zeptember

I don’t like this not being seen by a doctor thing. It is important for me to know what exactly I have when I get sick. When I first developed symptoms of pink eye on Tuesday, the doctor didn’t want to see me - she was convinced from what I had described to her that it was in fact viral conjunctivitis. I know it’s highly contagious and all but couldn’t I come in through a back door to be seen or something, like a friend of mine said he had to do when he got conjunctivitis?

I want to know OFFICIALLY, from TESTS which CONFIRM what is going on whenever I am sick. I don’t like treatment based upon speculation.

When I got home at 3:30pm yesterday, I called the doctor and asked if I could be seen before closing time. That didn’t happen. I took a nap around 5pm and then got up about 45 minutes later, only to return to bed for the rest of the night around 8pm. An hour later, around 9pm, I was awakened by a phone call from my doctor. Again she had more speculation for me as to what my diagnosis is based upon my description of symptoms.

She said she’s seen a lot of patients this week with severe headaches and sore throats, that it goes around this time of year, and that she’s seen grown men crying from the head pain. She said it’s Aseptic Meningitis and said rest is in order. She was taken aback that I’d actually gone in to work yesterday, and said ‘no wonder’ when I said my symptoms had gotten worse. A virus needs time to run its course she said.

I decided to glean some more detail about this Aseptic Meningitis thing. I learned that it is made up of two viruses; the coxsackie virus and the echovirus. Upon researching the coxsackie virus, I found that it is the SAME virus which also causes hand, foot and mouth disease.

WELL! Isn’t that interesting, since a child at our school was reported to, as of September 21, 2009, to have hand, foot and mouth disease! I journaled about it here.

Now let’s go back to the pink eye (conjunctivitis) for a moment. According to WebMD, viral conjunctivitis “often results from the viruses that cause a common cold.”

Let’s go look up the viruses that cause the common cold…

According to Wikipedia, “The common cold is most often caused by infection with one of the 99 known serotypes of rhinovirus, a type of picornavirus.”

WELL! Isn’t that interesting!

The coxsackie virus is a member of the of the picornaviridae family!

For me this is an open and shut case. I have a direct trace on what’s been plaguing me.

My husband had a look at the paper issued from my workplace, which detail symptoms for hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), and gave me the hairy eyeball when I matched none of the symptoms on that paper. I got defensive - the paper lists only the stereotypical and worst case manifestations of HFMD.

If you look at the wikipedia article for HFMD, I match the following symptoms: headache, fatigue, sore throat, diarrhea. I’m not trying to say I have HFMD specifically. I’m saying I have very likely caught the coxsackie virus that the child in my school had last month. I have direct daily contact with this child, either in my outdoor classroom or at lunchtime, when I am serving as lunch monitor. I checked my logs and she was in my classroom the week leading up to her diagnosis.
We spent the week of September 21 sanitizing everything in our classroom to prevent further spread of the virus, but I’d already caught it, as evidenced by my journal entry on September 22nd.
The child missed one week of school rather than the recommended two weeks for recovery, then came right back to school with a wet cough and a runny nose, and was back in my classroom.

My doctor last night said without even seeing me that based upon my symptoms and based upon what she’s seen physically in her doctor’s office in the past week, that I likely have aseptic meningitis. According to the Medline Plus website, which is government-run, “About half of aseptic meningitis cases are caused by the coxsackie virus and echovirus, two members the enterovirus family”.

Further, the website states, “Risk factors for aseptic meningitis include:

• Being a health care worker
• Having a suppressed immune system
• Exposure to children in a day care setting
• Exposure to someone with a recent viral infection

I hit three out of four on that list. Lest you need reminding, endometriosis, which I have, is an autoimmune disease, and I have a supressed immune system from birth, since I became allergic to my allergy shots by age 6.

Let’s have a look at the symptoms list for aseptic meningitis. I will put in bold text the symptoms that I match:

• Abdominal pain
• Abnormal sensitivity to light (photophobia)
• Chills
• Confusion
• Drowsiness
• Fever
• General discomfort, uneasiness, or ill feeling (malaise)
• Headache
• Muscle pain
• Nausea and vomiting
• Rash
• Sore throat
• Stiff neck

These symptoms have been going on intermittently, becoming worse at times, since September 18th - again - the same time period as the infectious child was in my classroom. I had direct eye-level contact with this child, and I recall jumping back whenever she coughed while talking to me. I recall giving her a tissue to blow her nose. I recall taking her to the bathroom to wash her hands after coughing, sneezing, blowing her nose.

