Missing

It's been nearly 3 and a half years. Gabbie has become a part of the walls of my brain. All thoughts are infused with her loss. Not in a horribly sad way, but more like a lens through which I see things. I think a lot about my reaction to matters, especially with the girls and D.   Is my reaction to stress,  to them,  to life,  one that I want to convey?  I'm still quite snippy.   I see this like I'm standing above myself and I say something snippy and then it's too late to retract it.   Those moments come and I feel guilty but haven't figured out how to stop them before I say it. I find I am most snippy when I am tired, rushed or stressed. Perhaps it's because then I have the least patience. 

I still live with a terrible sense of guilt. Today I should be walking in the WNYPBN'S annual Walk to Remember.   I didn't. Instead I stayed home. I finished the first book I've read in a very long time.  I napped when the baby napped.   For hours.   I cried.   I cried when D was home because I felt guilty for not walking for her,  and I cried when he left and I had put the baby down for her nap.   It was for the same reason--- for guilt, but also for sadness.  She'd be 3 and half.   It's been a long time since I'd considered what she'd look like or be like.   Now that Evie's getting older and beginning to talk, I realize how much I've missed of Gabbie.  She'd be walking and talking and have favorite foods,  and a style. She'd have favorite cartoons and... and none of it matters.   And life is not that. And today,  I cried because I have been feeling guilty for so long and I still don't know why.   I can't explain the guilt.   I didn't kill her.   I didn't do anything so that she'd be sick.  And yet still I feel guilt about her not being here.   And I know that this is so irrational. I'm angry at myself for feeling guilty for not walking and I feel guilty that I'm angry. I don't cry or wallow in her absence often anymore. But today, I allowed myself the deep sobbing cry that hurts your heart, alone on my pillow while the baby slept and D was at the land and the wind blew the trees into beautiful fall colored shimmers outside the window.   It didn't help but it was necessary. I think I'd let the saddness fester for too long. I'd go visit her rock at the Botanical Gardens,  but going any where isn't necessary. I know she isn't anywhere but right here. Her bear, her spirit,  is here.  It's all I have of her and it'll always (and never) have to be enough. 

The business of living

Children have a way of pointing out things that we otherwise can't see.

A while ago I posted about Gracie asking if there was a phone in heaven. And when I told her she didn't need it,  that she could just talk because Gabbie was all around and could hear her all the time, she asked Gabbie to come visit because she loved her.  BUT Gracie also asked Gabbie if she'd visit more so mama wouldn't be sad all the time that she's gone because mama loves her and misses her. This simple verbalized thought pulled at my soul. I tried very hard to not have my sadness spill out everywhere. I didn't do so well. I'm getting better though. I went off my antidepressants; I've been off for two weeks. I feel good about that though I still have terrible anxiety in the car. TERRIBLE anxiety mostly as a passenger.  I can't watch out of the windshield.

I feel awful that for Gracie's childhood one of the things she remembers most how mom was so sad.  Gracie is 5. At 2 she lost her sister. She'd wipe the tears from my face in the early months when Sky and Daddy were back to school. I really have no recollection of those months except darkness. Then we celebrated the firsts without Gabbie, the first Christmas, and Easter and Birthday (which was Gracie's 3rd). Those all blend too. I missed so much these last few years. 

Then I got pregnant and worried and feared and concentrated on not losing her baby sister. And I lost another year of Gracie's growing. With Evie's birth I suffered physically and mentally. I was wounded that I'd never share those moments with Gabbie. I wallowed and emersed myself in Evie's firsts. As the months went on I began to have clarity. All of those moments I lost with Gabbie that stimulated such deep darkness and sadness has now translated to a clarity in the obvious loss of moments with Gracie as she, herself, stated, and now I wonder what I lost with Sky-- the child who shares so little with me about what she feels or thinks but who was old enough to know she has a sister she never got to meet.  Sky is 12, now.

I try to remember back to sky being little like Gracie and Evie.   Often I can't remember things I wish I could. But it's not just related to Sky, it pertains to many things. I can recall elements of a written story or literature effortlessly; they are things committed to my mind somehow as though they were permanent, like walls of my subconscious holding up the roof that houses all the memories. But real memories are missing, I struggle to recall things I feel I should be able to.  Am I so self absorbed in moments that I cannot see what goes on even immediately around me?  I want to remember what Sky's favorite food was, or where she was the day she first started walking. I want to remember what she wore home from the hospital, and Gracie too.  I want to remember.  But I can't. I want to remember other things too.  I feel like my world is absorbed in,... in,... I don't know what.... living day to day? Living in the rat race? Living in a self absorbed bubble? Living with distractors?... that I do not make room inside my head for important things because it seems as though those things are just the business of living.  I go about my day preparing for tomorrow and am not even sure I even lived today. Is this the nature of teaching? Or is this my nature?

