Conversation at my breakfast table goes something like...
Aaron: This ain't no dramallama!
Ananda: This is an
alpacalypse!And my late night computer time is them behind me, bickering....
Ananda: Aaron, MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, how many times do I have to say "Excuse me," move -
Aaron: *giggling uncontrollably*
Ananda: I will crack all your knuckles and put salt in your bed.
Aaron: *dead serious* Annie don't say things like that.
Ananda: So move.
Aaron: She put salt in my bed once, Mom.
Ananda: I did not! When?
Aaron: That time you said, don't poke me one more time or I'll put salt in your bed, and then I poked you again!
Me: Seriously guys?
Ananda: JUST MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!
Just below is our current favorite video clip, which we found while looking at JAWS scenes after I told them how JAWS TERRIFIED ME as a 5 year old that spent every weekend out on boats in (periodically) shark infested waters. None of this crap where kids can be comforted, "werewolves aren't real honey." My Dad was like, "Well yes there are really terrifying great white sharks and their entire jaws really do come out of their mouths like that as they kill and eat and they really are around here sometimes, but quit worrying." <---paraphrased
Anyway,
cinematic gold, particularly from :43 on:
I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the scene where the JAWS shark pulls the helicopter down out of the sky and eats it...
Aaaaanyway. I think Aaron has a shadow on his upper lip, where a mustache will soon appear O_o
He is devastated about this, hates everything about puberty (he views it as this terrible thing that ruined his relationship with Annie so now they can't share a room anymore and she thinks she needs "privacy"), and goes out of his way to make sure nobody ever sees the 3 hairs per armpit that he is now sporting.
He's also starting to get the hang of word problems, and is irritated that I keep telling him he's using too much filler in his essays. And, he's in extra rehearsals for his hip hop class because Tawanna's signed them up for a competition next month that one or more of us will be travelling with him for (just to Orlando). This one requires knee pads.
Because of my own reading about gluten and autoimmune disorders, and the GAPS diet, and how it's naturally led me to all the kids who are on gluten free diets to help manage their sensory issues - I've been thinking a lot about how he eats. He would live on honey bread and french toast if I facilitated that. As it is, he wants 90% carbs all day long. He sees me making huge dietary changes and going to too many doctors' appointments, so I explained all the research on leaky guts, bacterial imbalances, problems with the modern American diet, the genetic engineering of wheat, etc. Including how it's controversial, most doctors either don't know about or don't agree with this stuff for the most part, anecdata vs studies and eastern and western medicine blah blah blah. The upshot is he's on a "low gluten" transitional diet right now; he can have one gluten thing a day. This is what I did for a couple of weeks before I went gluten free and he seems pretty on board; he really wants to be have less of some of the challenges that seem to be getting worse, rather than better, lately (being confused too often, no short term memory, frustration that leads to depression....his blood work last year basically led us to the doc asking me, "do you think he's just depressed and it's manifesting physically", which is part of why he's dancing again...)
I keep contemplating the idea of whether or not he needs to be tested for ADHD and/or on some kind of meds, for his own peace and happiness. It's tricky because he's not in school and we find ways to work around his problems as a homeschooler. Parents who he spends weekends with for sleepovers and his dance teacher (or flute teachers over last summer, acting teacher last fall) always act surprised and disbelieving if I mention he has SID/SPD - even though they are also often obviously accommodating it in various ways (like how one PATH Mom realized after I pointed it out that she would call out goodbyes to other kids in a group but for Aaron she'd put her hands on his shoulders and look in his eyes because he didn't hear her otherwise). Our end-of-school-year evaluator and our pediatrician just look at me for all the answers about how he's doing and trust whatever I say. It's kind of a lot to try to assess and do right on my own! But Aaron loathes the idea of counseling and has a really hard time opening up to most adults, and I am not at all sure counseling would be helpful or effective in the way it was with, say, Isaac, who was super eager and enthusiastic to go and loved every minute. It has definitely NOT been helpful when our pediatrician (who we all love and Aaron has known for many years...) asks him questions directly about how he feels...Aaron basically goes into "give the right answer" mode, weirdly stiff and with nothing to do with how he truly feels or what he might actually think. When I ask him WHY later he says he doesn't know and he realizes it's "weird" - he did the same thing with his virtual school teachers, he'd basically put on this formal voice and go, "Oh yes...ok...mmhmm...absolutely," during their phone conversations, and then have no idea what he was supposed to do when he hung up O_O
There will be days or weeks where it seems nothing is unusual about him and I need to just relax - then he almost steps out in front of a speeding truck and Elise grabs his hand and tells him he has to look both ways and wait to cross. I still won't let him ride his bike anywhere but our street, our block by himself because I honestly think he'd get hit by a car in no time otherwise. He'll run into a trash can if he sees a butterfly or spots a spiderweb. Sometimes I think of how he's turning 12 in a couple of months and feel downright disturbed about how completely impossible it seems that he could be ready for independent living in 6 years.
