I still had my mom's work email as a contact. I hadn't realized it, to be fully honest. Today, my mom's work email was deleted from my email contacts.
Bit by bit, my old life-that of the little girl, basically-is ending. It isn't easy going through these changes at times. Her birthday was this past friday, September 20th, and she should have been 57. In just a few days, we hit the day that she entered the hospital for the last time. And November 2nd is creeping up faster than I would like.
Change happens.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
History Paper
Confusion over my history paper has put me into a tailspin. I was under the assumption that as long as I got it to my adviser/professor before early October, when midterms were, that it would be all good for me to graduate at the end of October. Apparently I was wrong, and he wants it SOON. As in SOON.
Which is NOT good.
Also almost went into a full-scale panic attack when I saw that I start teaching in just three weeks.
Also not good given that I do not have anywhere near full classes yet.
This week has not started well.
Which is NOT good.
Also almost went into a full-scale panic attack when I saw that I start teaching in just three weeks.
Also not good given that I do not have anywhere near full classes yet.
This week has not started well.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Summer
Summer. To be honest, this has been a difficult summer for me. I have cried an awful lot.
We have renovated the house in just about every space. Talk about turning my life upside down. Some days I have felt ready to crack from the stress of it. Having everything in different places, dust, dirt, men coming and going-sometimes staying for nearly twelve hours, chemicals from paint and carpeting, my dad having the television down in the waiting area of my studio, me having to sleep IN my studio for four nights due to the carpeting and painting in my room...
For several weeks, I was unable to hold meetings for potential students. That stressed me. A Lot.
My body hasn't really liked summer either. It held up okay during our trip to the maritime provinces, although I was sometimes a bit more tired than I would have liked. Coming back home though, there have been a number of weird occurrences. For an entire week straight, I had decently severe levels of my breathing issues starting early in the day, every day. I would have maybe one or two hours in the morning before my body would start hating me. Another week, my GI tract, which normally moves on the slow side, decided to move quickly, and reject food even more than usual. The worst was one of the nights when I was sleeping in my studio, and I fell asleep utterly freezing, and in some stomach pain, woke up a couple of hours later, and had to camp out in the bathroom where I was SO SO SO tired because of the seroquel but with such a twisted stomach that I didn't dare leave...one of those times when you just wish your body would DO something and get it over with, but it just decided to hang in limbo.
The strangest of all though had to be last saturday. I woke up feeling even more tired than normal, but shrugged it off as one of those days. My close friend B was having a come-and-go celebration of being five years off treatment for lymphoma, and I baked some brownies and bussed over to celebrate. While on the bus I began to feel that things weren't quite right...my eyes were a little bit sore, and my head felt a bit tight-ish and I couldn't quite get comfortable. I passed it off on being tired, and maybe some allergies, although I had a feeling that things weren't just allergies or being tired. I stayed a couple of hours, and by the time I left I knew that I was definitely running a fever without even having to check a thermometer. When I got back home, it was 100.6, within a couple of hours, it had gone up to 101.7 where it stayed for several hours. Besides feeling like you do when you have a fever (kind of achy bones, sore eyes, and that slight slight headache, along with alternating warm and cool) I had no other symptoms. It was the STRANGEST thing. One, that's the highest fever I have recorded since I was 13, almost ten years ago when I had a full-blown double ear infection, and two, NO other symptoms. Add to that that I have basically been a recluse in my house, and you get one confused girl in her twenties. I woke up in the morning with a normal temperature. All together, it was probably about 12 or 14 hours of fever. A night's sleep has generally sent away fevers in the past for me, not to return. Same happened here. So far, it's been a one-time occurrence. A very weird one time occurrence. I'm not really a fever running person, the last time was back three summers ago when I caught a VERY nasty cold from one of the kids. And it certainly wasn't as high as this one. If it had gone as high as 102, or had lasted past the night, I would have gone and gotten checked out because things were just too strange. And if it happens again, I'm getting checked out.
The good thing right now is that the end is in sight for this construction/renovation hullabaloo.
The bad thing is that I am overly stressed about some other aspects of my life: Getting students for the fall, and graduating. I got an email from my adviser today asking about the progress on my paper. So yeah, stress there. Sometimes I have spent 8-10 full hours a day just cleaning and organizing, or moving things around. 99% of the work of putting things back to rights in this house has been done by me, not my dad. So there has been a bit of tension there too.
Just wanting my life back to some closer level of normal.