I want my girls to grow up LIVING. I want them to live for sunrises and sunsets.  I want them to savor the taste for travel, and ache to try new things. I want them to love to live and live with love but not let either of those things consume them. I want them to strive for greatness but not obsess over it. I want them to be involved in the moment but not so involved in it or themselves that they forget to remember it. 

I don't know how to teach them that because I know they learn by watching me and I am a failure at all of these. I cannot remember. I sometimes sarcastically think: what if one day I wake up and realize I've forgotten all of the important things and am left with only fictional stories? 

The memorial walk is Sunday and I am struggling with deciding if I want to go. I think I've tried to stop feeling.   I stopped my medications.  I've not read a novel in months.   (I love books;  they allow you to feel someone else's feelings,  to live another's life).  I haven't cried for her in ab while. I just don't know if I can bring myself to go.   But then I know,  I'll feel guilty for not. What else do I have for her if not this?  This business of living is complicated

My Last menstrual cycle

FRIDAY: Today I awoke in pain.   I'm so swollen I look 3 months pregnant. I have to overlap pain pills with 600 ibuprofen just to take the edge off. I have no choice. I'd go to the hospital for the pain if I didn't know what it was,  but I do know, so the trip would be pointless. I walk hunched over like I'm very very old. A simple tap on my stomach sends shooting pain through my body.

Today is the beginning of my last period.   I thought for a while today about how I'll never have another baby. I considered how Evie is my last. The decision (not that there really was one,  because having babies really is too dangerous for me) is made. I cannot nor will not have any more. My body,  God,  whatever,  has decided that for me. And I'm okay with it. There's been so much pain for me these last few years. So many things have gone wrong, it's time to let things go, starting with my insides I guess. It'll be nice to be healthy again. Derek isn't home tonight,  I'm staying at my in laws with the kids.

SATURDAY: Taking the cycle of percocet and ibuprofen still.  I tried to eat this cereal morning,  I threw it up. Not good.  I still hurt. Yesterday at its worst, I lay in bed crying.  Curled in the fetal position hand over my face,  sobbing. D's parents saw this. I don't think they knew how much this disease hurts.  

Disease. That's the first time I've called it that. That's what it's called in everything I read: a disease. A disease that much is not known about.   I wonder how long I've had it and it was masked by birth control?   I wonder if it may have caused the issues with my water?   I wonder if it's been causing my bowel issues this whole time?   This smart likely.

SUNDAY (or realistically Monday since it's 4 am): I can't sleep.   Not because I'm not tired but because D woke me up checking on me. I'm not sure if he was even awake.  My stomach still hurts some. And my lower abdomin still hurts too.  I wonder if the medicine regime that I never take messed with my stomach. It feels like I got punched in the guts. I can't take ibuprofen anymore--- surgery is a week away. I'm nervous about it. What if it's worse than suspected?  What if they can't get it all?

I say these things knowing that the success rate is good. That's more than other diseases offer. I should be grateful and I am.

One week out, and nearly through one more flare up.   This one was the worst. I'd have been in the hospital again if I didn't know what it was.  They get progressively more painful.  One week out and as scared as I am I hope the surgery comes and is over quickly.   It's a rather large and looming date in my future. Now to get through one more major appointment with my general practitioner for her to give the surgery the go ahead.   I hope it goes smoothly. But that appointment is Tuesday.

Father's Day champion

I don't have much to give.  I don't have money to buy a gift or even an idea of what I could get him if I had money to spend.  What I do have is words. And love. 

When I met him he was a bachelor without children. I had S. She was almost 2; she's 11 now.  When he finally came into S's life it was a transition that he eased into. I will not say it was flawless but he was beyond good with her.  He assumed a role with her that many fail at, and when he became a steady person in our lives we both gained something that cannot be replaced.

Then he and I got married and had G-- daddy's girl.  He never flinched adding one more to our family only 9 months and a day after we got married. She became his cuddle monster, he had a knack at putting her to sleep when I could not. Crawling into bed on his side for a few minutes of sleep in the morning or when she had a nightmare became expected of her and he welcomed it, and welcomes it still. 

He makes sure to make the time to take the two to sporting events, practices and rehearsals. He spends hours at recitals and cheers them on. He is their champion.

And then we had Gabbie.  He became the father of an angel too. And he became our everything when I was nothing but a puddle in bed, he made sure we still rolled on while I was lost.  He is our champion.

