Live Forever or Die Trying

After another 4 hours waiting at the clinic I did not get much results.  I have a very high viral load and they cannot figure out what it is.  It is not cancer, but the numbers are close.  If in 10 days the swelling in those lymph nodes don’t go away, they will order more tests.

So what did I walk away with?  Some anti-inflammatories for the swelling and pain, muscle relaxants for the muscle spasms, and a one-dose pill to cure the yeast infection that is always paired (for me) with taking any antibiotics.

I will keep y’all updated.

Okay, so this weekend after being on meds for 1-2 days, I was feeling great.  My only issue was a recurrent back ache every night (as in when it got dark) that would mysteriously go away in the morning.

Last night the the soreness came and two things different happened:

-It was not just contained to the small area it had been and

-It did not go away in the morning.

I now have your run of the mill flu symptoms:

-ache muscles

-fuzzy brain

-fever (99 yesterday to 102 right now)

BUT there is one thing that is different.  Take a look at the image below and notice the occipital lymph nodes.  The form a tri-force if you will on the base of the skull where the spinal cord enters.

Okay see them?  Well 2/3 of those (the bottom ones) are swollen.  I thought when I first felt one it was a bug bite, but when I found another parallel to the first, I started doing research.

What I learned:

-lymph nodes usually respond to something in their area (my head)

-this specific lymph node reacts to bacteria and cancer

It was too late to call the doc today when I found all of this, so I will tomorrow.  I am not going to take anything for the fever unless it goes over 103:

A fever is a high body temperature. A temperature of up to 102 °F(38.9 °C) can be helpful because it helps the body fight infection. Most healthy children and adults can tolerate a fever as high as 103 °F(39.4 °C) to 104 °F(40 °C) for short periods of time without problems. Children tend to have higher fevers than adults.

-WebMD.com

And in case you are worried “does she take the meds right?”, the answer is religiously.  The first one I took was at 6pm, so EVERY morning we have had an alarm for 6am (12 hour doses) and I take it on the dot.

I was writing the following as a reply to George on the “lonely” post, but it got so long I decided to make a new post of it:

Aw you are so sweet George!

Being a narcissist and having low self esteem go hand in hand; these last few days the low self-esteem part is in control. I am sure as soon as I get a job and have a larger social circle I will be fine. I will have a place where I can again work my ass off to get recognition. It sounds bad, but hey, if I am doing a great job at work, does the origin of my motivation matter?

On the pink issue: not all shades of pink are acceptable. Out of the thousands one can fit into the pink family, only the deep hot pink of my hair is acceptable to me. I hate “Barbie” pink with a passion! You know, the light pink that little girls are stereo-typed with.

I think that maybe by the time Dean gets to your age, he might have grown emotionally. I mean how much EI can a man in their early 20s have?

I think this stuff with my Dad not validating me by not coming to my graduation has a lot to do with the emotional needs i am having too. When he chose not to come, the reality that I have no parents hit me. I was in denial.

My mom died 2 years ago this Thanksgiving and a year before (at Christmas) my step-mom left my dad and then he turned back into an alcoholic. So technically, I lost my first parent at 22 and my second at 23.

If you want to be even more technical, my “sperm donor dad” (the guy who got my mom pregnant at 17 who I only met once) died when I was 4 or 5 (My dad is a guy who married my mom when I was a baby and then adopted me, but he is “dad” to me).

To add to it, I was the oldest and with such a hard life, I grew up fast to help mom with my bro and sis. I felt so much responsibility at such a young age, and most of it was my choice. For example, at 3 I remember dad coming home drunk and him and mom got into a violent fight. I physically got in between them and told my dad to leave until he was sober and to never hit my mom again.

What all this is leading up to is that I never had much of a normal childhood, and it is starting to catch up with me. I was always the strong one for everyone else, even my mom. My first phrase was “I’m the boss of you”. That was how strong willed I was and evidence of how much responsibility I took on myself.

Most kids first phrase might be “I love you mommy/daddy”, but mine had to do with trying to control my out of control family. I truly thought that my mom’s and dad’s love for me would give me the power over them to “fix” our life. At 3, I felt like an adult and looked at my parents like they were children: my dad the bully, and my mom the passive follower.

I am not trying to make a sob story, there are MANY thousands of stories worse than mine. I just wanted to set the stage for what I am going through now.

After all these years of denial thinking I can change my family, the death of my mother and the estrangement of my father has brought me to acceptance.

Acceptance that there is not a damn thing I can do for my mom. My mom is dead, so I can now never get her into college and into a career where she is not living off the government or odds and ends jobs. I can never bring her to the intellectual level I am at and have an intellectual conversation with her.

Acceptance that my dad is and always was an alcoholic. I cannot drag him to rehab. No letter I write him, no number of tears I cry, no “I love you” is ever going to get him on the path to a healthy life. In the past 3 years, I have never talked to him sober. I may never get back the dad I used to have.

This is why I am in the current state I am in. I have realized that I have no parental safety net. I wanted to be an adult when I was a kid, and I was. I always had the option of fucking up and crying to them, but now I don’t and it is all I want. Not all of it, just that wonderful sensation of being free of worry: mom/dad will take care of (fill in the blank).