We have renovated the house in just about every space. Talk about turning my life upside down. Some days I have felt ready to crack from the stress of it. Having everything in different places, dust, dirt, men coming and going-sometimes staying for nearly twelve hours, chemicals from paint and carpeting, my dad having the television down in the waiting area of my studio, me having to sleep IN my studio for four nights due to the carpeting and painting in my room...
For several weeks, I was unable to hold meetings for potential students. That stressed me. A Lot.
My body hasn't really liked summer either. It held up okay during our trip to the maritime provinces, although I was sometimes a bit more tired than I would have liked. Coming back home though, there have been a number of weird occurrences. For an entire week straight, I had decently severe levels of my breathing issues starting early in the day, every day. I would have maybe one or two hours in the morning before my body would start hating me. Another week, my GI tract, which normally moves on the slow side, decided to move quickly, and reject food even more than usual. The worst was one of the nights when I was sleeping in my studio, and I fell asleep utterly freezing, and in some stomach pain, woke up a couple of hours later, and had to camp out in the bathroom where I was SO SO SO tired because of the seroquel but with such a twisted stomach that I didn't dare leave...one of those times when you just wish your body would DO something and get it over with, but it just decided to hang in limbo.
The strangest of all though had to be last saturday. I woke up feeling even more tired than normal, but shrugged it off as one of those days. My close friend B was having a come-and-go celebration of being five years off treatment for lymphoma, and I baked some brownies and bussed over to celebrate. While on the bus I began to feel that things weren't quite right...my eyes were a little bit sore, and my head felt a bit tight-ish and I couldn't quite get comfortable. I passed it off on being tired, and maybe some allergies, although I had a feeling that things weren't just allergies or being tired. I stayed a couple of hours, and by the time I left I knew that I was definitely running a fever without even having to check a thermometer. When I got back home, it was 100.6, within a couple of hours, it had gone up to 101.7 where it stayed for several hours. Besides feeling like you do when you have a fever (kind of achy bones, sore eyes, and that slight slight headache, along with alternating warm and cool) I had no other symptoms. It was the STRANGEST thing. One, that's the highest fever I have recorded since I was 13, almost ten years ago when I had a full-blown double ear infection, and two, NO other symptoms. Add to that that I have basically been a recluse in my house, and you get one confused girl in her twenties. I woke up in the morning with a normal temperature. All together, it was probably about 12 or 14 hours of fever. A night's sleep has generally sent away fevers in the past for me, not to return. Same happened here. So far, it's been a one-time occurrence. A very weird one time occurrence. I'm not really a fever running person, the last time was back three summers ago when I caught a VERY nasty cold from one of the kids. And it certainly wasn't as high as this one. If it had gone as high as 102, or had lasted past the night, I would have gone and gotten checked out because things were just too strange. And if it happens again, I'm getting checked out.
The good thing right now is that the end is in sight for this construction/renovation hullabaloo.
The bad thing is that I am overly stressed about some other aspects of my life: Getting students for the fall, and graduating. I got an email from my adviser today asking about the progress on my paper. So yeah, stress there. Sometimes I have spent 8-10 full hours a day just cleaning and organizing, or moving things around. 99% of the work of putting things back to rights in this house has been done by me, not my dad. So there has been a bit of tension there too.
Just wanting my life back to some closer level of normal.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Grief
Since April, I have felt like I've been in a complete tailspin. I realized on tuesday that what I've been feeling is...an emotion that I know very well. Grief.
Grief over the very strong probability of infertility. My friend B, who had a bone marrow transplant put the words exactly thus..."It's like all your future children dying to find out about infertility".
Maybe this would have been easier had I heard it when I was younger. Or maybe it would have simply pushed me to suicide attempts at a younger age.
Grief.
Grief over the very strong probability of infertility. My friend B, who had a bone marrow transplant put the words exactly thus..."It's like all your future children dying to find out about infertility".
Maybe this would have been easier had I heard it when I was younger. Or maybe it would have simply pushed me to suicide attempts at a younger age.
Grief.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Lost Adventures of Childhood
Watch...and realize that one, we are doing our children harm, and two, we can easily correct it. Never been so happy that my parents would not allow us to do organized sports. Well, my sister did gymnastics, but it was NOTHING like what these children are describing. And I'm also happy that the program I teach does not require much time from children (depending on level, 5-30 minutes 5 days a week).
Very glad that I was at the tail-end of 'free' childhood. They're right. I KNOW that children live in my neighbourhood...but I don't usually see them out very much.
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