He's so addicted to minecraft. Sometimes I think it's a good thing - if a kid is going to be addicted to a video game, that is probably the best one to choose - but other times I cannot deal with how he thinks his whole life should be a default state of playing with just special breaks to do other things (like eat, go to the bathroom, sleep). We have log in screens on his laptop and make him earn an hour at a time here and there and it's like his entire universe orbits around those times.
Ananda has finally landed herself on a roller derby team; the South Florida Junior Roller Derby (ages 8-16).
If you haven't been following, this started when she saw the movie Whip It the same week that we met a roller derby team at the Florence and the Machine concert last fall. I happened to find her some fitting, high quality derby-style skates at a yard sale
cheap, a couple of months back, and she was using them just around the neighborhood. Then our friend Gloria had her birthday party at a local match, and I took a bunch of pics and video for Annie and got details about their junior league which she was awesomely, over the top excited about.
Her first practice was 2 hours of sweaty, red-faced, challenging demands (stopping completely and momentarily on one and on both knees; "T-stops;" attempting to block other players; trying to "jam" for the first time by lapping and getting around girls who want to stop her) - all among total strangers with people watching on the bleachers. With a mouth guard in. I figured she would either love it or tell me we were never, EVER going back, when it was over...and she loved it. And has been raving about it ever since :) The other girls on the team are SO nice, and outgoing, and did this "Circle of Awesome" thing after the practice where three of them went on and on about how well she did for it being her first day. She is really, really excited about this.
Such the renaissance girl, going from cello sectionals to derby practice :p
Still and all, those things both happen on Sundays and for a lot of the rest of the week (barring TLC and PATH on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and times when the little kids are in bed and she wants to try to stay up late with me) it's this constant ridiculous battle to get her out of her room. I know she's "approaching that age," but good grief. I thought I spent all my time behind a closed door because of extenuating, dysfunctional and unsafe circumstances; I didn't know it can just unfold this way because someone is getting older O_o She doesn't lock the door and Elise is coming in and out all the time since it's her room, too, so her stuff is all in there - and a lot of the time she's just reading a book or cleaning the whole place top to bottom, or drawing or doing her schoolwork. But...come on! Then I feel sort of pointless and self conscious when I drag her out and there's no obvious benefit to her being out at all. I often have to make it a thing - "let's cook something," or "come see this video I found" but like as soon as we're done...she goes back in her room. And then there are the 45 minute locked bathroom door times constantly happening (which was also so me).
I don't want to write too much more about Annie, particularly any concerns I have, because she's got friends who know I blog at this point and it becomes infringement on her life or something.
Ananda approved sharing: She went on a sleepover with her friend/our babysitter Izzy a couple of weekends ago, and it was interesting that I felt significantly more nervous about her being alone with another girl than I do about the normal giant coed TLC sleepovers - because those have constant guaranteed multiple adult presences, with someone calling me about any and every thing for an ok, whereas Izzy has freedom to basically do whatever she wants. She's a really good kid and I love her mother, but she's older (just turned 15) and I knew there would be a lot of judgement calls falling to Annie. It was kind of awesome - she wanted to recount every minute of the weekend to me when she got back. "We looked up a butter beer recipe and walked to Publix to get the stuff - that's only a couple of blocks and it's a great neighborhood in the afternoon, so I figured it would be ok. It was DELICIOUS, we NEED to make butter beer. And she wanted to watch this show Merlin together so we looked up info and it's just a BBC show - with HORRIBLE effects, it's hilarious - and it is AWESOME, we watched the whole first season and part of the second and now I want to show it to you so much. Angela made falafel for dinner and it was really good, and I kept thinking, 'why is Neil Gaiman in my falafel', so I had to show them that episode of Arthur that he appears in..." and on and on.