Medline Plus says that although “People usually recover fully 5 - 14 days after symptoms start”, “Fatigue and light-headedness may last longer in some people” (as noted by my spout of dizziness on September 25th), and “The infection may last much longer in a person with a depressed immune system.”

I told my husband in my defensive state this morning that it is not “all about the blame” as he dismissively remarked to me. I told him it’s about me tracking what illnesses impact me worse than others, how and where I was exposed to said illnesses, and their effects on me, because I have a compromised immune system. I told him I am in effect writing the user manual for my own system, and that since this system was released before it was properly QA’d and tested (I was born a month premature), there are inherently some bugs in the system - namely, the immune deficiency. SO, I told him, I am the documentation guy for this system - to continually learn how to operate it and maintain it in light of its shortcomings.
My husband finally got it, giggled, and told me I’m a beta release.

(We have both worked for many years in and around the computer industry, so the lingo is sometimes the best way to communicate).

This morning it was hard for me to wake up. I got up at 7am, so that means I slept for about 11 hours, and I’m still tired. I have a sore neck and shoulders, which is what was going on yesterday afternoon too, so I can’t claim it’s from sleeping for too long. This morning, my eyes are still sensitive to light, and are still feeling sticky. I had loose stool but not diarrhea this morning. I have a low level body buzz, which for me has always meant flu or virus present in the body.
I have stomach gurgles, and the headache has just poked through the haze of just having woken up.
(text bolded for easy reference)

Based upon all of this, I called in sick to work to obtain another day’s rest. Viruses need rest. Any activity and/or stress helps promote viral proliferation. I want today to be low key and stress free.

Tomorrow night is my husband’s 20-year high school reunion. I want to be well enough to accompany him to it.

I feel guilty taking the time off, because just as I was about to call in sick - as I had the phone in my hand - it rang. It was my co-worker telling me she wouldn’t be in and wanted to know if I could sub for her. I had to disappoint her.
So the secretary and at least three of us assistant teachers are out of work today, on a Friday. I feel guilty for the hardship the other teachers will have to take on in dealing with being short staffed. But it’s common sense to stay away so as not to infect more people, and more importantly, so as not to make my illness even worse or take longer to recover from it.

Of course in that guilt too is the whole ‘will I be fired for missing work’ PTSD that I always go through.

Alas.
*sigh*

Last week I talked about Triggers and Fundamentalism. I was set off because a fellow endometriosis blogger had found a site called Invisible Illness Week, which I was eager to join along with my fellow endo bloggers.

However, I found that the site is a Christian-run website. I drew a deep breath and registered to be one of the guest bloggers, anyway, because I really like the content on their website, it’s not pushing religion, and the more people voicing themselves about invisible illnesses, the better.

Then I waited, feeling in my gut that I’d be rejected. I felt this way because my website had said “contains explicit language”, and because my website currently has a black scratchy looking background, which is likely too dark and depressing for the average Christian, let alone the average anybody. I know that I exist within a subculture of people who enjoy outwardly expressing the more macabre side of life.

A day after posting my blog, I received an email from that website, commending me on my strength and resolve in battling an invisible illness. The email ended with “Best wishes!”

Immediately I knew I’d been rejected as one of their guest bloggers.

On top of what I listed above, my blog contains a section entitled Things I’ve Tried To Combat Endo, and within that section I detail how I USED to pray to God, but that “I left the fold in college”.

Being that the Invisible Illness Week website is Christian-run, it is no surprise that my blog would be rejected. I am not Christian. They rather covertly advertise their site as Christian - there is no ‘About Us’ or ‘Mission Statement’ that explains them as Christian, but there is a link in the upper right that says ‘Christian Resources’. If you look around on their busy homepage, you’ll also find an ad on the right side of the page for Rest Ministries. Clicking into that ad, you will see that there IS an ‘About’ page, and it reads, “Rest Ministries, Inc. began in 1996 and became a 501(c)[3] in ‘97. It was founded by Lisa Copen. Lisa was diagnosed a few years earlier with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 24 and life had changed dramatically. She searched for some time, but was unable to locate the kind of Christian support that she desired to help her along this unexpected detour of chronic illness.”

I commend Lisa for being the one to take charge and put up a Christian-based support site for those who suffer with chronic illness and pain.

It still doesn’t stop the fact that I feel rejected by followers of God once again. It doesn’t stop the triggered memories of growing up fundamentalist Christian and being told from a young age that no matter what I did, I was always offending God somehow and would never be perfect in any sense of the word, but yet I had to always prove and prove and prove myself in the HOPES of one day being accepted and loved by God.