Then we found out we were having Evie and he became her champion before he ever knew her. He rallied her when she was quiet inside. He waited to see her rolling inside my belly. And the nearer it got to meeting her he worried silently, staying strong for me. And then she came and again he was my strength taking care of her when I could not, taking care of me when I could not.

And now, that I am so tired, and hurting with this endometriosis which is sometimes more physically painful than anything I know, he does what needs to be done. He does it his way, and it works and I can't and wouldn't complain, because it's more than I can do sometimes. Sure you could say, "it's what he's supposed to do he's a father and a spouse" but not every man can nor would.   Many marriages have ended after a loss like ours. But he holds strong and he does it without complaint--- all of it: the stepfather to a tween, the father to two beautiful girls of his own,  the father of an angel,  the man who takes care of me. I don't know what I'd do without him. Thank you Babe, for being the best father to my children and partner I could ever imagine and hope for.

The verdict--- The large elephant in the middle of my near future.

Perhaps severe endometriosis--  that's the verdict.  The sentence: partial hysterectomy with the possibility of loss of an ovary or two.

So here's the problem, or the perceived problem: the theory is I have retrograde endometriosis.  That's, theoretically, when the menstruation cycle does not empty correctly from your uterus but instead empties in a reverse fashion out through your Fallopian tubes and into your body. The menstrual tissue then implants in the abdomen cavity and grows because of an immune system problem or hormonal problem.  This is just a theory, but the theory, currently, that my doctor is subscribing to.  There really is no absolute proven clinical cause for a woman to have endometriosis.

The other options besides surgery weren't really options at all.  I could go permanently on birth control or hormones to control it's growth, but all birth controls I've been on have made me sick or altered my psyche, so those aren't really an option.  I could treat the pain with doctor prescribed narcotics but that's only masking the problem and would eventually worsen the situation.  So, like I said these are not options.

The procedure will be robotically done.  The idea is to go in and take out  my sick uterus and affected ovaries, then take out all the displaced tissue to keep it from growing and affecting other organs and causing more damage.  Going into the surgery which right now is the only real option, I know for certain I will not have my uterus when I wake up, that is the only certainty.

There are many unknowns.

1. Will I have one or both ovaries or will I be on hormone replacement therapy forever?

2. Will there be complications with other organs?  The doctor mentioned a common complication is damage to my bladder.  It will be fixable but will require a bag until it's healed.

3. If there is too much damage from the displaced tissue it may require invasive surgery and not just laproscopic, so I may wake to another large scar similar to my c-section where they had to go in and fix the damage.  

4. There is about a 40% chance that the surgery may not solve the problem entirely depending on how severe the stage of endometriosis.

Pros:

1. I may have no more pain.  

2. I will no longer have my period.  (Seriously, though every woman should cheer at this because I don't care who you are, your periods are annoying at best and a high maintenance painful bitch at worst.)

3. I should be at least a couple pounds lighter right? I mean come on I'm giving up a body part for this. (I say facetiously.)

4. I may finally feel better.  Maybe even capable or running again.  Perhaps I won't be so tired ALL of the time.  Post surgery me seems pretty wonderful.  I hope.  

5. I will no longer have a uterus that I still believe caused us to lose Gabbie-- a sad and final revenge on it?  Perhaps.  But I'm still angry it failed me.
These are pretty good Pros.

Cons:

1. There are many unknowns.

2. I am slightly (okay perhaps slightly more that "slightly") terrified of surgery.  I mean come on, I needed a transfusion with my last big surgery.  How though, unless your a surgeon and you live for this crap, who really likes surgery?  Crazy people.  

3. I will never again have the option of procreating.  Of being a new mommy again.  Of seeing that little face with squinty eyes blink at me in the bright light of a hospital room.  But realistically I can't anyway.  D can't (so it's a non-issue anyway) and the thought of pregnancy again is silly. It is too stressful, dangerous, (stupidly risky) and endometriosis is damaging and causes infertility.  I am however, attached to my uterus-- pun both intended and not intended.  It gave me four beautiful girls.  It allowed me to grow miracles.  It is a part of me, a useful, blessing-providing organ that gave and without it, I am... well... without it.
4. Scheduled for July sometime around the 20th (I am still waiting for the specific date from my Doctor) my summer will, realistically be over.
5. I feel bad that D's vasectomy was for no reason since I have to get a hysterectomy anyway.  We were trying to prevent me from having another surgery which obviously was not in cards.
6. I will not be able to pick up a very active, very sweet 1 year old who will not understand.  This perhaps makes me the most sad.  I will not be able to carry Evie, pick her up, or hold her while standing for at least 6 weeks.  This one sucks.
Okay, they all suck.