So. I had some pretty messed up first time experiences last week. Basically, I went to get my blood drawn at Quest, which was fine, and a non-event, last Tuesday. Then late that night, I started pulling off that ridiculous perma-glue medical spellotape... you know, the medical heplock/IV type tape that leaves residue for WEEKS sometimes no matter how you scrub? I don't know why I couldn't just have a band-aid, but I had the tape, so I was wincing and ripping it off and yeah, glue-y stuff all over me. And my inner elbow sticking together from it was so fucking triggering, I just...freaked out. I had the first real panic attack of my whole life. I was scrubbing the living hell out of my skin with desperation to get the shit off of me, which is of course IMPOSSIBLE. Instead I just look like this a week later:
It only lasted a minute and I was like, ok, get yourself together, take a deep breath, and I went and put on a tight long sleeved shirt so I just wouldn't be able to feel that or stick to myself or whatever...but at this point I was having chest pains. I've never had chest pains before, but I figured, whatever, I got all stupid-crazy-upset, they aren't CHEST PAINS chest pains (whatever that means). Grant went to bed, I tried to stretch and breathe and got on the computer to just veg out and distract myself...more chest pains.
I researched "PTSD and chest pains"...they kept happening.
Finally 20 or 30 minutes had passed and they kept coming in contraction-like waves, and my left arm started going numb and tingly and I was like...seriously? Seriously. I mean. WTH.
SO. Off I went with G to the ER feeling like an idiot. Chest pains the whole way there. Whole hand going numb. I was trying to reason with myself like, can you please just get a grip so we don't have to go to the hospital? I mean you realize you have PTSD FROM THE HOSPITAL?!
But they kept up. And of course the first thing they do when you go in with chest pains, is an ekg, which requires them to put little STICKY THINGS ALL OVER YOU. I felt emotionally calmed down at this point - I had ever since I put the shirt on - it was just irritating and a little worrying that the pains weren't stopping and at the point of the little sticky things, I started laughing a lot, because. Good grief, the irony.
So that night they were like, "the blood we just drew shows you have inflammation", and I was like "yeah I'm being seen about that", but my white count was also high that night - which is interesting, since I now know it WASN'T on the Quest blood work just hours before...I've since been told you can actually have an immune response to stress that bad.
They made me do a chest x-ray and then said I had costochondritis, which is basically visible and painful inflammation of the connective tissue of the chest wall. Something that can be caused by arthritis, and amplified by stress, in other words. They ordered me Ativan and Percoset and I was so tensed into a tight rock ball and tired of the pains in my chest and convinced I'd never sleep again when I went home that I actually took them both. Which was kind of awesome, except then when I was reading about Ativan the next day I was like Um, NOPE (anterograde amnesia? cognitive impairment that NEVER GOES AWAY??). They wanted to prescribe me a ton of them and have me start taking anti-anxiety meds - based on a single first time incident? I mean I would consider that if this sort of thing started being a regular deal, but I can't help but feel an ongoing prescription is jumping the gun a bit at this point? I was totally chill with them in the ER, just recounting high stress and complaining of lingering after effects... Also, since I've been back to the regular doctor and explained this incident she can't believe they would give me percoset (narcotics with tylenol) and not an anti-inflammatory (which would actually fix the problem and not just make me too stoned to notice it).
Anyway. This whole thing has caused me to do a lot of thinking about my own preconceived notions about mental illness (I don't want to have it), psychiatric medication (I've never thought I'd need it even in a one time situation sort of way), and the surrounding taboos (because in the week since, prior to writing this, I have really not told almost anyone about this). It's sobering (perhaps that's the wrong word choice...) to feel really out of control of yourself, or like meds would be awfully helpful in a given situation. It makes me realize that I can think/act as though I'm fine with other people in my life actually having events related to their diagnoses, and their prescriptions, but I still hold on to something faintly superior about not participating in any of that. Which is obviously shitty of me. So this is my silver lining moment: I now know what it feels like to have a panic attack and to welcome a pill to make the anxiety go away, and thus I will...hopefully...be a better friend/psych down the road as a result.
I'm also looking at my poor Isaac with his anxiety disorder and just wanting so much to help him NOT FEEL LIKE THAT. Gah. He is doing great overall, better than ever in life, but he still gets super anxious multiple times per day, and works himself into a panic a couple of times a week.
I have so much more to say about all of this, but it's just too late tonight.
I was thinking of how I read so much science and world news most days, and watch educational stuff with the kids and on my own, and hash out and debate things with Grant, and just...have no urge to blog about any of it. I like consuming and pondering issues, events, discoveries, theories...it's almost all I talk about a lot of days, in my real outside-the-computer life. But it feels really irrelevant to archive in a personal history, and like less of a priority to share since it's obviously already out there, and also I just don't have the energy for internet debates or even anything approaching debate-like-interactions. I hate that shit, when it's with anonymous strangers. But...I'd like more adults to talk to about adult things! As if I even have time for that...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