It’s not Lisa Copen’s fault. It’s not her website’s fault. It’s not the fault of the people who staff her site, who rejected my blog. I hold nothing against these people.

I’m still learning how to deal with my anger, my hurt feelings, my rejection complex, my bitterness after being raised in such a foul, miserable cult called Fundamentalism. I’m still learning how to forgive my ma for continuing to be a fundamentalist. It’s very hard work, emotionally. I am always trying to prove my worth to people because I could not prove my worth to God - religion according to my ma didn’t allow for it to happen. I am always feeling rejected by people to this day, because according to how I was raised, God had always rejected me, and yet I was always expected to keep trying to get into his club. These things are not easily unlearned and reprogrammed. It takes years, with therapy. There are moments where I feel I have transcended everything, but then something smacks me in the face again, and I find out I’ve not really come so far after all in emotional healing.

It’s a learning process. I am, as they say, a work in progress.

On Friday, Susie Collins over at The Canary Report, a site for those who suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, posted a video advertising for Invisible Illness Week from September 14-20.

I have Endometriosis, which is termed an Invisible Illness. I know of Susie Collins through Jeanne over at the Chronic Healing website. I found her while searching for other people blogging about endometriosis, and we have corresponded via email, chat and video chat. Jeanne insisted that I also get to know Susie. I love the work Susie’s doing over at The Canary Report.

I watched the video that Susie posted, and decided that despite seeing a Christian site mentioned in the ’sponsored by’ info at the end of the video, that I would go ahead and sign up for the list of bloggers writing for Invisible Illness Week.

It’s only been a day, so we shall see if my blog is even added. I’ve taken down the “contains explicit language’ tag on my blog, since over the last few months I’ve been editing out profanity as much as possible, anyway. I have decided that I can still be angry about how people with endo are treated, without using such fucking foul goddamned language.

If my blog is not picked up for Invisible Illness Week, I’ll understand. It’s a Christian site, after all, and some of the stuff I talk about on my blog is a bit TMI and too dark for many Christians.

I would be lying however if I did not mention that I’ve been triggered by the start - by even finding out that it’s a Christian-run website - and that if rejected as a guest blogger, I will be angry because I’m already on the defense due to being triggered.

I have a rejection complex that is easily traced back to being raised in a Baptist Fundamentalist family. No matter how good you are, no matter how hard you try, GAWD IS WATCHING AND HE KNOWS WHAT YOU REALLY THINK, and don’t you tell me you DIDN’T think this or that, because we are all born of EVE’S SIN, and we must all prove to GAWD that we really are capable of overcoming our sins and our guilt. ONLY IF GAWD CHOOSES, WILL YOU BE TRULY FORGIVEN. And the funny thing about that is that certain HUMANS are endowed with the ability to KNOW IF GAWD HAS FORGIVEN YOU. These people include televangeists, preachers, and your parents and family. They also include some self-righteous members of the cult church.

So no matter what I’ve ever done in life, I’m GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY! And no matter what I’ve tried to say in my defense, I’M NOT WORTHY of Gawd’s grace.

About eight or so years ago, my mother told me she’s sorry I’m going to burn in hell, but could I please go home to her house and claim the family belongings when The Rapture comes? Perhaps I could read her bible and make one last attempt at being saved, she mused.

About six or so years ago, my brother told me that it was ridiculous for our mother to continually tell me to just call out to Jesus to be accepted back into the fold, because it’s obvious I won’t be allowed back (i.e. rejection) because of all of the things I’ve done in my sinful life.
I thought about this for a second, and then I rehashed for my brother all of the things HE’S done: hitting our mother, doing drugs including cocaine, pot and LSD, selling those drugs to others including minors, melting down great aunt’s silverware to make amulets for the Necronomicon, busting open newspaper boxes to steal the money inside, being a member of a gang, stealing our mother’s handgun and partially filing off the serial number on the gun, using the gun in a drive-by shooting, causing our father to take out a new mortgage to get him out of a ten-year prison sentence after getting caught for all of this, knocking up a fifteen-year-old high school girl when he was nineteen, then trying to have friends talk her into an abortion, marrying that girl to make her honest when she refused said abortion, but continued drug and alcohol abuse, looking at porn on cable TV and on the Internet, calling porn hotlines, and getting caught by the wife doing all that because HELLO it shows on the monthly statements…

My brother replied simply that he’s asked Gawd to forgive him, and he was forgiven. He said it’s too complicated for me to ever understand.

I replied that by his logic of just asking to be forgiven, all I should be able to do is ask Gawd to forgive me, and call out in Jesus’ name, and I too should be forgiven.