Hmm that last paragraph did not get across what I am feeling. I guess a better way of putting it is I feel alone in the parental guidance department. Yes I have in-laws, and yes in many ways they are better than my own parents, but they are not my parents. There are just experiences that I will never have: my dad walking me down the isle (had a JP wedding), my mom seeing her grandchildren grow up (probably not any from me, but Holi my sister’s beautiful, love-of-my-life, little 2-year-old daughter). Also, there will never be another Christmas with my mom and her “dollar store grab bags” or bar-B-ques with my dad. it is all gone and will never happen again.

I know this is long, but the gray weather of the last 3 days has put me in an artistic expression state of mind; the outside mirrors my inside.

In short, I have realized and pretty much accepted that I have lost something that most people do not loose until their 50s or 60s, my parents.

I can never call a person mom ever again.

I am a daddy’s girl with out a dad.

I am a child without any parents.

I am an orphan.

OMG this JUST happened! I can’t beleive it.

Steve Irwin, the Australian television personality and environmentalist known as the Crocodile Hunter, was killed Monday by a stingray barb during a diving expedition, media reports said.
Irwin, 44, was filming an underwater documentary on the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Queensland state when the accident occurred, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on its Web site.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Irwin was diving near Low Isles Reef near the resort town of Port Douglas, about 2,100 kilometers (1,260 miles) north of the state capital of Brisbane when the incident happened.
Queensland ambulance service spokesman Bob Hamil confirmed that a diver had been killed by a stingray off Lowe Isles Reef, but said the person’s name wasn’t being released pending notification of the family.
A rescue helicopter was sent from the nearby city of Cairns, and paramedics from it confirmed the diver’s death.
“The probable cause of death is stingray strike to the chest,” Hamil said.
Staff at Australia Zoo, Irwin’s zoo in southern Queensland, said they had heard the media reports but could not make any comment.
Irwin is famous for his enthusiasm for wildlife and his catchcry “Crikey!” in his television program, Crocodile Hunter, which was first broadcast in Australia in 1992 and has been broadcast around the world on the Discovery channel.
He rode his image into a feature film, and developed the Australia Zoo as a tourist attraction.
The public image was dented in 2004 when Irwin triggered an uproar by holding his baby in one arm while feeding large crocodiles inside a zoo pen. Irwin claimed at the time there was no danger to his son, and authorities declined to charge Irwin with violating safety regulations.
Later that year, he was accused of getting too close to penguins, a seal and humpback whales in Antarctica while making a documentary. Irwin denied any wrongdoing, and an Australian Environment Department investigation recommended no action be taken against him.
He is survived by his American wife Terri Irwi, from Oregon, who was Terri Raines before they married in 1992, their daughter Bindi Sue, 8, and son Bob, who will turn 3 in December.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE

STEVE Irwin probably died instantly when his chest was pierced by a stingray’s barb, the producer of the documentary he was making said today.

John Stainton, who has worked as a director and producer on a number of Mr Irwin’s film and television projects since 1996, said it was unlikely Mr Irwin had felt any pain.

He said he had gone “over the top of a stingray and a stingray’s barb went up and went into his chest and put a hole into his heart”.

Mr Stainton said Mr Irwin had been rushed back to his research vessel but had not regained consciousness despite desperate attempts to revive him.

“We got him back within a couple of minutes to Croc One, which is his research vessel,” Mr Stainton said.

“We tried to quickly trip back to Low Isle where we were going to meet the emergency rescue people to do immediate and constant CPR, try and resuscitate him back into life.

“When we got there it was probably 10 to 12, and by 12 o’clock when the emergency crew arrived they pronounced him dead.

“It’s likely that he possibly died instantly when the barb hit him, and I don’t think that he … felt any pain.”

Mr Stainton said Mr Irwin had been filming with his daughter Bindi.

“We were in the Cairns, Port Douglas area shooting a documentary for Animal Planet called Ocean’s Deadliest, which was basically looking at things that can kill you in the sea,” he said.

“This morning Steve decided to shoot a couple of segments for a new TV show that he’s doing with his daughter Bindi, and with the cameramen went out onto the reef … to film a segment on stingrays.”

Most of this weekend I have been alone even though Dean is sitting literally 3 feet away from me. He is trying to achieve a certain rank in the MMORPG (massively multi-player on-line role playing game) that we play, and in doing so, he is on from the moment he wakes to the moment he goes to bed; I serve him food at his computer.

Hopefully this will be the last time he needs to do this, because after he gets the rewards, he won’t need to play as much. I mean, I like playing the game, but I don’t have the stamina he does.

On another note, I am feeling better, but not after getting much much worse. The evening after I went to the Doc I had severe pain. I tried to go to bed early, but the pain prevented it. My left side was aching, and then it turned into pain, then I started to cry. I don’t cry, so you an imagine how much pain I was in.

Dean played his game the whole time while I laid on the floor near his chair and sobbed. He would look down every so often and mouth “I’m sorry” but other than that, I got no comfort. I guess he does not have any mothering instinct. It also adds to why I lack emotion; he does not know what to do when I am upset. I cannot talk to him or cry because he does not know what to do. If I get upset, he gets upset, and I end up consoling him instead of the other way around.

He is a genius in every other facet in life, but lacks emotional intelligence. I know it is partly genetic (very stoic family except his sister and non-blood related grandma), but I am sure one could learn EI.

I just wish I had someone who could be there for me when I need them. Someone I can cry to and not feel like I am burdening them. Someone that can be my rock for a change.

I can’t be a rock forever, I will eventually crumble.