So there it is.  The Elephant in my future.  

Antidepressants

A year ago after Evie I became terribly postpartum. I was so in love with Evie and so sad I'd never have the same opportunities of mothering Gabbie. I became anxious that something would happen to her. Riding in the car as a passenger became terrifying-- who knew if we'd all be okay; I couldnt breathe.
So, I started on Celexa. It took away the anxiety and deep sadness. But now, possibly because of its side effects, and possibly because of hormones I am having terrible abdominal pains. 

These pains are similar to, comparable to those of a c-section as your body comes down off the anesthesia and you feel it for the first real time. It's horrible crippling pain.

Last month I went into the hospital for the pain. They admitted me. I had inflammation around my ovaries, fallopian tubes, intestines, colon and appendix but they could find no cause. My belly was distended with the pain, it is now. They did CAT Scans, and internal and external Sonograms. They gave me pain killers which helped with the pain but doped me up to sleeping most of the time. They gave me an antibiotic which melted some of the inflammation.  They sent me home. I saw a gastro, he found nothing in colonoscopy. 

I uncovered that some of my symptoms may be caused by the side effects of Celexa.  Some of the rarer effects are pelvic inflammatory problems.   Awesome by the way.   As D stated. .. I think I'd rather be sad.   But the problem with this point is the first occurrence of this pain was before Evie after I had been off antidepressants for a while, so maybe they aren't related. I'm at my wits end. I will be seeing my OBGYN Wednesday. I'm definitely weaning of the antidepressants even though I'm scared of the saddness and anxiety returning. I pray that the Celexa is the problem and is an easy fix,  though I'd be annoyed that the doctors didn't see it. However,  if it's not,  the alternatives are pretty sucky options.

As an update,  Gabbie's still sends me signs.   Butterflies,  and whispered "mama"s as I fall of to sleep.   Evie is walking and talking,  she just turned 1.  My older two G and S ate such good big sisters.  G has had a lot of questions lately regarding Gabbie and her ashes.   Time seems to fly so quickly.  

Like a teething baby

It's been nearly 4 months since last I posted. Time has continued on with work and sickness and busy schedules of dance and choral concerts for the girls. In those 4 months the girls have grown, obviously most notably, Evie. As this month begins to proceed it marks the 3rd full year without Gabbie. Sky just tok her babysitting course, Gracie turns 5 and soon after Evie will be a year. How? How has life proceeded on thusly with years passing and grief waning? So how does it feel now in the third year? 

Grief is like a teething baby on a hip: so heavy to hold but impossible to put down.  Sometimes in exhaustion it rests a weary head on your shoulder and gently drifts to sleep quietly but the weight of sleep drapes over her, making her heavier to bear and even more impossible still to put to rest because you'll wake her if you try. Grief is like that heavy, sleep-laden baby: quietly resting but unable to be put down for fear of waking it. Grief is sometimes invisible, unnoticed just like teething. Sometimes through teething, she is pleasant and smiling, playing gently and sweetly the teething is not noticeable, no rose cheeks nor gnawing jaw.  Grief is sometimes just like this, dormant in its pain. But then, then in a midnight waking, it sneaks back in and aches, with frequent reminders of the pain that steal away again after a time. Occasionally, grief, like a teething baby, needs to be cuddled, held close to your heart so you can wrap your arms around it and sooth it. Other times it just wants, needs to be let free, to gnaw, to chew, to grip something and hold it painfully tight because the pressure of it on the inside needs to be set free but yet it cannot be liberated. This is grief. 

In less than 8 days she will be gone for 3 years.  I sometimes wonder if I remember her face for what it was or because of the pictures we have of her. I'm afraid, or saddened maybe, that I might somehow remember falsely her face--- perhaps less or more full than it was, or her chubby hands with their perfect nails that had already began to darken from lack of air, or how her bow lips tilted slightly downward. She was from me. I should remember her face without a picture, but the guilt of not remembering precisely though perhaps a bit unrealistic is a real guilt.  No I don't abuse myself for it, but if I were not to remember then who would? 

I didn't bring the girls with me on my commute to work these last two mornings because of illness at the babysitter's house.   The absences of the two was deafening. I thought of how I used to cry in the car on my way to work those first few weeks I returned to work after losing her, noting how different it would have been and so much more difficult with an infant to prep everyone for the day. It disturbed me to think how easily routines change when missing a vital component of one. Routines seem to be the glue that keeps me together much of the time. When I'm thrown off by hurrying, or chaos it stresses me out.  I can't wait to pick up my teething baby (and her crazy sweet sister) and return to routines, teething and cuddles and crying and all.