My brother forcefully said NO! And told me that Gawd KNOWS I am NOT repentent, and WILL NOT forgive me, whereas my brother himself WILL ALWAYS be forgiven.

I said, “suppose you go and kill a man out of anger. But then you feel really bad about what you’ve done. If you pray to Gawd to ask his forgiveness, are you forgiven?”

My brother replied, “Yes.”

I said, “suppose I go and kill a man out of anger. But then I feel really bad about what I’ve done. If I pray to Gawd to ask his forgiveness, am I forgiven?”

My brother replied, “No.”

At this point, I stopped trying to be logical with my brother. We talked a bit more, with me trying to change the subject, then I told him I had to go.

I try not to engage in religious talk with my family - you cannot rationalise with a Fundamentalist. It’s not possible. They will always win because they cannot see their own web of lies, contradictions and hypocrisy. Being a Christian Fundamentalist is the very definition of severe mental illness, in my opinion.

But the real point of all this, you might ask, is what does my family and my experience have to do with a Christian-operated website?!?

I am cognitively aware that Christian does not equal Fundamentalist.

However, being scarred by cultists calling themselves Christians has had an unfortunate side effect for me, emotionally. Every time I hear or see the word Christian, the FIRST thing that leaps to my mind is an association of Fundamentalists. The second thing that happens for me emotionally is that of guilt and rejection combined.

It may take me the rest of my life to separate the semantics of the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Fundamentalist’. Knowing the difference on a rational, logical level is one thing. Believing and understanding it on an emotional level, especially after having been harmed emotionally, is quite another.

I will end this post to say that while journaling about this, the people over at Invisible Illness Week sent a reply to me, saying, “All of us at Rest Ministries & Invisible Illness week thank you for sharing your personal journey. I have a family member who also struggled with endometriosis & infertitily. Gratefully she had a positive outcome, but not everyone is as fortunate. Your positive attitude is a testimony to your strength & resolve. Best wishes!”

The “best wishes” ending to the email read to me like REJECTION, heh.

I went over to their bloggers unite site to see if my blog had been added, and it has not been added, yet.

Every day is awareness day for me on my blog. My blog is listed on other endo-related blog sites. But to get my blog out to even more people is always a goal. If I don’t pass muster on the Invisible Illness Week website, that’s got to be okay. I have to remember to not take it personally. I have to remember that these people are not my family who have judged and hurt me so.

That’s the real lesson for me, here.

On March 26, I saw an ad for a preschool right in my own town, so I applied to it. The very same day, I got a call back and was asked to interview.

Five days later, I had my interview. It went well, and I was asked back for second round interview. I went back two days later and found out that I’d already landed the job, and the second round was really just the beginning of orientation! I was asked if I could stick around and observe daily procedure. I totally stuck around. They gave me the okay to leave around 1pm. I got the impression that I was needed more than anything to fill in, rather than observe, since they’re so short staffed. I allowed myself to be taken advantage of because seriously, I wanted to give them a thorough once-over as well. I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me after the daycare hellhole I’d worked in last spring.

The endometriosis pain set in on that same day, but I stuck it out. The pain was a 6 on the pain scale.

I was asked to come back the next day as well, to observe early morning routine. This had me a bit panicked, since I was worried that the pain would be unbearable on the second day of my cycle. I didn’t want them to see me at my worst before I’d officially started the job!!
But I went. I observed from 8:30am - 11am. Thankfully, the pain and such did not ramp up until 20 minutes before the scheduled end of my observation day.

They wanted me to return on Monday to start a college-level refresher course on Early Childhood Education. Because they have hired me, this course costs less than it would at university, and it’s done over one week instead of one semester. I totally leapt at the opportunity, because once I have my ECE units, I’m golden for being hired elsewhere in California - I no longer have to solely rely upon my out-of-state college transcripts, which many California schools don’t honour.

I went home and was bedridden from the pain on Friday and for about half of Saturday. I only had mild pain on Sunday, which had me worried once again, because normally, I’m bedridden for two solid days at the very least. In the past two years, it’s been 3-4 days actually.

Got up this morning, felt only minor pain, nothing else. So I went to school.

The pain and such didn’t ramp up again until 1pm, right after I’d eaten lunch. The food I’d eaten was on my “approved foods” list, so I’m puzzled as to whether it was food that set off the pain and simulated sugar crash, or whether my body would have just gone that route anyway due to whack hormones or what.
I popped half a Tylenol 3 and stayed in school. I was a bit loopy for awhile but managed.

Class let out at quarter to five. I return to school tomorrow, bright and early.

My first official day on the job, as a full-time assistant pre-kindergarten teacher, begins on Monday, April 13th.

