"Fret"ting

I am working nights right now. After my husbands doctors appointment I layed down.

I had been asleep for about an hour when Paul called me. This is odd because he is very careful not to bother me when I sleep.

"Don't be mad" was the first thing he said. Its never good when your husband starts off a conversation with "Don't be mad".

My husband is a musician. He is classically trained on guitar and has recorded some things with known musicians. I have heard him play on recording but the entire time I have known him I have never really heard him play.

He was in a car accident over a decade ago and with it he broke his back and his neck. He wasn't supposed to walk but did but continued to have trouble with his hands for years.

He started to get some of it back about 5 years ago but was then hit with the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.

After his accident he was pretty angry, but the thing that sent him over the edge was not be able to play guitar. He has had a rough life. I would not discuss most of it publically without him knowing but his upbringing was violent and invasive. So much so that if I did not trust this man with my life I would think he was making it up.

He turned to music for comfort, esteem, solace. Then it was taken away from him twice.

Over the years he realized it could be much worse. He has a family, great job, crazy wife. There all lots of things he throws himself into now for value.

I didn't realize how much he mourned it until the car ride home when he said he wanted a base guitar for Christmas. I have already tried twice for a Christmas present for him and he keeps blowing it by buying it or changing his mind so I told him he should wait just to make sure that he was feeling better.

When I got home I did some reasearch and tried to find money somewhere to get him one. When he came home with the car me and the girls were going to get him one.

"What do you mean don't be mad." I don't know why people say that. I was instantly mad.

He was guitar shopping. He had found one and had obtained financing for it and everything. I yelled at him, telling him he ruined his Christmas present again. He apologized and then I thought it was over. I could go and get it later.

Then he came home. And he had a bass guitar in his hand.

I was so angry and the old me would have screamed and freaked out. I would have made him see what a tool he was being. (I had previously called him a "dick" so 'tool' wasn't out of the question.

However it seems that God has granted me some sense and I saw how great the loss of not being able to play must have been to him. He has never really complained but it was obvious it pained him.

It hasn't been the not being able to play. It was the loss of the piece of himself that got him through all the terrible times.

So we talked. And he is keeping the guitar.

And he was happy.

And now I don't have to buy him a Christmas present.

And the guilt he is feeling has got to be good for some favors my way!!

The bass players are always the hottest too.

Scurvy Dog

My husband has never been well.

As a kid he had a spine deformity. In his early adulthood he was in a terrible car accident. He died on the table, and a back injury that was supposed to render him paralyzed causes him pain everyday.

Three years ago he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Severe rheumatoid arthritis. We were told that he would need joint replacements and end up in a wheel chair in the next decade.

We made plans. We pushed my career, and we pushed every drug that was available into his body in hopes of a cure, we pushed him not to sit around and feel sorry for himself.

The drugs were brutal. They made him lose his hair, brought him down to 120 pounds. They were immunosuppresent drugs and when one month he got the flu he nearly died. He says he didn't but he was too sick to listen to what the nurses were saying when they were hooking up the ecg machine to him. He had to take four months off of work to rest and still let me inject him twice a week because he wanted to get better so he could take care of us.

For three years I have watched my husband stretch himself everyday just so he can be a good husband and father to daughters he chose rather than created.

His sickness seeped into every pore of our lives. Every decision we made was made with the question "Can he handle it?"

My husband is a great man. He put himself and his pain last so we could have a better life. He waddled his way to work everyday so he could be productive.

He was having a hard time a couple of months ago and went to go see his doctor. She told him he was in remission and should start taking flax seed as a maintenance therapy. He told her he thought this was weird because he was in so much pain. She left the office and came back in and told him in fact he was not in remission and started signing him up for a drug that costs 3000 bucks a month.

He left the office uneasy and decided to get a second opinion. About 3 weeks ago he met his new doctor and after some poking and prodding he mutter that Paul was not going to like what he was going say. He didn't think that Paul had RA. The doctor refused to say anymore until tests were done.

Today we went to the doctor for the results. I had to go with Paul. I couldn't let him take the diagnosis alone. The other diseases we looked at with the same symptoms were horrible and what if it was a new disease we hadn't thought of.

He was visibly upset in the office. His doctor came in and opened the incredibly organized file. He started going through the list of all the tests he ordered and confirmed Paul did not have RA.

Liver function, kidney function, and immune tests all normal.

Then we were told.

Paul has rickets. Osteomalacia in adults, severe vitamin D deficiency. Common in these parts due to the lack of enviromental vitamin D.

He said that this diagnosis may not be exactly it. But reading between the lines we could see that there really is not anything else.

5000 mg for three months, 1000 mg for the rest of his life. If this is the problem my husband should be feeling better in 6-8 weeks.

I have tortured my husband for years giving him needles. For three years his life has been an exisitence only for some of the time.

All he needed was a jug of milk.

I am very angry.

Check it out!

Today at the Mission by rhymes with kerouac.

Tired

I am so tired. It is Christmas time, and as anyone knows who has worked in retail, Christmas is it. Everything that the business does is to just get it to Christmas, to make the most amount of money possible. My job is to get the stuff out to sell and to do that is to work overnight.

I have enough trouble sleeping and the flipping from days to nights has nearly ruined me. I had a terrible spell this week and thank God for my patient husband. I lost my mind temporarily. I became horribly irritable and had alot of trouble sleeping. Because of the lack of sleep, the problems my mind face become worse. I was terrible to my husband, impatient with my kids, and just wanted to spend all of my time in bed not sleeping.

When I start peaking on mania, I start to hallucinate. Its not so bad that I think that it is real. I just see stuff. I saw squirrels in my car, and people where there couldn't be anyone. The last day that was the worst I could hear the electricity.

Luckily with some drug induced sleeping I pulled out of it. I am feeling better.

Really though, I am just sick of this. One of the reasons that my husband and I decided that we should not have a child to blend in with the children I brought, is because I am crazy. Sometimes we don't go out because I am crazy. We don't watch certain shows, or visit with certain people. I have to do the driving sometimes, and the tv has to have a certain level of voluem because I am crazy.

I try to stay away from the drama of it, lamenting day in and out of all the things that I have been help back from because I am crazy. Of how bad I have it. Sometimes though, it does control my life, and the fact that I cannot control this bothers me. It smacks me out of no where and it makes me angry. I do not like ruining the time out with my family because I freak out on the way in the car. I do not like not going on vacation because I do not travel well. I feel stupid when we get to a movie theater 45 minutes early because I obsess about standing in lines and being in a crowd.

I feel as though I hold my family back and that makes me sad.

I want to be good.

I don't want to be myself.