Eventually, I’ll be a head teacher again. Gotta work my way back up the ladder after having been away from the field for 13 years. Somehow I don’t think it will take too long for me.

Yay!

The nanny job ended on March 6 and since that time I’ve been looking for a new job. I’ve applied to daycares, schools, and private families who are looking for a nanny.

I had two interviews with private families and both fell through because of my endometriosis being a deal-breaker (time off each month). I had a third person reject me by phone. This hurt me a lot, morale-wise. But I kept plugging along.

On Tuesday, March 31, I interviewed with a Montessori school. I was told to come back today, April 2nd for second round interviewing, and it was then that I nailed the job. But I almost lost it when I announced I’d be on honeymoon for most of May. They want me in there so badly that they made accommodation for me!

So… TODAY I GOT A JOB AS A TEACHER AGAIN!!!!

Because of this victory, george just couldn’t pass up a deal of his own. Call it a late April Fool’s joke if you will.

He showed up a day early - today - while I was at the school for second round interview and observation of students and teachers.

I did the grin and bear it routine. The pain never got too bad today, thankfully. But tomorrow I’m expected back to do observation again, and I’m expected to attend classes next week under the tutelage of the school owner herself, to officially earn my California Early Childhood Education (ECE) units.

I didn’t have to have this schooling when I got the daycare agency job last spring, because they accepted my university transcripts in lieu of.

This school however only approved one class from my transcripts. This is not unusual - every school and agency has their own idea of what coursework is acceptable - that’s why I had a hard time finding childcare work in California when I first moved here in 1997, and said screw it, and went to work in the dotcom industry, instead.

I’m excited that I got this job. I do want it. This will further my career and resume. It’s a golden opportunity, what with the ECE coursework being thrown in with the job offer.
But we’ll see if george behaves. We’ll see if I don’t lose this job the moment I’ve won it.

This of course made me very depressed.

After spending four hours in the school, when I had budgeted up to an hour originally, I went home starving and made lunch. I had to scarf down my food because I’d promised I’d take my father-in-law to the hospital to get his wound checked. He’d just had a fistula installed on Tuesday so that he can start kidney dialysis in a few months (he has diabetes and end stage renal failure as a result. His kidneys are only at 10% functionality right now).

Got FIL to the doctor in time but his wife, who was supposed to pick him up after his appointment, was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t answering her cell phone. I had to be at my own doctor (gyn) appointment in Berkeley, 21 miles away, at 4:30pm.
At 3:30pm, my FIL told me it was okay to go, so I left him at the hospital. I called his wife three more times. She never returned my calls. I called my husband to let him know this. He was pissed at his father’s wife as usual. I don’t blame him.

My husband ordered me to take the rest of the day off and just try to be still and relax so that the pain doesn’t ramp up.

No can do I told him - was on my way to my own doctor appt at that very minute.

I got to my appointment in time, despite rush hour and construction, because I sped like the devil. Still unable to reach the FIL’s wife, I called him instead. He said he was fine and that they were now on their way home. This means his wife made him wait nearly an hour past the time she said she’d be there!!! This is so typical of her. UGH.

My appointment was fine but nothing much new was able to be told to me regarding my illness (endo) or complications from it, because the test results from the primary care doctor visit on Saturday haven’t come in yet. More UGH.

Endured more shitty traffic on the way home, got home and met husband there. He was home early cuz his car had been in the shop, was all fixed, and so he came home early on the bus to get his car. Once again, he told me to relax and destress.

That’s when the power winked out and back on again, rebooting my computers.

This is the second time since last night that the power has done this. The power only goes out in the computer room, hallway and bedroom. It is not a tripped switch. We can’t figure it out. I called the landlady and left a message.
Because of the quick outage, the computers rebooted as I said, but the DSL router didn’t come back up. I power cycled it twice. I called tech support and left a message. I logged into my linux box and checked out the ip masquerading and network settings to make sure it was all fine.

I then decided that since I didn’t have Internet, I may as well take that time to offload the phone pix I took at the doctor’s office. While sending the files from my phone to my mail account, the phone spontaneously rebooted.

WTF.

And no, we are not in a Mercury Retrograde. I do still keep up on astrology stuff, even though I’m no longer maintaining my old website for that. Well…not maintaining for now. I hope to take up that torch again in the future.

After an hour, the DSL router automagically came back up and I was able to get my Internet fix before acute shock set in.

We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

…Just in time now that I’m settled in bed with the laptop all cozy…for the cramps to set in.

Today started out so good. Whisky Tango Foxtrot.